Developmental Psychology

Chapter 10

1. Emotional & Personality Development

SELF Development of Self-Understanding -8-11 years old: increasingly describe themselves with psychological characteristics (nice, popular) and traits in contrast to more concrete self-descriptions of younger children -Likely to recognize social aspects of self

-Include reference to social groups in their self-description

-Increasing reference to social comparison -Distinguish themselves from others in comparative rather than in absolute terms, more likely to think about what they can do in comparison with others -Middle and late childhood: self description increasingly involves psychological and social characteristics, including social comparison

Understanding Others -Increase in PERSPECTIVE TAKING: ability to assume other peoples perspectives and understand their thoughts and feelings -Begin to understand that others may have a perspective because they have more access to information -Perspective taking is important in whether children develop prosocial or antisocial attitudes and behavior -Taking anothers perspective improves childrens likelihood of understanding and sympathizing with others when they are distress or in need -Children who have low level of perspective-taking skills engage in more antisocial behavior than children at higher levels

Middle and Late Childhood

1. Emotional & Personality Development

Self-Esteem and Self-Concept -Self-Esteem: global evaluation of self (self-worth or self-image) -May reflect perceptions that do not always match reality -High self-esteem may refer to accurate, justified perceptions of ones worth as a person and ones success but can also refer to an arrogant, grandiose sense of superiority over

others
-Low self-esteem: either accurate perceptions of ones shortcomings or distorted insecurity -Self-Concept: domain-specific evaluation of self (academic, appearance etc) -Only moderate correlations between school performance and self-esteem -Children with high self-esteem have greater initiative but can produce BOTH positive or negative outcomes -Over time aggressive children with high self-esteem increasingly valued the rewards that aggression can bring and belitted their victims -Too many children grow up receiving praise for mediocre performance and thus have inflated self-esteem Increasing Childrens Self-Esteem -Identify the causes of low self-esteem -Provide emotional support and social approval -Help children achieve -Help children cope

Middle and Late Childhood

1. Emotional & Personality Development

Self Efficacy -Master a situation and produce favorable outcomes -Critical factor in whether or not students achieve -Opposite to HELPLESSNESS -Influences a students choice of activity; low self-efficacy students will avoid learning

many tasks especially challenging ones

Self-Regulation -Efforts to manage ones behavior, emotions, and thoughts, leading to increased social competence and achievement -Self-control increased from 4 years to 10 years old -High self-control linked to lower levels of deviant behavior -Parenting characterized by warmth and positive affect predicted the developmental increase in self-control -Children from low-income families who had a higher level of self-regulation made better grades in school than their counterparts

Industry vs. Inferiority -Children become interested in how things are made and how they work -Parents who see their childrens efforts at making things as mischief or making a mess would encourage childrens development of a sense of inferiority

Middle and Late Childhood

1. Emotional & Personality Development

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT -Show greater awareness of need to control and manage their emotions and meet social standards

Developmental Changes

-Improved emotional understanding: increased ability to understand complex emotions as

pride and shame -Increased understanding that more than on emotion can be experiences in a particular situation -Increased tendency to be aware of the events leading to emotional reactions -Ability to suppress or conceal negative emotional reactions -Use of self-initiated strategies for redirecting feelings: use strategies to control their emotions -Capacity for genuine empathy

Coping with Stress -Older children generate more coping alternatives to stressful conditions and use more cognitive coping strategies -Reframing of situation to change ones perception is used -But in families that have not been supportive and are characterized by turmoil or trauma, children may be so overwhelmed by stress that they do not use strategies

Middle and Late Childhood

1. Emotional & Personality Development

Parents and teachers can: -Reassure children of their safety and security -Allow children to retell events and be patient in listening to them -Encourage children to talk about disturbing or confusing feelings and reassure them that these feelings are normal after stressful events

-Protect children from reexposure to frightening situations

-Help children make sense of what happened and keep in mind that children may misunderstand what took place

MORAL DEVELOPMENT -Piaget proposed that younger children are characterized by HETERONOMOUS MORALITY -But at 10 years old, they move to AUTONOMOUS MORALITY -Kohlberg suggests that the 6 stages of moral development are universal and are fostered by opportunities to take the perspectives of others and to experience conflict between ones current stage of moral thinking and the reasoning of someone at a higher stage

Middle and Late Childhood

1. Emotional & Personality Development

Kohlbergs 6 Stages of Moral Development: Preconventional Reasoning: lowest level of moral reasoning, good and bad are interpreted in terms of external rewards and punishment (before 9 years old) 1. Heteronomous Morality: tied to punishment, must obey because fear of punishment

