Summary of PYC2602 (updated

syllabus for 2016 and onwards)

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Cognitive Development
Infancy Infants progress from reflexive responding and they increasingly understand objects and start
using symbols such as words and gestures.

Piaget’s Theory

a) Sensorimotor stage
Infants who obtain their information through sensory input and motor activities. They
gradually develop the ability to coordinate information, this mainly occurs through circular
reaction, where the infant repeats pleasurable or interesting situations.

 Substage 1: Reflexes (birth – 1 month). They respond to whatever stimuli are

available. E.g grasping or sucking.
 Substage 2: Primary Circular Reactions (1-4 months). The coordination between
listening and looking, looking and reaching, reaching and sucking, ie exploring the
world, and this is done through repetition.
 Substage 3: Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8 months). Infants begin to repeat an
action intentionally to trigger a response in the environment. It’s similar to
operant conditioning – if the action receives positive feedback, it is repeated, e.g
shaking a rattle and mom gets excited, then baby does it again.
 Substage 4: Coordination of Secondary Reactions (8-12 months). It is purposeful
behaviour where there is a means to an end, e.g. push something out the way to
get a toy. They modify and coordinate different schemas to find one that works. It
is the beginning of understanding the cause and effect relationships.
 Substage 5: Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18 months). Infants vary their circular
reactions to discover new methods of meeting challenges. They start to walk at
this age, which makes exploring their environment easier.
 Substage 6: Mental Representation (18-24 months). It is the beginning or insight
and real creativity, the infant develops the ability to use mental symbols such as
words, numbers or images to represent objects, events or actions.

b) Cognitive skills in the sensorimotor stage

 The sensorimotor stage is object permanence – the understanding that objects or
people continue to exist when they cannot be seen anymore.
 If you hide a baby’s toy under container A where he or she will discover it several
times, then before his/her eyes hide it under container B, the infant usually looks
for it under container A, this is called A-not-B error or perseverating search.
 Even in Substage 5, infants can still have problems with object permanence
 Substage 4 is the development of imitation, the ability to copy someone else’s
behaviour.
 A more developed form of imitation is developed in Substage 6 and is called
deferred imitation – to imitate behaviour after they have been exposed to it.
c) Evaluating Piaget’s view point
 Piaget’s sample was too small and thus not representative (his observation was on
his three children)
 His methods were too simplistic
 Measurement of brain activity was not available

Information Processing Theory

 Information processing theorists contend that their skills develop week by week or even
day by day in the first year of their life, which contrasts with the six Substages proposed by
Piaget.
 Information processing researcher use sensitive technology, as well as the infant’s

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habituation and visual and auditory processing abilities to explore infants’ information-
processing capabilities.
 Habituation occurs when babies are exposed to the same stimulus repeatedly and
gradually start showing less interest in it (they become habituated).
 Dishabituation occurs when new stimulus appears and they start paying attention to this.
 Visual preference refers to infants’ tendencies to spend more time looking at one object
rather than another, while visual recognition refers to the ability to discriminate between
a familiar and unfamiliar object .
 Auditory discrimination refers to the ability to differentiate between sounds.

Memory
 Refers to the acquisition, storing and retrieval of information.
 Short-term memory (STM) refers to the temporary storage of immediate information and
thus includes the working memory.
 Long-term memory (LTM) refers to the permanent or semi-permanent storage or episodic
(memories of events), semantic (memory of facts and general knowledge), procedural
(memory on how to do things and includes procedural, motor and cognitive activities).
 Implicit memory refers to memories of which one is not necessarily aware e.g. habits and
routines and explicit memory refers knowledge required through conscious effort, such as
words and concepts.
 Memory is tested by recognition and recall. Recall memory becomes possible usually
around nine months, when brain structures in the middle temporal lobes become
functional.
 Distributed learning is more effective for babies – three 6-minutes sessions.
 Infants’ visual recognition memory seems to be related to various cognitive measures,
including IQ scores, in later childhood.

Language development
a) Phases of language development
 Receptive language (understanding language) precedes productive language (the
ability to speak it)
 However, before babies speak intelligible words, they go through several phases of
vocalisation (called prelinguistic speech)
 Babies of nine months can possess an elementary receptive vocabulary.
 First 6 months of productive language is relatively slow (12-18 months)
 Between the ages 16-24 months the learning of words increases rapidly, thus a
vocabulary spurt occurs.
Early In early childhood their thinking becomes more sophisticated, organised and elaborated.
Childhood
Piaget’s Theory: the preoperational stage

The term operation indicated an action or mental representation carried out through logical
thinking. Preoperational thinking refers to illogical thinking, which means they are not yet ready to
engage in logical mental operations. The preoperational stage lasts from the ages two – seven and
is generally subdivided into the symbolic or preconceptual period (characterised by the
increasingly complex use of symbols or mental representations and is between the ages two –
four) and the intuitive period (where children begin to use primitive reasoning and what they
know to answer all kinds of questions, and is between the ages four –seven).

a) Advances of preoperational thought

A major development during this stage involves symbolic or mental representation.
 Deferred imitation
- Refers to the ability to repeat the behaviour of a model that is no longer

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present.
 Symbolic play or ‘pretend’ play
- Refers to substituting imaginary situations for real ones
 Spoken language
- Thinking occurs through representations of actions

b) Immature aspects of preoperational thought

 Perceptual centration
-Refers to the tendency to attend to only one attribute of what one observes and
to ignore the rest
- Often make perceptual errors
- They don’t understand conservation – the understanding that matter can change
in appearance and not in quantity
- Look at table 4.1 on page 159 to get a clearer understanding
 Irreversibility
- Refers to an inability to reverse an operation, they don’t understand the logic
behind simple maths (reversal) problems such as 2+3=5 therefore 5-3+2.
 Egocentrism
-Refers to the tendency of young children to view the world from their own
perspective.
- They fail to realise that others can have different points of view.
 Animistic thinking
-To assume that non-living objects such as the sun, moon, rocks and dolls have
thoughts, feelings and motives.
 Transductive reasoning
-Refers to preoperational thinkers’ tendency to reason from one particular
instance, linking two events that occur close together in a cause-and-effect fashion
– whether it is logical or not.

By the end of the pre-operational period, children are able to classify and categories object on the
basis of one dimension, such as colour. They are not capable of multiple classification. They do not
have basic number skills such as ordinality (comparing qualities); cardinality (numerical number or
size); number transformations (simple +/-) and estimation.

c) Evaluation of Piaget’s view

 Current research findings do not support Piaget’s portrayal of young children as
being as animistic, illogical or egocentric.
 Children seem to be less egocentric than Piaget believed, pre-schoolers are able to
display empathy and awareness of how others feel.
 Researchers have indicated that children’s number concept and ability to classify
develop much earlier than Piaget indicated.

Neo-Piagetians

Theorists who have expanded on Piaget’s theory

 They have challenged Piaget’s claim that clearly defined cognitive structures associated
with distinct stages play a major role in determining children’s problem solving abilities.
 Cognitive psychologists Robbie Case and Kurt Fischer have studied children’s cognitive
development from a more domain, task and context-specific perspective.
 Fischer believes cognitive development should be described for each skill and in every
different context and he emphasises environmental support for the child.
 Case believes that children’s thinking develops in stages. He also believes that children’s

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thinking is influenced by what he calls executive processing space, which refers to active,
temporary, conscious (or short-term) memory and therefore, to the maximum number of
schemes children can activate at any one time. Case believes there is a limit on how many
schemes may be attended to in this executive processing space and refers to the
maximum number as operational efficiency.

The child as theorist

Children develop their own theories on how the world works – called naïve theories

a) Naïve physics
 Refers to a person’s understanding of objects and their properties
 Infants are aware of many important basic facts about objects
 Infants rapidly create a reasonably accurate theory of some basic properties of
objects – a theory that helps them expect that objects such as toys will act in
predictable way.
b) Naïve biology
 The distinction between living (animate) and non-living (non-animate) objects
 By12-15 month, infants have determined that animate objects are self-propelled,
can move in irregular paths and act to achieve goals.
 Elements include: Movement, growth, internal parts, inheritance, healing
c) Naïve psychology and theory of mind
 Naïve psychology refers to individual’s tendencies to try and explain why people
act as they do
 Theory of mind (ToM) specifies to a set of opinion constructed by a child (and
adult) to explain other people’s ideas, beliefs, desires and behaviour.
 Henry Wellman believes that children’s theory of the mind develops through three
stages during the preschool years:
-Earliest phase (two-year-olds) children are aware of their desires and often
communicate these desires, and link their desires to their behaviour. They know
others also have desires.
-At the age of three, they distinguish the mental world from the physical world,
they also emphasise desires when trying to explain why people act as they do.
-At the age of four, they understand that their own and other’s behaviour is based
on their beliefs about events and situations, even when these beliefs are wrong.
 In all false-belief tasks, a situation is set up so that the child has accurate
information, but someone else does not. Look at Figure 4.3 on page 165.
 A theory of the mind generally provides the preschool child with a powerful tool to
explain, predict and manipulate other people’s behaviour. It is closely related to
social-cognitive functioning, language development, fantasy, pretend play,
prosocial behaviour and understanding and regulation of emotion.
 However they do not understand reciprocal thought – that others can think about
them.
 Prior developments necessary for the acquisition of the theory of mind are the
following:
- Self-awareness – child’s recognition of his/her own mental states.
- The capacity for pretence – a powerful imagination from the second year on.
- The ability to distinguish reality from pretence – this does not become reliably
established until the fourth year.
- Understanding emotions
- Executive functions
 Cross-cultural differences did not reflect differences in rates or extent of
mastering theory of mind.

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Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory

a) Zone of proximal development

 Refers to the difference between the level of performance a child may achieve
when working independently and the higher level of performance when working
under the guidance of more skilled adults or peers.
 Places emphasis on potential for intellectual growth rather than intellectual
abilities.
 Scaffolding - temporary assistance provided by one person to a less-skilled person
when learning a new task.
 Guided participation refers to the participation of an adult in a child’s activity in a
manner that helps to structure the activity.

b) Language and thought

 He disagrees with Piaget views - Vygotsky believes language ability reflects almost
every aspect of child’s thought, thinking is not possible without language
 Piaget’s “egocentric speech” (plays no role in cognitive development) differs from
Vygotsky’s “private speech” (children’s self-talk, viewing it as an intermediate step
towards the self-regulation of cognitive skills).
 As children gain a greater skill, private speech becomes inner speech, at the age 6
or 7.
 Children show better performance levels when they speak to themselves rather
than keeping silent, and can help children with ADHD and with autism.

c) Mechanisms of development
 Vygotsky focused on change and its mechanisms, more than on the outcome or
level of performance of the child.
 Development follows a dialectical process of thesis (one idea), antithesis (an
opposing idea) and synthesis (resolution)

d) Evaluation of Vygotsky’s theory

 His main theoretical contribution is the account of the relation between
development and learning – as children learn, they achieve a higher level of
development.
 He fails to address the interactions between intrinsic and cultural forces
adequately

Theory of Information Processing

The information-processing theorists take their inspiration from modern technology

 Short-term memory(STM)
-They are increasingly able to hold more material in the short-term memory
 Long term memory
- Can be stored in LTM when the experience was repeated and became a routine,
however, the particulars of specific occasions become clouded with a general memory of a
routine – this generic knowledge is called script knowledge.
 Memory strategies
-Consist of deliberate mental activities to improve the processing and storing of
information.
-Rehearsal (repeat the target information) and retrieval (the process of accessing
information and entering it into consciousness)
-Retrieval consists of two forms: recognition (memory that notices whether a stimulus is

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identical or similar to one previously experienced) and recall (remembering stimulus that
is not present)
 Metamemory and metacognition
-Metamemory refers to the knowledge of memory skills and the appropriate use of these
strategies.
-Metacognition refers to knowledge about and control of thought processes.
 Executive functioning – the conscious control of thoughts, emotions and actions to
accomplish and solve problems

Middle Piaget’s theory: concrete operational stage

Childhood
 The concrete operational stage spans 7 to 11 and signifies the stage in which children start
using mental operations to solve problems and to reason.
 Mental operations are strategies and rules that make thinking more systematic and more
powerful and they apply to numbers, to categories of objects and to spatial relations
among objects.
 Of all operations Piaget thought the most critical was reversibility and to understand
hierarchies of classes.
 Horizontal décalage – they don’t readily transfer what they have learnt about one type of
conversation to another type, even if the underlying principals are the same.
 Preoperational children are egocentric.
 Thinking abstractly and hypothetically is beyond the ability of concrete operational
thinkers, their thinking is limited to the tangible, the real, to the here and now.

