Psychology 223

Made by: Daryan Van der wath
Psychology 223 WEEK 4

CHAPTER 4-7 CHAPTER 4
EARLY CHILDHOOD
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
Aspects:
• Height and Weight
o Age 4 – double birth length
o 2kg per year
o 5-8cm per year
o 80% increase in height
o 300% increase in weight
• Physical proportions
o Loss of ‘baby fat’ and start to resemble more of a young child
• Muscle and bone growth
o Increased daily activities
o Ossification à hardening of the cartlidge and bone
• Teeth
o Lose “baby teeth” which are replaced by more permanent teeth
• Brain development
o Age of 3 = +/- 75% brain capacity
o Age of 5 = +/-90% brain capacity
o The frontal lobe areas of the cerebral cortex devoted to reasoning,
planning and organising behaviour develop rapidly which expands
language skills, enhances balance and motor control and consciousness
as the plasticity is still very high.
o Plasticity à The ability of one area of the brain to take over the function
of another brain area that has been damaged.
Characteristics:
• Perceptual development
o Age 2-3 à auditory acuity (most children are able to hear soft sounds as
well as adults do, e.g. speech sounds)
o Age 4- 6 à perception of figure-ground (children are able to recognise
objects in a busy background) improves rapidly, as well as the ability to
distinguish between the different letters, they can consistently label
colours at the age of four, the eyeballs are not fully developed by this
time thus young children tend to be more farsighted however their visual
acuity does improve during this period
• Motor development
o Gross motor skills
§ Involve the use of large muscles, e.g. the muscles used in
climbing or running or jumping (this usually occurs by age of 3)
Not for Resale or Distribution! 1

§ By the age of 5 children would be able to ride a bicycle and engage

in activities such as gymnastics or activities that involve co-
ordination and balance
o Fine motor skills
§ The use of the small muscles in the hands and fingers (e.g. Using
scissors or painting)
§ Children’s handiness or dexterity improves during this period thus
they will begin to show a preference of which hand they will write
with
o Bilateral coordination
§ The coordination of the left and right halves of the body to engage
in different activities
Influences:
• Heredity and hormones
o The impact of heredity on physical growth is evident throughout
childhood
o The pituitary gland sits at the base of the brain and releases the growth
hormone (also known as somatotropin) to help aid in tissue and organ
growth
o Under secretion of this growth hormone will mean that children will be
stunted in their growth and an over secretion will have the opposite
effects
o The pituitary gland plays a critical role by releasing two hormones that
induce the growth hormone is necessary for the development of all body
tissue
§ thyroid-stimulating hormone stimulates the thyroid to release
thyroxin à necessary for normal development of nerve cells of
the brain and for growth hormone to have its full impact on body
height and size
o Children who are stunted in their growth due to various factors like
malnutrition can be injected with this growth hormone at an early enough
age to be able to correct this issue
• Nutrition
o Proper nutrition is vital for optimal physical and psychological growth
o Malnutrition leads to lowered resistance to infection (such as
respiratory infections and diarrhea)
o Undernourishment, especially between conception and the age of 2, are
at risk of delayed cognitive development (delay in motor and mental
development, impaired cognitive abilities, mortality etc.)
o Obesity: this is an emerging public health crisis for children around the
world and this situation is enhanced by the fact that overweight children
tend to become overweight adults
§ In the past 30 years obesity rates have doubled and tripled in
preadolescence and adolescence
§ This risk’s diseases such as orthopaedic, neurological or
pulmonary conditions also has great mental impact: low self-
esteem and depression
o In South Africa:
§ 25% of children under the of 5 are stunted (low height ratio)
§ 10% of children are underweight

§ 5% experience wasting (extreme loss of body tissue, especially

for their muscles)
§ 15% of children are obese
• Emotional well-being
o Influence of environmental factors (divorce, martial conflict, stress,
unemployment, and poverty)
o Psychosocial/ deprivation dwarfism à delayed physical growth as result
of stress and emotional deprivation
§ Stress resulting from such environments could have a delay on
children’s physical growth and health
§ Researchers argued that stress may have an influence on the
pituitary gland which can lead to an over or under production of
growth hormones
§ Characterised by: below average height, primary caregiver has
problems and neglects the child, the child will then flourish when
removed from this environment
o Stress – on hormones, on digestion, on immune system
§ Impacts the function of the pituitary gland
§ They will become for suspectable to viruses because stress lows
their resistance
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
THEORIES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT:
PIAGET’S THEORY: PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (2-6/7 YEARS)
• The term Operation is used to refer to a mental representation that is preformed

through logical thinking.
• Preoperational thinking: illogical thinking - cannot engage in mental
operations
• Two substages: symbolic and intuitive period
• Symbolic/pre-conceptual period (2-4 years)
o Complex symbols meaning children begin to attach meaning to words,
numbers or images
• Intuitive period (4-7 years) – children so sure of their world and what they know
however can’t tell you how they’ve come to know or what exactly they know.
o Primitive reasoning, children are constantly asking “why?”
o Develop own ideas about the world, their ideas are still relativity simple
and are not yet well considered
• Advances of pre-operational thought
o Deferred imitation à the ability to repeat the behaviour of a model that is
no longer present ( For example a child, sees their father make a braai
and then on Monday, they also want to have their own braai)
o Symbolic play/pretend play à substituting imaginary situations for real
ones (for example when a child pretends that a broom stick is a horse)

o Spoken language à with the development of language, thinking occurs

through representation of actions, rather than through actions alone,
thus the ability to understand the symbolic meanings of the words gives
the child a completely new significance to the child’s world.
• Immature aspects of pre-operational thought:
o Perceptual centration à attend to one attribute of what is observed
and ignore the rest; poor understanding of conservation
o Irreversibility à cannot reverse an operation (for example they are able

to understand that 2+3=5 but they cannot understand and reserve that 5-
3=2)
o Egocentrism à difficulty seeing things from someone else perspective
and think that the universe centres on them (the child believes that they
control the world) – three mountains drawing, the child choose the point
of view of the mountains that is their own rather than that of the doll.
o Animistic thinking à young children assume that non-living objects

have thoughts, feelings and motives
o Transductive reasoning à make links between two occurrences in
cause-and-effect fashion whether logical or not (for example a child
whose parents are getting divorced might feel as though their naughty
behaviour is the reason for the divorce)
• By the end of the pre-operational period, children should be able to classify
and categorise objects on the basis of one dimension (thus they can classify
colour and shapes but not together), but they are not capable of multiple
classification and do not have a number concept (meaning children do not
have basic number skills such as ordinality, cardinality, number
transformations and estimations)
• Evaluation of Piaget’s view:

o Current research findings does not support Piaget’s view

o Animism is of too small a degree as young children are uncertain about
objects and they possess incomplete knowledge which leads to
mistakes
o Studies of children’s emotional development and theory of mind also
reveal that many pre-schoolers are able to display empathy and
awareness of how other people feel
o Number concept and ability to classify develops earlier than Piaget
assumed
Thinking
Description Examples
patterns
Pre-schooler’s solve problems When a mother cuts her child's meat into small
Perception-
based on what stands out vividly pieces, the child comments "Now you have given
bound thinking
and perceptually. me much more to eat."
In the liquid conservation problem, children notice
Preoperational thinkers can only
Perceptual the volume level line of the liquid, but do not take
perceive and thus reason about one
centration into consideration the size and the shape of the
dimension at a time
glasses.
A pre-schooler is drawing a picture in the living room
Pre-schoolers believe that others
and asks her mother, who is in the kitchen, if she
Egocentrism think, feel and perceive in the same
likes her drawing. The child is unable to realise that
way as they do.
her mother cannot see the drawing.
Pre-schoolers believe inanimate A child announces that her doll is sleepy and needs
Animism
objects have feelings. to go to bed.
Pre-schoolers reason from event to
Transductive Teacher: Why does it rain? Child: So we can use an
event rather than in a more logical
reasoning umbrella.
fashion.
NEO-PIAGETIANS
• They are theorist who have expanded Piaget’s work rather than contradict it
• They challenged claims that clearly defined cognitive structures associated with
distinct stages play major role in determining problem-solving abilities, so
according to them there should be some consistency in a variety of tasks at
each of the four stages of cognitive development
• However what they have found is that there are some evidence of uneven
performance of different tasks and even on the same task at different stages, for
example children understand the conservation of liquid before they understand
the conservation of mass, thus there is some inconsistency in the way that
Piaget thought about children’s conceptual development at this time.
• To address these inconsistencies, Kurt Fischer and Robbie Case have studied
cognitive development from a more domain, task and context perspective

• Kurt Fischer’s viewpoint

o Agrees that cognitive development is an action based, self-regulating,
constructive process but he disagrees that there is a generalised
cognitive structure
o Cognitive development must be described for each task and in a different
context (thus a skill applied in one context does not mean that it will be
or can be applied in a different context)
o Cognitive development needs support from environment (helpful
parents), thus higher levels of support leads to higher cognitive
performance
• Robbie Case’s viewpoint
o Agrees development happens in stages – but progression not due to
cognitive structures.
o Thinking develops in stages and is influenced by executive processing
space (this references to active, temporary conscious memory)
o Operational efficiency - Limit to the number of schemas that children
can attend to in this space at any one time
o An improvement in operational efficiency occurs through practice and
brain maturation as the child get older, thus a 7 year old is better to
handle a conservation task than a 4 year old
NAÏVE THEORIES
• Children as theorists à children’s theories are usually called naïve theories

because they are not created by specialists, and are not evaluated by formal
research thus they are not scientific but help to understand new experience and
predict future events
• Core knowledge hypothesis à according to this hypothesis, children are born
with very basic knowledge of the world and this knowledge continues to grow as
children have new experiences
• Naïve physics:
o understanding of objects and properties
o Infants are aware of many basic facts about objects
o By the end of their first year, they have an understanding that
unsupported objects can fall and that a tall object can be partially hidden
by a short object
• Naïve biology:
o Children have a understanding about the distinction between living
(animate) and non-living objects (inanimate)
o Motion is critical to early understanding of this
o Around 15 months they are able to understand that animate objects are
self-propelled, they can move in irregular paths and they can act to
achieve certain goals
o During early childhood children’s naïve theories of biology become more
complex
o 4 years old theory of biology (properties associated with living objects)
§ Movement
§ Growth
§ Internal parts

§ Inheritance
§ Healing
NAÏVE PSYCHOLOGY AND THE THEORY OF MIND
• Naïve psychology à individuals’ tendencies to try and explain why people act
as they do
• Theory of mind à attributing mental states (feelings, emotions, intentions, and
beliefs) to other people
• Henry Wellmen
o First phase, 2 yrs. olds à aware of and can communicate desires and
link their desires to their behaviours
o Second phase, 3yr olds à clearly distinguish mental and physical
world and can use mental verbs like (think, believe, remember and
forget) which suggests that they do have a understanding about mental
states
o Third phase, 4 yrs. olds à understand their own and others’ actions.
Understand that their own and others’ behaviour is based on beliefs
about events and situations
§ False-belief task

• Theory of mind
o Theory of mind is when children have to ability to attribute mental states

such as beliefs, emotions, desires, intents and knowledge not only to
themselves but also to others
o A theory of mind is a powerful tool to explain, predict and manipulate
other people’s behaviour
o Preschool children do not fully grasp Reciprocal thought – understand
that others can think, but not about them
o 5-7yrs this begins to develop when children become more social and is
important for reciprocal friendships
o Factors that contribute to development of ToM
§ Pretend play
§ Parent-child communication
• Prior developments needed for acquisition of ToM:
o Self-awareness à refers to the child’s awareness to recognise their own
mental states
o The capacity for pretence à from about age 2 children can engage in
make-belief/pretend play with dolls and they can allocate various mental
states to these dolls
o The ability to distinguish reality from pretence à pretend play involves
children projecting their emotions and desires on to other things and the
ability to see that others are not just extensions of their desires
o Understanding emotions à children can understand emotions before
they can understand mental states and demonstrate an awareness of
their emotions not only in themselves but also in others
o Executive functions à provides an important platform for their
acquisition of theory of mind
• What about cross-cultural adaptions of ToM?
o Cross-cultural difference do not reflect differences in rates or extent to
which children are able to master the theory of mind
o Cross-culture differences exist in the sequencing of theory of mind
steps, but not in the overall rates of mastering theory of mind
VYGOTSKY’S SOCIALCULTURAL THEORY
• Criticised Piaget for disregarding cultural influences

• He believed that, to develop their minds fully, children need intellectual tools
provided by their cultures, such as language, memory aids, writing and scientific
concepts
• Vygotsky’s contributions to developmental theory
• Zone of proximal development à The difference between the level of
performance a child may achieve when working independently and the higher
level of performance when working under the guidance of more skilled (parents
or peers)
o He believed that finely tuned and coordinated adult support assists
children in completing actions that they will later come to accomplish
independently and this can be achieved by encouragement and joint
participation

o Scaffolding
§ temporary assistance provided by one person to a less-skilled
person when learning something new
§ The defining characteristic of scaffolding is giving help, but not
more than is needed, subsequently promoting learning
o Guided participation
§ the participation of an adult in a child’s activity in a manner that
helps to structure the activity and to bring the child’s
understanding of it closer to that of the adult
• Language and thought
o Piaget suggested that Cognitive development comes first – makes
language possible
o Vygotsky disagreed, he believed that language ability comes first
because it reflects almost every aspect of the child’s thought
o Language is a vital instrument in structuring thought and regulating
cognitive behaviour
o Around age 2, Speech and thought combine and mutually influence each
other
o Piaget coined egocentric speech, whereas Vygotsky coined private
speech
o Private speech
§ Intermediate step toward self-regulation of cognitive skills and
cognitive growth
§ Instruct themselves by speaking aloud
§ Eventually becomes inner speech at age of 6 or 7
• Mechanisms of development
o For Vygotsky, development follows a dialectical process of thesis (one
idea or phenomenon), antithesis (an opposing idea/phenomenon) and
synthesis (resolution)
o Conflict and resolution play a major part in development
o This dialectical process often occurs when children interact with adults
or peers that are more advanced
o Language and observation of other people’s activities contribute to the
process of change and their mechanisms of development
• Evaluation of Vygotsky’s theory
o His main theoretical contribution is the account of the relation between
development and learning, one of the most important issues of cognitive
development and he argued that learning drives development
o His work suffers one-sidedness and his accounts of intrinsic
development are vague while his research focuses largely on cultural
forces
THEORY OF INFORMATION PROCESSING
• Cognitive development is less consistent and more multi-faceted process than

Piaget suggested in his staged theory
• Focus on children’s memory systems
• Short-term memory (working memory)

o As a child progresses through early childhood they are increasingly able

to hold more information in their short-term memory and are better able
to do this as they get older
• Long-term memory (permanent storehouse of information)
o Certain kinds of long term memory do not occur even in early childhood
o Script knowledge (general knowledge about a subject or an event)
• Memory strategies (deliberate mental activities to improve processing and
string of information)
o Rehearsal is when target information is repeated
o Retrieval is the process of accessing information and entering it into the
consciousness
o Two forms of retrieval : Recognition (refers to the type of memory that
notices whether a stimulus is identical or similar to one that has been
previously experienced) & Recall (refers to remembering a stimulus that
is not present)
o These skills improve with age
• Metamemory à knowledge of memory skills and appropriate use of these
strategies
• Metacognition à knowledge about the control of thought processes
• Executive functioning à conscious control of thoughts, emotions and actions
to accomplish goals or solve problems, it facilitates children’s performance in
tasks involving the theory of mind
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
VOCABULARY
• Toddlers: two-word to multiple utternances
• 2yrs – sentences 4-5 words
• 3yrs – sentences 8 words
• Mean length of utterance (MLU) which is used to calculate complexity of
children’s language usage
Vocabulary:
• Vocabulary spurt happens around 16 months and two years
• Age 3 à at least 1000 words
• Age 6 à receptive and expressive vocababulary/lexicon 10k-20k words
• This rapid expansion of vocabulary can occur through fast mapping (pick up
meaning of word after only hearing it once or twice) or by a slower process know
as extended mapping (more exposure and usage of word)
• This process involves graduallly increasing the number of words that are used in
a sentence
• After reaching a certian point, children will then take their vocabulary to the next
step and display more immaturities in their vocablulary
o Underextension (restrict usage of word – such as “juice” only for orange
juice and not for other juices
o Overextension (usage of word for a variety of objects – such as using the
word “dog” for any other fourlegged animal such as a horse)

PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY

• Phonology (sounds of language)
o Acquire a Rule system for pairing sound with meaning
o During pre-school years children become perceptive to sounds of
spoken words and are increasingly capable of producing all sounds of
their language
o 3yrs – produce vowels and most consonants
• Morphology (smallest language unit that has meaning in order to structure a
word) – such as adding an “s” to make the word plural
o Begins when they start to use more words in sentences
o Plural and possessive forms as well as prepositions
o Sentences become more complex
o Evidence of use– overgeneralisation of the rules (e.g. foots instead of
feet)
o Children will begin to use morphological knowledge to create new verbs
from nouns
GRAMMER AND SYNTAX

• Development of grammar and syntax becomes more complex now
• 3yrs – use plurals, possessive and past tense.
• 3yrs – ask what? And where?
• 4-5yrs – MLU increases, sentences more complex to include sentence types
such as negatives, questions and imperatives (they are able to tell stories)
• 5-7yrs – speech becomes adult like
o Can use conjunctions, prepositions, articles and multiple clauses.
o More complex stories.
o Not yet mastered all aspects of language.
THE PRAGMATIC USE OF LANGUAGE

• Pragmatic language à rules for using language effectively and appropriately in
social context and according to social conventions
• Social speech à speech intended to be understood by listener
• Development in pragmatic use of language dependent on ToM
o With improvements of pronunciation and grammar, the use of language
is socially dependent on awareness of others’ emotions and beliefs thus
it becomes easier for others to understand children and what they say,
thus this facilitates a Reciprocal (two-way) conversation
• 3yrs olds – talkative, pay attention to effect of their speech on others, explain
themselves more
• 4yrs olds – parentese (higher pitch and slower)
• 5yr olds – adapt to listeners perspective, which demonstrates the ToM
EMERGENT LITERACY
• Emergent literacy
o Refers to the development of skills that are need for the understanding
the printed word

o There are certain skills that are required in order to use this EL:
§ Prereading skills à two types: oral language skills, skills
associated with vocabulary, syntax and oral narrative skills, &
Phonological skills, these skills are associated with being able to
link letters with sounds.
o What do children need to do to master a functional level of literacy?
§ Firstly, children need to be able to recognise letters
§ Secondly, they need to understand grapheme-phoneme
correspondence rules (understand which sounds correspond with
which letter symbol)
§ Thirdly, they must be able to recognise words
§ Finally, they need comprehension and interpretation skills
o Longitudinal research indicates the importance of early language skills in
children’s school readiness
• Reasons why many SA children lag behind
o South African children lag behind in this regard because a high percentage of
South African children do not acquire basic literacy skills in their first three
years of school
o The ineffective school curriculum, the bad quality of teaching and the lack of
parental involvement
o The impact of this pervasive cognitive under stimulation, especially in the
developing world, has rekindled interest in the importance of cognitive
stimulating activities, such as book sharing/shared or paired reading
o Ways that this is can be improved à Book sharing implies that parents, while
reading, also engage in labelling objects and commenting on and questioning
the child about things in the book, it helps the child and gives parents
opportunities to engage in decontextualized talk (discussions extending
beyond the pictures in the book to include additional and new concepts)
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT AND THE MEDIA

• Forms of media exposure à Tv, internet, phones, laptops, gaming consoles etc.
• Criticism of TV viewing
o The displaced time view à Argues that television viewing harms
cognitive development because it takes away time from other activities
that are more beneficial, such as reading or pretend playing.
o The passivity view à Because it takes little effort to watch television,
habitual inactivity may result.
o The shallow information processing view à Posts that the rapid and
short segments typical of many television shows over time result in
shorter attention spans and difficulty in sustaining focus.
o The visual/iconic view à television selectively enhances visual info
processing at the possible expense of verbal processing.
• Studying TV viewing à Research shows it seems plausible that what pre-
schoolers watch, rather than how much, might be an important predictor to
what the effect on behaviour will be on behaviour
• Educational programmes à well designs programmes actually enhance
social, vocabulary, school readiness, literacy and numerous skills, they are
aimed at pre-schoolers and do not focus excessively on cognitive skills