2. Individualism, Instrumental Purpose and Exchange: reason that pursuing their own
interests is the right thing to do but they let others do the same, what is right involves an equal exchange

Conventional Reasoning: apply certain standards set by parents or government (adolescents) 3. Mutual Interpersonal Expectations, Relationships, and Interpersonal Conformity: value trust, caring and adopt parents moral standards to be good boy/girl. 4. Social Systems Morality: moral judgment based on understanding the social order, law, justice and duty

Postconventional Reasoning: decides on personal moral code (20 years old +) 5. Social Contract or Utility and Individual Rights: reasons that values, rights and principles undergird or transcend the law, human rights and values 6. Universal Ethical Principles: developed a moral standard based on universal human rights, faces conflict between law and conscience

Influences on Kohlberg Stages Advances in childrens cognitive development did not ensure development of moral reasoning Moral reasoning also reflects childrens experiences in dealing with moral questions and moral conflct

Middle and Late Childhood

1. Emotional & Personality Development

-Peer interaction and perspective taking are critical aspects of social stimulation that

challenges children to change their moral reasoning

Kohlbergs Critics Moral Thought and Moral Behavior -Placed too much emphasis on moral thought and not enough emphasis on moral behavior

Cultural and Moral Reasoning

-Culturally biased -Mostly non-European provided support for the universality of Kohlbergs first four stages -Stages 5+6 not found in all cultures

Families and Moral Development -parents moral values and actions influence childrens developing moral thoughts, Kohlberg underestimated

Gender and Care Perspective -Gender biased theory -Kohlbergs Justice Perspective, Gilligan argues for Care Perspective (views people in terms of their connectedness with others and emphasizes interpersonal communication)

Social Conventional Reasoning -Kohlberg did not adequately distinguish between moral reasoning and social conventional reasoning -Social Conventional reasoning: focuses on conventional rules that have been established by social consensus in order to control behavior and maintain the social system -Moral rules focus on ethical issues and rules of morality

Middle and Late Childhood

1. Emotional & Personality Development

Prosocial Behavior

-Study of prosocial moral behavior has placed more emphasis on behavioral aspects of
moral development -When children share, it is usually not for reasons of empathy but for the fun of social play ritual or imitation -Children believe that they have an obligation to share but do not necessarily think they should be as generous to others as they are to themselves -Sharing reflect a more complex sense of what is just and right during middle and late

childhood
-Children come to believe that equity instead means that people with special merit or special needs deserve special treatment

Moral Personality 1. Moral Identity: have moral identity when moral notions and moral commitments are central to their lives 2. Moral Character: character has willpower, desires and integrity to stand up to pressure, overcome distractions and disappointments and behave morally Displays honesty, truthfulness, loyalty

3. Moral Exemplars: people who lived exemplary moral lives

- Moral development is multifaceted, complex concept

Middle and Late Childhood

1. Emotional & Personality Development

GENDER

Gender Stereotypes
-Broad categories that reflect general impressions and beliefs about females and males -Until 7 yrs old, gender stereotyping is extensive because young children dont recognize individual variations in masculinity and femininity -Age 5: girls stereotype boys as powerful and in more negative terms -Girls and older children use a higher percentage of gender stereotypes -Appearance stereotypes are more prevalent on the part of girls while activity and trait

stereotyping is more commonly engaged in by boys

-Boys gender stereotypes are more rigid than girls

Gender Similarities and Differences 1. The differences are averages 2. Even when differences are reported, there is considerable overlap between the sexes 3. The differences may be due primarily to biological factors, sociocultural factors or both

Physical Development: Female are less likely than males to develop physical or mental disorders Males have twice the risk of coronary disease as females Female brains are smaller but have more folds. The large folds (convolutions) allow more surface brain tissue within the skulls of females Males have larger parietal lobe for visuospatial skills Brain involved in emotional expression shows more metabolic activity in females than males Anatomical sex differences in the brain may be due to biological origins of these differences, behavioral experiences or a combination of these factors

Middle and Late Childhood

1. Emotional & Personality Development

Cognitive Development

-Girls have slightly better verbal skills than boys

-No difference in maths skills -Boys have better visuospatial skills than girls

Socioemotional Development -Boys are more physically aggressive than girls (occur in all cultures -Environmental factors include cultural expectations, adult and peer models, and social

agents that reward aggression in boys and punish it in girls

-Girls show more verbal agression RELATIONAL AGGRESSION: involves harming someone by manipulating a relationship -Trying to make others dislike someone by manipulating a relationship -Relational aggression increases in middle and late childhood, and it compromises a greater % of girls overall aggression than is the case for boys -Girls engage in more relational aggression that boys in adolescence but not in childhood -Parents psychological control was linked to a higher incidence of relational aggression in their children -Girls are more likely to express their emotions openly and intensely than are boys -Girls are better at reading others emotions and more likely to show empathy than boys -Boys show less self-regulation of emotions and therefore translate into behavioral problems -Females view themselves as more prosocial and empathic and across childhood and adolescence, females engage in more prosocial behavior

