CHAPTER 8

1. CHAPTER 8 Early Childhood: Social and Emotional Development

2. Dimensions of Child Rearing

3. Dimensions of Childrearing Warm parents More likely to be affectionate toward their children and less likely to physically discipline than cold parents Children of warm parents are warm, accepting, more likely to develop internalized standards of conduct and a moral sense or conscience Parental warmth related to child’s social and emotional well-being Cold parents May not enjoy their children and may have few feelings of affection for them Childrearing is reflected by imitating parents’ own upbringing, their parental beliefs, and genetics.

4. Dimensions of Childrearing (cont’d) • Authoritative parenting style • Firm, consistent enforcement of rules combined with strong support and affection • Permissive parenting style • Parents supervise children much less; allow children to do what is “natural,” may also allow children to show some aggression, intervening only when child is in danger • If too much “restrictiveness,” meaning physical punishment, interference, or intrusiveness, the child may end up disobedient, rebellious, and have lower cognitive development

5. How Parents Enforce Restrictions • Inductive methods • Teach knowledge that will enable children to generate desirable behavior on their own • Reasoning or explaining why one behavior is better than another is the main technique • Power-assertive methods • Include physical punishment and denial of privileges • Rationalize physical punishment due to noncompliance of children • The greater the use of this method, the less likely the child is to develop internal standards of conduct • Parental rejection and punishment linked with aggression and delinquency

6. How Parents Enforce Restrictions (cont’d) • Withdrawal of love method • Isolating or ignoring misbehaving child • Loss of love oftentimes more threatening than physical punishment • May foster compliance but instill guilt and anxiety • Preschoolers comply better when asked to do something rather than to stop doing something. • Good method is to engage child in something else when involved in unacceptable activity or behavior

7. Parenting Styles: How Parents Transmit Values and Standards • Baumrind (1989, 1991b) developed grid of four parenting styles based on whether parents are high or low on each of the two dimensions • 1. Authoritative • 2. Authoritarian • 3. Permissive-indulgent • 4. Rejecting-neglecting

8. Parenting Styles: How Parents Transmit Values and Standards (cont’d) • 1. Authoritative • These parents are restrictive and demanding, yet communicative and warm • They reason with their children and provide them strong support and feelings of love • Children of these parents demonstrate self-reliance, independence, high self-esteem, high levels of activity and exploratory behavior, and social competence and tend to be highly motivated to achieve and do well in school

9. Table 8-1, p. 159

10. Parenting Styles: How Parents Transmit Values and Standards (cont’d) • 2. Authoritarian • These parents value obedience with little explanation for their reasoning • Do not communicate well with their children • Do not respect child’s view point • These parents mostly cold and rejecting • Highly controlling and use force as enforcement method • Sons of these parents relatively hostile and defiant • Daughters low in independence and dominance • Children are less friendly and less spontaneous in social interactions • Have low self-esteem and are low in self-reliance

11. Parenting Styles: How Parents Transmit Values and Standards (cont’d) • 3. Permissive-indulgent • Parents are low in their attempts to control their children and in their demands for mature behavior • Parents are easygoing and unconventional • Permission accompanied by high warmth and support • Children less competent in school but high in social behaviors • 4. Rejecting-neglecting • Parents are low in demands for mature behavior and low in attempt to control their children • Low in support and responsiveness • Outcomes for children include lowest competence, lack of responsibility, immaturity, and tendency to problem behaviors • Less competent in school and show more misconduct and substance abuse

12. Effects of the Situation and the Child on Parenting Styles • Parenting styles change due to the situation • Power assertion more likely to occur when parent believed the child knew the rules and was capable of behaving appropriately • Power assertion likely to occur when dealing with aggressive behavior • Stress contributes to parental use of power

13. Table 8-2, p. 160

14. Social Behaviors

15. Social Behaviors and the Influence of Siblings • During early childhood, children make tremendous advances in social skills and behavior. • Positive: learn how to share, cooperate, and comfort others • Negative: can be aggressive • Older siblings more likely to be more caring and dominating than younger ones • Younger siblings more likely to imitate older siblings and to accept their direction • Typical sibling rivalry can contribute to better social competence, the development of self-identity, and the ability to rear their own children • The more parents play favorites, the greater the conflict.

16. Adjusting to the Birth of a Sibling • Preschoolers may feel stress due to the birth of a sibling and the changes within the family. • Older child may feel displaced and resentful due to the attention given to the new baby. • Regression to baby-like behaviors, such as increased clinging, crying, and toilet accidents may occur. • Some children may show increased independence by dressing themselves and helping to take care of the baby.

