Psychology of Childhood Flashcards
(125 cards)
1
Q
Children’s emotional development:
A
1) The ability to recognise different emotional expression.
2) Children’s understanding of emotions
3) How young children become able to regulate their emotions.
2
Q
Darwin argued ability to communicate emotions through facial expressions as:
A
- innate - investigated via exploring whether emotional facial expressions are universally understood and whether newborns spontaneously produce recognisable facial expressions
- Cross cultural evidence:
- Ekman and Friesen (1971) found cross-cultural similarity in adults’ interpretation of facial expression when showing Fore people from New Guinea photographs of Western adults’ face expression.
- Ekman (1973) found the same when Americans were showed face expressions of the Fore people.
3
Q
Infant emotional expression:
A
- basic e.g. happiness, sadness and complex e.g. pride, jealousy emotions
- Evidence that basic emotions available early in life but complex not until later e.g. Dunn 1994 but remains controversial - Reddy et al found infants as young as 2-4 months could display shyness and embarrassment
4
Q
Adult interpretation of infant expressions:
A
- adults could just expressions in a 1-9 month old infants after positive or unpleasant experiences, less accurate in recognising more complex emotion - different types e.g. fear vs anger (Oster et al 1992)
5
Q
Infant identification of expressions:
A
- (infants more interested in new things - could tell they recognised emotions as they got bored - habituation-dishabituation) - recognise but didn’t necessarily know meaning
- Barrera and Maurer (1981) 3-month-old could distinguish between smiling and frowning
- Caron et al. (1982) 4-7-month-olds could distinguish between happiness and surprise
6
Q
Infant’s emotional understanding
A
Repacholi and Gopnik (1997) infants watched experimenter taste broccoli and crackers, reacting positively to broccoli and negatively to crackers. 18 month olds selected to ‘feed’ the experimenter broccoli even though personal preference for cracker
- There is evidence that 2-3 year olds perform better than chance (Denham, 1986)
7
Q
Role of modelling for children’s emotions
A
- Children start to use social referencing (learning from people around us) around 10 months (look to caregiver for how to act/respond), different from emotional contagion (feel same emotions)
- Parent influence can be direct (language/action) or indirect (observation and modelling) (e.g. visual cliff study - Gibson and Walk)
8
Q
Modelling and mental health for children’s emotions
A
- Murray et al 2008 - mothers with social anxiety and controls, mothers interacted with a stranger and children observed at 10 months and again at 14 months, mothers with social anxiety less engaged and less encouraging of child’s interaction with stranger
- At 10 months no difference in infant behaviour
- At 14 months the child showed increased avoidance
9
Q
Language and emotional understanding
A
- Children begin to talk about emotion from a young age (Bretherton et al 1981 - accounts of children using emotion words as young as 18 months and increased in emotional vocabulary at 3
- Bretherton and Beeghly (1982) found that 28 month olds could use emotion words to comment on their own and other’s behaviours.
10
Q
Language and fear learning
A
- Rachman (1977) 3 pathways to fear learning: classical conditioning, observation and verbal information
- Parents communicate messages of threat and safety.
- Parents of anxious children communicate more ‘anxious’ messages (e.g. “be careful) (Beidel & Turner, 1998). (respond to children)
- Moore et al. (2004) anxious mothers used more catastrophising in their communication
- Suveg et al. (2005) anxious mothers described positive emotions less
11
Q
Pass et al. (2017)
A
- 65 preschool children and their mothers
- Asked the mothers ‘are you worried about your child starting school?’
- Asked the mothers to talk to their child about social aspects of school.
- Children used doll-play to complete brief scenarios about school
- Mothers who said they were worried were more likely to:
- mention unresolved threat
- use at least one anxiety-related word
- show clear/consistent negativity across their description of school
- Emotional tone of mother’s description was associated with child’s own representations of school
12
Q
Emotion regulation
A
- Young children tend to be bad at hiding their true feelings
- But children as young as 3 years old show some ability to control the expression of mild negative emotions (Cole, 1986)
- This is likely due to learning from others reactions when displaying emotions
- By the age of 5 years, some children have even learnt that some positive emotions are undesirably e.g. showing off (Reissland & Harris, 1991)
13
Q
Bowlby’s theory of attachment
A
- Argued that attachment was an innate drive - behaviours like crying are to get attention from caregivers
- Environmental cues trigger attachment behaviours - the ‘goal-corrected system’
- purpose of attachment was to remain close to the caregiver, depended on the infant’s cognitive development, and the ability to recognise that a caregiver was not present, until infants had developed object permanence (8 months), they would not miss the attachment figure.
14
Q
Bowlby’s stages of development
A
1) pre-attatchment - 0-2 months
2) attachment in the making - 2-7 months
3) Clear cut attachment - after 7 months
4) goal corrected partnership - 2 years
15
Q
Bowlby characteristics of attachment:
A
- Safe Haven
- The child can rely on their caregiver for comfort at times whenever they feels threatened, frightened or in danger.
- Secure Base
- The caregiver gives a good and reliable foundation to the child as they go on learning and sorting out things by themself.
- Proximity Maintenance
- The child aims to explore the world but still tries to stay close to their care giver.