Development of information-processing skills

a) Memory
 Working memory improves and advances in 1) the phonological loop (stores up
sounds and verbal material) and 2) the visual-spatial sketchpad (stores visual
material).
 Long term memory is well developed by the end of middle childhood.
 Memory strategies: rehearsal (mental or vocal repetition), organisation
(categorisation, grouping ideas, objects or words into meaningful units), and
elaboration (embellishing information to make it more memorable).
 Look at table 5.1 on page 231.

b) Processing speed
 The speed with which one can carry out cognitive processes.
 Increases with age.

c) Automatic processing / automaticity

 Refers to the cognitive activities that require virtually no effort.
 Advantage: makes more cognitive capacity available to perform other cognitive
tasks.

d) Knowledge base
 In middle childhood there is a growth of knowledge base (i.e. what children know).
 The more a person knows about a topic the better he or she can learn and
remember.

e) Control processes / executive functions

 The processes that pull memory, processing speed and knowledge base together
 Enable the individual to plan and organise, make decisions, think abstractly and

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solve new problems.

 Involves prefrontal cortex.
 Attention, intention, knowledge, thinking and memory strategies.
 The metacognition is important because it allows a person to evaluate a cognitive
task and to monitor its performance.
 Metacognition is related to metamemory (an informal understanding of memory)

f) Theory of mind
 Refers to individual knowledge of the mind and how it functions
 In middle childhood, it becomes more elaborate and refined – this may be
attributed to improved metacognition, improved metamemory and an improved
ability to reflect on their mental life
 Children become increasingly adept at understanding emotion, such as
understanding display rules and mixed emotion

g) High-order cognitive tasks

 Includes reasoning, decision-making, problem solving and thinking, as well as
academic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic.

Language development
a) General language development
 Language skills increases rapidly up to the ages of four and five, thereafter,
language development occurs at a slower pace.
 The length and complexity of the sentences that schoolchildren use increase and
certain grammatical forms, such as the passive voice, are completely mastered at
school.
 Multiple meanings of words are mastered at school.
 At the age of 8 or 9, children are beginning to grasp sarcasm, irony and understand
metaphorical (figurative) language
 With the older children, humour based on wordplay and the double meaning of
words also becomes prominent
 They begin to display and understands a greater use of facial expressions
 Their ability to adapt language to the social context in which it is used improves
(e.g. Politer language used when speaking to a teacher).

Adolescence Theories of Cognitive Development

A Constructive perspective: Jean Piaget

 Assumes that individuals must continually interpret or make sense of all experiences –
whether listening or recognising a familiar face.
 According to this viewpoint, events remain ambiguous until we respond to them
 Children around 11 or 12 enter the formal operational stage of cognitive development - it
is the last stage of cognitive development and extends into adulthood. During this stage,
children develop the capacity for abstract, scientific thinking
 Characteristics of formal operational thinking:
-Hypothetico-deductive reasoning
 Refers to the cognitive ability to develop alternative ways to hypotheses to solve a
problem, to be able to reason from the general to specific .
 An example of this reasoning ability is illustrated by Piaget’s classic pendulum
problem, where middle childhood and adults are given strings of different lengths,
objects of different lengths, objects of different weights and a bar which to hang
the strings (see on page 326). Adults were able to conclude that only the length of

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the strings were able to make a difference in the speed with which the pendulum
swings – they are able to apply scientific reasoning. Children in middle childhood,
couldn’t separate the effects of each variable.
-Propositional thinking
 It means that formal operational thinkers can evaluate the logic of verbal
statements without referring to real-world circumstances.
 They understand that reality is not the only possibility
-Combinatorial analysis
 Refers to the ability to organise various possible combinations inherent in a
problem
 Concrete operational thinkers test variables haphazardly, by trial and error
-Relativistic thinking
 To concrete thinkers, absolute right answers exist and are known by authority –
this is called realism
 The formal operational thinker can take other perspectives into account – thus
thought is relative.
 Young adults tend to be more dualistic – the answer is either right or wrong, with
no other possibilities.
 Six conceptual skills emerge during the stage of formal operations
1. Adults can manipulate mentally more than two categories of variables at the same
time
2. They can think about changes that come with time
3. Adults are able to hypothesise
4. They are able to anticipate the consequences of their actions
5. They are able to detect the logical consistency or inconsistency in a set of statements,
they can test the truth of statements
6. They can think in relativistic ways about themselves, others and their world
 Evaluation of Piaget’s theory
- Piaget’s predictions about adolescents’ thinking were overly optimistic – in
contrast to his overly pessimistic estimates of young children’s abilities
- Piaget underestimated how much effort, energy and knowledge it takes to use
formal operations – people will often not use it even if they have the capacity
to do so
- It was generally accepted that in many cultures formal operational thought
does not develop and that this was true in cultures that do not have formal
schooling

A componential approach: The information-processing view

This approach refers to the breaking down of thinking process into various components. An
example would be the information-processing approach.
Progressive changes with age occur in the following areas:
 Attention
-Adults are better adapted to the changing demands of a task.
-This includes selective attention (the ability to focus on one relevant information and to
ignore the rest) and divided attention (the ability to pay attention to more than one aspect
simultaneously)
 Processing information, speed, capacity and automaticity
-Have all increased with a greater awareness and control of an increase knowledge base
and this produces a more effective form of thinking.
-An adult can process more information, this is related to two developments:
1. Structural Capacity which refers to cognitive ability, adults can handle more
information and are thus able to have more efficient short and long term
memories

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2. Functional capacity which refers to making efficient use of existing mental abilities
such as attention and mnenmonic aids (memory strategy)
 Knowledge base, encoding, storing and retrieving information
-This allows them to have a greater flexibility of thought and enables them to shift their
attention from one aspect of a problem to another
 Metacognition and cognitive self-regulation
-Metacognition expands, leading to new insights into effective strategies for acquiring
information and solving problems.
-Cognitive self-regulation improves

Sternberg takes a view on cognitive functioning and accounts for individual differences in problem-
solving abilities and knowledge base in terms of three processes or components that operate on
information:
 Metacognition: monitor a person’s progress , it includes higher order cognitive functions
that determine what information is needed to select or construct the particular strategy
that should be used.
 Performance components: carry out the actual procedures selected by the
metacomponents.
 Knowledge acquisition components: acquire new information, as it is needed.

According to Sternburg, all ages use the same components in cognitive functioning but spend
different amounts of times on each.

Evaluation of the information processing approach

 Main criticism is against the reductionist approach, which means the breaking up a
phenomena into different parts to the extent that the meaning becomes lost. This means
that the holistic perspective, characterised by Piaget’s work, becomes lost.

The Psychometric approach: Intelligence

 Most Psychologists would agree that intelligence refers to the ability to profit from
experience, which implies the ability to behave adaptively and to function successfully in a
particular environment.
 This approach focuses on individual differences in the general abilities that contribute to
intelligence which is measured by IQ (intelligence quotient).
 Gardner defines intelligence in terms of one’s ability to solve problems as they arise, but
the range of problems that he accepts as legitimate for studying intelligence is much
broader.
 Gardner recognises 8 multiple intelligences:
- Musical – Musician, music teacher
- Bodily-kinaesthetic - dancer, sportsperson, actor
- Logical-mathematical - Scientist, teacher
- Linguistic – writer, lawyer
- Spatial – Artist, designer
- Interpersonal (understanding others) – teacher, sales person
- Intrapersonal (understanding oneself) – writer, poet
- Naturalist – chef, farmer

Practical cognition: The effects of adolescents’ cognitive abilities on certain areas of their
development
Cognitive development in adolescents functions as an organisational core that affects all areas of
thinking.

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Implications in the classroom

 Courses in maths, science and literature require increasingly abstract and logical thought
and requires inductive and deductive reasoning.
 Inductive reasoning - reasons from particular to general
 Deductive reasoning – reasoning from general to particular
 Adults are better at identifying gaps in their knowledge.
 Most adolescents at least have the potential to succeed in one area

Argumentativeness, idealism, and criticism

The ability to use abstract and hypothetico-deductive reason results in adolescents to gather facts
and to build a case – which can result in arguments. This could affect the parent-child relationship
in the following ways:
 Adolescent still want to make their own decisions without guidance because of their need
for independence
 If parents fail to provide reasons to them or if they do not accept that adolescents have
their own views, there could be conflict
 Due to their inexperience, they often have grand, idealistic visions – they leave no room
for the shortcomings of everyday life.

Social Cognition

 Social cognitive refers to the way in which we think about other people, social relationship
and social institutions.
 Perspective-taking is the ability to consider a situation form a point of view other that
one’s own and it develops around the age of 6-8.
 Children of the ages 10-12 become capable of mutual perspective-taking, which means
just as you understand that another person has a view that is different to your own, you
also realise that other persons understand that you have a view that is different form their
own.
 By late adolescence social and conventional system perspective-taking develops, meaning
that adolescents comes to realise that their social perspective and those of others are
influenced not just by their interaction with one another, but also by their roles in the
wider society.
 Implicit personality theories involve making judgement about what other persons are like
and why they behave in the way they do.
 People of all ages form implicit personality theories, but these theories change in a variety
of ways from childhood to adolescence:
-Children aged 6-7 tend to describe other in terms of concrete, external characteristics and
egocentrically (by referring to themselves).
-By middle childhood (8-10), children describe others in terms of internal traits and
abilities, rather than in terms of their external characteristics only.
-Adolescents’ desciptions of others tend to be more abstract, describing others in terms of
abstract personality traits.

Self-consciousness and self-focusing

 Piaget believed that adolescents have the inability to distinguish the abstract perspectives
of self and other.
 Adolescent egocentrism includes two distorted images of the relation between the self
and others – the imaginary audience (belief that they are the focus of everyone else’s
attention) and the personal fable (an intense investment in one’s own thoughts and

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feelings and a belief that these thoughts and feelings are unique; it is built on imaginary
audience; they feel like nobody understands them, because their experiences are unique;
they also believe they are invisible).
 People of all ages experience optimistic bias, which is the tendency to assume that
accidents, diseases and other misfortunes are more likely to happen to others than to
themselves.

Planning and decision-making

 Adolescents are better at cognitive self-regulation, which means planning what to do first
and what to do next, monitoring progress towards a goal and redirecting actions that
prove unsuccessful.
 One of the most prominent perspectives on adolescent decision-making is the behavioural
decision theory. It includes:
1. Identifying the range of possible choices
2. Identifying the consequences that would result from each choice
3. Evaluating the consequence
4. Assessing the likelihood of each consequence
5. Integrating this consequence
 Competent decision-making involves cognitive components and psychosocial components.

