Developmental Psychology Module 3 Study Guide Flashcards

Question

hormones and brain functioning

Answer 1

- Organizing influences - Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) - Autosomal recessive - Enzyme deficiency - Reduced cortisol - Prenatal overproduction of testosterone - Parental contribution

Answer 2

- Recruited 5-year-old girls wth mild CAH and matched controls - 7 with mild - 19 wth severe - 26 control (match siblings of children who had CAH) - Videotapes free play at home - 7 minutes at home - 7 minutes with parents -Materials=Toys - 4 female toys- e.g., Barbie & Ken, tea set - 4 male toys- e.g, bug, ninja - 4 neutral toys- manga-doodle, deck of cards - Dependent variable=number of seconds they interact with toy - Participant variable: CAH mild, CAH severe, control - Type of play: alone, wth parent - Type of tpy: female, male, neutral - Masculine toys were more popular overall - In mild CAH, they played less in feminine toys alone condition and with parents than with masculine toys - In severe CAH, they don’t touch the (fe)(?)male toys - We might see parental or organizational differences or child identifying as something - Everyone likes masculine toys but the control girls like it less than girls with severe CAH

Answer 3

- Research Questions: How do girls with CAH compare to other children in their preferences - Children ages 4-11 (n=152) - Children with CAH - 43 girls and 37 boys - Control children included unaffected siblings and first cousins - To provide similarity in background factors (n=41 unaffected females and 31=unaffected males) - Forced choice: Which do you like better, this pink or blue, this car or this doll

Answer 4

- Different temperamental or dispositional qualities - Proximity first and then like characteristics

Answer 5

- Level of validation and support - How to properly behave/build social skills - Feed social goal (need to belong to group) - Buffer you from other things happening in world

Answer 6

- Psychological models: - Selection = individual characteristics = social control - Friends play no/little role in children;s behavior - Personal disposition and/or family - Select friends similar to oneself - Socialization = peer influence = social facilitation - Friends play a casual role in children’s behavior

Answer 7

- 1,278 studied American middle schoolers (78% European) - M = 12 year's at wave 1 (6th grade), M = 14 year's @ wave 2 (8th grade) - Interested in academic achievement - Selection, socialization, parental monitoring - Measures 6th and 8th grade - 3 best friends nomination - Academic achievement - School engagement - Problem behavior - Parental monitoring - Selection: If the friendship selection model explains children’s academic achievement, how should friends’ behavior be related to academic achievement? - Socialization: If the friendship socialization model explains children’s academic achievement, how should friends’ behavior be related to academic achievement? - Not much change for boys: high academic achievement boys are high academic achievement despite their friends, etc. - Significant change for girls: high-achieving girls with high-achieving friends get higher achieving, if you’re low-achieving and have friends with high achievement, there is a decline in academic performance. The moderate didn’t have a significant interaction - Why? Girls are engaging in social comparison, and boys are not doing that, so that is why there is that difference - Fixed and growth mindsets amongst boys and girls

Answer 8

If the **friendship selection model** explains children’s academic achievement, it means that children **choose friends who are similar to themselves** in academic motivation and performance. In this case: * **Friends’ behavior should correlate with academic achievement** because children are selecting peers who already exhibit similar academic behaviors or attitudes. * For example, high-achieving students would tend to **befriend other high-achieving students**, and low-achieving students would form friendships with peers who also struggle academically. * Thus, the **association between friends’ behavior and academic achievement would reflect pre-existing similarities**, not influence or causation. In short: under the friendship selection model, children’s friends behave similarly **because of who they choose to befriend**, not because of the influence of those friends. Would you like a comparison with the socialization model as well?

Answer 9

If the **friendship socialization model** explains children’s academic achievement, then **friends' behavior should influence or predict changes in a child's academic performance over time**. Specifically: * Children would adopt behaviors, attitudes, and values modeled by their friends. * If a child’s friends are academically engaged, hardworking, or value education, the child is likely to show **improved academic achievement**. * Conversely, if a child’s friends are disengaged or show negative academic behaviors (e.g., skipping homework, low motivation), the child’s academic performance may **decline**. In short, **friends’ behaviors should be positively or negatively correlated with changes in a child’s academic achievement**, depending on the nature of those behaviors. Would you like a comparison to the selection model as well?

Answer 10

- Cliques: Peer groups are voluntarily formed or joined - Members share similarities - Emerge in Middle childhood - Decrease in late adolescence - Crowds: adolescents with similar stereotyped reputations - Membership is assigned by peer-group consensus - Gangs: loosely organized groups of adolescents or young adults - Identify as a group - Often engage in illegal activities - Impose a negative peer-group influence

Answer 11

Children are embedded in social systems, and how are they influenced by them

Answer 12

- data base - memory storage - acquired rules - social schemes - social knowledge 1.) encoding of cues- both internal and external 2.) interpretation of cues - casual attributions - intent attributions - other interpretive processes - evaluation of goal attainment - evaluation of past performance - self-evaluations - other-evalutions 3.) clarification goals - arousal regulation 4.) response, access, or construction 5.) response decision - response evaluation - outcome expectations - self-efficacy evaluations - response selection 6.) behavioral enactment 7.) peer evaluation and response 2 effects 1, 5 effects 4, 7 effects 6 and 1 data base effects all of them and all of them effect data base

Answer 13

Hertup (1989), Hollos (1975), Selman’s Stage Theory of Role Taking,

Answer 14

- Vertical social relationships: caregiver-child - Inherently unequal is social power. We learn from them, and they protect us - Horizontal social relationships: peers - Inherently more equal. Learn how to get along in groups, cooperation, and competition

Answer 15

- Is peer contact related to social perspective taking? - 3 age groups of children: 7, 8, and 9-year-olds - 3 groups of locations: farm (bus into school 3 days a week and go home after school is over), village (went to school 3-5 days a week and after school they interacted with peers or families), town (population bigger than village) - 2 countries: Norway + Hungary Measures: - 6 Logical Operations Tasks (Piagetian Tasks) - 4 Social Perspective Tasks - (3 mountain, communication accuracy (story), role taking (picture order), pronoun use) - Results: - Logical Operations- Developmental Trend - Social Perspective Taking- Related to Location - Overall take-home message: town, village, or farm is associated with their levels of perspective taking. Setting doesn’t matter a great deal for cognitive development, but for social development, peers who interact more often with others can influence their perspective taking.

Answer 16

- Role-taking behavior promotes perspective-taking - Selman (1989) Role Taking - Ability to adopt the perspective of another persona and think about something from another’s point of view - Young children (preschool) - Level 0- Undifferentiated Perspective Taking (3-6 years) - Recognize that self and others have different thoughts, but frequently confuse perspectives - Confusion between objective (physical) + subjective (psychological) - Level 1- Social Informational (4-9 years) - Clear differentiation between a person’s physical + psychological characteristics - Subjective states thought to be directly observable -Level 2- Reciprocal- Self-Reflective (7-12) - Take a 2nd person perspective on self-thoughts and actions Realization others can take the 2nd person perspective - Level 3- Mutual- Third Party (10-15) -Think about their own and others perspectives from 3rd pov - Level 4- Societal (14 years+) - “Generalized other”, social values

Answer 17

- the ability to - Achieve personal goals in social interactions - While simultaneously maintaining positive social relationships (Siegler et al, 2020)

Answer 18

- Sociometric Status measures peer acceptance - Survey each person, “How much do you want to play with this person in your classroom?” - A measurement that reflects the degree to which children are liked or disliked by their peers as a group - Classifies children into one of five groups: - Popular - Rejected - Neglected - Average - Controversial - Sociometric Categories for Peer Ratings - Popular: Highly liked, accepted, highly impactful - Rejected: Low in acceptance and preference, high in impact - Neglected: Low in social impact; not liked or disliked by peers; unnoticed - Average: Moderately impactful; moderate acceptance - Controversial: High in impact; average in preference. Mixed acceptance

Answer 19

Children's sociometric status, or how they are perceived within their peer group, is shaped by a variety of factors, including individual characteristics, social interactions, and environmental influences. These factors contribute to a child's acceptance, rejection, or neglect by their peers, influencing their social development and well-being. Here's a more detailed look at the factors influencing sociometric status: 1. Individual Characteristics: Social skills: Children with strong social skills, like the ability to communicate effectively, show empathy, and resolve conflicts peacefully, tend to be more accepted by their peers. Cognitive abilities: Intellectual abilities can play a role, as children who excel academically may be seen as more desirable by their peers. Emotional intelligence: Children who can understand and manage their emotions, as well as the emotions of others, tend to have better social relationships. Physical appearance: While not always a primary factor, physical attractiveness can influence how children are perceived, sometimes leading to increased popularity or negative stereotypes. Behavior: Aggressive or withdrawn behaviors can negatively impact a child's sociometric status, leading to rejection from peers. 2. Social Interactions: Peer interactions: . The quality of a child's interactions with peers, including the frequency, nature, and outcomes of those interactions, strongly influences their social status. Friendships: . Having strong, positive friendships can boost a child's sociometric status, while lack of friendships or negative interactions can negatively impact it. Social support: . Children with strong social networks, including support from family and teachers, are more likely to have positive social outcomes. 3. Environmental Factors: Family environment: . A supportive and nurturing family environment can foster social competence and positive peer relationships, while negative family dynamics, such as conflict or neglect, can negatively impact a child's social development. Parenting styles: . Parenting styles, particularly those that are warm, responsive, and authoritative, can influence a child's social skills and relationships. School environment: . The quality of the school environment, including teacher-student relationships and classroom dynamics, can impact a child's social status. Socioeconomic status (SES): . A child's SES can influence their access to resources and opportunities that support their social development, potentially impacting their sociometric status. 4. Sociometric Assessment: Peer nomination: . Children are asked to nominate classmates they like most and least, allowing researchers to categorize them into sociometric types. Peer ratings: . Children are asked to rate how much they like or dislike other classmates, often on a numerical scale. Sociometric categories: . Based on nominations and ratings, children are typically classified into five groups: popular, rejected, controversial, neglected, and average.

