Chapters Physical And Cognitive Development – Flashcards

body weight more than 20% higher than the average weight for a person of a given age and height

The two halves of the brain also begin to become increasingly differentiated and specialized. Lateralization, the process in which certain functions are located more in one hemisphere than the other, becomes more pronounced during the preschool year.

protective insulation that surrounds parts of neuron increases which speeds the transmission of electrical impulses along brain cells but also adds to brain weight. This rapid brain growth not only allows for increased cognitive abilities, but also helps in the development of more sophisticated fine and gross motor skills

the preference of using one hand over another

according to Piaget, the stage from approximately 2 to 7 in which children's use of symbolic thinking grows, mental reasoning emerges and the use of concepts increases

the process of concentrating on one limited aspect of a stimulus and ignoring other aspects

the knowledge that quantity is unrelated to the arrangement and physical appearance of objects

the process in which one state is changed into another

thinking that does not take into account the viewpoints of others

thinking that reflects preschoolers' use of primitive reasoning and their avid acquisition of knowledge about the world

memory of particular events from one's own life

broad representations in memory of events and the order in which they occur

according to Vygotsky, the level at which a child can almost, but not fully, perform a task independently, but can do so with assistance of someone more competent

the support for learning and problem solving that encourages independence and growth

the way in which an individual combines words and phrases to form sentences

a process in which new words are associated with their meaning after only a brief encounter

the system of rules that determines how our thoughts can be expressed

speech by children that is spoken and directed to themselves

the aspect of language that relates to communicating effectively and appropriately with others

speech directed towards another person and meant to be understood by that person

education that is based on both typical development and the unique characteristics of a given child

organized, formal, logical mental processes

a bundle of nerve fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain, becomes considerably thicker, developing as many as 800 million individual fibers that help coordinate brain functioning between the two hemispheres.

children who are malnourished show delays in brain development. For example, severely malnourished children develop less myelinization protecting their neurons

left hemisphere is involved primarily with tasks that necessitate verbal competence, such as speaking, reading, thinking, and reasoning. Also, the left hemisphere processes information sequentially, one piece of data at a time.

develops its own strengths, especially in nonverbal areas such as comprehension of spatial relationships, recognition of patterns and drawings, music, and emotional expression. Also, the right hemisphere processes information in a more global manner, reflecting on it as a whole.

For example, many of the 10% of people who are left-handed or ambidextrous have language centered in their right hemispheres or have no specific language center.

Starting 1st year of life and thru the preschool years, boys and girls show some hemispheric differences associated with lower body reflexes and the processing of auditory information.

Boys also clearly tend to show greater lateralization of language in the left hemisphere. Females, language is more evenly divided between the two hemispheres. Girls' language development proceeds at a more rapid pace during the preschool years than boys' language development.

He argues autistic children (predominately males) have an "extreme male brain." The extreme male brain, though relatively good at systematically sorting out the world, is poor at understanding the emotions of others and experiencing empathy for others' feelings. Baron-Cohen states individuals with an extreme male brain have traits associated with the normal male brain, but display the traits to such an extent that their behavior is viewed as autistic.

Grows at faster rate than any other part of the body Increase in interconnections among cells and myelin Corpus callosum becomes thicker Lateralization improves

By age 2, the average child in the United States weighs around 25 to 30 pounds and is close to 36 inches tall—around half the height of the average adult. Children grow steadily during the preschool period, and by the time they are 6 years old, they weigh, on average, about 46 pounds and stand 46 inches tall.

Averages mask individual differences: For instance, 10 percent of 6-year-olds weigh 55 pounds or more, and 10 percent weigh 36 pounds or less. Furthermore, average differences in height and weight between boys and girls increase during the preschool years. Although at age 2 the differences are relatively small, during the preschool years boys start becoming taller and heavier, on average, than girls. Profound differences in height and weight between children in economically developed countries and those in developing countries.

In area of the brain associated with attention and concentration and is completed by the time children are about five. May be associated with children's growing attention spans as they approach school age. The improvement in memory that occurs during the preschool years may also be associated with myelination. During the preschool years, myelination is completed in the hippocampus, an area associated with memory.