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Personality development*
Infancy Personality development should be regarded as important in infancy because:
 Emotional deprivation in infancy is liked to personality change
 Limited experience of environment inevitably affects personality,
 Personality traits that are in an active phase of development can be affected
 The development of self-concept occurs during infancy and
 Some behaviours established during infancy are permanent.
a) Emotions

All people experience basic emotions (joy, sadness, anger, fear). Emotions have adaptation/protective
functions (e.g. infants crying when hungry). Emotions mobilise action in emergencies. Emotions
promote exploration of the environment. People feel certain emotions more than others and all react
differently to situations, which is why emotions form a basic element of a person’s personality.

Development of emotions

Studying emotions in infancy is difficult because (1) emotional responsiveness is not clearly
differentiated after birth, (2) outward emotions don’t always reflect internal emotional experience
(which could be physiological), and (3) they don’t have language. There are many explanations for the
origins of emotions: (1) Biologically-based explanations (emotions originate in the genetic blueprint),
(2) Cognitive-socialisation explanations (cognitive processes act as mediators that bridge the gap
between environmental stimuli and the emotion/response the child expresses, for example past
experiences with dogs will effect how the child reacts to ones presence), and (3) Contextual
explanations (emphasize the positive or negative of emotions and their intensity). When do emotions
appear? Basic emotions, like signs of contentment/interest/distress, appear soon after birth. Within 6
months, these develop into joy, sadness, disgust, anger and fear. Emotions involving the self (self-
conscious emotions), like embarrassment/empathy/ jealousy arise once children have developed self-
awareness, between 15 and 24 months of age. Self-evaluative emotions like pride/shame/guilt
emerge at age 3. Lastly, emotions involving others, like empathy emerges during the second year and
depends on social cognition.

Emotional expression
The earliest displays of basic emotion are crying and smiling. The smile initially occurs in REM sleep.
As they grow older they start reacting to stimuli, so now the child smile during states of wakefulness
(non-selective social smile). Smiles then become reserved for familiar people (selective social smile).
Laughing occurs at around 4 months old. This shift shows the maturation of the cerebral cortex.
Smiling influences the parent-child interaction, creating a supportive relationship that promotes the
child’s developing tendencies. Crying is another common infant emotion. Newborns cry primarily for
discomfort. Three patterns of cry are identified: the basic cry (hungry cry – rhythmical, noise, pause,
breath), then the angry cry (extra force in the noise part of the basic cry), and the pain cry (long
vocalisation, longer silence as they hold breath, and then gasp). By two months old, crying patterns
become fussy/irregular. For babies, crying is a vital form of communication/exercising control of their
lives. Babies that are quickly comforted cry less by the end of the first year. Babies who are ignored or
scolded become more aggressive and fretful.
Emotional Communication Between Parent and Child
A baby’s cry or smile is one of the first social actions and it usually stimulates a two-way
communication process. A baby’s smile will elicit the parent’s reaction, while a parent’s emotional
reaction influences the baby’s emotional reaction. At about 2-3 months old babies start to respond to
the facial expressions of others. The ability to read emotions is important in babies’ social and
emotional development, as it contributes towards the establishment of attachment bonds. As they
grow older, babies start making use of social referencing, they actively seek approval or disapproval
for their actions from people they trust. This also indicates their realisation that other people have

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feelings or thoughts. Social referencing plays an important role in the indirect learning of behaviour
(for example, a mothers anxious facial expression will show a child not to do something). When
parents give conflicting signals babies show anxious behaviours, but adapt quickly if parents give like
signals.
Emotional Regulation
Are strategies used to adjust/change our emotional state to a comfortable level, in order to
accomplish our goals. Infants have a basic capacity to regulate their emotions, seen in self-soothing
behaviour (sucking). They also engage in mutually regulatory interactions with their mothers
(attention diversion). Emotional development is induced by the development of the cerebral cortex.
Once a baby anticipates soothing, they learn that emotions can be controlled. Babies who aren’t
soothed may fail to develop properly, resulting in an anxious, reactive temperament.

b) Temperament

Temperament is the inherent characteristic way in which a person reacts to stimuli, and refers to that
specific aspect of personality that has to do with feelings and the expression thereof. Temperament
traits are regarded as the core of personality. Temperament plays a key role in the psychological
adjustment of children. Temperament is changeable and that environmental factors can modify the
child’s reactions and behaviour.

There are 9 dimensions of temperament: activity level, rhythm, distractibility, approach or avoidance,
adaptability, attention span or persistence, intensity of reaction, responsiveness threshold and quality
of mood. Most babies can be placed in one of three groups: easy child, difficult child and slow to
warm up child. There are three core dimensions of temperament: effort control, negative affectivity
and extraversion (see table 128: 3.4).

How stable is temperament? Some traits show structural developmental changes, while some remain
stable (like agreeableness, shyness, activity level and irritability). However, to a large extent,
temperament may be influenced by environmental variables like good quality caregiving and stable
family relationships, or vice versa. The term goodness-of-fit is used to refer to the nature of
interaction between the baby’s temperament and his or her environment. Optimal development will
take place when the baby’s temperament and environmental influences are in tune with each other.
If not, problematic behaviour may result. If a difficult baby is also in a difficult environment, that baby
could have developmental issues. Goodness-to-fit is also evident in cultural differences (some value
an active temperament and some don’t).
c) The Self Concept

Self-concept consists of the unique set of traits and characteristics an individual considers true about
him/herself (the view they have of themselves). For infants, the self-concept consists of the subject
self, which is the “I”, the objective self, which is the “Me/Mine”, and the emotional self, which refers
to children’s abilities to understand and regulate their own emotions. Several characteristics
contribute towards their growing self-awareness:
1. Self-agency (action will bring out a reaction),
2. The development of object permanence (differentiating familiar from unfamiliar and that
they are separate)
3. Self-recognition (recognising themselves in a photo or mirror)
4. Self-description (describe themselves as a separate object), and emotional self-awareness
(understanding of/ability to control emotion).
5. Emotional self-awareness develops as a result of cognitive maturation and self-exploration.

Early Theories of personality development

Childhood As children go through preschool, their personalities take on a clearer definition. According to the
psychoanalytic theory, during the ages of 3-6, initiative develops. Children become more resourceful,

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tackle new problems, and activities with peers. If parents constantly discourage or punish children’s
developing initiative, they could develop unnecessary guilt feelings. According to the social-learning
theory, external rewards/punishments/role models shape a child’s behaviour. According to the social
cognitive development perspective, children learn more and more complex concept, and learn to
reject some and accept others (race/friendships).

Emotions

Self-development contributes to the development of self-conscious emotions, like guilt/shame/pride.

Children become more aware of their own/others feelings. Understanding their own emotions helps
children to guide their behaviour/control expression/be sensitive to other’s feelings. From the age of
4-5, they are able to refer to causes, consequences and behavioural signs of emotions. They
emphasise external factors (like food making them happy) rather than internal, but this changes with
age. Pre-schoolers become good at predicting friend’s behaviour (theory of mind development), and
formulate good ways of reducing negative behaviour (like hugging). However, they still have difficulty
understanding conflicting emotions, which coincides with their cognitive ability to focus on one
aspect only. Family relationships also influence understanding. Pre-schoolers who experience secure
attachment relationships are more advanced in their emotional understanding. Pre-schoolers who
grow up in families that frequently talk about feelings are better at judging emotions at a later stage.

Emotional expression: Basic emotions:

a) Happiness: By the end of the second year, children will jump, clap, run, laugh, and hug to
express their joy. However, during the socialisation phase, kids are taught to control their
emotions and not get too boisterous in certain situations and behave freely in others.
b) Fear and anxiety: The cause of fear may either be the presence of a threat or the absence of
safety. Fear is influenced by contexts, individual differences in temperament and by
experience (age and maturity also play a role). Younger children fear animals, the dark,
imaginary creature, sudden intense stimuli and being separated from their parents. How can
children cope with their fears: Encouraged to talk about them, associate fearful object with
something positive, see others handling fearful object without fear, be gradually brought into
contact with fearful object, teach them skills for handling fearful situations, explain the
fearful situation, ensure the child they are loved, don’t allow too much television, and
parents should be a haven for their fear.
c) Anger: Early reactions may be caused by objections to routines (dressing or eating), conflict
with parents over authority, disagreement with peers over possession, and physical
discomfort. As they grow older, there is a shift from uncontrolled violent reaction/tantrums
to more subdued and controlled responses. Children learn to control anger through the
process of socialisation. To keep children’s angry feelings from erupting into harmful actions,
this formula should be used: Acknowledge feeling – set limit – example for appropriate
action.

Emotional expression: Involving the self

By the second year, self-conscious emotions (embarrassment, shame, guilt, envy, pride) develop as
children’s self-concepts become more defined. These emotions also require an understanding of the
perspective of another person. Lowering of the head/eyes, or the covering of the face shows these
emotions. At around the age of 3, self-conscious emotions become increasingly linked to self-
evaluation. This means that self-conscious emotions may serve as a guideline for behaviour. Complex
emotions also play an important role in children’s performance-related behaviour (repeating a task
that evoked pride) and their moral behaviour (guilty after transgression, therefore avoid repeating
such behaviour).

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Emotional expression: Involving others

Empathy (another complex emotion), emerges during early childhood, and is related to the child’s
developing self-awareness, language, and cognitive skills. Children become increasingly aware of/able
to express concern for another situation.

Emotion regulation

Due to increasing mobility and improvement in social/cognitive development, pre-schoolers learn

avoidance strategies (avoid situations that lead to negative emotions). They also blunt emotions by
restricting sensory input (close their eyes/block their ears). Older children use language strategies
(self-comfort) and cognitive strategies (trying not to think of thing) to control negative emotions.
Masking is another strategy, where they pretend an emotion state for certain situations. Masking is
related to display rules, which are cultural guidelines for when, how and to what degree emotions
may be displayed. Parents play an important role in helping their child regulate their emotions.
Parent who have an emotion-coaching approach monitor their kid’s emotions, view negative
emotions as teaching opportunities, assist them in labelling emotions and coach them on how to deal
with them. Parents who have an emotion-dismissing approach view their role as one to deny, ignore
or change negative emotions. These children show poorer regulation of emotion, are less focused and
have more behaviour problems than the children of emotion coaching parents do.

Gender

Males and females are actually psychologically more alike than different. The only notable differences
are, boys are more aggressive, boys have better visual-spatial awareness, girls are better at decoding
social messages and visual cues. Gender stereotypes are inaccurate beliefs that certain
characteristics and activities pertain only to a specific gender.

Gender Role Development

Gender role refers to the patterns/attitudes that are viewed as appropriate or typical for a male or
female of a specific society. Gender-role development includes three processes:
1. The acquisition of gender identity (the knowledge that they are male/female, but they do not
understand that this will never change – gender constancy).
2. The development of gender stereotypes (what colours and toys are meant for boys and for
girls (which are absolute rules that fade in adolescence).
3. The development of gender-typed behaviour patterns (the display of the typical behaviour of
their gender, having same sex friends and beginning to segregate from the boys).

Theories of Gender-Role Development

a) Social influences

According to social learning theory, children learn gender roles in two ways, firstly through
1. Differential reinforcement (children are encouraged and rewarded for gender appropriate
behaviour and punished for gender-inappropriate behaviour – boys and girls are treated
differently, like gendered play – parents and others influence gendered behaviour)
2. Observation and modelling (imitation) of behaviour (children are exposed to a number of
models at home, in the outside world and in the media, that set the example for children as
to how girls should act and how boys should act) . This theory offers a good explanation for
the acquisition of gender-appropriate behaviour through the processes of modelling and
reinforcement. However this viewpoint does not consider the children’s own input into their
gender-role development, like the cognitive perspective does.

