Child Development ll – Flashcards

Theories of social development attempt to account for important aspects of development: •Emotion, personality, attachment, self, peer relationships, morality, and gender Such theories must: •Explain how children's development is influenced by the people and individuals around them •Examine the ways that human beings affect each other

Freud's Theory •Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory has had greater impact on Western culture and on thinking about social and personality development than any other psychological theory. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)- unconscious: the part of the mind that operates outside of conscious awareness but influences conscious thoughts, feelings, and actions. Part of this is from the fact that he is a neurologist, and basically what Freud attempted to do was understand mental disorders.

•In Freud's theory, behavior is motivated by the need to satisfy basic biological drives. What motivates us, at the end were trying to satisfy our biological need, which drives our day -day. •Psychoanalytic theories also stress the continuity of individual differences, maintaining that early experiences shape subsequent development. What goes on early in life, has effect in our personality and later in life. (Even as far as breastfeeding).

•Freud was a neurologist who became interested in the origins and treatments of mental illness. •He believed that many of his patients' emotional problems originated in their early childhood relationships. •Basic Features of Freud's Theory •Referred to as a theory of psychosexual - it posits a series of universal developmental stages in which psychic energy becomes focused in different erogenous zones. •Psychic energy: the biologically based, instinctual drives that energize behavior, thoughts, and feelings •Erogenous zones: areas of the body that become erotically sensitive in successive stages of development

*Id - The biological drives with which the infant is born -The earliest and most primitive personality structure -Unconscious and operates with the goal of seeking pleasure *Ego -Emerges in the first year -The rational, logical, problem-solving component of personality *Superego -Develops during the ages of 3 to 6 -Based on the child's internalization (or adoption as his or her own) of the parents' attributes, beliefs, and standards

Stage •*Oral Stage* - first year. The primary source of satisfaction and pleasure is oral activity. During this stage, the mother is established as the strongest love-object. •*Anal Stage* 1-3 years: The primary source of pleasure comes from defecation. •*Phallic* (3-6 years): Characterized by the localization of pleasure in the genitalia. •*Latency* (6-12 years): Characterized by the channeling of sexual energy into socially acceptable activities. •*Genital* (12+ years): Sexual maturation is complete and sexual intercourse becomes a major goal. •If fundamental needs are not met during any stage, children may become fixated on these needs, continually attempting to satisfy them.

For boys, the path to superego development is through the resolution of the Oedipus complex, a psychosocial conflict in which a boy experiences a form of sexual desire for his mother and wants an exclusive relationship with her •Freud argued that the son's desire for his mother and hostility toward his father is so threatening that the episode is repressed and infantile amnesia results. •The complex is resolved through the boys' identification with his father. •Freud thought that girls experience a similar but less intense conflict, the Electra complex, involving erotic feelings toward the father, resulting in their developing a weaker conscience than boys do. (Freud didn't technically agree, but there is no proof as to if he agreed or didn't agree with this)

•The most significant of Freud's contributions to developmental psychology were: •His emphasis on the importance of early experience and emotional relationships •His recognition of the role of subjective experience and unconscious mental activity

•Erik Erikson accepted the basic constructs of Freud's theory, but enlarged the theory to include other factors such as culture and contemporary issues. •Eight age-related stages (five during childhood and adolescence) •Each stage is characterized by a specific crisis that the individual must resolve. •If the dominant issue of a stage is not successfully resolved before the next stage begins, the person will continue to struggle with it. Trust vs mistrust, Autonomy vs shame and doubt, Imitative vs guilt ( *know these first three stages, refer to textbook for all the stages*)

•A. View of Children's Nature, B. Central Developmental Issues, C. Watson's Behaviorism , D. Skinner's Operant Conditioning, E. Social Learning Theory, F. Current Perspectives

•Learning theorists emphasize the role of external factors in shaping personality and social behavior. -Reinforcement and punishment •More contemporary learning theorists emphasize the importance of cognitive factors and the active role children play in their own development.

