PSY 121 - Social and Personality Development in Childhood

What is an authoritative parenting style?

A parenting style characterized by high (but reasonable) expectations for children’s behavior, good communication, warmth and nurturance, and the use of reasoning (rather than coercion) as preferred responses to children’s misbehavior.

What does conscience mean?

The cognitive, emotional, and social influences that cause young children to create and act consistently with internal standards of conduct.

What is effortful control?

A temperament quality that enables children to be more successful in motivated self-regulation.

What is the Family Stress Model?

A description of the negative effects of family financial difficulty on child adjustment through the effects of economic stress on parents’ depressed mood, increased marital problems, and poor parenting.

What are gender schemas?

Organized beliefs and expectations about maleness and femaleness that guide children’s thinking about gender.

What does goodness of fit mean?

The match or synchrony between a child’s temperament and characteristics of parental care that contributes to positive or negative personality development. A good “fit” means that parents have accommodated to the child’s temperamental attributes, and this contributes to positive personality growth and better adjustment.

What does security of attachment mean?

An infant’s confidence in the sensitivity and responsiveness of a caregiver, especially when he or she is needed. Infants can be securely attached or insecurely attached.

What is social referencing?

The process by which one individual consults another’s emotional expressions to determine how to evaluate and respond to circumstances that are ambiguous or uncertain.

Define temperament.

Early emerging differences in reactivity and self-regulation, which constitutes a foundation for personality development.

What does theory of mind mean?

Children’s growing understanding of the mental states that affect people’s behavior.

What is attachment?

Emotional bond that forms between newborns and their primary caregivers

What does it mean to be secure?

Comfortable with intimacy and autonomy

What does it mean to be avoidant?

Dismissive of intimacy and counter-dependence; cannot trust others to care

What does it mean to be ambivalent?

Preoccupied with relationships; not sure if they themselves are worthy

What does it mean to be disorganized?

Fearful of intimacy and socially avoidant

What is an authoritarian parenting style?

Values obedience and exert a lot of control, punishment

What is an indulgent/permissive parenting style?

Most tolerant, least likely to use discipline

What is an indifferent/uninvolved parenting style?

Parents largely ignore the children

Social interactions with same-aged peers foster many social skills.

True

What is social comparison?

Evaluation of your own skills, knowledge, or personal qualities in relation to peers

Acceptance by peers is important.

True

What is effortful control?

Temperament quality that enables children to be successful in motivated self-regulation

What is social referencing?

Reading reactions of adults or other people to determine how to behave in different situations