CHILD DEVELOPMENT

AJISHA SARA MOHANASSISTANT PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY SACRED HEART COLLEGE (AUTONOMOUS), THEVARA

child development

Berk, L. E. (2010).Child Development (8th ed.). New Delhi: Prentice Hall. Hurlock, E.B.(2009). Child Development (6th ed.). New Delhi: Tata McGraw Hill Edition Santrock, J.W. (2007).Child Development (13th ed.). New Delhi: Tata McGraw Hill.

MODULES

6. Temperament and Moral Development

3. Prenatal Development

5. Socio-Emotional Development

2. Theories of Development

4. Physical and Sensory Development

1. Introduction to Child Development

TEMPERAMENT AND MORAL DEVELOPMENT

• Temperament
• Structure of temperament
• Models of temperament: Thomas & Chess and Rothbart.
• Development of attachment
• Bowlby’s theory
• Security of attachment.
• Moral development theories by Piaget and Kohlberg

CONTENTS

TEMPERAMENT

temperament

• Temperament - early-appearing, stable individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation.
• Reactivity - variations in quickness and intensity of emotional arousal, attention, and motor action.
• Self-regulation - strategies that modify reactivity.

• 1956 - Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess - New York Longitudinal Study
• 141 children from early infancy to adulthood
• Findings: Temperament can increase a child's chances of experiencing psychological problems or, alternatively, protect a child from the negative effects of a highly stressful home life. Parenting practices can modify children's temperaments considerably.

Mary Rothbart, 1990

Thomas and Chess, 1977

STRUCTURE OF TEMPERAMENT

meASURING TEMPERAMENT

Interviews of or questionnaires given to parents

Behavioural ratings by pediatricians, teachers and others familiar with the child.

Laboratory observations by researchers

Psychophysiological Measures

• According to Bowlby (1980), out of their experiences during these four phases, children construct an enduring affectionate tie that they can use as a secure base in the parents’ absence.
• This image serves as an internal working model, or set of expectations about the availability of attachment figures, their likelihood of providing support during times of stress, and the self ’s interaction with those figures.
• The internal working model becomes a vital part of personality, serving as a guide for all future close relationships.

• Consistent with these ideas, as early as the second year, toddlers form attachment-related expectations about parental comfort and support.
• In two studies, securely attached 12- to 16-month olds looked longer at a video of an unresponsive caregiver (inconsistent with their expectations) than a video of a responsive caregiver.
• Insecurely attached toddlers, in contrast, did not distinguish between the two.
• With age, children continually revise and expand their internal working model as their cognitive, emotional, and social capacities increase and as they interact with parents and form other close bonds with adults, siblings, and friends.

BOWLBY'S ETHOLOGICAL THEORY OF ATTACHMENT

PRE-ATTACHMENT PHASE (BIRTH TO 6 WEEKS)

"clear-cut" attachment phase(6-8 months to 18 months-2 years)

"attachment-in-the-making" phase(6 weeks to 6-8 months)

formation of a reciprocal relationship(18 months to 2 years and on)

Disorganised/ disoriented Attachment

• This pattern reflects the greatest insecurity.
• At reunion, these infants show confused, contradictory behavior.
• Most display a dazed facial expression, and a few cry out unexpectedly after having calmed down or display odd, frozen postures.

Resistant Attachment

• Before separation, these infants seek closeness to the parent and often fail to explore. When the parent leaves, they are usually distressed, and on her return they combine clinginess with angry, resistive behavior, struggling when held and sometimes hitting and pushing. Many continue to cry and cling after being picked up and cannot be comforted easily.

Avoidant Attachment

• These infants seem unresponsive to the parent when she is present. When she leaves, they usually are not distressed, and they react to the stranger in much the same way as to the parent. During reunion, they avoid or are slow to greet the parent, and when picked up, they often fail to cling .

Secure Attachment

• These infants use the parent as a secure base.
• When separated, they may or may not cry, but if they do, it is because the parent is absent and they prefer her to the stranger.
• When the parent returns, they actively seek contact, and their crying is reduced immediately .

• A widely used laboratory technique for assessing the quality of attachment between 1 and 2 years of age is the Strange Situation .
• Mary Ainsworth and her colleagues (1978) reasoned that securely attached infants and toddlers should use the parent as a secure base from which to explore in an unfamiliar playroom.
• In addition, when the parent leaves, an unfamiliar adult should be less comforting than the parent.
• The Strange Situation takes the baby through eight short episodes in which brief separations from and reunions with the caregiver occur.