- Separation Distress
- This means that the child becomes unhappy and sorrowful when they become separated from their caregiver.
16
Q
The Strange Situation (Ainsworth, 1978):
A
- Caregiver and infant introduced to room
- Caregiver and infant alone, infant free to explore
- Strange enters room, sits, talks to caregiver, then tries to
engage the infant in play - Caregiver leaves, stranger and infant alone
- First reunion. Caregiver returns and stranger leaves, caregiver settles infant if necessary and returns to play
- Caregiver leaves, infant alone
- Stranger returns and tries to settle infant if necessary, attempts to engage in play
- Second reunion. Caregiver returns and stranger leaves, caregiver settles infant if necessary
- Conducted between 1-2 years of age, infants’ responses crucial and form the basis of a coding scheme for identifying an infant’s security of attachment
17
Q
Ainsworth’s attachment types:
A
- Securely attached infants (Type B)
- Insecure avoidant infants (Type A)
- Insecure resistant infants (Type C)
- Main and Solomon identified a fourth category - insecure-disorganised (type D), they seem disorientated and show no clear strategy for coping
Van Ijzendoorn, Schuengel, and Bakermans-Kranenburg (1999) conducted meta-analysis to identify prevalence of attachment types
18
Q
Internal working models:
A
- Attachment theory proposes that children use early experiences with caregivers to form internal-working models.
- These incorporate representations of themselves, their caregivers and their relationships with others
- The child will use these internal working models as templates for future interactions
19
Q
Van den Boom (1994) - Attachment intervention
A
- Testing the hypothesis that enhancing maternal sensitive responsiveness will improve quality of mother-infant interaction, infant exploration, and attachment
- Randomly assigned 6-month-old infants and their mothers to 3 month intervention and control groups
- Results:
- At 9 months, intervention mothers were significantly more responsive, stimulating, visually attentive, and controlling of their infant’s behavior than control mothers.
- Intervention infants had higher scores on sociability, self-soothing, and exploration, and they cried less.
- At 12 months, significantly more intervention group dads were securely attached than control group dads.
20
Q
Attachment and anxiety:
A
- A review concluded that attachment security in general, and resistant attachment and disorganised attachment, more specifically, may act as risk factors for anxiety (Brumariu & Kerns, 2010).
- Moss et al. (2006) found that children who were classified as having disorganised attachment at age 5-7 years exhibited significantly more anxiety symptoms two years later.
- May interact with other risk factors such as life events and Dallaire and Weinraub (2007) Attachment at 15 months moderated the effect of negative life events on children’s anxiety at age 4.5 years
21
Q
Predictors of child anxiety
A
- Hudson & Dodd (2012)
- 202 participants between 3 and 4 years
- Measures of anxiety, temperament (week 6), parenting, and attachment
- Followed up at age 9 to identify predictors of anxiety
- Results: temperament (inhibition), maternal over involvement, maternal anxiety
22
Q
Assessment of attachment (Ainsworth):
A
- Child-mother attachment was assessed using the preschool version of the Strange Situation procedure (Cassidy & Marvin, 1992).
- Similar to infant version of the Strange Situation (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). Consists of 8 episodes of separation and reunion between mother and child
- Children were classified as either securely (B) or insecurely (insecure-avoidant (A), insecure-resistent (C), disorganised (D) or insecure-other
23
Q
(In)stability of attachment security
A
- Belsky, Spritz & Crnic (1996) attachment stable in only half of infants in 6-month period.
- Booth-LaForce & Roisman (2014) little stability at 15, 24 and 36 months
- Bar-Haim et al. (2000) no correspondence between attachment behaviours in infancy and attachment representation at age 4
24
Q
Statistics for childhood disorders
A
- 1 in 8 children have a diagnosable mental health disorder
- 1 in 6 young people aged 16-24 has symptoms of a common mental disorder such as depression or an anxiety disorder.
- Half of all mental health problems manifest by the age of 14, with 75% by age 24.
- In 2017, suicide was the most common cause of death for both boys (16.2% of all deaths) and girls (13.3%) aged between 5 and 19.
- Nearly half of 17-19 year olds with a diagnosable mental health disorder has self-harmed or attempted suicide at some point, rising to 52.7% for young women.
25
Anxiety
- A normal emotion, a problem when danger is imagined or out of proportion to reality
- Body (physiology - heart racing ect.), thoughts (cognition), actions (behaviour - flight/flight)
- A disorder when about a particular event or multiple lives, when the fear is excessive and worries not normal to age, leading to avoidance of events, causing significant distress /significant interference in daily activities
- One of the most common 6.5% point prevalence, can affect academic performance
26
Separation anxiety
- inappropriate response of being separated from home or attachment figures
- worry about separation - losing caregivers or harm coming to them
- reluctant to being alone/nightmares
- must last for at least 4 weeks and must cause clinically significant distress or interference
27
Generalised anxiety disorder
- excessive anxiety and worry occurring more often than not, difficult to control, significant distress and impairs functioning for at least 3 months
- Accompanied by at least 3 somatic symptoms - stomach/head aches, sleeping problems, poor concentration or fatigue
- seek constant reassurance, overly compliant/perfectionist
28
Social anxiety disorder
- fear of social situations e.g. embassment/unfamiliar people
- Intense anxiety and often leads to avoidance of feared situation
- must last at least 6 months, clinically significant distress/interference, people of the same age, capacity for age-appropriate social relationships
29
Specific phobia
intense and persistent fear of specific object or situation
- Avoidance and distress caused when confronted
- Children may cry, freeze or cling
- common - animals/insects, storms, dark, heights ect.
