Middle Childhood Development Notes

Self Development

  • Emotional Development

  • Peer Sociability

  • Aggression

The Self

  • Conceptions of Self (6 to 9 years):

    • Person perception evolves from behavioral descriptions to stable dispositions.

    • Self-descriptions evolve to include inner qualities like traits, values, and beliefs, portraying the self more abstractly and psychologically.

    • 9-year-olds still list physical attributes but become more psychological, including preferences, relationships, and psychological traits.

      • Example: "I’m pretty popular, at least with the girls I spend time with, but not with the super-popular girls who think they are cooler than everybody else."

    • Peer relationships are significant; children display behaviors and traits to solidify their standing with peers.

      • Example: "With my friends, I know what it takes to be liked, so I am nice and helpful and can keep secrets."

Self-Esteem

  • Around age 8, competency appraisals become more realistic, aligning with others' evaluations.

  • Peers confirm or question personal assessments of social competencies.

  • Harter (2005): Self-esteem depends on how children think others evaluate them and how they evaluate themselves, especially in self-involved contexts.

  • Based on:

    • Academic competencies

    • Physical competencies

    • Social competencies

Self-Esteem - Social Comparison

  • As early as age 5 or 6, children evaluate themselves in comparison to peers.

  • Using others as reference points to determine whether they perform better or worse in various domains.

  • Plays an important role in shaping perceived competencies and global self-esteem (Altermatt et al., 2002).

Emotional Development

Understanding the Causes of Emotions

  • Around 10-11 years: proficient at identifying situations that evoke pride, guilt, shame, envy, jealousy, and other complex emotions.

  • Olthof et al (2000): around 9-10 years

    • Shame Only Stories: In situations in which someone behaves incoherently and/or incompetently without causing harm to anyone.

      • Example: Tim burps out loud at a party and feels ashamed.

      • Guilt: "How awful for the other children. Why do I always drink so fast?"

    • Shame and Guilt Stories: In situations in which the protagonist’s incompetent and/or incoherent behavior does cause harm.

      • Example: Jake is secretly happy when his friend loses a race but feels guilty afterward.

      • Shame - Jake quickly looks the other way when his friend approaches him. He can only look down at his feet when his friend stands next to him

      • Guilt - Jake thinks: „It’s terrible that I was happy because my friend lost the race”

Understanding of Mixed Emotions

  • Between ages 5 and 7, children understand they can feel two compatible emotions at the same time (e.g., happy to be at Disneyland and excited about meeting Goofy).

  • By age 8, children recognize that the same situation may elicit different emotions from different individuals (e.g., big fluffy dog).

  • Between ages 6 and 10, children begin to acknowledge that individuals can have positive and negative (mixed) feelings about the same situation (e.g., happy to be at Disneyland but sad that John couldn’t come).

  • Background:

    • Concrete-operational intelligence - decentration

    • Discussion with parents about causes of emotions (social experience)

    • Improvements in social and moral development: stronger respect for rules and obligations >> compliance with or breaking of rules - moral emotions as pride, shame, and guilt (e.g., guilt + at the same time the activity can be rewarding “schadenfreude” / gloating - káröröm)

Emotional Display Rules

  • Primary school: increasing awareness of socially sanctioned display rules.

  • Takes time to master fully (7- to 9-year-olds are still unable to hide all their disappointment and act thrilled about receiving a lousy gift).

  • Family influences:

    • Stronger pressures on girls to "act nice" -> girls are both more motivated and more skilled at complying with display rules (Davies, 1995).

    • Caregivers emphasize positive emotions over negative feelings > children better able to mask disappointment and other negative emotions.

    • Frequent displays of negative emotions at home > high levels of negative emotionality (difficulties in ER).

Peer Sociability

Peer groups:

  • Interact on a regular basis

  • Define a sense of belonging - Identification with the group (in-group identity)

  • Develop its own norms (dress, think, and behave)

  • Develop a hierarchical organization (e.g. leader and other roles) > well-organized cooperation (school-projects in team)

  • Discover the value of teamwork

  • Develop a sense of loyalty and commitment to shared goals

  • Learn lessons on how social organizations pursue their objects

Parental Influences on Peer Sociability

  • Choice of residence (parks, playgrounds, other young children in the neighborhood).

  • Arranging visits by playmates, encouraging their participation in social activities (friendship facilitation).

  • Coaching their social skills:

    • Calmly discussing basic social conventions

    • Teaching children prosocial strategies for initiating and maintaining social interactions (such as how to gain entry or how to manage conflicts)

    • Indirectly monitoring their children’s interactions with peers (vs. intrusively intervening)

    • Allowing playmates considerable freedom to structure their own play activities and to resolve minor conflicts on their own

  • Attachment: inhibited or overdependent vs. open and autonomous

  • Childrearing practices: parental power assertion as control tactic -> children are often aggressive, socially unskilled, are likely rejected by peers

Peer Acceptance and Popularity

  • Assessed by SOCIOMETRY: identify specific persons within the group they would prefer (or would not prefer) to have as partners in a given activity

  • Sociometric position: number of group members who rate the person of being liked (chosen) or disliked (repulsed)

    • Popular children: liked by many peers, disliked by few

    • Rejected children: disliked by many peers, liked by few

    • Neglected children: few nominations as liked or disliked, low social impact, almost invisible to the peers

    • Controversial children: liked by many, but disliked by many, displaying positive behaviors (e.g., cooperation, high sociability) and negative behaviors (e.g., aggression) as well

    • Average status: average number of nominations as liked or disliked

Why are children accepted, neglected, or rejected by peers?

  • For group-level reasons (such as norms / cliques – “geek among cheerleaders”; involvement of members; shared activities and time)

  • For individual-level reasons

    1. Social-emotional skills and sociability (e.g., overactive, intrusive or shy, withdrawn; self-esteem)

    2. Cognitive and social-cognitive skills (e.g., role-taking & prosocial skills, academic performance)

    3. Physical features

Prosocial Behavior and Aggression

Prosocial Behavior during Middle Childhood

  • 7- to 9-year-olds begin understand the nature of empathic emotion as they put themselves in others’ place and infer the psychological basis for their sadness (“I am sad, because he is sad”).

  • Prosocial behavior become motivated more by empathy:

    • Children become better at inferring others’ point of view

    • Understanding the causes of their own empathic emotions

    • Understanding these causes can help them to feel sympathy for distressed or needy others

Gender Differences in Prosocial Behavior

  • Girls are often reported to help, comfort, and share more than boys (Eisenberg, Fabes, & Spinard, 2006; Russel et al., 2003).

  • Girls are more concerned about others’ welfare and often emit stronger facial and vocal expressions of sympathy than boys (Hastings et al., 2000).

    • Boys experience same levels of psychological arousal upon encountering someone who is distressed as girls do (Eisenberg, Fabes, & Spinard, 2006)

    • Boys are less cooperative and more competitive

    • By middle childhood: boys were more likely than girls to act so as to hinder another child’s chances of winning a prize while playing a game, even when they could easily win without regard to how the other player performed (Roy & Benenson, 2002).

Aggression During the Grade-School Years

  • Physical aggression and overt behavioral problems continue to decline during school years (less impulsivity, emotion regulation matures, complying with rules, settling conflicts more amicably).

  • Hostile aggression & retaliatory aggression: slight increase with age

  • 7- to 12-year-olds can discriminate between accidental and deliberate harm-doing (..to be continued in the Topic of Bullying in SD seminar).