Social Development Exam #1

Have children always been viewed as separate from adults?

No.

In the past, children used to be viewed as mini-adults; childhood not acknowledged as a separate stage

What are some key questions in Social Development currently? (9 of them)

1. How do internal factors interact with external factors?

2. What role do children play in their own development?

3. What Is The Appropriate Unit for Studying Social Development?

4. Is social development continuous or not continuous?

5. Is Social Behavior the Result of the Situation or the Child?

6. How does social development differ by culture?

7. Is There a Single Pathway of Social Development?

8. How Important Are Mothers for Children’s Social Development?

9. What Influences How We Judge Children’s Social Behavior?

What is the basis of this question: How do internal factors interact with external factors in SD?

Nature vs. nurture.

Maturation

unfolding of increasingly complex social skills and abilities.

 How do internal factors interact with external factors?

The environment can affect behavior, which affects neurons, which affects genes

• This process goes both ways.

Example of internal factors and external factors interacting in general

Ex. If nutrition in early adulthood is lacking, that affects gene expression, which causes height to be lower

Example of internal factors and external factors interacting in SD

Temperament is affected by biological factors/genes (ex. is the infant fearful or happy typically) which interacts with early family experiences (ex. safety) which leads to social behavior later with peers…which could affect which genes are expressed!

Model of bidirectional influences in SD (external vs. internal factors)

 What role do children play in their own development?

Children are active agents in their development, not simply "receiving" development

Development = ACTIVE!!!!!

•  Shape, control, direct SD

What did Piaget say about children affecting their own development?

Piaget said children construct knowledge and schemas. , ex. Schema of gender

Reciprocal interactions

• parent responds to child, which then responds back, so on and so forth…

Reciprocal interaction example

• Ex. child has a personality that evokes a response that reinforces that personality

the evocative effect:

• own personality evokes responses 

Transactional interactions

• Development is a transaction between parent and child. Ex. buyer and seller

What Is The Appropriate Unit for Studying Social Development?

• Can focus on single child

• Also focus on dyads, social triads, social groups

social dyad

• Researchers now study the nature of social interactions and exchanges between pairs of children or between children and their parents and investigate social relationships between these individuals

Is social development continuous or not continuous?

Both, depending on development itself and the researcher’s worldview. It can also depend on the timeframe,

• Development measured every 15 seconds looks continuous/quantitative

• Development measured every year looks qualitative/discontinuous

Continuous

• quantitative changes, the amount of something changes. Ex. adults know more than children

Discontinuous

• qualitative development. Ex. infants differ from adults because they way they think is different

Is Piaget’s theory of social development continous or discontious?

Discontinuous. Has stages!

Nativists

• researchers who believe some things are innate. More likely to have quantitative (continuous) view

Non-nativists:

•  researchers who believe very little is innate. More likely to have qualitative (discontinuous) view

Today, do development researchers see development as continuous or discontinuous?

• Today, social development researchers see social development as basically continuous 

  • But a couple areas have transitional time periods, like puberty

Is Social Behavior the Result of the Situation or the Child?

• this questions asks if development is due to “person factors” or “situational factors.”

• IRL its Both! Genetics leads children to seek out certain situations, other situations they may act completely differently due to the situation itself! Think home vs church vs angry kid seeking out fightclub

How does social development differ by culture?

• Some SD is universal

• Some SD is culture specific

What is an example of a universal aspect of social development?

Universal: first attachment @ 9 months

What is an example of culture specific aspect of development?

• what percentage of babies fall into different attachment styles

• Sensitive caregiving is Culture specific

Is There a Single Pathway of Social Development?

• No single pathway exists. Concepts of multifinality and equifinality

Multifinality

divergence of developmental paths, in which two individuals start out similarly and end up at very different points

Equifinality

•  children follow very different paths to reach the same developmental end point

How Important Are Mothers for Children’s Social Development?

Important, but fathers, siblings, grandparents, peers, teachers are also important

What Influences How We Judge Children’s Social Behavior?

• characteristics of the child, the adult, and the context— can subtly influence social judgments and the labeling of social behaviors

  • More likely to judge or label a behavior negatively if it occurs in boys, in children, who have been temperamentally difficult as infants, in unattractive children, etc

What are some other questions related to SD?

• How do trends affect SD?

• How does SD work with other developments?

  • Physical development affects social development…

• How can we see SD in the real world?

How do we get the research ideas that we think of in social development?

• Typically people use available methods and theories. Guided by these theories

How do theories function?

• Theories can give you ideas to guide studies

• Theories help you figure out what to measure and how to measure it. (data analysis and interpretation, what conclusions you draw)

• Theories can also guide how you interpret data and conclusions across studies

Other than theories and methods, what are some other ways to get research ideas?