- At least 6 months, clinically significant distress or interference
30
Panic disorder
- recurrent, unexpected panic attacks for no apparent reasons
- centered around panic attacks and what they mean
- Intense fear, somatic symptoms and catastrophic cognitions
- Assoicated with agoraphobia
- At least one attack must have been followed with:
- Persistent concern or worry that about panic attacks or their consequences (e.g. I’m going crazy)
- Maladaptive change in behaviour related to the attack(s)
31
Agoraphobia
- persistent fear of certain environments - crowded/open spaces
- Must exist in at least two environments.
- Fear must be out of proportion to realistic threat posed.
- Presence or anticipated presence of feared environment results in significant distress.
- Feared environment is avoided or endured with extreme distress.
32
Major depression diagnosis
- Persistent depressed mood (or irritability in YP)
AND/OR
- Marked loss of interest
At least 5 symptoms in total
Lasts at least 2 weeks
Clinically significant impairment
- Additional symptoms include:
- Significant weight loss/weight gain or changes in appetite
- Insomnia or hypersomnia
- Unable to sit still or lethargy
- Loss of energy or fatigue
- Feelings of worthlessness or excessive, inappropriate guilt
- Impaired concentration/slowed down thinking/indecisiveness
- Recurring thoughts of death/suicide
33
Comorbidity
- refers to the presence of more than one disorder occurring together
- Children with anxiety disorders are 8 – 29 times more likely to be diagnosed with depression (Angold et al., 1999; Costello et al., 2003; Ford et al., 2003).
- Anxiety is strongly associated with subsequent depression (Cole et al., 1998; Costello et al., 2003) .
- Clark & Watson (1991) tripartite model – negative affect (associated with both anxiety and depression), low positive affect is associated with depression, high physiological arousal associated with anxiety.
34
Measuring depression and anxiety
- Typically use questionnaire measures of symptomatology or diagnostic interviews
- Widely used questionnaire: Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS)
- ‘Gold-standard’ for diagnosing:
- Anxiety: Anxiety Disorder Interview Schedule (ADIS)
- Depression: Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia in School Age Children (Kiddie-SADS)
35
Problems with the diagnostic approach for childhood disorders
- Categorical (all or nothing) - what about people just below the threshold, dimensional approach may be better
- High comorbidity between diagnoses
- Results in labeling
- Tells us nothing about cause
36
ADHD, ADD and hyperkintetic disorder
- Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
- high maladaptively impulsivity, hyperactivity and inattention
- High comorbid with conduct disorder
- Associated with secondary problems e.g. academic/relationships
- differences between DSM and ICD - age of onset
3.4% worldwide prevelence, more males
37
Biological theories of ADHD
- Genetic - Highly heritable (but not 100%), Dopamine receptor gene (D4) shows most robust evidence
- Neurotransmitter dysregulation - Dopamine and noradrenaline systems
- Hypoarousal hypothesis
- Stimuli not sufficiently arousing, so behaviour is stimulus-seeking
- Not unique to ADHD (e.g., LD, conduct disorders) 12
38
Psychosocial theories of ADHD
- Executive function - Impaired behavioural inhibition (Reinforced by secondary deficits (e.g., self-regulation of affect))
- Family / systemic factors - High stress and low support - Less “effective” parenting, conflict, comorbidity (e.g.,Babinski et al., 2016)
- Environmental risk factors (e.g., alcohol, smoking in pregnancy) but difficult to establish causality
39
Biological intervention - medication of ADHD
- Methylphenidate (Ritalin®, Concerta®), atomoxetine, lisdexamfetamine, dexamfetamine
- moderate effect sizes for symptom reduction
- Cochrane review of methylphenidate (2015):
- Review including over 12,000 children
- 40% funded by industry
- Some risks (e.g., sleeping problems, reduced appetite, compliance)
- May improve teacher-reported symptoms, teacher-reported general behaviour, and parent-reported quality of life
40
Psychological intervention of ADHD
- Individual interventions include:
- Social skills training
- CBT (including behaviour modification)
- Neurofeedback (teaching impulse control)
- Complementary / alternative (e.g., dietary, homeopathic)
- Some support for psychological interventions, particularly BT (e.g., Catalá-López et al., 2017; Fabiano et al., 2009)
- Little evidence for cognitive training, neurofeedback, dietary (e.g., PUFAs), homeopathic and therefore not currently recommended
41
Age differences in intervention for ADHD
- NICE provides guidance for healthcare, not rules or regulation