Answer 20

- if you have the social competence to understand social situations and how peers are reacting, they are more likely to accept you becasue you are acting in a socially acceptable way

Answer 21

- Instrumental Aggression: aggression motivated by the desire to obtain a concrete goal - Hostile Aggression: behavior intended to harm or injure others - Overt Aggression: intending to harm others by overt (observable) behaviors - Relational aggression: intending to harm others by damaging peer relationships - Reactive aggression: emotionally driven, antagonistic aggression sparked by one’s perception that other people’s motives are hostile - Proactive aggression: unemotional aggression aimed at fulfilling a need or desire

Answer 22

aggression motivated by the desire to obtain a concrete goal - (from textbook

Answer 23

behavior intended to harm or injure others - Overt Aggression: intending to harm others by overt (observable) behaviors - Relational aggression: intending to harm others by damaging peer relationships

Answer 24

intending to harm others by overt (observable) behaviors

Answer 25

intending to harm others by damaging peer relationships - a kind of aggression that involves excluding others from the social group and attempting to do harm to other people’s relationships; it includes spreading rumors about peers, withholding friendship to inflict harm, and ignoring peers when angry or frustrated or trying to get one’s own way

Answer 26

emotionally driven, antagonistic aggression sparked by one’s perception that other people’s motives are hostile

Answer 27

unemotional aggression aimed at fulfilling a need or desire

Answer 28

- Dodge and Crick (1994) - Cognitive processes fundamental to social behavior - Children use aggression as a problem-solving strategy - Some children have a hostile attributional bias - Some children have limited strategies - Aggression - Proactive- without provocation - Reactive- with provocation

Answer 29

attributing hostility to others

Answer 30

- Is the child misinterpreting their intent? Then, you can help them with understanding emotions and perspective taking - How many socially interactive behaviors do they have? Do they know how to say please and thank you? Do they have any other strategies?

Answer 31

- 314 Italian Middle School Children - Socioemtric classifications - Peer and teacher rated labels of relational and overt aggression - What do you predict? - Children who are rejected by their peers are the aggressive - Children who are contreversial are second most aggrressive - Children who are Average are rarely overtly aggressive but a little relationally aggressive - Children who are popoualr show low levels of agrressions - Children who are neglected show lower levels ofg aggression - Limited startesiges (Behavior bullies) - Hostile attribution bias (bully victims)

Answer 32

- Do feelings of alienation contribute to the link between peer rejection and aggression? - Alienation - Powerlessness- perceived inability to control outcomes of one’s behavior - Meaninglessness- - Self-estrangement - Normlessness - 121 Dutch Youth (10-13 years) - 2 weeks before experiment was completed - Alienation measure: “I often feel left out of things that others are doing” - Experiment: Cover story: Internet content “survivor” allegedly evaluated by panel of peers from different school - Complete personal profile- for judges to learn about them - Following personal details: 5 minutes to look over evaluation feedback - IV: 2 Conditions - 1. Approval: 3 positive statements, 1 neutral - 2. rejection: 3 negative, 1 neutral - DV: Aggression (Composite Schore Created) - Influence $ judges would allegedly receive - Post comments on judges on the “internet survivor” site - Less aggression in the approval condition than in the rejection condition - Regardless of rejection condition, you feel more than average aggression when you get rejection feedback and less than average aggression when you experience rejection feedback - If you feel like you are not connected with yourself or world and you get rejection feedback, you are much more likely to feel aggression

Answer 33

- Pew Research Center (Parenting in America Today) - Parenting: How do parents reach their goals for their children? - Discipline: The ste of strategies and behaviors parents use to teach children how to behave appropriately - Internalization: effective discipline that leads to a permanent change in a child’s behavior - Conscience: an internal regulatory mechanism that increases the individual’s ability to conform to the standards of conduct accepted in their culture - Punishment: a negative stimulus that follows a behavior to reduce the likelihood that the behavior will occur

Answer 34

- The set of strategies and behaviors parents use to teach children how to behave appropriately

Answer 35

- Internalization: effective discipline that leads to a permanent change in a child’s behavior - Conscience: an internal regulatory mechanism that increases the individual’s ability to conform to the standards of conduct accepted in their culture

Answer 36

- an internal regulatory mechanism that increases the individual’s ability to conform to the standards of conduct accepted in their culture

Answer 37

a negative stimulus that follows a behavior to reduce the likelihood that the behavior will occur

Answer 38

- behaviors and attitudes - create an emotional enviroment in parent-child interactions - Dimensions: Parental responsiveness (warmth) and demandingness (control) - Pioneering research done by Diana Baumrind (1973)m who differentiated four parenting styles - Related to parental warmth and control

Answer 39

- authoritarian - Low warmth - High Control - Strict behavior standards - Little communication - conflict irritable - High negative emotion - Anxious - withdrawn

Answer 40

- authoritative - High warmth - High control - Sets limits - Communicates - children profile under this - Energetic friendly - High potisice emotion - Sociable - cooperative

Answer 41

- permissive - High warmth - Low control - High nurturance and communication - Little discipline, guidance - child profile under this - High positive - High negative - Dominant - aggressive

Answer 42

- low warmth - low control

Answer 43

- 2000+ 14 & 18 year olds California and Wisconsin teens - Surveyed twice: 1 year apart - Parenting -Acceptance/Involvement -Strictness/Siupervision -Grouped -Authoritative - Authoriatarian -PErmissive - Neglectful - Self-report - ACADEMIC COMPETENCE - DELIQUNECY - SCHOOL ORIENTATION - SOMATIC SYMPTOMS- fatigue, stomach ache, energy - Parenting - Authoritative - Authoritrian - Permissive - Neglectful - Outcome -Academic Competence - Deliquency - School Orientation - Somatic Symptoms - Main Effect of - Style - Parenting style associated with academic compentenceiies - Interactions with ethnicity - European American - Higher competence: -Authoritative - Lower competence: - Authoritatriam -Hispanic America -Higher competenceL -Authoritative -Lower: neglectful -Asian American - HIgher competence: authoritarian - African Ameerican -Parenting style was unrelated to academic competence - School Orientation - Main Effect -Style - Change - More change in neglectful - Deliquency - Main effect - Style - Change - More change in neglectful - Somatic Symptoms - Indulgent: have very low somatic symptoms - Main effect - Change - More change in authoritarian and neglectful

Answer 44

- Bidirectional association between self-regulation and parenting styles in early adolescence - 473- 11-16 year olds (at time 1) -Sampled twice- over 1 year -70% European american -13% african american -17% mixed/biracial/other -Does parenting predict adolescent self regulation? -Does adolescent self-regulation predict parenting> -Adolescents report parenting style if both mothers and fathers -Authoritative -Authoritarian -Permissive -Authoratative Parenting Style -European youth are more likely to endorse authoritative parenting than African -American & Mixed/Biracial Youth -Authoritarian -Stability -African American & Mixed/Biracial youth are more likely to endorse authoritarian parenting than European

Answer 45

- No bidirectional effects (children who are stable produce authoritative parenting) - European youth are more likely to endorse authoritative parenting than African American & Middle/Biracial Youth - Authoritarian Parenting Style - Bidirectional between adolescents and mothers only - Time 1: High Maternal Authroitarian -Predicts descreases in - Time 2: Self Regulation - Time 1: High Self Regulation - Predicts a decrease in

Answer 46

- Permissive Parenting Style - Stability - Bidirectionality - Adolescent - Time 1: Self-Regulation - Predicts - Time 2: Self Regulation - Time 1: Permissive - Predicts -Time 2: Permissive -Time 1: High Self Regulation -PRedicts Decreses in -Time 2: Permissive Indulgent -Time 1: Low Sel REfulatiom -Predicts Increases in -Time 2: Permissive Indulgent - African American & Mixed/Biracial youth are more likely to endorse authoritarian parenting than European American parents

Answer 47

The paper talks about how early prosocial behaviors—such as sharing, helping, and showing empathy—can buffer against academic challenges associated with living in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods. Using a longitudinal sample of over 6,000 children in the United States, the researchers found that children who exhibited higher levels of prosocial behavior in early childhood were less likely to experience declines in academic performance over time, even when they lived in low-SES neighborhoods. This protective effect persisted after controlling for other factors like cognitive ability, parental education, and behavioral problems, suggesting that prosocial traits may support academic resilience by fostering positive peer relationships, greater engagement in school, and cooperative interactions with teachers. The study highlights the importance of promoting prosocial development early in life as a potential intervention target to support educational success in under-resourced communities.

Answer 48

The paper talks about how cultural values and parenting practices interact to shape the development of prosocial behaviors in U.S. Mexican adolescents. Grounded in an integrative socialization framework, the researchers examine the roles of cultural values such as familism and respeto alongside parenting dimensions like warmth, discipline, and monitoring. Using data from a longitudinal sample, the study finds that culturally congruent parenting—particularly when characterized by warmth and strong endorsement of Mexican American cultural values—predicts higher levels of prosocial behaviors, including helping, comforting, and sharing. These associations were especially pronounced for youth who strongly identified with their cultural heritage, suggesting that alignment between cultural values and parenting practices enhances social development. The study highlights the importance of considering both cultural context and family dynamics in understanding how prosocial behaviors emerge and are sustained among ethnic minority youth in the U.S.

Answer 49

This paper talks about how traditional bullying and cyberbullying can affect children. Using data from a large national sample of middle and high school students, the study found that both forms of bullying are associated with negative outcomes such as increased psychological distress (including depression and anxiety), physical health complaints, and decreased academic performance. Notably, victims of cyberbullying reported higher levels of emotional distress compared to those experiencing traditional bullying alone. The authors emphasize the importance of addressing both types of bullying in school-based prevention efforts, highlighting the distinct and overlapping consequences of each.

Answer 50

This paper talks about the long-term effects of childhood bullying. Using data from a longitudinal study, the researchers found that being bullied—as a victim, bully, or bully-victim—has significant negative consequences well into adulthood. These effects include poorer physical and mental health, lower educational attainment, reduced income, greater difficulty maintaining employment, and more trouble with social relationships. Bully-victims—those who were both bullies and victims—fared the worst, showing the most severe adult outcomes. The study emphasizes that bullying is not a harmless part of growing up, but a serious public health issue with long-lasting impacts.