• Effect of other media à Heavy TV usage, watching non-educational shows

and TV viewing by children under the age of two years are not conducive to their
optimal development. However, the general point is that well-constructed
educational TV programmes designed for pre-schoolers can have beneficial
effects for their cognitive and social development
• Media literacy à Adults can also influence how children use media and
Helping children choose time for physical and play activities and helping them
choose programmes with a prosocial and educational content will help children
develop media literacy
• Better media use
o Differentiate between media and reality
o Deconstruct commercials and watch TV critically
o Share TV as family – limit times
o Chose programmes wisely and in proportion to other activities
o Regard media as resource to better understand the world
EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCTAION

• Importance à Going to pre-primary school is an important step that widen a
child’s physical, cognitive and social environment
• Approaches:
o Child-centred
§ Nurturing is a key aspect of this approach, which emphasises
education of the whole child and concerns their physical,
cognitive and socio-emotional development
§ Emphasis is on the process of learning rather than what is learned
§ Firstly each child should follow a unique developmental pattern,
that is suited to their needs, secondly that young children learn
best through first hand experiences and material and lastly that
play is extremely important in their development
§ However this approach does not benefit all
o Direct instruction
§ This method relies on abstract paper-and- pencil activities
presented to large groups of children
§ The emphasis is on direct academic instruction with extensive use
of workbooks, worksheets and rote drill or practice
§ Children are mostly seat bond, thus they are mostly sitting in large
classrooms for majority of their school time
§ However it doesn’t consider the child’s developmental needs and
socio-emotional development is also neglected
o Montessori approach
§ Maria Montessori
§ Children are given considerable freedom and spontaneity in
choosing activities while the teachers act as facilitators rather
than instructors
§ In this approach the teacher will show the child how to preform
intellectual activities and demonstrate interesting ways to explore
materials and really only offer the child help when needed
§ Criticised for neglecting children’s social development and de-
emphasising verbal teacher and peer interaction

• Early childhood education policy in SA

o Educational policy in South Africa defines early childhood development
(ECD) as catering for children from birth to nine years
• Quality of early childhood education in SA
o Performance levels of South African learners are of the lowest in
developing countries
o Why? Poor quality of teaching and poor home environments, as well as
not getting the right start and then not being able to catch up or reach
their full potential
PERSONAILITY DEVELOPMENT
THEORIES OF PERSONAILTY DEVELOPMENT

• Main focuses of the theories:
o Emotions
o Emotional control
o Self-concept
• Freud
o Phallic stage à Foundation of personality laid during these years when
boys and girls successfully identify with same gender parent
o The boy child will have successfully resolved the Oedipus complex and
the girl child will have successfully resolved the Electra complex, as both
identify with the same gender parent
• Erikson
o Development of basic trust during infancy
o 2-3 yrs: emerging autonomy
o 3-6yrs: initiative develops, which means they become more resourceful
in exploring their environment, tackling new problems and joining in
activities with their peers
o Guilt feelings à can develop when a parent constantly discourages or
punishes the child during the development of their initiative
• Social learning perspective:
o Behavior is shaped by external rewards, punishments, role models
o Children’s rewards can also be internal thus behaving in ways that can
enhance their self-esteem, feelings of pride and accomplishment
o Children learn ways and concepts such as those attaining to gender,
race, ethnicity, and friendships and that some of these schemes they
can accept and internalize but other ones they can reject
• Big 5 personality traits & temperamental traits (see page 23 & 25 of this doc)
EMOTIONS
• Emotional understanding
o Children’s heightened cognitive and social development contributed
toward changes in their emotional experiences
o Self-development contributed to the development of self-conscious
emotions (such as guilt, shame and pride)

o During this time children become increasingly more aware of their own
emotions as well as other peoples emotions
o Children become more aware of their emotions they become better at
controlling their emotions, expressing them and they become more
sensitive to others
o Factors that influence emotional understanding:
§ Apart from advances in cognitive processes, family relationships
also influence emotional understanding
§ Young children that have secure relationships are better able to
express their emotional understanding , thus the more parents
label emotions and explain them in talking to pre-schoolers, the
more emotion words pre-schoolers use
o Importance of emotional understanding
§ Age 2-4 à emotions develop more quickly
§ Age 4-5 (pre-schoolers) à are able to refer to causes,
consequences and behavioural signs of emotions, however
children are more likely emphasize external factors over internal
states when they try to explain these cause, consequences and
behavioural signs of their emotions
§ Pre-schoolers are quite good at predicting what a friend,
expressing an emotion (this shows us how children’s ToM
develops)
§ Capable of reducing another’s negative feelings
§ They become more aware that thinking and feeling are more
interconnected
§ Pre-schoolers have an good ability to interpret, predict, and
change others’ feelings
§ However children still have difficulty in understanding conflicting
emotions, which means that they do don’t understand that people
can experience two emotions at the same time
• Emotional expression: basic emotions
o Happiness
§ Babies – smiling/laughing
§ 2yrs – spontaneous expression
§ They will jump up and down, clap their hands, run, and laugh out
loud and hug their loved ones to indicate their joy and excitement.
§ Children – socialisation leads to emotional regulation
o Fear and anxiety
§ Children’s responses to fear and anxiety vary from being mildly
timid, to being paralysed with terror.
§ Not all children’s fears are bad: some fears help them to be aware
of possible dangers and therefore provide a safeguard and protect
them from harm and disaster.
§ What causes fear in children?
• Might be due to something that is threatening or it could be
the absence of something that provides safety
§ Fears is also influenced by different contexts and differences in
temperament and experience
§ Fear is also linked to biological differences and sociocultural
contexts

§ Nightmares in children tend to reach a peak by the age of ten,

after that, they decrease
§ Young children with consistent bad dreams seem to be more
anxious, emotionally disturbed and have more difficult
temperaments
§ Common fears (see below)
o Childhood fears research in SA (Muris et al.,2008)

§ Parental support to cope with fears
• Encouraged to talk about fears
• Associate feared object with something neutral
• Others should handle object without fear
• Gradually brought into contact with feared object
• Taught skills to deal with fears
• Explain feared situation
• Visit feared situation beforehand
• Divorce – reasons should be explained (if possible)
• Distinguish between fantasy and reality
• Sympathy, comfort, and safe haven
o Anger
§ Strong emotional reaction that is primarily socially instigated,
often under conditions of threat or frustration.
§ Objections to routines
§ Conflict with parents
§ Disagreement with peers
§ Physical discomfort

§ Reactions:
• Outbursts
• Active resistance – temper-tantrums
• Become more controlled as get older (socialisation)
• Cultural variations of how anger is expressed and dealt with
• Acknowledge feelings, taught strategies to deal with them and
learn ways to express and control their anger more in
acceptable ways
• Emotional expression: the self
o Self-conscious emotions develops as self-concepts become better
defined (feelings that involve injury/ enhancement of sense of self,
embarrassment, shame, guilt, envy, pride), these emotions require that
the children can understand the perspective of someone else (ToM)
§ Emerge before 2nd yrs.
§ 18 months à shame, embarrassment
§ 2yrs à jealousy
§ 3yrs à guilt, pride, remorse
o Self-evaluation à (evaluate own thoughts, desires, plans and
behaviours against what is considered socially acceptable)
§ A child may avoid a behaviour that could cause negative emotions
and repeat a behaviour that causes positive emotions
§ Role of complex emotions play a role in children’s performance
related behaviours, so if a child feels praised after completing a
certain task, they are more likely to complete that behaviour than
if they did not feel praised
o Emotional expression: others
§ empathy (understanding of another’s situations and feelings)
§ empathy is related to the child’s increasing self-awareness,
language abilities and cognitive skills
§ Role of parents – parents who are warm, encouraging and
empathic, will usually have children who then reflect these
characteristics, however if parents are more abusive, this will
delay the child’s development of empathy
o Emotion regulation
§ Strategies
• Avoidance strategies à children develop ways that avoid
situations that lead to negative emotions
• Language strategies à a child might comfort themselves by
telling themselves things that bring them comfort and ease
anxiety (“mom will be home soon”)
• Cognitive strategies à when a child tries not to think about
something that will make them sad but rather think about
something more positive
• Masking à for example when a child falls and pretends that it
doesn’t hurt instead of crying in front of his peers
• Display rules à are cultural guidelines for when and how we
display our emotions

• Emotion-coaching approach à used by parents to monitor the

child’s emotions, by using certain emotions as opportunities
for teaching and coaching them on ways to deal with them
• Emotion-dismissing approach à used by parents when they
deny, ignore, and change these negative emotions, thus
children of such parents show poor regulation of these
emotions and tend to have more behavioural problems
THE SELF-CONCEPT
• Refers to a person’s view of themselves
• The development of the self-concept
o Starts with the development of self-awareness during the first few years
of life and this continues to develop as children get older
o For pre-schoolers the knowledge about themselves will expand quite a
lot during these few years thus they are able to give more than just
physical descriptions of themselves
o Children develop a Categorical self (can describe themselves in terms
of name, gender, age, skills, possessions, where live, friends) and
internal self (emotions and attitudes)
o So their development of understanding of personality traits is also
indicated by their correct inference of motives (for example they will
know when someone is shy when they don’t want to play with them)
o As their cognitive development improves they are able to use
psychological terms and traits when they describe themselves
o Young children’s self-concept is closely related to their possessions as
this is also noticeable over children’s assertiveness over their objects
o In research this assertiveness over objects is regarded as a positive sign
of children’s developing Self-definition (define boundaries between
themselves and others)
• Self-esteem
o The personal evaluation of own characteristics
o Degree of self-acceptance (play an important role in personality
development)
§ Negative self-concept when you are not satisfied with these
characteristics of yourself, they will usually have high levels of
anxiety and later on they will perform poorly at school and have
difficulty adjusting socially
§ Positive self-concept when you evaluate your characteristics as
good and acceptable, they are usually more successful
academically, have more self-confidence and are better adjusted
socially
o Self-esteem is based
§ Feelings love, acceptance, support, encouragement
§ Characteristics and skills and based on the degree to which they
accept themselves, especially when they are comparing to others
o Developmental course
§ Begins in early childhood and as they develop they form
numerous perceptions of themselves
o Influence of culture

§ Research indicates that in a society that is more individualistic in

nature, there is preference given to personal goals, self-reliance,
independence and creativity when children are raised
§ In a more communal society these individual goals are more
subordinate to the collective goals of the community, thus this
emphasise interdependence, obedience and conformity
GENDER
• Gender-role development
o Behaviour patterns and attitudes viewed as appropriate for male/female
society, therefore gender-role development implies the development of
these behaviours and attitudes
o 3 processes:
§ gender identity à knowledge of their gender
• by the age of 2 or 3 most children can label themselves as
a boy or girl, however they still struggle with gender
constancy (refers to persons biological gender and the fact
that this biological gender will remain unchanged even with
superficial changes)
§ gender stereotypes à toys, clothes, careers, colours that are
linked to a certain gender
• starts as soon as they begin to identify themselves as a boy
or girl
• these stereotypes grow stronger as they get older and as
there gender constancy begins to form
§ gender-typed behaviour à typical behaviour, preference for
same sex playmates
Theories of gender-role development

• Biological theories:
o chromosome combinations (X;X – female or X;Y – Male)
o Male hormones are linked to aggression, dominance, competitiveness
which contributes to the stereotype
o Hormone imbalances – female foetuses that have an excess of
androgens leads to a condition call adrenogenital syndrome, however
these androgens can be surgically removed and when removed this
seems to correct the hormonal imbalances and the characteristics
associated with this
o In some studies they found that androgen girls showed more male
personality characteristics than other girls, but when these were
removed these characteristics tended to go away
o Hermaphroditism, when infants are born with ambiguous sexual organs,
thus they are part male and part female
• The psychoanalytic theory of Freud:
o Freud indicated that there are biological factors and that the social
environment is important in determining the influence on children’s
gender-role development
o Biological factors are the sexual energy that is channelled to various
zones of the body during the course of development

o Social environment is the way in which the child is treated by their

parents
o psychosexual development
§ Begins during the phallic stage (age 3-6), during this stage the
child will experience a biological based love for the parent of
opposite gender (Oedipus complex in boys and the Electra
complex in girls)
§ However during this stage they experience a conflict which results
from these forbidden desires towards the parent of the opposite
sex
§ Thus in attempt to resolve this conflict they begin to identify with
parent of same gender
§ Thus according to Freud gender-role develops because of this
identification of the same gender parent
o No empirical support for his theory
§ According to the identification process, children will have the
same characteristics as their parents but this is not necessarily
true, for example there are boys who have very feminine attributes
but have very masculine fathers
§ Furthermore children are quite ignorant of human anatomy at this
stage so it is difficult to believe that they experience castration
anxiety or penis envy at this age, the basic of which the
identification process if supposed to develop
§ Freud also claims that the identification process begins out of fear
for the parent however most modern researchers believe that
identification develops from a warm and supporting relationship
with that parent
• Social influences:
o Social learning theory states that children learn gender-roles through:
§ differential reinforcement à this means that children are
encouraged and rewarded for gender appropriate behaviour and
punished for gender inappropriate behaviour, thus as they grow
older children participate in gender-typed play
§ observation and modelling à children begin to see which toys
and activities are mostly for girls and which are for boys and then
they begin to imitate these individuals of their own gender, they
also witness this in the household and via the media
o Evaluation of theory
§ Offers a good explanation of gender appropriate behaviour
through the process of modelling and reinforcement
§ However the assumption is made that children as passive
recipients of external influences
§ Thus the SLT, doesn’t take on the view point that children can
have their own input into their own gender-role development
• Cognitive influences:
o Focuses mainly on the ways a child understands these gender-roles and
their view of themselves as either male or female
o Cognitive developmental theory (Kohlberg)

§Children’s gender typing only develops after they have acquired a

concept of gender and they then begin to organise their world
based on gender
§ This means that they actively acquire knowledge regarding gender
appropriate behaviour from models of the same gender and other
sources of information
§ This theory rests on two assumptions: that gender role
development is dependent on cognitive development, this means
that children must first understand gender before they can be
influenced by their social experiences and secondly that children
are actively involved in their own socialization
§ 3 developmental stages in which they need to acquire certain
knowledge before they can develop knowledge of what it means
to be male or female:
• Gender identity (+/- 3 years old)
• Gender stability à knowledge that gender identity
remains stable overtime (4 years old)
• Gender Constancy à knowledge that gender remains
stable across situations (5-7 years old)
§ Critics: the assumption that Gender Constancy should be
attained before children seek information regarding gender
appropriate behaviour from their role models from the same
gender
o Gender Schema Theory (Bem; Martin and Halverson)
§ Emphasizes the importance of the development of a gender

identity and children’s motivation to active in a gender typical
way, which is reach by children actively seeking knowledge
regarding values, attitudes and actives related to their view of a
certain gender
§ This self-socialization begins when children have developed a
basic gender identity (2-3 years old)
§ A gender schema is a cognitive structure that organises the social
world for children into either male or female schemas
§ Firstly children develop the same gender and opposite gender
schemas, in which they begin to classify appropriate behaviour for
girls and for then for boys

§ Secondly children develop what is called an Own gender schema

which includes: own gender behaviour and serves as a basis for
guidelines of gender appropriate behaviour
§ Although gender schemas help organise their social world, they
can cause distortion of information that does not fit into a schema
RACIAL & ETHNIC IDENTITY
• Race à socio-political construct, that is used to describe observable
differences individuals such as skin colour
• Ethnicity à cultural background typically associated with language group
• Ethnic identity develops according to 5 components
o Ethnic knowledge à that their ethnic group has distinguishing traits,
behaviours, physical traits, values, customs and language that sets them
apart from other groups
o Ethnic self-identification à members of ethnic group
o Ethnic constancy à distinguishing characteristics do not change across
time and place and that they will always be members of a certain ethnic
group
o Ethnic-role behaviours à engagement in behaviours that reflect
characteristics of group
o Ethnic feelings and preferences à feelings about belonging to their
ethnic group and its members and their preferences that distinguish
them from their ethnic group
• Ethnic identity is something that develops gradually throughout childhood
• Children only begin to identify themselves according to their ethnic group
between the ages of 7 & 8 and shortly after they begin to understand that race or
ethnicity is a feature of themselves
• Parents are instrumental in helping children to learn the strengths and the
unique features of their ethnic culture and instilling in them an ethnic pride
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS à PARENTS OR CAREGIVERS

• Attachment
o nature of attachment changes from about 2-3 years old, many of the
attachment behaviours become less visible than before due to the
development in cognitive ability such as language
o Bowlby referred to this attachment as a goal-corrected partnership, for
a preschooler the goal is to be in contact with the parent, but this contact
doesn’t require a constant physical presence, they are also able to
correct or modify their goal of contact with the attachment figure by
engaging in more collaborative planning
o The quality of attachment:
• Secure attachment à will experience fewer Behavioural problems
• Insecure attachment à show more anger and aggression towards
their peers and other adults in social settings
o Researchers believe that attachment is about relationships thus they
argue that the supportive relationships and the promotion of good

parent- child relationships is the core content of intervention to

programmes to modify children’s issues with the attachment figures
• Dimensions of parenting: (Diana Baumrind)
o Warmth and nurturance à Children with warm and nurturing parents are
generally more securely attached than children with cold and detached
parents and will show more positive development in most areas of their
life and acts as a buffer against negative events
o Consistent control à Parents who set clear rules and constantly apply
these rules, usually have children who are much less likely to be defiant
or noncompliant, the most optimal outcomes occur when parents are
not overly restrictive and explain things to the child and avoid the use of
physical punishment
o Expectations à Children of parents who have high expectations of them
also tend to fare better, specifically regarding their self-esteem, and
altruistic behaviours, these expectations are called Maturity demands
o Communication à Open, clear and regular communication between
parent and child has been linked to positive outcomes, also listening is
just as important as talking to the child
• Parenting styles:
o Authoritative à Meets all 4 above dimensions which is the most
successful approach because of high acceptance and involvement,
adaptment of techniques and the granting of appropriate autonomy
o Authoritarian à High in control and expectations, but low in nurturance
and communication thus the parents are cold, rejecting and frequently
degrade their children to exert control and resort to force and
punishment which generally lead to negative outcomes for children
o Permissive à Show warmth and nurturance, but fail in terms of
expectation, control and communication. The parents are generally
warm and accepting but tend to be overindulgent and inattentive and
have a lack of control means that children often have to make own
decisions (of which they are not yet capable)
o Uninvolved à Don’t meet expectations of any parenting styles, the
parents tend to be emotionally detached and sometimes neglect their
children, which disrupts all aspects of the child’s development
• Correlations between parenting style and children’s behaviour