Two-year-olds have brains that are about three-quarters the size and weight of an adult brain. By age 5, children's brains weigh 90 percent of average adult brain weight. In comparison, the average 5-year-old's total body weight is just 30 percent of average adult body weight. Interconnections allow for more complex communication between neurons, and they permit the rapid growth of cognitive skills that we'll discuss later in the chapter. Corpus callosum, a bundle of nerve fibers that connect the two hemispheres of the brain, becomes considerably thicker, developing as many as 800 million individual fibers that help coordinate brain functioning between the two hemispheres.

Knowledge is product of direct motor behavior All children pass through series of stages Universal Fixed order

Quantity and quality of knowledge changes Focus on change in children's understanding

Time of stability and change; lack use of operations and organized, formal mental processes Use of operations at end of stage; 2-7 years Characterized by symbolic thinking; mental reasoning and use of concepts increase Still not capable of operations: organized, formal, logical mental processes that characterize school age children. It is only at the end of preoperational stage that the ability to carry out operations comes into play.

Symbolic function: Ability to use symbols, words, or object to represent something that is not physically present Language allows preschoolers to: Represent actions symbolically Think beyond present to future Consider several possibilities at same time Symbolic function is at the heart of one of the major advances that occurs in the preoperational period: the increasingly sophisticated use of language. Use of symbolic thought, allows preschoolers to represent actions symbolically, permitting much greater speed.

Centration is the process of concentrating on one limited aspect of a stimulus and ignoring other aspects. Preschoolers are unable to consider all available information about a stimulus. Instead, they focus on superficial, obvious elements that are within their sight. These external elements come to dominate preschoolers' thinking, leading to inaccuracy in thought.

Preoperational children Unable to envision successive transformations Ignore middle steps Transformation is the process in which one state is changed into another. Adults know that if a pencil that is held upright is allowed to fall down, it passes through a series of successive stages until it reaches its final, horizontal resting spot. In contrast, children in the preoperational period are unable to envision or recall the successive transformations that the pencil followed in moving from the upright to the horizontal position. If asked to reproduce the sequence in a drawing, they draw the pencil upright and lying down, with nothing in between. Basically, they ignore the intermediate steps.

Preschoolers do not understand that others have different perspectives from their own Egocentric thought takes two forms Lack of awareness that others see things from a different physical perspective Failure to realize that others may hold thoughts, feelings, and points of view that differ from theirs

Egocentric thought is thinking that does not take into account the viewpoints of others. Preschoolers do not understand that others have different perspectives from their own. Egocentric thought takes two forms: the lack of awareness that others see things from a different physical perspective and the failure to realize that others may hold thoughts, feelings, and points of view that differ from theirs. Egocentrism lies at heart of several types of behavior during the preoperational period. Preschoolers may talk to themselves, even in the presence of others, and at times they simply ignore what others are telling them. Rather than being a sign of eccentricity, such behavior illustrates the egocentric nature of preoperational children's thinking: the lack of awareness that their behavior acts as a trigger to others' reactions and responses. Consequently, a considerable amount of verbal behavior on the part of preschoolers has no social motivation behind it but is meant for the preschoolers' own consumption.

-Curiosity blossoms and answers to wide variety of questions sought -Often act as authorities on particular topics -Leads preschoolers to believe that they know answers to all kinds of questions, but there is little or no logical basis for this confidence Some highlight "deficiencies" during this period, actually time of considerable cognitive development intuitive thought Intuitive thought refers to preschoolers' use of primitive reasoning and their avid acquisition of knowledge about the world. Often act as authorities on particular topics, feeling certain that they have the correct—and final—word on an issue. If pressed, they are unable to explain how they know what they know. In other words, their intuitive thought leads them to believe that they know answers to all kinds of questions, but there is little or no logical basis for this confidence in their understanding of the way the world operates.

-Slowly certain qualities prepare children for more sophisticated forms of reasoning -Begin to understand the notion of functionality -Begin to show an awareness of the concept of identity Functionality, the idea that actions, events, and outcomes are related to one another in fixed patterns. Identity is the understanding that certain things stay the same, regardless of changes in shape, size, and appearance.

