part 5

• Parents influence development by direct instruction and coaching.
• Parents also use feedback to influence children’s behavior.
• Sometimes parents fall into the negative reinforcement trap, inadvertently reinforcing behaviors that they want to discourage.
• Punishment is effective when it is prompt, consistent, accompanied by an explanation, and delivered by a person with whom the child has a warm relationship.
• Time-out is one useful form of punishment
• Siblings get along better when they are of the same sex, believe that parents treat them similarly, enter adolescence, and have parents who get along well.
• Research shows that adopted children are similar to children living with biological parents in any respects, although they are more prone to some problems such as adjusting to school and conduct disorders.
• Parents have higher expectations for first-born children, which explains why such children are more intelligent and more likely to go to college.
• Later-born children are more popular and more innovative
• only children are almost never worse off than children with siblings; in some respects (such as intelligence, achievement, and autonomy), they are often better off.
• Factors that contribute to child abuse include poverty, social isolation, and a culture’s views on violence
• Older children and adolescents often from cliques —small groups of like-minded individuals— that become part of a crowd.
• Common to most groups is a dominance hierarchy, a well-defined structure with a leader at the top. Physical power often determines the dominance hierarchy, particularly among boys.
• Peer pressure is neither totally powerful nor totally evil. In fact, groups influence. individuals primarily in areas where standards of behaviors are unclear, such as tastes in music or clothing or concerning drinking, drug use, and sex.
• Most popular children are socially skilled. They often share, cooperate, and help others. A far smaller number of popular children use aggression to achieve their social goals.
• Some children are rejected by their peers because they are too aggressive. Others are rejected for being too timid or withdrawn. Repeated peer rejection often leads to school failure and behavioral problems.
• According to Selman’s theory, children’s understanding of how others think progresses through five stages. In the first (undifferentiated) stage, children confuse their own and another’s view. In the last (societal) stage, adolescents can take a third-person perspective and know that this perspective is influenced by context.
• Prejudice emerges in the preschool years, soon after children recognize different social groups
• The Concrete-Operational Period (7-11 years), Egocentrism wanes gradually, e they have acquired mental operations, Takes an earthbound, concrete, practical-minded sort of problem-solving approach.