SIBLING RELATIONSHIPS
• There are links between the quality of sibling relationships and peer
relationships that seem to exist
• Developmental changes leads to a change in the nature of sibling relationships
• Sibling conflict increases significantly after the child reaches about 18 months
of age, so as cognitive and social understanding develops sibling conflicts
become more constructive and the younger sibling tries to reconcile this
conflict
• For preschool siblings the most often dispute is over possessions
• Parents’ role in sibling conflicts and quality of relationships
o When siblings fight, psychologists are of the opinion that parents should
intervene and if this conflict is left unchecked the some behavioural
problems may persist
o Sibling disputes and their settlements may be viewed as opportunities in
socialisation
o Parents contribute largely to the quality of sibling relationships, indirectly
and directly
§ Directly à the treatment of siblings, thus siblings will get along
more when they believe they are treated equally
§ Indirectly à stems from the quality of relationships with each
other (parents), thus a warm and harmonious relationship also
fosters a positive sibling relationship
• Birth of a new sibling
o The birth of a new sibling can be quite distressed for older children but
this can be avoided in parents remain warm and responsive to the older
child needs and engage them in the activities
• The role of culture
o In some cultures the care of younger siblings is part of the societal
system and older children play an important culturally defined role in
caregiving and teaching
PEER RELATIONSHIPS
Play
• Types and functions of play
o Functional play à repetitive activities (skipping, jumping and moving toy
cars) does not have a goal of creating an end result, so this type of play
evolves the gross and fine motor development and also enhances body
movement for children
o Constructive play à Involves children manipulating and making
something, this type of play encourages children to practice their fine
motor skills and cognitive skills and they also then begin to understand
how things fit together
o Social pretend (socio-dramatic/fantasy play) à they use make-believe
to change the functions of objects, create imaginary situations and enact
pretend roles, these play activities reflect the child’s growth in their
cognitive, perspective taking and the communication skills

o Games with rules à like hide-n-seek and board games etc., these
games provide children with opportunities for cognitive development and
social understanding
• Developmental sequence of play (Mildred Parten, 1932)
o Solitary play (the child plays alone) à Parallel play (the child plays near
other children) à Cooperative play (when children play together by
sharing and following one another)
o More recent research has shown that these are interchangeable
• Imaginary friend à common and normal for children, and reflect the richness of
the child’s imagination
• Children’s play and culture
o Children in collectivist cultures (African and Indian Cultures) tend to play in
large groups, which requires a high level of cooperation and communication
between one another
o Children in more individualistic cultures tend to play in small groups and
tend to focus more on the movement of objects
o Children who participate in play groups are more likely to be more social, co-
operative
o Children in all cultures play, however there are cultural variations and
cultural beliefs about play influence early play behaviour
Aggressive behaviour
• Aggression refers to physical or verbal behaviour that is intended to injure or
harm someone else
• Types of aggression:
o Instrumental aggression à being used as a means to an end, an
aggression that will lead to obtaining something in the end
o Hostile aggression à intended to hurt someone deliberately, when
children are hitting, kicking or assaulting one another
• Developmental course:
o Begins around 1 or 2 years of age when children begin to interact with
one another
o From brief struggles, children learn which type of behaviour is more
successful in obtaining a desired object
o Instrumental aggression diminishes as pre-schoolers grow older
because they are able to compromise over the ownership over
something
o Hostile aggression increases between 4-7, which is linked to children’s
ability to recognise the intentions of other people
o Although this occurs in both boys and girls, it seems that boys are more
likely to be physically and verbally aggressive than girls
• Normal vs. excessive aggression
o Occasional aggression is normal
The causes of aggression - theoretical grounding:

• Instinct theories
o Aggression is part of the evolutionary survival process of humans thus we
are programmed to active aggressively in certain situations

o No longer accepted
• Biological factors
o Reactions to stimuli are activated by biological systems thus the brain
(hypothalamus and amygdala) and hormones (testosterone) play a role in
the tendency to act aggressively
• The frustration-aggression hypothesis
o Proposed by Dollard
o Individuals experience frustration, and therefore anger, when the
attainment of their goals is blocked
o The reformulated hypothesis states that frustration may cause
aggression and because pre-schoolers cannot express themselves
clearly they end up expressing themselves through a type of aggression
Cognitive factors as an explanation for aggression

• This view point deals with children’s interpretations of their social environment
as well as their view and assumptions regarding aggression
• A key point is the child’s understanding of the intentions of someone else,
which means that when a child believes that their peers intentions were
deliberately hostile, they are more likely to retaliate with aggression
• When the peers intentions are unclear aggressive children are more likely to be
hostile towards that person
• Aggression is caused by an inability to process social information properly
• Aggressive children will view the outcomes and results differently compared to
nonaggressive children
• Aggression may lead to some tangible rewards for the child, however aggressive
children are not concerned with the consequences of their actions
• Thus these outcomes may contribute to the continuation for the aggressive
behaviour
Social factors as an explanation for aggression

• Social learning theorists believe that children learn aggression through
reinforcement and imitation of role model (like their parents, community
violence or via the media)
• Parenting styles that influence aggression:
o The type of nurturance that the child receives à parents that are cold or
hostile or who reject their children, these children tend to be more
aggressive, than those whose parents are warm and positive, because
their emotional needs are not being met
o The type of discipline that the parent follows à parents who use strict
and punitive discipline also have children that show this type of
interaction with others, however if the parent uses a permissive
parenting style by not providing the child with guidelines regarding
aggressive behaviour, these children also tend to be aggressive
• Community violence à the more children witness community violence the
higher the levels of their own aggression are
• The media:
o Tv violence
o Effects and stages of development (See below)


• Meta-analyses: main effects

o The desensitisation effect à reduction of cognitive, emotional,
behavioural responses after continued exposer (in this case towards
violence)
o The aggressor effect à some children and adults tend to become more
meaner and more violent because of this exposer
o The victim effect à both children and adult will begin to view the world
as a much more scarier place and become more fearful and engage in
more self-protected measures
o The bystander effect à children and adults will become more
desensitised to violence in the media and in real life and they become
less sympathic to victims
o The appetite effect à children and adults will develop and increased
appetite for seeing more violence
• However not all children who watch violent television or engage in violent video
games show negative consequences
Controlling aggression: guidelines

• Parents should ensure that their own interaction styles are not aggressive
• Parents should be firm with aggressive behaviour
• Parents should make less use of power assertion
• Parents should explain the harm of aggressive behaviour to children
• Parents should investigate the causes of aggressive behaviour
• Children should be able to voice their feelings at appropriate times to avoid
anger build ups
• Parents should have boundaries with tv viewing for children
• Parents should evaluate the games that children play with to make sure it
doesn’t emphasize too much harm and violence
Prosocial behaviour
• Prosocial behaviour refers to any action that is intended to benefit someone
else such as empathy or altruism (doing positive things for the sake of others)
• The development of prosocial behaviour
o Starts around ages 2-3, the begin to understand that others might feel
differently from them thus they lose their egocentrism
o Children understand enough about emotions to respond in a
support/empathic way when they see other children sad
o Prosocial behaviours increase with age however the responses vary
• Factors that influence the development of prosocial behaviour
o Emotional regulation, helps children to be more inclined to this
behaviour
o Parent modelling this type of behaviour leads the child to have more
tendencies towards this behaviour too

MORAL DEVELOPMENT
• Refers to a set of principles or ideas that enables individuals to differentiate
between right and wrong
• Building blocks of moral development
o Emotions
o Self-regulations
o Conscience
• Basic lessons
o Children need to learn to experience negative emotions when they
violate rules
o Children need to control their impulses so that they can engage in
behaviours that are allowed
• Developmental course
o Around age 2 children begin to show signs of distress, shame and guilt
when they break rules or when they dont act in a way that is expected of
them
o There is a development of conscience when they do something wrong
and they also expect to be repremanded for their behaviour or actions
• Reparative behaviors seem to be linked to empathy
• There are temperamental traits that play and important role in children’s moral
development
• Parents also play an important role in the child’s development of morality
• Socialisation and socialisation agents also play a role in moral development

WEEK 5
CHAPTER 5
MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
GENERAL PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
• Nature of the growth tempo (more gradual)
o Rapid growth of the arms and legs
o Bodily proportions change gradually and the child’s body begins to take
on a shape similar to that of an adult
o Children grow about 6cm in height per year and gain around 2kgs per
year during this phase
• Areas of development:
o Brain
§ The brain has almost reached its adult size and weight by end of
middle childhood
§ The development of the frontal lobes (planning & reasoning) and
the increased connections in the frontal lobes means that
children can master more difficult cognitive tasks
o Respiratory system
§ The elasticity of the lungs increases and breathing becomes
deeper and slower
§ The circulatory system develops at a slower rate
o Teeth
§ The milk teeth are lost and replaced by permanent teeth
§ A condition known as Malocclusion could occur when teeth are
not properly aligned but this can be corrected via braces
o Vision (myopia)
§ 20% of children will have vision problems
§ The most common problem in middle childhood is myopia, near
sightedness à distance objects are out of focus for them but they
can see objects that are closer to them
• Individual differences & Gender differences
o The growth rate of boys and girls differ, 10-11 year old girls increase more
in weight and height than compared to boys during this period
• Factors that can impact physical development
o Race, nationality, and socio-economic level
o Thus in different parts of the world, there are differences in the average
height amongst children
• The role of sleep
o Sleep is extremely important for physical development because the
growth hormone is secreted during this time
MOTOR SKILLS
• Acquisition and refinement of a variety of psychomotor skills
o New skills develop because of an increased strength and their
coordination, timing and concentration

o They are almost able to achieve the same skills as adults in certain tasks
• Gender differences in gross motor development
o Boys usually develop more rapidly than girls do
o Boys seem to have more muscle tissue than girls do
• Motor development and personality
o On the cognitive level, the acquisition of skills such as writing and playing
a musical instrument becomes possible
o Children’s social development is enhanced by their participation in
individual and team sports and they begin to follow rules and cooperate
with team members
SEXUALITY IN MIDDLE CHILDHOOD

• General (incorrect) view of children’s sexuality
o Freud believed that this is a period during which children show little or no
interest in sexuality (latency)
o Sexual development of children and their interests in sexuality continue
uninterruptedly throughout childhood
o In middle childhood their sexuality seems to be more undercover and
according to Freud they did this in order to meet social expectations
o This view was disregarded!
• Gender constancy and sexual orientation
o By the end of middle childhood, children usually have a firm and
established sense of gender identity and gender constancy
o Many children in this age range become aware of issues related to sexual
orientation, thus they will learn about different sexualities
o They will often show strong preference for gender-typed clothing and
activities during this time too
• Masturbation: self-soothing behaviour
o Although in minority, some children in this age range will masturbate
occasionally for pleasure as it’s a self-soothing behaviour that helps
them deal with especially emotionally taxing situations (such as parental
discourse or divorce)
• ‛Sexual’ games: curiosity and exploration
o Children take greater care in concealing these game from adults
o Occurrence of sex play with the same gender as well as with the opposite
gender is common
• Conveying knowledge about sexuality and reproduction
o Many children this age will have a basic understanding of how babies are
made however some information that they receive during this time can
be incorrect and can lead to many misconceptions about sexuality and
reproduction
o Thus it is important that parents start the sex education of their children
as early as possible so that children can obtain the correct information
within the parents’ value system

PIAGET:CONCRETE OPERATIONAL THOUGHT
• From ages 7 to 11 and signifies the stage in which children start using mental
operations to solve problems and to reason
• Advances in thought:
o Mental operations à strategies and rules that make thinking more
systematic and powerful.
o Reversibility à The understanding that both physical actions and
mental operations may be reversed
o Horizontal décalage à Cannot easily transfer knowledge about one
type of conservation to another type –even if underlying principle remains
the same
o Egocentrism à means that they are ver centred in their thinking and
they also confuse apparence and reality, however this dismignishes
during this phase
o Decentring à Avoid centering on one aspect only
• The ability to understand hierarchies of classes also rests on this ability to
move both ways in thinking relationships, allow children to perform
conservation tasks, however they don’t master all conservation tasks all at once
• Concrete operational thinking is much more powerful than preoperational
thinking
• Learning that events may be interpreted in different way helps children realise
that many problems have many facets therefore children are able to decentre
• Limitations
o Children think more concretely which means that they arent able tot hink
abstractly and hypothetically
• Applicability of Piaget’s theory of concrete operations today
o Piaget maintained that the master of skills depends on brain maturation
and adaptation to the environment
o His descriptions of the changes that occur during middle childhood have
generally held well because of cross-cultural
o However, he may not have paid enough attention to the role of culture-
based experience, disregards influential cultural characteristics
(schooling, education levels and parenting styles)
INFORMATION-PROCESSING SKILLS
• Memory
o The phonological loop, which stores sounds and verbal material, plays
are important task in learning to read and understand language
o Visual-spatial sketchpad, which stores visual material, improve the
creation and use of mental images
o Memory strategies that children develop more efficiently:
§ rehearsal, organisation and elaboration

CHILD’S AGE MEMORY CAPABILITIES

Under 2 years Infants remember actions and routines that involve them.
Memory is Implicit, triggered by sights
and sounds (e.g. an inter active toy or a caregiver's voice)
2-5 years Words are used to encode and retrieve memories. Explicit
memory begins, although children do not use memory
strategies. Children remember things (their phone number,
address, nursery rhymes and songs) without truly
understanding them
5-7 years Children realise that some things should be remembered, and
they begin to use simple strategies, primarily rehearsal. With
enough repetition, automaticity occurs.
7-9 years Children use new strategies if they are taught them. They use
visual dues (remembering what the spelling of a particular
word looks like) and auditory hints (rhymes, letters), that is,
evidence from the visual-spatial sketchpad and phonological
loop. Children now benefit from the organisation of things to
be remembered.
9-11 years Memory becomes more adaptive and 9-strategic as children
become able to learn various memory techniques from
parents, teachers, and other children. They can organise
material themselves, developing their own memory aids.
• Processing speed
o Speed at which you carry out cognitive processes
o Cognitive processing becomes faster and more effective
• Automatic processing
o Processing speed is significantly influenced by factors such as automatic
processing, also called automaticity à Cognitive activities that require
virtually no effort
o Makes more cognitive capacity available to perform other cognitive tasks
• Knowledge base
o Growth of children’s knowledge base
o School-aged children learn an incredible amount of basic information
o The more a person knows about a topic, the better he or she can learn
and remember and they also become a lot better at organising this
information
• Control processes
o Processes that pull memory, processing speed and knowledge base
together – collectively called executive functions.
o Executive functions predict how well children achieve academically and
it also helps them to control impulsive behaviours
o Important control processes metacognition and metamemory
o Metacognition à Allows a person to evaluate a cognitive task and
determine how to accomplish it
o Metamemory à informal understanding of memory

o As children mature, they learn more about how memory operates and
devise intuitive theories of memory
o There are many learning problems (adhd etc) that lead to problem in
executive functioning
• Theory of mind
o Knowledge of mind and how it functions, and also knowledge of your own
and others’ mental states and how these mental states influence
behaviour
o Children’s theory of mind becomes more elaborate and refined
o Children also become increasingly able to understand emotion better in
themselves and in others
• Higher-order cognitive tasks
o Include reasoning, decision making, problem solving as well as
academic skills (reading, writing and arithmetic), each of these tasks
need to be processed and stored by basic cognitive processes as well as
combined, all of which improve during middle childhood
• Applicability of this approach
o Has important implications to education and has also influenced other
theoretical approaches, for example working memory predicts how well
children will do in reading and spelling
o The strengths of the theory lie in is ability to express the complexity of
thought, it has a precise analysis of performance and change
o The weaknesses lie with certain developmental issue and a neglect of
the context of behaviours, it focuses on the processing mechanism that
a person will bring to a task however it ignores the needs, goals and
social influences children bring to the task
• General language development
o Increased length and complexity of the sentences school children use
and certain grammatical forms are completely mastered at school
o The multiple meanings of words are mastered, (between 8-9) begin to
grasp sarcasm, they also understand irony and metaphorical language
o The older, the more they will experiment with words
o Children increase their use of facial expressions and gestures to
accompany the understanding and expressions of language
o Children develop an improved ability to adapt language to the social
context of which it is used
• Bilingualism and multilingualism
o Most South Africans are at least bilingual, while many are multilingual
o Although South Africans are mostly bilingual or multilingual, they do not
appear to be confused about the identity of their communicative acts
o More than half the world’s population is bilingual
o Children acquire bilingualism or multilingualism through two processes:
§ simultaneous learning (one lang does not interfere with another)
à acquire languages at the same time
§ successive/consecutive learning (words of 2nd lang interfere
with that of first) à first learn one language then the other

o Benefits
§ Bilingual and multiple children will perform better on test based
on analytical reading and cognitive flexibility
§ Multilingual children have far better language proficiencies than
monolingual children do and they also know how to distinguish
between different languages
ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT
• School readiness
o First day of primary school is one of the most important transition periods
in a child’s life
o Regard themselves as “big” who are engaged in the serious business of
going to school and they don’t think of themselves as little kids who are
playing anymore
o Reorganisation of the child’s inner life and external behaviour as the
child moves away from the familiar preschool to become incorporated
into a different environment
o Parents and teachers are important in this process, coherence among
them is critical, children’s transition from preschool to primary school is
dependant on them
o Dimensions of school readiness (UNICEF, 2012 report):
§ children’s readiness
• A certain level of physical, cognitive, social and emotional
maturity that has to meet the demands of formal schooling
• Children’s attitude towards learning plays an important
role
• Cognitive skills and school-entry literacy and numeracy
skills and moral development are important attributes
§ schools’ readiness
• Defined in terms of the school environment that supports a
smooth transition for children into primary school and thus
advances learning for all children, thus there needs to be
continuity between these learning environments
• Ready schools apply quality teaching and help bridge the
cultural divide between home and school cultures
• Promote a social learning environment where the
relationships between teachers and children is critical for
the development of social, ethical, emotional, intellectual
and physical competencies
§ parents’ readiness
• The focus here is on attitudes of parents and caregivers
and their involvement in their children’s early learning and
development and transition to school thus parents need to
create a home environment that supports the child in going
to school
• There are strong correlations between a simulative and
supportive home environment and school performance

o In South Africa, there is a high failure rate amongst school beginners, one
of the reasons is the unreadiness of many school-age children
o Children from low socio-economic environments are particularly at risk
because they are not yet proficient at numeracy and literacy
o One of the ways in which this issue if being addressed is by the inclusion
of the Reception year (grade R), which task is to teach literacy and
numeracy and life skills to young children
o Advantages of school readiness
§ Lays the foundation for positive school performance and
continued academic success
§ Investing in children ensured success will benefit society as a
whole
§ Children are more likely to succeed at school and become earning
and tax-paying citizens which might help to take them out the
poverty cycle
§ School readiness also helps increase self-worth
• Achievement motivation and learning orientation
o The degree to which a person chooses to engage in and keeps trying to
accomplish challenging tasks
o This is dependent on their beliefs, values and psychological goals
o These attributions a child makes have important effects on the child’s
achievement motivation and learning orientation: (internal & external
factors)
§ Ability
§ Effort
§ Luck
§ Task difficulty
§ Strategy use
o characteristics of children who are successful: (see next page)
§ mastery orientation
§ Incremental view of ability
§ Focus on learning goals
o characteristics of children who are unsuccessful
§ helpless orientation
§ hold an entity view of ability and seek out task that they know they
can do well in and will not fail at
§ Focus on performamce goals
• Different views of ability, goals and overall orientations,
typically develop in later childhood and may be strongly
influenced by parents and teachers feedback
• Parent contributions
o Parents of achieving children create an environment for learning, monitor
their children’s activities and show interest in their children’s lives
o Children thrive off structure and routine thus the more this is in place the
more likelihood the child will succeed
o Parents motivation their also seems to play a role in children’s
achievement motivation
o Motivational style
§ Extrinsic motivation (external, gifts- sweets or punishment)
§ intrinsic motivation (internal, gifts-pride)

o Parenting style (authoritative/authoratarian)

§ authoritative parents generally have children who are higher
achievers, curious and what to achieve higher marks
§ authoritarian parents (rejecting and unresponsive)
§ permissive parents have less successful children in general
(uninvolved)
MASTERY ORIENTATION HELPLESS ORIENTATION

Attributes success to hard work and skill. Attributes success to luck.
Attributes failure to lack of effort and
Attributes failure to lack of ability
knowledge
Sees lack of knowledge and skills as Sees lack of knowledge and skills as relatively
temporary and changeable permanent and unchangeable
Is optimistic about future success, even after Is pessimistic about future success, even after
failure. success has been achieved.
Engages in positive self-talk, self- Engages in negate self-talk, anxiety; holds

encouragement; holds positive expectations negative expectations.
Asks for help when needed, sees getting help Avoids seeking help, sees need for help as
as opportunity to improve skills confirmation of poor ability.
Persist in difficult tasks, tries to find new

Decreases effort in difficult tasks gives up easily
strategies
Seeks challenging tasks, views them as ways Avoids challenging tasks views them as
to increase ability confirmation of poor ability
Has learning goal, seeks to learn new

Has performance goal, seeks to perform well to
strategies and skills
confirm ability to self and others
• Socio-economic status
o Research has shown a strong correlation between academic
achievement and socio-economic status, which means that a low socio-
economic status affects parents ability to provide an environment that
enhances learning
o Low socio-economic status can affect educational achievement and the
quality of schooling
o Children from low socio-economic environments are at a disadvantage:
§ poor parental care and inadequate nutrition
§ bad teaching and a lack of resources
o Social capital à the extent to which the family and community will pull
resources to provide for the children so that they can achieve in difficult
circumstances

• Community involvement
o Creating environment that support learning (such as establishing
library’s)
o Is important in improving the quality of education and includes
establishing participation among schools, local education officials and
community members
o Examples: Reading clubs that aim to enhance children’s literacy or
providing places that can help with children’s homework
• School contribution
o Classroom climate
§ General attitudes, social and emotional responses and
perceptions of the individuals in the class (characteristics that are
associated with the teachers and learners)
§ A positive climate is associated with higher learner motivation and
achievement
§ Good classroom management and teaching skills are essential
and adaptable to the learners needs, in creating a positive climate
o School climate and structure
§ Focus on external rewards that learners can earn for good
performance
§ This means that they encourage the setting of performance goals
rather than learning goals
§ Schools can help their learners better by focussing more on the
process of learning
§ Small class size is beneficial for academic success
§ However this is expensive and results in overcrowded class (like
in South Africa) which has a negative influence on school climate
§ Schools and learners flourish more when there is parental
involvement (i.e. parent-teacher meetings and newsletters)
o Educational policy
§ On a direct level the type of system or orientation followed could
impact on how children are taught and how they learn
§ On Indirect level children are affected by teacher’s commitment
to, understanding of and ability to implement the specific
orientation, thus teachers need to be adequately trained
§ South African education system is not working very well (CAPS)
o Corporal punishment
§ Any punishment in which physical force is intended to cause
some degree of pain and discomfort
§ Recent research shows that over a fifth of children still experience
it at school
§ Strips children of their self-respect and self- esteem which can
lead to violent behaviour, depression and other problems
§ In South Africa it was abolished
§ Violence is a systemic issue that needs to be addressed in various
types of environments that children are exposed too
• Sociocultural contexts
o NEEDU (2013) – Literacy issues in SA
§ Differences between home language and language of instruction.