Positive: Masterful observer Useful way to consider progressive advances in child cognition Negative: More recent experimental work suggests higher child performance on tasks involving conservation, reversibility, transformation, and ability to count Contentions about continuity of development as theorized in Piaget's stages Actually, broad outlines of his approach has given us a useful way of thinking about the progressive advances in cognitive ability that occur during the preschool years.

Focus of Approaches; Changes in kinds of "mental programs" that children use when approaching problems Changes analogous to way computer program becomes more sophisticated as a programmer modifies it on basis of experience Often Used Research Approaches; Understanding number & Memory development

Suggest that preschoolers follow a number of principles in their counting. They know they should assign just one number to each item and that each item should be counted only once. Preschoolers may demonstrate a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of numbers, although their understanding is not totally precise. By age 4, most are able to carry out simple addition and subtraction problems by counting and they are able to compare different quantities quite successfully.

Recollections of events are sometimes, but not always, accurate Typically accurate in responses to open-ended questions Partly determined by how soon memories are assessed Affected by cultural factors. Autobiographical memory; Largely inaccurate before age 3 Not all last into later life. Autobiographical memory, memory of particular events from one's own life, achieves little accuracy until after 3 years of age. Accuracy then increases gradually and slowly throughout the preschool years. Memories are also affected by cultural factors. For example, Chinese college students' memories of early childhood are more likely to be unemotional and reflect activities involving social roles, such as working in their family's store, whereas Australian college students' earliest memories are more emotionally-elaborate and focus on specific events such as the birth of a sibling.

Preschoolers' memories of familiar events often organized in terms of scripts, broad representations in memory of events and the order in which they occur. With age, the scripts become more elaborate: getting in the car, being seated at the restaurant, choosing food, ordering, waiting for the meal to come, eating, ordering dessert, and paying for the food. Because events that are frequently repeated tend to be melded into scripts, particular instances of a scripted event are recalled with less accuracy than those that are unscripted in memory.

Difficulty describing certain kinds of information, such as complex causal relationships, may oversimplify recollections.

PRO: Relies on well-defined testable, processes which alternative approaches traditionally have paid little attention. Provides a clear, logical, and full account of cognitive dev. CON: Focuses on series of single, individual cognitive processes. Individual sequence of processes never adequately paint whole, comprehensive picture of cognitive dev.

Summary: According to information-processing approaches, cognitive development consists of gradual improvements in the ways people perceive, understand, and remember information. With age and practice, preschoolers process information more efficiently and with greater sophistication, and they are able to handle increasingly complex problems. Developmentalists using information-processing approaches respond to such criticisms by saying that their model of cognitive development has the advantage of being precisely stated and capable of leading to testable hypotheses. They also argue that there is far more research supporting their approach than there is for alternative theories of cognitive development. In short, they suggest that their approach provides a more accurate account than any other.

Cognition result of social interactions in which children learn through guided participation. Children gradually grow intellectually and begin to function on their own because of assistance that adult and peer partners provide. Vygotsky saw children as apprentices, learning cognitive strategies and other skills from adult and peer mentors who not only present new ways of doing things, but also provide assistance, instruction, and motivation. Consequently, he focused on the child's social and cultural world as the source of cognitive development. According to Vygotsky, children gradually grow intellectually and begin to function on their own because of the assistance that adult and peer partners provide. Focus on child's social and cultural world as source of cognitive development.

Nature of the partnership between developing children and adults and peers determined largely by cultural and societal factors. Societal expectations about gender play role in how children come to understand world.

Cognition increases through exposure to information that is new enough to be intriguing, but not too difficult Greater improvement with help = greater increases in zone of proximal development Zone of proximal development, or ZPD, the level at which a child can almost, but not fully, perform a task independently, but can do so with the assistance of someone more competent. When appropriate instruction is offered within the zone of proximal development, children are able to increase their understanding and master new tasks.

Scaffolding is the support for learning and problem solving that encourages independence and growth. Aids in development of overall cognitive abilities.