Answer 51

This paper talks about how socialization processes that shape children's beliefs about intelligence. Drawing from surveys and experiments involving parents and their children, the researchers found that children’s mindsets—whether they view intelligence as fixed or malleable—are not significantly predicted by their parents’ own beliefs about intelligence. Instead, the key predictor is how parents view and respond to failure. Parents who see failure as a debilitating experience tend to have children who adopt a fixed mindset, while those who view failure as a valuable learning opportunity are more likely to raise children with growth mindsets. Importantly, this relationship holds even when parents explicitly endorse a growth mindset about intelligence, suggesting that their implicit messages—conveyed through reactions to their children's setbacks—play a more powerful role. The study underscores the critical role of parental responses to failure in fostering children’s motivation and resilience in learning contexts.

Answer 52

This paper talks about how adolescents’ perceptions of their family relationships influence the development of problem behavior over time. Using a longitudinal design with a diverse sample of over 1,300 adolescents, the researchers found that lower perceived parental warmth and higher intrusiveness in 7th grade predicted greater unsupervised socializing and associations with negatively influential peers in 8th grade. These peer dynamics, in turn, significantly predicted increased problem behaviors by 11th grade. Early problem behavior in 7th grade also contributed to later behavior issues, both directly and through its effect on peer relationships. While the study examined gender and racial differences, the overall pathways from family perceptions to peer context to behavior outcomes were largely consistent across groups, emphasizing the critical role of early family interactions in shaping adolescent behavior trajectories.

Answer 53

This paper talks about how neighborhood dynamics influence parenting practices and, subsequently, early adolescents' antisocial behaviors.Conducted in a midsize Italian city, the research involved 952 parents and 1,147 students from five middle schools.Utilizing structural equation modeling, the study found that higher neighborhood social capital—characterized by supportive neighbor relationships and a positive social climate—was associated with reduced parental safety concerns and enhanced parenting behaviors, specifically increased support and solicitation. Interestingly, while safety concerns were positively linked to proactive parenting behaviors, both social capital and safety concerns indirectly impacted adolescents' antisocial behavior through their influence on parenting practices. The findings underscore the pivotal role of community context in shaping parenting strategies and, by extension, adolescent behavioral outcomes, suggesting that bolstering neighborhood social capital and addressing safety perceptions could be effective avenues for interventions aimed at reducing youth antisocial behaviors.

Answer 54

which proposes that those children who already have good social skills benefit from the Internet and related forms of technology when it comes to developing friendships (Khan et al., 2016; Schneider, 2016). In support of the rich-get-richer hypothesis, a study of Palestinian teens found that individuals with lots of friends in their offline lives tended to have large online social networks as well (Abbas & Mesch, 2018). Moreover, people who were better adjusted at ages 13 to 14 use social networking more at ages 20 to 22 and exhibit a similarity in their online and offline social competence

Answer 55

which argues that social media may be especially beneficial for lonely, depressed, and socially anxious adolescents (McKenna & Bargh, 1998). Specifically, because they can take their time thinking about and revising what they say and reveal in their messages, these adolescents may be more likely to make personal disclosures online than offline, which eventually fosters the formation of new friendships. Lonely and socially anxious teens seem to prefer online communication over face-to-face communication

Answer 56

-Interactions between friends are characterized by reciprocities; that is, friends have mutual regard for one another, exhibit give-and-take in their behavior (such as cooperation and negotiation), and benefit in comparable ways from their social exchanges. -influenced by culture and race

Answer 57

- which argues that social media may be especially beneficial for lonely, depressed, and socially anxious adolescents. Specifically, because they can take their time thinking about and revising what they say and reveal in their messages, these adolescents may be more likely to make personal disclosures online than offline, which eventually fosters the formation of new friendships. Lonely and socially anxious teens seem to prefer online communication over face-to-face communication (Pierce, 2009). Evidence also suggests that adolescents with high levels of depressive symptoms use online communication to make friends and to express their feelings (Hwang, Cheong, & Feeley, 2009), and that such use is associated with less depression for adolescents with low-quality best friend relationships (Selfhout et al., 2009). - oreover, people who were better adjusted at ages 13 to 14 use social networking more at ages 20 to 22 and exhibit a similarity in their online and offline social competence (e.g., in peer relationships, friendship quality, adjustment; Mikami et al., 2010). By contrast, in a study of children aged 10 to 18, researchers found that those who are shy or withdrawn tend to inappropriately vent anger online, which impairs further interactions with peers (Laghi et al., 2013). Thus, socially competent people may benefit most from the Internet because they are more likely to interact in appropriate and positive ways when engaged in social networking.

Answer 58

- In one study that demonstrated this effect, 10- and 11-year-olds reported on their negative experiences over a 4-day period, indicating shortly after each bad experience how they felt about themselves and whether or not a best friend had been present during each episode. The researchers also recorded the children’s cortisol levels multiple times each day, as a measure of the children’s stress reactions. The study showed that when a best friend was not present, the more negative children’s everyday experiences were, the greater the increase in their cortisol levels and the greater the decline in their sense of self-worth following each experience (Adams, Santo, & Bukowski, 2011). In contrast, when a best friend was present, there was less change in cortisol response and in the child’s self-worth due to negative experiences. - Thus, having a best friend in preadolescence relates not only to positive social outcomes in middle childhood but also to self-perceived competence and adjustment in adulthood. - When assessing the impact of friendships, it can be difficult to determine who is influencing whom. The peer socialization hypothesis argues that adolescents adapt their behaviors based on peer influences; in other words, peers lead an individual adolescent to change their behavior. - However, the peer selection hypothesis posits that these behavioral similarities exist because adolescents actively choose friends who engage in the same behaviors that they do. Longitudinal studies are needed to truly tease apart the direction of effect.

Answer 59

- peers are similar to one another because adolescents adapt their behavior to be more like their influential peers

Answer 60

- peers are similar to one another because adolescents choose friends who are similar to them and engage in the same behaviors they do

Answer 61

- may work together to explain why friends tend to have similar levels of aggression and problem behavior. Aggressive and disruptive children may gravitate toward (select) peers who are similar to themselves in temperament, preferred activities, or attitudes, thereby taking an active role in creating their own peer group (Knecht et al., 2010).

Answer 62

- 4 possible models - Good relationships reinforce one another - BUFFERS EFFECT OF GOOD PARENT RELATIONSHIP IS STRONGER FOR ADOLESCENTS WITH POSITIVE FRIEND RELATIONSHIPS - AND THE PROTECTIVE EFFECT OF GOOD FRIENDSHIPS IS STRONGER FOR ADOLESCENTS WITH POSITIVE PARENT RELATIONSHIPS -“Toxic Friend Model” - A close friend does not mean a beneficial friend - Friends may encourage less effective coping and/or deviant behavior -Compensation Model - A close friend may compensate for a poor parental relationship - Additive Model - Relationships with friends are independent from relationships with parents. -Inter-individual -Intra-individual -Participants: 1297 Dutch adolescents - 79% Dutch, 2.6% Surinam - Measure: Depressive moods over 6 months - Parent-Adolescent Relationship Quality - Friendship Quality -Reinforcement and Additive Model - Rich get richer: parents and peer reinfrocenment to promote positive outcomes - The protective effect of a good parent-relationship is stronger for adolescents with positive friendships - Stronger effect of peers when good parenting - Best outcome here: good quality parents and good quality peers - Stronger: the association of parent conflict and mood was stronger when friend conflict was low than high - Reinforcement of positive outcomes: good friends reinforce positive parents - Compensation Model - Peer protection: Peer protects from negative outcomes when parent relationships are poor Stronger effects of peers when parenting is poor - Parental satisfaction: good outcome when positive peer (peer conflict is low),poor parental satisfaction

Answer 63

- Adolescents tend to have friends who engage in the same levels of alcohol and substance use as they do, and evidence suggests that both peer socialization and peer selection processes may explain this tendency (Trucco, 2020). A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies on the influence of peers and substance use found that peer substance use predicts changes in an adolescent’s own substance use over time (Watts et al., 2023), supporting the peer socialization hypothesis. Other studies have found both processes at work: a study of 12- to 19-year-olds who report occasionally heavy alcohol or marijuana use found that peer substance use led these adolescents to engage in heavier use 6 months later, and that their higher level of substance use also led their peers to further elevate these behaviors (or led them to select new friends who had engaged in the same elevated levels of behavior; Becker et al., 2019).

Answer 64

- The extent to which friends’ use of drugs and alcohol may put individuals at risk for use themselves seems to depend, in part, on the nature of the adolescent–parent relationship. Adolescents with substance-using close friends are at risk primarily if those adolescents’ parents are uninvolved — low in warmth and low in control and monitoring (Kiesner, Poulin, & Dishion, 2010). If the adolescents’ parents are authoritative in their parenting — high in control but also high in warmth (see Chapter 12) — those adolescents are more likely to be protected against peer pressure to use drugs. If the adolescents’ parents are more authoritarian — high in control but low in warmth — those adolescents are more susceptible to peers’ drug use and thus to using drugs themselves (Mounts, 2002). Consistent with Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model (see Chapter 9), bullying behavior is influenced by a range of individual, home, school, neighborhood, and societal factors (Swearer & Hymel, 2015). Children who are bullies tend to be callous and antisocial, susceptible to peer pressure, higher in social status (Swearer & Hymel, 2015), and they tend to have harsh and insensitive parents (Rodkin et al., 2015).

Answer 65

repeated and intentional harassment or mistreatment of an individual via digital devices such as smartphones, computers, and tablets

Answer 66

- Researchers speculate that these children may have developed hostile attributional biases as a result of being bullied and that such biases make them more likely to act aggressively toward others in the future whom they suspect may harm them (Lereya et al., 2015).

