Lecture 7 and 8 Emotional and Social Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood and Moral Theory PDF

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Principles of Developmental Psychology Notes for Lectures 7 and 8. About the Emotional and Social Development in Infancy and Toddler-hood and Moral Development Theory ...

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Lecture 7 Emotional and Social Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood Erickson’s Theory of Social development  Erik Erikson built this theory on Freud’s original understanding that the quality of parental relationships is deeply important to a child social and personality development  Trust vs Mistrust o Children will trust their sympathetic and loving caregivers o They will mistrust harsh and rigid caregivers that give them a lot of punishment and not a lot of emotional support and love  Autonomy vs Shame and Doubt o The key conflict of childhood o Children want to be autonomous. They want to have their own control over their lives  Healthy development when parents provide children with suitable guidance and reasonable choices  The healthiest development is when it is not extreme in one direction or the other  The parent isn't giving them too much freedom or they're not giving them too much rule. Or not trusting them too much but not trusting them at all  Initiative vs Guilt o Preschoolers learn to initiate tasks and carry out plans on their own o Or they feel guilty about their efforts to be independent  Industry vs Inferiority o Children learn the pleasure of applying themselves to tasks o Or they feel inferior and that they are failing and cannot do so on their own accomplish things on their own

 Intimacy vs Isolation o young adults struggled to form close relationships and to gain the capacity for intimate love o they also struggle with feeling isolated and alone  Generativity vs Stagnation o The middle aged discover a sense of contributing to the world usually through family and career o The other side of this is that they feel a lack of purpose; they don't know what they're doing with their life they’re not giving back to the community  Integrity vs Despair o Those in older age will reflect on his or her life and they can feel either a sense of satisfaction from what they've accomplished or feel like a failure o They try to see if they've left a lasting impression on the world around them Happiness  Communicated mostly through smiles and language  Social Smile o Will appear within 6 to 10 weeks o Pleasure at positive stimuli and a recognition of mastery and skills o Encourages positive bonds between the baby and the caregiver  Other signs of happiness in Toddlers o Laughter- appears around 3 to 4 months o Clearly joyful interactions with other people which appears with around six months

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o At about a year you see different types of happy expressions with different people - with one family member as opposed to another child as opposed to a friend or sibling Sadness  Exhibited in early infancy as a sign of distress at the removal of positive stimuli or introduction of negative stimuli o Distress develops into anger and sadness  Anger is a little less common o You'll see pain more often  As a warning sign that they are hungry or tired or uncomfortable o You'll also see this from a loss of parental child interactions, a feeling of being abandoned or lonely o These are all basic expressions that the child needs for healthy development not only emotionally but also physically Anger  Develops in increasing frequency and intensity o Becomes more apparent between four to six months  Often the result of increased intentional behaviors; a lack of autonomy and control o Older infants are able to direct their anger at specific individuals objects and situations Fear  This emotion develops in the second half of year one o It often occurs in response to the unknown  Such as new toys, heights, unfamiliar sounds or places o Stranger Anxiety

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 A fear of adults or other people they've never met  This is just a basic survival instinct of wanting to be around something that you know is safe and comfortable  Avoiding places people and things that could potentially get them hurt o Secure Base  Babies use familiar caregivers as a reference point in exploring the new things around them Using Emotions and Socializing  Social Referencing o Actively seeking emotional information from a trusted person in an unknown situation  Looking for your mom or family members in a crowded room  Self-Conscious Emotions o Appears at around 18 to 22 months o Enhancement to our sense of self  A little bit more complicated than previous emotions o Examples are guilt, shame, embarrassment, envy, pride  It's not always a bad thing and overall contributes to the child learning and developing new skills and management and emotional management o Emotional Self-Regulation  Strategies used to adjust the intensity of our emotions o Effortful control  voluntary purposeful management of emotions that develops from two years onwards

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Temperament  Early stable individual differences in reactivity such as the quickness an intensity of motions and self-regulation or controlling reactivity  Easy Child o About 40% of children are routine oriented the very easygoing their cheerful their adaptive they're playful and happy and easy to give instructions to quickly  A Difficult Child o This is about 10% of children o They are irregular in routines, slow to accept change and they can often react negatively an intensely to negative stimuli knew people unfamiliar things in uncomfortable situations o They’re moody and dislike a lot of things  Slow to Warm Up Child o About 15% of children they are inactive, very mild and low-key reactions to the environment , they do have negative moods but overall they have slow adjustments to a change  Our temperament develops into a personality traits and for the most part temperament is pretty stable across the lifespan it it's not to say that you can't become more easygoing overtime or that you don't become more difficult overtime but for the most part we stay the same Attachment  Our bond with caregivers  Strange Situation Tasks- Harlow’s Attachment’s Styles o Helps to identify children's attachment with caregivers  The child will be playing in a room with the parent who will abruptly leave then return

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o there are four different kinds of attachment styles that a person can have o Secure Attachment  The parent is a secure base if a child is feeling frightened or uncomfortable, they will go immediately to the caregiver for comfort and aid o Avoidant Attachment  This is a little troubling  The child is indifferent to the parent’s presence or absence  If they leave the room, they really don't notice or they don't care o Resistant Attachment  This is when a child is very clingy and needy for their caregiver  They get extremely upset when the caregiver leaves a room and are quite angry at them when they return o Disorganized or Disoriented attachment  This is the most concerning kind of attachment style that a child could have  Greatest insecurity, they act in contradictory ways upon the reunion  For example, when the parent reenters the room they could be greatly upset but they still don't seek the parents comfort Lecture 8 Moral Development Theory  How we perceive morality what's moral and what's not moral o Affect what we feel how we think and how we behave