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b) Cognitive influences

The cognitive developmental theory

Children’s gender typing develops after they have acquired a concept of gender. Firstly, gender-role
development is dependent on cognitive development. This means that children must first understand
gender before they can be influenced by their social experiences. Secondly, children are actively
involved in their own socialisation. They are not passive recipients of social influences. There are 3
stages that must occur before a child can understand what it means to be male or female:
1. Gender Identity (children’s knowledge of themselves as male or female, which develops
around age 3)
2. Gender stability (gender identity remains stable over time, boys will become men and girls
will become women, which occurs at around four years old
3. Gender constancy (at age 7 they realise that gender is unchangeable, no matter the situation,
and the concept of gender is established). This theory is criticized because it assumes that
gender constancy needs to be attained before children seek information regarding gender-
appropriate behaviour.

The gender schema theory

This theory emphasises the importance of the development of gender identity and children’s intrinsic
motivation to act in a gender-typical way. Children actively seeking knowledge regarding values,
attitudes and activities related to their view of a specific gender reach this. This means they actually
socialise themselves. Self-socialisation begins when children have developed a basic gender identity
at approximately 2-3 years old. A gender schema is a cognitive structure that organises the social
world into male and female. First, children develop a same gender and opposite gender schema
(appropriate behaviour for boys and girls). Second, they develop an own-gender schema, which
serves as a basis for guidelines for gender appropriate behaviour. These schemas are powerful
mechanisms for organising their social world, gender schemas may also cause distortion of
information that does not fit in the schema.

Racial and ethnic identity

The term race is a socio-political construct and is used to describe observable differences in people
(skin colour/features). The term ethnicity is used to describe one’s cultural background, which is
typically associated with a specific (language) group. Preschool children become aware of their
surroundings at a very young age. Children’s ethnic identity develops according to 5 components:
1. Ethnic Knowledge: a child’s knowledge that their ethnic group has certain distinguishing
characteristics.
2. Ethnic self-identification: a child’s categorisation of themselves as members.
3. Ethnic constancy: a child’s understanding that the distinguishing characteristics of their
ethnic group will never change thus they will always be members.
4. Ethnic-role behaviours: a child’s engagement in the behaviours of their ethnic group.
5. Ethnic feelings and preferences: a child’s feelings about belonging to their ethnic group and
their preferences for its characteristics.
Children don’t really understand that race is a lasting feature of themselves until they are about 8.

Middle Theories of Personality Development

Childhood Freud believed that children between the ages of 6-12 concentrate on developing social/academic
skills and friendships with members of the same gender (latency stage). Erikson called it the industry
versus inferiority stage (competence/ confidence or not in their abilities). Competence is defined as
demonstrating a pattern of effective adaption to the environment, and is developed in four areas:
Adjusting to school, Establishing peer relationships, Learning to play by the rules, achieving
academically.

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Self-understanding: The Development of Self-concept and seld-esteem

Children start describing themselves in terms of psychological traits. Children’s descriptions of
themselves become increasingly differentiated (good at some stuff bad at other stuff), meaning their
descriptions are more realistic. Differentiation is caused by social comparisons. Cognitive
development affects the changing structure (combining typical experiences/behaviours into
psychological characteristics) and content (cognitive capacities and social feedback play a role –
improved prospective-taking skills, the formation of their ideal self and their real self) of self-concept.
Furthermore, in Middle Childhood, self-esteem differentiates and becomes more realistic, but their
judgements on themselves are compartmentalised/separate (FIGURE 5.1 (PAGE 258)). Each section
does not contribute equally to the child’s general self-esteem (it depends on which area means the
most to the child). APPLICATION: HOW CHILDREN’S SELF ESTEEM CAN BE INCREASED (PAGE 259).
Next, Self efficiency refers to the child’s belief in their ability to do well, even though it does become
more realistic in middle childhood, children notoriously believe they achieve better than the really do,
thus parents must help shape this concept.

Emotional Development
Children show an increased understanding of complex emotions like pride/shame. They understand
that more than one emotion can be experienced in a particular situation. The see how events lead to
emotional reactions. They improve in emotional suppression/concealment (self-regulation due to
high social competence and low problem behaviour). They understand emotions and display rules.
They refine self-initiated strategies for redirecting feelings. Towards they end of this phase they
understand the role of cognition (morality) in emotions (RESEARCH FOCUS: Children’s Coping
Strategies For Fearful Events pg260). Also, Emotional Intelligence (EI) starts developing in this phase.
EI involves four main areas: (1) developing emotional self-awareness (like separating feelings from
actions), (2) managing emotions (like controlling anger), (3) reading emotions (like empathy), and (4)
handling emotions (solving conflict). Children that have skills associated with EI seem to: enjoy better
physical health, score higher academically, have a higher IQ, get along better with friends, have fewer
behavioural problems, increased emotional respect, better self-worth/self-acceptance, make better
decisions involving sex/alcohol/drugs, and have better coping skills. Parents and teachers play a key
role in the development of kid’s EI, so it is important that they too have developed EI. Listening,
paying attention and respecting a child’s emotions are valuable skills in emotional training. EI has
been criticised because it is not easy to measure, acquire, and needs to be separated for different
genders and cultures.
Adolescents Theories of Personality Development
Temperament and Personality traits: See Table 6.3 AND Table 6.4 on page 340. Our temperament
and personality traits are not only formed by our genes, but also by environmental context, and life
experiences (which are particularly important as the alter the connection between emotional
reactions to event, conceptualisations of events and strategies for coping with events.

Adaptive Functioning: There are 3 processes (SOC) that together make up an effective strategy of
maximising adaptive functioning over the course of development: (1) selection (identifying one’s
goals, committing to them and limiting oneself to a smaller number of tasks), (2) optimisation
(directing ones effort, energy time and other resources towards one’s chosen goals), and (3)
compensation (efforts directed at overcoming limitations or lack of resources). Therefore, to
determine adolescents’ functionality, one should consider the following: what they do when deciding
to pursue goals, how they develop knowledge/skills/resources to attain their goals, and how they
deal with the diversity of outcomes their actions will produce/how they deal with
failure/disappointment.

The Psychoanalytic Perspective: Freud believed that in adolescence you are in the final stage of
development (the genital stage), and psychosexual maturity is reached, thus libido (sexual drive)
needs to be channelled into a healthy sexual relationship. On the other hand, Erikson believed that
the central crisis faced in adolescence was the development of an identity, where role confusion or
identity confusion may result.

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Identity Development
Erikson’s theory: Identity versus identity confusion: This is the best account of identity growth during
adolescence, and Erikson was the first theorist to mention the formation of a personal identity which
was a key step in the formation of a productive and happy adult.
(a) The development of an identity – Identity development implies that adolescents need to define
who they are, what is important to them and what directions they want to take in life. Identity crisis
is a temporary period of confusion values and goals are questioned. Psychosocial moratorium is the
period of time where adolescents find themselves and their roles as adults through experimentation.
In order to develop an own identity, adolescents have to master the following tasks:
 Ego Synthesis (form a continuous, integrated, unified image of the self)
 Socio-cultural identity (their identity must include value-orientations of their culture)
 Gender-role identity (accepting the changes of sexual maturity, and identify their gender)
 Career identity (becoming realistic in their abilities and achievements)
 Own value system (they must form an own basic philosophy, serving as a life anchor)
(b) Identity Confusion – occurs when adolescents are indecisive about themselves and their roles. This
confusion and lack of self-confidence cause anxiety and hostility. Identity confusion could result in: (1)
Identity Foreclosure (identity crisis is resolved by making a series of premature decisions about one’s
identity, based on other’s expectations of what one should be), and (2) Negative Identity (they form
an identity contrary to he cultural values and expectations).
(c) Evaluation of Erikson’s view of Identity Formation – research has revealed the following
shortcomings to Erikson’s findings: (1) the term crisis implies an active search for identity, creates the
impression of an intense traumatic experience and implies that identity development occurred at a
specific point. Which is why modern researchers prefer the term exploration. (2) Identity
development occurs much later than Erikson suggests. (3) Identity doesn’t form as a unified whole as
Erikson suggests (one may know what career they want but not their gender identity).
James Marcia’s theory: The Formulation of identity statuses: Based on Erikson’s theory, Marcia
emphasises the identity statuses or the way the identity crises may be resolved. The identity status of
adolescents is determined according to the crises they have already worked through, and by the
degree of commitment to these choices. Table 6.5 pg345. Marcia noted 4 identity statuses:
(1) Identity achievement (the person has passed through the crisis and has a strong commitment to a
career and a value system), (2) Identity moratorium (the person is still in a crisis period and is actively
investigating alternatives), (3) Identity foreclosure (no crisis is experienced, but there is commitment
to goals/values from parental influence), and (4) Identity diffusion (a crisis may/may not have been
experienced, but the individual isn’t committed to anything and doesn’t attempt any commitment.
Adolescents will fluctuate between the various statuses until they reach a final identity. Normally
they begin in the foreclosure/diffusion statuses, they then experience the moratorium status and
then finally the identity achievement status. (Page 345 – can read why some adolescents develop
differently from others, but the most important part of this section is the identity statuses). Also, the
following may contribute to identity formation:
 Cognitive development - development of abstract reasoning and information processing
 Parenting – Strong parent child attachment bonds, secure base, open communication
 Peer interactions – provide support/role models/opportunities’ to explore careers
 Schools and communities - enriching and varied experiences
 Personality - whether you are flexible/open-minded or lack in confidence plays a role
 Socio-cultural/Socio-Political events – like the end of apartheid, effects psychological identity

Forming a group identity: An individual identity indicates what one has in common with others and
leads to group identity/feeling of sameness/belonging to a group. A secure ethnic/cultural identity is
generally associated with high self-esteem/optimism/sense of mastery over the environment.
Exploring ethnic heritage/learn about other cultures in an atmosphere of respect fosters identity
achievement in many areas of social and emotional development, like ethnic tolerance. RESEARCH
FOCUS: Identity development of South African adolescence in a democratic society pg347.

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Self-conceptions: Adolescence Understanding of Self

Adolescents start thinking of themselves in terms of abstractions (I am sensitive/cheerful/reserved)
The actual self, possible self and false self:
 Actual Self – is the real self, who they actually are. Awareness of the actual self provides
motivation to strive for their ideal self and avoid becoming their feared self.
 Possible Self – includes the ideal self and the feared self, and exists in abstractions. Discrepancies
between the real and possible self may result in feelings of failure/depression.
 Ideal Self – is who the person would like to be
 Feared Self – is the person the adolescent imagines it is possible to become
 False Self – is related to the increasing complexity of self-conception, this is the self they present
to others while realising it is not actually what they are thinking or feeling. It is a way to impress
others and conceal what they don’t what others to see. Adolescent self-understanding becomes
increasingly complex, because they are able to describe themselves in contradictory ways

Self-Esteem: Adolescents self esteem changes as several new dimensions are added to themselves
and need consideration, like changing physical appearance/sexuality/social relationships/career
choices. Initially their self-esteem will decline, and then once they have adjusted to these changes,
self worth is restored. The three main aspects of self-esteem to take note of:
 Overall self-esteem – includes all areas where self-esteem can be drawn from. Adolescents
do not need to have a positive self-esteem in all domains to have a high global self-esteem.
Each domain of the self-esteem influences global self-esteem only to the extent that the
adolescent views that domain as important.
 Baseline self-esteem – is the stable/enduring sense of worth and well-being a person has.
People with a high baseline self esteem are positive about themselves on most days. People
with low baseline self-esteem tend to have a poor opinion of themselves.
 Barometric self-esteem – is the fluctuating sense of worth and well-being people have as
they respond to different thoughts, experiences and interactions in the course of a day.
Adolescents feel these variations most intensely.

