CHAPTER 11
SOCIOEMOTIONAL
DEVELOPMENT IN EARLY
CHILDHOOD
EMOTIONAL AND PERSONALITY
DEVELOPMENT
The Self
• Initiative vs. guilt – With the increase of energy,
children begin to explore their world. Erikson
believes that their mistakes, if punished without
reason, can unleash guilt, thereby lowering the
child’s self-esteem.
• Self-understanding – Child’s cognitive
representation of self, the substance and content of
the child’s self-conceptions. At approximately 18
months of age, the child becomes aware of the self
– mostly in physical terms.
Emotional Development
Developmental timetable of young children’s emotion language and
understanding – increased use of emotion language – adept at telling
their feelings – at four to five years they begin to reflect on their
emotions – demonstrate a growing awareness about the controlling of
emotions.
Self-conscious emotions – Children being aware of themselves as
distinct from others. Pride and guilt become more common in early
childhood years.
Regulation of emotion – Children begin to regulate and manage their
emotions, especially by shifting the focus of one’s attention.
Helping children understand emotions – Children need to express
their emotions in a non-threatening environment; educators must
provide outlets and support for studying emotions (books, stories,
plays, etc).
Moral Development
What is moral development? – Rules and conventions about what
people should do in their interactions with other people. Three
domains are examined on this topic with children: how children
reason, how they actually behave, and how they feel about moral
matters.
Piaget’s view of how children’s moral reasoning develops –
Through his observations of children 4 to 12 years old, he concluded
that children think in two distinct stages:
Heteronomous morality – displayed by younger children – justice and
rules are unchangeable properties of the world outside the control of
people’s lives and consequences of the behavior have a great force.
Autonomous morality – displayed by older children – where child
becomes aware that rules and laws are crated by people, so one must
consider the intentions of the actor as well as consequences.
Continued…
Imminent justice – A concept held by the heteronomous
thinker that if a rule is broken, punishment is immediate.
Moral behavior – Influenced extensively by the situation
– the totally honest and totally dishonest child does not
exist as a result.
Moral feelings – In the psychoanalytic view of moral
development, self-punitiveness of guilt is responsible for
keeping children from committing transgressions; they
seek to avoid guilt. Empathy in moral development results
when the person can understand how another feels and
possibly anticipate a feeling as a result of an action. Some
believe that this empathetic ability forms a base for the
child’s gradual acquisition of values.
GENDER
What is gender? – The social and psychological dimensions of being
male or female. Gender identity acquired by the age of three is the
sense of maleness or femaleness, whereas gender role is a set of
expectations that define that identity.
Biological influences – chromosomes, hormones, brain, and evolution.
Chromosomes – 46 – the 23rd pair is either two XXs or an XY – that
creates the male.
Hormones – secretion of androgens – male sex hormones that, in low
levels, format the female embryo’s sex organs.
Estrogens, the main female sex hormones play a role in puberty.
Levels of hormones have been found to affect femininity and
masculinity in animas, but environmental factors of behavior prevent
applying this conclusion to humans.
Brain – sex differences found in the brain (i.e., female processing
information in both sides of the brain).
Evolutionary psychology – evolutionary aspects produce differences
in gender behavior (i.e., male competitiveness led to male dominance
in reproduction, female selection of mates linked to parenting,
therefore preferring long-term relationships).
Social influences – The culture imposes aspects of femaleness and
maleness on infants and children, thereby establishing the gender
separation (i.e., blue for males, pink for females). Continued…
Psychoanalytic and social cognitive theories – Emanates from the Freudian
concept of a young child’s sexual attraction to the opposite-sex parent – a
concept generally disbelieved today. The social cognitive theory of gender
believes that gender characteristics are imposed through reward and
punishment and are reinforced by peers.
Parental influences – Children identify with the roles played by their parents,
especially by that of the father. Parents often impose gender types through
rearing practices (e.g., girls babysitting, boys doing yard work).
Peer influences – Children show a clear preference for being with and liking
same-sex peers, and evidence indicate that children teach each other about
gender roles.
School and teacher influences – Documentation verifies that boys receive
more attention in many aspects of education.
Media influences – The media is a major source of gender stereotyping from
television characterization of male/female roles to extensive profiling of
femaleness and maleness in print advertising.
Cognitive influences – The cognitive gender developmental theory occurs
when children have accepted gender as a concept with specific characteristics.
Once the conception is germinated, they organize their world accordingly. The
gender schema theory presents gendering as a model followed by beliefs of
appropriate and inappropriate practices related to gender.
The role of language in gender development – Speaking and reading to
young children often carry cues that are distinctly feminine and masculine and
act as reinforcements of the stereotype.
FAMILIES
Parenting
Parenting styles – The Baumrind styles of parenting:
Authoritarian – A controlling style of parenting
where there are strict limits and consequences. Topdown, there is no discussion. These children are
unhappy, fearful and anxious.
Authoritative – Encourages independence but with
limits established through verbal interchange. These
children are often cheerful, self-directed, achievementoriented.
Neglectful – Parent is uninvolved in the child’s life.
These children are frequently truant, have low selfesteem, and are immature.
Indulgent – Highly involved in the child’s life with
few demands or controls. These children often have
behavior problems, lack respect, and are lowachievers.
Child Abuse – Within families, child abuse is on the increase in the
United States despite a greater focus by law enforcement officials on
detection.
The multifaceted nature of abuse – There are many different
types of abuse: physical and sexual, lack of supervision, medical,
educational, and nutritional neglect.
Severity of abuse – A very small minority of children suffer the
vile and unspeakable abuse highlighted in the media; however,
the range of abuse is marked by degrees of severity from physical
injury to psychological harm.
The Cultural context of abuse – Abuse is high in the United
States, possibly because of a cultural perspective that a child’s
discipline requires a physical application.