- NICE recommends
- Children <5
- Group parent-training programme to parents / carers as first-line, then consider specialist advice
- Do not offer medication without specialist opinion
- Children 5+ and young people
- Psychoeducation + carer support
- Consider parent training / medication / CBT if impairment remains
- Adults
- Consider medication, or non-pharmacological if medication not indicated / accepted
42
Conduct disorder
- Intentionally vicious, aggressive and callous behaviour
- Repetitive and persistent pattern of behaviour involving:
1. Aggression towards people and animals
2. Destruction of property
3. Deceitfulness or theft
4. Serious violation of accepted rules
43
Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD)
ODD is reserved for children who do not meet full criteria for conduct disorder but have regular temper tantrums, refuse to comply with instructions, or may appear to indulge in behaviours that annoy others, common in preschool children and may predict later conduct disorder
44
Prevalence and course of CD
- Relatively common, 4-16% in boys, 1-9% in girls (Loeber et al., 2000)
- Median age of onset 11.6 years (Nock et al., 2006)
- some may go on to meet criteria for antisocial personality disorder
- Studies suggest that CD predicts antisocial personality disorder, but only in lower SES families (Lahey et al., 2005), or if parents have antisocial personality disorder or low verbal IQ (Lahey et al., 1995)
- Like with ADHD, causal links with genetic, neuropsychological and prenatal factors
- different presentation in boys and girls
45
Autism
- a neuro(developmental) ‘disorder’
- Spectrum of difficulties, not a disease it means the brain works differently
- Is not necessarily associated with
above or below average intelligence
- 1% worldwide prevalence - cultural differences, different diagnostic criteria, less info for older people and poorer countries
- Onset in childhood but follows a persistent course
- More common in males - delayed/missed diagnosis in girls
46
Characteristics - ‘Triad of impairment’ of autism
1. Social interaction
- Difficulty ‘reading’ other people
- Emotion recognition in others
2. Social communication
- Difficulties interpreting both verbal and non-verbal language
- Range from no speech to not understanding some jokes (e.g., non-literal)
3. Repetitive behaviours / interests (DSM-5, but disputed!)
- Prefer routine / predictability
- Prefer to eat same food, travel same way
- May have focused interests
- Sensory sensitivity
47
Genetic factors of Autism
- Autism has a prenatal origin bur cause not determined e.g. greater maternal age, insufficient evidence
- Highly heritable - environmental component
- Several genes in synaptic plasticity
48
Cognitive factors of autism
- Aim to explain pattern of symptoms
- 1. Weak central coherence
- Bias away from integrating contextual information for meaning (detail focus)
- 2.Theory of mind defecit
- Impairment in attributing thoughts and feelings to others
- False belief tests - Sally-Ann
- 3.Executive dysfunction
- Umbrella term for functions such as planning, working memory, impulse control, set shifting, and so on
- May be necessary for development of ToM (see Ozonoff et al.,1991)
- Particularly associated with repetitive behaviours
49
Psychological interventions of Autism
- Psychosocial interventions that:
- increase the understanding, sensitiveness and responsiveness to child’s patterns of communication and understanding
- Include techniques that expand child’s communication, interactive play and social routines
- Interventions for life skills
- Interventions for co-existing problems (both mental health and medical) E.g. CBT
- Interventions for sleep problems / feeding problems
50
ABA interventions for Autism
- ABA (applied behavioural analysis) is a term for interventions that are based on observing and understanding behaviours.
- Because of it’s broad approach, which first emerged in the mid 20th century, ABA has changed over time and ranged from:
- Using encouragement and rewards, and making changes in the environment
- To... trying to ‘treat’ autism, and even using cruel methods as punishment
- Views on ABA are strongly polarised, and whilst it has developed substantially many are fundamentally against it’s approach
51
Studies of nature and nurture
- twin design (fraternal dizygotic DZ and identical monozygotic MZ)
- adoption design
52
Limitations of adoption design:
- Adoptees are not placed randomly into adoptive families, they tend to be chosen to provide environments that are low-risk
- Adoption studies may not be generalisable to the population at large
- Prenatal influences are not taken into account (e.g., whether the biological mother smokes, what she eats, etc.)