The nature of the tools available to children to solve problems and perform tasks is highly dependent on the culture in which they live: -Actual, physical items or intellectual and conceptual framework for solving problems -Language -Alphabetical and numbering schemes -Mathematical and scientific systems -Religious systems

PRO: Increasingly influential in the last decade. Helps explain growing body of research about importance of social interaction in promoting cognitive development. Consistent with growing body of multicultural and cross-cultural research. CON: Lack of precision in conceptualization of cognitive growth Sparse information about attention and memory develop and how children's natural cognitive capabilities unfold

symbolic function; foundation

intuitive; functionality; identity

limitations; underestimation

information processing; cognitive

Vygotsky; culture; scaffolding

During preschool years: Sentence length increases at a steady pace Syntax doubles each month Enormous leaps in number of words used through fast mapping During the preschool years, children's language skills reach new heights of sophistication. They begin the period with reasonable linguistic capabilities, although with significant gaps in both comprehension and production. Language blooms so rapidly between the late twos and the mid-threes that researchers have yet to understand the exact pattern. Syntax is ways in which children at this age combine words and phrases to form sentences.

Fast mapping; in which new words are associated with their meaning after only a brief encounter. New words are associated with their meaning after only brief encounter By age 6, the average child has a vocabulary of around 14,000 words Vocabulary acquired at rate of nearly one new word every 2 hours, 24 hours a day

Use plurals and possessive forms of nouns Employ the past tense Use articles Ask, and answer, complex questions Extend appropriate formation of words to new words By the age of 3, preschoolers routinely use plurals and possessive forms of nouns (such as "boys" and "boy's"), employ the past tense (adding "-ed" at the end of words), and use articles ("the" and "a"). They can ask, and answer, complex questions ("Where did you say my book is?" and "Those are trucks, aren't they?").

Grammar is the system of rules that determine how our thoughts can be expressed. Preschoolers also learn what cannot be said as they acquire principles of grammar Although they still make frequent mistakes, 3-year-olds follow principles of grammar most of time and are correct in their grammatical constructions more than 90 percent of time

Private speech, originally termed egocentric speech (Vygotsky, 1962/ 1934), is speech that is self-directed and used for the purpose of emotional, psychological, and behavioral regulation. It is traditionally studied in children because private speech is externally voiced until around age 8, after which point it becomes internalized (Diaz & Lowe, 1987). However, people continue to use private speech through adolescence and into adulthood as a means of self-regulation (John-Steiner, 1992). Researchers have distinguished between three kinds of private speech (Berk, 1986): task-irrelevant (e.g., thinking about what to cook for dinner); task-relevant, non-facilitative (e.g., thinking about how frustrating the task at hand is); and task-relevant, facilitative (e.g., figuring out how to best solve a problem). In children, these different kinds of private speech predict performance on tasks, emotional adjustment, and reactions to challenging situations (Manning, White, & Daugherty, 1994).

What about practical communication? Relates to communicating effectively and appropriately with others Helps children to understand the basics of conversations Turn-taking Sticking to a topic What should and should not be said, according to the conventions of society Use of different language in various settings

Before the age of 3: Speak only for their own entertainment Apparently unaware if anyone else can understand During preschool years: Begin to direct their speech to others Want others to listen Become frustrated when they cannot make themselves understood Begin to adapt their speech to others through pragmatics Piaget contended that most speech during the preoperational period was egocentric: Preschoolers were seen as taking little account of the effect their speech was having on others. However, more recent experimental evidence suggests that children are somewhat more adept in taking others into account than Piaget initially suggested.

Heard home language has profound implications for future cognitive success Hart and Todd Risley (1995) landmark study Affluence of the parents = more speech to children. Parents professionals spent almost twice as much time interacting Children in families that received welfare assistance exposed to fewer words Language used home differed among various types of families. (See Figure 7.12 for complete comparison). The greater the affluence of the parents, the more they spoke to their children. The rate at which language was addressed to children varied significantly according to the economic level of the family. The greater the affluence of the parents, the more they spoke to their children. In a typical hour, parents classified as professionals spent almost twice as much time interacting with their children as parents who received welfare assistance. By the age of 4, children in families that received welfare assistance were likely to have been exposed to some 13 million fewer words than those in families classified as professionals. The kind of language used in the home differed among the various types of families. Children in families that received welfare assistance were apt to hear prohibitions ("no" or "stop," for example) twice as frequently as those in families classified as professionals.