Middle and Late Childhood

2. Families
DEVELOPMENTAL CHANGES IN PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIPS

-Parents start to spend less time with their children as they move to middle and late
childhood, but parents serve as gatekeepers, regulate their lives -Parents not only influence childrens in-school achievement, but also make decisions about childrens out-of-school activities -Elementary school children receive less physical discipline than preschoolers, parents use deprivation of privileges, appeals to childs self-esteem, comments design to increase childs sense of guilt and statement that the child is responsible for his/her actions

-Middle and late childhood, control is transferred from parent to child

-Parents continue to exercise general supervision and control while children engage in moment to moment self regulation

PARENTS AS MANAGERS -Mothers are more likely than fathers to engage in managerial role in parenting -Family management practices are positively related to students grades and selfresponsibility -When African American parents monitored their sons academic achievement, their sons academic achievement benefited

STEPFAMILIES -Divorce occur at 10% higher rate in remarriages than in first marriages -3 types of stepfamiliy structure: 1. Stepfather 2. Stepmother 3. Blended or complex - Children in simple stepfather/stepmother family are adjusting better than in the early years of remarried family and were functioning well in comparison to children and adolescents in conflicted nondivorced families and children and adolescents in complex

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2. Families
-long-established simple stepfamilies adolescents seem to eventually benefit from the

presence of a stepparent and the resources provided by the stepparent

-Children often have better relationships with their custodial parents -Children in simple step families show better adjustments than their counterparts in complex families -But children in divorced families still show more adjustment problems than children in nondivorced family (academic problems, lower self-esteem)

Middle and Late Childhood

3. Peers
-Engaging in positive interactions with peers, resolving conflicts with peers in nonaggressive ways -Being popular with peers and engaging in low levels of aggression at 8 years old were

related to higher levels of occupational status at 48 years old

-Peer competence was linked to having better relationships with coworkers in early adulthood

DEVELOPMENTAL CHANGES -Reciprocity becomes especially important in peer interchanges -Through middle and late childhood, the size of their peer group increases and peer

interaction is less closely supervised by adults

-12 years old: childrens preference for same-sex peer groups increases

PEER STATUS -Sociometric Status: describes the extent to which children are liked or disliked by their peer group -Children are asked to rate how much they like or dislike each of their classmates 1. Popular children: often nominated as best friend, rarely disliked by peers 2. Average children: average positive and negative nominations by peers 3. Neglected children: infrequently nominated as best friends but NOT disliked by peers 4. Rejected children: infrequently nominated as someones best friend and actively disliked by peers 5. Controversial children: nominated as best friends but also disliked

Popular children give out reinforcements, listen carefully, control negative emotions

and all these contributes to their well being

Rejected children have serious adjustment problems (often show aggression towards peers), engage little in classroom

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3. Peers
Why Aggressive peer-rejected boys have social relationship problems: 1. They are more impulsive and have problems sustaining attention, more likely to be disruptive

2. Emotionally reactive, aroused to anger more easily, more difficulty in calming down
3. Fewer social skills in making friends *not all rejected children are aggressive Rejected children can be taught to more accurately assess whether the intentions of their peers are negative Engage in role play Discuss hypothetical situations involving negative encounters

SOCIAL COGNITION Thoughts about social matters, such as the aggressive boys interpretation of an encounter as hostile and his classmates perception of his behavior as inappropriate Children go through 5 steps in processing information (Kenneth Dodge):

1. Decode Social Cues 2. Interpret 3. Search for a Response 4. Select an Optimal Response 5. Enact Aggressive boys are more likely to perceive another childs action as hostile Social knowledge also is involved in childrens ability to get along with peers, they need to know what goals to pursue in poorly defined situations, how to initiate and maintain social bond

Middle and Late Childhood

3. Peers
BULLYING -Verbal or physical behavior intended to disturb someone less powerful -Boys are more likely to be bullies than girls, but gender differences regarding victims of

boys is less clear

-Children who were bullied reported more loneliness and difficulty making friends -Bullies have lower grades and smoke and drink -Anxious, socially withdrawn, and aggressive children are often victims of bullying, perceived as nonthreatening -Social context also influence bulling, often in same school classroom -Bullies often torment victims to gain higher status in peer group and bullies need others to

witness their power displays

-Bullies often affiliated with each other and maintained their position in popular peer group