§ Indigenous languages not standardized – different between

language taught at school and how spoken at home.
§ Indigenous African home language instruction often only offered
at foundation phase.
o In South Africa children from diverse backgrounds come to school with
different experiences as a result schools struggling to meet different
educational needs
o Poor performance in South Africa reflects the continued use of an
instructional model used in schools and due to the potential mismatch
between what is learnt inside and outside of formal schooling
o Medium of instruction also plays a role because some children are not
taught in their mother tongue
o Teachers are rarely trained to embrace diversity or vary learning
techniques
• Language medium of instruction
o Diversity in SA is evident in the languages spoken in the country
o Educating learners in their mother tongue provides them with easy
access to concepts, which facilitates cognitive development
o When learners do not speak the language of instruction, their academic
achievement is undermined
o NEEDU (2013) – Literacy issues in SA
§ Differences between home language and language of instruction.
§ Indigenous languages not standardized – different between
language taught at school and how spoken at home.
§ Indigenous African home language instruction often only offered
at foundation phase.
• Electronic media effect on children’s cognitive skills
o Cognitive socialisation à The internalisation process by which cultural
tools influence the development of cognitive processing skills
o Spatial representational skills à The ability to judge speed and distances
and the ability to mentally rotate objects
o Iconic representational skills à The ability to ‘read’ and interpret images,
such as pictures and diagrams, and attentional skills
o Attentional skills à The skill of keeping track of multiple events occurring
simultaneously at different locations on the screen
o However, parents should be aware of the content of children’s computer
games
o Several studies provide evidence that computer use is positively related
to academic achievement
CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS
• Many children encounter barriers that impair their performance

• Intellectual disability (risk factors)
o Previously IQ was the most important factor in testing for an Intellectual
disability (IQ level below 70)
o Unreliability and invalidity of IQ tests lead to the inclusion of other
criteria in determining intellect, which looked at other mental abilities,
adaptable behaviour, age

o Intellectual disability occurs along dimensions of mild, moderate and

profound
o Profound intellectual disability characterised by sensory, motor and
intellectual delays, while physical deformities are common, these types
of children often need life-long care and support
o These factors place people at risk for intellectual disability:
§ organic or biomedical factors - genetic disorders, malnutrition,
traumatic brain injury
§ social factors - poverty, child abuse and neglect, domestic
violence
§ educational factors - impaired parenting, inadequate special
education services
o There are programmes that have been designed to fit the educational and
developmental level of each child
o Medication is often necessary to control behavioural issues
• Learning disabilities
o Affects the manner in which individuals with average to above-average
intelligence take in, retain, or express information
o Limitations in speech, reading, writing or numeracy and other accepts of
their lives
o There are distinct criteria that children have to meet in order to be
diagnosed with a learning disability
o Most psychologists agree that learning disabilities have a genetic origin,
research has shown that remedial programmes can lead to significant
improvement
o Remedial programmes lead to improvement
• ADHD
o Children who constantly and repeatedly show age-inappropriate
behaviours in the two general categories of inattention and
hyperactivity-impulsivity
o Inattentive children will find it difficult to sustain mental effort during
work or play time, they have a hard time focusing on one task at a time
and following instructions
o Not all children with ADHD show both categories of ADHD
o No cure, but a variety of treatments may be used to help children cope
with their symptoms and deal with any secondary problems that may
arise over the years
o No specific cause, but contributing factors include:
§ Genetic and neurobiological influences
§ Abnormalities in in front (behavioural inhibition) lobes of the
cortex
o Some children outgrow some of the symptoms of ADHD, while others
learn to cope effectively with them
• Giftedness
o The term is used more broadly and includes high achievement or
exceptional talent in various areas such as art, academics and sport
o The main characteristics of gifted children are the following:
§ Special talents are usually obvious from an early ages
§ Inspiring and talented teachers and parents

§Show an almost obsessive passion to understand better the

domain in which they excel
o Exceptional talent should be nurtured and identified from an early age
o Talented children need a curriculum that is challenging stimulating and
complex enough to aid to their talent
• Creativity
o Divergent rather than convergent thinker
o This is the ability to think and produce in novel and unusual ways
o Leads to products that are both original and meaningful
• Educating special needs children
o Inclusive educational system (Pandoor, 2004) so that children with
different learning needs are included in mainstream education
o The SA government is determined to create special needs education as
an integrated component of our education system
§ Reduce discrimination and prejudice towards children with
special needs
§ Contention based on international human rights policies
o However, not all children benefit from inclusive education
o Parents have to take responsibility for their children’s education
o Parents involvement and attitude is important for inclusion to work
o Success for inclusion is attributed to staff attitude, thus if teachers feel
supported they are more likely to appreciate this inclusive education
PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT
THEORIES OF PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

• Chapter 3, see different approaches
• Temperament and personality traits (see below)
o The big five personality traits:
§ Extraversion, negative emotionality and neuroticism,
agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness
PROCESS DEFINITION EXAMPLE

Learning Process Temperament shapes the child's Children high on openness may
experience of classical and operant find complex and novel stimuli to
conditioning. be reinforcing
Environmental Elicitation Temperament shapes responses of Children high on extraversion
adults and peers to children may attract peers to play with
them
Social and Temporal Temperament shapes the ways Children high on neuroticism
Comparisons children evaluate themselves relative may wrongly view themselves as
to others and to themselves across inadequate relative to their
time peers.

Environmental Selection Temperament shapes children’s Children high on

choices about their everyday conscientiousness may pursue
environment challenging activities.
Environmental Temperament shapes the ways that Children high on extraversion
Manipulation children alter, modify, and manipulate may actively persuade other
their environment children to choose them as
leaders of the group
Environmental Construal Temperament shapes the ways Children low on agreeableness
children interpret the environment and may interpret requests from
their experiences adults as hostile impositions on
their freedom
• Psychoanalytic approach
o Freud:
§ Children between the ages of 6 and 12 repress sexual desires in
order to concentrate on developing friendships with members of
the same gender, as well as social and academic skills
§ latency stage
o Erikson
§ Referred to this developmental stage as the industry versus
inferiority stage
§ When this is resolved, children will develop competence
§ The development of competence à Demonstrating a pattern of
effective adaptation to the environment
§ Children develop competence in:
• Adjusting to school
• Establishing peer relationships
• Learning to play by the rules
• Achieving academically
SELF-UNDERSTANDING: SELF CONCEPT AND SELF-ESTEEM

• Self-concept
o set of attributes or qualities, abilities, attitudes, and values that an
individual uses to define who they are.
o Children start describing themselves in terms of psychological traits and
compare their own characteristics with those of their peers and they
speculate about the causes of their own strengths and their weaknesses
• Structure of self-concept refers to children’s ability to combine typical
experiences and behaviours into psychological dispositions or characteristics
• Content of the self-concept: cognitive capacities and social feedback play a
role.
• Characteristics:
o Children develop a much more refined self-concept and include internal
characteristics and psychological traits, as well as social aspects in their
self-descriptions
o Thus children become more realistic about their skills and they are able
to differentiate between things that they are good at, bad at and okay at
• Factors responsible for this shift:

o Make social comparisons with their peers

§ thus they are more likely to distinguish themselves comparatively
rather than in absolute terms and these assements are made
o Cognitive development à affects the changing structure of self-concept
as well as the content of the self-concept
o Improved perspective taking à children are able to understand what
other people are thinking
o Ideal self versus real self à any discrepancies between the two may
undermine the self-concept
§ Ideal self: a concept of what they would like to be
§ Real self: a concept of who they really are
• Self-esteem à Is an aspect of self-concept that involves judgements about
one’s own worth and the feelings associated with those judgements
• Self-efficacy à People’s beliefs about their capabilities to perform well, and
the confidence they have in being able to control events in their surroundings.
o Children who believe they are competent develop feelings of positive
self- efficacy and behave effectively
o As children reach school age, the school environment provides valuable
feedback in forming their self-efficacy
• Structure of self-esteem (see below)
EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
• Cognitive understanding of events and emotions increasingly influences their

emotional reactions
• Developmental changes:
o Understand complex emotions (e.g. shame and pride).
o More than one emotion can be experienced in a particular situation.
o Take into account events and situations leading to emotional reactions.
o Suppress and conceal negative emotions.
o Understand facial expressions.
o Understand discrepancy between expressed and felt emotions.
o Self-initiated strategies for redirecting feelings are refined.
o Understand role of cognition in emotion.

• Emotional intelligence (Goldman, 1995):

o A form of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own
and others’ feelings and emotions and to use collected information to
guide one’s thinking and actions
o Main areas of development:
§ developing emotional self-awareness à ability to separate
feelings from actions
§ managing emotions à being able to control anger
§ reading emotions à taking the perspective of others
§ handling relationships à ability to solve relationship problems
• Emotional skills (De Klerk and Le Roux, 2003):
o Better physical health
o Score higher academically
o Get along better with friends
o Fewer behavioural problems
o Increased respect for emotions, values and perceptions of others
o Improved self-worth and self-acceptance
o Make better decisions about risky behaviours
o Resilient
• The concept of emotional intelligence has received criticism because many
psychologists point out that it is not a new concept and it is very difficult to
measure because it’s a complicated construct
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
THE ROLE OF THE FAMILY

• The parent-child relationship:
o There is a shift in the parent-child relationships due children’s roles
change between the ages of 6-12 and parents’ roles also change
o Home is a symbol of security and family is central unit
o Children gradually become less dependent on their parents in terms of
active help
o They often express dissatisfaction with existing rules regulating playtime
and bedtime, and pocket money
o They start questioning their parents’ decisions
o Parents must deal with new issues and concerns
o Parent and child engage in co-regulation
o As children demonstrate that they can manage daily activities, effective
parents gradually shift control from the adult to the child
o Parents with an authoritative parenting style seem to have a much easier
time with this transition and understand that children need to be offered
this opportunity to being to establish their independence
o The way in which this is handle helps prepare the child for adolescence
• Models of influence
o Parent effects model
§ This model tells us that the influences of parents is a one-way
relationship

§ Thus whatever is going on with the parent is going on with the

child and will determine how the child is developing
o Child effects model
§ The way in which the parents respond to the child, ultimately
results in the child’s behaviour (thus it is about the child’s
temperament and personality)
§ Highlights instances in which children influence their parents
rather than vice versa (behaviour problems in children may bring
out a negative behaviour pattern in their parents)
o Bi-directional model
§ The parent and child are seen to influence each other equally and
reciprocally, they tend to reinforce and perpetuate each other’s
behaviour
§ They ultimately mirror each other’s behaviours and personalities
• Parents’ role in children’s social development:
o Direct instructors
§ Parents are responsible for transmitting values and attitudes-
their own and those of the larger culture and community in which
they live to their children
o Indirect socialisers
§ Parents provide indirect socialisation through their own behaviour
with and around their children
o Social managers
§ Parents manage their children’s experiences and social lives,
including their exposure to various people, activities and
information
o Parents act as important socialisation agents in their children’s social
development
o However one should not dismiss the active role of the child
o Children need to be willing to be socialised else their parents attempts
will not be successful
o Furthermore the social environment should be supportive of parents
being socialisation agents for their children
• Discipline (see table below)
o Methods of teaching children character, self-control, moral values and
appropriate behaviour
o Powerful tool for socialisation with the goal of developing self-discipline
o Features of positive discipline:
§ Parental behaviours à Parents have to take leadership and be in
control, acting as good role models for their children to learn from
§ Rules and Limits à Children need clear, simple and easy to
regulate rules to guide their behaviour, otherwise children wont
know what to do in certain situations
§ Choices à Allowing children to make age-appropriate choices,
empowers them and gives them some control over their lives
§ Consistency à Parents need to communicate clearly what the
rules are, also what the consequences will be, and apply them
consistently
§ Positive feedback à The most powerful and easiest tool we have
to encourage and improve behaviour and build up self-esteem

§ Punishment that teaches

• Punishment is a form of discipline that usually involves
some negative consequences for the child
• Punishment should be used properly
• How parents use any disciplinary tactic is more important
than what tactic they use, which offer them opportunities
to make adjustments
PUNISHMENT DISCIPLINE
Emphasises what a child should not do Emphasises what a child should do
Is a once-off occurrence Is an on-going process
Insists on obedience Sets and example to follow
Is an adult’s release and about an adult’s Helps children to change
power; it is often also about displaced anger
Is usually negative Is usually positive
Makes children behave Accepts a child’s need to assert him/herself
Thinks for the child Encourages a child’s ability to think
Defeats self-esteem Encourages self-esteem
Condemns misbehaviour Encourages self-disciplined behaviour
• Sibling relationships and only children (see table on the next page)
o Parents often compare siblings’ traits and accomplishments
o Sibling bullying may occur which could result in rivalry and jealousy, bad
behaviour and low levers of empathy
o Sibling relationships are challenging for a number of reasons
o Parents are important agents in establishing positive sibling engagement
o Positive engagement, cohesion, shared experiences that build support,
controlling behaviour, conflict management
o patterns of sibling relationships
§ a caregiver relationship
§ a buddy relationship
§ a critical or conflictual relationship
§ a rival relationship
§ a causal relationship
o Only children
§ Don’t seem to differ too much from children who has siblings
§ Although siblings may bring many benefits, they are not essential
for healthy development

COMPETENCY PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT

Positive engagement This involves play, conversation, mutual interest, enjoyment, and fun.
Help children identify a set of activities that will accommodate the
differing developmental levels of all siblings
cohesion Parents should recognise and value instances of siblings providing help,
support, protectiveness, cooperation, loyalty, trust, and pride.
Shared experiences that Help siblings to appreciate their unique knowledge of one another and of
build support their family and to avoid using such knowledge to disadvantage a sibling.
Social and emotional This links with the development of theory of mind. Help siblings to
understanding; identify and respect each other's unique views, needs, goals, and
perspective taking interests.
Regulating emotion Help children to identify and manage emotions and behaviour in
emotionally challenging
and frustrating situations.
Controlling behaviour Help children find ways to refrain from behaviour that their siblings find
undesirable or irritating (e.g., bossiness, teasing, embarrassing in front of
friend, tagging along, failing to respect personal boundaries and space).
Forming neutral or In ambiguous situations, children may form hostile attributions about the
positive attributions intent of sibling’s behaviour; children must learn to check or correct
faulty attributions. Family members should clarify intentions and
communicate about the effect of others' behaviour.
Conflict management Conflicts are social problems that can be solved, yet parents need to
teach children the methods explicitly. Parental modelling and scaffolding
of effective conflict management strategies (e.g. collaborative problem
solving, mediation) are essential for the learning
process.
Evaluating parental Discuss children's perceptions of parental differential treatment that is
differential treatment perceived to be unfair and adjust parental behaviour so that each
practices sibling's unique needs are met.
PEER RELATIONSHIPS
• Children interact with other children for the sake of friendship, affection and
fellowship
• Greater cohesion and solidarity develops within peers groups
• However, excessive conformity and attachment to the peer group may be
detrimental
• Nature and function of the peer group
o Comradeship à friends to play and talk with
o Opportunities to try out new behaviours
o Facilitates transfer of knowledge and information
o Teaches obedience and rules
o Reinforce gender roles

o Weakening of emotional between parent and child

o Provides its members with experience of relationships in which they can
compete with one another
• Friendships
o Children tend to have fewer friends that during preschool
o Friendship provides an important context in which children learn to
tolerate criticism and resolve disputes
o Learn importance of emotional commitment
o Children learn to tolerate criticism and conflict resolution
o Children’s friendships progress through three phases:
§ Play-based (3-7 years)
§ Loyal and faithful (8-11 years)
§ Intimate (adolescence +)
• Play (see table below)
o Appropriate games that children start to play involve activities and
games that involve structured rules
o Children begin to see the world more realistically
o Plays also involves improving practical skills
o Master of skills is important to children in this age group to impress peers
o The cultural and environment in which children grow up will have an
effect on play behaviour
AGE TRENDS IN PLAY APPROPRIATE TOYS AND MATERIALS

Birth to 3 Sensorimotor play focused on Toys should provide varied sensory stimulation:
months seeing, touching, hearing. Infant colourful pictures, wallpaper, cot ornaments,
is not vet crawling on grasping mobiles, musical toys, rattles.
objects.
3-12 Infants can now reach and grasp, Add toys that infants can grab and manipulate with
months so sensorimotor play expands to their hands, squeeze, drop, stack and put in their
include these motor activities. mouths, teething toys, balls, blocks, picture books,
and toys with buttons and dials that make sounds
and motions.
1-2 years Walking and climbing extend Provide riding toys, small climbing structures, push
motor activities. Symbolic play and pull toys, stacking blocks, simple puzzles,
emerges with make-believe and sandbox and water toys, dolls, stuffed animals, toy
pretend activities. dishes, storybooks.
3-5 years Socio-dramatic play emerges as Add props for play-acting such as clothes and
children play-act roles and costumes for dress-up. Offer art materials for
characters. Imaginative play is colouring, painting, and moulding. Children enjoy
important. puzzles and simple games, as well as swing sets,
climbing structures, tricycles, and small bicycles.
6-10 years Logical rules, reality-based play, Games with structured rules (Monopoly, card
physical skills, and sport become games) have appeal; also things that can be
more dominant. collected and organized (cards, action figures,
dolls). Children master bicycles, skateboards,
skipping ropes and sports equipment.