Answer 67

- Many children engage in social bullying behaviors that are known as relational aggression, such as excluding others from the group, withholding friendship to inflict harm, and spreading rumors to ruin a peer’s reputation. Unlike physical aggression, which harms the child physically and perhaps emotionally, relational aggression is aimed at damaging the child’s peer relationships. It is particularly common among popular children and adolescents (Casper, Card, & Barlow, 2020; Hoff et al., 2009). Relational aggression is more common among children and adolescents whose parents do not monitor their activities and who have friends or siblings who engage in problem behaviors (Aizpitarte et al., 2019).

Answer 68

As discussed in Chapter 10, girls are also more likely than boys to co-ruminate with their close friends, that is, to extensively discuss problems and negative thoughts and feelings (Smith & Rose, 2011; see Box 10.4). Compared with boys, girls who are socially anxious or depressed seem more susceptible to the anxiety or depression of their friends. Unfortunately, while providing support, a co-ruminating anxious or depressed friend may also reinforce the other friend’s anxiety or depression, especially in young adolescent girls.

Answer 69

Help: emotional support and acceptance Harm: delinquency and co-rumination

Answer 70

voluntary behavior intended to benefit another, such as helping, sharing with, and comforting others

Answer 71

- Empathy- children must be able to identify the emotions of others (at least to some degree) and understand that another person is feeling an emotion or is in some kind of need. - Sympathy- a feeling of concern for another in response to the other’s emotional state or condition. - Although sympathy often is an outcome of empathizing with another’s negative emotion or negative situation, what distinguishes sympathy from empathy is the element of concern: people who experience sympathy for another person are not merely feeling the same emotion as the other person.

Answer 72

- Although early theorists such as Piaget believed that children are unable to do this until age 6 or 7 (Piaget & Inhelder, 1956/1977), it is now clear that children have some ability to understand others’ perspectives much earlier. - By 14 months: children become emotionally distressed when they see other people who are upset and express verbal and nonverbal concern for an adult who has been hurt. - These studies suggest that children feel empathy and sympathy by the second year of life. - By 18 to 25 months: toddlers in laboratory studies sometimes share a personal object with an adult whom they have seen being harmed by another (e.g., by having a piece of personal property taken away or destroyed). They also sometimes comfort an adult who appears to be injured or distressed or help an adult retrieve a dropped object or obtain food. - Such behaviors are especially likely to occur if the adult explicitly and emotionally communicates a need (Brownell, Svetlova, & Nichols, 2009), but they sometimes occur even when the adult does not express an emotional reaction - In the second to fourth years of life: some types of prosocial behaviors increase, while others decrease. In one laboratory study in Ontario, Canada, 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds were equally likely to help an adult get something that was out of reach (Dunfield & Kuhlmeier, 2013; see Figure 14.5). There were no statistically significant age differences for sharing stickers or food with an adult who did not have any. However, 3- and 4-year-olds were much more likely than 2-year-olds to provide assistance or verbal reassurance to adults who were emotionally distressed because they had broken a toy or hurt themselves. This finding suggests that young children may not be able to act on their feelings of sympathy when others are distressed until they reach age 3, in part because that is the age at which they begin to understand social norms (Tomasello & Vaish, 2013).

Answer 73

- In support of the view that humans have evolved to be prosocial, researchers at the University of British Columbia have shown that 2-year-olds are happier when giving treats to others than when taking treats for themselves. - Genetic factors do contribute to individual differences in these characteristics (e.g., Waldman et al., 2011). In studies with adults, twins’ reports of their own empathy and prosocial behavior are considerably more similar for identical twins than for fraternal twins (Gregory et al., 2009; Knafo & Israel, 2010). - On the basis of heritability estimates derived from this study, it appears that the role of genetic factors in the children’s prosocial concerns for others and in their prosocial behavior increases with age (Knafo et al., 2008). (See Chapter 3 for more on heritability.)

Answer 74

One likely path is through differences in temperament. For instance, differences in children’s ability to regulate emotion are related to their empathy and sympathy. Children who tend to experience emotion without getting overwhelmed by it are especially likely to experience sympathy and to act prosocially (Eisenberg et al., 2007; Trommsdorff, Friedlmeier, & Mayer, 2007). Moreover, children who are not responsive to others’ emotions or who are too inhibited to help others may be relatively unlikely to act prosocially (Liew et al., 2011). Regulation is also related to children’s theory of mind (see Chapter 7), and theory of mind predicts children’s prosocial behavior (Caputi et al., 2012). Thus, the effect of heredity on sympathy and prosocial behavior might involve individual differences in social cognition as well as in temperament.

Answer 75

1) by modeling and teaching prosocial behavior (2) by arranging opportunities for their children to engage in prosocial behavior (3) by disciplining their children and eliciting prosocial behavior from them - Parents also communicate and reinforce cultural beliefs about the value of prosocial behavior (see Box 14.1).

Answer 76

Similarly, preschoolers in China and the Netherlands both felt happy after sharing with or helping a stranger, which researchers have called the warm glow effect of prosocial behavior (Song, Broekhuizen, & Dubas, 2020). This “warm glow” provides positive reinforcement of children’s prosocial behavior, which in turn makes it more likely they will behave prosocially in the future.

Answer 77

- Thus, the values parents convey to their children may influence not only whether children are prosocial but also toward whom they are prosocial. - In laboratory studies, when elementary school children heard adults explicitly point out the positive consequences of prosocial actions for others (e.g., “Poor children … would be so happy and excited if they could buy food and toys”), they were more likely to donate money anonymously to help other people. - High levels of prosocial behavior and sympathy in children tend to be associated with constructive and supportive parenting, including authoritative parenting. - In contrast, a parenting style that involves physical punishment, threats, and an authoritarian approach (see Chapter 12) tends to be associated with a lack of sympathy and prosocial behavior in children and adolescents (Houltberg et al., 2014; Laible et al., 2008). - Children are motivated to do nice things for their friends, both because they care about them and because doing so increases the likelihood that those friends will do nice things for them in return.

Answer 78

Primary prevention is universal and thus aimed at all children and staff in a school. Posters that clearly state behavioral expectations are displayed around the school and are aimed directly at the students; an example of a common PBIS poster message is “Be Safe; Be Responsible; Be Respectful.” School staff, including teachers, are trained to model appropriate behavior and to praise children when they behave appropriately. This level of the intervention is aimed at preventing problem behaviors from occurring in the first place and increasing the likelihood that positive behaviors will be repeated (Sugai & Horner, 2006). - a program targeting all individuals in a particular setting (e.g., a school) in order to prevent the occurrence of a problematic behavior or condition

Answer 79

Secondary prevention is targeted toward children who are deemed at risk for problem behavior. These children may exhibit problems with attention, self-regulation, or peer interactions that the staff recognize as leading to potential behavior problems. These children are given extra attention and monitoring from staff, who praise them when they engage in appropriate behavior and provide reminders about expected behavior when they do not. This level of intervention is projected to target about 15% of the student population, with the goal of reducing problem behavior (Sugai & Horner, 2006). - a program designed to help individuals at risk for developing a problem or condition, with the goal of preventing the problem or condition

Answer 80

Tertiary intervention is focused on children who consistently engage in inappropriate, aggressive, or antisocial behavior. The school staff create an individualized plan for each student at this level of intervention; the plan may include interactions with school counselors, special education teachers, and other specialists. The goal at this level of intervention is to reduce the frequency and severity of problem behavior (Sugai & Horner, 2006). - a program designed to help individuals who already exhibit a problem or condition

Answer 81

- In the research that motivated Dodge’s theory, elementary school-age children were presented with stories that involved a child who suffers because of another child’s actions, the intentions of which are ambiguous. For example, in one story, as a child is working hard to assemble a puzzle, a peer bumps into the table, scattering the puzzle pieces, and says “Oops.” The children were then asked to imagine themselves as the victim in this scenario and to describe how they would respond and why. Some children interpreted the other child’s knocking into the table as an accident and said that they would simply ignore the event. Others concluded that the peer bumped the table on purpose, and they reported that they would find a way to get even.

Answer 82

Some children have a hostile attributional bias: a general expectation that others are antagonistic to them (Crick & Dodge, 1994; Graham & Hudley, 1994). This bias leads such children to search for evidence of hostile intent on the part of the peer in the previous scenario and to attribute to the peer a desire to harm them. They are likely to conclude that retaliation is the appropriate response to the peer’s behavior. Hostile attributional biases become self-fulfilling prophecies: a child’s aggressive retaliation to the presumed hostile act of a peer elicits counterattacks and rejection by peers, further fueling the child’s belief in the hostility of others. The development of hostile attributional biases does not appear to be specific to a particular cultural group or gender. A large-scale study including a wide range of locations (including cities and towns in China, Colombia, Jordan, Kenya, and Sweden) observed the same pattern: children with hostile attributional biases asserted that they would react aggressively to a provocation (Dodge et al., 2015). - in Dodge’s theory, the tendency to assume that other people’s ambiguous actions stem from hostile intent

Answer 83

- Early harsh parenting predicts social information-processing biases that persist into early adulthood (Pettit et al., 2010). Children who have been physically abused are particularly likely to attribute anger to others, even in neutral situations (Pollak et al., 2000). The experience of physical abuse may heighten children’s sensitivity to anger cues. For example, physically abused children are better at recognizing angry facial expressions than are children who have not experienced abuse, and the speed with which they do so is related to the degree of anger and hostility to which they have been subjected (as reported by their parent; Pollak et al., 2009).

Answer 84

- For instance, when presented hypothetical stories about child–parent situations, the abused children saw anger as a plausible response to positive events, such as a child’s winning a prize at school or helping around the house. A tendency to assume anger in others (even when it is not present), paired with difficulty understanding what might provoke anger in others, is likely to result in a hostile attributional bias.

Answer 85

- One intervention strategy, designed to combat the development of hostile attribution biases, targets social cognitive processes themselves. Fast Track is a multiyear preventive intervention program focused on aggression, targeting high-risk kindergartners with small-group activities, parent training, peer coaching, and other programming (e.g., Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 2002). - This program has shown long-term benefits of decreased aggression through improved social cognitive processing. Children in the program were more likely to assume benign intent on the part of others, responded more competently to social challenges, and viewed aggression as detrimental (Dodge, Godwin, & Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 2013). - These alterations in social information processing were associated with decreased delinquent and criminal behaviors when the children became adults, as well as some improved parenting behaviors for those who became mothers (but not fathers; Rothenberg et al., 2023; Sorensen, Dodge, & Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 2016). - Thus, by directly targeting children’s thinking about social behavior — both their own and others — it may be possible to decrease the likelihood of later antisocial behavior.