Measuring the security of attachment

ATTACHMENT Q SORTS

• Suitable for children between 1 and 4 years, depends on home observations.
• Either the parent or a highly trained observer sorts 90 behaviors—such as “Child greets mother with a big smile when she enters the room,” “If mother moves very far, child follows along,” and “Child uses mother’s facial expressions as a good source of information when something looks risky or threatening”—into nine categories, ranging from “highly descriptive” to “not at all descriptive” of the child.
• Then a score, ranging from high to low in security, is computed .

• Because the Q-Sort taps a wider array of attachment-related behaviors than the Strange Situation, it may better reflect the parent–child relationship in everyday life.
• However, the Q-sort method is time-consuming, requiring a nonparent informant to spend several hours observing the child before sorting the descriptors, and it does not differentiate between types of insecurity.
• The Q-Sort responses of expert observers correspond well with babies’ secure-base behavior in the Strange Situation; more research is needed to verify a correspondence for preschoolers.
• Parents’ Q-Sorts, however, show little rela tionship with Strange Situation assessments.
• Parents of insecure children, especially, may have difficulty accurately reporting their child’s attachment behaviors.

STABILITY OF ATTACHMENT

• Research on the stability of attachment patterns between 1 and 2 years of age yields a wide range of findings.
• In some studies, as many as 70 to 90 percent of babies remain the same in their reactions to parents; in others, only 30 to 40 percent do.
• Quality of attachment is usually secure and stable for middle-SES babies experiencing favorable life conditions.
• Infants who move from insecurity to security typically have well-adjusted mothers with positive family and friendship ties.
• Perhaps many became parents before they were psychologically ready but, with social support, grew into the role.
• In contrast, in low-SES families with many daily stresses and little social support, attachment generally moves away from security or changes from one insecure pattern to another.
• Child maltreatment, maternal depression, and poor family functioning in adolescence distinguished these young people from the few who stayed securely attached.

• These findings indicate that securely attached babies more often maintain their attachment status than insecure babies, whose relationship with the caregiver is fragile and uncertain.
• The exception is disorganized/disoriented attachment that is as stable as attachment security: Nearly 70% retain this classification over the second year, and the majority remain highly insecure over the long term, continuing to express confused, ambivalent feelings toward parents in early adulthood.
• Many disorganized/disoriented infants experience extremely negative caregiving, which may disrupt emotional self-regulation so severely that attachment disorganization persists.

Moral Development

In all cultures, morality is promoted by an overarching social organization that specifies rules for good conduct. At the same time, morality has roots in each majoraspect of our psychological makeup:● Morality has an emotional component. Powerful feelings cause us to empathize with another’s distress or to feel guilty when we are the cause of that distress. ● Morality also has an important cognitive component. Children’s developing social understanding enables them to make increasingly profound judgments about actions they believe to be right or wrong. ● Morality has a vital behavioral component. Experiencing morally relevant thoughts and feelings increases the likelihood, but does not guarantee, that people will act in accord with them. Traditionally, these three aspects of morality have been studied separately: Biological and psychoanalytic theories focus on emotions, cognitive‐developmental theory on moral thought, and social learning theory on moral behavior. Today, a growing body of research reveals that all three facets are interrelated. Still, major theories disagree on which is primary. The aspect a theory emphasizes has major implications for how it conceptualizes the basic trend of moral development: the shift from superficial, or externally controlled, responses to behavior based on inner standards, or moral understanding. Truly moral individuals do not merely do the right thing for the sake of social conformity or to meet the expectations of authority figures. Rather, they have developed compassionate concerns and ideals of good conduct, which they follow in a wide variety of situations.

Morality as rooted in human nature

• In the 1970s, biological theories of human social behavior suggested that many morally relevant behaviors and emotions have roots in our evolutionary history. This view was supported by the work of ethologists.
• Among primates, chimpanzees conform to moral‐like rules, which group members enforce in one another. They also reciprocate favors and engage in kind and comforting acts.
• On the basis of this evidence, researchers reasoned that evolution must have made similar biologically based provisions for moral acts in humans.
• Although a variety of built‐in bases for morality have been posited, empathy or caring and self‐sacrifice are of prime importance.
• Evolutionary theorists speculate that our unique capacity to act prosocially toward genetic strangers originated several million years ago, in the small hunting‐and‐gathering bands.
• To limit selfishness, humans developed informal systems of social exchange, in which they acted benevolently toward others with the expectation that others might do the same for them in the future.
• These reciprocal exchanges are far more common, varied, and highly developed in humans.
• The willingness of many members of a group to aid others and engage in self‐ sacrifice ensures that the majority will survive and reproduce.
• Under these conditions, traits that foster altruism undergo natural selection, becoming increasingly prominent in succeeding generations.
• Many researchers believe that prewired emotional reactions are involved.
• Researchers have identified areas within the prefrontal cortex (the ventromedial area, located just behind the bridge of the nose, and the orbitofrontal area, resting above the orbits of the eyes) that are vital for emotional responsiveness to the suffering of others and to one’s own misdeeds.
• Functioning of the prefrontal cortex improves over the first two years, preceding children’s increased empathic concern.
• Humans’ elaborate mirror neuron systems are also believed to support empathic responding.