17. Birth Order • First-born children • More highly motivated to achieve than later-born children • Perform better academically, are more cooperative, more adult- oriented, and less aggressive than later-born children • Obtain higher standardized test scores • First-born and only children show greater anxiety and are less self-reliant than later-born children • Later-born children • May compete for attention by acting aggressively • Self-concept is lower, but social skills translate into greater popularity with peers • Tend to be more rebellious, liberal, and agreeable than first born • Parents are more relaxed with later-born children

18. Peer Relationships • Peer groups foster social skills -Teach how to lead and how to follow -Help increase physical and cognitive skills through interactions -Provide emotional support • By age 2, children show preference for particular peer • Not until late childhood and adolescence do friends’ traits and notions of trust, communication, and intimacy become important

19. Play: Child’s Play, That Is • Play is meaningful, voluntary, and internally motivated. • Play contributes to the development of motor skills and coordination. • Dramatic play (trying on new roles) contributes to development of cognitive qualities such as curiosity, exploration, symbolic thinking, and problem solving. • Play may help with children learning to control impulses.

20. Play and Cognitive Development: Piaget’s Characteristics of Play • Functional play • Occurs during sensorimotor stage • Involves repetitive motor activity like rolling a ball or laughing • Symbolic play • Occurs at end of sensorimotor stage • Involves creating settings and scripts • Constructive play • Common in early childhood • Child uses objects or materials to make something • Formal games • Games with rules; may be invented by the child • Involves social interaction as well as physical activity and rules • May be played for a lifetime

21. Parten’s Types of Play • Parten (1932) observed six types of play among 2- to 5-year-old children. • Solitary play/onlooker play: nonsocial play; occurs in 2- to 3-year-olds • Parallel play/associative play/cooperative play; social play; associative and cooperative common by age 5; girls more likely to engage in social play • Parallel constructive play: demonstrated when preschoolers play with puzzles or blocks near other children • Girls more likely to play with boys’ toys than vice versa

22. Table 8-3, p. 163

23. Gender Differences in Play • Boys • In preschool and early elementary school, boys prefer vigorous physical activities. • In middle childhood, boys prefer playing in groups of five or more children engaging in competition. • Girls • More likely to stray from stereotypes • More supervised • More likely to engage in arts and crafts • Spend more time playing with one child than with a group • Play choices determined by environmental influences as well as biological factors such as strength

24. Gender Differences in Play (cont’d) • By age 2, children prefer same-sex playmates; tendency strengthens by middle childhood • Sex differences may be due to boys preferring play that is aggressive and rough; may also be due to lack of response to girls’ polite requests; girls try to protect themselves from aggression and unresponsiveness by avoiding boys; boys may avoid girls because they see them as inferior

25. Prosocial Behavior • Prosocial behavior • Altruism; intent to benefit another without expectation or reward • At preschool and during early school years, children engage in prosocial behavior. • Siblings observed helping more than sharing, affection, and reassuring (Grusec & Sherman, 1991) • Prosocial behavior linked to development of empathy and perspective taking

26. Empathy • Empathy: sensitivity to the feelings of others; connected with sharing and cooperation • Infants may cry when another infant cries • Empathy promotes prosocial behavior and decreases aggression • At age 2, many children approach other children and adults in distress and try to help them • Unresponsive children more likely to behave aggressively • Girls more empathetic than boys

27. Development of Aggression • Preschoolers’ aggression instrumental or possession oriented • Older preschoolers more likely to engage in resolving conflicts over toys by sharing rather than fighting • Aggressive behavior causes rejection • By age 6 or 7, aggression is hostile and person oriented • Boys more likely to show aggression • Aggressive 8-year-olds more aggressive than peers 22 years later; more likely to have criminal records, abuse their spouse, and drive while drunk

28. Theories of Aggression • Genetic factors may be involved in aggressive behavior as well as criminal and antisocial behavior. • MZ twins have high concordance rate for criminality • Males more aggressive than females, possibly due to testosterone • If child believes in legitimacy of aggression, more likely to engage in aggression when presented with social provocations • Aggressive children lack empathy and perspective taking. • Reinforcement and observational learning may contribute to aggression.