Answer 86

- Engaging in talking, taking turns speaking, and listening - Makes questions and suggestions - Learning how to converse with friends - Learning skills to sort and explain to others - Imagination increases through play - At 4, they show real interest in each other's conversations with friends

Answer 87

- defined as disruptive, hostile, or aggressive behavior that violates social norms or rules and that harms or takes advantage of others — from highly publicized cases like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and mass shootings or from everyday incidents of bullying and aggression. disruptive, hostile, or aggressive behavior that violates social norms or rules and that harms or takes advantage of others

Answer 88

- a subcategory of antisocial behavior that involves acts intended to physically or emotionally harm others. behavior aimed at physically or emotionally harming or injuring others

Answer 89

- As we address these issues, the themes of individual differences, nature and nurture, the sociocultural context, and research and children’s welfare will be particularly salient.

Answer 90

- Instances of aggression over desirable possessions, such as toys, occur between infants before 12 months of age — especially behaviors such as trying to tug objects away from each other (Hay, Mundy et al., 2011) — but most do not involve bodily contact such as hitting (Coie & Dodge, 1998). Beginning around 18 months of age, physical aggression such as hitting and pushing — particularly over the possession of objects — is normative in development and increases in frequency until about age 2 or 3 (Alink et al., 2006; Hay, Hurst et al., 2011). Then, with the growth of language skills (see Chapter 6), physical aggression decreases in frequency, and verbal aggression such as insults and taunting increases (Mesman et al., 2009; Miner & Clarke-Stewart, 2008). - Conflict over possessions often is an example of instrumental aggression, that is, aggression motivated by the desire to obtain a concrete goal, such as gaining possession of a toy or getting a better place in line. Preschool children sometimes also use relational aggression (Crick, Casas, & Mosher, 1997), which, as explained in Chapter 13, is intended to harm others by damaging their peer relationships.

Answer 91

- The drop in physical aggression in the preschool years is likely due not only to children’s increasing ability to use verbal and relational aggression but also their developing ability to use language to resolve or pursue conflicts and to control their own emotions and actions (Coie & Dodge, 1998). Overt physical aggression continues to remain low or to decline in frequency for most children during elementary school, although a relatively small number of children — most of them boys (Moffitt & Caspi, 2001; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2004) — develop frequent and serious problems with aggression and antisocial behavior at this age (Campbell et al., 2010; Shaw et al., 2003) or in early adolescence (Xie, Drabick, & Chen, 2011). Whereas aggression in young children is usually instrumental (goal directed), aggression in elementary school children often is hostile, arising from the desire to hurt another person, or is motivated by the need to protect oneself against a perceived threat to self-esteem (Dodge, 1980; Hartup, 1974).

Answer 92

- adolescent violent crime peaks at age 17, when 29% of male adolescents and 12% of female adolescents report committing at least one serious violent offense. As the figure also shows, male adolescents and adults engage in much more violent behavior and crime than do female adolescents and adults - In another study of only girls, relational aggression in childhood was related to subsequent conduct disorders

Answer 93

- is characterized by angry, defiant behavior that is age-inappropriate and persistent (lasting at least 6 months). Children with ODD typically lose their temper easily, arguing with adults and actively defying adults’ requests or rules. They are also prone to blame others for their own mistakes or misbehavior and are often spiteful or vindictive. a disorder characterized by age-inappropriate and persistent displays of angry, defiant, and irritable behaviors

Answer 94

- includes more severe antisocial and aggressive behaviors that inflict pain on others (e.g., bullying, initiating fights, cruelty to animals) or that involve the destruction of property or the violation of the rights of others (e.g., stealing, robberies). Other diagnostic signs of CD include frequently running away from home, staying out all night before age 13 despite parental prohibitions, or being truant from school beginning prior to age 13. a disorder that involves severe antisocial and aggressive behaviors that inflict pain on others or involve destruction of property or denial of the rights of others.

Answer 95

- When a child is diagnosed with two distinct mental disorders, the disorders are said to be comorbid. ODD and CD seem to differ somewhat in their prediction of later problem behaviors: CD has been found to predict primarily behavioral problems in early adulthood, including antisocial behavior, whereas ODD shows stronger prediction of emotional disorders in early adulthood - Several family-, child-, and context-level factors have been found to predict whether a child develops ODD, namely high levels of family conflict, high levels of family stress, parent depression, insecure attachment, and low self-regulation (Lavigne et al., 2019). Preschool predictors of later CD include high-intensity aggression to people and animals, destruction of property, deceitfulness, and problems with peers. - In addition, callous, unemotional traits, which often accompany aggression and conduct disorder (e.g., Keenan et al., 2010), appear to be associated with a delay in cortical maturation in brain areas involved in decision making, morality, and empathy.

Answer 96

- One genetically influenced contributor to aggression is difficult temperament. Children who develop problems with aggression and antisocial behavior tend to exhibit a difficult temperament and a lack of self-regulatory skills from a very early age. - Whether the child becomes aggressive will depend on numerous factors, including experiences in the social world; in other words, nature and nurture both play a role.

Answer 97

-Children’s aggressive behaviors are often in reaction to how they interpret social situations. - For example, aggressive children are more likely to interpret an ambiguous situation — such as a child spilling a drink on them in the cafeteria — as intentional rather than accidental and to think they need to “get back at” that child (Dodge, Lansford, & Dishion, 2006). Correspondingly, when asked to come up with possible solutions to a negative social situation, aggressive children generate fewer options than do nonaggressive children, and those options are more likely to involve aggressive or disruptive behavior. - In part, this is because aggressive children feel more confident of their ability to perform acts of physical and verbal aggression (Barchia & Bussey, 2011), and they expect their aggressive behavior to result in positive outcomes (e.g., getting their way) as well as to reduce negative treatment by others. - reactive aggression- emotionally driven, antagonistic aggression sparked by one’s perception that other people’s motives are hostile - proactive aggression- unemotional aggression aimed at fulfilling a need or desire

Answer 98

- Many children whose parents often use harsh but non-abusive physical punishment are prone to problem behaviors in the early years, aggression in childhood, and criminality in adolescence and adulthood - This is especially true when the parents are cold and punitive in general (Deater-Deckard & Dodge, 1997), when the child does not have an early secure attachment (Kochanska, Barry, et al., 2009; Kochanska & Kim, 2012), and when the child has a difficult temperament and is chronically angry and unregulated. - In an international study, both spanking and yelling were associated with higher levels of aggression in children in six countries — China, India, Italy, Kenya, the Philippines, and Thailand — although this relation was weaker if children viewed such parenting as typical. - That is, children who are high in antisocial behavior, who exhibit psychopathic traits (e.g., are callous, unemotional, manipulative, or remorseless), or who are low in self-regulation tend to elicit harsh parenting (Lansford et al., 2009; Salihovic et al., 2012); in turn, harsh parenting increases the children’s problem behavior. - There is probably a reciprocal relation between children’s behavior and their parents’ punitive discipline. That is, children who are high in antisocial behavior or low in self-regulation tend to elicit harsher parenting. The harsher parenting in turn elicits more problematic behavior from the child, leading to a coercive cycle. - In this pattern, known as a coercive cycle, the aggression of children who are difficult to control may be unintentionally reinforced by parents who, once their efforts to coerce compliance have failed, give in to their children’s fits of temper and demands. - Recall that this indirect effect of a parent’s genes on a child’s behavior is called a passive gene–environment correlation. - Another factor that can increase children’s antisocial behavior is parents’ monitoring of where their children are, whom they are with, and what they are doing. One reason parental monitoring may be important is that it reduces the likelihood that older children and adolescents will associate with deviant, antisocial peers. - Once adolescents begin engaging in aggressive and antisocial behaviors, they become even harder to monitor; parents of antisocial or aggressive youth find that monitoring can lead to such high conflict with their children that they are forced to back off. - Children who are frequently exposed to verbal and physical violence between their parents tend to be more antisocial and aggressive than other children. - One obvious reason is that embattled parents model aggressive behavior for their children. Another is that children whose mothers are physically abused tend to believe that violence is an acceptable, even natural, part of family interactions. - Children are more likely to develop aggressive and antisocial behavior if they are exposed to marital conflict, especially violence. Parents who are in unhappy marriages tend to be withdrawn from and not supportive of their children, which appears to contribute to their children’s problems with adjustment. - Children from low-income families tend to be more antisocial and aggressive than children from more prosperous homes. - One major factor is the greater number of stressors experienced by children in low-income families, including stress in the family (e.g., due to illness, domestic violence, divorce, or legal problems) and neighborhood violence. - Such neighborhoods also lack appropriate mentors, job opportunities, and constructive activities (e.g., clubs and sports) that could engage children and youth and divert them from potential antisocial behavior.

Answer 99

- Members of the larger peer group with whom older children and adolescents socialize may influence aggression even more than their close friends do (Coie & Dodge, 1998). In one study, boys exposed to peers involved in overt antisocial behaviors, such as violence and the use of a weapon, were more than 3 times as likely as other boys to engage in such acts themselves. - At the same time, participating in delinquent activities brings adolescents into contact with more delinquent peers. - However, there are exceptions to this overall pattern that appear to be related to cultural factors. For example, Mexican American immigrant youth who are less acculturated, and therefore more tied to traditional values, appear to be less susceptible to peer pressure toward antisocial behavior than are Mexican American children who are more acculturated.

Answer 100

- For example, under adverse conditions (e.g., chronic stress, negligent or harsh parenting, socioeconomic deprivation), children with particular variants of the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4), the dopamine receptor gene (DRD4), or the MAOA gene (which controls the enzyme that metabolizes serotonin and dopamine) tend to be more aggressive than children with different variants of these genes (Caspi et al., 2002; Conway et al., 2012). By comparison, those same children tend to be less aggressive when they are in a supportive, resource-rich environment (Simons et al., 2011; Simons et al., 2012).