11 years Leisure activities are central, Video and computer games, adventure games,
and older Fantasy involves hypothetical movies, and music are popular Teens tend to focus
and idealistic scenarios. on a few sports in which they excel.
Affiliation with peers is
important.
• Peer acceptance
o The extent to which a child is viewed by group of people the same age as
a worthy social partner
o Researchers study peer acceptance through socio-metric techniques
to study these relationships
o 4 distinct categories of social status:
§ Popular (well liked)
• Popular prosocial
• Popular antisocial
§ Rejected à show a wide range of negative social behaviour
(rarely liked)
• Rejected-aggressive
• Rejected-withdraw (more passive and socially awkward)
§ Controversial à display a mixture of positive and negative
behaviours (liked and disliked by many)
§ Neglected à engage in low rates of interaction, and tend to be
shy (isolated or ignored)
o Factors that influence Social Acceptance
§ Family stress
§ Intensive child rearing and coercive discipline may contribute to
children problems in peer relationships
• Peer victimisation
o Defined as deliberate, conscious desire to hurt, threaten or fight
someone
o Bullying has an influence on the child’s physical, emotional, social and
educational well-being
o Types of bullying
§ Physical à punching & threatening
§ Emotional à Rumors & blackmail
§ Verbal à Name calling
§ Non-verbal/gesture à offensive signs, pulling faces, degrading
looks
§ Relational/Exclusion à deliberately ignoring and excluding
someone
§ Extortion à using tactics or demanding for money or properties of
others
§ Sexual à sexual harassment, rape, abuse, and assault
o Types of bullies:
§ Aggressive bully à direct aggression, poor impulse control, good
self- image
§ Anxious bully à share some characteristics with victim, poor self-
image
§ Group adherents à join groups for protection and status, passive
in bullying and tend to feel guilty after

o The incidence of bullying in SA

§ Bullying seems to be widespread in South African schools
o Reasons for bullying
§ Home, school, society and personality variables are all
contributing factors to bullying
§ Children who often bully, might be imitating what is happening at
home
§ Socio-economic problems
§ Peer pressure
§ Personal factors such as issues with self-esteem
§ the desire to have power over others
§ they are being bullied themselves
o Guidelines for intervention
§ School authorities providing children with hostile-free learning
environments
§ Extensive antibullying programmes and using positive role models
§ Creation of awareness of the nature of bullying and education on
preventative strategies
MEDIA INFLUENCE
• Television
o Theoretical viewpoints
§ Social Learning theory
• Children learn by observing and imitating what they see on
the screen
§ Cognitive developmental theory
• Tells us that children cognitive capacities at certain stages
will determine who they understand media that they see
§ Superpeer theory
• States that the media are like powerful best friends that
sometimes make risky behaviour seem like normative
behaviour
o Effects on socialisation
§ Influence portrayals of family values
• Children might be less willing to accept family values if
they see something else happening in the tv
• Children could create a social reality that is at odds with
their own real world
§ family interaction may be enhanced or disrupted by TV viewing
§ violence and aggression on TV can lead to problematic behaviour
§ sexual attitudes can be influenced by TV shows
§ drugs can be normalised by TV viewing
• Computer technology
o developmental course
§ Concerns have been raised about the effect on development of
interpersonal skills because of solitary nature of PCs
o advantages and disadvantages
§ Parents own use of these technologies may lead to irritation of the
child

§ Distinction between real life and simulation not always distinct

§ May have adverse effects such as games that portray violence etc.
and thus influences behaviour
• Cell phones
o reasons for use
§ Young children primarily use the cell phone to communicate with
family and friends
o advantages and disadvantages
§ One negative aspect is cyber bullying, which can be aggravated by
the online disinhibition effect à by being able to say something
that they wouldn’t say in person
§ A particular concern is children’s easy access to pornography
§ Cell phones may also lead to problematic use in schools
(inappropriate photography, cheating, theft etc.)
MORAL DEVELOPMENT
• Definitions:
o Morality à The process in which children learn principles that allowed
them to judge behaviour in a particular society as good or bad and to
direct their own behaviour accordingly
o moral education à aimed at maintaining the social order and allowing
someone the opportunity to function optimally within their culture
• Cultural influences
o Moral values and standards differ across cultures
o Piaget and Kohlberg made great contribution in understanding moral
development
• Theories address:
o moral emotions
o moral behaviour
o moral reasoning
MORAL EMOTIONS
Childrens emotional responses to certain events helps to predict whether
children can act prosocially or antisocially
• Psychoanalytic theories
o focuses on the special relationship between the child and their parents
as the basis of developing moral emotions, and that the mother is the
primary influencer
o Freud à children learn their moral rules by identifying with the same
gender parent during the phallic stage (ages 3-6), and the rules that the
child learns forms their superego (conscience and ego ideal)
o Erikson à children learn moral rules from both their parents
• Modern viewpoints
o Psychologists believe that negative emotions such as guilt, shame and
pride, play a role in children’s overall moral behaviour
o Psychologists believe that positive emotions such as empathy may be
just as powerful in moral development because empathy allows insight
in to other people’s feelings and thoughts

o Altruistic behaviour occurs in children, if they feel responsible for

someone else, or if there are feelings of compatence or if they are in the
mood
MORAL BEHAVIOUR
• The learning theory approach:
o operant conditioning (Skinner): punishment and rewards
§ teaches children to obey moral rules
o social learning (Bandura): observation and imitation
§ children believe that what they see will happen to them, thus if
someone else is rewarded for something they too will be rewarded,
vice versa
• Can these viewpoints be verified?
o An approach that combines punishment with reasoned explanation may be
more effective in establishing moral behaviour
o Corporal punishment is an ineffective example of this.
MORAL REASONING
The cognitive approach:
• Jean Piaget: moral realism and moral relativism
o sequence of development (which is linked to cognitive development)
§ pre-moral stage à young children (5 years old) don’t really
understand the rules of games, how to engage in it and act in a
cooperative way
§ moral realism à during middle childhood, children develop
enormous respect for rules and they view rules as important and
that they should be obeyed at all time
§ moral relativism à around the age of 10, children start to think
less ego-centrically and display greater moral fixability
o Impetus for development
§ Moral absolutism à Children do not take into account any
mitigating circumstances or intentions
§ Cognitive maturation, as well as social experience, plays an
important role in the transformation from moral realism to moral
relativism
o Evaluation of theory
§ Researchers have confirmed that there is a relationship between
moral and cognitive development
§ And that cognitive development is an important pre-requisite for
moral development
§ However his theory has been criticised for underestimating the
moral understanding of younger children and for not taking
cultural and socio-economic difference amongst children into
account
• Lawrence Kohlberg: moral reasoning
o Theoretical assumption
§ Moral development is based on cognitive development as well as
social experiences

§ Perspective-taking becomes essential (understanding the

psychological perspectives, motives and needs of others)
§ He used moral dilemmas to research moral reasoning
o Levels of development:
§ Level 1: Pre-conventional (what happens in middle childhood)
• Stage 1: punishment and obedience orientation
• Stage 2: individualism, instrumental purpose and exchange
§ Level 2: Conventional
§ Level 3: Post-conventional
o levels and stages of development in middle childhood
LEVEL I: PRE-CONVENTIONAL
Stage 1: Punishment and obedience orientation
The child decides what is right based on whether the action will be punished or rewarded but does not
consider the interests of others. The child obeys because adults have greater power.
Stage 2: Individualism, instrumental purpose, and exchange
The child follows rules when it serves his/her own needs or interests. The child is aware that others
have interests too and they may conflict with his/her own.
LEVEL I: CONVENTIONAL
Stage 3: Mutual interpersonal expectations, relationships, and interpersonal conformity
The child is concerned with living up to others' expectations. “Being good” is important and it means
having good intentions, being concerned about others and being loyal and trustworthy
Stage 4: Social system and conscience
The child defines what is right in terms of duties he/she has agreed to carry out and abides by laws
except in extreme cases. Moral actions are those that the larger society has determined are right
LEVEL III: POST-CONVENTIONAL

Stage 5: Social contract or utility and individual rights
Values and rules are seen as relative to a particular group and may be changed. Rules should be
followed for the welfare and protection of all people's rights and what is moral is what is best for the
largest number of people. Some values, such as life and liberty, are recognised as non-relative and
must be upheld regardless of socially agreed upon laws
Stage 6: Universal ethical principles
A person develops and follows his/her own self-chosen ethical principles, which are part of an
integrated and carefully thought-out system of values. If social laws violate these principles, the
person’s actions will be consistent with his/her ethical principles.
• Nancy Eisenberg: pro-social reasoning

o Theoretical assumption
§ Gave children prosocial dilemmas where helping someone else
would require a prosocial sacrifice
§ Prosocial reasoning develop through certain levels that
correspond with Kohlberg’s levels of general moral reasoning
§ Emotional factors as well as environmental factors and culture,
affect the development and use of prosocial reasoning
o developmental levels of prosocial reasoning: (see below)

LEVEL AGES DESCRIPTION

Level 1: Early childhood & The child is concerned with his or her own needs and
Hedonistic, Beginning middle consequences for himself or herself rather than with moral
self-focused childhood considerations. Child will help if it benefits himself or herself
orientation now or in the future, or if he or she likes or needs the other
person.
Level 2: Early childhood & The child is concerned with the needs of others, even if they
Needs-based Mostly middle conflict with his or her own needs.
orientation childhood This concern is expressed in the simplest terms, without clear
evidence of self-reflective role-taking, verbal expressions of
sympathy, or reference to emotions such as pride or guilt.
Level 3: Middle childhood & The child is concerned with being accepted by others and
Approval Adolescence gaining approval.
and/or Decisions about helping or not are often based on
stereotyped stereotyped views of what good or bad' people do.
orientation
Level 4a: Self- Adolescence The child shows self-reflective sympathy for the other
reflective person's situation. Role-taking and concern for the other's
empathic humanness occurs. The child expresses guilt for not helping
orientation and positive feelings for helping. There are sometimes vague
references to internalised values or responsibilities.
Level 4b: Adolescence The individual's justifications for helping or not helping involve
Transitional internalised values, norms, duties, or responsibilities, they
level may also reflect concerns for the condition of the larger
society or refer to the necessity of protecting the rights and
dignities of other persons. However, these ideals are not
clearly or strongly stated
Level 5: Small number of The individual is concerned with following his or her own
Internalised adolescents internalised values, norms, beliefs, or duties; the desire to
value maintain individual and societal contractual obligations or
orientation improve the condition of society; and the belief in the rights,
dignity, and equality of all individuals. This level is also
characterised by positive or negative emotions related to
whether or not one succeeds in living up to one's own values
and accepted norms
PROMOTING MORALLY COMPETENT BEHAVIOUR

• Family factors
o Parenting styles
o The way in which parents facilitate prosocial behaviour
• Peer factors
o Peer interactions
• Empathy

o Important aspect of moral reasoning and behaviour

o Empathic behaviour allows them to share and help
RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY

• Definitions
o Religion is the belief in god or gods
o Spirtiuality is a broader term, often the search for something sacred or
meaning in things
• Important part of socialisation
• Autonomy is disregarded by some religions
• Advantages for children
o Religion and spirituality are often associated with positive mental health
and well-being
o They can serve as an important shield against life’s many poundings,
thus it promotes resilience and coping strategies
o Religion has been shown to enhance family relationships
• Stages of faith development (Fowler)
o Primial faith (0-2yrs) à they develop a sense of safety and security in the
universe and the divine
o Intuitive-projective faith (early childhood) à awakening of some kind of
religious morality and children begin to understand representations of
religious figures
o Mythical-literal faith (middle childhood) à children can think more
logically but they still tend to interoperate religious stories very literally
and they also no begin to believe that if they are good, they will be
rewarded and if they are bad, they will be punished
o Synthetic-conventional faith (adolescence) à where they would want to
have a personal relationship with a religious figure
• Evaluation of Fowler’s theory
o The best know criticism of his theory is his definition of faith, because it
is very wide and extends beyond religious faith and he is seen to have
underestimated the modern child
• How do children learn the religion or spirituality of their group?
o Learning occurs through participation in reading, songs, dancing, prayers
and writing etc.

Made by: Daryan Van der wath WEEK 6
CHAPTER 6
ADOLESCENCE
WHAT IS ADOLESCENCE?
• The period of transition between childhood an adulthood and usually beings

when the body meets sexual maturation and will end when the person meets
the societal norms of being an adult
• Legally in South Africa adolescence ends at 18 years old
• Demarcating adolescence
o With the emergence of the western world such as schooling and
children’s rights the transitional period between childhood and
adulthood came into being
o Depending on biological, socio-cultural, chronological and legal criteria,
the age at which adolescence as a separate development state begins,
varies from 11-13, while the age at which it ends is between 17 and 21
o From a psychological perspective adolescence has been described as a
stage beginning in biology and ending in society
o Adolescence and its characteristics is a universal phenomenon that
seems to occur in all cultures
• A stormy phase
o Adolescence is characterised by conflict with parents and other authority
figures, moodiness and high-risk behaviour
o Adolescence is a normal period of development and is attributed due to
the influx of hormones during this time and their environment that they
are exposed too
o The majority of adolescents do not experience any significant
maladjustment or undesirable behaviour
THE NATURE OF PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT DURING ADOLESCENCE
• Rapid growth and puberty (the development of sexual maturity)

• Hormonal secretions involved are somatotropin (growth hormone) and
gonadotrophin (sex hormone)
• Male sex hormone – androgens (testosterone & androsterone)
• Female sex hormones – estrogens
• Primary sex characteristics à refer to the sex organs
• Secondary sex characteristics à refer to the distinguishing male and female
characteristics (beard and beard)

ADOLESCENT GROWTH SPURT

• Age of onset
o Girls growth spurt begins around 10-13 years and ends around 16 years
or later
o Boys growth spurt begins around 12-15 years and ends around 18 years
or later
• Gender differences
o Boys grow faster than girls
o Girls reach their adults height towards late adolescence, while boys
reach their adult height during their early twenties
o Tempo of growth is different for various body parts
• Asynchrony à disproportionate growth tempo between different body parts
• Body mass and Muscle development
o When the growth tempo of the skeleton starts decreasing, the body’s
mass and muscle development begin to increase, boys become more
angular and Girls become more rounded
SEXUAL MATURATION
• Known as puberty
• The onset of puberty seems to be occurring earlier and earlier over the years
(secular trend)
• One of the most dramatic events in human development
• The nature of sexual maturation (see table below)

MALE AND FEMALE CHARATERISTICS

BOYS GIRLS
CHARACTERISTICS +/- AGE OF CHARACTERISTICS +/- AGE OF
APPEARANCE APPEARANCE
Growth of testes, 10-13,5 years Growth of breasts 8-13 years
scrotal sac
Growth of pubic hair 10-15 years Growth of pubic hair 9-14 years
Growth of penis 11-14,5 years Menarche 10-16,5 years
Change in voice +/- same time as Underarm hair +/- two years after
(growth of Larynx) penis growth pubic hair appears
Facial and underarm +/- two years after Oil- and sweat- +/- same time as
hair pubic hair appears producing gland underarm hair
appears
Oil- and sweat- +/- same time as
producing glands, underarm hair
acne appears
Sexual maturation in girls

• Characteristics
o Puberty in girls starts when the sex organs begin to enlarge, at the same
time, the secondary sex characteristics start to develop
o The most dramatic or symbolic sign of sexual maturation in girls is the
menarche (first menstruation)
o External signs include maturation of breast buds, bodily hair and
widening of hips
• Factors that play a role
o Environmental factors such as nutrition, stress and physical exercise
may influence the onset of puberty
o There is a strong correlation between stressful life experiences and
childhood menstrual problems
o It seems that girls from higher socio-economic groups menstruate on
average 11 months earlier than girls from lower socio-economic groups
• Cultural factors
o In South Africa, in many traditional or rural societies, feasts, rituals or
certain initiation rites often mark the transition into adulthood one of
these initiation rites is circumcision
o Female circumcision, called female genital mutilation (FGM) in
professional circles, is divided into three major types
o A clitoridectomy à the splitting or removal of the clitoral hood (a
procedure that presumably increases sexual pleasure)
o A clitoridectomy à the partial or total removal of the clitoris
o An infibulation à the partial or total removal of all the external genitalia
and the stitching together of the vaginal opening

o Usually a midwife performs female circumcision without using

anaesthetics and they use crude instruments
o Immediate complications include excessive pain, shock, infection,
problems urinating, bleeding and even death
o Long-tern problems include chronic pain, childbirth complications,
anxiety and frigidity
o In South Africa, female circumcision is at any age illegal
Sexual maturation in boys

• Characteristics and age of onset
o Puberty begins when the primary sex characteristics begin to develop
while the secondary sex characteristics also develop simultaneously
§ Testes and scrotum enlarges
§ After 1-2 years enlargement of the penis
o The most symbolic sign of sexual maturation in boys is the first seminal
emission (discharge of sperm, also known as spermarche or
semenarche)
• cultural/religious rituals
o Circumcision of adolescents is a rite practices by various traditional
ethnic groups in Africa as part of the initiation process in preparation for
adulthood
o The main reason why it is surrounded by controversy is hat traditional
procedures have led to many cases of permanent mutilation
o Most of the problems surrounding circumcision are caused by incorrect
procedures by unqualified surgeons, inadequate hygiene and poor
aftercare of the initiates
o Owing to the many negative outcomes of male circumcision, it has
suggested that this procedure should be performed by medical
practitioners
o However, the fact remains that no country can allow its children to die or
be mutilated for the sake of tradition
o Circumcision is the removal of the foreskin of the penis
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF PHYSICAL CHANGES

• General concerns
o Important developmental task is the acceptance of a changed physical
appearance
o The age at which adolescence reach physical maturity affects their
psychological development, especially when they reach it much earlier
or later than their peers
o The effects of early maturation are not the same for girls and boys
• Early and late maturation
o Adolescents who mature earlier develop their primary and secondary
characteristics earlier than their peer group
o Late maturation seems to be more advantageous for girls than early
maturation
o Problems regarding early maturation do not occur universally
• Early and late maturation in boys

o Boys who mature early tend to have certain characteristics in common

(good self-control, efficient, confident and level-headed), however they
tend to be prematurely exposed to alcohol, drugs and sex
o Boys who mature late tend to be seen as less attractive, less well-
balanced and more anxious than boys who mature early
• Early and late maturation in girls
o Girls who mature late are usually perceived as physically attractive,
lively and sociable
o Girls who mature early are often attractive to older boys, but not
emotionally mature enough to deal with the intimate relationships that
are associated with their physical appearance
o Thus unusually early maturation is linked to poor academic performance,
early sexual activity and unplanned pregnancies
• cultural differences
o Problems surrounding early maturation do not occur universally
o In Africa early maturation could be an advantage for girls because it
could bring them respect and prestige in the community
BODY IMAGE AND EATING DISORDERS
• Adolescents are very aware of their body shape and appearance because of the
desire to be accepted in peers groups enforces a focus on being slender
• Obsessions with being slender may be related to eating disorders such as
anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa
Anorexia nervosa
• Characteristics
o Body weight is significantly below the average (+-15% below ave. weight)
o Self-induced vomiting and purging, excessive exercise and use of
appetite suppressants
o A severely distorted body image
o Other mental health conditions such as depression
o Excessive growth of fine hair on the body
o Menstrual problems
• Age of onset
o Anorexia usually occurs between puberty and 25 years of age with more
than 90% of sufferers being female
• Incidence
o Among 0,5% of females and males in approximately one tenth of that of
females
o They tend to be from high socio-ecomonic groups
Bulimia nervosa
• characteristics
o repeated episodes of binge eating, which is followed by a compensatory
action to prevent weight (self-induced vomiting or the misuse of
laxatives, excessive exercising and fasting)

o These patients are also overly concerned about their body weight but
won’t necessarily have an abnormally low body weight
• Incidence
o 90% are female
o 1%-3% are young females
o Is increasing in non-Western and developing countries,
• Cultural differences
o Is increasing in non-Western and developing countries, because of
globalisation and the media, the differences between cultures and
subcultures are disappearing
o There is no single cause of eating disorders
o Many factors such as culture, family pressures and psychological
disorders are seen to cause eating disorders
o In some rural areas being overweight is associated with health and
respect
ADOLESCENT SEXUALITY
• Changing values and adolescent sexuality
o Begin to discover their sexual orientation
o This refers to the dominant sexual behaviour pattern of an individual,
specifically a preference for sexual activity with persons of the same
(homosexuality) or opposite sex (heterosexuality), or both ( bi-sexuality).
o An important developmental task for adolescents is to satisfy their
sexual needs in socially acceptable ways
o Social factors play a role in the expression of sexual activity
o Each culture Is faced with the problem of how to channel sexual needs in
a manner that allows for healthy development but does not create
physical, psychological or social problems
o With the introduction of effective contraception on a large scale and with
medical advances in the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, the
possibility of free sexual exploration without unwanted pregnancy or
diseases, became possible compared to the very little sexual freedom in
medieval times
o This is contradictory to premarital laws in religions
o Although more openness regarding sexuality currently exists,
adolescents still find it difficult to make choices regarding sexual
behaviour
o In African traditions sexual behaviour is encouraged
• Adolescent sexual behaviour includes autoerotic behaviour and interactive
sexual behaviour
• Autoerotic behaviour
o refers to sexual self-stimulation or more specifically to sexual behaviour
that occurs without the presence of another person.
o Masturbation previously not considered normal and was previously
regarded as immoral and physically harmful
o Today, masturbation is only regarded as a problem when it replaces
social and other activities to such an extent that it hinders the
adolescent’s development

o Masturbation is more common in male adolescents and they masturbate

more frequently than female adolescents do
• Sexual behaviour that occurs without the presence of another person:
• interactive sexual activities:
o reasons for increase:
§ Early sexual maturation
§ Peer-group pressure
§ Changed values, attitudes and the media
o In South Africa, because of the sensitivity of the subject, the age and
nature of sexual activity is usually under-reported
o Sexual behaviour between adolescent couples usually progresses from
holding hands and kissing to intimate fondling and sexual intercourse
o Religious beliefs, fear of AIDS and pregnancy and a wish to wait until
marriage are factors preventing many early sexual encounters
o Unfortunately, the fact that adolescents are biologically mature enough
to become sexually active, does not necessarily imply that they are
emotionally for various sexual activities
• Teenage pregnancy
o In South Africa, 30% of young women have already given birth by the age
of 19 years
o 95% of appearance are in developing countries
o Reasons for teenage pregnancy
§ Usually the result of high risk sexual behaviour, the tendency not
to use contraceptives, poor parental control and a general decline
in the importance society places on sex as a value norm
o Reasons for the non-use of contraceptives
§ They did not plan sexual intercourse
§ They feel guilty about having sex and regard contraception a
reminder/proof of their guilt
§ Contraception use is judged in some cultures
§ Adolescent egocentric thinking
§ They are too shy to visit a family planning clinic
o Implications of teenage pregnancy
§ Family disorganisation
§ Rapid urbanisation and Westernisation
§ Poor socio-economic situations, low educational status and the
low social status of women
§ Certain family and social practices
§ Poor sexual communication between parents and adolescents
o Other consequences of high-risk sexual behaviour:
§ Pregnancy during adolescents increases psychological and social
problems, as well as endangers the health of the young girl
§ Sexually transmitted diseases are also a significant issue (AIDS,
gonorrhoea, genital herpes)
• Discovering of sexual orientation: heterosexual, bisexsual, homosexual
o The confusion and anxiety that often accompany the development of a
sexual orientation in adolescence is mostly intensified for adolescents
who are homosexual

o The result is that homosexual adolescents mostly feel that they have
nowhere to run and have to wear a mask of heterosexuality mainly due to
Homophobia
o Homosexual youth have a much higher depression rate and four times
more likely to attempt suicide
o Many homosexual adolescents have never had a sexual experience with
someone of the same sex
o The causes for homosexuality are largely unknown, however, there are
indications that it has a biological basis:
§ If one identical twin is homosexual, the chances of the other twin
also being homosexual is about two thirds, however the chances
with non-identical twins when one is homosexual, is less than one
third
§ Children’s parents sexual orientations do not seem to have an
effect on the child’s sexual orientation, suggesting the
environment in the form of modelling does not seem to play a
significant role
§ It is accepted by most scientists that it is impossible to change a
person’s sexual orientation, regardless of claims in this regard
o However, until the opposite is proved, environmental factors should not
be discarded
THEORIES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
A constructive perspective: Jean Piaget

