Early
Social Development, Part 1
o What
determines how children learn to interact in a social world
n Emotion
n Personality
n Attachment
n Self
n Peer
relationships
n Personality
n Gender
o Will
initially focus on infancy/preschool period and will discuss social development
in older children later in the cousrse
Infant Social
Development
o How much impact do parents
have?
o What is important for parents
to do?
Psychoanalytic
Theories
o Sigmund
Freud and Erik Erikson
n Freud: Behavior is driven by the need to satisfy
drives and motives that are largely unconscious.
n Erikson: Development is driven by a series of
age-related developmental tasks that individuals must resolve to achieve
healthy development.
Sigmund Freud
o Freud was a
neurologist and a founder of developmental theory (1856–1939).
Freud’s
Theory of Psychosexual Development
o His lasting
contributions to developmental psychology:
n Role of
early experience
n Discovery of
the unconscious
n
Emphasis on the role of emotional relationships in
development
Basic
Features of Freud’s Theory
o There are
five biologically determined stages of development, three of which occur during
the infancy and preschool period
o Motivation
springs from drives and the reduction of these drives.
o There are
three basic structures of personality:
the id, ego, and superego.
o Freud’s
theory is called “psychosexual” because it posits that psychic energy
(biological drives) are focused in different erogenous
zones of the body.
Freud’s
Parts of Personality
o Id: The earliest and most primitive of the
personality structures, ruled by the pleasure principle (to obtain maximal
pleasure as quickly as possible). Stands for “untamed passions.”
o Superego: The conscience that enables a child to control
behavior and develop morally. The superego develops through internalization of
parents’ standards
o Ego: The mind’s link to the external world of
reality. Stands for “reason and good sense.”
Freud’s
Stages of Development
o Oral stage,
birth to 1 year: Primary source of
satisfaction is oral pleasure, such as sucking and eating. The id controls.
o Anal stage,
1 to 3 years: Primary source of pleasure
is defecation.
n Beginning of
superego and ego
o Phallic
stage, 3 to 6 years: Children become
interested in their own genitalia and curious about parents’ and
playmates’.
n True
Development of superego
Early
Theories of Infant Social Development
o Erikson
(1902–1994) had enormous influence on developmental psychology
Erikson’s
Theory of Psychosocial Development
o Proposed
eight age-related development stages that span infancy to old age.
o Each stage
is characterized by a crisis, or task, that the individual must resolve.
o An
unresolved task will impede progress in the next stage.
Erikson’s
Stages
o Basic trust
vs. Mistrust, birth to 1 year:
corresponds to Freud’s oral stage.
n The task is
to develop an essential trustfulness of others as well as a sense of one’s own
trustworthiness.
n Development
of basic trust requires warm, consistent, reliable caregiving
that leads the infant to trust the mother or caregiver.
Erikson’s
Stages (continued)
o Autonomy vs.
Shame and Doubt, 1 to 3 years:
corresponds to Freud’s anal stage.
n Children
gain motor skills, cognitive abilities, and language, which enable them to make
choices and decisions for themselves.
n Children
need a supportive atmosphere that allows them to gain a sense of self-control
that enhances self-esteem.
n Severe
punishment, shame, or ridicule will impede achievement of autonomy.
Erikson’s
Stages (continued)
o Initiative
vs. Guilt, 4 to 6 years: Children
identify with and learn from their parents.
n Corresponds
with Freud’s phallic stage.
n Children set
goals and learn to achieve them.
n Children
internalize parents’ rules and standards and develop a conscience.
n Children
need to achieve a healthy balance between initiative and guilt.
Current
Perspectives on Psychoanalytic Theories
o Freud’s
emphasis was on the importance of early experiences and emotional
relationships.
o Erikson’s
reinterpreted without emphasis on sexual drives.
o The weakness
of both theories is that they are not testable and not verifiable. Doesn’t make them invalid
Early Social
Development, Part 2
Learning
Theories
o Emphasize
the role of external factors in shaping personality and social behavior.
o Wanted
viewable and testable theories
Watson’s
Behaviorism
o Watson
believed that children’s development is determined by their social environment,
especially their parents.
o Ignored
mental states and emphasized conditioning.
o Proved with
his famous “Little Albert” experiment that fear could be conditioned.
Watson and Little
Albert
Skinner’s
Operant Conditioning
o Skinner
believed that behavior was under environmental control.
o A major
tenet is that we tend to repeat behaviors that lead to favorable outcomes
(reinforcement) and suppress those that result in unfavorable outcomes
(punishment).
Skinner’s
Contributions to Child-Rearing
o Skinner
showed that attention is a powerful reinforcer.
o The
behavior-management strategy of “time-out” focuses on the withdrawal of
attention.
o Skinner
showed the difficulty of extinguishing behavior that has been intermittently
reinforced (that is, sometimes rewarded and sometimes not).
o Skinner’s
work led to behavior-modification therapy, which is useful for changing
undesirable behaviors.