Answer 101

- Communities and governments have long sought ways to reduce youth problem behaviors and increase positive behaviors. Beginning in the late 1800s, organizations such as the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), Boy Scouts of America, Camp Fire Girls, and Girls Scouts of America were established to promote leadership, citizenship, and life skills among youth. While these organizations continue to serve millions of young people throughout the United States, a new generation of services has developed under the mantle of positive youth development. - Interventions that take a positive youth development approach focus attention on youths’ strengths and assets, rather than on their weaknesses and deficits, and work to develop and nurture those strengths and assets (Lerner et al., 2005). The positive youth development approach emphasizes what are known as the Five Cs (Eccles & Gootman, 2002; Lerner et al., 2005): -Competence (skill development in social, academic, cognitive, and vocational domains) -Confidence (self-efficacy and self-worth) -Connection (positive bonds with adults and peers in the community) -Character (integrity and morality) -Caring and compassion (sympathy and empathy for others)

Answer 102

- an approach to youth intervention that focuses on developing and nurturing strengths and assets rather than on correcting weaknesses and deficits

Answer 103

- a strategy for promoting positive youth development that integrates school-based instruction with community involvement in order to promote civic responsibility and enhance learning

Answer 104

- the way in which family members interact through various relationships: parent with child, parent with parent, and sibling with sibling

Answer 105

- the process through which children acquire the values, standards, skills, knowledge, and behaviors that are regarded as appropriate for their present and future roles in their particular culture

Answer 106

- the set of strategies and behaviors parents use to teach children how to behave appropriately

Answer 107

- the process by which children learn and accept the reasons for desired behavior - Internalization occurs best when parents apply the right amount of psychological pressure on children. If parents apply too little pressure, children will discount the parents’ message and do what they (the children) want to do. If parents apply too much pressure, children may comply but only because they feel they are being forced to do so; children then attribute their compliance to an external force (i.e., their parents) rather than internalizing the reason for complying (Maccoby & Martin, 1983). Children in this situation will likely act in desirable ways only when they know there is a risk that they will get caught (and punished) by their parents if they do not comply.

Answer 108

- Reasoning focused on the effects of a behavior on other people, referred to as other-oriented induction, is particularly effective at promoting internalization. For example, if a parent emphasizes that being hit hurts the other child’s body and feelings, the child will begin to understand why it is better not to engage in the original misbehavior. - Added benefit of teaching empathy

Answer 109

- a negative stimulus that follows a behavior to reduce the likelihood that the behavior will occur again - A large body of research indicates that spanking, a form of physical punishment, is not effective at teaching children how to behave and is linked with a range of unintended negative consequences for children (Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016a; see Box 12.2). Other forms of punishment, such as yelling, time-out, taking away privileges, and love withdrawal (withholding affection from a child because of the child’s behavior), have also been found to be ineffective and linked with negative outcomes for children (Gershoff, Grogan-Kaylor et al., 2010), despite the fact that between 20% and 40% of parents report using each of these methods - Spanking does not improve children’s behavior. - Spanking increases children’s risk for a range of negative outcomes. - Spanking is linked with negative outcomes equally across cultural groups.

Answer 110

- a parenting style that is high in demandingness and supportiveness. Authoritative parents set clear standards and limits for their children and are firm about enforcing them; at the same time, they allow their children considerable autonomy within those limits, are attentive and responsive to their children’s concerns and needs, and respect and consider their children’s perspective

Answer 111

- parenting behaviors and attitudes that set the emotional climate in regard to parent–child interactions, such as parental responsiveness and demandingness (1) the degree of parental warmth and responsiveness (2) the degree of parenting control and demandingness

Answer 112

- a parenting style that is high in demandingness and low in responsiveness. Authoritarian parents are nonresponsive to their children’s needs and tend to enforce their demands through the exercise of parental power and the use of threats and punishment. They are oriented toward obedience and authority and expect their children to comply with their demands without question or explanation

Answer 113

- a parenting style that is high in responsiveness but low in demandingness. Permissive parents are responsive to their children’s needs and do not require their children to regulate themselves or act in appropriate or mature ways

Answer 114

- a parenting style that is low in both demandingness and responsiveness to their children; in other words, this style describes parents who are generally disengaged.

Answer 115

- Mothers are more likely to provide physical care and emotional support than are fathers (Moon & Hoffman, 2008); for instance, in a sample of families in the Netherlands, mothers were warmer and more responsive to their children than were fathers. - In contrast, fathers in modern industrialized cultures spend a greater proportion of their available time playing with their children, both in infancy and childhood, than do mothers, and they engage in more physical and rough-and-tumble play than do mothers. - In the United States, mothers are more likely than fathers to say that they are overprotective and that they praise their children too much, whereas fathers are more likely than mothers to have coached their children’s sports teams. - In some countries, such as Estonia, Finland, Russia, South Korea, and the United States, mothers play more with their young children than do fathers, while in other countries, including Brazil and Malaysia, there are no differences in amount of play between mothers and fathers. - Despite these distinctions in amount and type, however, the effects of mothers’ and fathers’ parenting on child development are the same.

Answer 116

- Thus, warm and responsive parenting, whether from mothers or fathers, is universally beneficial for children. - it is important to keep in mind that children’s behavior can shape parents’ typical parenting style as well. In one study, adolescents’ reports of relatively high levels of externalizing problems (e.g., delinquency, loitering, intoxication) and internalizing problems (e.g., low self-esteem, depressive symptoms) predicted a decline in parents’ authoritative parenting styles (as reported by youths) 2 years later, whereas an increase or decline in authoritative parenting over the same 2 years did not predict a change in the adolescents’ adjustment (Kerr et al., 2012). Thus, individual differences in children contribute to the parenting they receive. Consistent with the theme of the active child, children also actively shape the parenting process through their behavior and expressions of temperament. - How children behave with their parents — including the degree to which they express anger, low self-regulation, or disobedience — can be due to a number of factors. The most prominent of these are genetic factors related to temperament. - For instance, children with anxious temperaments tend to become fearful and immobilized in response to harsh and demanding parenting; in contrast, these same children are eager to please and comply with warm and responsive parents . t the genetic level, some children have an allele of the serotonin transporter gene SLC6A4 that makes them especially responsive to their rearing environment, whether it be warm and responsive parenting or controlling and demanding parenting - In resisting their parents’ demands, for example, children may become so whiny or aggressive that their parents back down; the parents’ behavior has been affected by the children’s behavior, and the children’s behavior has been reinforced by the parents’ behavior. As these parents become frustrated, they may escalate their negative behaviors (e.g., yelling, spanking), which evoke even more negative behavior from children. Such patterns have been called coercive cycles.

Answer 117

- the idea that parents and their children are mutually affected by one another’s characteristics and behaviors

Answer 118

- The sibling relationship is unique. Sibling relationships are often similar to peer relationships; like peers, siblings who are close in age interact in ways characterized by sharing and reciprocity. - However, in other cases, sibling relationships are more like parent–child relationships, in which one (the older) sibling has more power and influence over the other (younger) sibling (Dirks et al., 2015). Indeed, the more frequently older siblings engage in positive and prosocial behavior, the more likely their younger siblings are to engage in such behavior years later; however, the younger sibling’s behavior does not impact the older sibling’s behavior (Pike & Oliver, 2017). Children in the middle of sibling groups may thus have both types of sibling relationships. - Siblings, of course, also can be rivals and sources of mutual conflict and irritation; they live in close proximity to one another and are often in competition for resources, from toys to parents’ time. In some cases, sibling conflict can contribute to the development of undesirable behaviors, such as disobedience, delinquency, and drinking (Dirks et al., 2015), as well as depression, anxiety, and social withdrawal (Morgan, Shaw, & Olino, 2012). In addition, high levels of sibling aggression and conflict predict low self-regulation.

Answer 119

-If parents favor one child over another, the sibling relationship may suffer, and the less favored child may experience distress, depression, and other problems with adjustment, especially if the child does not have a positive relationship with their parents.

Answer 120

- Cultural values may also play a role in children’s evaluations of, and reactions to, differential parental treatment. For example, in a study of Mexican American families, older siblings who embraced the cultural value of familism, which emphasizes interdependence, mutual support, and loyalty among family members, were not put at risk of higher levels of depressive symptoms or risky behaviors by their parents’ preferential treatment of younger siblings.

Answer 121

- Another factor that can affect the quality of siblings’ interactions is the nature of the parents’ relationship with each other. Siblings get along better if their parents get along with each other - Relationships between half-siblings can be especially emotionally charged, perhaps because the older half-sibling may resent the younger half-sibling who is born to both parents in the new marital relationship (Hetherington, 1999). In general, the more a child in a blended family perceives a parent’s treatment of a sibling — whether a full sibling or a half-sibling — to be preferential, the worse the child’s relationship is with that sibling.

Answer 122

- action or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker that results in physical or emotional harm to a child or a risk of serious harm - Neglect refers to the failure of a caregiver to provide necessary food, water, shelter, clothing, medical care, or supervision, such that the child’s health and safety are harmed or threatened. - Physical abuse is any behavior that results in non-accidental physical injury of a child. Emotional abuse involves a pattern of behavior in which a caregiver demeans, rejects, repeatedly criticizes, orwithholds love from a child or otherwise communicates to a child that the child is worthless, unloved, or unwanted. - Sexual abuse involves sexual acts or sexual exploitation involving children; it includes both inappropriate touching of a child and exposure to sexual content such as pornography.

