Developmental Psychology

(Hay et al., 1999) subst

Most infants and toddlers meet their peers on a regular basis, and some experience long-lasting relationships with particular peers that start at birth.

Peers

Peers are the group an individual interacts with who are of the same age and developmental level as them.

(Rubin et al., 2003) subst

By the age of 6 months, infants communicate with other infants by smiling, touching, and babbling. In the second year of life, they can show both prosocial and aggressive behaviour with their peers, with some toddlers clearly being more aggressive than others.

Play

Play is considered as a range of activities the child is motivated to be involved in and which provide pleasure.

Cognitive development

Development of mental processing such as problem solving, language ability, and abstract thinking skills.

Oostermeijer et al. (2014)

• To measure how free time in construction play influences test scores on mathematical word problems.
  

• 128 sixth grade students (64 boys and 64 girls)  from eight elementary schools in the Netherlands

• Parents given consent forms — short self-report given to caretakers with questions on a Likert scale 1-4

• To what extent the child engaged in constructive play activities (e.g. playing with LEGO®, blocks)

• Researchers then measured mathematical word problem-solving performance using the Mathematical Processing Instrument (MPI), which was translated to Dutch.

• Children were allowed to solve each word problem in a maximum of three minutes and during this time the researcher did not speak to the child.

• The number of mathematical word problems solved correctly was used as the DV int he analysis.

Trauma

Trauma can be defined as any deeply distressing experience that has an effect on the thoughts, feelings, and behaviour of an individual.

Dobbs (2009) theory

Some people have genes that make them more or less likely to succeed in challenging environments (Dobbs, 2009).

Dobbs uses a flower metaphor, describing some people as dandelions (able to take root and survive almost anywhere) and others as orchids (fragile but capable of doing well if given good care). He argues that orchid children have a genetic predisposition to vulnerability and this can be magnified positively or negatively depending on the environment the child is raised in. In a poor environment and with poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail.

Rutter et al. (2001)

• Two types of institutionally reared children: One group Romanians xclusively reared in Romanian institutions and then adopted into the UK. Another group were British who had been raised in UK institutions and then adopted within the UK.

(Romanian orphanages are characterized by large numbers of children to very few caring adults.)

•  The Romanian children had attachment problems (e.g. they would not identify their new parents as carers and would go with strangers easily; they did not go to their new parents for comfort). This is known as disinhibited attachment – they had learned to seek comfort where they could find it.

• The Romanian children were overactive and less cognitively developed.

• The Romanian children had emotional expression problems and showed ‘near

  autistic features’.

• Rudder concluded that age of adoption was important and romanians were diff bc the amt of time they spent in an unloving environment.

• Some kids showed natural resillience and overcape deprivation

• Evaluation

  Long term 

  Comparative Design

  Non-Randomized Sample

  Correlational Nature

(Koluchova, 1976)

Twin czech boys born in 1960.

• Placed into institution after mother’s death

• Father remarried and reclaimed boys at 11 months old.

• New wife depraved and abused them, keeping them locked in a cellar, seriously undernourished.

• Not exposed to any stimulation or love apart from the contact they had with each other.

• Rescued at age 7 — foster care — adopted by two caring women who were sisters.

• The boys’ IQ scores were around 40 when they were rescued, rose to around 100 and 90 respectively

• School performance was good, and they became motivated.

• The deprivation they suffered caused cognitive and emotional dysfunction/lack of development, but their recovery supports Dobbs (2009), who argues that with the right environment and good parenting even seriously abused children can grow up to be society’s most creative, successful, and happy people.

•  high validity

• lacks generalizability

• However, extreme cases can be used to show how single variables such as deprivation can have singular outcomes, such as emotional and cognitive dysfunction.

Absolute poverty

The lack of sufficient resources with which to live. It can be measured using a definitive paradigm and applied globally. However, it does not take individual experiences relative to the society in which individuals live into account.

 Relative poverty

Income or resources in relation to a national or regional average

Why do Social sciences researchers often use relative poverty?

It is concerned with the absence of the material needs to participate fully in accepted daily life within a given society. Therefore, it takes account of the facilities, material goods, and experiences that are available to individuals, and measures to what extent people have access to them.

Pilyoung et al. (2013)

fMRI detecting blood flow to areas in brain — reflection of brain activity — regulation of emotions in young adults — longitudinal poverty study

income at age 9 vs current neural activity in diff brain regions

when showed emotionally upset images — incr amygdala activity (assumed w fear, anciety, emo disorders( and dfecr activity in prefront cortext (limits infl of amygdala, decision making)

Range of chronic stresses w growing up in poverty — overcrowding, noise, violence, family turmoil or separation — impact brain development in childhood and adolescence.