• Theoretical assumption
o This perspective assumes that individuals must continually interpret all
experiences, events remain ambiguous/ uncertain until we respond to
them
o He assumed that people not only actively construct what they know of
the world, but that they also organise this understanding in qualitatively
different ways with age, which results in distinctly different stages of
thought.
• Formal operational thinking
o Developmental perspective (how children and adults understand the
world)
o Children around the ages of 11 or 12 enter the formal operational stage
of cognitive development and this extends into adulthood
• Characteristics:
o Hypothetico-deductive reasoning
§ The concept that adolescents have the cognitive ability to develop
alternative ways or hypotheses to solve a problem
§ They then test these hypotheses using the pendulum problem, of
which adolescence are able to apply scientific reasoning
§ This hypothetico-deductive reasoning enables adolescents to
systematically plan for the future

o Propositional thinking
§ Means that formal operational thinkers can evaluate the logic of
verbal statements without referring to real-world circumstances
§ They use hypothetical reasoning to probe the implications of
fundamental change in physical or biological laws
o Combinatorial analysis
§ The ability to organise various possible combinations inherent in a
problem
§ Adolescent analyses all possible
o Combinations of variables
§ Making sure that all possible values of all possible variables
inherent in a problem, will be investigated
§ Concrete operational thinkers are able to test variables by trial
and error
o Relativistic thinking
§ To the concrete thinker, absolute right answer exist for everything
and are known by an authority (realism)
§ The formal operational thinker recognises the subjective
construction of knowledge and the possibility of differences in the
interpretation of the same facts, thus thought is relative
§ This change is bought about by the ability to take the perspective
of another
• Six conceptual skills that emerge during the formal operations:
o Adolescents are able to mentally manipulate more than two categories
of variables at the same time
o They are able to think about changes that come with time
o They are able to hypothesise about a logical sequence of possible events
o They are able to anticipate the consequences of their actions
o They are able to detect the logical consistencies/inconsistencies in a set
of statements
o They can think in relativistic ways
• Evaluation of theory
o His predictions about adolescents’ thinking abilities were overly
optimistic, disregards individualism
o It has been suggested that Piaget underestimated how much effort,
energy and knowledge it takes to use formal operations
o Another criticism of formal operational reasoning is that it is not broad
enough to encompass the many dimensions along with cognitive
functioning matures in adolescence
A componential approach: The information processing view

• The componential approach à the breaking down of the thinking process into
various components
• Proggessive changes and skills that occur with age:
o Attention
§ selective attention à the ability to focus on relevant information
and to ignore less important information , important for the
problem solving process

§ divided attention à the ability to pay attention to more than one

aspect simultaneously
o Processing information: speed, capacity and automaticity improve
§ structural capacity à which refers to cognitive ability
§ functional capacity à refers to making effective use of existing
mental abilities such as attentional and mnemonic aids (A
mnemonic aid or device is a memory strategy such as
organisation and rehearsal)
o Knowledge base, encoding, storing and retrieving information
improves
§ Encoding, the process by which information is transferred from
one form to another in memory
o Metacognition and cognitive self-regulation improves
• Robert Sternberg: individual differences related to time spent on following
processes:
o Metacomponents à monitor a person’s progress
o performance components à carry out the actual procedures selected by
the metacomponents
o knowledge acquisition components à acquire new information as it is
needed
• Evaluation
o He states that people of all ages use the same components in cognitive
functioning but spend different amounts of time on each
o He indicates that with age, people tend to spend more time planning how
to solve a problem than actually doing it
o Main criticism of this theory is against the reductionism approach
However, the information processing approach is applicable to many
areas of functioning
The psychometric approach: intelligence

• Focus of approach
o refers to the ability to profit from experience and function successfully in
a particular environment
o The psychometric approach focusses on individual differences in the
general abilities that contribute to intelligence
o Generally measured with IQ tests
o Garner defines intelligence as one’s ability to solve problems as they
arise, but the range of problems he accepts as legitimate for studying
intelligence is much broader than it is for other theorists and researchers
• Limitations of intelligence tests
o Garner views existing measures of intelligence as overly narrow and
related more to academic than real-life experiences
o Shows bias in favour of logical and verbal abilities
• Howard Gardner’s approach: multiple intelligence
o Logical-mathematical à scientist, mathematician
o Linguistic à lawyer, writer
o Spatial à artist, architect, designer
o bodily- kinaesthetic à dancer, sportsperson
o musical à musician

o interpersonal (understanding others) à teacher, counsellor

o intrapersonal (understanding oneself) à writer, poet
o naturalist intelligences à botanist, chef
Factors that play a role:
• Brain development and input from parents during early childhood
• Wider social institutions
o School
§ At school they rely on educators to gain vocabulary
o Peers
§ Adolescents rely on peers to introduce them to the language of
the streets, courtship language, cell phones and other electronic
media
o Religious instructors
§ teach spiritual language
o Workplace
§ When they enter the workplace they will rely on their co-workers
to develop a literate understanding of work procedures, union
rules and methods for furthering their status and careers.
• Concern of parents and educators often complain about the decrease in young
people's ability to recall, integrate and internalise significant facts, specifically
because they have easy access to knowledge at the press of a button.
• In order to maintain continuity, young people need to be able to apply the
electronically acquired knowledge
PRACTICAL COGNITION
• Cognitive development in adolescence functions as an organisational core that
affects all areas of thinking
• Implications for the classroom
o Inductive reasoning à a person reasons from a particular to a general
§ For example, to explain the general personality of a character in a
novel or drama, the student or learner must take into account all
the specific behaviours, emotions and thoughts of the specific
character to come to a conclusion.
o Deductive Reasoning à a person reasons from a general to a particular
§ In the same scenario, the specific personality characteristics of
the character in the novel or drama will enable the reader to make
certain predictions of how the character may act in certain
situations.
o Adolescents can gather facts to support of oppose principles, generate a
range of possible alternatives for any situation, think in abstractions and
test their thoughts against inner logic
o Improvements in metacognitive skills, make it easier for adolescents to
identify gaps in their knowledge and to adjust the way in which they study
to compensate these gaps

o Broader conceptualisation of intelligence is also good news as it means

that most adolescents at least have the potential to succeed in one area
or another
o The effect of schooling is also noticeable in children’s language
development
• Argumentativeness, idealism and criticism
o The ability to use abstract and hypothetico-deductive reasoning results
in adolescents' ability to gather facts and ideas to build a case.
o Argumentativeness à the once complaint child becomes a fiercely
argumentative teenager
o This could affect the parent-child relationship in the following ways:
§ Desire to make own choices according adolescent’s drive toward
independence
§ Because of adolescents questioning attitudes, they require that
their parents explain to them their reasons for what they expect
from them, if parents fail to give good explanations or accept that
adolescents have their own views, thus could lead to conflict
§ Adolescents are able to reason beyond the real to the possible,
whereas adults have a more realistic outlook these different ways
of thinking could cause conflict also because of the generation
gap
• Social cognition
o Social cognition à The way in which we think about other people, social
relationships and social institutions
o Perspective-taking à The ability to consider a situation from a point of
view other than one’s own
o In early adolescents, children become capable of mutual perspective-
taking à they understand that their perspective-taking interactions with
others are mutual
o By late adolescence, social and conventional system perspective-
taking develops à realise that social perspectives and those of others
are influenced by their interaction with one another and also by their
roles in the wider society
o Research on perspective-taking has indicated that it plays an important
role in adolescents’ peer relationships
o Implicit personality theories à making judgments about what other
persons are like and why they behave in the way they do
o Adolescents’ implicit personality theories become more abstract,
complex and organised
• Self-focusing and self-consciousness
o New kind of egocentrism evolves in this stage
o The new egocentrism involves the inability to distinguish abstract
perspectives of self and other
o The imaginary audience:
§ The adolescents’ belief that they are the focus of everyone else’s
attention
§ This results from adolescents' limited capacity to distinguish
between their thinking about themselves and their thinking about
the thoughts of others.

§ Because they think about themselves so much and are so acutely

aware of how they might appear to others, they conclude that
others must also be thinking about them a great deal
§ They exaggerate the extent to which others think about them
which makes them more self-conscious
§ For adolescents, who believe that everyone is monitoring their
performance, a critical remark from a parent or teacher can be
devastating.
o The personal fable:
§ Is an intensive investment in one’s own thoughts and feelings and
a belief that these thoughts and feelings are unique
§ the imaginary audience leads to the personal fable, which is
inflated opinion of their own importance adolescents feel that no-
one understand them
§ The personal fable may also contribute to risk-taking behaviour by
adolescents whose sense of uniqueness leads them to believe
that they are invincible; that negative consequences from high risk
behaviour, such as unprotected sex, drug taking, drunk driving
and high speed driving "won't happen to me."
§ The imaginary audience and personal fable are strongest during
the transition to formal operational thinking
§ People of all ages experience optimistic bias à tendency to
assume that accidents, diseases and other misfortunes are more
likely to happen to others than to themselves
• Planning and decision-making
o Adolescents are better at cognitive self-regulation
§ planning when to act, monitoring their progress towards goals and
redirecting unsuccessful actions
o Adolescents are often overwhelmed by planning and decision-making in
everyday life due to the possibilities available
§ The question arises, can adolescents make decisions
competently?
o The behavioural decision theory - the decision making process
includes:
§ the range of possible choices
§ identifying consequences to choices
§ evaluating consequences
§ assessing the likelihood of each consequence
§ integrating the consequences
o Competence in this process improves with age and late adolescence are
shown to have few differences in decision making to adults
o However, adolescents are much more affected by psychosocial factors,
which accounts for the greater likelihood of risky decisions made by
adolescents compared to adults
o Adolescents may understand the riskiness of their behaviour, they do not
seem to be able to control the risky behaviour when there is an
immediate prospect of reward
o Thus greater injuries occur during this period

SCHOOLING
• Importance in cognitive development
o Transitions, such as from primary to secondary school, may temporarily
disrupt adolescents’ academic performance, behaviour and self-image
• Factors that play a role:
o Quality of teaching
§ Leaners will excel when there is adequate application of resources,
dedicated teachers and generally disciplined pupils, the focus is on
school as an institution for learning.
§ Other schools are characterised by wasted resources, negligent and
demoralised teachers and rebellious adolescents. Schooling often
seems more of an exercise in frustration - or social control - than in
education and skill development.
§ Learners do best when their teachers spend a high proportion of time
on lessons, begin and end lessons on time, provide clear feedback
and give pupils appraisal when they perform well
o Qualities of adolescent
§ However, adolescents’ own attitudes, expectations and beliefs and
motivation also play an important role in their success at school
o Socio-economic environment
§ Unfortunately, because of poor teaching and academically
unsupportive backgrounds, many South African adolescents have a
poor understanding of what educational achievement entails and
requires
§ Many adolescents make poor decisions, such as not putting enough
effort into their work, 'bunking' classes, engaging in risky and even
criminal behaviour and eventually dropping out of school.
§ Poverty also contributes to the tensions adolescents experience in
their social identities, which can further hinder their ability to
succeed in school
§ Some adolescents in some lower-income areas are likely to respond
to their local schools in ways that are destructive and eroding of
discipline and push teachers, schools and pupils alike into a vicious
cycle of inferior schooling
o School attendance
§ In South Africa, there is a high rate of children dropping out of school
at all ages, or simply just not attending school
§ Children who drop out and do not finish matric is because of the cost
involved, family responsibilities, view school as useless, illness,
pregnancy, not being able to progress etc.
PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT
• Make important new strides toward maturity during this time

• Although some adolescents experience an emotional roller-coaster, for the
most part, adolescence is a thrilling time of life- a time of lasting memories of
first experiences

THEORIES OF PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

• Temperament and personality traits (Chp 3 and 5)
o The big five dimensions of temperament during adolescence:
§ extraversion, negative emotionality and neuroticism,
agreeableness, effort control and conscientiousness, and
openness
§ Life experiences, especially interpersonal experiences, are
important shapers of temperament and personality.
• Adaptive functioning
o Selection à What adolescents do in identifying, organising and deciding
to pursue goals
§ refers to identifying one's goals, committing to them and limiting
oneself to a smaller number of tasks or activities from all of the
available options.
o Optimisation à How they develop knowledge and skills to pursue goals
§ refers to directing one's effort, energy time and other resources
towards one's chosen goals.
o Compensation à How they deal with the diversity of outcomes that their
actions will produce
§ involves efforts directed at overcoming limitations or lack of
resources.
• The psychoanalytic perspective
o Freud (genital stage) à Function is to channel the libido into a healthy
sexual relationship
§ During this stage psychosexual maturity is reached
§ Marriage and procreation represent healthy adjustments to the
genital stage, however fixation could undermine the achievement
of this goal, which could lead to sexual deviation or dysfunction
o Piaget believed that the central crisis during adolescence was the
development of an identity, otherwise role confusion or identity
confusion may result
IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT
Erikson’s theory: identity vs identity/role confusion

• Personal identity
o Identity refers to the individual's awareness of him- or herself as an
independent, unique person with a specific place in society
o He was the first theorist to identify the importance of the formation of a
personal identity in the individuals personality development
• The development of an identity
o Identity development àAdolescents need to define who they are, what is
important to them and what directions they want to take in life
o identity crisis à A temporary period of confusion, explore and question
existing values and experiment with alternative roles
o According to Erikson, this experimenting, exploring and questioning is not
an indication of negative development, but rather of the way in which the
individual forms a personal and social identity

o psychosocial moratorium à A certain period of time that society gives

children to find themselves and their roles as adults
o Adolescences has to master the following tasks
§ ego-synthesis à They have to form a continuous, integrated,
unified image of the self. This means that regardless of the course
of time and the accompanying changes, a person should feel that
he or she is still the same person.
§ socio-cultural identity à which means that the adolescent's
identity must include the value-orientations of his or her culture.
§ a gender role identity à adolescents must accept their identities
as male or female.
§ career identity à adolescents must be realistic regarding their
own abilities and achievement in order to make a realistic career
choice
§ own value system à adolescents must rethink certain values to
the point that they have their own basic philosophy
o Successful completion of these tasks will promote adolescents’ sense of
identity and limit confusion
• Identity confusion
o Individuals are indecisive about themselves and their roles
o Identity confusion can result in an identity foreclosure or a negative
identity
o Identity foreclosure à The identity crisis is resolved by making a series
of premature decisions about one’s identity, based on others’
expectations
§ the confusion is in the fact that they adopt these roles without
really identifying with these roles due to others expectations
o Negative identity à Adolescents form an identity contrary to the
cultural values and expectations (such as drug abusers & social misfits)
• Evaluation of Erikson’s viewpoint
o Contributed to the understanding of adolescent development and
stimulated extensive research
o Shortcomings in his theoretical assumptions:
§ He uses the term identity crisis, implying an intense traumatic
experience, however, many adolescents in the process of identity
development feel good about themselves
§ His belief that the identity crisis occurs early in adolescence has
been proved wrong by research, which shows it occurs late in
adolescence
§ Adolescents do not form their identity simultaneously in all areas
as implied in Erikson’s theory
James Marcia’s theory: identity statuses

• Determining identity status
o is determined according to the crises they have already worked through
and by commitment to choices
• Types of identity statuses
o Identity achievement à strong commitment to a career and value
system

o Identity moratorium à person is still in a crisis period

o Identity foreclosure à no crisis has been experienced but some
commitment to goals and values exists
o Identity diffusion à a crisis may or may not have been experienced and
the individual is not committed to anything
POSITION IDENTITY STATUS

REGRADING CAREER IDENTITY IDENTITY IDENTITY IDENTITY
AND IDEOLOGY ACHIEVEMENT MORATORIUM FORECLOSURE DIFFUSION
CRISIS PASSED IN CRISIS CRISIS ABSENT CRISIS PRESENT
CRISIS OR ABSENT
COMMITMENT PRESNT PRESENT BUT PRESENT ABSENT

VAGUE
• Developmental pattern of identity statuses

o Adolescents often move between the different statuses until they reach a
final identity
o Do all adolescents procced in the same way through identity statuses to
reach identity achievement eventually?
o Adolescents from traditional back grounds form foreclosed identities
o Adolescents who face extreme stressors seem to be best adjusted when
they adopt the foreclosure status
o The process of identity formation occurs at a later stage than indicated
by Piaget or Marcia
o Some adolescents are stuck at certain stages of identity development
• Research on identity statuses
o There seems to be evidence that the quest for identity continues
throughout a lifespan, with alternating periods of stability and instability,
consequently, adolescence may only be one period of identity formation
among several
• Factors that contribute to identity formation
o Cognitive development
o Parenting
o Peer interaction
o Schools and communities
o Personality
o Socio-cultural and socio-political events
Forming a group identity
• Personal identity
o indicates what one has in common with others and thus leads to a group
identity or feeling of sameness and belonging to a group.
• Multi-cultural identity
o by exploring and adopting some of the other cultures' values may have
added benefits.