Problems
with Traditional Social Learning Theories
o Ignored role of the child
o Children play an active role
in their development
o A Learning theorist who took
this into account was Albert Bandura
Bandura’s Social/Cognitive Learning Theory
o Places
the emphasis on the observation and imitation of others, as well as on the
cognitive processes of attention, encoding, storing, and retrieval of
information to reproduce the behavior observed.
o Bandura emphasized
“reciprocal determinism” between children and their social environment, which
emphasizes the active role children have in their own development.
Reciprocal
Determinism
Bandra and Observational Learning
Problems
with both Psychoanalytic and Social Learning Theories
o Ignores the role of
individual differences in children– children are born with different
temperaments
o
Social
development is actively evolving over development– Transactional View
Individual
Differences in Emotions and Regulation
o Temperament: Individual differences in emotional
reactivity that are seen shortly after birth.
o Temperament
is biologically based: Heredity, neural,
and hormonal factors affect response to the environment.
o Stella Chess
and Alexander Thomas developed three categories of temperament.
Thomas
and Chess’s Temperament Types
o Easy
babies: 40% of infants; adjust easily to
new situations, quickly establish routines, are generally cheerful and easy to
calm.
o Difficult
babies: 10% of infants; slow to adjust
to new experiences, likely to react negatively and intensely to stimuli and
events.
o Slow-to-warm-up
babies: 15% of infants; somewhat difficult at first but become
easier over time.
Examples
of Thomas and Chess’s Temperament Dimensions
Temperament
Dimensions (continued)
Six
Dimensions of Infant Temperament (Rothbart &
Bates)
o Fearful
distress
o Irritable
distress
o Attention
span and persistence
o Activity
level
o Positive
affect
o Rhythmicity
Temperament
and Social and Psychological Adjustment: Nature and Nurture
o “Goodness of
fit” refers to the compatibility between temperament and the demands and
expectations of the social environment.
o Parents can
modulate children’s temperament by their influences on the environment. If parents are supportive and consistent with difficult children,
negative behaviors may moderate. If
parents are harsh and punitive, undesirable behaviors can worsen.
Temperament
and Social and Psychological Adjustment:
Nature and Nurture (continued)
o The role of
temperament in social and psychological adjustment is complex and
interdependent on parents and the environment.
Jerome
Kagan: Innate
Temperament and Stability
Attachment
o Attachment:
The close and enduring bond between children and their parents or other primary
caregivers.
o Early
research on attachment was done with children separated from their parents
early in life (Spitz).
o Freud–
attachment the result of mother’s being the source of food and drive reduction
Harry Harlow (50’s
and 60’s)
o Importance of mother as a
“social stimulus”
o Monkeys raised without social
interaction of mother never developed normal social behaviors and had limited
interactions with “peers”
Theories of Infant
Attachment
o John Bowlby:
Ecological Theory
n Infants have innate
characteristics that promotes attachments
o Looks
o Sounds
o Behaviors
Mary
Ainsworth’s Research
Devised the Strange Situation test to assess attachment: Research
is conducted in an unfamiliar context (a laboratory playroom) likely to
heighten the child’s need for a parent.
o Objective: To observe mother infant relationship
under moderately stressful situations
The
Strange Situation
Ainsworth’s
Three Attachment Categories
o Securely
attached: 65% of infants
n Use the
mother as a secure base, but leave her side to explore the room.
n Happy
to see the mother return.
Secure Attachment
Ainsworth’s
Three Attachment Categories (continued)
o Insecurely
attached - Avoidant
Insecure/avoidant (20% of
infants): Avoid the mother in the Strange Situation,
ignore her when she is in the room.
Often don’t greet mother when
she returns
Insecure Avoidant
Attachment
Ainsworth’s
Three Attachment Categories (continued)
o Insecurely
attached- resistant or abivalent
n Insecure/resistant
or ambivalent (15% of infants): Clingy often staying close to mom and ignoring
toys
n upset when the
mother leaves
n When mother
returns, they greet but then often resist the mother’s attempts at offering
comfort
Insecure Resistant
Baby
Attachment
Groups –
American Children
Factors
Associated with Security of Attachment
o Parental
sensitivity in child rearing
o Mothers of securely
attached infants respond readily to their children’s signals.
o Mothers of
anxious/resistant infants are inconsistent in caregiving.
o Mothers of
anxious/avoidant infants tend to be indifferent and emotionally unavailable.
o Disorganized/distressed
infants tend to be frightened by or confused by their mothers.
Do these predict
later behaviors
o Yes, in that securely
attached babies have closer and better relationships with peers and are
generally more successful later in life
o To some extent this is
because “good parenting” during infancy predicts better parenting later in
development
o However, there also can be
change. Parents can change and reverse
effects seen in early insecure babies