• Limitations:
• Prevailing standards may be at odds with important ethical principles and humanitarian goals. Under these conditions, deliberate violation of norms is not immoral but justifiable and courageous.
• With respect to children, parental concern about internalization of societal norms is often accompanied by other goals.
• The cognitive‐developmental approach assumes that individuals, rather than internalizing existing rules and expectations, develop morally through construction —actively attending to and interrelating multiple perspectives on situations in which social conflicts arise and thereby attaining new moral understandings.

• Several factors jointly affect the child’s willingness to adopt societal standards:
• Parental style of discipline, which varies with the type of misdeed
• The child’s characteristics, including age and temperament
• The parent’s characteristics
• The child’s view of both the misdeed and the reasonableness of parental demands.
• Internalization results from a combination of influences within the child and the rearing environment.
• When the process goes well, external forces foster the child’s positive inclinations and counteract the child’s negative inclinations.

• Both psychoanalytic theory and social learning theory regard moral development as a matter of internalization: adopting societal standards for right action as one’s own.
• Both focus on how morality moves from society to individual—how children acquire norms, or prescriptions for good conduct, widely held by members of their social group.

Morality as the Adoption of Societal Norms

Morality as Social Understanding

• According to the cognitive‐developmental perspective, cognitive maturity and social experience lead to advances in moral understanding, from a superficial orientation to physical power and external consequences toward a more profound appreciation of interpersonal relationships, societal institutions, and law-making systems.
• As their grasp of social cooperation expands, children’s ideas about what ought to be done when the needs and desires of people conflict also change, toward increasingly just, fair, and balanced solutions to moral problems.

1. Piaget's theory of Moral Development
2. Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development

• Piaget’s (1932/1965) early work on children’s moral judgments originally inspired the cognitive‐developmental perspective.
• Using clinical interviews, Piaget questioned 5‐ to 13‐year‐old Swiss children about their understanding of rules in the game of marbles.
• He also told children stories in which characters’ intentions to engage in right or wrong action differed from the consequences of their behavior.
• In the best known of these stories, children were asked which of two boys is naughtier, and why—well‐intentioned John, who accidentally breaks 15 cups while on his way to dinner, or ill‐intentioned Henry, who breaks a single cup while stealing some jam.
• From children’s responses, Piaget identified two broad stages of moral understanding.

PIAGET'S THEORY OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT

HETERONOMOUS MORALITY (About 5-8 years)

MORALITY OF COOPERATION (ABOUT 9-10 YEARS AND OLDER)

• Kohlberg's stages of moral development constitute an adaptation of a psychological theory originally conceived of by Piaget.
• Moral reasoning has six developmental stages, each more adequate at responding to moral dilemmas than its predecessor.
• Kohlberg determined that the process of moral development was principally concerned with justice, and that it continued throughout the individual's lifetime.
• Kohlberg was interested in how individuals would justify their actions if placed in similar moral dilemmas.
• He then analyzed the moral reasoning displayed, rather than its conclusion, and classified it into one of six stages.

The Heinz Dilemma:

A woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife.

• Convenient
• Takes advantage of parents' depth of knowledge of the child across many situations.
• Criticisms - biases due to prebirth expectations, mental state of the parent.
• Parental reports are moderately related to researchers' observations of children's behaviour.
• And, parent perceptions are useful for understanding the way parents view and respond to their child.

• Rapid growth in representation and language permits toddlers to understand some of the factors that influence the parent's coming and going and to predict her return.
• As a result, separation protest declines.
• Now children start to negotiate with the caregiver, using requests and persuasion to alter her goals.

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• fMRI research indicates that in adults, spatial-conflict tasks activate specific areas of the frontal lobes involved in resolving opposing tendencies between many parts of the brain.