Answer 123

- the co-occurrence of multiple forms of maltreatment

Answer 124

- Parental alcohol and other drug dependence also increase the probability of maltreatment, as does whether a parent is in an abusive romantic relationship. - Parents with a history of being maltreated themselves are 3 times as likely as parents without a maltreatment history to maltreat their own children (Assink et al., 2018). However, it is important to note that not all adults who were maltreated in childhood become abusers themselves; 71% of these adults do not maltreat their own children. - Children who are maltreated experience a range of immediate outcomes that can include physical pain and injury (from physical or sexual abuse); hunger, cold, or other physical discomfort (from neglect); and fear or anxiety (from any type of maltreatment, but particularly from emotional abuse). The effects emerge early: 3-month-old infants who have been physically abused show increased rates of fearfulness, anger, and sadness while interacting with their mother. - In later infancy, maltreated infants are at risk of developing an unusual attachment pattern to their caregivers, known as the disorganized/disoriented attachment pattern, discussed in Chapter 11 (Cyr et al., 2010). Children who are victims of maltreatment are at increased risk of developing cognitive delays and antisocial behaviors and of engaging in risky behaviors in adolescence and into adulthood. - Like other ACEs, maltreatment increases the likelihood that a child will be diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder in adolescence or adulthood and that these disorders will be more severe and less amenable to treatment. - The more chronic the abuse, the worse the outcomes for a child later in life, including higher rates of substance abuse, violent delinquency, and suicide attempts. - Thankfully, most children survive maltreatment and go on to have healthy and productive lives. Such positive outcomes are more likely if abused children have sources of resilience in their lives, such as positive relationships with other adults (including aunts, uncles, grandparents, or teachers), if physical needs are being met, if their parents are otherwise nurturing, if their parents have a stable relationship with each other, and if they have access to medical care and social services.

Answer 125

- Strengthen the economic situation of families. It is not surprising that poverty is the root cause of much child neglect. Government efforts to ensure that families can make ends meet and that parents have secure jobs with family-friendly policies can go a long way toward preventing maltreatment. - Change social norms to promote positive parenting. The CDC notes that the best way to prevent physical abuse is to reduce acceptance of spanking and other forms of physical punishment (see Box 12.2). It recommends public campaigns and potentially legislation to affect change in these attitudes. - Provide quality early education to children. Ensuring that all children have safe, supervised, and enriched environments from an early age can reduce rates of abuse and neglect and can help compensate for negative or inadequate home environments. - Enhance parenting skills. Babies do not come with guidebooks, and thus most parents learn on the job. Numerous research studies have shown that parental education programs, including home visits from childcare professionals, that teach child-development basics and healthy parenting behaviors reduce maltreatment. - Intervene to help children and prevent recurrence of maltreatment. Children who have been maltreated clearly need care and protection. Parent perpetrators of maltreatment also need help to ensure that they do not harm their children again. Individual counseling and group parenting sessions have been successful in reducing recurrence of maltreatment.

Answer 126

- Parents’ expression of emotion provides children with a model of when and how to express emotion. - In a review of studies, Halberstadt and colleagues found that when positive emotions such as happiness are prevalent in the home, children tend to express happiness themselves. These children in turn are socially skilled, well adjusted, low in aggression, able to understand others’ emotions, and typically high in self-esteem. - In a study in China, researchers found that the more often mothers expressed positive emotions to their children, the better their children were at understanding emotion display rules, a concept introduced earlier in this chapter. - Even when the conflict or anger in the home is not directed at the children, there is an increased likelihood that they will develop anger, behavior problems, and deficits in social competence and self-regulation.

Answer 127

- In the 1970s, Edward Tronick and his colleagues developed an experimental procedure known as the Still-Face Paradigm (Tronick et al., 1978). For this procedure, mothers and their infants, usually around 4 months of age, are brought into the laboratory; the infants are strapped into high chairs, and each mother is seated 1 ½ feet away from her infant, where she can easily interact with the infant. Mothers in the control group are instructed by the experimenters to play with their children for 10 minutes. Mothers in the experimental group first are instructed to play normally for 2 minutes with their babies; then, they are told to sit back in their chairs, maintain a neutral expression, and not talk to, touch, or otherwise react to their babies — in other words, to keep a “still face.” After 2 minutes, they again alternate another play episode with a still-face episode, before concluding with a final play episode. - What is remarkable about the findings from this research is how quickly the infants become distressed when their mothers do not express emotion or react to the infants’ emotional expressions. The accompanying photos show the change in an infant’s emotions and behavior from a play episode to a still-face episode; remember that each episode is only 2 minutes long!

Answer 128

- the process through which children acquire the values, standards, skills, knowledge, and behaviors that are regarded as appropriate for their present and future roles in their particular culture - Parents’ reactions to their children’s emotions directly influence the children’s own tendencies to express emotions, as well as their social competence and adjustment. - In turn, their children are likely to be less emotionally and socially competent than are children whose parents are emotionally supportive. They tend, for example, to be lower in sympathy for others, less skilled at coping with stress, and more prone to express anger and to engage in problem behaviors such as aggression. - In the !Kung San hunter-gatherer community of Botswana, mothers keep their infants close by for the first years of their lives and respond very quickly (within 10 seconds) to their infants’ cries (Kruger & Konner, 2010) — a clear example of the co-regulation of emotions previously discussed. As a result, even at the peak age for crying (1–12 weeks), !Kung infants cry for the equivalent of 1 minute per hour, with only 6% of all observed crying bouts lasting longer than 30 seconds; compare this tendency with Western newborns who, as we learned in Chapter 2, cry for approximately 2 hours per day.

Answer 129

- the use of discussion and other forms of instruction to teach children how to cope with and properly express emotions - In fact, mothers’ verbal references to others’ thoughts and knowledge when describing a series of pictures to their children at 24 months of age predicted children’s use of emotion language and understanding of emotion at 33 months of age. - Researchers have also found that children whose parents use emotion coaching are more socially competent with peers, more empathic, and less likely to exhibit problem behaviors or depression than are children who do not receive such guidance.

Answer 130

- the experience of overwhelming levels of stress without support from adults to help mitigate the effects of that stress - When a child’s stress response system is overworked by toxic stress, regions of the brain that regulate fear (e.g., amygdala, hippocampus) become overloaded and suffer atrophying of neuron dendrites (Danese & McEwen, 2012). Some changes are permanent and may lead to long-term changes both in responses to stress and in stress-related chronic disease in adulthood (Shonkoff et al., 2012).

Answer 131

- traumatic childhood experiences, such as abuse, neglect, violence exposure, or death of a parent, that are linked to mental and physical health problems later in life

Answer 132

- Attachment theorists have suggested that a secure attachment between parent and child promotes competence with peers in at least three ways (Elicker, Englund, & Sroufe, 1992). - First, securely attached children develop positive social expectations and are thus inclined to interact readily with other children, expecting these interactions to be positive and rewarding. Second, because of their experience with a sensitive and responsive caregiver, they develop the foundation for understanding reciprocity in relationships. - Consequently, they learn to give and take in relationships and to be empathic to others. Finally, securely attached children are likely to be self-regulated, confident, enthusiastic, and friendly — characteristics that are attractive to other children and that facilitate social interaction (Booth-LaForce & Groh, 2018). - Parents can play a number of active roles in their children’s competencies in peer relationships. Two of the more salient ones are in monitoring their children’s social life and in coaching their children in social skills.

Answer 133

-Parents, especially those of young children, typically spend considerable time orchestrating and monitoring their children’s interactions with peers. Parents directly decide with whom the children interact, such as by setting up playdates, and how much time they spend with peers doing various activities. Parents also select their children’s peers indirectly by choosing the neighborhoods they live in, the childcare centers and schools they will attend, and the sports and other enrichment activities in which their children participate. - When children reach adolescence, they spend more time out of the home and with peers, and increasingly in unsupervised situations; thus, parental monitoring becomes especially important. Knowing where a child is and with whom at all times is important for their safety and well-being, and research has shown that it can reduce adolescents’ engagement in risky behaviors in the future. - However, parents’ monitoring can backfire if it is too intrusive. In a study of children in the United States and in China, researchers found that the more middle school–aged children’s parents restricted contact with their peers, the worse their behavioral and psychological adjustment.

Answer 134

- children may also benefit in their peer relations when their parents provide emotion coaching (see Chapter 10) — that is, explanations about the acceptability of emotions and how to appropriately deal with them.

Answer 135

- Children with insecure attachments have difficulties regulating their emotions because their parents’ inconsistent and rejecting behaviors have not taught these children how to handle their emotional reactions (Booth-LaForce & Groh, 2018). If parents are rejecting and hostile or neglectful, young children are likely to become hostile themselves and to expect negative behavior from other people. - They may be predisposed to perceive peers as hostile and, consequently, are likely to be aggressive toward them. These children may also expect rejection from other people and may try to avoid experiencing it by withdrawing from peer interaction instead. - Children who are not securely attached do, in fact, tend to have difficulties with peer relationships. Toddlers and preschoolers who were insecurely attached as infants tend to be aggressive, whiny, socially withdrawn, and low in popularity in elementary school. - Securely attached children tend to be generally happy and to have good social skills, as has been found in studies with children from Mexico, Peru, and the United States. - For example, socially competent, popular children tend to have mothers who are warm in general; discuss feelings with them; and who use warm control, positive verbalizations, reasoning, and explanations in their approach to parenting - For example, fathers’ warmth and affection toward their children have been linked to children’s peer acceptance in elementary school - But it is difficult to prove that quality of parenting actually has a causal influence on children’s social behavior with peers. As noted in Chapter 12, it may be that children who are aggressive and disruptive because of constitutional factors (e.g., heredity, prenatal influences) elicit both negative parenting and negative peer responses (Rubin et al., 1998); or it may be that both harsh parenting and the children’s negative behavior with peers are due to heredity. The most likely possibility is that the causal links are bidirectional — that parents’ behavior affects their children’s social competence and vice versa. - Parents can also serve as a buffer when their children’s peer relationships are not going well. A longitudinal study of several hundred 7- to 9-year-olds found that children having difficulty with their peers were less likely to experience increases over time in depressive symptoms if they had positive, close relationships with their parents.

Answer 136

- According to Carol Dweck’s social cognition perspective (2006), the difference in their reaction is attributable to a difference in their achievement motivation — that is, in whether they are motivated by learning goals, seeking to improve their competency in new material or new skills, or by performance goals, seeking to receive positive assessments of their competence or to avoid negative assessments. From this perspective, Mia has an incremental view of intelligence, the belief that intelligence can be developed through effort. She is motivated by a desire for mastery — on meeting challenges and overcoming failures, and she generally expects her efforts to be successful. Indeed, her increased effort and persistence following failure will in all likelihood improve her subsequent performance.

