CHAPTER 10
PSYCHOSOCIAL
DEVELOPMENT IN
MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
McGraw-Hill
Erikson
• Ages 7-11 Developmental Crisis: Industry vs.
Inferiority
– Resolved positively when experiences lead children
to develop a sense of competence at useful skills
and tasks
– Negative outcomes result in inferiority: reflected in
pessimism of children who have little confidence in
their ability to do things well
Humanistic Theory
Abraham Maslow (1908 – 1970)
– Assumed people are essentially good
– Believed people are naturally motivated
toward self-actualization
• One of the highest level of psychological
development
• Involves striving to achieve everything one
is capable of
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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
– Physiological
– Safety
– Love and Belongingness
– Esteem
– Self-Actualization
– Need for Understanding
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow organized a hierarchy of motives
– As lower-level needs are satisfied, higherlevel needs become more motivating
– Believed only a small portion of people attain
self-actualization
Problems with Maslow’s theory
– Too global to be tested experimentally
– Strongly tied to Western values
Self-Understanding
Psychological traits and social comparisons appear in
children’s self-concepts, and a hierarchically organized
self-esteem emerges.
Self-Esteem: How children rank themselves compared to
others (self-worth).
By age 6,7 children have formed at least 4 broad selfesteems (academic, social, physical competence, and
physical appearance)
Low self-esteem leads to anxiety, depression, and
increasing antisocial behaviors
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Self -Esteem
• African American children tend to have higher self esteem as
compared to their Caucasian age mates. May be attributed to
warm extended families and strong sense of ethnic pride
• Children who live in neighborhoods where their SES and ethnic
groups are well represented have fewer self-esteem problems.
• Children whose parents use an authoritative child rearing style
feel especially good about themselves.
• Controlling parents communicate a sense of inadequacy to their
child that is linked with low self esteem, as are repeated
disapproval and parental insults
• Overindulgent parenting is correlated with unrealistically high
self-esteem, which also leads to adjustment problems
Competence
• Form of self-esteem; related to athletics, peer popularity,
physical appearance and behavior.
• Between ages 8 to 11 children refine their me-self, or self
concept, organizing their observations of behaviors and internal
states into general dispositions.
• They emphasize competencies rather than specific behaviors
• They can describe their personalities including both positive and
negative traits, rather than describing themselves in all-or-none
ways
• Make social comparisons
Self-Control and Impulsivity
Self-Control: Restraint exercised over one’s own
impulses, emotions and desires
Impulsivity: Inability to delay gratification
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Homework Assignment
• What is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder (ADHD)?
• What are the three core elements involved
with ADHD?
• Before what age should it diagnosed?
• What types of treatments are useful for this
disorder?
• Are there any other mental health diagnosis
that are similar to ADHD?
Peer Influence
By the end of middle childhood, children form peer
groups
• Important for social development
• 1:1 friendships strengthen
• Friendship become more complex and psychologically
based
• Gender-stereotyped beliefs continue
• Attracted to those with:
– Same interests
– Play well together
• Amount of time spent with parents begins to decline
Gender Typing
• School age children consider certain academic
subjects (reading art spelling and music) as
feminine
• Math, athletics, mechanical skills as masculine
• Children are especially intolerant of boys’
violations of gender roles.