• Real world events/current events/ (COVID 19) can help generate ideas

• Own experience and life

• Ideas from our culture and cultural beliefs. What would this be like in another place?

SD vs cognitive development

SD you study much more broad things that you can’t randomly assign people to be in groups

• SD depends often on correlational research and self-reporting and observational studies

correlational research and self-reporting examples

• Questionnaires/surveys

• Structured interviews (asking same questions to all participants)

Limits of observational studies

• researchers will always influence the environment

• Can’t control anything so you don’t know if you will observe what you want

• Can’t observe everything

Does SD use correlational or experimental studies?

Correlational almost always

Correlational studies: what are they?

• Measures at least 2 things (typically more) to see correlation. 

• Often times people measure a lot of things

• Can say these things are linked, related, associated. NO CAUSALITY

Math properties of correlation

• Correlation ranges from 0 to 1. 

  • Quantifies strength of relationships (closer to 1) and type of relationship (positive or negative)

    • Negative is inverse relation 

  • Correlation in human studies ranges typically around .3 

Do you have independent and dependent variables in correlational research?

No

Limitations of correlational studies. Why can’t we say causality?

1. Selection Bias

2. Third Factor

3. Direction of relationship

4. Demand characteristics

Selection bias

• different people end up in different groups because of reasons. People do not randomly choose to be a smoker, or to be high sensitivity…therefore different types of people with different backgrounds

  • No random assignment

Third factor:

 never measure everything, so there is always possibility of another factor affecting the situation

Direction of relationship:

• which causes the effect? DV could influence the IV. Direction of relationship is unknown

Demand characteristics:

•  perceived things in environment where participant changes their behavior, like trying to act in a way that matches the hypothesis/study’s goal

  • Ex. parent doesn’t want to report abuse because they don’t want researchers to know

With all these limitations that correlational studies have, are correlational studies worth it?

• Yes, because they answer complicated questions!!

What field, other than psychology, uses correlational research?

field biology…(Jane Goodall)

Psychology vs sociology

• Psychology is systematic and more controlling than sociology despite interested in same topics due to nature of field

  • Psych is quantitative (how many, much, how often?)

  • Psych looks for sets of results that come together and can be replicated

5 Developmental designs

1. Single age 

2. Cross-sectional 

3. Longitudinal

4. Sequential

5. Microgenetic

Single age design

study one single age at once

Cross-sectional design

Study multiple ages all at once

Longitudinal design

1. Study same group over time. 

2. Needs lots of funding and takes a lot of time

Sequential design

1. Mix of cross sectional and longitudinal

   1. Study 2, 3, and 4 year olds AND have different set where you study a group of 2 year olds for years 2-4

   2. Then you can compare to ensure studying is accurate

Microgenetic

1. Study in much smaller time scales

2. Ex. study child every week or every month

3. This is a new focus. Time consuming

What are the 4 key parts of developments of emotions

• Expressing emotions

  • Babies born crying, able to express emotions

• Recognizing emotions in other people

  • Ex. Raver article

• Understand labels of emotions

  • Have words

• Self regulating emotions

Primary emotions

first half of first year. Birth to around 6 or 7 months
happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, and surprise

Secondary emotions

• happens at a year and a half

  • Ex. guilt, shame, more complex and require sense of self

As children develop, do they stick with only one emotion at a time?

As children develop, children begin to understand that they can feel more than 1 emotion at a time. 2 things at once

Paul Ekman

Studied Isolated adult people who did not see media and found that they have same primary emotions across culture

• found the same things for babies. They have the same primary emotions across cultures!

First two months of life often called…

 fourth trimester with LOTs of brain development.

Social smile

• 2 months, babies get control over smile and smile at people with social smile

• Looks different from smiles before

Babies are born with which innate fears?

Born with 2 innate fears

• Falling and loud noises

What can babies do?

1. Infants interpret others’ emotions

2. social referencing

3. Positive bias

4. Self-regulation of emotion

5. Be social partners

How do we know infants can interpret others’ emotions

• By 3 months, infants have a preference for positive emotions and can recognize emotions. (hear angry or happy face and match it to correct face)

• When mom has MDD, they can’t do this

What procedures do we use to figure out that infants can interpret others’ emotions?

• Can use intermodal matching or another procedures

  • Sounds go with pictures…Researchers show babies two photos/videos side-by-side (one showing a happy face and one showing a sad face) while playing a single audio track that matches one of the emotions. Babies look at the one that matches the sound!

• Procedures like preferential looking. Ex. infants look at happy faces more…

Social referencing

• Infants look to parent to see how they should feel or do

• Parent is reference for baby

• Look happy when you want them to feel happy.

What procedure allows us to test social referencing?