Answer 137

- refers to whether children are motivated by competence or by others’ views of their success - achievement motivation - refers to whether children are motivated by competence or by others’ views of their success

Answer 138

- a tendency to attribute success and failure to enduring aspects of the self and to give up in the face of failure

Answer 139

- a general tendency to attribute success and failure to the amount of effort expended and to persist in the face of failure

Answer 140

- a theory that a person’s level of intelligence is fixed and unchangeable

Answer 141

- a theory that a person’s intelligence can grow as a function of experience

Answer 142

- Again, the answer appears to be yes. For example, recall the hostile attributional bias discussed in the previous section. Adolescents who maintain a fixed mindset about personality traits are more likely to demonstrate a hostile attributional bias than are adolescents who endorse a growth mindset (Yeager et al., 2013). In other words, if they hold the view that people’s behaviors are due to fixed personality traits (some people are good, others are bad), rather than due to situations or circumstances, they are more likely to interpret other people’s harmful behavior as hostile rather than as accidental or situational. If this is the case, then learning to take a more incremental view should diminish their tendency to make hostile attributions. And indeed, when adolescents received an intervention about neuroscience concepts (as described in the previous paragraph) designed to shift their perspectives away from the fixed-entity view and closer to the growth-incremental view, there was a reduction in participants’ hostile attributions.

Answer 143

- One obvious source is caregivers, who often try very hard to enhance their child’s self-esteem. Unfortunately, doing something that might seem purely positive — praising a child for being good at something — can actually undermine the child’s motivation for improvement. When caregivers instead praise their toddlers’ effort, the children are more likely to have an incremental perspective in elementary school (Gunderson et al., 2013, 2018). Another obvious source is teachers. Indeed, the teacher’s own mindset, and the messages and opportunities they provide, impact students’ learning-oriented choices; even students who themselves endorse a growth mindset do not behave in accord with that mindset when their teacher endorses a fixed mindset (Hecht et al., 2023; Yeager et al., 2022). Parents and teachers alike should be aware that some kinds of praise and comfort can successfully communicate growth mindset messages, whereas other kinds of encouragement do not.

Answer 144

- According to Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model (see Chapter 9), children’s development is affected by a variety of contexts that are nested into a set of hierarchical systems. The family is the child’s most proximal context and thus the one that has the most direct influence on development. Yet the family itself is affected by the contexts in which it is embedded, including cultural contexts, economic contexts, and work contexts.

Answer 145

- However, research with families from dozens of countries around the world has demonstrated that parenting behaviors tend to predict children’s outcomes in similar ways regardless of country or culture. - Similarly, an analysis of data from 51 of those same countries found that parents’ use of nonviolent discipline consistently predicted positive outcomes in their children — namely better academic achievement, more positive social behavior, and better physical health.

Answer 146

- Low-income children thus experience a range of material hardships that the majority of high-income children will never personally experience. - Low-income parents may need to work multiple jobs or jobs with irregular or night hours; such jobs make it difficult for parents to spend time helping their children with homework or taking them to extracurricular activities — in other words, to “invest” in their children (Kalil & Ryan, 2020). Having difficulty making ends meet and experiencing material hardships also create stress for low-income parents, and that stress can lead to depression, irritability, harsh parenting, and marital conflict (Benner & Kim, 2010; Gershoff et al., 2007). Adequate family income thus matters to parents and children, both for what it can buy and for the stress it can alleviate.

Answer 147

- It is not surprising that children in poverty have lower academic achievement, more mental health problems, more behavioral problems, and more health problems than their higher-income peers. - Families experiencing poverty are also at risk of becoming homeless, a crisis state that of course exacerbates all the stressors the parents and children experience. - Families with children constitute 40% of the homeless population in the United States (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2022). More than 1 million children and adolescents experiencing homelessness were enrolled in public schools in the 2020–2021 school year — that is, 2% of all public school students. - One particularly at-risk group is youth (which typically includes children 12 and older) who are homeless and also living on their own, either because they have been kicked out of or have run away from their homes. Each year, approximately 30,000 unaccompanied youth under the age of 18 experience homelessness, with 43% of them unsheltered (National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2023). - Low-income parents are 4 times as likely as high-income parents to fear that their child will be shot, and 6 times as likely to worry that their child will get in trouble with the law. - All parents, regardless of income, worry that their child will be bullied and will have alcohol or drug problems, but low-income parents are more likely to also fear that their child will be physically assaulted. These fears likely stem from the qualities of the neighborhoods in which they live; low-income parents are 3 times as likely as high-income parents to view their neighborhoods as not being good places to raise children. - Children in high-income families do not experience the stress of survival that low-income children and adolescents do. What these studies do make clear, however, is that there is more than a single pathway to certain maladaptive outcomes; this phenomenon, known as equifinality, is discussed in detail in Chapter 10.

Answer 148

- The fact that many more mothers work now than in past generations means that many more families may be susceptible to work–family conflict. In 1955, only 18% of mothers with children younger than 6 were employed outside the home (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2006). In 2022, 68% of mothers with children younger than 6, and 77% of mothers with children aged 6 to 17 worked outside the home. - These changes in the rates of maternal employment reflect a variety of factors, including greater acceptance of mothers working outside the home, more workplace opportunities for women, and an increase in women who obtain college and graduate degrees, most of whom work. - Taken as a whole, the research does not support the idea that maternal employment has negative effects on children’s development. Even in the area of greatest debate — the effects of maternal employment on infants in their first year of life — when negative relations between maternal work and children’s cognitive or social behavior have been found, the results have not been consistent across studies, ethnic groups, or the type of analyses applied to the data. - For example, some research suggests that early maternal employment is associated with better adjustment at age 7 for children in low-income African American families, whereas no such effect was found for those in a study of low-income Latino American families.

Answer 149

- As a result, many parents can take family leave only if they can afford the loss of income, can take saved sick or vacation days, file for disability payments, happen to work at a company that does offer paid family leave (which is true for only 14% of workers), or live in one of the 11 states (and the District of Columbia) with laws guaranteeing paid family and medical leave: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2022). Three additional states offer paid parental leave only for state employees (Georgia, New Hampshire, and South Carolina). Thus, the majority of working adults in the United States do not have paid parental leave, despite the fact that a large majority (82%) of Americans support a paid family- and medical-leave policy for all working individuals (Li, Knoester, & Petts, 2022). - In the United States, approximately 62% of children from birth through age 5 are in center-based childcare, 38% are cared for by a relative, and 20% are cared for by a nonrelative in a home environment.

Answer 150

- Studies of maternal employment extending beyond infancy also reveal contextual variation in the effects that maternal employment can have on children’s development. For instance, a study of 3- to 5-year-olds found that those whose mother worked a night shift (starting at 9:00 p.m. or later) tended to exhibit more aggressive behavior, anxiety, and depressive symptoms than did the children whose mothers worked a typical daytime schedule (Dunifon et al., 2013). In another study, researchers found that mothers who worked more often at night (starting at 9:00 p.m. or later) spent less time with their adolescents and that their adolescents had a lower-quality home environment (in terms of the quality of mother–child interactions, the cleanliness and safety of the home, and so on), which in turn predicted higher levels of risky behaviors among the adolescents. However, similar negative effects were not found in the case of mothers who worked evening shifts that ended by midnight or who had other nonstandard work schedules (e.g., those with varying hours) that allowed them greater knowledge of their children’s whereabouts.

Answer 151

- Furthermore, the number of hours spent in childcare is less relevant than the quality of childcare provided: no matter what their SES background, children in high-quality childcare programs tend to be well adjusted and to develop social competencies.

Answer 152

- The possible effects of childcare on children’s cognitive and language performance are of particular concern to educators as well as to parents. Research suggests that high-quality childcare can have a modest, positive effect on these aspects of children’s functioning although the effects sometimes weaken over time. - However, higher-quality childcare that included specific efforts to stimulate children’s language development was linked to better cognitive and language development in the first 3 years of life (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2000b). Children in higher-quality childcare (especially center care) scored higher on tests of pre-academic cognitive skills, language abilities, and attention than did those in lower-quality care. - In addition, children from low-income families who spend long hours in childcare, compared with those who spend fewer hours, tend to show increases in quantitative skills (Votruba-Drzal et al., 2004). It is likely that childcare, unless it is of low quality, provides greater cognitive stimulation than is available in some low-income homes.

Answer 153

- A child-to-caregiver ratio of 3:1 for children aged 12 months or younger; 4:1 for 13- to 35-month-olds; 7:1 for 3-year-olds; and 8:1 for 4- and 5-year-olds - Maximum group sizes of 6 for 12-months-olds and younger; 8 for 13- to 35-month-olds; 14 for 3-year-olds; and 16 for 4- and 5-year-olds - Formal training for caregivers, with lead teachers having (1) a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education, school-age care, child development, social work, nursing, or another child-related field or an associate’s degree in early childhood education and currently working toward a bachelor’s degree; (2) at least 1 year of on-the-job training in providing a nurturing environment and meeting children’s out-of-home needs - Quality was generally highest in nonprofit centers that were not religiously affiliated; intermediate in nonprofit religiously affiliated centers and in for-profit independent centers; and lowest in for-profit chains.

Answer 154

- Child has supporting adults and caregivers: allow the child to be successful in school in negotiating - Basic necessities, encourage learning, develop self-respect, nurture peer relationship, provide peace and harmony

Answer 155

- Teenagers are caught in the middle - Paretns teenager fights are scope of personal domain - Comnication, support, connectedness, and control - Encouraging autonomy can make transition smoother - CHILDREN TEND to follow examples of paretns

Answer 156

- Give adolescent psychological space while maintaining autonomy - Allow the process of independence happen and protect them from harm but let them be independent wen there isnt a lot of harm - Bickering is part of the process of developing autonomy from their parents

Developmental Psychology Module 3 Study Guide Flashcards

(181 cards)