•Emphasize continuity in development, proposing that the same principles operate throughout life and that there are no stages. •Focus on mechanisms of change (i.e., learning principles) and argue that individual differences arise because of different histories of reinforcement and observation. •Relevant for research and children's welfare in that therapeutic approaches to treat children are based on learning principles.

•John Watson is the founder of behaviorism •Believed that children's development is determined by their social environment and that learning through conditioning was the primary mechanism of development. •Demonstrated the power of classical conditioning in a famous experiment with "Little Albert" Classical Conditioning •A form of learning that consists of associating an initially neutral stimulus with a stimulus that always evokes a reflexive response •Plays a role in infants' everyday learning about the relations between environmental events that have relevance for them •It is thought that many emotional responses are initially learned through classical conditioning, as demonstrated by the case of Little Albert.

•Classical conditioning involves an unconditioned stimulus (UCS) that reliably elicits a reflexive, unlearned response - an unconditioned response (UCR). •Learning or conditioning can occur if an initially neutral stimulus, the conditioned stimulus (CS), repeatedly occurs just before the unconditioned stimulus. •Gradually, the originally reflexive response - the learned or conditioned response (CR) - becomes paired with the initially neutral stimulus. Classical Conditioning -- Watson's advise •Treat them as though they were young adults. Dress them; bathe them with care and circumspection. Let your behavior always be objective and kindly firm. Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say goodnight. Shake hands with them in the morning. Give them a pat on the head if they have made an extraordinary good job of a difficult task. (1928, pp.81-82) •Critique; Watson's exclusive emphasis on conditioning is now regarded as simplistic. However, his approach to extinguishing fear has been widely used to rid people of phobias. •This approach, known as *systematic desensitization*, is a form of therapy based on classical conditioning in which initially debilitating responses to a given stimulus are gradually deconditioned.

•B. F. Skinner conducted research on the nature and function of reinforcement. •His discoveries include the importance of attention as a powerful re-inforcer, and the difficulty of extinguishing behavior that has been intermittently reinforced (i.e., responded to inconsistently). •Skinner's work on reinforcement also led to a form of therapy known as *behavior modification*, in which reinforcement contingencies are changed to encourage more adaptive behavior.

•Emphasizes observation and imitation, rather than reinforcement, as the primary mechanisms of development •In a classic series of studies, Albert Bandura and his colleagues found that preschool children can acquire new behaviors through observing others. •Discovered that children's tendency to reproduce what they learned depended on vicarious reinforcement (i.e., whether the person whose actions they observed was rewarded or punished)

•Preschool children initially watched a short film in which an adult model performed highly aggressive actions on an inflatable Bobo doll (weighted at the bottom so it pops up when knocked down). •One group of children observed the model rewarded with candy and soda for the aggressive behavior. •Another group saw the model punished. •The remaining children saw the model experience no consequences. •Bandura's Research Findings: •Observing someone else receive a reward or punishment for the behavior affects the subsequent reproduction of the behavior. •Boys were initially more aggressive than girls, but the girls increased their level of imitation when offered rewards.

•Over time, Bandura placed more emphasis on the cognitive aspects of observational learning. •Unlike most learning theorists, Bandura argued that child-environment influences operate in both directions, a concept referred to as *reciprocal determinism*. •Reciprocal Determinism: it's when a persons behavior can influence two things. Personal factors (likes and dislikes), and also influences their social environment. •In recent years, Bandura has emphasized the importance of *perceived self-efficacy*- An individual's beliefs about how effectively he or she can control his or her own behavior, thoughts, and emotions in order to achieve a desired goal

•Learning theories are based on principles derived from empirical research. •They, in turn, have generated extensive research and valuable practical applications •The weaknesses of the learning approach are its limited attention to biological factors and (with the exception of Bandura's theory) to the impact of cognition.

•Have to do with children's ability to think and reason about their own and other people's thoughts, feelings, motives, and behaviors •Emphasize the process of self-socialization •Children's active shaping of their own development through their activity preferences, friendship choices, and other behaviors

•Focuses on role taking - the ability to adopt the perspective of another person, thereby better understanding that person's behavior, thoughts, and feelings •Preschoolers, for example, cannot take the perspective of another and hence have very limited social cognition. •Selman proposed that children go through four increasingly complex and abstract stages in their thinking about other people.