Bowlby’s theory

1. Between 6 and 30 months, the child is likely to be emotionally attached to the main caregiver, mainly the mother, especially if the caregiver is responsive to any sign of distress faced by the child. 

2. The child will lean more towards a familiar caregiver, especially in times of distress. The familiar adults are also use to explore the environment. 

3. Events that interfere with attachment, such as deprivation from these caregivers, can have short and long term impacts on the child, even into their adulthood. 

Maternal deprivation

Detachment or separation from the mother figure

Luby et al (2013)

MRI on 145 children aged 6-12 based on parental nurturing skills

grey white matter, areas w learning skills and coping w stress

Bowlby (1944)

44 juvenile delinquents, record of theft, control group w no history. juveniles followed by mothers were interviewed. mother — insight on prolonged mater depri for 6+ months b4 kid was 2. juven — insight into personalities, 14 diagnosed as affectionless psychos. out of those 14, 12 experienced mater depri for 6+ months b4 kid was 2.

Chances of delinquency and affectionless psychopathy was greater if the child had experienced maternal deprivation for over 6 months before the age of 2. 

• ecological validity —naturalistic data

• non-delinquent control group — comparable and isolate mater depri

•  lack of generalizability — small sample size

• extraneous var — culture and factors beyond upbringing

• Recall bias — rely on mom’s memories

• Researcher bias — psycho diagnosis — based on clinical judgement

Gender identity

A person’s experience of masculinity or femininity and to what extent with the roles associated with being male or female.

Sociocultural determinants of gender identity

Assume the thoughts, feelings and behaviour of individuals that are a result of sociocultural mechanisms.

slaby and frey (1975)

• split screen

• gender constancy

• experimental design

• operationalisation of gender constancy enhance the study’s internal validity.

• split screen - objective measurement

• small likley homogenous sample, low generalizability

• artificial setting : low ecological validity

• purely correlational

• prolly not diverse and more on gender setereotypes (70’s america)

cognitive aspect of gender identity

 thoughts, feelings and behaviours are a result of cognitive mechanisms.

Gender constancy

cognitive mechanism of understanding that gender is fixed

Mentalization

process by which we make sense of each other and ourselves implicitly and explicitly in terms of subjective states and mental processes.

Allen (2006) - stat

Mentalization is developmental and develops through interactions

theory of mind (TOM)

the ability to understand and infer the mental states of others such as their beliefs, intentions and emotions.

SIPN and the nodes

Social Information Processing Network

Detection node

Cognitive Node

Affective Node — involves the Amygdala and Hypothalamus, and controls primary (short-lived) emotions. This additionally correlates to the development of empathy.

Empathy

an understanding of someone else’s mental or emotional state and a sharing of the emotional experience of the other person.

Hooker et al (2008)

• tested affective node

• two conditions: self-report questionnaire on a 5-point likert scale

  • shown images and were asked to identify emotions

  • given situations and were asked to identify emotions

• fMRI recording brain actovity

• increased activity in hypothalamus and amygdala — affective node works in daily life empathy.

• min external var — high internal validity

• self treport + fMRI = subjective and quantitative, objective data — increased validity thru triangulation

• artifcial tasks — reduced real-world applicabilty

• cannot establish causation

• Uncontrolled variables, such as individual emotional sensitivity or prior experiences, may confound results.

Eisenberg et al., 1989, Fabes, 1998

Western cultures, high empathic concern and low personal distress have been implicated in increased prosocial behaviour.

This is in turn related to better emotion management as well as better peer relations

Trommsdorff (1999) - sta

Children from East Asian cultures experience greater personal distress but less empathic concern than children from Western cultures. 

Cassels et al. (2010)

• compared East Asian and

  European-Canadian young adults.

• predominantly female sample of 190

  school and university undergraduate students from the Vancouver area who clearly

  identified as East Asian or European-Canadian.

• Davis’s (1980) Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) to measure empathy and personal distress —  index has 28 items answered on a five-point Likert scale

  ranging from ‘Does not describe me well’ to ‘Describes me very well’, and produces

  quantifiable data easily replicated across different groups.

Westerners reported more empathic concern (the tendency to feel sympathy and/or concern for others in negative situations), but less personal distress (the tendency to experience distress and/or discomfort in response to another person’s distress) than East Asians.

Trommsdorff et al. (2007) - subst

preschool children responding to a sad event (an adult having her balloon popped). They compared four different cultural groups (children from Germany, Israel, Indonesia, and Malaysia).

They found children from other-oriented cultural groups (Indonesia and Malaysia) displayed more self-focused distress than children from individual-oriented cultural groups (Germany and Israel).

Affective empathy

Emotional response to others’ distress and can take two forms:

personal distress or empathic concern