• Cognitive development, gradual release from adult control, and peer interaction lead children to make the transition to the second stage, morality of cooperation, in which they no longer view rules as fixed but see them as flexible, socially agreed‐on principles that can be revised to suit the will of the majority.
• Piaget regarded peer disagreements as especially facilitating.
• Through them, children realize that people’s perspectives on moral action can differ and that intentions, not concrete consequences, should serve as the basis for judging behavior.
• Furthermore, as children interact as equals with peers, they learn to settle conflicts in mutually beneficial ways.
• Gradually, they start to use a standard of fairness called reciprocity, in which they express the same concern for the welfare of others as they do for themselves.
• Piaget found that children start with a crude, tit‐for‐tat understanding of reciprocity: “You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.” This defines the beginning of the morality of cooperation.
• Older children and adolescents move beyond this payback morality to a grasp of the importance of mutuality of expectations, called ideal reciprocity —the idea expressed in the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
• Ideal reciprocity helps young people realize that rules can be reinterpreted and revised to take individual motives and circumstances into account, thereby ensuring just outcomes for all.

• Avoid the subjectivity of parental reports but can lead to other inaccuracies.
• In homes, observers find it hard to capture all relevant information, especially rare but important events, such as infants' response to frustration.
• In the unfamiliar lab setting, distress-prone children who calmly avoid certain experiences at home may become too upset to complete the session if the lab does not permit avoidance.
• Still, researchers can better control children's experiences in the lab and can conveniently combine observations of behaviour with psychophysiological measures to gain insight into biological bases of temperament.
• In a recent series of studies, investigators found that a spatial-conflict task can be used to measure effortful control as early as 2.5 to 3 years of age.

• Heteronomous means under the authority of another.
• Children in this first stage view rules as handed down by authorities (God, parents, and teachers), as having a permanent existence, as unchangeable, and as requiring strict obedience.
• For example, younger children state that the rules of the game of marbles cannot be changed, explaining that “God didn’t teach [the new rules],” “you couldn’t play any other way,” or “it would be cheating. . . . A fair rule is one that is in the game”.
• According to Piaget, two factors limit children’s moral understanding:
• (1) cognitive immaturity, especially a limited capacity to imagine other perspectives and realism —the tendency to view mental phenomena, including rules, as fixed external features of reality;

• (2) the power of adults to insist that children comply, which promotes unquestioning respect for rules and those who enforce them.
• Together, egocentrism, realism, and adult power result in superficial moral understandings.
• Younger children think that all people view rules in the same way and that rules are absolutes rather than cooperative principles that can be modified at will.
• In judging an act’s wrongness, they focus on impressive consequences rather than on intent to do harm.
• For example, in the story about John and Henry mentioned earlier, they regard John as naughtier, despite his innocent intentions, because he broke many more cups.

• Infants respond differently to a familiar caregiver than to a stranger.
• As infants interact with the parent and experience relief from distress, they learn that their own actions affect the behaviour of those around them.
• Babies now begin to develop a sense of trust - the expectation that the caregiver will respond when signaled - but they still do not protest when separated from her.

Slow-to-warm-up-child 15% of the sample Inactive, shows mild, low-key reactions to environmental stimuli, is neagtive in mood, and adjusts slowly to new experiences.

Difficult child 10% of the sample Has irregular daily routines, is slow to accept new experiences, and tends to react negatively and intensely.

Easy child 40% of the sample Quickly establishes regular routines in infancy, is cheerful, and adapts easily to new experiences.

NINE DIMENSIONS - Thomas & Chess

• Built-in signals - grasping, smiling, crying and gazing into the adults' eyes - help bring newborn babies into close contact with other humans.
• Once an adult responds, infants encourage her to remain nearby because closeness comforts them.
• Babies of this age recognise their own mother's smell and voice, and they will soon recognise her face.
• However, they are not yet attached to her, since they do not mind being left with an unfamiliar adult.

• Attachment to the familiar caregiver is evident.
• Babies display separation anxiety - they become upset when the adult on whom they have come to rely leaves.
• Does not always occur but depends on infant temperament and the current situation.
• In many cultures, it increases between 6 and 15 months.
• Its appearance suggests that infants have a clear understanding that the caregiver continues to exist when not in view.
• Consistent with this idea, babies who do not have yet mastered Piagetian object permanence usually do not become anxious when separated from their mothers.
• Besides protesting her departure, older infants and toddlers try hard to maintain her presence.
• They approach, follow, and climb on her in preference to others.
• They use her as a secure base from which to explore.