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 There have been different theories that explain how morality develops o Biological theories, evolutionary, psychological, social learning, cognitive developmental…etc Evolutionary Moral Theory  Believe a moral development has evolutionary roots and a genetic heritage o Claim that we are born a certain way or quickly after birth we are predisposed to learn about what is good and what is bad o It has survival value in the sense that it actually foster bonds with significant people in our immediate groups (families) uh and it  Fosters empathy and when the situation calls for it, self sacrifice and o This is within a family setting however we are not a beings that only care for family our moral codes do not only apply to our sisters, brothers mothers fathers grandmothers often uncles we actually feel strongly for others who are not related to us and evolutionary theory also then tells us that uh it is possible but it wasn't evolutionary achievement for human beings to start feeling empathy caring and applying the moral code to people who weren't they were not immediately related to because human beings survived in groups  Ability to form a give and take relations reciprocity cooperation within groups was also important for our survival um  So there is an evolutionary way of thinking that suggests natural selection fostered altruism uh and we have prewired emotional reactions meaning certain parts of our brain are actually um more active in processing moral problems and this seemed to be up more or less the same areas from one person to the next which again suggests that there might be some structural foundation for moral reasoning

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 Mirror Neuron Systems o Suggests that when we see somebody in pain the areas of our brain that are active when we experienced pain are also activated which again seems to suggest that there is some neural foundation for our feelings of care and compassion for others  What's interesting with this research is that children as they get older are more likely to carry out the unnecessary steps o Younger children discard the unnecessary steps and just pull out the pin and unlatch the door that's what they usually do but as children get older, they start doing these unnecessary tapping motions and stuff  As children are getting older, they are learning from culture o They're learning to learn from people and even in cases where they understand that an action has nothing to do with the causal consequence if that is how it is done, then they are going to do it as a member of a culture o So as children are getting older they might actually be becoming more inefficient in order to accommodate culture Psychoanalytic Theory  The Role of Guilt o Here comes Freud with all of the guilt that is associated to childhood o Freud believed that in early childhood children experience either Oedipus or Electra conflicts depending on their gender meaning they want the opposite gender parents for themselves and they actually actively have a dislike for the same sex parents  However, they do understand that they're not going to get rid of the same sex parents and that these feelings are wrong

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o So, they start feeling guilt; the hostility they feel towards that same sex parent is then directed towards the self o They over identify with the same sex parents internalizing their moral attitudes yes uh according to Freud what drives moral development is fear of punishment and loss of parental love uh but modern researchers disagree uh because children seem to experience guilt as a result of their own improper actions more than their feelings towards the other sex parents uh and  Parental Attitudes o Affect guilt formation and we also see that those parents who are a bit abusive and withdraw love or neglect their children actually have children who feel less guilt  It doesn't seem like this loss of parental love is what's driving children's feelings of guilt hence again driving their morality to the develop Inductive Discipline  An alternative explanation to this o A form of positive discipline which helps children notice other’s feelings o Point out the effects of children's own misbehavior on other people and note others distress  Also known as empathy-based guilt  A parent who uses induction if their kid knocks down another child’s sandcastle o If she says “Look you knocked down back Jacobs’s castle, you see how sad he is, he’s crying. And he's crying because his castle is gone and it's because of you. Because you knocked it down. What can we do to help him?”

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 This actually helps children to empathize with others better and also shows more pro social that aims to help others  A good way to induce empathy because it is very educational o In a way it informs the child on how to behave: What's the appropriate type of behavior. What promotes empathy and sympathetic concern  It paves the way for pro social behavior-what can we do to make back Jacob happy o Makes the connection between behavior and emotions clear for children o It helps develop scripts for moral and immoral behavior  Complete with feelings and strategies to get out of negative feelings o Children are more likely to both listen to this kind of discipline and internalize it  Child Factors in Inductive Discipline o It's not a prescription for all because we know that children are different, they show individual differences from very early age there are temperamental differences for example  Fearful children, more irritable children, or impulsive children and so naturally empathic children require less power assertion by their parents  More subtle warning and explanations  Mild tactics work best for fearless children um  Firm tactics should be in place but should always be nested in the context of warm parent child relationships

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 In induction the child will still feel guilty or learn to feel guilty but this is empathy-based guilt o They'll feel guilty because they have hurt somebody else Social Learning Moral Theory  Quite different, looks at the development of morality o In social learning theory in this theory morality is learned through reinforcement and modeling o Does a lot to teach children  Acknowledged that it is impossible for all children to learn by conditioning because the amount of experience in the world may not be as varied to allow for that o Children also learn through watching other behaviors o This context helpful model increases children's pro social responses so if they're looking at adults who are good models for moral behavior, they will internalize it more  Good Models o People that the children are familiar with o They want to imitate these people; they want to learn from them  These people show competence and power  Most adults are perceived as competent and powerful compared to all children o Have consistency between what they say and what they do  If they're going to teach their children not to throw litter on the ground outside they won't engage in that behavior themselves either Punishment  What do we mean by punishment?

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o Obviously, a punishment plays a role o An effective way of teaching children what's right and what's wrong partially yes, partially no  Corporal Punishment o Would be a physical form of punishment but please do not when we said Corporal punishment, we don't usually mean beating a child senseless Corporal punishment is inflicting mild pain to get the child’s attention  Other alternative punishment o Time out  Letting the child sit out and think about what they did wrong o Withdrawing privileges  You won't be able to have the desert if… o Positive Discipline  The effectiveness of punishment is greatly increased by how consistent it is  So if a parent punishes a behavior twice out of the five times it occurs it is quite unlikely that the child will internalize it

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