- Adoption (especially, adoption at birth) is an unusual event in itself
53
Limitations of twin design
- Equal environments assumption:
- the assumption that environments are similar for identical and fraternal twins
- monozygotic twins share more similar environments - both in the womb (prenatal) and out (postnatal)
- Twin studies may not be generalisable to the population at large:
- for example, twins are more susceptible to prenatal trauma leading to mental retardation
- MZ twins may not be 100% genetically identical:
- it is now known that there are various biological mechanisms that can lead to genetic differences between MZ twins
54
Heritability
- = genetic influences = the proportion of variance in a **population** attributable to genetic differences between people
- **Heritability (G) = 2(rMZ – rDZ)**
- - Heritability is a statistical estimate for a population (not an individual) studied;
- Heritability estimate applies only to a particular population living in a particular environment at a particular time
- Heritability estimate does not account for a complex interplay between genetic an environment factors
55
Lemery-Chalfant et al, 2013
- Sample: 807 pairs of twins, mean age ~8 years (301 MZ; 263 same-sex DZ; 243 opposite-sex DZ) from Wisconsin Twin Project
- Assessments: parent telephone interviews, home visits
- Finding 1: effortful control, negative affectivity, extraversion show high heritability: 54%, 79%, 49%
- Finding 2: Home environments (how chaotic and unsafe they are) are also under genetic influence (heritable) and affect personality (extraversion)
- Conclusion: Parents’ temperament can influence child temperament through genetic transmission and through home environment that they create
56
2 approaches of psychopathology
- Clinical diagnostic approach - psychopathologies considered discrete categories defined on criteria from experts
- Empirical quantitive approach - symptoms on continuous scale, disorders on extreme distribution
57
Internalising vs internalising psychopathology
- Internalising psychopathology: depression, anxiety
- Externalising psychopathology: conduct problems, ADHD (attention problems, impulsivity)
58
Psychopathology as polygenic
- Psychopathologies are influenced by more than one genetic variant (polygenic traits)
- Each genetic variant is additive to the others: more specific genetic variants (alleles) – higher risk of psychopathology
- The hallmark of polygenic traits:
- A bell curve distribution
- A continuous distribution
59
Approaches to temperament:
- Paediatric approach (Thomas and Chess)
- Personality tradition (Diamond; Buss and Plomin)
- Individual differences (Rothbart and Bates)
60
Paediatric approach
the how of behaviour - the way in which an individual behaves
Thomas and Chess - longitudinal study - 3 way typology - easy, difficult, slow-to-warm-up
9 constituents on temperament:
- Activity level, Regularity, Approach-Withdrawal, Adaptability, Threshold of responsiveness, Intensity of reaction, Quality of mood, Distractibility, Attention Span
61
Personality tradition
inherited personality traits and ones which develop in the first year of life and influenced by nature - genetic so different to personality
- Constituents: emotionality, activity and sociability
62
Individual differences
differences in emotional, motor and and attentional reactivity and self-regulation - consistency over time and contexts
- Constituents:
- Fearful distress/inhibition
- Irritable distress
- Attention span and persistence
- Activity level
- Positive affect/approach
- Rhythmicity
- Agreeableness/adaptability
63
Commonalities between different approaches to temperament
- individual differences not normative characteristics
- Set of traits not a trait
- temperamental dimensions reflect behavioural tendencies which are pervasive across situations - consistency over time
- biological underpinnings
- temperament emerges early in life
64
Disagreements:
- Differing boundaries for temperament
- differing constituents
- relationship between temperament and personality construed differently
65
Heritability
- strongest evidence for heritability for the EAS traits (Buss and Plomin)
- temperament is moderately influences by genetic factors - similar estimate across age
- stability in temperament is mediated primarily by genetic factors, whereas environmental factors account for much of the change seen from age-to-age e.g. gender differences in treatment
66
Clinical application of temperament:
- Thomas and Chess started
- temperament a departure from ‘tabula rasa’ idea - temperament primary
- introduced ‘goodness of fit’ concept
- an interactionist, idiographic approach
67
Goodness/poorness of fit:
- Goodness of fit = the child’s capabilities, motivations and temperament are adequate to master demands, opportunities of the environment
- Poorness of fit = inadequate - leads to maladaptive functioning and distorted development
68
Temperament and adjustment - Prior 1992
- Relationships are generally moderate in strength; prediction from infancy is weak, increasing by early childhood.
- Difficult and active babies are at increased risk for colic, sleep problems, excessive crying, and abdominal pain.
- Temperamental difficulty is associated with both externalising and internalising problems.
69
Temperament & Behaviour Problems (Caspi et al., 1995)
Aim: to link early temperament to internalising & externalising problems at later ages
Method: large representative sample from NZ. Tester ratings of temperament used to predict problem behaviour via parent & teacher reports at ages
Results: Lack of control best predictor, esp. for externalising problems
Interpretation?
Problem behaviours/psychopathology merely the “business” end of temperament/personality.
Gene environment interplay, due to genes children are labeled, those labeled similarly treated the same and so acting as an environmental factor
70
Universal characteristics of play:
- Spontaneous; children are free to initiate or end play
- Autonomous; children have choices in terms of how to play
- Means over ends; children engage in play for its own
sake
- Joyful; accompanied by positive affect
71
Parten’s 1932 Types of play:
1. Unoccupied behaviour (infancy+)
Sensory activity that lacks focus or narrative.
2. Solitary play (3 months – 2.5 years) Child playing alone in a focused or sustained way
3. Onlooker play (2.5 – 3.5 years)
Child observes other children’s play without becoming involved themselves.
4. Parallel play (3.5 +)
Children playing in proximity but not together
5. Associative play (4+)
Children playing side-by-side; sharing resources and acknowledging, copying and working with one another BUT different goals
6. Cooperative play (4.5 +)
Children playing together and sharing the same game.
72
Play in different populations of children: Autism Spectrum Condition
- Because of behaviours commonly associated with Autism (repetitive behaviours, differences in social interactions and communication), social play can sometimes be difficult
- 'Inappropriate’ play is a marker of ASD
- In object-based play, focus is on object rather than play partner. Child may become quite specialised in particular objects as a result.
- Play levels ‘below’ cognitive level and chronological age: mismatched play styles can inhibit sustained play
73
Play in different populations of children: Down syndrome
- Content of play seems similar to neurotypical children but play schemes tend to be repeated
- Strong sociability
- Same developmental sequence as neurotypical children
- Less manual exploration, limited exploratory play
74
Why might play be important?