-Importance of early exposure to language -Usefulness of intervention programs -Consequences for children's general cognitive development & behavior related to poverty & family income. Cannot be interpreted in terms of cause-and-effect, but clearly suggest importance of early exposure to language. Intervention programs may be useful in alleviating some of the potentially damaging consequences of poverty. Family income and poverty have powerful consequences for children's general cognitive development and behavior. Poverty not only reduces the educational resources available to children, it also has such negative effects on parents that it limits the psychological support they can provide their families. In short, the consequences of poverty are severe, and they linger.

linguistic; private; social

Poverty; linguistically

television; mixed

trained; good; group sizes; ratios

developmentally appropriate

What are advances and limitations, in thinking during childhood? Approaches: Piaget Information-processing Vygotsky

Concrete operational stage 7 and 12 years Characterized by active and appropriate use of logic Logical operations applied to concrete problems Conservation problems; reversibility; time and speed, decentering

Children still experience one critical limitation in their thinking. They remain tied to concrete, physical reality. Furthermore, they are unable to understand truly abstract or hypothetical questions, or ones that involve formal logic, such as concepts like free will or determinism.

Shift from preoperational thought to concrete operational thought does not happen overnight Children shift back and forth between preoperational and concrete operational thinking Once concrete operational thinking is fully engaged, children show several cognitive advances They attain the concept of reversibility, which is the notion that processes transforming a stimulus can be reversed, returning it to its original form. Because they are less egocentric, they can take multiple aspects of a situation into account, an ability known as "decentering."

Right! Virtuoso observer of children Powerful theoretical, educational implications Wrong? Underestimate of children's capabilities, in part because of the limited nature of mini-experiments conducted Misjudged age at which children's cognitive abilities emerge Neglected cross-cultural differences Many schools still employ principles derived from his views to guide the nature and presentation of instructional materials!

Information Processing: Increasing ability to handle information Memory improvement Short term memory capacity improvement Memory in the information-processing model is the ability to encode, store, and retrieve information. Memory capacity may shed light on another issue in cognitive development. Some developmental psychologists suggest that the difficulty children experience in solving conservation problems during the preschool period may stem from memory limitations.

Understanding about processes that underlie memory Improves during school age years Helps children use control strategies (conscious, intentional tactics to improve functioning)

School-age children can be taught to use particular strategies Keyword strategies See Center for Development and Learning (10 Strategies to Enhance Memory) for additional strategies Keyword strategy;1 word is paired with another that sounds like it. http://www.cdl.org/resourcelibrary/articles/memory_strategies_May06.php?type=recent&id=Yes

Cognitive advances occur through exposure to information within zone of proximal development (ZPD) Influential in development of classroom practices Cooperative learning Reciprocal teaching The ZPD is the level at which a child can almost, but not quite, understand or perform a task. WHAT IS IT? Cooperative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement. WHY USE IT? Documented results include improved academic achievement, improved behavior and attendance, increased self-confidence and motivation, and increased liking of school and classmates. Cooperative learning is also relatively easy to implement and is inexpensive. WHAT IS IT? Reciprocal teaching refers to an instructional activity that takes place in the form of a dialogue between teachers and students regarding segments of text. The dialogue is structured by the use of four strategies: summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting. The teacher and students take turns assuming the role of teacher in leading this dialogue.

