Emotional and Social Development in Middle Childhood

Vocabulary flashcards covering emotional and social development concepts in middle childhood based on Chapter 10 of Laura E. Berk's Development Through the Lifespan (Seventh Edition).

Industry

Erikson's psychological stage concept in middle childhood representing a sense of competence at skills and tasks, combining a positive and realistic self-concept, pride in accomplishment, moral responsibility, and cooperative participation with agemates.

Inferiority

Erikson's psychological stage outcome characterized by pessimism and a lack of confidence in one's own ability to do well, which can be contributed to by negative responses from adults and peers.

Mastery-Oriented Attributions

Attributions that credit success to ability and failure to controllable factors such as insufficient effort, encouraging children to seek information on how best to increase ability through effort.

Learned Helplessness

Attributions that credit failure to a lack of ability (believing ability cannot be changed by effort) and success to external factors, leading children to seek positive and avoid negative evaluations.

Person Praise

Praise that emphasizes a child's fixed traits (e.g., "You're so smart") rather than effort, teaching children that abilities are fixed and leading to learned-helplessness attributions.

Process Praise

Praise that emphasizes behavior and effort (e.g., "You worked hard"), suggesting that competence develops through effort and encouraging a mastery-oriented approach.

Attribution Retraining

An intervention that encourages learned-helpless children to exert more effort and use more effective strategies, focusing on mastering tasks for their own sake rather than comparing themselves to others.

Problem-Centered Coping

A strategy for managing emotion in which a child appraises a situation as changeable, identifies the difficulty, and decides what to do about it.

Emotion-Centered Coping

An internal, private coping strategy aimed at controlling distress when little can be done about an outcome, used when problem-centered coping does not work.

Recursive Perspective Taking

The ability to view a situation from a third-person perspective and reason about two or more people's perspectives simultaneously, aiding in the understanding of varied reasons for deception.

In-Group Favoritism

The tendency to prefer and endorse members of one's own group, which emerges before out-group prejudice in childhood moral development.

Out-Group Prejudice

Negative attitudes toward individuals outside one's own social or ethnic group, which develops after in-group favoritism and tends to decline overtly with age as children focus on inner traits.

Peer Culture

The unique values and behaviors of a peer group, including specialized vocabulary, dress codes, gathering places, and preferences, which can involve relational aggression and exclusion.

Peer Acceptance

A measure of social preferences indicating the extent to which a child is viewed by classmates as a worthy social partner ("like most" or "like least"), serving as a powerful predictor of psychological adjustment.

Popular-Prosocial Children

A subcategory of popular children who receive many positive peer votes and combine academic and social competence.

Popular-Antisocial Children

A subcategory of popular children who are admired for their socially adept yet aggressive, authority-defying behavior.

Rejected-Aggressive Children

A subgroup of rejected children who show high rates of conflict, physical and relational aggression, and hyperactive or impulsive behavior, and are often bullies.

Rejected-Withdrawn Children

A subgroup of rejected children who are passive, socially awkward, and frequently victimized by peers.

Controversial Children

Children who receive a large number of both positive and negative peer votes, being both liked and disliked, with positive votes serving as a buffer against negative ones.

Neglected Children

Children who are seldom mentioned by peers, either positively or negatively, but are typically well-adjusted.

Average Children

Children who receive an average number of positive and negative votes from peers, constituting approximately $1/3$ of a typical classroom.

Gender Typicality

A self-evaluation aspect of gender identity reflecting the degree to which a child feels similar to others of the same gender.

Gender Contentedness

A self-evaluation aspect of gender identity reflecting the degree to which a child feels satisfied with his or her gender assignment.

Felt Pressure to Conform to Gender Roles

A self-evaluation aspect of gender identity reflecting the degree to which a child feels parents and peers disapprove of his or her gender-atypical traits.

Coregulation

A child-rearing relationship in middle childhood in which parents exercise general oversight while gradually shifting control over moment-by-moment decision-making to the child.

Divorce Mediation

A series of meetings between a divorcing couple and a trained professional to settle disputes out of court, increasing parent cooperation and involvement.

Joint Custody

A legal arrangement granting both divorcing parents equal say in important decision-making regarding the child's upbringing.

Blended Families

A family structure formed by remarriage or cohabitation containing a parent, stepparent, and children (remarriage occurs in $60\%$ of divorces).

Self-Care Children

Children who regularly look after themselves without adult supervision during after-school hours.