- observed in mammals and present in some birds and reptiles (Limited understanding on why animals play)
- Brain size is significantly positively correlated with play - more prevalent and more complex in larger brained species
- Play tends to occur more during period of early life - where most brain development happens
- Not just play - a diversion from more important tasks, relaxing and having fun - possibly more important in early lives
Pellis, Pellis and Bell - rats deprived of opportunities to play growing up cannot socialise as effectively as adults not deprived of play
75
Friendships as ‘play-building’
- Well aquainted toddlers engage in scripted cooperative fantasy before 24 months
- Social play increased in complexity 2-4 (more complex among friends, non-friends spend more time negotiating and less effectively
- By 3-4 children engage in more skilful play interactions with friends but use these skill for wider range of playmates
76
- Play as relationship building
- Young children form relationships with non-caregiving adults, siblings and peers based on play
- Young children experience sustained interactions with other children providing opportunities to play and form friendships
- Children discriminate among peer partners by 2-3 and form preferences, these friendships are stable, tend to last for 2 years
77
Pretend play as intimacy between friends
- function of social pretend play as trust and intimacy
- Play partners negotiate the shared creation of joint meaning and joint direction → co-creation of a new reality
- Themes of pretend play as a form of self-disclosure (represent preoccupations and concerns)
- Use themes of play to communicate - may not yet have the linguistic or cognitive sophistication to communicate these aspects of self in conversation
78
Themes of pretend play - (Dunn & Hughes, 2001):
Aim: to explore how themes of children’s play is
associated with social behaviour
- Children’s themes of play were coded
- Participants:
1. ‘hard-to-manage → showed high rates of antisocial behaviour, and negative emotions
2. matched controls (age, gender, school, ethnic background)
- Findings: The total amount of pretend play was similar across groups BUT hard-to-manage group were more likely to engage in violent themes of play
- Regardless of group: children who engaged in violent themes of play;
- More frequently angry and less positive in their responses to peers
- Engaged in more frequent antisocial behaviour outside the context of play
- Had play with greater conflict
79
Friendship
dyadic relationship that is mutually reciprocated, voluntary, intimate (shared interests, affectionate), stable, differ from other dyadic relationships (e.g. parent-child - which is vertical and friendship is horizontal)
80
Measuring friendships
If friendships reciprocated, proximity scanned in observation, self assessed friendship quality
81
Peer acceptance: Sociometric Status
- Children nominate the 3 peers they like most and 3 peers they like least (or like to play with most/least), with pictures of classmates (Coie et al., 1982)
- Social Preference: Like most - like least nominations
- Social Impact: Like most + like least nominations
- can be rejected, neglected, popular or controversial
82
Consequences of poor peer relationships:
- Consensus that peer relationships and friendships are important for later mental health and wellbeing e.g. friendships buffer against the negative impact victimisation has on wellbeing
- Friendship and peer acceptance are predictive of children’s academic achievement at school
83
Bagwell et al., (1998) : Followed a group of children from 10 years of age to 23 years of age:
Children who were well-liked by the peer group:
- Had better school adjustment and achievement, and greater adult life satisfaction, including job performance, aspiration level, social life
Children without a reciprocated friend:
- Less positive family interactions, and poorer general self worth
- Greater depressive symptoms
Children without a reciprocated friend and experiencing peer rejection
- Overall higher levels of psychopathology
84
Unexpected contents false belief
a child must attribute a false-belief about the contents of a prototypical container to someone else
85
The (rough) development of social cognition
- Visuo-spatial perspective taking
- False-belief understanding
- Appearance-reality
- Situational determinants of emotion; belief-based emotion,
86
Advanced Theory of Mind tests
- Second-order false-belief (e.g., double bluff, Happe, 1994)
- Self-conscious awareness and knowledge of social ‘rules’ (faux pas understanding)
- Understanding sarcasm, irony and double entendre humour
- Silent films task (Devine & Hughes, 2013)/Strange Stories (Happe, 1994).
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Problems with theory of mind measures:
- Complexity of language demands
- Implicit vs explicit ToM
- Single item at a single point in time
- Appropriate reflection of how ToM is used in everyday situations
- Memory burden
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Theory Theory (Gopnik & Wellman, 1992)
(Classic Theories of Theory of Mind: ‘The Big Three’)
- Children as scientists trying to figure out how minds
work
- Children form a ‘theory’ about minds
- But:
- Academic-centric
- But how does ToM develop?
- Do children really develop theories? untestable
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Simulation Theory (Harris, 1991)
(Classic Theories of Theory of Mind: ‘The Big Three’)
- Imagination – a ‘like me’ analogy to understand others
- Development hinges on getting increasingly good at
imagining others’ perspectives
- But:
- Imagination appears to be the *outcome* of development
- How do we test this theory?
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Modularity Theory (Leslie, 1987)
(Classic Theories of Theory of Mind: ‘The Big Three’)
- Also known as Theory of Mind Mechanism theory
- ToM underpinned by discrete, innate circuits in the brain
- Acquisition of ToM is a process of maturation
- But
- How do we get to complex forms of thinking?
- What about the influence of the environment?