Outcomes of Bullying: -Bullies and their victims in adolescence were more likely to experience depression and engage in suicide ideation and attempt suicide than their counterparts who were not involved in bullying -Bullies and victims both had more health problems -Peer victimization had a small but significant link with lower academic achievement

Prevention of Bullying? -Mixed results for school-based interventions -Antibullying campaign (school wide) -Individualized social skills training

Middle and Late Childhood

3. Peers
FRIENDS -Friends can be cognitive and emotional resources from childhood through old age Serve as:

1. Companionship: provides children with a familiar partner

2. Stimulation: provides children with interesting information 3. Physical Support: provides time, resources and assistance 4. Ego Support: provides expectation of support, encouragement and feedback 5. Social Comparison: provides information about where the child stands relative to others 6. Affection and Intimacy: provides children with warm, close trusting relationship

Intimacy in friendships: characterized by self-disclosure and the sharing of private thoughts

Developmental advantages occur when children have friends who are socially skilled and supportive

Longitudinal Study: 6th graders who did not have a friend engaged in less prosocial behavior, had lower grades, were more emotionally distressed than their counterparts who had one or more friends. 2 years later, they were still more emotionally distressed

Middle and Late Childhood

4. Schools
CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES TO STUDENT LEARNING Constructivist Instruction Approach -learner-centered approach that emphasizes the importance of individuals actively constructing their knowledge and understanding with guidance from the teacher -Emphasizes on collaboration and discovering answers, not spoon-fed -Does not give enough attention to content of a discipline Direct Instruction Approach -structured, teacher-centered approach that is characterized by teacher direction and control -Turns children into passive learners and does not challenge them to think in critical and creative ways *effective teachers use both a constructivist and direct instruction approach rather than either exclusively

Accountability Standardized testing will have a number of positive effects: -Improved student performance, more time teaching the subjects that are tested

-High expectations for all students, identification of poorly performing schools, teachers
and administrators -Improved confidence in schools as test scores rise

Standardized testing will have negative effects: -Narrow view of students skills

-Should use number of measures (tests, quizzes, projects, portfolios etc) -Should teach students how to focus on thinking skills which is needed to succeed in life -NCLBs goal is to raise standards for achievement in US school

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4. Schools
SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS, ETHNICITY, AND CULTURE -Schools have not done a good job of educating low-income ethnic minority to overcome the barriers to their achievement -US students have lower achievement in math and science than a number of countries

Education of Students from Low-Income Backgrounds -Children in poverty face problems that present barriers to their learning -Might have parents who dont set high educational standards for them -Do not have enough money to pay for educational materials -Neighborhood disadvantage (low neighborhood income, high unemployment) was linked to less consistent, less stimulating, and more punitive parenting, and ultimately to negative child outcomes such as behavioral problems and low verbal ability -The longer children experience poverty, the more detrimental the poverty was to their cognitive development -Low-income areas more likely to have young teachers with less experience, encourage rote learning -Too many schools in low-income neighborhoods provide students with environments that are not conducive to effective learning

-New Hope program: increase parental employment and reduce family poverty on adolescent development -Adolescents were more competent at reading, had bettter school performance and less likely to be in special education classes (New Hope Program)

Middle and Late Childhood

4. Schools
Ethnicity in Schools -Effects of SES and effects of ethnicity are often intertwined Improving relationships among ethnically diverse students: 1. Turn the class into a jigsaw classroom 2. Encourage students to have positive personal contact with diverse other students 3. Reduce bias 4. View the school and community as a team 5. Be a competent cultural mediator

Cross-Cultural Comparison Poor performance of American children in math and science has become well publicized Asian teachers spent more time teaching math than did the American teachers Substantially greater time spent on math instruction in Asian schools than American schools American parents had much lower expectations for their childrens education and achievement than did Asian parents American parents were more likely to believe that their childrens math achievement

was due to innate ability

Asian parents were more likely to say it is the consequence of effort and training Carol Dweck: importance of childrens MINDSET (cognitive view that the individual develop for themselves) 1. Fixed Mindset: believe that their qualities cant change 2. Growth Mindset: believe their qualities can change and improve through effort

Teachers should encourage students to develop a growth mindset Group that received the combination of study skills instruction plus the growth-mindset emphasis on how brain develops when it is challenged reversed the downward trends and improved their math achievement

Middle and Late Childhood