• Aware that society attaches greater prestige
to “masculine” characteristics and occupations
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Sibling Rivalry
• Sibling rivalry tends to increase
• Siblings try to be different from one another
Learned Helplessness
• Children attribute their failures to ability but,
when they succeed, conclude that external
factors, such as lick, are responsible
• They believe:
– Ability is fixed and cannot be changed by trying
hard
– On difficult tasks, they feel an anxious loss of
control and give up without trying
TX for Learned Helplessness
• Attribution training: encourages children to
believe that they can overcome failure by
exerting more effort
• Encourage children to focus less on grades
and more at mastering a task for its own sake
• Best when done early, before children’s view
of themselves are hard to change
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Divorce
• 45% of American marriages end in divorce
• ¼ live in single-parent homes, most with mothers,
12% with fathers
• 2/3 divorced parents will remarry
• ½ of those will experience a 2nd divorce
• Stressful
• Drop in income
• Fathers more indulgent and permissive
• Younger children often blame themselves
• Older child often parentified
Divorce Mediation, Joint Custody, Child
Support
• Divorce Mediation: a series of meetings between
divorcing adults w/ a trained professional (family
court mediator) aimed to reduce family conflict,
including legal battles over property division and child
custody
• Joint custody: grants both parents w/ equal say in
important decisions about the child’s upbringing,
encourage both parents to remain involved in the
child life
• Child support: all states have established procedures
for withholding wages from parents who fail to make
court order child support payments
Blended Families
• Aka: Reconstituted families: a family structure
resulting from remarriage or a divorced parent that
includes parent, child, and new step relatives
• Mother-Stepfather Families: most common, usually
boys adjust quickly, older children-adolescents both
gender find it harder to adjust to blended families
• Father-Stepmother Families: when father have
custody , children typically react negatively to
remarriage, especially girls relationships with
stepmothers
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Support for Blended Families
• Marriage and Family Therapy
• Move into roles slowly as step parents
Moral Development
• Distributive Justice: beliefs about how to divide
material goods fairly
– Strict equality: age 5-6 focus on making sure each person
gets the same amount
– Merit: age 6-7 extra rewards should be given to someone
who has worked especially hard for it
– Equity and benevolence: age 8 special consideration should
be given to those at a disadvantage
– Older children: rely more on equality when interacting with
strangers, more on benevolence with friends
Understanding Diversity and Inequality
• Age 2-6 associate power and privilege with white
people and poverty with people of color
• Pick up prevailing societal attitudes from implicit
messages in their environments
• Age 5-7 white children generally evaluate their own
racial group more favorably than other groups
• Minority children age 5-7 evaluate their group more
negatively
• Age7-8 both groups of children express in-group
favoritism, white prejudice against others weakens
• Children with high self-esteem are more likely to hold
racial and ethnic prejudices
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Television and Cognitive Development
• Greater effect on development than other
media
• Children ages 2-18 watch, on average,
more than 3 hours of television per day
Television and Cognitive Development
• Children learn what is said
• Children learn TV’s codes, sound effects, camera
techniques, and program organization
• Children’s behavior reflects these items
• TV viewing and school achievement are
positively and negatively related.
Television and Violence
• Children view an estimated 10,000 to 15,000
acts of violence each year
• Children’s programming is the most violent
• 26% of violent acts involve the use of guns
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Television and Violence
• Attitudes about violence are learned at an early
age, attitudes can be lifelong
• The issue of desensitization is of constant
concern and has not been adequately addressed
• Children can learn that violence is acceptable to
resolve conflicts and achieve goals
Questions to Ask
1. Who is the author and what is the purpose of
the show?
2. What techniques are used to attract the
children’s attention?
3. What values are being presented?
4. Will children interpret the show’s
message differently than adults?
5. What is lacking in the presentation?
Stress in Childhood
Fears and anxieties are directed by new concerns w/
Physical safety, Media events, Academic performance
Parents’ health, Peer relations
Phobias: intense unmanageable fear effects about 5% of
children
School phobias: severe apprehension about attending
school
Types of Stress: Physical, Cognitive, Psychosocial
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Why Children React Differently to
Stress
• Sex
• Age
• Temperament
Abused Children
• Other than by accidental means
– Physical Abuse: Physical injury, corporal
punishment, bruises
– Emotional Maltreatment: Willfully permits a
child to suffer, inflict physical pain, or mental
suffering, child endangerment, health is
endangered
– Neglect: Failure to provide food, clothing or
shelter
Child Sexual Abuse
Sexual Abuse: Adults having sex with a minor,
Lude & lavious acts, pornography, videos,
comments, gestures
– Taught to obey adults
– Feel forced to comply
– Usually a familiar person who violates the
child
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Resilient Children
Children who manage to thrive in the face of chaos and
adverse conditions
4 factors that protect against maladjustments:
1. Child’s personal characteristics
2. Warm parent relationships
3. Adjust outside the immediate family who offers a
support system
4. Community resources (good schools, social services,
youth recreation and organization centers)
Chaos Theory
Chaos Theory
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Chaos Theory
Extra Credit (10 points)
• Create 5 Multiple Choice
Questions from the Lecture
Notes for Chapter 10 ONLY!
• Include the Answers!
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