- Not enough genes to claim innate knowledge
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Socio-cognitive neuroscience:
Biological basis for theory of mind
1) mirror neurons - allow us to understand intentions behind behaviours but aren'y enough for ToM on their own
2) localisation of function - - Neuroimaging studies can help reveal if there is a neural correlate of forms of thinking - could be one for ToM
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Theory of mind and friendship
Fink, Begeer, Peterson, Slaughter & de Rosnay, 2015
Aim: What role does false-belief play in the establishing children’s friendships at the transition to school and maintaining friendships over the next two years?
- measured at 5 and 7
- Findings - Unusually slow start in the development of ToM during the first year of school was a unique predictor of chronic friendlessness between ages 5 and 7
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Theory of mind and social competence/peer relations
- cyclically linked
- more important for girl's relationships
- socially neutral - can be used to support positive and antisocial behaviours
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Bullying and ToM
- Strategic proactive aggressive behaviour, with intention to cause harm, imbalance of power, repeatedly inflicted
- best achieved when the perpetrator has a strong grasp of the internal mental states of victims
- 1. Direct link between theory of mind and later bullying
2. Indirect link between theory of mind and bullying via social preference
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Lying and ToM:
Theory of mind associated with all aspects of lying
- No difference by culture or valence
- Most strongly related to lie maintenance
- Lying more strongly associated with first compared to second order ToM
- Lee and Imuta
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Sensitivity to criticism and ToM:
- Children with greater ToM understanding are more sensitive to the criticism of others
- When faced with critical feedback children who have good theory of mind skills are more likely than their peers to give lower evaluations of their performance.
- BUT - Feedback from teachers plays a key role in the development of academic skills such as reading and writing
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Knowledge abstracted from our experience
- (changes in how the child views the world)
- Physical properties of objects → physical knowledge
- Our actions upon the objects → logical mathematical knowledge
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Piaget mechanisms
- knowledge organised into cognitive structures/schemas - internalised action (e.g. sucking/grasping) - organised behavioural response to action
- Later turn into intellectual activity - abstract reasoning - become more nuanced
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Piaget - Principle of adaptation:
(children as mini scientists)
- **Assimilation**: incorporating new objects from environment into an already existing scheme
- **Accommodation**: modifying or re-organising mental structures in response to a new object/event
**Equilibration** - A sequential pattern of self-regulation, achieving balance between maintaining existing schemas and modifying them to deal with new information from the environment
Principle of **organisation:**
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Piaget stages - Infancy: the sensorimotor stage
(0-2 years)
- from reflexes to reflecting
- newborn reflexes (automatic chance behaviour)
- primary circular reaction (repeating a behaviour)
- secondary circular reactions (objects from environment)
- coordination of secondary circular (achieving goals with reactions)
- tertiary circular reactions (trying out things)
- mental representation
- Object permanence - search emerges around 8 months
- Object concept isn’t mature - when hidden a second time children will still look in the first place
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Piaget stages - Early to middle childhood - pre-operational stage
(2-7yrs)
- Increase in mental representation - difficulty in manipulation of mental representations
- Egocentrism - recognising that others have points-of-view different from their own - learning to engage in decentration
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Piaget stages - Middle childhood - concrete operations
(7-11yrs)
- Applying operations to concrete objects - classifications can take place along multiple dimensions, understanding of compensation ect. physical presence of objects often still needed for operations to be applied
- Child has limited ability to reason with abstract representations
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Piaget stages - Adolescence to adulthood - formal operations
(12yrs+)
- Applying logical operations to abstract, intangible entities
- Dissociation of truth from logic
- Systematic hypothesis-testing
- Strategic planning
- Appreciation of multiple alternatives
- Problem solving
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Limitations to Piaget:
- Children more cognitively competent than he thought
- Vague about mechanisms that give rise to changes in thinking
- Stages depict thinking as too consistent
- understates the social world
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Challenges from other empirical work:
- Piaget’s use of observation and unstructured interviews
- Early experimental evidence problematic
- Margaret Donaldson: tasks (and the language used in the tasks) need to make human sense
- e.g., conservation task using a Naughty Teddy (McGarrigle & Donaldson, 1974)
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Basic theoretical features of Cognitive development information processing theories:
- Emerged alongside developments in computer technology - mind as a computer, mind as information-processor with specifiable limits, hardware (brain, sensory system), software (strategies, rules)
- Processes - acquisition, attention to objects/events, encoding as representations, storage, retrieval
- Limits - memory capacity, knowledge of problem solving strategies
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Mechanisms of Cognitive development information processing theories
Cognitive development arises from children gradually surmounting their processing limitations
1) Expanding the hardware
2) Increasing their processing speeds (hardware + operating system)
3) Acquiring new strategies (software)
Emphasis on precise descriptions of **how** change in processing occurs
1) Development of WM, LTM and executive functioning
2) Improved efficiency of basic processes (central executive functioning)
3) Use of strategies and development of domain-specific content knowledge
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Capacity of information (memory) in Cognitive development information processing theories
- Organisation of working memory remains consistent from early in childhood but capacity and speed increases
- Increasing knowledge of content
