Hd Chapter 5: Development Of The Self-System And Socialization In The Early Years

Front 1

Precursors of self-awareness in Infancy: The “Pre-self”

Back 1

• Newborn’s capacity for information processing and social bonding is important in development of self awareness
• Infant’s self-development evolves from experience in relationships
• Imitation: Infant is detecting similarities between self and others

Front 2

Early Development of the System

Back 2

• Pre-self: Permanence of body, separateness from others, and rhythms of interpersonal connections
• 6-12 months: Representations of interactions (Infant assumes more control in signaling caregiver to provide for his/her needs; when infant’s attempts are successful, beginning of self-efficacy)
• 8-10mo: Separation anxiety (realization that caregiver is separate from him/herself)
• 12mo: uses mother as a secure base – preliminary sense of self-worth
• End of 1st year: Social referencing; Visual Cliff experiment

Front 3

Social Referencing

Back 3

• Visual cliff experiment
• Infant begins to differentiate experience of the self from experience of the other
• The infant uses the caregiver’s emotion to discern meaning of events and to intuit information about the self

Front 4

The Emergence of Self-Awareness and Self-Concept

Back 4

• 24mo +: as language skills improve, there is further elaboration of self-concept:
- Caregivers’ descriptions are important influence
- Self-evaluation/self-esteem advances, use of self-descriptive words
• Maltreated children: blunted devopment of self-awareness (esp. of inner thoughts and feelings
• Preschoolers: more complex and differentiated self-concepts
- Can identify race, skin color
- Describe selves in concrete, physical terms

Front 5

Phases of Self-Development: 0-6 months

Back 5

Pre-Self: Beginnings of “self-invariance” and “other invariance” embedded in infant-caregiver interactions

Front 6

Phases of Self-Development: 6-12 months

Back 6

Intentional or Agentic Self or “I”:
• Intentional signaling of caregiver; social referencing; shared referents; beginning self-efficaacy; using caregiver as secure base (beginning self-worth and trust)

Front 7

Phases of Self-Development: 12-24 months

Back 7

Objective self or “me”: self recognition; early self-control;; early self-esteem

Front 8

Phases of Self-Development: 24-60 months

Back 8

Self-monitoring self: self-description; self-conscious emotions; self-regulation

Front 9

Development of Self-Control and Self-Regulation - Self-Control

Back 9

Ability to stop oneself from performing a proscribed act; ability to make oneself perform an act that is undesirable

Front 10

Development of Self-Control and Self-Regulation - Emotional regulation

Back 10

Underlies any ability to control behaviors; caregiver is crucial in developing emotion regulation—providing scaffolding

Front 11

Development of Self-Control and Self-Regulation - Behavior regulation

Back 11

Depends on development of representational thought and emotional response to wrongdoing (18 months)

Front 12

Development of Self-Control and Self-Regulation - Self-conscious emotions

Back 12

Begin late in 2nd year, beginning of conscious development:
• Shame, embarrassment, guilt, pride
• Emerge after self-awareness/self-recognition is attained
• These emotions require ability to consider oneself as separate and as subject to others’ judgments
• Ages 2-3: begin to demonstrate emotional responses to their wrongdoing or mistakes

Front 13

Early Socialization: Parenting and the Development of the Self-System - Infancy to Toddlerhood

Back 13

• Child has gained cognitive, communicative, and motor skills. Need for autonomy, motivated to practice and expand competencies, need for independent action
• Caregiver must create a good fit between their care and child’s needs
• Caregiver needs to grant autonomy and begin to socialize the child (discipline)

Front 14

Positive Emotional Climate

Back 14

• Child Centered: setting aside parental needs to meet child’s dev. needs
• Parental responsiveness/warmth: listening, involved in child’s activities/interests, accepting child, positive attribution of child, “tuned-in,” supportive
• Warmth and responsiveness help maintain secure attachments and increase likelihood that toddlers will be cooperative

Front 15

Negative Emotional Climate

Back 15

Parent Centered: little responsiveness to their child’s concerns. May even make hostile attributions when children’s needs are out of line with their own.

Front 16

Demanding parents

Back 16

Discipline, maturity demands, impose standards and rules and enforce them

Front 17

Child Centered Discipline

Back 17

Development of self-control, social give and take

Front 18

Parent Centered Discipline

Back 18

Parents’ concerns are primary—quiet, orderliness, convenience

Front 19

Attachment: Early Social Relationships, Part 1

Back 19

• Bowlby, Erikson research – relationships with caregivers in 1st years of life play an important role in determining how secure and optimistic a child will later feel about exploring the world.
• Early relationships lay groundwork for furture interactions with others, child’s self-concept, and outlook on life.

Front 20

Attachment: Early Social Relationships, Part 2

Back 20

• Basic Trust: Seeing others as dependable and trustworthy influences how we see ourselves.
• Attachment Theory: Infant and caregiver participate in an attachment system that has evolved to serve the purpose of keeping the infant safe and assuring his/her survival.
• Separation anxiety, stranger anxiety
• Proximity maintenance (physical), secure base (child goes for security), safe haven (child can go if in distress): the three purposes that an attachment relationship serves.
• Working models—prototypes of social functioning that affect the child’s expectations and behavior in future relationships.

