Dev Psych Exam 2

Easy Babies

positive in mood, high regularity (eat/sleep at predictable intervals) and adaptability (won’t be thrown off by changes), and accepting new experience (~40% of babies)

Difficult babies

irritable and hard to please, low regularity and adaptability, and withdrawing from new experience (10%) 

Slow-to-warm-up babies

slow to adapt to new situation or people, need time for new experiences (15%) 

Goodness of fit

• the match between a child’s temperament and the environmental demands and constraints

  •  e.g., “Difficult” babies and patient and responsive caregiving 

    • “inhibited” toddler and encouraging and accepting parents 

Basic emotions

joy, surprise, sadness, disgust, fear, anger (first 6 months) supposed to be important for child's adaptational survival 

Self-conscious emotions

embarrassment, empathy, envy (18 months) *child would need to develop self awareness

Self awareness

realization that one’s existence and functioning are separate from those of other people and things *separate from the outside 

• It develops between 15 and 18 months.

Self evaluative emotions

pride, guilt, shame (age 3)

Separation-individuation process: 

a child’s psychological separation from the caregiver and growing awareness of being an individual

Erickson’s psychoanalytic theory

• Emphasis on early feelings and relationship

• Psychosocial development is lifelong

• A series of qualitatively different psychosocial stages

  • Infancy: trust vs. mistrust (ex: trusting parent to change their diaper/attend to their needs)                                   

  • 18 mo.s – 3 yr.s: autonomy vs. shame and doubt

Parents’ tasks: Moving toward early autonomy

• support their child’s exploration/make sure there is a safe space for them to explore 

• set appropriate limits for the child

Processes in transition to self-regulation

• regulation by caregiver

• guided self-regulation (mutual regulation) 

  • Social referencing: the use of cues from another person to interpret ambiguous situations and guide behavior 

Situational compliance:

child will comply to a rule in the presence of an authority figure

Committed compliance:

child can comply to a rule in the absence of an authority figure (more independent self) 

Piaget: Preoperational thinking

• Preoperational stage

  • The 2^nd major stage of cog dev in Piaget’s theory

  • Children become more sophisticated in symbolic thought

  • Not yet able to use logic 

Conservation

the idea that the amount of something remains the same despite changes in its form, shape or appearance 

State 1: Conservation Development

(3- & 4-year-olds): non conservers 

Stage 2: Conservation Development

Stage 2 (5- & 6-year-olds): transitional period 

Stage 3: Conservation Development

Stage 3 (age 7 & above): mature conservation 

Limitations of Non-conservers thinking

• Centration: (focus on one dimension) focus on aspect of a situation (e.g., height, length)

• Appearance-reality problem: confuse what is real with outward appearance, focus on appearance 

• Focus on states: failure to understand the transformation between states 

• Irreversibility: failure to understand that some operations can be reversed 

Strategies of Mature conservers

• Compensation: considering two or more aspects of a situation simultaneously 

• Identity: the same material, although they look different 

• Nothing added or subtracted criterion: focusing on what happened during the transformation between states 

• Reversibility: understanding that some operations can be reversed, restoring to the original situation

Piaget: Process of conservation development

• physical maturation (including brain) 

• experience 

• Training studies (neo-Piagetian approach)

• Piaget was right on the biological constraint 

• nonconservers’ thinking is qualitatively different than conservers’ thinking 

Transduction

a child’s tendency to mentally link two phenomena, regardless of logical or causal relationship.

Animism

tendency to attribute life to objects that are not alive

Egocentrism

Piaget’s term for inability to consider another person’s point of view

Familiar tasks= less egocentrism

Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory: Basic Perspective

• Children as active participants in their learning and thinking

• Social interaction and specific cultural practices play critical roles in the development of cognitive skills

Vygotsky’s processes of cognitive development

• A collaborative process 

• Children’s learning is guided by adults or more skillful individuals

• Language helps children learn to plan and regulate their own behaviors

• Children learn from social interactions           

• Shared interactions ➔ internalization of society’s way of thinking and behaving

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

the difference between what a child can do alone and with help

Scaffolding

temporary support to help a child master a task 

Private speech

Audible speech that children direct to themselves in regulating their own behavior

• reflects internalization of behavior regulation 

Inner Speech

Children’s inaudible directives to themselves, used for behavioral regulation

Piaget Private Speech

reflects children’s cognitive immaturity 

Theory of mind

awareness and understanding of mental processes, shows significant development in early childhood