Mastering the Mechanics of Language in Middle Childhood: Vocabulary continues to increase Mastery of grammar improves Understanding of syntax grows Certain phonemes remain troublesome Decoding difficulties when dependent on intonation More competence in pragmatics Increase in meta-linguistic awareness VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT: happens quite naturally through exposure to vocabulary-rich literature selections, always teaching "the language of instruction" (what every word used by the teacher in her daily teaching tasks means), by listening to the teacher "model" good speech and interesting sentences with the spelling dictation, AND by the specific teaching of the meanings of prefixes, roots and suffixes. GRAMMAR: Children and Grammar. Linguists' view of language and grammar; grammar is special; grammar is separate; grammar must be innate. Assertions about early grammar acquisition: Grammatical elements are innate; Syntactic rules are used in early "sentences;" Grammar learning is implicit. -Semantics, Grammar, Lexicon, Rules: Semantics = meaning of morphemes and words. Syntax = grammar conveyed through word order. Grammar = syntax + inflectional morphology. Two ways linguistic information stored: Lexicon = individual "words" & information; Rules = generalized procedures. -Linguists view of grammar Two types of grammatical information: categories in lexicon; terminal elements (e.g. N, V), non-terminal elements (e.g. NP, VP); "rewrite" rules Grammar = arranging elements using rules; Semantics is irrelevant. -Separate modules & grammar first conflict btw psychologists & linguists Chomsky (1959) demolished behaviourism: language is unpredictable; language is creative. Use a special kind of rule: requires competence-performance distinction; Gold's theorem - language unlearnable. Psychologists - initially sort evidence support linguists' claims, but increasing conflict. Grammar acquisition: Examine 2{two} proposals which arose from the linguistic perspective: Grammatical elements are innate. Syntactic rules are used in early "sentences". Origin of grammatical elements: mantic bootstrapping theory Pinker (1984): grammatical elements are innate; grammar acquisition involves mapping words onto these elements . Mapping achieved via semantics: -learn very general semantic categories = thematic roles (e.g. theme, goal); - innate linking rules maps roles to elements. Origin of grammatical elements: Semantic bootstrapping theory?? Bowerman (1990): theory predicts some verbs hard to learn; if theme maps to subject easy (e.g. fall), if elsewhere (e.g. lose) hard; but, acquired at same time. Braine (1988): If learn thematic roles why not grammatical units? - Semantic Assimilation Theory. Origin of grammatical elements: Does semantics come first? Construct grammatical units from semantics Early language is agrammatical. Nouns = things, adjectives = attributes, verbs = actions - but McShane (1991): abstract nouns (e.g. sleep, truth, love); verbs "states" not actions (e.g. want, think, like). Can not be semantic analysis alone (e.g. states are verbs expect "I hungries"). Where do grammatical units come from??? Innate principles are not necessary or even useful. Semantics may also be of little help. Probably learn through patterns in language - syntactic +morphological: (turns Gold's theorem on its head); -false assumptions - e.g. learning is not rule based induction. Early Grammar: Up to three years: language use inflexible (Tomasello, 2000); lexically based around individual verbs (Pine & Lieven, 1997); no grammatical rules - acquisition statistically. No grammar module at birth: context & social factors crucial (Messer, 2000); develops during childhood (e.g. Kim et al., 1997)

Metalinguistic awareness is increasing understanding of their own use of language. In early years learn and comprehend these rules implicitly, during middle childhood come to understand them more explicitly Help achieve comprehension when information is fuzzy or incomplete One of most significant developments in middle childhood is children's increasing understanding of their own use of language By age 5 or 6, Understand language is governed by set of rules By age 7 or 8, Realize that miscommunication be due to factors attributable not only to themselves, but to person communicating with them

Helps school-age children control and regulate behavior "Self-talk" used to help regulate behavior Effectiveness of self-control grows as linguistic capabilities increased

concrete operational; logical processes

quantitative; memory

actively; educational

encoding; storage; retrieval; metamemory

vocabulary; syntax; pragmatics

Bilingualism; metalinguistic; IQ

Who Am I? During middle childhood, children begin to view themselves: Less in terms of external physical attributes More in terms of psychological traits

Industry Versus Inferiority Industry = feelings of mastery and proficiency and a growing sense of competence Inferiority = feelings of failure and inadequacy Lasting from roughly age 6 to age 12, the industry-versus-inferiority stage is characterized by a focus on efforts to meet the challenges presented by parents, peers, school, and the other complexities of the modern world.