Culture and the Self: A distinction is made between the independent self, promoted by individualistic
cultures and the interdependent self, promoted by collectivistic cultures. Because differences
between individualism and collectivism are difficult to explain, an explanation incorporating the
concept of optimism was suggested. Optimism refers to the attitude that things happen for the best
and that peoples wishes/aims will ultimately be fulfilled. (can read up more about this on pg353-354,
but its common knowledge about the difference between individualism/collectivism ie
Western/African)

Emotion
Adolescents experience certain emotional changes because of their physical, cognitive, personality
and social development. Adolescents are inclined to experience fewer extremely positive emotions
and more negative emotions than younger children. They are also inclined to have more mood swings
than children/adults, which implies that they are less emotionally stable (gender plays a role here).
These changes should be attributed to hormonal, cognitive and environmental factors. Adolescents
tend to be more focused on themselves, which is why they are more susceptible to emotions like
anxiety, guilt, and embarrassment. Conversely, because of their ability to think in a more abstract and
complex way, they are more inclined to show insight into their own and other people’s feelings
(development of empathy). Learning emotional management in adolescence prepares them to deal
with emotional upheavals during adulthood.

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Social Development
Basic Social Development- involves the development of the individual’s interactions and relationships
Concepts of with other people. Mustn’t be confused with socialisation (Which is an aspect of social
child and development where the individual acquires socially acceptable behaviour through social
Adolescent interactions with other.
Development
Albert Bandura: Social cognitive theory

Sometimes children learn without reinforcement or punishment using:

-Imitation
-Modelling
-Observational learning
Was originally social learning theory but then realised there was cognitive factors so it changed to
social-cognitive theory. As children decided which behaviour to model and was influenced by
children’s own expectations like personal standards and value system. Self-efficacy (belief in their
own abilities and potential) play an important role in modelling.

Lev Vygotsky’s: socio-cultural theory

He focused on the way adult’s covey to children the beliefs, customs and skills of their culture. He
believed that because a fundamental aim of all societies is to enable children to acquire essential
cultural values and skills. Vygotsky suggested that a child’s learning of new skills is guided by an
adult or older child, who models and structures the learning experience. Zone of proximal
development refers to tasks which are too difficult for a child to do alone, but which he or she can
manage with the help of an adult.
Infancy The first social relationship is usually with the parents and is also a period of increasing
socialisation, in which the child learns the correct behaviour.

Attachment

An emotional bonding that takes place between individuals. Psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and
Rene Spitz believe that the infant becomes attached to the person who provides them with oral
satisfaction. But Harlow Harry refuted this notion in a classic study with the Rhesus monkeys.
Where regardless of which surrogate mother provided food, all young monkeys showed a definite
preference for the cloth mother. Where only the wire monkey could provided food. Harlow
showed that the hunger drive does not play such an overwhelming role in the development of
attachment as initially thought. The provision of comfort, warmth and softness is of vital
importance. The monkeys also needed social interaction for normal social development. The trust
vs mistrust stage of development is key in which attachment is formed.

John Bowlby: The development of attachment

This theory emphasises the importance of the formation of attachment with a primary caregiver,
specifically the security that develops from such a relationship.
 The pre-attachment phase - (2-3 months and Indiscriminate responsiveness to humans)
.The baby’s behaviour is characterised mainly by genetically determined relax responses.
Babies reaction towards strangers and familiar people tend to be the same
 The attachment-in-the-making - (3-6 months and focusing on familiar people). It is
characterised by baby’s different reactions to familiar and unfamiliar people. The greater
the attachment that develops between babies and their primary caregivers is particularly
noticeable. Babies become upset if separated from their mother.
 The phase of clear-cut attachment – (6 months to 2 years and active proximity seeking).
Attachment to caregivers is clearly noticed. Because babies are able to walk/crawl they
will always try to be where there caregivers are. Cry when caregiver leaves the room.

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Attachment to primary caregivers is unique can still develop attachment to other family or
friends.
 Formation of a reciprocal relationship – (starts at about 2 years and is partnership
behaviour). Development of cognitive, social and emotional behaviour. Attachment
between babies and caregivers is much more complex during this phase. Characteristics is
the attempt made by babies to influence the behaviour of their caregivers to make them
more responsive to their own needs.

Mary Ainsworth and Bowlby: Types of attachment

Strange Situation Test was to measure the quality of a baby’s attachment in the laboratory.
 Secure attachment – Babies use their mothers as a security base from which they explore
their world. Distressed when mother gone/ happy when their mother returns. Welcome
physical contact with their mother. Positive reaction to strangers when mother is present
 Avoidant attachment – Babies are usually not upset when the mother leaves and when
mother returns, babies usually avoid them. They do not attempt to explore their world
with their mothers, not upset with strangers but sometimes avoid them like their mothers.
 Ambivalent (or resistant) attachment – babies become anxious even before mother
leaves and becomes extremely upset when the mother does leave the room. When their
mother return they behave ambivalently, also very wary of strangers even in mothers
presence.
 Disorganised attachment – Greatest insecurity and is most likely to occur in infants whose
mothers are insensitive, intrusive or abusive. Greet mother brightly when she returns but
turns away and tends to show variety of confused contradictory behaviour.

Factors influencing attachment

Social interact forms an important component of attachment, however not all result in a healthy
attachment

 Attachment seeking behaviours – such as crying, sucking, smiling, clinging or looking,

usually leads to a response from the caregiver.
 The mother’s personality and her relationship with her baby – plays an important role in
attachment relationship. Mother babies who show a positive attachment are friendlier,
more supportive, more helpful, more affectionate and more playful towards their children
than mother whose children don’t show a positive attachment. The more sensitive and
responsive the greater the bond
 The temperament of the infant – also an important factor in the attachment between
child and mother. If a baby is a difficult baby, this may have such a negative effect on the
mother that the development of attachment bonds is not that simple. Baby’s
temperament and parents personalities, expectations and wishes could play a role.
 A Working mother – may also hinder the development of attachment in certain cases.
Children are not harmed by the fact that the mother was employed. When a healthy
relationship exists between the child and mother and between child and the rest of the
family. The fact that mother work should not have a negative influence on the child. But if
the mother feels guilty and lacks family support, the situation could be harmful to the
child.
 Psychosocial factors – Such as unhappy marriage, social adversity, trauma and loss, and a
lack of social support, may be responsible for unsatisfactory bonds of attachment. Main
reason is the mother take up so much time, energy and attention coping with these
negative conditions they don’t have time to form proper strong bonds with their child.
Low levels of stimulation and unable to help baby with emotional regulation.
 Mental problems – such as post-partum depression (experienced after the birth of an
infant) are also related to problems in mother-infant relationship.

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Long-term effect of attachment

The stronger a baby’s attachment to their mother, the easier it is for the child to be separated
from her. Children who feel secure are more inclined to move away from the mother in order to
explore their environment. Security enables them to try new things. Attachment bonds seem to
effect social, emotional and cognitive competence.
- Securely attached to mother more like to obey their mother than insecurely attachment
infants
- Securely attached also have a larger , more varied vocabularies than insecurely attached
infants
- Securely attached infants are more sociable and have more positive interactions with
peers whereas insecurely attached infants show more negative emotions (fear, anger and
distress) where securely attached infants show more joyfulness in even the same
situation.
- Securely attached children at the age of four they are also more inquisitive, more
responsive to play mates
- Intimacy of secure attachment seem to prepare children for the intimacy of friendships,
they have more stable friendships whereas insecurely attached infants often have later
problems
Should be treated with caution for the following reasons
 Firstly, attachment is only one of a variety of factors that could influence a child’s
development. Secure attachment alone, does not ensure self-confidence and self-reliance
 Secondly, Child’s subsequent adjustment problems are not the result of earlier
unsatisfactory attachment, but rather the outcome of the poor quality of a child-rearing
practices children received throughout their earlier years. It is possible for insecurely
attached children can change into securely attached.

Role of the Father

Babies develop a stronger attachment to their father than was initially thought. Father may
physically care for their children just as well as mother do and that father are just as sensitive and
response to the baby’s difficulties as are the mothers. Generally the mother feeds and nurtures
the child while the father generally spends time playing with their child. Fathers often do unusual
and unexpected things that babies find exciting. Fathers can be very powerful figures for
attachment figures who can have a powerful influence on their children’s social and emotional
development. Sensitive and challenging playing of fathers with their children is associated with
children’s later positive attachment bonds. The quality of the father-child relationship is of far
greater importance than the mere physical presence of the father. Both husband and wife believe
that men are capable of nurturing infants.

The role of the caregiver

Various societies in Africa and in India show that children have numerous caregivers and form
close emotional bonds with a number of people, not only with the mother. Despite the variety of
attachment bonds, these children display healthy emotional development. Allo-parenting – refers
to a social system in which other members of the society help to support children who are not
their own. The view of dyadic attachment model (i.e mother-child attachment) seriously limits the
inclusion of the cultural variation that occurs in reality in attachment formation.

Stranger anxiety
The fear that some babies show in the presence of a stranger. Generally starts after 6 months and
reaches climax at 8 to 12 months and gradually diminishes from 12 to 15 months.
May influence infants’ reaction to strangers
- Stranger anxiety occurs most frequently when the baby’s mother is not present and least
when the mother holds the child.
- If babies are given time to get used to strangers, they are more likely to allow strangers to

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pick them up
- Babies tend to react more positively to a stranger when the stranger is a child and not an
adult
- Children who experience secure attachments seem to experience less stranger anxiety
than those who do not.
- Children who are cared for by many caregivers experience less stranger anxiety.
- Culture also plays a role. As mentioned elsewhere, children in some cultures are socialised
to act friendly towards strangers. These children will then either react neutrally or
welcoming towards strangers.
The different viewpoints of stranger anxiety
 The cognitive viewpoint – Baby realises that the stranger’s face is different from other
familiar faces and that this leads to incongruity.
 The Behavioural viewpoint – A baby is obliged to do something when he or she in
confronted with an unfamiliar stimulus. A familiar face elicits a familiar response and the
baby’s distress decreases. If there is an unfamiliar face the baby becomes tense to the
point where they will cry.
 The contingency viewpoint – When a baby is exposed to a stranger, the interaction
becomes unpredictable. There is thus the possibility that the stranger will not behave in
accordance with the babies expectations. Fear and its accompanying behaviour now occur
because the baby feels that he or she has lost control of the social environment.
 The evolutionary viewpoint – Stranger anxiety is regarded as part of a universal
behavioural system. The assumption is that it will keep the baby from the unknown, and in
this way, the baby will be protected
 Culture – Various traditional African cultures in south Africa believe that should the baby
show discomfort towards a specific stranger, this is a sign that this particular person is bad
or bewitched.
Separation anxiety
Refers to the fear and accompanying behaviour that babies demonstrate when the mother, father
or caregiver leaves them for a short while. Separation usually occurs around 8-12 months and
disappears between 20-24 months. Reaction to separation vary, depending on the situation in
which the separation occurs. Separation anxiety is less likely to occur if the baby is left with
familiar faces. Babies demonstrate separation anxiety because they have a concept of a
permanent object. This means that they understand that objects and people continue to exist,
even if they are out of sight. The baby realise that the caregiver continues to exist in another
location away from him or her. Separation anxiety is shown because the baby would like to be
with the caregiver, probably because an attachment bond has formed.