Principals of Mind

• Minds exists

• Minds have connections to physical world

• Minds are separate and different from the physical world

• Minds can represent objects and events accurately or inaccurately

• Minds actively interpret reality and emotional experiences

What does deception indicate? (Theory of Mind)

cognitive advances

Influences on theory of mind development

• brain maturation: involvement of left frontal lobe 

• parents’ talk or family discussion about mental states 

• multiple siblings 

• being the younger sibling 

• pretend play 

Correlates of theory of mind development

• better social skills 

• advanced language development 

Information Processing Approach

• Cognitive development is viewed as quantitative, there are no general stages of development.

• Drawn from computer science

• not one theory but a general approach

What develops in early childhood according to I-P approach?

Control of attention, processing speed, span of short term memory, intentional use of strategies, knowledge organization

Children’s autobiographic memory is influenced by:

• joint activity, child’s participation in the activity

• the way mother talks with the child about previous experience: 

  • repetitive vs. elaborative styles (shows different levels of scaffolding, elaborative style has more supportive scaffolding) 

Characteristics of young children’s episodic memory

• Competence: Young children can remember a great deal of information, and their memory can last for a long period of time.  

• Susceptibility to suggestions: young children (ages 3-4) are more susceptible than older children and adults. 

Children’s eyewitness testimony

can be reliable, but it is important that they are Interviewed once; no leading questions; open ended  questions; neutral interviewer; no repetitive questioning 

Gender identity

awareness that one is male or female

Gender roles

behaviors, interests, skills, attitudes, and traits that a culture considers appropriate for males and females

Gender-typing

socialization process whereby children learn appropriate gender roles

Gender Development: Developmental Patterns, Age 2

• Awareness of one’s own gender and start to identify others’ gender — Gender Identity 

• Gender-related preference in toys (starts very early)

Gender Development: Developmental Patterns, Age 3

• Gender Stability: A girl realizes that she will grow up to be a woman, and a boy to be a man. 

• Gender segregation— boys start to play with boys and girls start to play with girls 

Gender Development: Developmental Patterns, Age 4+

• Gender Constancy: awareness that one will always be male or female

• Awareness of gender roles

• Gender-typed behavior

Gender Differences

• Temperament (e.g., inhibitory control) 

  • Verbal fluency: Male < Female 

  • Spatial ability (e.g., 3-D rotation) Male > Female 

  • Externalizing behavior problems 

    • Age 2: no gender difference

    • Age 3-6: increased gender difference: Age 3+ M > F 

  • Internalizing problems

    • Puberty & later: M< F

Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, Basic Perspectives

• People are born with biological drives that are incompatible with societal norms that must be redirected 

• Development of personality proceeds through distinct stages 

• Focus on psychosexual development

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages

• Oral (birth - 18 months)

• Anal (18 months – 3 years)

• Phallic (3 – 6 years): A child becomes attached to parent of the other sex & later identifies with same-sex parent.

• Latency (6 years – puberty)

• Genital (puberty through adulthood): reemergence of sexual impulses of Phallic stage, channeled into mature adult sexuality

Problems with Freud’s Theories

• little empirical research support 

• multiple interpretations for the same observation 

• *relevance is with mechanisms 

Cognitive Approach

• Children’s understanding of their own gender   organize their behaviors around the gender category.

Gender Schema

a mentally organized network of information about what it means to be male or female in a particular culture

Socialization Approach: Mechanisms

• Observing models (e.g., parent, sib, peers, media) 

• Reinforcement (e.g., feedback, teaching, reward, disapproval)

Cultural Influences: Socialization Approach

• Every society has powerful gender roles & every culture teaches these to the young

• Gender stereotypes (e.g., “big boys don’t cry.”) 

• Television, books, toys, costumes, & customs

• Cultural, family and peer influences reinforce each other in the socialization of gender roles 

Biological Approach

• Brain differences

  • Corpus callosum (coordination between left and right hemispheres): F>B (females have larger corpus callosum) 

• Hormone influences: 

  • Prenatal sex hormone 

Evolutionary Theory: Sexual Selection

• Different roles in reproduction:

  • Females invest more in caring for the offspring; 

  • Females can have limited numbers of offspring. 