o Opportunities to explore ethnic heritage and learn about other cultures,

fosters identity achievement in many areas of social and emotional
development, as well as ethnic tolerance, which supports the identity
explorations of others
o South African-ness is seen as an umbrella identity, which may include
other identities
• Group identity
o South African adolescents, Norris examined their collective cultural
identity dimensions and their national identity dimensions
o The results may indicate longstanding cultural differences in collectivist
versus individualistic orientations Although race is a significant feature in
black girls identity, socio-economic factors emerge as the most
important formative feature of identity
THE SELF-CONCEPT: ADOLESCENTS’ UNDERSTANDING OF SELF
• As with cognitive development, adolescents’ conception of self also become

more abstract and complex
• In adolescence, self-conceptions become even more trait-focussed, while
these traits become more abstract (“outgoing”, “sensitive” etc)
• The actual self, possible self, ideal, feared and false self
o Actual self à the person the adolescence actually is
o Two kinds of possible selves are distinguished by adolescents: an ideal
self and a feared self
o Ideal self à the person the adolescence would like to be
o Feared self à the person the adolescence imagines is possible to
become but dreads becoming
o Both kinds of possible selves require adolescents to think abstractly
o Awareness of the actual and possible selves may provide some
adolescents with motivation to strive toward their ideal self and avoid
becoming the feared self
o Recognising the contradictions in their personalities may be confusing to
adolescents as they try to sort out the real self from the different aspects
of themselves that appear in different situations
o Adolescents become aware of the times when they exhibit a false self
o False self à this is the self they present to others while realising it is not
actually what they are thinking or feeling, usually occurs when they want
to impress someone or they want to conceal some aspect of the self
• Self-esteem (baseline; barometric)
o Self-esteem refers to the degree in which a person values him or herself
o During adolescents, the self-esteem has to be further modified, as
several new dimensions are added which need to be evaluated (changing
physical appearances, sexuality, changing social relationships, romantic
relationships)
o Adolescents’ self-esteem level changes à they experience a temporary
decline in their self-esteem
o Eight domains of adolescent self-esteem:
§ Scholastic competence
§ Social appearance

§ Athletic competence
§ Physical appearance
§ Job competence
§ Romantic appeal
§ Behavioural conduct
§ Close friendship
o The baseline self-esteem à The stable, enduring sense of worth and
well-being a person has
o Barometric self-esteem à The fluctuating sense of worth and well-being
people have as they respond to different thoughts, experiences and
interactions
• Culture and the self
o Independent, individualistic self also promote and encourage reflection
about the self
o In collectivist cultures, an interdependent conception of the self prevails
o By adolescents, the self is thought of not so much as a separate,
independent being, but as defined to a large extent by a relationship with
others
o Western cultures tend to be more individualistic, while African and Asian
cultures tend to be more collectivist
o A new non-racial and more individualistic generation is emerging but the
failing education system in South Africa is blocking the future ideals of
thousands of South African adolescents
EMOTIONS
• a storm-and-stress situation?
o Adolescents emotionality are largely exaggerated
• emotional changes
o Adolescents do experience certain emotional changes because of their
physical, cognitive, personality and social development
o They are more inclined to have mood swings
• gender differences
o girls experience an increase in the feelings of anger and depression
o boys, experience both positive and negative emotions: on the one hand,
they feel more energetic and focused, but on the other, also more
irritated and aggressive.
• causes of changes
o These changes are often related to the hormonal changes in
adolescence
o Emotional changes could also be attributed to cognitive and
environmental factors
o Because of their ability to think in a more abstract and complex way, they
are more inclined to show insight into their own and other people’s
feelings
• emotional control
o Learning emotional management in adolescence prepares children to
deal with emotional upheavals during adulthood

CAREER CHOICE
Donald Super: lifespan lifespace approach
• theoretical assumptions
o The choice of, and adjustment to, a career is a continuous process
o This process consist of specific stages during which certain choices are
made
o The individual is considered in a wider social context
o According to Super, success in coping with the demands of each career
developmental stage depends on the readiness or maturity of the
individual to come with these demands
o A progressive interaction takes place between the self and the
environment, which eventually culminates in the choice of a career
o Work satisfaction and life satisfaction depend on the extent to which an
individual finds adequate outlets for abilities, needs, values, interests,
personality traits and self-concepts.
• career development constructs through the life stages:
CAREER CHILDHOOD (4- ADOLESCENCE EARLY ADULTHOOD MIDDLE ADULTHOOD LATE ADULTHOOD
DEVELOPMENT 13 YEARS) (14-24 YEARS) (25-44 YEARS) (45-64 YEARS) (65+ YEARS)
CONSTRUCTS GROWTH EXPLORATION ESTABLISHMENT MAINTENANCE DISENGAGEMENT
SELF-CONCEPT Learn to have a Learn to Integrate Accept Sustain sense of
positive self- integrate real, psychological and limitations; self-acceptance
concept in ideal and environmental develop new
difference areas social self- factors in self- potential
concept concept
CAREER MATURITY Make tentative Verify career Make choice, Hold own against Keep up what is
choices choice secure and settle competition still enjoyed
in occupation
ADAPTABILITY Willing to Focus on own Person- Adapt to own Accept decline
conform to needs and environment limitations; accept in some abilities
pattern set by identity correspondence; new challenges in (physical);
environment embrace positive changing sustain/develop
uncertainty environment abilities in other
areas (integrity,
wisdom)
VALUES Accept parental Physical, Materialistic Inner-orientated Inner-orientated
values; identify social,
and learn by autonomous
example lifestyle
LIFE ROLES Play/leisure; Enjoy leisure; Reduce leisure; Re-evaluate life Retire
start school learn new skills increase work and roles (work, empty from/reduce
family roles nest, leisure) work; pursue
nonwork roles
LIFE THEMES Play; imitate Daydream; test Revise/implement Innovate/renew Reflect on life
careers career dreams career dreams; career dreams
in real world make them real

CULTURAL CONTEXT Primary focus Primary focus Primary focus on Focus on work; Focus narrows
on family, on peers, role work and family fewer family to family and
peers, heroes models responsibilities; established
more time for social systems
wider social
systems
• application in the SA context

o There are some factors important to career development in South Africa
lacking in Super's theory.
o These include factors such as ethnic identity, discrimination,
unemployment and the African worldview
John Holland’s theory of personality types

• theoretical assumption
o He gives more attention to the relationship between the person, the
environment, the interaction between the two and the behaviour
resulting from this environment
• six personality types and career environments
o Realistic
§ These individuals are physically strong, deal with problems in a
practical way and are not very socially competent. They are
interested in outdoor activities and activities that require
handiness. Practical careers such as farming, engineering,
technical and construction work fit these individuals best.
o Investigative
§ These individuals are thinkers rather than doers, because of their
theoretical and intellectual orientation. They often avoid
interpersonal contact because they are more interested in
investigating certain phenomena. Careers in science and
mathematics or other intellectually orientated professions suit
them best.
o Social
§ Since these individuals are competent in verbal activities and
interpersonal relationships, they have a helping orientation.
Human-oriented careers such as teaching, social work,
psychology and nursing would be suitable career choices.
o Conventional
§ Rather than working with ideas or people, these individuals prefer
to work with numbers or perform clerical tasks and are best suited
for careers where the work is well structured, such as
accountancy, bookkeeping and secretarial work.
o Enterprising
§ Since these individuals are verbally very competent, they do well
in careers such as politics, sales and management.
o Artistic
§ These individuals have a creative orientation and relate to the
world by means of their art (whether creating or performing). They
express themselves through their ideas and materials in a novel

way. They do not like to conform and avoid conventional

situations as far as possible. Typical careers in the artistic career
environment are: musician, actor and photographer.
• Most individuals cannot be described as one specific character type, the
assumption is that they are a combination of the different types with a specific
dominant characteristic
• Holland believed that both career and non- career behaviour results from an
interaction between a person’s specific personality pattern and the
environment in which he or she functions
• Holland proposed a hexagonal model:
Social cognitive career theory

• Theoretical assumptions
o The social cognitive theory is proposed as a more suitable theoretical
framework
o That an individual’s career development may be divided into clear
developmental stages
o That a person’s career choice is an expression of his or her personality
• Criticism against Super and Holland’s theories
o In south Africa, individuals who do not have access to adequate
educational, social and economic resources to achieve personal, career
and academic development
o It is therefore concluded that South Africa needs a theoretical model for
career development and career counselling that can take its unique
socio cultural and socio-economic contexts into consideration.
• Main components of the Social cognitive career theory (SCCT)
o Triadic reciprocity à There is mutual interaction between personal
attributes, the external environment and overt behaviour
o Self-efficacy à The individual’s belief about his or her capabilities to
perform a task
o Outcome expectations à What the individual believes the results of a
particular behaviour will be
o Goals à Having goals helps individuals to guide their actions and
behaviours
o Interests à Develop in activities from which the individual experience
positive self- efficacy and outcome expectations
o Career choices à Flow from the goals and activities that develop from
interest

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
THE PARENT-ADOLESCENT RELATIONSHIP

Parent adolescent conflict
• A storm-and-stress relationship?
o Their relationships undergoes significant changes and reorganisation
• reasons for changes in the interactional patterns
o questioning of parental values, rules and regulations set by parents,
distancing and arguementiveness
o Biological changes (hormones)
o Cognitive changes
o adolescent egocentrism, which is associated with their perception of
their parents' attitudes towards them
o the development of an own identity
o social development, which implies an increase in independence
o the onset of adolescence which often overlaps with the parents' own
development in midlife which may also imply hormonal changes and a
re-evaluation of their life situation, leading possibly to emotionality and
less availability for the adolescent's struggles.
• Conflict and personal growth
o parents feel upset about these changes and react by becoming more
controlling
o Conflict occurs more between the mothers and adolescences
o The so-called generation gap (i.e. differences in viewpoints, attitudes and
values between parents and children) also seems to be largely
exaggerated.
o Conflict does not necessarily undermine the bonds of love between
parents and adolescents; a certain degree of conflict is unavoidable and
even necessary for personality growth.
o It is an important part of the developmental process and as adolescents
become older, family interactions seem to become less conflict-ridden
and more intimate.
Autonomy and attachment

• Need for autonomy
o conflict between parents and adolescences is related to the
adolescences need for autonomy (independence)
o Thus they often rebel against the stricter control of their parents
o For some the sex, smoking, and drinking represent adult territory
• Goals
o Cognitive autonomy à involves making decisions and assuming
responsibility for these choices
o Behavioural autonomy implies making choices regarding friendships,
leisure time and finances.
o Emotional autonomy concerns being self-reliant and independent of
their parents and being able to exert self-control.

o Moral or value autonomy refers to forming an own value system that may
serve as a guideline for their own behaviour.
• Ambivalence which causes inconsistent behaviour
o For adolescents, autonomy means being able to make their own
decisions and assuming responsibility for these choices.
o however, they often feel uncertain when confronted with the many new
experiences and decisions they have to make during the emancipation
process.
o The result of this ambivalence is often behaviour that alternates between
childlike and adult behaviour.
o Parents are concerned about their children's welfare because autonomy
also implies the risk of exposure to danger and disappointment.
o These ambivalent feelings of the parents could contribute to inconsistent
behaviour towards their adolescents; one moment adolescents are seen
and treated as children and the next, as adults.
• Maintenance of attachment bonds
o Attachment to parents provides adolescents with a secure base from
which to explore their world and to master increasing social demands
o the parents may serve as a buffer against feelings of anxiety, depression
and insecurity.
o Securely attached adolescents are also less likely than insecurely
attached adolescents are to engage in problem behaviours
o Secure attachment bonds with parents are also related to successful
relationships with peers and other people outside the family.
• Separation anxiety
o Characterised by intense longing for the parents, regularly phoning the
parents and going home on weekends.
o Adolescents who experience secure attachment with their parents are
likely to cope with this separation
Parenting styles
• Types of parenting styles
o Authoritative parents
§ encourage adolescents to behave independently within a
framework of certain limitations and control over their behaviour.
§ Inductive discipline is exercised, which means adolescents are
allowed to reason with their parents, while the parents give
reasons for the rules and limitations they set.
§ The parents are also affectionate and caring.
§ The adolescent children of these parents can rely on themselves
and are socially responsible.
o Authoritarian parenting
§ is a restrictive and punitive style where the parents set limitations
and exercise strict control.
§ Adolescents are forced to behave according to the opinions and
rules of parents and verbal reasoning is seldom allowed.
§ Explanations for rules are also seldom given.

§This type of parenting style is associated with socially

incompetent behaviour in adolescents which may result in anxiety
when compared socially, an inability to show initiative regarding
social activities, and poor communication skills.
o Permissive parenting
§ occurs when no control is exercised over adolescents' behaviour
and they make their own decisions.
§ These adolescents show socially incompetent behaviour and
limited self-control because they have never learnt to control their
behaviour.
• Dimensions of parental behaviour
o The love-hostility dimension
§ Loving behaviour of parents is characterised by acceptance,
understanding and approval.
§ These parents exercise positive discipline through explanations
and praise.
§ Parental behaviour based on love and trust enables adolescents
to act autonomously and to develop their own identities with self-
confidence.
§ When parents behave in a hostile manner and neglect or reject
their children, adolescents may experience poor social
relationships, academic and behavioural problems and be
unwilling to accept responsibility for their behaviour.
o The autonomy-control dimension
§ This dimension refers to parents who allow their children realistic
freedom as opposed to those who exercise exceptionally strict
control over their children.
§ Parents, who allow their children realistic freedom and control
them authoritatively (by explaining certain rules for behaviour and
expectations and therefore exercise their control justly), have
adolescents who are confident and outgoing. They also display a
healthy self-esteem and responsible and autonomous behaviour.
§ Authoritarian parents who exert excessive control seldom
experience a need to communicate and interact with their
children. Adolescents of such parents often lack self-confidence,
experience dependency needs, and feelings of inferiority. Their
creativity, initiative, and independent problem-solving abilities are
also inhibited. Depression, drug and alcohol abuse and antisocial
behaviour are outcomes that often persist into early adulthood.
• Bidirectional effects
o Adolescents who are difficult, stubborn and uncooperative often make it
difficult for parents to maintain a positive disposition.
• Influence of culture
o In traditional cultures, parents expect to be obeyed, without question
and without requiring an explanation.
o In such cultures the role of the parent carries greater inherent authority
than it does in Western cultures.

o Parents are not supposed to provide reasons why they should be

respected and obeyed.
o The simple fact that they are parents and children are children is viewed
as sufficient justification for their authority
• Parental guidance and control
o In both individualistic and collective culture extreme parental control
(choice of clothes, music and friends) is related to anxiety and
depression
PEER GROUP RELATIONSHIPS

The structure of the peer group
• Dunphy’s model of peer group development:
Stage 1:
Pre-crowd stage. Isolated cliques of the same gender
Stage 2:
The beginning of the crowd. Same-gender cliques in
group-to-group interaction
Stage 3:
The crowd in structural transition. Cliques still consist
of the same gender, while members with a higher
status begin to form heterosexual cliques
Stage 4:
Fully developed crowd. Heterosexual cliques in close
interaction
Stage 5:
Beginning of disintegration of the crowd. Loose
association of couples
• Peer group acceptance/rejection/ victimisation

o Certain characteristics and behaviour tend to lead those individuals to
be accepted more easily by their peers
o Unpopular adolescences tend to lack social skills
o Some are rejected because of their negative behaviour
o Because of their rejection isolation increases
o Inability to form a good peer group is associated by scholastic and
behavioural problems
o Neglected adolescences are neither liked nor dislikes, they tend to be
shy and withdrawn
• Popularity vs loneliness
o Researchers believe that loneliness and popularity are subjective
conditions that depend on the individual's perception of what it means to
be 'well liked'

Conformity
• The nature of conformity during adolescence
o Conformity refers to the degree to which a person is willing to change his
or her behaviour, attitudes and beliefs in order to fit in with a group (peer
pressure).
o Conformity is a complex process and is influenced by the adolescent's
age, specific needs and the situation.
o The peer group seems to influence adolescents' choice of clothes,
music, language usage, social activities, leisure activities, hobbies and
relationships with the opposite gender.
o Parents' opinions are valued regarding social and moral issues; this is
true for both individualistic and collectivistic cultures.
• positive aspects of conformity
o Conforming to the peer group provides the necessary guidelines to assist
them in their choices.
o Dependency upon the peer group seems to be a necessary step in
adolescents' development towards independence from their parents.
o Conforming to the peer group provides a sense of security in their striving
towards autonomy.
• negative aspects of conformity
o Excessive conformity may result in adolescents' involvement in high-risk
behaviour, such as early sexual activity, the misuse of nicotine, alcohol
and other drugs and in reckless and antisocial behaviour.
o Peer group pressure is, of course, not the only cause of such behaviour;
it is rather a complex interaction of personality characteristics, family
background, culture, and educational and socio-economic status.
• parenting style and conformity
o Parents who are neither too strict nor too lenient, but who are warm and
supportive, and who provide the necessary guidelines, find that
adolescents internalise their values.
o This authoritative parenting style also equips adolescents with the
necessary skills to form healthy peer group relationships.
o Stormy parent-child relationships, however, do not provide adolescents
with these skills, with the result that they only find acceptance in those
peer groups which follow a counter-culture (i.e. a culture against the
values of parents and the society).
Friendships
• The nature of friendship relationships during adolescence
o Adolescence are inclined to choose friends whose psychological
attributes such as interests, attitudes, values and personalities match
their own.
o adolescents also develop a greater need for intimacy and self-
disclosure.
• The benefits of friendship relationships
o Close friendships help teenagers to cope with the stressors of
adolescence (e.g. physical development, school life, changes in
interactional patterns with parents and heterosexual relationships).

o Close friendships counteract loneliness and isolation and contribute

towards the adolescent's self-concept development.
o Self-disclosure and honest communication between close friends
provide opportunities not only to get to know themselves better, but also
to be sensitive towards others. These skills play a role in their identity
development and the development of empathy.
• The distancing effect between parents and their adolescents
o Only temporary
o During late adolescence, the degree of intimacy and emotional intensity
between close friends start to decline as adolescents become more
aware of their own identity and are able to act more independently.
Romantic relationships
• developmental stages in heterosexual romantic relationships
o Stage 1
§ Entering into romantic attractions and affiliations (11-13 years)
§ Triggered by puberty, developing crushes and infatuations
o Stage 2
§ Exploring romantic relationships (14-16 years)
§ Casual dating and group dating
o Stage 3
§ Consolidating romantic bonds (17-19 years)
§ Strong emotional bonds more closely resemble those of adult
relationships
• positive and negative influences
o too serious or steady relationships at an early age may limit adolescents
interactions with the same sex peers, which may influence their social
development
o also restricts their heterosexual interactions with others
o the risk of premature sexual intercourse, leading to unplanned
pregnancies and early marriages
o HIV & AIDS is also an issue in south Africa
o Mix gender activities in group situations have a positive influence on the
well-being of adolescence girls whereas serious dating can have a
negative influence on their mental health
o As these teenagers' interest in dating and sex increases, they also report
that school gets harder and the pressure to do well and think about the
future increases substantially.
o For older adolescents, on the other hand, steady relationships may
provide a sense of security. These relationships also promote
opportunities for practising openness, honest feedback and resolving
conflicts; qualities that are of the utmost importance in a marriage
relationship.
• Benefits of peers and friends
o the development of independence and identity formation
o opportunities for companionship
o acquiring communication skills
o acquiring interactional and social skills.
• influence of peers and friends (see table below)

PHASE DESCRIPTION OF RELATIONSHIP

Initiation phase Tentative explorations begin. These are usually superficial and brief and are
often fraught with fear and anxiety, in addition to excitement. The anxiety and
(usually early fear results partly from the novelty of romantic feelings and partly because of
adolescence) the scrutiny and possible ridicule from friends and peers.
Status phase Adolescents gain confidence in their skills at interacting with potential
romantic partners and start forming romantic relationships. They remain
aware of the evaluations of their friends and peers. In considering a romantic
partner, they therefore not only assess how much they like and are attracted
to the person, but also how their status with friends and peers will be affected
(e.g. dating the prettiest girl in class or the captain of the rugby team). Friends
may also act as messengers, inquiring for a friend if a potential love interest is
interested, thereby gaining information without the risk of direct humiliation.
Affection Phase Adolescents come to know each other better, and express deeper feelings for
each other, as well as engaging in more extensive sexual activity. Intimacy is
greater and relationships become more emotionally charged. Adolescents
face greater challenges in managing these emotions. Peers become less
important, but friends become even more important. They act as support
systems to keep an eye on faithfulness, act as arbitrators when conflicts or
complexities in the relationship arise. Issues of jealousy may also arise if the
romantic partner takes up more time and friends are neglected
Bonding phase The romantic relationship becomes more enduring. The opinion of friends and
peers become less important. Friends nevertheless, may continue to provide
(emerging guidance and advice.
adulthood)
ADOLESCENTS AND CYBERSPACE