Socialisation
Child learns to conform to the moral standards, role expectations and requirements for acceptable
behaviour of his or her particular community and culture. Socialisation during infancy is aimed
primary at the elimination of undesirable behaviour and the learning of desirable behaviour.
Parents or caregivers are the most important socialisation agents.
Parents influence them in 3 ways
- Parents socialise their children through direct teaching, for instance by showing them how
to eat and how to dress.
- Parents act as important role models through their interaction with their children. Parents
who are loving, warm and responsive will have children who are warm and responsive
towards others.
- Parents who control certain aspects of the child’s social life that could have an influence
on their social development, such as the neighbourhood in which they live and the
organising of visits to friends.
Parenting styles and discipline
 Positive reinforcement – Which includes rewarding children for correct behaviour

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 Induction – Which includes reasoning, explaining and the setting of clear limits
 Scaffolding – Which refers to parental support of their children’s efforts, allowing the
children to be more skilful than they would be if they were rely on their own abilities
 Power assertion – Which includes physical punishment, forceful commands and the
removal of objects and privileges
 Love withdrawal – When the parent ignores the child or reacts coldly towards his or her
behaviour

Positive reinforcement, induction and scaffolding seems to lead to behaviour in children that is
more acceptable, while assertion of power often leads to negative behaviour especially when this
is the only means of discipline. Psychologist never recommend the withdrawal of love as child
comply with their wishes but will generally tend to avoid them. In the first year parents generally
reaction more physically and use verbal commands. The most important milestone that children
reaches during socialisation is Acquisition of toilet skills – toilet training should not begin before
children have reached the necessary level of neuromuscular maturity. This development normally
starts at the age of 18 months old. The later the toilet training begins, the faster the child will learn
the desirable behaviour, so like 20-24 months. Parents should be attentive to the cues that
indicate that their child is biologically and psychologically ready. A relaxed supportive and
accepting attitude with sufficient positive reinforcement each time the child achieves success is
much more likely to produce positive results.

Sibling interactions
Sibling play an important role in the infant’s attachment formation. In the stranger Situation Test,
babies who become upset turned to their siblings for help. Indications that siblings are more
powerful socialisation agents in certain situations than their parents. In some cultures, older
children act as caregivers for their younger siblings. A new baby is often upsetting for younger
children as their mother has to spend a lot their time looking after the new born baby and gives
less attention to the other children. Some children act negatively toward the new baby and some
children will be proud of their new brother or sister. Father can play an important role by
increasing their interaction with the older siblings.

Peer interactions
Refers to a companion who is approximately of the same age and developmental level. Peers
function as equals, it is primarily among equals that children acquire such social skills as
compromising, competing and cooperating. Peers provide a natural comparison against which
children can measure their own accomplishments. The way in which children relate to their peers
undergoes significant developmental changes. Children’s peer network start out small, but as they
enter day-care and school and as their cognitive, language and social skills develop, their peer
networks expand and their relationships with peers grow intensity. At 3 months they get excited to
see another baby, 6 months give more specific signals like smiling, touching and other facial
features.
Peer relations in infancy seem to develop through three phases
 During the first phases, the contact is object-centred. This means that the interaction is
elicited by a common toy and attention in centred on it. Negative reactions are usually
attributable to conflict over toys
 During the second phase, babies try to elicit response from another. For instances, a baby
will offer another baby toy
 During this phase, babies are able to exchange roles. For instance, babies will take turns in
offering one another a toy.
The long-term effects of peer relations in infancy are unclear.

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Early Family relationships

Childhood
Parents or caregivers
 Attachment – By 12 months infants have normally developed a clear attachment. Pre-
schoolers continue to show powerful attachments to their parents, but the manifestation
of this bond begins to change. By 2/3 years the attachment becomes less visible. They
understand that they will leave and come back. By 3/4 years they may also use
communication offered by the parents to say they’ll be coming back. Goal-corrected
partnership – infant’s goal is always to have the attachment figure within sight or touch.
While the pre-schooler’s goal is to still be in contact with the parents, this contact no
longer requires a constant physical presence. The relationship continues even if they are
not together. Securely attached pre-schoolers seem to experience fewer behavioural
problems.
 Parenting styles – Conflict between parent and child may arise. Dimensions of parenting : -
Warmth and nurturance – Children with warm and nurturing parents are generally more
securely attached than children of cold and detached parents. They generally show
positive development in most areas. Consistent control – Parents who set clear rules and
consistently apply them, usually have children who are much less likely to be defiant or
noncompliant. Expectations – Children of parents who have high expectations of them,
also tend to fare better, specifically regarding their self-esteem and altruistic.
Communication – Open, clear and regular communication between parent and child has
been linked to positive outcomes. Listening to the child is just as important as talking to
him or her. Parenting styles
 The authoritative parenting style – These parents meet the standards of all four
dimensions mentioned above. It involves high acceptance and involvement, adaptive
control techniques and the granting of appropriate autonomy. The most successful
approach.
 The authoritarian parenting style – This style is high in control and expectation, but low in
nurturance and communication. They appear cold and rejecting. They frequently degrade
their children by putting them down and shouting and commands. Children generally
become negative.
 The permissive parenting style – These parenting show much warmth and nurturance,
but fail as far as expectations, control and communication are concerned. Little control of
the children’s behaviour will result in that child having to make their own decisions at an
age when they are not capable of doing so. Children become impulsive, disobedient and
rebellious.
 The uninvolved parenting style – These parents don’t meet any of the expectations of
any of the parenting styles. They tend to be emotionally detached. Tend to have little or
no energy left to cater to their children’s needs. This style disrupts virtually all aspects of
development, including attachment, cognition and emotional and social skills.
 Sibling relationships – Infants become attached to their older siblings. Sibling conflict
increase significantly after 18 months. A cognitive and social understanding develops,
siblings tend to become more constructive and the younger sibling participants in
attempts to reconcile conflict. The conflict is generally over rights of possession. Parents
should intervene. This intervention takes place in the form of teaching children
appropriate ways to deal with disputes. If they behaviour is unchecked it can lead to
behaviour problems at school. The direct influence stems from parents’ treatment of
siblings. Siblings tend to get on more with each other if they believe parents have no
favourites and treat all sibling fairly. The indirect influence stems from the quality of the
parents’ relationship with each other. Many older siblings enjoy helping their parents take
care of infants.
Peer relationships
The development of friendships with peers is one of the most important aspects of pre-schoolers’

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social development. As they develop more self-awareness, become more effective in

communicating, and better at understanding the thoughts and feelings of other.

Play – is an excellent example of the interdependence among the dimensions of development.

Communication allow for the children to talk about what they are doing and how to play together.
Gives children the opportunities in visual spatial skills, thus enhancing their cognitive skills. Types
of play :
 Functional play – refers to repetitive activities such as skipping, jumping, rolling clay or
moving toy cars. This type of play involves activity and does not have the goal of creating
some end result. Involves fine motor development and body movement.
 Constructive play – Involves children manipulating objects or toys to make something
such as tower of blocks. In courage’s children to practise their fine motor and cognitive
skills.
 Social pretend (Socio-dramatic or Fantasy play) – They use make-believe to change the
function of the objects. Creating imaginary situations and enact pretend roles. These play
activities reflect children’s growth in cognitive, perspective-taking and communication
skills.
 Games-with-rules – such as hide-and-seek, board games and hop-scotch, provide
opportunities for cognitive development and social understanding.
Children’s play proceeds in sequence from solitary play in which a child playing individually and
apart from other children, to parallel play where children play near other children but do not try
to influence their behaviour, to cooperative play where children interact by sharing, following one
another and making suggestions. Concern often raised by parents is an Imaginary friend. This is
common and normal phenomenon reflects the richness of the child’s fantasy play. Cultural
variations do seem to occur. Cultural beliefs about the importance of play also effect early play
behaviour.

Aggressive behaviour – refers to the physical or verbal intended to injure or harm someone else.
 Instrumental aggression – refers to aggression being used as a mean to an end. Children
are usually not deliberately hostile, but shout, push or attack someone in order to get
something
 Hostile aggression – on the other hand, is intended to hurt someone deliberately by
hitting, kicking or insulting him or her. Aggression is no longer a means to an end, but an
end in itself.
Usually emerges at 2 years, at the age where children begin to interact. Disputes over objects,
privileges and territorial space are usually the instigators. Instrumental aggression diminishes as
pre-schoolers grow older because they develop greater aggression. The increase in hostile
aggression is related to children’s increasing ability to recognise the intentions of other. Occasional
aggression is to be expected and is normal. Excessive aggression may cause problems for the
child’s development. Aggressive tendencies tend to remain stable.
Causes of aggression
 Instinct theories – aggression is part of the evolutionary survival process of humans and
therefore we are programmed to act aggressively in certain situations. These theories
assume that aggression is an inherent response characteristic of the whole species.
Psychologist today no longer accept aggression to be evolutionary.
 Biological factors – reactions to stimuli are activated by biological systems. Certain brain
areas and hormones play an important role in the tendency to act aggression. Genetic
factors also seem to play a role.
 The frustration-aggression hypothesis – individuals experience frustration when the
attainment of their goals is blocked. Their inevitable reaction to this is aggression.
Theorists realise not all aggression is caused by frustration and not all frustration leads to
aggression.
 Cognitive factors – Children’s interpretations of their social environment, as well as their

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views and assumptions regarding aggression. One of the core determinants of aggression
is the child’s understanding of the intentions of the other person. When children believe
that there peer are deliberately hostile, they will be more inclined to retaliate with
aggression than when they believe the action was accidental. Aggression is caused by an
inability to process social information adequately. Children tend not to consider all
available social cues, but focus on the aggression cues. Aggressive children view the
outcomes or results of aggression differently to non-aggressive children. Aggression may
lead to tangible rewards eg by getting what they want. Aggressive children do not seem to
be concerned with the consequences of aggression. Child interpretation is that aggression
holds no negative consequences for him or her.
 Social factors – Parents – they play an important role in aggressive behaviour. 2
dimensions of parenting style play a vital role. Nurturance of the child and disciplinary
strategies that parents follow. Parents that are cold, negative, hostile and rejecting
towards them tend to make them aggressive, then parents that are warm and positive.
Parents that use strict and punitive disciplinary strategies have children that show
aggressive interaction styles. Through their parent’s actions, children learn that they can
control other by hitting or threatening them. Permissive parents are often inconsistent in
applying punishment, which means that children are sometimes punished for aggression
and at other times not. Children therefore receive confusing messages as to which
behaviour is permitted and which is not. Children might not learn that aggressive
behaviour is unacceptable.
 Community violence - Exposure to community violence may have an important influence
on the aggressive behaviour of both parent and their children. Influences parenting styles:
parents are more aggressive, punitive and rejecting toward their child. The more children
witness community violence, the higher their levels of aggression.
 The media – Violence portrayed on television and in electronic games has an important
influence on children’s behaviour.
Children start watching television fairly regularly at 6 months and by 2/3 years they are already
ardent television viewers. Television viewing reaches a peak during late preschool years. Another
peak is reached just before adolescent, followed by a decline during high school. It’s not the
amount of time but it’s the content of programme material especially the violence and its effect
on children, adolescents and adults. Another concern is the amount of violence in the media
portrayed in the news and in reality shows. The violence in the media seem to be increasing.
 The desensitisation effect – refers to the reduction or eradication of cognitive,
emotional and ultimately also behavioural responses.
 The aggressor effect – Some children and adults tend to become meaner, more
aggressive and more violent as a result of exposure to violence.
 The victim effect – Both children and adults tend to see the world as a scarier place,
become more fearful and initiate more self-protective measures.
 The bystander effect – Both children and adults tend to become more desensitised to
violence, and more callous and less sympathetic to victims of violence
 The appetite effect - Both children and adults tend to develop an increased appetite
for seeing more violent entertainment.
Children under the age of 8 are more vulnerable to television violence because children do not
understand the concept. Aggressors who kick, hit and shoot are no necessarily the ‘bad guys’ and
they do not always recognise that the aggressors are brought to justice. Video games appear to
increase aggressive thoughts and feelings, physiological arousal and aggressive behaviours, as well
as decreasing prosocial behaviours.
 Controlling aggression :
 Parents are powerful models. They should therefore ensure that their own interaction
styles are not aggressive.
 Firmness is of utmost importance. Parents should never give in to a child’s aggressive
behaviour.