- Maturational changes in the brain
- External environment
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Efficiency of capacity/processing in Cognitive development information processing theories
- Control of cognition (executive functioning):
- Inhibiting inadvisable actions/processing
- Enhancing working memory through coordinated use of strategies
- Cognitive flexibility
- Relates to efficiency of information processing
- Can be trained (Blair & Raver, 2014) and predicts achievement in later life (Cantin et al. 2016)
- Speed of processing - becomes faster from prenatal period to adolescence - increasing number of axons myelinated (Paus, 2010)
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Strategies of Cognitive development information processing theories
- For optimal storage and retrieval of information - for mental manipulation of information
- Domain specific - can occur at different rates for different things (Piaget = domain general), stages overlap (Chi - child chess experts)
- Siegler - ‘overlapping waves model’ - Changes in strategies do not occur in a sequence of qualitatively different stages
- Goal - Automatisation and generalisation
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Basic features of Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory:
- The relationship between social activity (‘intermental’) and individual thinking (‘intramental’) underpins cognitive development
- Children as teachers and learners
- Children as products of their culture
- Learning symmetric (same for everyone) rather it is influenced by those around us
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Mechanisms of Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory:
- Guided participation - task focused, child actively participates in process, child led through experience by an adult
- Social scaffolding and ZPD - also task focused, appropriate task for level of child, appropriate degree of support, enables a child to think higher than their ZPD (doesn't mean they can't do it)
ZPD = zones of proximal development
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Talk and collaboration in the classroom (Mercer & Howe, 2012)
- Examples of **how** children learn from interactions with others
- **Quality** of talk important (authoritative talk vs. dialogic talk)
- Use of questions to elicit reason and explanations over answers results in good learning outcomes (Kyriacou & Issitt ,2008)
- **Collaboration** vs. cooperation
- Evidence of lack of effective implementation in education settings
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Educational applications of of Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory:
- Reciprocal teaching (e.g., Joke City, Yuill et al., 2009)
- Reading comprehension intervention
- Scaffolding and exploratory talk
- Jigsaw classrooms (e.g., community-of-learners, Brown, 1997)
- Collaborative learning
- Learning pairs
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Intelligence:
- The **capacity** of a person to understand the world and meet its demands (Weschler, 1975), or a general reasoning capacity useful in problem-solving tasks of all kinds (Kline, 1991)
- The total intellectual repertoire of behavioural responses that an individual has attained at any given point of time (Humphreys, 1994), or some general property or quality of the brain (Jensen, 1994).
not learning, general knowledge, artistic ability, practical abilities, creativity, common sense, success
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The birth of empirical intelligence - Spearmean (1904) “General Intelligence”
- Collected school achievement and test score data from English schools
- Evidence of positive correlations across differing abilities - across different subjects
- Created factor analysis to analyse this covariance (the birth of the psychometric tradition)
- Single factor account for majority of variance, labelled ‘*g*’ – general cognitive ability
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Fluid vs crystallized intelliegnce (Cattell, 1967)
- Fluid intelligence – basic reasoning ability that can be applied to a wide range of problems –Highly heritable and biologically based
–E.g. Working memory; speed of information processing
- Crystallised intelligence – factual knowledge about the world (often culturally specific)
–E.g. Answers to arithmetic problems; vocabulary
- Supported by evidence that measures within each intelligence type correlate more highly than measures across the intelligence types
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Three-Statum Theory - Carroll 1993
- Attempt to reconcile competing perspectives on structure of intelligence
- Meta-analysis yielded a 3-stratum model (Carroll, 1993)
–Stratum 1 – narrow abilities (approx 60)
–Stratum 2 – broad abilities (e.g., fluid intelligence)
–Stratum 3 – *g*
- E.g. of modern psychometric approach – specific cognitive abilities appreciated.
- Majority of variance however, accounted for by *g*.
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Measuring intelligence
- observing individual’s actions on tasks that require aspects of intelligence (based on Carroll)
- Verbal comprehension e.g. “what is a tea strainer?”
- IQ and age - validity of test items vary across ages - different ones for different ages - standardised score - Intelligence Quotient (IQ) - comparisons by comparing to general population
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IQ bell curve -
- IQ = mental age (raw score) / expected score for age (drawn from population) x 100
- Thus IQ scores should remain stable over the life course
Provide information about an individual child - to identify children not likely to benefit from mainstream education
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Predictability of IQ
- Match what people think of as ‘intelligence’ - continuity from age 5 onwards - predictors of academic and occupational attainment
- IQ scores can be used to identify children who may need differentiated education
–‘Low functioning’ children
–‘Gifted and talented’ children
–IQ ‘spiking'
- Can be used to inform social policy
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Internal validity concerns of IQ
- May be too simplistic reducing it to a single score
- Culturally biased (crystalized intelligence)
- Representative population testing relied on but populations change
- Training children to perform better
- Tricky to conduct in practice
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Ethical issues of IQ
- Confidence means that judgments made on basis of IQ means that this leads to big environmental changes e.g. opportunities and teacher expectations
- Knowledge on IQ score can impact self-concepts and educational aspirations
- Group differences in IQ scores (e.g. race differences) readily lead to prejudice and stereotype threat led to poor academic performance (Steele)
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Heritability (G)
2 (rMZ - rDZ)
MZ = 100% G + E
DZ = 100% G + E
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