Family influences – How children are disciplined can later
influence how they, as parents, discipline their children.
Research points to the intergenerational aspect of abuse.
Developmental consequences of abuse – Abused children show
the effects in many ways, but especially in attachment, where
they appear disorganized and cannot respond competently to
distress or positive approaches by peers. Maltreated children also
display anxiety, depression, conduct disorder, and delinquency.
Parenting: Nature or Nurture? – It is
fairly conclusive that neither parenting nor
heredity alone is responsible for
development; it sis in interactive process.
Good parenting takes time and effort –
Santrock here argues that presently there is
an emphasis by parents on “quick-fix”
parenting through packaging artificial
means of spending time with their children.
Sibling Relationships and Birth Order
Sibling relationships – because more than 80 percent of American
children have siblings, there is evidence that these relationships have
an impact on development. There is also evidence that in
industrialized countries sibling responsibility is less, or different, from
that of non-industrialized countries.
Birth order – Birth order certainly creates a variance in relationships
within the family.
Firstborns and later-borns – Firstborns tend to receive a great deal of
attention until the second child arrives. This places stress on the
firstborn and interferes with their routine. It also affects the sibling
relationship because the older child is considered dominant and
competent. Hence children evolve with different characteristics.
The only child – Contrary to the stereotype, the only child is often
achievement-oriented and displays a desirable personality.
Birth order as a predictor of behavior – Researchers conclude that
because of the high variability of factors influencing behavior, birth
order alone cannot accurately predict behavior.
The Changing Family in a Changing Social
World – The United States has the highest
number of single-parent families in
comparison with most other countries.
Working parents – Today’s parents are responding to a
modern culture in which a working mother is an
indigenous factor. An incorrect assumption is that time
away from home and the child is detrimental.
Effects of divorce on children
Children’s adjustment in divorced families – Children of divorce show
greater adjustment problems (i.e., more likely to have academic problems,
be anxious, depressed, less socially responsible).
Should parents stay together for the sake of their children? – The
prevailing intelligence is that there are too many “ifs” to conclusively
answer that question.
How much do family processes matter in divorced families? – The
research strongly supports the view that good parenting is key whether
within or without a divorce situation. What roles do non-custodial parents
play in the lives of children in divorced families? – Greater participation
in the child’s activities by the non-custodial parent mitigates some of the
negative effects of divorce.
What factors are involved in the child’s individual risk and
vulnerability in a divorced family? – Temperament, developmental
status, gender, and custody situation are all factors. Children who are
socially mature and responsible show less effect. Very young children are
sometimes found to e at greater risk than older children.
What role does socioeconomic status play in the lives of the children
in divorced families? – Income loss has a double impact on the custodial
parent because she or he must leave the home for longer periods to make
up for the loss of income, which also creates stress on the order of the
family.
Cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic
variations in families – What seems to be
emerging as a “truism” is that love with
moderate control is the successful strategy
for effective parenting. The size of families
varies with ethnic cultures; large and
extended families are more common among
Latino families (19 percent vs. 10 percent for
White families).
PEER RELATIONS, PLAY,
AND TELEVISION
Peer Relations
• Peer group functions – Defined as children of
about the same age or maturity level, peers provide
a source of information and comparison about he
world outside of the family. Documented studies
have shown that peer relations are necessary for
normal social development, but these relations can
also be negative.
• The distinct but coordinated worlds of parentchild and peer-relations – Evidence supports the
view that parental influence can affect peer
relations and that parents who model aggression
will yield it in their children, whereas parents who
show meditation and coaching yield competency in
their children regarding social relations.
Play
• Play’s functions – Play increases the
probability that children will converse and
interact with each other. Freud and Erikson
believe it is a useful form of human
adjustment, helping children to master
anxieties and conflicts. Play therapy allows
children to work off frustrations and allows
the therapist to analyze conflicts and ways of
coping.
Parten’s Classic Study of Play
Unoccupied play – child is not engaging – performs
actions without goals.
Solitary play – alone and independent and not caring for
what others are doing.
Onlooker play – speaks with playing children but does
not engage in the activity.
Parallel play – plays separately from others but with
toys similar to those being used by the other children.
Associative play – socially interactive where children
seem more interested in each other than in the activities.
Cooperative play – interactive play with a sense of
group identity and organized activity. This is seen more
in middle childhood and less in preschool years.
Types of Play
Sensorimotor play – Is where behavior by infants
derives pleasure from exercising their sensorimotor
schemas. From the early months through the second
year, they enjoy playing with objects in varying ways.
Practice play – The repetition of behavior when new
skills are being learned or when physical or mental
mastery and coordination are required.
Pretense/symbolic play – In preschool it is the makebelieve play engaged in by young children, which both
Piaget and Vygotsky agree helps develop children’s
imagination.
Social play – An involvement of social interaction with
peers from casual to rough-and-tumble.
Constructive play – Combines senorimotor with
symbolic representation of ideas.
Games – Activities for pleasure that include rules and
often competition.
Television
Television’s many roles – Generally considered to be a negative
influence that distracts children from learning through books, affects
their views and perspective, deceives, and negatively educates
children regarding stereotypes of gender, race, culture, and religion.
Amount of television watching by children – Generally, American
children’s television watching is second in number of hours only to
sleep.
Effects of television on children’s aggression and prosocial
behavior – Many research studies and experiments have
demonstrated the negative effects of viewing violence on television
on the prosocial behavior patterns of young children. Some
evidence suggests that television can also promote good prosocial
behavior when programs reflect positive social strategies.
Television and cognitive development – Negative television aids
the children’s script and schema development but in ways that are
not always desirable. There is great promise for television to
promote cognition through extensive use of visual and spatial
arrangements.