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 Parents should make less use of power assertion and more of induction
 Children’s cognitions regarding the consequence of aggression can be changed by
explaining to them that their behaviour harms other people
 Children should be encouraged to practise prosocial behaviour
 Parents should investigate the cause of their children’s behaviour in order to understand
their children’s aggression
 Children should be granted opportunities to verbalise their feelings in an appropriate
manner
 Parents could influence their children’s TV viewing habits
 Parents should evaluate a video or internet game before a child is allowed to play. The
following question should be asked :
 Does the game involve some characters trying to harm others?
 Does this happen frequently – more than once or twice in 30 minutes?
 Is the aggression/violence rewarded in any way?
 Is the aggression/violence portrayed humorously?
 Are non-violent solutions absent or less ‘fun’ than the violent ones?
 Are realistic consequences of violence absent from the game?
If two or more answers are ‘yes’, parents should think carefully about the lessons taught before
allowing the child assess the game.
 Should children persist with high levels of aggressive behaviour despite the
abovementioned guidelines, it would be advisable to seek professional help.

Prosocial behaviour
Prosocial behaviour is any voluntary action that is intended to benefit another individual. It
includes positive social actions such as empathy and altruism. Certain prosocial behaviours such as
taking turns and helpfulness seem to increase with age, while others such as comforting someone
seems to be more common among pre-schoolers and children in primary grades than among older
children. Longitudinal studies indicate that prosocial behaviour in the preschool years tends to
continue into adulthood.

Moral development
Refers to a set of principles or ideas that enables individuals to differentiate between right and
wrong to direct their behaviour accordingly. Building blocks of moral development in the first few
years of life are emotions, self-regulation and conscience. Children should learn two lessons:
 To experience negative emotions when they violate rules
 Control their impulses to engage in prohibition behaviours.
This means that 18-24 months children are beginning to internalise rules and to anticipate
disapproval when they fail to comply with them. Limited degree, to exert self-regulation in order
to resist temptation. Reparative behaviours ( trying to correct wrongdoing) seem to be linked to
empathy, which develops even before the second year of life.

Middle The role of the family

Childhood Children in middle childhood spend much more time away from home. The child’s home is still the
place that offers the most security and the family is still the pivot on which his or her life hinges.
Children in middle childhood make huge demands on their parents. Many parents have to
transport their children, help them plan for the day and the week. Help supervise and assist with
their homework. Parents also face new financial pressures. Parents often have to protect the child,
and they are responsible for teaching their children moral, religious and cultural values. Children
gradually becomes less dependent on their parent in term of active help. They want more
opportunities to make decision affecting their lives. They are also better able to compare different

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aspect of their family life with those of other families.

Parent-child relationship
It seems that parents, who have managed to establish an authoritative parenting style during the
early years, may find parenting somewhere easier. This is due to engaging in co-regulation:
Parents are still the main controllers and supervision, but permit children to be in charge of
moment-by-moment decision-making. In turn, children inform parents of their whereabouts,
activities and problems, so that parent may intervene when necessary

Models of influence in the family

Three different models represent different ways of thinking about directions of influence in the
family
 The Parent effects model – This model assumes that influences run one way, from parents
to child. The assumption is that the behaviour, parenting style, mood, emotion and
circumstance of a parent may have a major influence on the development of the child.
 The child effects model – This model highlights instances in which children influence their
parent rather than vice versa. As children mature into older children and adolescents,
parents generally become less restrictive, because they assume that children become
increasingly capable of making their own choices. Another example of a child effect is that
a child’s personality or temperament may affect the parents’ behaviour. Behaviour
problems in children may bring out a negative coercive behaviour pattern in their parents.
It refers to an environment in which family members are locked in power struggles, each
trying to control the other through aggression tactics such as threatening, shouting and
hitting. This ultimately results in the parents giving in to the child’s demands. Children’s
behaviour with their parents can be affected by their perceptions of their parents’
attitudes toward them.
 The bi-directional model – Parent and child are seen to influence each other reciprocally;
they tend to reinforce and perpetuate each other’ behaviour. May problems may evolve if
the relationship between the parent and child deteriorates as the two interact over time.

Parents’ role in children’s social development

 Parents as direct instructors – Parents are responsible for transmitting values and
attitudes to their children. Parents may do this by directly teaching their children the
required rules and values, and explicitly inform and advise them on various issues. Another
important element of the directive role of parents involves their efforts to scaffold their
children’s social development.
 Parents as indirect socialisers – Parents provide indirect socialisation through their own
behaviour with and around their children. If children experience security in their first social
relationship, they internalise these experiences to develop an internal working model for
future relationships. This means if the early attachments where positive, this could affect
future relationships positively.
 Parents as social mangers – Parents manage their children’s experiences and social lives,
including their exposure to various people, activities and information. Parents are
instrumental in the type of environments they choose for their children, such as the home,
neighbourhood and school. Parents orchestrate children’s out-of-home activities in ways
that will promote their goals for their children’s development. Parenting from a distance
becomes increasingly prominent with children’s developing autonomy and involvement in
many new social settings.

Discipline
Controlling the child’s behaviour and teaching the child to follow basic rules. Refers to the
methods of teaching children character, self-control, moral values and appropriate behaviour.
Punishment does not promote self-discipline; it only stops behaviour for that moment. Focus on

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the positive discipline

See table for the difference between discipline and punishment page 267

 Parental behaviours – Parents have to provide leadership and be in charger. If a parent

does not take control, the child will. Parents are powerful. Parents are powerful models:
They cannot expect good behaviour from their children if they behave badly.
 Establishing rules and setting limits – Children need rules to guide their behaviour. Limits
give children a sense of security, protection and containment. A calm reasoned discussion
gives parents an opportunity to express warmth and compassion to the child and an
opportunity to demonstrate positive ways to handle conflict. By using inductive
techniques such as discussion and explanation, rather than power assertion such as
spanking and shouting, parents lay a foundation of love and care and are generally
respected by their children.
 Offering choice – Allowing children to make age appropriate choice empowers them and
gives them some control over their lives. Parents decide the options and present the
alternatives that they are prepared to allow.
 Consistency and follow-through – Parents and caregivers need to communicate clearly
what the rules are – also what the consequences will be for disobeying them. If parents
follow through with predictable and reliable action towards their children’s behaviour, the
results will mostly be effective.
 Positive feedback – Most powerful and the easiest tool we have to encourage and
improve behaviour and build self-esteem.
 Punishment that teaches
 Punishment should be used properly
 Parents usually tend to get back what they put in, also with respect to punishment –
Example shouting at children increases the chance that child will shout back.
 How parents use disciplinary tactic is more important than what tactic they use :
 Reducing temptations to misbehave
 Set clear rules and limits
 Praise good behaviour
 Use explanation and reasoning when misbehaviour occurs
 Offer them opportunities to make amends
Discipline refers to techniques to teach children appropriate behaviour. The emphasis is therefore
on teaching rather than on punishing.

Sibling relationships and only children

Sibling rivalry tends to increase as the children grow older. The child who gets less parental
affection, more disapproval or fewer material resources, is likely to be resentful. Sibling bullying
may occur. It is linked to conflictual, competitive and hostile relationships with siblings. Children in
middle childhood continue to rely on one another for companionship and assistance.

See table on positive sibling relationships page 273

Researchers have identified several patterns or styles of sibling relationship:

 Caregiver relationship
 Buddy relationship
 Critical or conflictual relationship
 Rival relationships
 Casual relationships
They do better in school and attain higher levels of education.

Peer relationships

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Children become more inclined to interact with other children of the same gender and age. They
also terminate a relationship with another child when they are no longer satisfied with interaction.

Nature and function of the peer group

Function on very a flexible foundation. Anyone who wants to join a group to play is permitted to
do so. Different statuses are attached to the various roles fulfilled by the members of the peer
group. Peer group often plays more important roles than the parents. The most important
functions a peer group fulfils are the following:
 The peer group provides comradeship
 The peer group provides opportunities for trying out new behaviours
 The peer group facilitates the transfer of knowledge and information
 The peer group teaches its members obedience to rules and regulations
 The peer group helps to reinforce gender roles
 The peer group causes a weakening of the emotional bond between the child and
his/her parents
 The peer group provides its member with experience of relationship in which they can
compete with other (their peers) on an equal footing.

Friendships
Children’s friendships typically progress through the following 3 phases
 Play-based friendship – (3 to 7 years) Play-based friendships are the most common for
younger children.
 Loyal and faithful friends - (8 to 11 years)
 Intimate friends – (Adolescence and beyond)
Children tend to have fewer friends than during pre-school and tend to select friends similar to
themselves in age, gender, race, personal characteristic, attitudes and beliefs.

Play in middle childhood

Read table on page 277

Peer acceptance
Refers to the extent to which a child is viewed by a group of age-mates as a worthy social partner.
It differs from friendship in that it is not a mutual relationship
Researchers study peer acceptance through socio-metric techniques - methods for determining
who is liked and disliked in a group:
 Popular –well-liked by most, rarely disliked
 Rejected – rarely liked, often disliked
 Neglected – Neither liked nor disliked; these are isolated and ignored children who seem
to be invisible to their classmates
 Controversial – liked by many but also disliked by many
Most popular children are kind and considerate, although some are admired for their socially
adept yet belligerent behaviour. Therefore, popular- antisocial children largely tough boys with
aggressive manner and shrewd but devious social skills. Peers perceive their toughness as ‘cool’

Peer victimisation
Verbal and physical attacks. Bullying may be defined as a deliberate, conscious desire to hurt,
threaten and frighten someone.
 Physical bullying
 Emotional bullying
 Verbal bullying
 Non-verbal bullying or gesture bullying – offensive signs, pulling faces, degrading looks
 Relational bullying or exclusion bullying
 Extortion bullying – demands for money or property of others

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 Sexual bullying
3 types of bullying can be distinguished
 The aggressive bully – These bullies direct their aggression towards any person,
irrespective of that person’s authority or position. They tend to be physically and
emotionally strong, are insensitive to other people’s feelings and have a good self-image.
 The anxious bully – Anxious and aggressive, have a poor self-image, are uncertain, and
have few friends.
 Group adherents – They are easily dominated, tend to be passive rather than aggressive,
generally show empathy towards other, and therefore tend to feel guilty after acts of
bullying.
Only infringes upon the victim’s rights to human dignity, privacy, freedom, and security, but also
has an influence on the child’s physical, emotional, social and educational well-being.
Consequences such as psychosomatic symptoms and loss appetite and poor posture have often
been reported. Emotional problems include depression, suicidal tendencies, social withdrawal,
anxiety and fear. May result absenteeism, lossof concentration and deteriorating academic
achievement may develop.