29. Media Influences • Bandura’s Bobo doll study suggested that televised models influence children’s aggressive behavior • Children observing adult hitting Bobo in turn hit Bobo sometimes more aggressively • Children learn aggression through observational learning (watching models on TV). • Television is a fertile source of aggressive models • Media violence and aggressive video games may increase level of arousal; humans more likely to be aggressive under high levels of arousal

30. Fig. 8-1, p. 166

31. Media Influences (cont’d) • Depictions of violence contribute to violence through • observational learning • disinhibition • increased arousal • priming of aggressive thoughts and memories • habituation

32. Personality and Emotional Development

33. Personality and Emotional Development • Personality development becomes more complex as children age. • Children describe themselves in terms of certain categories such as baby, child, and sex (girl, boy). • Categorical self • Self-definitions that refer to concrete external traits • Preschool children who have good opinions of themselves more likely to show secure attachment and have parents who are attentive to their needs

34. Personality and Emotional Development (cont’d) • Preschool children make evaluative judgments about their cognitive and physical competence as well as their social acceptance by peers and parents. • Preschoolers do not make distinctions between different areas of competence such as being good in school but poor in sports. • Children become increasingly capable of self-regulation in early childhood.

35. Initiative versus Guilt • Children engage in learning new skills on their own. • Children during this stage strive to achieve independence from their parents and master adult behaviors. • During these years, it is learned that not all dreams can be realized. • Fear of violating parental constructs may impede efforts to master new skills. • Parents should encourage child to attempt to learn and explore without being critical and punitive.

36. Fears: The Horrors of Early Childhood • Number of fears peak between 2 ½ and 4 years old • Preschool years marked by decrease in fears of loud noises, falling, sudden movement, and strangers • Preschool fears include animals, imaginary creatures, the dark, and personal danger • Real objects such as lightning, thunder, high places, sharp objects and being cut, blood, and unfamiliar people cause fear for their personal safety • During middle childhood, fears of failure and criticism in school and social relationships

37. Development of Gender Roles and Gender Differences

38. Development of Gender Roles and Gender Differences • Gender roles may be seeped in stereotypes. • Feminine gender-role stereotypes include traits such as gentleness, helpfulness, warmth, emotionality, submissiveness • Masculine gender-role stereotypes include traits such as aggressiveness, self-confidence, independence, competitiveness, and competence in business, math, and science • Children stereotype into traditional roles by ages of 3 and 9 or 10. • Children and adolescents perceive their own sex in a better light (e.g., more hardworking, nicer).

39. Gender Differences • Sex differences in infancy small and inconsistent • Preschoolers display some differences in their choices of toys and play activities. • Boys • engage in more rough-and-tumble play and are more aggressive • show greater visual-spatial ability • Girls • tend to show more empathy and report more fears • show greater verbal ability

40. Theories of the Development of Gender Differences • Evolutionary psychologists believe sex differences fashioned by natural selection in response to problems in adaptation that were repeatedly encountered by humans over thousands of generations • Genes that increase the likelihood of an organism’s chances of survival are most likely to be passed on to next generation • Males place value on physical attributes in mate selection • Females place it on personal factors such as financial status and reliability

41. Organization of the Brain • Brain organization is largely genetically determined. • Brain may be female and male differentiated • Studies on rats and humans have indicated males and females rely on different parts of the brain when they are navigating. • Females rely on the hippocampus in the right hemisphere along with the right prefrontal cortex • Males use the hippocampus in both hemispheres when they are navigating

42. Social-Cognitive Theory • Children learn masculine or feminine by observing and imitating models of the same sex. • Socialization by parents, teachers provide children with information about expected gender-typed behaviors • Rewards include smiles, respect, companionship when “gender-appropriate” behaviors are displayed • Boys encouraged to roam further from home, to be more independent than girls • Primary schoolchildren show less stereotyping if mothers frequently engage in traditionally masculine household and childcare tasks.

43. Cognitive-Developmental Theory • Kohlberg’s (1966) theory maintains the first step in gender typing is attaining gender identity (2 years). • Knowing whether you are male or female • Gender stability (4-5 years) • Realizing one’s sex is for lifetime • Gender constancy (5-7 years) • Changing dress, hair, or wearing an apron does not change your gender • Kohlberg’s theory cross-cultural; gender typing occurs in the same order of stages

44. Gender-Schema Theory • Gender is used by children as way of organizing perception of the world • Gender-schema theory • Cluster of concepts about male and female physical traits, behaviors, and personality traits • Gender identity can inspire “gender-appropriate” behavior; boys and girls seek information concerning gender-typed traits and try to live up to them • Boys show better memory for boy toys, activities, and occupations • Girls show better memory for “feminine” toys, activities, and occupations • Both biology and social cognition interact to affect most areas of behavior and mental processes