Child development, chapter 10, Caprice Paduano

Chapter 10 Social Development in Preschool Caprice Paduano Child Development

Chapter 10 Key Questions
How do preschool-age children develop a concept of themselves?
How do children develop their sense of racial identity and gender?
In what sorts of social relationships do preschool-age children engage?
What sorts of disciplinary styles do parents employ, and what effects do they have?

Chapter 10 Key Questions
How do children develop a moral sense?
How does aggression develop in preschool-age children?

Forming a Sense of Self
The question “Who am I?” underlies a considerable amount of development during the preschool years.
During this period, children wonder about the nature of the self, and the way they answer the “Who am I?” question may affect them for the rest of their lives.

Psychosocial Development: Resolving the Conflicts
Psychosocial development According to Erikson, development that encompasses changes both in the understandings individuals have of themselves as members of society and in their comprehension of the meaning of others’ behavior

Psychosocial Development: Resolving the Conflicts
Initiative-versus-guilt stage According to Erikson, the period during which children aged 3 to 6 years experience conflict between independence of action and the sometimes negative results of that action

Self-Concept in the Preschool Years: Thinking About the Self
Self-concept A person’s identity or set of beliefs about what one is like as an individual
Collectivistic orientation A philosophy that promotes the notion of interdependence

Self-Concept in the Preschool Years: Thinking About the Self
Individualistic orientation A philosophy that emphasizes personal identity and the uniqueness of the individual
Race dissonance The phenomenon in which minority children indicate preferences for majority values or people

Gender Identity: Developing Femaleness and Maleness
Preschool-age children often have very strict ideas about how boys and girls are supposed to act.
In fact, their expectations about gender-appropriate behavior are even more gender-stereotyped than those of adults and may be less flexible during the preschool years than at any other point in the life span.

Biological Perspectives on Gender
Hormones are one sex-related biological characteristic that have been found to affect gender-based behaviors.
Biological differences exist in the structure of female and male brains.
However, it is difficult to attribute behavioral characteristics unambiguously to biological factors.

Psychoanalytic Perspectives
Identification The process in which children attempt to be similar to their parent of the same sex, incorporating the parent’s attitudes and values
Some aspects of psychoanalytic theory have been supported.
Still, many developmentalists have searched for explanations of gender differences other than Freud’s.

Social Learning Approaches
Social learning approaches see children as learning gender-related behavior and expectations by observing others.
The observation of the rewards that these others attain for acting in a gender-appropriate manner leads the child to conform to such behavior themselves.
In some cases, learning of social roles does not involve models, but occurs more directly.

Cognitive Approaches
Gender identity The perception of oneself as male or female
Gender schema A cognitive framework that organizes information relevant to gender
Gender constancy The fact that people are permanently males or females, depending on fixed, unchangeable biological factors

Four Approaches to Gender Development

Friends and Family: Preschoolers’ Social Lives
Preschoolers begin to discover the joys of friendship with their peers.
Although they may expand their social circles considerably, parents and family nevertheless remain very influential in their lives.

The Development of Friendships
Around the age of 3, children begin to develop real friendships, as peers come to be seen as individuals who hold some special qualities and rewards.
As preschoolers age, their ideas about friendship gradually evolve.
The quality and kinds of interactions children have with friends changes during the preschool period.

Playing by the Rules: The Work of Play
Play helps preschoolers develop in important ways.
The American Academy of Pediatrics states that play is essential for the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional wellbeing of children and youth.
The U.N. High Commission for Human Rights maintains that play is a basic right of every child.

Categorizing Play
Functional play Play that involves simple, repetitive activities typical of 3-year-olds
Constructive play Play in which children manipulate objects to produce or build something

The Social Aspects of Play
Parallel play Action in which children play with similar toys, in a similar manner, but do not interact with each other
Onlooker play Action in which children simply watch others at play but do not actually participate themselves

The Social Aspects of Play
Associative play Play in which two or more children interact by sharing or borrowing toys or materials, although they do not do the same thing
Cooperative play Play in which children genuinely interact with one another, taking turns, playing games, or devising contests

Preschoolers’ Play

Preschoolers’ Theory of Mind: Understanding What Others Are Thinking
Children increasingly can see the world from others’ perspectives.
Even children as young as 2 are able to understand that others have emotions.
By the age of 3 or 4, preschoolers can distinguish between something in their minds and physical actuality.
By the end of the preschool years, most children easily solve false belief problems.