Front 21

Attachment Quality & Strange Situation Test - Ainsworth Experiment

Back 21

• Measurement technique developed by Mary Ainsworth and colleagues
• Three patterns of infant response:
- Securely attached
- Anxious ambivalent: insecurely attached; high levels of anxiety, anger, hot and cold with mom
- Avoidant: insecurely attached; don't cry when separated, ignore her or crawl away, appear unemotional at reunion, heart rate is still activated when mom is in the room
• Fourth pattern first described by Main & Solomon
- Disorganized/disoriented: insecurely attached; contradictory behaviors, inconsistent responses

Front 22

How do infants temperament play a role?

Back 22

Kagan & colleagues: Infant reactivity (physical) study
High (limbs are moving, high heart rate, etc.) and low reactive;
Found: infants who are really high reactive, may show later behavioral inhibition or shyness - difficulty in social situations. Research is relatively new.

Front 23

Maternal Care and Attachment Quality

Back 23

• Caregiving in the 1st year is key—associated with infant’s attachment at 12mo
• Mothers of securely attached infants: respond promptly and consistently to crying, handles infants with sensitivity, held baby tenderly and often, face-to-face interactions were responsive to baby’s signals
• Mothers of ambivalent infants: affectionate but awkward in holding, inconsistent responsiveness to crying, fail to respond to baby’s signals
• Mothers of avoidant infants: actively avoid holding babies, rejecting and angry, harsh, showed less warmth and affection
• Mothers of disorganized-disoriented infants: frightening and/or abusive parental behavior

Front 24

Class and Culture Factors

Back 24

Not just about caregiving style and temperament. Also about: SES levels, negative life events (death of caregiver, violence in the home or community, family discord, divorce, etc.)
Many events affect attachment and must be considered.

Front 25

How infant temperament is related to parent’s caregiving

Back 25

Longitudinal study by Thomas and Chess (1977) found four temperament types:
• Difficult babies—about 10% - more fearful, irritable, active, less positive affect, more irregular
• Easy babies—about 40% - more placid, less active, more positive, more regular in their rhythms
• Slow-to-warm-up babies—about 15% - like easy babies in many ways, but like difficult babies in their fearfulness, show more weariness in new situations than most babies
• Mixed or variable—about 35% - did not fit well into any of the more extreme groups
• Conclusions: infant temperament may persist into childhood and beyond, it affects parenting, parenting can moderate temperament.

Front 26

Applications for Psychologists: Infant Mental Health

Back 26

• Provide a voice for the baby:
- Child development psychoeducation—can provide parents with confidence in parenting skills,
- Help normalize the experience
• Provide support for the parent:
- Active listening, empathy, discuss parent’s attachment histories
• Learn new skills:
- Floor time
- Practice turn-taking, sharing
- Family routines
- Attachment interventions improve

Front 27

Authoritative Parenting Style

Back 27

• Highly responsive and highly demanding
• Create a positive emotional climate
• Promote autonomy and support assertiveness and individuality
• Setting and enforcing clear standards
• Usually openly affectionate, promote two-way communication, behavioral control
• Associated with positive outcomes: adaptability, competence and achievement, social skills, peer acceptance, low levels of antisocial or aggressive behavior
- Promotes positive self-development—high self esteem and capacity for self-regulation

Front 28

Authoritarian Parenting Style

Back 28

• Low on responsiveness, but highly demanding
• Do not create a positive emotional climate
• Do not encourage individualism, assertiveness
• Assert considerable control, maturity demands, requiring conformity to rules
• Communicate less effectively: more one-sided, less likely to provide explanations
• Express less affection, more restrictive psychological control

Outcomes: children are more irritable and conflicted, more signs of anxiety and anger; are self-controlled, but not socially skillful. More likely to be bullied. Low self-esteem, may lack self-regulation.

Front 29

Permissive Parenting Style

Back 29

• Moderate to highly responsive, but low on demandingness
• Exercise less behavioral control, fewer maturity demands, neglect to socialized
• More nurturing and affectionate than authoritarian, but not usually as nurturing as authoritative parents

Outcomes: uncontrolled, impulsive behavior, low levels of self-reliance. High levels of aggression.

Front 30

Neglecting-Uninvolved Parenting Style

Back 30

• Low on responsiveness and demandingness
• Invest little time or attention in a child, parent-centered concerns
• Neglect to socialize, express less affection and not likely to be responsive to child’s needs.
• May express hostility or negative attributions.
• When assert control, use power assertive techniques and little explanation.