• Differential selective pressure for males and females 

  • Females: choose mating partners; selected on reproductive potential 

  • Males: compete for females; selected on access to resources 

Solitary Independent Play

child plays alone

Parallel Play

playing beside each other

Associative Play

play similarly (ex. similar materials) , no common goal, not trying to do things together 

Cooperative or organized supplementary play

having a common goal, division or roles & labor

Pretend “dramatic” play

• play involves imaginary people or situations

• It emerges by the end of the 2nd year, increases in early childhood, then decreases during elementary school years. 

• Shown to be good for children 

Age 4: children’s self-descriptions 

• concrete behaviors 

• external characteristics, possessions, preference 

• family or friend relationship 

Age 7: children’s self-descriptions 

• start to include generalized traits 

  • example: smart, good at sports 

Age 3-6: children’s self-descriptions 

• High and enhanced self-concept and self-esteem: 

  • often overrate their abilities 

Emotion Regulation

the ability to control emotional arousal and direct emotional expression in a socially acceptable way, to maintain organized behavior in the presence of strong emotions

• improves noticeably in early childhood

Externalizing problems

experience emotion outside the self (e.g., lashing out impulsive anger) 

Internalizing problems

inhibiting the expression of emotions (e.g., being fearful or withdrawn) 

Influences on
Emotion Regulation Development

• Brain development

• Early stress and maltreatment

• sensitive and nurturing parenting

• child’s own temperament

Prosocial behavior

any voluntary behavior intended to help others

Aggressive behavior

any voluntary behavior intended to hurt others, intention matters

Instrumental aggression

• forceful behavior aimed at getting or keeping an object

  • Most common in early childhood (children fight over toys) 

Physical Aggression

forceful behavior aimed at hurting others

Verbal Aggression

verbal expression aimed at hurting others’ feelings

Direct Relational aggression

use of relationship as a means to hurt others or achieve a goal 

e.g., “If you don’t give me the toy, I won’t be your friends any more.” 

“We don’t want to play with you.”

Indirect social aggression

use of social community to hurt others 

e.g., spreading rumor, social alienation, social exclusion

Social Learning Theory: Basic Perspectives

• Learning aspect 

  • 1.) behaviors are learned by observing and imitating models— observational learning 

    • children choose models to imitate 

  • 2.) Behaviors are shaped by feedbacks— reinforcement

• Cognitive Aspect 

  • Sense of one’s own capacity to master challenges and achieve goals— self efficacy 

Influences on children’s aggressive behaviors

media, peer interactions, parents and parenting, older sibling

Discipline Techniques: Focus on the positive

• encouraging desirable behaviors

  • reward 

  • inductive reasoning 

Discipline Techniques: Focus on the negative

• discouraging undesirable behaviors

  • Punishment

    • taking away privileges, time out, etc. 

    • harsh punishment 

    • corporal (physical) punishment 

  • Power assertion (physical or verbal control) 

  • Withdrawal of love (psychological control) 

Aspects of physical punishment related to problematic outcomes

• Anger of parents (teaches child it is ok to respond to anger by lashing out) 

• Lack of explanation about the punishment 

• Emotional consequences: rejection by parent 

• Inconsistency in carrying out punishment 

• Using punishment (frequent use) 

Influences on parenting

• parent depression

• marital conflicts

• stressful life events

• social support

Authoritarian parenting style: child behavior

Conscientious, obedient, quiet; discontent, withdrawn, may rebel in adolescence

Permissive parenting style: child behavior

Immature, lack of self control 

Authoritative parenting style: child behavior

self-controlled, content and self reliant

Uninvolved parenting style: child behavior

behavioral disorders

Authoritarian parenting style

low warmth, strict discipline, high maturity expectation, parent to child communication

Permissive parenting style

high warmth, rare discipline, low maturity expectation, child to parent communication

Authoritative parenting style

high warmth, moderate discipline, moderate maturity expectation, two way communication

Uninvolved parenting style

low warmth, rare discipline, low maturity expectation, rare communication

Child’s Role, Vygotsky

Active

Child’s role, Piaget

Active

Child’s role, IP Approach

Active

Type of Change, Piaget

Qualitative

Type of Change, Vygotsky

Qualitative

Type of Change, IP Approach

Quantitative

Process of Development, Piaget

Assimilation and Accomodation

Processes of Development, Vygotsky

Scaffolding, ZPD, internalizing

Processes of Development, IP Approach

speed, strategy, knowledge