The Emergence of Theory of Mind
Brain maturation is an important factor.
As myelination within the frontal lobes becomes more pronounced, preschoolers develop more emotional capacity involving selfawareness.
Developing language skills are also related to the increasing sophistication of children’s theory of mind.
Cultural factors also play an important role.

Preschoolers’ Family Lives
Many preschoolers face the realities of an increasingly complicated world.
For most, however, the period encompasses growing interaction with the world at large.
Preschoolers begin to develop genuine friendships with other children, in which close ties emerge.

Effective Parenting: Teaching Children Desired Behavior
Authoritarian parents Parents who are controlling, punitive, rigid, and cold and whose word is law; they value strict, unquestioning obedience from their children and do not tolerate expressions of disagreement
Permissive parents Parents who provide lax and inconsistent feedback and require little of their children

Effective Parenting: Teaching Children Desired Behavior
Authoritative parents Parents who are firm, setting clear and consistent limits, but try to reason with their children, explaining why they should behave in a particular way
Uninvolved parents Parents who show virtually no interest in their children, displaying indifferent, rejecting behavior

Parenting Styles

Cultural Differences in Child-Rearing Practices
The style of parenting that is most successful may depend quite heavily on the norms of a particular culture—and what parents in a particular culture are taught regarding appropriate child-rearing practices.
Chinese concept of chiao shun
U.S. authoritative methods

Moral Development and Aggression
Changes in children’s views of what is ethically right and what is the right way to behave are an important element of growth during the preschool years.
The kind of aggression displayed by preschoolers is also changing.
Both morality and aggression involve a growing awareness of others.

Developing Morality: Following Society’s Rights and Wrongs
Moral development The maturation of people’s sense of justice, of what is right and wrong, and their behavior in connection with such issues
Developmentalists have considered moral development in terms of children’s reasoning about morality, their attitudes toward moral lapses, and their behavior when faced with moral issues.

Piaget’s View of Moral Development
Piaget suggested that moral development proceeds in stages:
Heteronomous morality
Incipient cooperation stage
Autonomous cooperation stage

Evaluating Piaget’s Approach to Moral Development
Recent research suggests that although Piaget was on the right track in his description of how moral development proceeds, he also underestimated the age at which children’s moral skills are honed.

Social Learning Approaches to Morality
Prosocial behavior Helping behavior that benefits others
Abstract modeling The process in which modeling paves the way for the development of more general rules and principles

Empathy and Moral Behavior
Empathy The understanding of what another individual feels
During the preschool years, empathy continues to grow.
Some theorists believe that increasing empathy leads children to behave in a more moral fashion.
In addition, some negative emotions, such as anger at an unfair situation or shame over previous transgressions, also may promote moral behavior.

Aggression and Violence in Preschoolers: Sources and Consequences
Aggression Intentional injury or harm to another person
During the early preschool years, some of the aggression is addressed at attaining a desired goal.
On the other hand, extreme and sustained aggression is a cause of concern.

The child’s personality and social development contribute to this decline in aggression.
Emotional self-regulation The capability to adjust one’s emotions to a desired state and level of intensity
Starting at age 2, children are able to talk about their feelings, and they engage in strategies to regulate them.

Instrumental aggression Aggression motivated by a desire to obtain a concrete goal
Relational aggression Nonphysical aggression that is intended to hurt another person’s psychological well-being

The Roots of Aggression
Social Learning Approaches to Aggression
Although instinctual explanations of aggression are logical, most developmentalists believe they are not the whole story.
Consequently, developmentalists have turned to other approaches to explain aggression and violence.

Social Learning Approaches to Aggression
Social learning approaches to aggression contend that aggression is based on observation and prior learning.
They emphasize how social and environmental conditions teach individuals to be aggressive.
But social learning approaches suggest that reinforcement also comes in less direct ways.
Albert Bandura’s classic Bobo doll experiment

Viewing Violence on TV: Does It Matter?
Although it is clear that laboratory observation of aggression on television leads to higher levels of aggression, evidence showing that real-world viewing of aggression is associated with subsequent aggressive behavior is correlational.
Just as exposure to aggressive models leads to aggression, observation of non -aggressive models can reduce aggression.

Cognitive Approaches to Aggression: The Thoughts Behind Violence
The cognitive approach to aggression suggests that the key to understanding moral development is to examine preschoolers’ interpretations of others’ behavior and of the environmental context in which a behavior occurs.
The cognitive approach is less successful in explaining how certain children come to be inaccurate perceivers of situations in the first place.

Child development, chapter 10, Caprice Paduano

by Caprice Paduano

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 10

Statistics

Child development, chapter 10, Caprice Paduano Presentation Transcript