Early

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Early Middle Childhood

• Emotional Development

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Eriksons Psychosocial Theory
of Personality Development
Take initiative in doing new tasks interact
with peers in make-believe play
Feel guilt (i.e., are self-conscious) if society
is overly critical
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Eriksons Psychosocial Theory
of Personality Development
Become industrious good at something
Feel a sense of inferiority
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Self Understanding Early Childhood
Tell me about yourself?

• Self-concept attributes, abilities, attitudes
  values that define a person
• 3-5 yrs based on external attributes behaviors
• I have yellow hair.
• I paint pictures.
• Yellow is my favorite color.
• Do not yet mention internal traits
• Reason assert themselves over possessions
• Mine!

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Self Understanding Early Childhood
How do you feel about yourself?

• Self-esteem judgments feelings about ones own
  worth competencies
• 4 yrs Im a good painter
• Overestimate competencies
• Contributes to development of initiative

Is this a good or bad thing?
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Self Understanding Middle childhood

• Self-concept emphasize internal competencies (
  deficiencies) instead of external behaviors
• I paint well, but Im not a good piano player I
  try hard in school, but I only do okay.
• Contributes to development of industry
• Self-esteem influenced by social comparisons
• gains in perspective taking
• form an ideal self to
• evaluate real self

How do children decide what they are are not
good at?
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What happens if the ideal self real self are
not in sync?
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Hierarchically Structured Self-esteem
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Hierarchically Structured Self-esteem
Which type is most closely related to general
self-esteem?
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Changes in Self-esteem in Childhood(Marsh,
Craven, Debus, 1998)

• Participants 396 preschool, 1st, 2nd grader
  boys girls
• Measure Self-Description Questionnaire

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Physical ability
Appearance
Academic
Social Competence
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Changes in Self-esteem in Middle
Childhood(Marsh, Craven, Debus, 1998)

• Participants 396 preschool, 1st, 2nd grader
  boys girls
• Measure Self-Description Questionnaire
• Results summary
• Self-esteem drops during 1st few years of
  elementary
• Physical appearance esteem drops sharply for
  girls
• Most do not have exceptionally low self-esteem

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What influences a childs self-esteem?

• Culture Child rearing practices
• Attributions common explanations for causes of
  behavior

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What influences a childs self-esteem?

• Culture Child rearing practices
• Attributions common explanations for causes of
  behavior

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Examples of influences on attributions

• Example
• Your such a smart kid!
• Getting an A is not
• what matters.
• Its okay if you quit.
• You got lucky on that test.
• You could have studied harder to do well.

• Attribution Style
• Helplessness
• Mastery
• Helplessness
• Helplessness
• Mastery

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Emotional Development

• Understanding emotion
• 4-5 yrs provide explanations for emotions
• Happy because my pictures pretty
• Limit emphasize external obvious reasons
• Happy because feel good about self

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Emotional Development

• Emotion self-regulation
• 3-4 yrs strategies for adjusting emotional
  arousal
• Leads to decline in emotional outbursts
• Limit Use external strategies until around age
  10
• Fear regulation display rules

When would children need to regulate emotions?
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Emotional Development

• Self-conscious emotions involve injury to or
  enhancement of self-concept
• 3 yrs shame or guilt over (even accidental)
  wrongdoing
• Limit audience is needed, rely on adults
  messages
• Intense shame maladjustment
• Guilt good adjustment

Do self-conscious emotions foster or hinder
adjustment?
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Emotional Development

• Prosocial emotions behaviors
• 3 yrs empathy - feeling with another
• Related to perspective taking
• Limit leads to personal distress doesnt
  translate into sympathy feeling for another

How do children acquire empathy?
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Morality
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Theories of Morality

• Develop from externally controlled morality to
  inner standards of morality through childhood
• Social learning theory
• Moral behaviors are learned through modeling
  reinforcement in early childhood
• Harsh punishment promotes
• momentary compliance
• relief for parents
• model for aggression, but
• Doesnt achieve long-term goals

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Theories of Morality

• Cognitive-developmental perspective
• Middle childhood become active thinkers about
  social rules
• More trustworthy in absence of adult supervision
• Wrong to take something thats not yours
• Distributive justice (Damon, 1988)

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• Scenario
• One day a teacher let her class spend the whole
  afternoon making paintings and crayon drawings.
  The teacher thought that these picture were so
  good that the class could sell them at the fair.
  They sold the pictures to their parents, and
  together the class made a lot of money. Now all
  the children gathered the next day and tried to
  decide how to split up the money.
• What do you think they should do with it? Why?
• Should a child who made more paintings get more
  money than the others? Why?
• How about a child who doesnt have enough money
  to buy lunch every day? Should they get more?

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Theories of Morality

• Cognitive-developmental perspective
• Middle childhood become active thinkers about
  social rules
• More trustworthy in absence of adult supervision
• Wrong to take something thats not yours
• Distributive justice (Damon, 1988)
• 5-6 yrs Equality
• 6-7 yrs Merit
• 8 yrs Benevolence