Outcomes: Impulsive, high rates of both externalizing (e.g., aggression) and internalizing problems, low self-esteem

Front 31

Parenting Practices: Methods of Control - Power Assertion

Back 31

Can involve physical punishment or threat of it (ranging from mild to severe)
• Withdrawal of privileges (mild to severe)
• Usually effective for immediate control of behavior
• Harsh/severe power control has been associated with high levels of anger, anxiety, and aggression
• Not usually effective in promoting self-regulation
• Milder forms are more effective than harsher
• Frequently used by authoritarian parents

Front 32

Parenting Practices: Methods of Control - Love withdrawal

Back 32

Withdrawing attention or affection, expressing disappointment, turning away, separating, cutting off verbal or emotional contact
• Generates high anxiety, more effective in immediate compliance than any other method
• Compliance is short-term
• Typical in parents who exert psychological control

Front 33

Parenting Practices: Methods of Control - Induction

Back 33

Use of explanation, gives reasons for rules, appealing to children’s desires to be grown-up, “other oriented” explanations
• Most effective way to internalize rules—self-regulation in other settings away from parents
• Authoritative parents

Front 34

Moderators of Parenting and Parenting Effectiveness

Back 34

• Shared biological inheritance may account for findings in parenting research
• Most researchers take a multidimensional approach: parenting, genetics, child temperament, and other factors all contribute to child outcomes

Front 35

How a child’s temperament can affect parenting:

Back 35

Examples: (Parents are)
• More directive with dependent children
• More likely to command or ignore more aggressive children
• More likely to help or reward depressive children
• More power assertive with socially unresponsive children
• More inductive behaviors with responsive children

Adults’ reactions are moderated by characteristics/behavior of child

Front 36

Differential Susceptibility

Back 36

• Children show differential susceptibility to different rearing approaches depending on early temperament characteristics.
• Difficult, negative reactive infants and toddlers are more affected by parenting style
• Example: With aggressive children, insensitive, negative parent behaviors appear to increase proneness to aggression. Whereas positive discipline decreases this proneness to aggression

Front 37

Bradley & Corwyn, 2007 article: Overview

Back 37

• Differential Susceptibility Hypothesis pertaining to infant temperament, parenting, and behavior problems in the first grade.
• Focused on 3 aspects of parenting: harshness, sensitivity and productive activity
• Results showed stronger relations between maternal sensitivity and behavior problems for children with difficult temperaments. Likewise, relations between opportunities for productivity and behavior problems were stronger for children with difficult temperaments.
• Conclusions: Having access to experiences that promote coping and build self-regulatory capacities seems particularly valuable for children with difficult temperaments.

Front 38

Bradley & Corwyn, 2007 article: Discussion Points

Back 38

• When it comes to manifesting externalizing behavior, children with difficult temperaments were more affected by the kinds of parenting they received than children with average and easy temperaments.
• Having opportunities for productive activity was associated with a significant reduction in externalizing behavior problems for children with difficult and average temperaments, but not for children with easy temperaments.
• Children with difficult temperaments, because they struggle with internal regulation, appear more amenable to assistance with regulation from outside, be it in the form of direct assistance with coping (e.g. parental sensitivity) or in the form of experiences that promote self-regulatory capacities and positive affect (e.g., opportunity for productive activity)

Front 39

Physical Punishment

Back 39

• Generally, has been associated with externalizing, aggressive outcomes—even hitting, spanking
• Spanking is associated with later aggression—regardless of ethnicity, SES, caregiver warmth, child’s gender
• May vary somewhat by culture
- European American, African American, Mexican American—may be some differences
• What is child’s interpretation of this harsh discipline?
• Parental warmth and responsiveness may moderate effects of physical/harsh punishment

Front 40

Effective Ways to Use Time-Out

Back 40

• Involves mild power assertion
• Suitable for use with toddlers and preschoolers
• Choose a place that separate, but within calling distance, not overly isolated
• Explain to child what led to time-out, why unacceptable and what alternative behaviors would be acceptable
• Children should know rules in advance
• Positive attention for appropriate behaviors
• Eliminate toys, TV, attention from others
• Praise child for staying in time-out
• 1-2 minutes per year of age
• Immediacy, consistency are essential

Front 41

Conscience: The Beginnings of a Moral Self

Back 41

• As early as age two children begin to show early signs of self-control and distress if a standard is violated
- Often show “committed compliance” – eagerness to comply with parents’ requests
- Tend to comfort others in distress
• Parents’ warmth and responsiveness promotes promotes self-control and the development of concern for others.

Front 42

Internalization

Back 42

Process by which children adopt adults’ standards and rules as their own

Front 43

Conscience

Back 43

Feelings of discomfort or distress when rules are violated

Front 44

Anxious Arousal

Back 44

Caused by parents' discipline - helps child pay attention, and try to understand and remember "socialization message"
• Mild power assertion is more effective for long-term internalization of rules than harsh power assertion - Minimum Sufficiency Principle
• Induction is helpful for internalization because children are more likely to remember rules that understand.

Front 45

Committed Compliance

Back 45

Willingness to go along with parents' request - predictive of internalization and conscience in later preschool.
• (Kochanske, 1995): Highly fearful children show most committed compliance if mothers use gentle discipline - harsh discipline was not effective.