Lecture Notes on Applied Developmental Psychology

Absenteeism and the Bioecological Model

• Absenteeism has severe impacts on development.
• It's defined as a child persistently missing school, including:
  • Excused absences (e.g., chronic illness).
  • Unexcused absences (e.g., truancy, school refusal).
• It's important to differentiate absenteeism from situations where schools are closed (e.g., pandemic).
• In Australia, 25-30% of school-aged children miss 10% or more of school (20+ days per year).
• Consequences of absenteeism:
  • Lower academic achievement, especially in cumulative subjects like math.
  • Increased likelihood of school drop-out.
  • Limited social opportunities and difficulties in forming friendships.
  • Emotional issues like isolation, loneliness, depression, and anxiety.
  • Exacerbation of existing problems at home (e.g., poverty, family health issues).
  • Reduced employment opportunities and lower economic security in adulthood.
  • Increased risk of mental and physical health issues, leading to lower life expectancy.
• The bioecological model can be used to understand factors contributing to absenteeism:
  • Microsystem:
    • Child: Physical and mental health, social skills, personality, sleep patterns, school experiences, and attitudes.
    • Family: Parenting style, family functioning, relationships, routines (especially the morning routine).
    • School: Start times, distance from home, friendships.
  • Mesosystem: Relationships between microsystems.
    • Family-school collaboration on absenteeism.
    • School procedures for reporting and recording lateness.
  • Exosystem: Factors affecting microsystems indirectly.
    • School policies on start times and absenteeism.
    • School's prioritization of attendance.
    • Transportation options and costs.
    • Availability of local social services for health and hardship.
    • Parental employment flexibility.
  • Macrosystem: Societal laws, values, and technology.
    • Neighborhood socioeconomic status and safety.
    • Community attitudes towards education and attendance.
    • Government policies on attendance, especially if tied to family resources.
    • Socioeconomic resources impact on mental and physical health.
  • Chronosystem: Changes over time.
    • Family or country's economic stability.
    • Changes in attendance policies.
    • Child's history of absenteeism.
    • Events contributing to absenteeism during the school year.
• The bioecological model provides a comprehensive view of the interacting systems that influence a child's attendance.
• Interventions can target multiple levels, not just the child and family.
• Changing one factor can potentially influence the entire system.
• Interventions should focus on both reducing risk factors and increasing protective factors (e.g., mentors, enjoyable activities).

Rubin's Peer Network Model and Sports Development

• Rubin's model focuses on relationships of increasing complexity, but not on values and resources:
  • Child at the center.
  • Interactions.
  • One-to-one relationships (friendships).
  • Group friendships.
• Structured sports activities benefit children and adolescents through:
  • Physical development.
  • Personal skills, such as resilience, motivation, confidence, self-efficacy and commitment.
  • Social skills, including social identity, belonging, companionship, teamwork, and structured conflict resolution.
• Peer relationships in sports can have different benefits:
  • Interactions offer opportunities to develop skills by interacting with diverse individuals and teams.
    • Increases resilience by observing how others cope with difficulties.
    • Learns motivation by sharing a goal with their team.
    • Develops self-efficacy and confidence when they gauge themselves relative to others whether they are better or poorer.
    • Helps to gauge one's social identity and team belonging.
    • Prosocial behavior by teammates strengthens social identity and belonging.
    • Antisocial behavior weakens social identity and belonging.
  • Friendships in sports increase enjoyment, commitment, companionship, structured conflict resolution, and teamwork.
  • Group friendships foster self-efficacy and confidence.
    • Adolescent girls in Volleyball sports class split into three groups:
      • Cooperative group: Worked together, success based on group improvement
      • Competitive group: Success based on individual performance
      • Control group: Only taught skills and strategies in volleyball
    • The result:
      • Cooperative group: Reported increased self-perception of their ability.
      • Control group: No change in self-perception
      • Competitive group: Reported a reduction in self-perception of their ability.