Encompasses the INDUSTRY-VERSUSINFERIORITY STAGE Period from ages 6 to 12 years of age Characterized by a focus on efforts to attain competence in meeting the challenges related to: Parents Peers School Other complexities of the modern world

Children realize they are good at some things & not so good at others Self-concept & self-esteem continue to develop

Children use SOCIAL COMPARISON to themselves to abilities, expertise, and opinions of others Festinger is known for the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance which suggests a tendency for individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions, and if conflict exists between attitude and behavior, attitude will likely change first. But sometimes... children make downward social comparisons. With others who are: Less competent Less successful To raise or protect their own self-esteem

As children progress into the middle childhood years, however, their self-esteem is higher for some areas and lower in others. For example, a boy's overall self-esteem may be composed of positive self-esteem in some areas (such as the positive feelings he gets from his artistic ability) and more negative self-esteem in others (such as the unhappiness he feels over his athletic skills).

Breaking the Cycle of Failure; Promoting development of self-esteem Using authoritative child-rearing style Why do you think this style is recommended? Because authoritative parents are warm and emotionally supportive, while still setting clear limits for their children's behavior. In contrast, other parenting styles have less positive effects on self-esteem. Parents who are highly punitive and controlling send a message to their children that they are untrustworthy and unable to make good decisions—a message that can undermine children's sense of adequacy. Highly indulgent parents, who indiscriminately praise and reinforce their children regardless of their actual performance, can create a false sense of self-esteem in their children, which ultimately may be just as damaging to children.

Early research found that African Americans had lower self-esteem than whites More recent research shows these early assumptions to be overstated: African Americans Hispanic Americans Asian Americans Set of pioneering studies a generation ago found that African American children shown black and white dolls preferred the white dolls over the black ones (Clark & Clark, 1947). Picture is more complex regarding relative levels of self-esteem between members of different racial and ethnic groups. For example, although white children initially show higher self-esteem than black children, black children begin to show slightly higher self-esteem than white children around the age of 11. This shift occurs as African-American children become more identified with their racial group, develop more complex views of racial identity, and increasingly view the positive aspects of their group membership. Hispanic children, also show an increase in self-esteem toward the end of middle childhood, although even in adolescence their self-esteem still trails that of whites. In contrast, Asian-American children show the opposite pattern: their self-esteem in elementary school is higher than whites and blacks, but by the end childhood, their self-esteem is lower than that of whites.

Why does this occur? Social Identity Theory: Members of a minority group accept negative views held by majority group only if they perceive little realistic possibility of changing power and status differences between groups If minority group members feel that prejudice and discrimination can be reduced, and they blame society for the prejudice and not themselves, self-esteem should not differ between majority and minority groups. As group pride and ethnic awareness on the part of minority group members has grown, differences in self-esteem between members of different ethnic groups have narrowed.

Proposes series of fixed stages in development of moral reasoning Uses moral dilemmas to assess moral reasoning Provides good account of moral judgment but not adequate at predicting moral behavior

Preconventional Morality (stages 1 & 2): people follow unvarying rules based on rewards and punishments Conventional Morality (stages 3 & 4) is where people approach problems in terms of their own position as good, responsible members of society Postconventional Morality (stages 5 & 6) is where universal moral principles are invoked and considered broader than a particular society

-Based solely on observations of members of Western cultures -Theory initially based largely on data from males Cross-cultural research finds that members of more industrialized, technologically advanced cultures move through the stages more rapidly than members of nonindustrialized countries. Nature of morality may differ in diverse cultures

Carol Gilligan: -Way boys and girls raised leads to differences in moral reasoning -Suggests Kohlberg's theory inadequate and places girls' moral reasoning at lower level than boys' Boys view morality primarily in terms of justice and fairness. Girls see morality in terms of responsibility and compassion toward individuals and a willingness to sacrifice for relationships.

"Orientation toward individual survival" - where females concentrate on what is practical and best for them. "Goodness as self-sacrifice" - where females think they must sacrifice their own wishes to what others want. "Morality of nonviolence" - women come to see hurting anyone as immoral, including themselves.

industry

social comparison; psychological

comparison; success; low

moral; rewards; punishments; moral

girls; moral

Next p.544-545