Interpersonal dilemma: •Holly is an 8-year-old girl who likes to climb trees. She is the best tree climber in the neighborhood. One day while climbing down from a tall tree she falls off the bottom branch but does not hurt herself. Her father see her fall. He is upset and asks her to promise not to climb trees anymore. Holly promises. •Later that day, Holly and her friends meet Shawn. Shawn's kitten is caught up in a tree and cannot get down. Something has to be done right away or the kitten may fall. Holly is the only one who climbs trees well enough to reach the kitten and get it down, but she remembers her promise to her father. •4 stages of social perspective taking

•Older children's cognitions about themselves are more complex •Some children have an *entity theory of intelligence* and tend to think that a person's level of intelligence is fixed and unchangeable. •When they experience failure, they conclude that they are not very smart and that there is nothing they can do about the situation. •Other children hold an *incremental theory of intelligence* and believe that intelligence can increase as a function of experience. •These children tend to try harder after failure.

•Motivation patterns that affect academic success •Displayed in affect, cognitions, and behavior •Incremental/Mastery-oriented •Positive mood, high expectation, task persistence, seek out challenges...academic success •Entity/Helpless •Sadness/disappointment, doubts, little task persistence, avoid challenges...low academic performance •Mastery-Oriented vs. Learned Helplessness •Feelings of self-worth •Internally vs. externally based •Implications •Praising children for working hard supports an incremental model and a mastery-oriented motivational pattern. •In contrast, offering praise and criticism focused on enduring traits can lead to an entity model and a helpless orientation.

•Social cognitive theories have made important theoretical contributions and have been supported by research. •However, they provide an incomplete account because they do not address biological factors in development.

•Ethological and evolutionary theories view children as inheritors of genetically based abilities and predispositions that underlie most aspects of their behavior. •The bio-ecological model emphasizes the effect of context on development, but it also emphasizes the child's active role in selecting and influencing those contexts.

Urie Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological Model •Detailed characterization of various environmental influences on development Environment is a series of nested systems: -Microsystem- the immediate environment, such as home and school ( where child spends the most time) -Mesosystem- the interaction among different microsystems. -Exosystem- the indirect environmental influences on a child, such as policies in the parent's workplace -Macrosystem- the environmental influences at the level of the society. They include values, laws and customs -Chronosystem- a temporal dimension. Changes in the child or the environment that occur over time and influence the direction of development. •The importance of the interaction of nature and nurture, sociocultural context, and continuity of development are emphases in all three ecological theories. •The active role of children in their own development is emphasized most in the bio-ecological approach.

*Contributions* - richest description of environmental influences -suggests interventions for optimizing development at various levels of society *Criticisms* -generalizability from one environment to next questioned -not complete; a complement to existing theories

•Child maltreatment (i.e., intentional abuse or neglect that endangers the well-being of anyone under the age of 18) is one of the most serious threats to child development in the United States. •In comparison to other youngsters, maltreated children have less secure relationships with parents, show less empathy and less self-esteem, and more conflicts with peers and difficulties with academic work in elementary school. •In adolescence and adulthood, individuals with a history of maltreatment are at risk for developing serious psychopathologies.

•Consistent with the bioecological model, a variety of factors are involved in the causes and consequences of child abuse. •At the level of the microsystem, certain characteristics of children make them more likely to suffer abuse at the hands of their parents. •Maltreating parents often have low self esteem, poor impulse control, and other problems. •At the levels of the mesosystem and the exosystem, factors related to low family income and increased stress on parents are associated with abuse. •A particularly important exosystem contributor is a family's social isolation and lack of social support.

•Daphne Bugental and her colleagues have developed a promising approach to preventing child maltreatment based on the social cognitive perspective. •The researchers found that many abusive parents misinterpret child behavior (such as prolonged crying) and view themselves as victims. •The program attempted to help parents at risk of abuse to achieve more realistic interpretations of their difficulties in caring for their children and to develop strategies for solving their problems. •With reference to comparison groups receiving other types of interventions, the program was remarkably successful in reducing the incidence of abuse.