Human Development
CHAPTER 10
THE PLAY YEARS
PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Erikson:
Initiative vs. guilt
• Increased levels of energy at this stage enable
the child to boldly and exuberantly initiate new
activities
• Outcome of this crisis will depend on whether the
child often succeeds and is praised for his/her
endeavors or whether efforts fail and the child is
unrewarded or blamed
• Child's growing self-concept results in a turning
away from an "exclusive attachment" such as to a
parent and toward becoming a member of a larger
group.
• Children's growing capacity for
communication, imagination and social
understanding allows them to explore
lots of social roles. In terms of selfconfidence, social skills, and social
roles, much develops during early
childhood
• Self emerges gradually during later
stages of infancy and, by early
childhood, children begin to have
clearly defined (though not always
accurate) concepts of self. They
regularly overestimate their abilities
• PHOBIA: Fear becomes so strong that is
interferes with child's normal functioning
Use modeling or gradual desensitization as
therapy.
ELECTIVE MUTISM: Talk normally at
home but are mute with other children or
adults. Usually gradually disappears in
good preschool or some other social
setting that allows child to get over
his/her fear of others. Some cases can be
precursor to serious speech and behavior
problems as well as sign of problems at
home
PLAY
THE WORK OF
PRESCHOOLERS:
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Mildred Parten(1932) Types of Play
Solitary: alone, unaware of others
Onlooker: watches others
Parallel: play in similar way with similar toys
Associative: Interact by sharing materials
Cooperative: Play together, helping and taking
turns
DRAMATIC PLAY
• Most complicated form of social play
• Coincides with the achievement of
symbolic thinking
• Fun but also helps children try out
social roles, express their fears and
fantasies, and learn to cooperate
SIBLING
INTERACTION
• Siblings are more likely to quarrel with one
another than with non-related children but
also more likely to have positive
interactions including nurturance and
cooperation
• Parents influence the sibling interactions
often setting the stage for rivalry
• Siblings are more likely to fight and argue
in presence of a parent and play
cooperatively alone
IMPORTANCE OF
SOCIAL PLAY
• Provides crucial experiences that would be
hard for adults to provide or for children
to learn later. Learning to play teaches
reciprocity, nurturance, and cooperation
• With more experience play becomes more
sophisticated and friendships more
selective
PARENTING Styles
Diana Baumrind (1967)
• Observed 110 children, interviewed parents,
observed parent-child interactions at home and
lab setting.
• THREE STYLES OF PARENTING
– Authoritarian: Parents' word is law, not to be
questioned. Aloof from children, afraid to show
affection/praise.
– Permissive: Make few demands on children, hiding
impatience they feel. Discipline is lax, anarchy common.
– Authoritative: Set limits, enforce rules, but listen
receptively to child's requests and questions. Family
rule is more democratic than dictatorial.
Generalizations she
found
• Sons of authoritarians-distrustful,
unhappy, hostile, neither sons or
daughters-high achievers
• Children of permissive-least self-reliant,
least self-controlled, most unhappy. (boys
low achievers, girls OK)
• Children of authoritative-most selfreliant, self-controlled, and content and
are friendly, cooperative, high achiever
Aggression
• Reaches peak during preschool years and then
declines
• Instrumental aggression
– involves arguing over an object, territory, or privilege
• Reactive Aggression-
– Shoving punching rather tan using words when “injured”
• Bullying Aggression
– Attack against someone rather than a fight about
something. Younger children more likely to respond
physically to being made fun of. Certain amt. of
aggression is normal
SPANKING
• 408 Parents Surveyed
– 9% never used physical punishment
– 72 % Spanked but did not use more
violent punishment
– 19% hit and/or beat as well as spanked
Instrumental aggression
• Unrelated to punishment
• All children used this
• Just as likely to fight over a toy no
matter punishment
Reactive Aggression
• Powerfully affected by spanking
• Three times more likely to retaliate
Bullying Aggression
• Clearly associated with being
violently punished
• Particularly in the case of a few
extreme children
Boys who were spanked
buy fathers were likely to
behave as if they had
been hit as well as
spanked.
That is they became Bullies
Role of T.V.
• Children
– 2-5 21h 21 min (1996)
– 6-11 19h 59min
• Teens
– Girls 18h 19min
– Boys 19h 59min
SEX ROLES AND
STEREOTYPES
•
All psychologists agree that children begin to
learn sex roles and moral values during early
childhood they disagree about how this occurs.
• Freud: believed that the guilt and fear that
children feel because of the fantasies of the
Oedipal complex result in the development of
their superegos
• Erikson: stresses the child's initiative and
exuberance, noting that the child sometimes feels
guilty when this gets out of bounds.
•
Learning theorists
• think children learn their values from the
reinforcement they receive for acting
appropriately, and from the punishment
they receive from acting inappropriately
– Modeling role models of parents, T.V., and
others
• Cognitive theorists remind us that young
children are illogical and egocentric and we
should not expect them to understand
moral values or sex roles.
Androgyny
• State of having both male and female
characteristics, person defining him
or herself as primarily a human being
rather than a male or a female