• Visual cliff task: used to measure depth perception and, for this class, social referencing

  • Child will look at parent to see what to do. If the mother smiles and looks encouraging, the baby is likely to cross. If the mother shows a fearful expression, the baby refuses to cross

Positive bias in infants

Babies begin with positive bias and like and prefer positive things

• Later at around 1 year they have a negative bias and prefer angry faces

Self regulation of emotion

Around 2 or 3 months, babies can begin regulating emotions

• Emotional talk. They get better about learning emotions once they can speak later

• Executive function (preschool)

  • Being able to control thoughts can help you control emotions

What are some early forms of emotional regulation?

• Early forms= sucking thumb, holding yourself, self soothing behaviors 2 or 3 months

Differences in emotional talk by gender

• Girls hear more about fear and boys hear more about angry

Differences in emotional masking by gender and race

• Girls and asian children are better about masking emotions

  • Give children a disappointing gift task (broken toy)

    • Girls and asian children will mask it better

Importance of executive function in self-regulation of emotions

Cognitive control. If you can suppress or regulate emotions, you are using executive function

How are babies are prepared to be social partners?

• Babies behavior follows bio rhythms

• Babies attracted to visual social media, like faces

  • Look longer at faces. High contrast!

• Babies have developed auditory system, even before birth

• Babies also have smell, taste, and touch senses 

  • Touch is one of first senses to develop

• Babies are attracted to people and their behavior in general

  • attunement

Attunement

• pattern of mutual responsiveness between parent and infant. Babies are attracted to people and their behavior in general!

Why are babies prepared to be social partners?

• This preparedness is adaptive. Babies depend on the support of parents! 

Experience-expectant:

• processes that are expecting a normal, regular environment

  • We expect that babies hear and will be exposed to a language. Hearing

  • We expect babies will be able to feel things through touch. Vision

experience dependent:

• it depends on a unique environment

  • Process depends on something special happening

  • Understanding peoples emotions is a dependent process

    • How family encourages emotion makes it dependent. How much emotion should you suppress

  • Having a depressed mom is experience dependent

Mirror neurons

• Controversial. Pretty sure we have them in humans

• Neurons that fire in the brain as we see someone else do something

  • Ex. when watching people cook, our mirror neurons are firing and we “feel” like we are cooking

  • Watching people have emotions, interact with others, can affect SD

Social brain network includes… (neuroscience a little bit)

ACC, mPFC, Amygdala

ACC:

Anterior cingulate cortex. Part of social brain

mPFC:

prefrontal cortex. Thinking control

Amygdala

 linked to hippocampus. Controls emotions, fear, aggression

Temperament traits (and their relation to personality)

• Temperament traits: subset of personality traits. temperament=part of personality, but not your WHOLE personality

  • Temperament traits do not include congitions, beliefs, and attitudes. You are more than your temperament!

Temperament vs. personality

• Temperament is a biological “core” that personality develops around

• Personality is more varied. Personality takes temperament and expresses it in more varied, complicated ways

Is temperament heritable?

• (somewhat heritable) 20-60% of temperament can be linked to family. (like the same amount of height)

Heritable

Degree to which variation is linked to genes

Is positivity or negativity more heritable?

Negativity. Negativity sticks around in families

Is temperament stable?

• Temperament is moderately stable

  • More stable after 3 years old than before 3 years old

  • After 3 becomes more stable

  • Very stable after 50

  • Its more stable the closer the measurements are (the more often measured)

    • More time between measuring = less stable

  • Very stable in adulthood

Thomas & Chess theory

• Interviewed parents and came up with first theory of temperament

• All about how we feel about the infant

• 3 temperaments: Easy, Difficult, Slow to Warm up

Easy: temperament

• 40%. Easy baby! Go to sleep, wake up same times… regular schedule. They like things and are happy. Good with new people and places. Happy for things to be changed. Default is happy. Low intensity of mood, not going to scream all at once, but ramp up slowly

Difficult: Temperament

• 10% of babies are difficult. Not parent’s fault. Irregular schedule… don’t want to go to bed and wake up when you want. Like a lot of activity, exhausting. Don’t like new things and don’t like change. Default mood is fussy. High intensity mood, no slow rampup. 

Slow to warm up: temperament

• 15%: easy, but slow to adapt to change. Low activity, likes to sit and do nothing. Don’t like change, need more time to adapt to change, maybe need parent’s help. Low intensity of mood. NOT HIGH energy. 

East, difficult, and slow to warm up temperament percentages add up to 65%. What are the other babies?

35% other. Not categorized!

Kagan’s temperament theory

• Only two types of babies

  • High reactive vs low reactive.

  • Able to predict at 4 month old

High reactive

Irritability. Shy, timid, restrained child. Fearful.