The following are proposed as guidelines for intervention

 School authorities have a legal obligation to care for learners
 Extensive anti-bullying programmes
 Role plays in this phenomenon – law enforcers, educators, parents and learners- should
be involved in order to :
 Create an awareness of nature, prevalence and consequences of bullying
 Enhance positive peer relations
 Develop clear guidelines and strategies to prevent intimidation and bullying
 Develop an attitude of zero tolerance towards bullying or any form of
violence
Media influences
 Television effects socialisation of children are the following :
 Family values – unrealistic views on family(loving and caring) and children may have
authority in shows therefore they may not want to listen to parents
 Family interaction – Could stimulate discussions. May inform younger children on
issues they may not understand.
 Violence and aggression – most problematic forms of the media violence includes:
Attractive perpetrators who go unpunished, no significate harm to victims is shown
and humour.
 Sexual attitudes
 Drugs – Advertising of tobacco has been band banned in South Africa
 Computer technology – The 6-8 year age groups reported basic knowledge and occasional
usage, mostly for game playing and activities. The 9-12 year age groups use the computer
and internet for homework, projects and games. Younger children were unaware of social
networking or chat rooms. Older children can be exposed to pornography. The internet
does not appear to isolate children from their families, peers and communities. Internet is
a powerful communication tool. Other studies indicate that internet use was negatively
related to family time and positively related to family conflict. Children will have more
difficulty distinguishing what is real and what is simulated.
 Cell phones – Young children primarily use the cell phone to communicate with family and
friends, to let their parents know about their whereabouts, ‘convenience’ calls and
emergency calls. Anonymous nature of text messaging may encourage people to say
things they would not normally say – this is called online disinhibition effect. A particular
concern is children’s easy access to pornography, but they are often motivated by curiosity
to explore this material. Cyber bullying and inappropriate photography have also become
problems in schools.

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Moral Development
Morality refers to a set of principles that enables individuals to differentiate between right and
wrong. Moral development refers to the process by which children learn the principles that enable
them to judge behaviour in a particular society as good or bad and to direct their own behaviour in
accordance with these principles. Every society has ethical codes for the approval or disapproval of
practices in that particular society. Moral education is aimed at maintaining the social order, while
giving the individual the opportunity to function optimally within his or her culture. The ability to
differentiate between right and wrong is the most important development task to be mastered
during middle childhood years.

Moral Emotions
Moral decision making is often quite emotional. Children gradually come to understand the
emotional consequences of different actions. The psychoanalytic theory focuses on the relationship
between the child and his or her parents as the basis of developing moral emotions.

According to Freud, the child learns moral rules by identifying with the same-gender parent during
the phallic stage of development (ages 3-6). The rules a child learns from the child’s superego,
which has two parts, a conscious and an ego-ideal.

Erikson’s views on moral development are similar to Freud’s, although he believed that children
learn moral rules from both parents. He believes that pride is just as important to moral
development as guilt and shame.

Emotions, such as empathy may be very powerful in moral development. Another skill is
perspective-taking; the better children understand the thoughts and feelings of other people, the
most willing they will be to share and help others. It seems the emotional setting helps determine
whether children act altruistically (helping others) or not. Theses settings are:
 Feelings of responsibility – when they feel responsible for someone in need
 Feelings of competence – children act altruistically when they feel that they have the skills
necessary to help the person in need
 Mood – children act more altruistically when they are happy or feel successful

Moral behaviour
Learning theorist propose that children learn to behave morally through reward, punishment, and
modelling, e.g. Skinner’s operant conditioning. According to Skinner adults reward children for
morally accepted behaviour with praise and morally unacceptable behaviour with punishment.
Bandura believes that children learn more from observing others.

However, an approach that combines punishment with reasoned explanation (induction) may be
more effective.

Moral Reasoning
It refers to the process of making judgements about the rightness and wrongness of specific
behaviour.

a) Jean Piaget’s theory of moral realism and moral relativism

- Piaget developed his theory by observing children playing games.
-He believes that moral development is linked to cognitive development
-He regarded children younger than about five years of age as pre-moral, children either
play without rules or they create their own rules
-During middle childhood, children develop an enormous respect for rules, that should be
obeyed at all times – this stage is called moral realism stage, and they believe that rules
can’t be changed because they come from authority.

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-Moral absolutism – when no mitigating circumstances or intentions are taken into account
(e.g. exceeding the speed limit to rush someone to hospital may be seen as wrong in their
eyes)
-Immanent justice is another characteristic of this phases (e.g. boy falls off of counter when
trying to reach the cookies)
-The last phase is moral relativism – this is when children think less egocentrically and
display more moral flexibility, they now believe that rules can be questioned and even
changed.
- According to Piaget, cognitive maturation and social experience, plays a role in the
transition from moral realism to moral relativism.
-Piaget’s theory has been criticized for underestimating the moral understanding of younger
children and for not taking the cultural and socio-economic differences between children
into account.

b) Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning

-Was inspired by Piaget’s work
-Kohlberg believed that children go through different stages of moral development and that
it is based on cognitive development and relevant social experiences.
-He believed that perspective taking – the ability to understand the psychological
perspectives, motives and needs of others – is essential.
-He was interested in the reasoning underlying the choices rather than the choice itself.
-He distinguished three levels of moral development :
o Pre-conventional (the term conventional refers to rules that certain
members abide to, and it usually occurs in middle childhood)
o Conventional
o Post-conventional
-The order of levels and stages are invariant, this means that all individuals move through
the same stages in the same order, however the pace may differ.
-Look at table 5.8, page 292 for summary of all the stages

c) Eisenberg’s theory of prosocial reasoning

She presented children and young people from per-school to Grade 12 with prosocial
dilemmas. These dilemmas depicted situations in which helping someone else would
require some kind of pro-social sacrifice. Eisenberg proposed that prosocial reasoning
develops through certain levels. She does not regard these levels as universal, she states
that emotional factors and environmental factors and culture, affect the development and
use of prosocial reasoning.
Look at table 5.9 on page 293

Promoting morally competent behaviour in children

 Family factors
Include parenting and discussion styles, and parenting facilitation of prosocial behaviours,
giving children age-appropriate chores, contributing towards family welfare – this in turn
promotes prosocial behaviour.
 Peer factors
Children often get involved in conflicts over how games should be played, and what rules
should be followed, they have to compromise – and this in turn develops their perspective-
taking ability
 Developing a sense of empathy

Adolescence The parent-adolescent relationship

a) Parent-adolescent conflict
The changes in the parent-adolescent relationship are characterised primarily by the

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questioning of parental values, rules and regulations set by parents, distancing and
argumentativeness. Parents frequently feels upset about these sudden changes in their
adolescents and react by becoming more controlling, which results in further conflict.
Conflict tends to occur more between adolescents and their mothers than their fathers
because mothers are more involved on a day to day basis. The reason for the changes in
interactional patterns during early adolescence are related to:
 The biological changes during puberty, when hormonal secretion may cause mood
swings
 Cognitive changes, which cause increased questioning
 Adolescent egocentrim – perception of their parent’s attitudes towards them
 The development of identity – experimentation
 Social development - increase in independence
Storm and stress view and generation gap (i.e. differences in viewpoints, attitudes and
values between parents and children) are exaggerated.

b) Autonomy and attachment

Conflict between parent and child can be related to the adolescents’ increasing need for
autonomy (independence), which may lead to rebelling. The need for autonomy as a
necessary developmental task and not necessarily as a rejection of parental authority. In the
process of becoming independent, adolescents strive to achieve the following goals:
 Cognitive autonomy – decision making
 Behavioural autonomy – choices regarding friendships
 Emotional autonomy – being self-reliant and independent
 Moral or value autonomy – forming an own value system that service as a guideline
for their own behaviour
Adolescents’ autonomy also means the end of the parents’ meaningful roles as educators,
while simultaneously becoming aware of their increasing age. One way to make this
development easier for both parents and adolescents is to relinquish power gradually.
Attachment bonds to parents provide adolescents with a secure base from which to explore
their world and to master increasing social demands. Adolescents may also experience
separation anxiety. Adolescents who experience secure attachment with their parents are
likely to cope with this separation.

Parenting styles
Social maturity during adolescence depend largely on the parenting styles of their parents.
 Authoritative parents
 Authoritarian parenting
 Permissive parenting

Apart from the various parenting styles, two dimension of parental behaviour may be distinguished,
i.e. the love-hostility dimension and the autonomy-control dimension:
 The love-hostility dimension – loving behaviour of parents is characterised by acceptance,
understanding and approval. When parents behave in a hostile manner and neglect or
reject their children
 The autonomy-control dimension – refers to parents who allow their children realistic
freedom as opposed to those who exercise exceptionally strict control over their children.

Parenting is a two-way process: parents influence their adolescents’ behaviour, adolescents also
influence their parents’ behaviour. Adolescents who are difficult, stubborn and uncooperative often
make it difficult for parents to maintain a positive disposition. This is referred to as reciprocal or bi-
directional effects between parents and children. In traditional cultures, parents expect to be
obeyed because of socialisation, where the status and authority of parents and other elders are
constantly emphasise directly and indirectly, adolescents are much less inclined to question

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authority. However, overall, adolescents seem to value parental guidance.

Peer group relationships

a) The structure of the peer group

According to this model, peer group formation during adolescents proceeds follows:
Stage 1: formation starts, cliques which usually consist of 5-7 members of the same age and
the same gender.
Stage 2: Gender cliques provide a safe base from which members can interact with
members of the opposite gender.
Stage 3: Popular members of boy and girl cliques begin to form mixed
Stage 4: The rest of the girl and boy cliques form heterosexual cliques, thus forming a new
member group structure, known as a crowd.
Stage 5: Towards late adolescence, the crowd gradually starts to disintegrate. Individual
couples will still go out with other couples as a group.
(Look at figure 6.4 on page 369)

Characteristics that lead to a greater acceptance by the peer group are intelligence,
attractiveness, a sense of humour, self-confidence and prosocial behaviour. Also
adolescents’ perception of the social world may have a significant influence on their mental
and physical well-being.

b) Conformity
Conformity refers to the degree to which a person is willing to change his or her behaviour,
attitudes or beliefs in order to fit in with a group (peer pressure). They may not yet have
developed sufficient self-confidence and independence to make their own choices. The peer
group seems to influence adolescents’ choice of clothes, music, language use, social
activities, leisure activities, hobbies and relationships with the opposite gender. Stormy
parent-child relationships, do not provide them with the necessary skills, with the result that
they only find acceptance in those peer groups which follow a counter-culture ( a culture
against the values of parents and society)

c) Friendships
Adolescents have friendship based on shared activities and loyalty, and are inclined to
choose their friends based on similar interests, attitudes, values and personalities that
match their own. Adolescents also develop a greater need for intimacy and self-disclosure
(i.e. emotional attachment, trust and understanding each other). Friends may provide each
other with the following types of support:
 Close friendships can help teenagers to cope with the stressors of adolescents
 Close friendships counteract loneliness and isolation
 Self-disclosure and honest communication and also to be sensitive towards others.

Intimate relationships with friends may lead to a distancing effect from their parents. It is
usually on temporary and does not necessarily imply that adolescents’ feelings for their
parents diminish. During late adolescents, the degree of intimacy and emotional intensity
between close friends start to decline as adolescents become more aware of their own
identity and are able to act more independently.

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