Emotion Regulation and Adolescent Crime

• Adolescents can face emotion regulation difficulties, potentially leading to problems.
• A dynamic systems model highlights changes in social, cognitive, neuro, and emotional processes during adolescence.
  • Neurological Changes:
    • Rapid increase and pruning of synapses
    • Differing rates of development for different brain areas
    • Prefrontal cortex and limbic system affects decision making with risk versus reward
    • The pathway between prefrontal cortex and the frontal lobe is associated with executive functioning.
  • Cognitive Changes:
    • Changes in identity and self-concept.
  • Social Changes:
    • Increased susceptibility to peer influence.
    • Intimacy and sharing of information with friends
    • Friendship groups value deviant behaviours or perceived as so, then the young person is more likely to engage in deviant behaviours because they're thinking this is important for group cohesion.
  • Emotion Regulation:
    • New and intense emotions arise like betrayal, lust, and grief
    • Reduced capacity to monitor and modulate emotion and expression.
    • Poor monitoring due to impulsivity.
    • Poor planning and decision making that also involves higher rates of unprotected sex, drug and substance use and crime.
• These factors can make adolescents vulnerable to poor decision-making.
• Approximately 2% of Australian youth aged 10-17 have been charged with a criminal offense and different groups and cultures there is an evidence of a peak in offending during adolescence.
• Four trajectories of offending behaviour among youth offenders:
  • Low group (89%): Average of two offenses across seven years.
  • Adolescent-limited group (6%): Average of 19 offenses.
  • Late-developing group (3%): Average of 24 offenses.
  • High group (2%): Average of 77 offenses.
• Offending behavior often peaks during adolescence (ages 14-17).
• Punishment alone may not reduce re-offending and increasing the certainty of arrest for specific behaviors does.
• Increasing the certainty of arrest changes from you might be caught to you will be caught.
• Clarity of consequences supports better decision-making regarding risk versus reward.
• Emotion regulation helps the person monitor what the person wants and what the outcome will be if they engage in this behaviour and reduce the scope for uncertainty.

Peer Status, Prejudice, and Emotional Development

• Peer status profiles are identified by asking children with who they like and don't like.
• Five peer status profiles can be identified:
  • Popular: High acceptance, low rejection, high impact.
  • Controversial: Many likes and dislikes, high impact.
  • Average: Moderate impact, some likes and dislikes.
  • Neglected: Low impact, often unnoticed, few or no likes/dislikes.
  • Rejected: Low acceptance, high rejection, high impact.
• Peer status profiles are associated with different patterns of emotional development:
  • Externalization (e.g., aggression) and internalization (e.g., withdrawal, shyness).
  • Peer interactions and perceptions reinforce emotional patterns.
  • Popular: Associated with externalization and aggression; status drops to rejected if bullying occurs.
  • Controversial: High externalization, aggression, disruptiveness, and positive emotions (cooperation, sociability, humor).
  • Average: No specific patterns of externalization or internalization.
  • Neglected: Less sociable, more withdrawn, but not significantly affected by their status.
  • Rejected: Both externalizing and internalizing; difficulty with emotional and social problems; associated with academic performance and absenteeism.
• Peers' judgments influence individual development.
• Prejudice refers to preconceived ideas about a person or group. It's usually not rationalised, not evidence based, it's often negative and harmful and is developed through a combination of emotional and social experiences.
• It is considered a major threat to social cohesion.
• How prejudice across countries and communities can look like:
  • Segregation is where have groups separated with no regular interaction, no collaboration, they're all sitting apart, no learning about each other's experience.
    • Segregation is conducive to prejudice.
  • Intermingling is where increases opportunities to share and challenge each other's experiences and perceptions.
    • Intermingling is less conducive to prejudice.
• Peers can contribute to developing prejudice in children.
• Longitudinal Study in Sweden with 671 adolescents collecting data from their parents and their best friend:
  • Measured anti-immigration attitudes for participants, parents, and friends.
  • Assessed family socioeconomic status and classroom diversity.
  • Adolescents' attitudes increased slightly at time two, then decreased by time three.
  • Parents' attitudes remained fairly stable.
  • Peers' attitudes decreased by time three, with more variation in scores.
    Findings:
  • Parents' and peers' attitudes strongly predict adolescents' prejudice.
  • Classroom diversity indirectly impacts prejudice.
  • Classes with less diversity showed greater variability in prejudice scores.
  • Classes with high diversity showed less variability and lower average prejudice.
  • Peers shape social and emotional development.