Early and Middle Childhood

MIDTERM 2

What is Classification? Give an example from the video in class

Classification is understanding the use of hierarchies, classes, and subclasses. The example from class was when the lady asking the child to classify the three animals and the apple

Lev Vygotsky

• Russian psychologist, writing around the same time as Piaget

• Never had any contact with Piaget (communism)

  • His work was suppressed, so we didn’t know a lot about his theories until the 1980s, when he became very popular in the US

• Thinking about the same problems from a completely different perspective

  • Conclusions are nearly all in opposition to Piaget’s fundamental thoughts!

• Social constructivist theory

Sociocultural Learning: Mind in Society

• Learning can never be separated from cultural context

• Cognitive capacities are developed in and shaped by the places where children spend time (e.g., home, school, church, etc.)

• Knowledge is created and reinforced through interactions with relative experts and the use of cultural tools

• Language is a cultural tool!

• Speech is Vygotsky’s most important cultural tool

  • Children learn from the speech around them, both socially and solitarily

  • Egocentric/private speech: verbal behavior directed at the self rather than others, with the purpose of enhancing concentration and performance

  • Eventually, speech is internalized

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

• Vygotsky’s term for the distance between a child’s ability to solve a problem alone and how much better they can do when guided by a more skilled social partner

• Scaffolding: the process by which more skilled social partners structure tasks to boost children’s performance

Conflicting Thoughts

PIAGET

• Development precedes learning

  • Children must have reached a certain level of maturity before they can learn certain things

• Cognitive constructivist

  • Children manipulate their own environment and thus acquire knowledge

  • Teachers inhibit learning by forcing children into a passive role

• Learning is individual and stage-like

• You think before you speak

VYGOTSKY

• Learning precedes development

  • Children cannot develop/reach the next level of mastery unless they first engage in social learning

• Social constructivists

  • Children are active in learning through interactions with social partners

  • Teachers enhance learning by scaffolding children and helping them reach the next level of mastery

• Learning is relational and incremental

• You speak before you think

Social Information Processing Model

• Social Cognition: how we process information about the social world

• Especially important in middle childhood onward

• Encoding

  • Information processing bias (attention, memory)

• Mental Representation

  • Meaningful interpretation of the stimulus

  • Casual attributions

  • Negative automatic thoughts and cognitive errors

• Response Accessing

  • Possible responses from long-term memory (verbalization, motor activities, experienced affect)

• Response Evaluation

  • Decision making (consequences, acceptability, moral)

• Enactment

  • Behavior (verbalization, motor activity, autonomic activation)

Lemerise & Arsenio, 2000

Updated Crick and Dodge’s SIP model to acknowledge the importance of emotions in influencing each step of the model

Hostile Attribution Bias

• Tendency to ascribe harmful intent to the ambiguous behavior of others

• Hostile attribution bias is associated with reactive aggression

• Risk for HAB in early childhood:

  • Weak theory of mind

  • Poor emotional understanding

  • Lower IQ

  • Less effortful control

Empathy

• Moral feeling

• An affective response to another’s feelings with an emotional response that is similar to the other persons feelings

• Perspective-taking, discerning the inner psychological states of others

Early Infancy

• Lack of distinction between feelings of self and others

• Sensitive parenting provides foundation

1-2 Years

• More genuine feelings of concern

Early Childhood

• Respond appropriately to other’s distress

Middle Childhood

• Develop empathy for those struggling (3.g., the poor, socially outcast)

Promoting Empathy in Children

“Empathy is caught, not taught” - Mary Gordon

• Talk about your and others feelings

• Empathize with the child

• Practice taking others perspectives

• Pretend play

• Read stories

Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development

• Moral reasoning becomes more sophisticated with development

• Social interaction is critical for development of moral reasoning

Preconventional Level

• “Good” and “bad: are interpreted in terms of external rewards and punishments

• Believer authority figures

• Stage 1, Avoiding Punishment:

  • Heteronomous morality

  • Focus is on obedience

• Stage 2, Aiming at a Reward:

  • Self-interest - “what’s in it for me?”

  • Exchange

Conventional Level

• Internalize society’s conventions

• Adolescence - adulthood

• Stage 3, Good boy/girl attitude:

  • Want others to approve of them

  • Avoid disapproval

• Stage 4, Loyalty to law and order:

  • Do what you are “supposed” to do

Postconventional Level

• Recognizes alternative moral courses, explores options, and then decides on a personal moral code

• Stage 5, Justice and Spirit of the Law:

  • Values, rights, and principles transcend the law

  • Law = social contract

• Stage 6, Universal ethical principle:

  • Equality, dignity, respect

  • Rase even among adults

Moral Reasoning at Kolberg’s Stages:

Why Should You Share?

• Level 1: I get in trouble when I don’t share

• Level 2: If I share my toys, they’ll share their toys

• Level 3: Sharing is a nice thing to do

• Level 4: The rule at home is that we share. If nobody shared, then we’d fight all the time

• Level 5: Sharing is right and fair. Sharing is how you be a good citizen

• Level 6: The world is unjust, and sharing is the way to equalize resources

Criticisms of Kohlberg’s Theory

• Too much emphasis on moral thought, not enough on moral behavior

• Kohlberg says moral thinking is deliberate, but it could something be intuitive

• He thought emotions played a negative role, but they can often be helpful

• Based on male norms that put abstract principles above relationships and concern for each other (justice perspectives vs. care perspective)

The Social Intuitionist Model

• John Hadit

• The elephant and the rider

• Emotion and rationality in moral decision-making