Chapter 8

• Self-concept


  Descriptive and evaluative mental picture of one's abilities and traits
• Self-definition


  Cluster of characteristics used to describe oneself
• Self-definition development


  • Changes between ages 5 and 7
• Single representations


  (In neo-Piagetian terminology) First stage in development of self-definition, in which children describe themselves in terms of individual, unconnected characteristics and in all-or-nothing terms
• Representational mappings


  The second stage in development of self-definition, in which a child makes logical connections between aspects of the self but still sees these characteristics in all-or-nothing terms
• Self-esteem


  The self-evaluative part of the self-concept, the judgment a person makes about his or her self-worth
• Emotional understanding development


  • Becomes more complex with age
• Initiative vs. guilt


  Children begin to understand themselves and the person they become, using their perceptual, motor, cognitive, and language skills to make things happen. Great governor on initiative is conscience.
• Self-understanding


  • About 4-5 years, children not only start describing themselves in terms of psychological traits, but they also begin to perceive others in terms of psychological traits
• Emotion-coaching


  Monitor child's emotions
• Emotion-dismissing


  Deny, ignore, or change negative emotion
• Regulation of emotions and peer relations

  • Ability to modulate one's emotions is an important skill that benefits children their relationship with peers
• Moral development


  Development of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors regarding rules and conventions about what people should do in their interactions with other people
• Moral feelings


  According to Freud, to reduce anxiety, avoid punishment and maintain parental affection, children identify with parents, internalizing their standards of right and wrong, and thus the superego, the moral element of personality
• Moral reasoning


  • Heteronomous morality - Children think of justice and rules as unchangeable properties of the world, removed from the control of people

  2. Heteronomous thinkers - Believe in immanent justice, if the rule is broken, punishment will be meter out immediately

  3. Autonomous morality - They become aware that rules and laws are created by people, and in judging an action, consider the actor's intentions as well as consequences
• Moral behavior


  Holds that the processes of reinforcement, punishment, and imitation explain the development of moral behavior
• Gender identity


  Sense of one's own gender
• Gender roles


  Set of expectations that prescribe how males and females should think, act, and feel
• Gender typing


  Acquisition of a traditional feminine or masculine role
• Baumrind's Parenting Styles


  • Authoritative parenting - Relationship is reciprocal, responsive

  Authoritarian parenting - Relationship is controlling, assertive

  Permissive parenting - Relationship is indulgent, low in control attempts

  Rejecting-neglecting parenting - Relationship is rejective
• In one study, spanking by parents was linked with children's antisocial behavior
• Types of child maltreatment

  • Physical abuse
  • Child neglect
  • Sexual abuse
  • Emotional abuse
• Sibling relationship


  • 3 important characteristics: emotional quality, familiarity and intimacy, variation in sibling relationship
• Birth order has been linked to the development of certain personality traits
• Changing family in a changing society

  • Working parents
  • Children in divorced families
  • Gay and lesbian parents
  • Cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic variations
• Peer group functions


  • Good peer relations can be necessary for normal socioemotional development
• Peer relations development changes

  • Many preschool kids spend considerable time in peer interaction conversing with playmates about such matters as negotiating roles and rules in play, arguing, and agreeing
• Friends


  Children distinguish between friends and nonfriends
• Connected worlds of parent-child and peer relationships

  • Parents may influence their children's peer relations in many ways, both directly and indirectly
• Play


  Pleasurable activity in which children engage for its own sake, and its functions and forms vary
• Play's function


  • Play makes important contributions to young children's cognitive and socioemotional development, and according to Freud and Erikson, play helps children master anxieties and conflicts
• Types of play


  • Sensorimotor and practice play
  • Pretense/symbolic play
  • Social play
  • Constructive play
  • Games
• The extent to which children are exposed to violence and aggression on television

  Raises special concerns about the effect of television on children's aggression
• Television can also teach children that it is better to behave in positive, prosocial ways


  Than in negative, antisocial ways