• The nature of ICT during adolescence
o ICT à information and communication technologies
o cyberspace is currently used to describe a range of information
resources available through computer networks.
o used largely for information and communication purposes
• ICT and developmental needs
o Identity experimentation and exploration
o Intimacy and belonging
o Separation from parents and family
§ The internet provides an escape from parents that does not
require complete separation that could cause fear and anxiety in
adolescence
§ This provides young people with even more flexibility and
spontaneity in their lives and leads to a more fluid culture of
social interaction
§ However excessive and unsafe use can have dangerous
outcomes
o Venting frustrations
o Mastery and accomplishment

§ Due to adolescents' developing cognitive capacities, they are in a

position to explore the various capabilities and applications of
this technology
§ These skills contribute to their sense of self-worth and provide
status with their peers. Teaching others (especially their parents!)
reinforces their own knowledge and builds self-esteem.
• Risks of ICT
o seeking information may result in exposer to pornography, violence and
self-mutilation
o The anonymity of cyberspace creates a platform to vent feelings in an
inappropriate
o Hiding behind the online anonymity makes the abuse easier to inflict,
resulting in an online disinhibition effect.
o cyberbullying, electronic bullying or Internet bullying.
o some may join groups that are not in their best interests, such as radical
political groups, satanic cults and online sexual orgies
o A common pitfall of online friendships and cliques is that they can be
somewhat artificial, shallow and transient.
o Vulnerable to cybersex
o Internet addiction
• Relationship between problematic ICT behaviour and other problems
o acting out in cyberspace (such as through abusive remarks, distributing
inappropriate material of themselves and others) may be an indication
that they are experiencing problems in their lives
o Cyberbullying may be linked to a lack of moral emotions and moral
values
o teenagers from troubled families may search for 'love' and acceptance
on the Internet, while troubled parent-child relationships may be
exacerbated by adolescents' demands regarding these technologies.
• Guidelines for parents
o parents provide guidelines for ICT usage
o parents must show interest in their ICT activities
o Parents must set reasonable rules and discipline misbehaviour
MORAL DEVELOPMENT
• The nature of moral development during adolescence
o adolescence is a crucial period for the development of abstract thinking
skills, which leads to full integration of moral principles and values.
o Adolescents develop their moral self-concept based on their daily
experience, where they have to make decisions and regulate their
behaviour when coping with new challenges and social influences.
o Moral experiences and expertise gained in adolescence form the
foundation of mature moral character, identity and action
• Theories of moral development:

Psychoanalytic theory
• morality is part of the superego of the individual, which is formed by the

resolution of the Oedipus and Electra complexes and the identification with the
parent of the same gender.
• By means of the unconscious process of identification, the cultural values and
norms of the parents are transferred to their children and in so doing, the
survival of societies is ensured.
• re-externalisation of the superego means that the values adopted by the
superego during childhood are now experienced consciously during
adolescence.
• Values that are regarded as unrealistic or not acceptable are rejected, while
acceptable values are re-adopted by the superego.
• Thus, a new, more mature value system is formed.
Social learning theory
• moral values and behaviour are acquired through observing and imitating the
behaviour of models
• influence of parents vs peers
o the parental values that were acquired through observational learning
and modelling are no longer readily accepted.
o adolescents tend increasingly to conform to the views of their peers
o This provides them with the necessary guidelines to make choices
regarding the formation of an own value system.
• moral agency à people are considered as active agents who pursue their goals
in accordance with personal values.
• Anticipatory self-pride and self-blame are suggested to be regulatory capacities
that keep behaviour in line with moral standards.
• moral disengagement à People may sometimes engage in behaviour that
violates their personal principles, but still remain morally committed to those
principles and avoid guilt or remorse
o individuals may regard their amoral behaviour and its consequences in a
socially and morally favourable way, and not contradicting their personaI
values and social norms.
• The disinhibitory power of moral disengagement in fostering rule-breaking
behaviour in adolescence
The cognitive perspective: Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory

• Theoretical assumptions
o The development of moral reasoning and judgement progresses through
three levels, each consisting of two stages.
o These levels are: the pre-conventional level, the conventional level and
the post-conventional level.
• Levels and stages during adolescence:
o Level II: Conventional morality à individual conforms to society and
expectations of other & moral reasoning becomes less egocentric
§ Stage 3: interpersonal expectations, relationships and conformity

• “good” behaviour is that that is approve by others

• Individuals seek approval of others and avoid disapproval
§ Stage 4: Social systems and conscience orientation
• Moral behaviour is doing one’s duty, having respect for
authority and upholding social law and order
• Acts that are wrong if they violate societal laws or harm
others
o Level III: Postconventional morality à self-defined and self-accepted
moral principles
§ Stage 5: social contract, usefulness and individual rights
• Moral or immoral behaviour is in terms of laws or
established rules relating to general rights and standards.
• individual's personal values and beliefs serve as guidelines
in determining what is correct or incorrect
• However, if these laws no longer promote the welfare of
individuals, they become invalid.
§ Stage 6: universal ethical principles
• Individuals judge behaviour not only as the basis of
society's existing norms, but also on the basis of their own
conscience or own internalised abstract ethical principles.
• These principles are not concrete moral rules, but rather
universal principles of justice, equality of human rights and
respect for the dignity of the individual.
• Evaluation of Kohlberg’s theory
o Contribution to knowledge concerning the development of moral
reasoning of children, adolescents and young adults
o Research verification à evidence from various cross-cultural studies
seems to support the notion that the stages follow one another in the
sequence Kohlberg proposed.
o Key challenge to Kohlberg’s theory à If people must reach Stages 5 and
6 to be considered truly morally mature, few individuals anywhere would
measure up.
o Points of criticism against Kohlberg’s theory
§ Gender Bias ( used male participants only)
§ Research methodology in terms of reliability and validity
§ Flawed assessment of Moral reasoning and moral behaviour
§ Cultural Bias in research
§ Too much emphasis on cognitive development
Factors influencing moral development
• Cognition à Cognitive developmental factors enable the adolescent to look at

situations from another’s perspective
• Personality à An open-minded approach to new information and experiences
is linked to gains in moral reasoning
• Parental attitudes and actions à Whether or not moral values become
internalised during adolescence, depends to a large extent on the relationships
of adolescents with their parents

• Peer interactions à When adolescents have opportunities to discuss moral

issues, they often advance to higher stages of moral development
• Religion à Attitudes towards religion affect their moral development and
behaviour
• Schooling à Effective school environments with efficient teachers and
appropriate social atmospheres are also influential in moral development
• Demographic environment à Particular circumstances do not necessarily
require more abstract cognitive abilities
• Characteristics of moral immaturity à Characterised by egocentrism and
heteronomous acceptance of others’ value systems
• Individualisation and moral self-relevance à The degree to which morality is
central to the self-concept and identity

Made by: Daryan Van der wath CHAPTER 7
WEEK 7
VULNERABILITIES, RESILIENCE AND THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN
RESILIENCE
• What is resilience?
o The ability to cope with or recover from a dificult or challenging life
experiences
• What is positive psychology?
o A branch of psychology that can be defined as the scientific study and
promotion of the optimal functioning and well-being of the individual
o It studies the strengths, virtues,and skills that enable individuals to thrive
• Characteristics of resilient children
o Personal Characteristics
§ Good cognitive abilities and problem-solving skills.
§ Positive outlook on life (hopefulness).
§ Easy temperament in infancy, adaptable personality later in
development.
§ Faith and a sense of meaning in life.
§ Talents valued by self and society.
§ Good sense of humour.
§ General appeal or attractiveness to others.
§ Sense of self-efficacy and positive self-esteem.
§ Sense of control over one's own life.
§ Achievement orientated. Ability to experience and express a wide
range of emotions in a regulatory manner.
§ Ability to empathise and consider situations from another's
perspective.
o Family Characteristics
§ Parents involved in the child's education.
§ Socio-economic advantages.
§ Faith and religious affiliations.
§ Stable and supportive home environment, especially:
• Positive family climate with low levels of parental conflict.
dose relationship with parent/caregivers
• Positive parenting style (high on warmth,
structure/monitoring, and expectations).
Good sibling relationships.
• Supportive connections with extended family members.
o Community Characteristics
§ High neighbourhood quality:
• Safe neighbourhood.
• Low level of community violence.
• Affordable housing.
• Access to recreational centres
• clean air and water.
§ Effective schools:
• Well-trained and well compensated teachers.
• After-school programmes.

• School recreation resources (sports, music, art).

§ Employment opportunities for parents and teens.
§ Good public health care.
§ Access to emergency services (police, fire, medical)
§ Exposure to adult role-models and rule abiding peers.
§ Protective child policies (regarding child labour, child health and
welfare)
§ Value and resources directed at education.
§ Prevention and protection from political oppression and violence.
§ Low acceptance of physical violence.
• Cultural resilience: positive outcomes and risks
o It is generally accepted that cultural traditions, religious rituals and
support services embedded in a culture may provide a wide variety of
protective functions.
o Advantageous practices such as complimenting children for positive
behaviour or providing them with support to overcome adversity, may
promote resilience
o Risk Factors:
§ unacceptable and severe ways of punishment, imbedded in
beliefs such as "spare the rod and spoil the child"; belittling
children, embedded in the belief that children should be seen, not
heard
§ over protection of children in an attempt to protect them from the
"harsh realities of life"
§ overemphasising obedience to the exclusion of the development
of inner strengths and independence
§ not discussing sexuality with children with the result that, for
example, experimentation and the belief in myths could hinder
normal sexual development
§ not providing children with a climate and opportunities that are
conducive to asking for assistance in solving their problems and
challenges.
• Improving children’s resilience when experiencing trauma
o Encourage the child to establish and build positive relationships à
Children who enjoy positive relationships with others appear to be more
resilient than their peers are when exposed to current and future
adversity.
o Help children make sense of their experiences à Children who can
make sense of the adversities to which they are subjected, appear to be
affected less negatively by their experiences than children who cannot
make sense of their experiences
o Help children exercise some control over their experiences à
Children who have some sense of control over their experiences appear
to be less adversely affected by the stressors in their lives than children
who feel that the stressors are beyond their control.
o Provide the child with some routine à It is to children's benefit if their
parents insist on some degree of routine, such as continuing to attend
school activities regularly at specific times.
o Do not overreact à It is a known fact that a child reacts to the response
of other people, especially parents and other adults.

o Develop the child’s self-esteem and self-efficacy à an overriding aim

should be to create supportive and facilitative environment and specific
opportunities to create a feeling of accomplishment and a sense of
achievement in children
o Teach the child a sense of humour à this will allow them to see the
brighter side of life and help them to cope with situations of anxiety or
stress
o Encourage children to talk about their feelings with their parents,
friends, teachers or other people close to them à it helps them share
life questions and the burden of trauma, conflict, and doubt
THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD

• Reasons for specific laws and regulations
o Children are exposed to numerous risk factors
o Children are the most vulnerable members of society and dependent on
others such as their parents, families and the government.
o They therefore need specific laws and regulations to safe guard their
interests
• The Convention on the Rights of the Child
o The right to survival
o The right to develop to the fullest
o The right to be protected from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation
o The right to participate fully in family, culture and social life
• basic human rights
• core principles
o non-discrimination
o devotion to the best interest of the child
o the right to life, survival and development
o respect for the view of the child
• The situation in SA and Positive outcomes
o South Africa officially joined this venture in 1995 when it signed the
Convention on the Rights of the Child.
o Research projects on children have increased dramatically, while special
and innovative legislation and judicial procedures have been put in
place.
• Reasons for lack of support in certain circles
o cultures that are more traditional have a strong belief in the structure of
an authoritarian, patriarchal society that is also reflected in the
household.
o several religions teach respect and subservience to authority.
o Different cultures place different emphases on the kinds of rights
children should be afforded.
o there is conflict between children's rights and traditional customs.

THE CHILDREN’S CHARTER

1. Discrimination
2. Name and nationality
3. Opinion and participation
4. Beliefs and culture
5. Protection from violence
6. Family life
7. Health and welfare
8. Education
9. Child labour
10. Homeless children
VULNERABILITIES
• Children are more vulnerable to negative cicumstances than adults because of
their immature developmental status and they do not have the same economic,
social, political and legal power that adults have
• Determinant; (causes or influences) that increase the possibility of an event or
cicumstance having a negative effect of having a negative effect on children are
called risk factors
FAMILY INFLUENCES
• Important role of the family
o Essential role in child’s social, emotional and cognitive development
• Changing family structures
o Greater variety of families
o Babies enter through birth, adoption or fostering
o Babies are conceived through intercourse or infertility treatment
o Children live in families formed by marriage, remarriage, cohabiting
heterosexual families, in homosexual families, in single parent families
and in child-headed households
• Factors that influence family life in SA
o Urbanisation
o Employment (limited access)
o Education
o Housing (poor quality)
o Health (health problems)
o Transport facilities
o Social difficulties
o Unstable family relationships
o Promiscuous sexual behaviour
• Family influences that could have an effect on children’s development:
Divorce
• Incidence rate
o 25000 divorces are granted legally in SA annually
• Effects on children

o Children from intact homes have psychological problems, behavioural

problem, scholastic under-achievement and interpersonal problems
o 70% of children from divorced families see divorce as a solution to an
unhappy marriage
o The relationship between children and their fathers is negatively
impacted
o Lower levels of education, occupational and financial attainment
o Two times more likely to reject faith and religious involvement
• Factors that influence children’s reactions
o The degree of conflict before and after the divorce.
o Stability after divorce.
o The nature of the parent-child relationship.
o The age of the child
o Level of social support.
o Information given to children
o Uniqueness of the child.
o Gender of the child.
• How valid is the view that parents should not divorce “for the sake of the
children”?
o children of divorced parents usually begin to show behaviour problems
long before the divorce
o the prior conflict and discord that is the greatest cause of behaviour
problems.
o Children also seem to be better off in a loving single-parent home than in
a two-parent home torn apart by conflict and discord.
o Overall, it seems that the level of parental conflict is a key determinant of
the effects of parental divorce on children.
• Negative/positive outcomes
o On the one hand, it cannot be denied that a significant number of
children from divorced families are affected negatively
o However, it is equally true that the majority of such children cope
relatively well and continue to have reasonably contented and even very
happy lives.
• How can parents help their children to adjust to divorce?
SUGGESTION EXPLANATION
Shield children from Conflict. Witnessing intense parental conflict is very damaging to children. If
one parent insists on expressing hostility, children fare better if the
other parent does not respond in kind.
Provide children with as much Children adjust better during the period surrounding divorce when
continuity, familiarity, and their lives have some stability- for example, the same school,
predictability as possible. bedroom, babysitter, playmates, and daily schedule.
Explain the divorce and tell Children are more likely to develop fears of abandonment if they are
children what to expect not prepared for their parents' separation. They should be told that
their parents will not be living together anymore, which parent will be
moving out, and when they will be able to see that parent. If possible,
parents should explain the divorce together, providing a reason that

each child can understand and assuring children that they are not to
blame.
Emphasise the permanence of Fantasies of parents getting back together can prevent children from
the divorce. accepting the reality of their current situation. Children should be
told that the divorce is final and that they Cannot change this fact.
Respond sympathetically to Children need a supportive and understanding response to their
children's feelings. feelings of sadness, fear, and anger. For children to adjust well, their
painful emotions must be acknowledged, not denied or avoided.
Engage in authoritative Parents who engage in authoritative parenting providing affection
parenting. and acceptance, reasonable demands for mature behaviour, and
consistent, rational discipline - greatly reduce their children's risk of
maladjustment following divorce.
Promote a continuing When parents disentangle their lingering hostility toward the former
relationship with both parents. spouse from the child's need for a continuing relationship with the
other parent, children adjust well. Grandparents and other extended
family members can help by not taking sides.
Stepfamilies
• Adjustments
o New parent but often all brothers/sisters
o Children find the change in household practices stressful
o Children may also regard the presence of new step-relations in their
home as a violation of their relationship with the parent in whose
residential care (custody)
o or view the stepparent (rightly or wrongly) as the cause of their parents'
divorce.
o Competition between step children as well as step and biological
parents
o Conflict between biological parents and obstruction of visitation and
contact rights adds to the stressful situation
• Effects on the children
o Behaviour problems
o Psychological problems
o Poor academic performance
o Can have a positive influence
• Mother-stepfather family
o the mother usually gains residential care of the children; therefore, most
stepfamilies will have a stepfather rather than a stepmother
o boys adjust better to a stepfather than girls do
o Boys with stepfathers are also less likely to develop psychological
problems than boys in single-parent families are
o boys in a mother-stepfather family within two years function just as well
as boys in an intact family.
o The fact that girls adjust less well is attributed especially to the fact that
many girls often view their stepfathers as a threat to their relationship
with their mothers.
• Father-stepmother family
o girls adjust less well to such a situation than boys do.

o the girl's less satisfactory adjustment is attributed mainly to the

probability that she regards her stepmother as an unworthy substitute for
her biological mother and/or an intruder who is threatening her
relationship with her father.
Single-parent families
• Reasons for this phenomenon
o Absence of the father or mother
o Divorce
o Separation
o Migrant labour
o Unmarried status
o Death
• Stressors
o Adjustments have to made in terms of discipline and expectations may
be unrealistic
o feeling of insecurity as to what the future holds
o Financial stress
• Negative consequences
o Juvenile delinquency
o These children like school less
o Poor relationships with teachers and friends
o Poor self-image
o These children run a greater risk of future marriage problems and rearing
their own children
• Positive outcomes
o Children are more dependant, responsible and take a more active part in
family decision making
Adopted children
• The nature of adoption
o Adoptive parents comprise of stepparents, relatives and non-related
adults from all walks of life, including gay couples and adults from
different countries, races and ethnicities.
o Many children are put up for adoption because of maladaptive family
circumstances
• Adjustment and negative outcomes
o These circumstances put adopted children at greater risk for
maladaptive outcomes such as emotional problems and learning
difficulties, aggressive and delinquent behaviour and drug use
o adopted children have greater difficulty when they are older at the time of
the adoption (e.g. older than five years of age), largely because of
negative early experiences
o Adopted boys seem to have more difficulty than adopted girls do
o Adolescence is a particularly difficult time for adopted children. Because
this is an important period to define their identities (because they know
little about their biological background)
• Positive outcomes
o Majority adjust well and function normally

o Majority of adopted children report that they are satisfied with their
adoptive status
o They are emotional attached to their adoptive parents
• Cross-racial adoption:
o Reasons
§ Loss of mother or father
§ Loss of both parents
o different viewpoints
§ experts argue that children should be adopted by parents of the
same race so that they can develop a strong cultural identity
however children are not born with culture and culture is not
inscribed on their skin
§ other experts argue that race should not be considered but rather
the environment that will ensure they child’s optimal development
o research findings
§ International research has shown that cross-race adopted
children when raised in similar homes do not differ from same
race adopted children in terms of characteristics such as
psychosocial adjustment, self-esteem and academic
achievement
Child-headed households
• Nature and prevalence
o defined as a household in which all the members are younger than 18
years.
o refers to a situation where both parents are absent and children are
compelled to take over the adult duties
o One of the most important contributors of this social tragedy is AIDS.
o approximately 100 000 children are involved in these households.
• Problems relating to description/definition
o a household could be classified as 'child-headed' while relatives and
neighbours may look after the children very well, although they do not
live in the same house.
o Other households could receive almost no support
o some researchers may include all children younger than 18 in the study,
while others may for practical reasons include only school-going children
between 7 and 18 years. The geographical areas in which the research
was conducted may also differ
o Participants (children and family members) may even lie about the status
of the household
• Diverse research findings
o In one study, the chief reason for the child-headed households was
reported as the death of one (40%) or both (43%) parents, mainly
because of AIDS
o Another survey found that only 8% of children living in child-headed
households were children who had lost both their parents. In fact, about
80010 of these children had a living parent who had deserted them or
was working in another area.

o In some child-headed households, girls are twice more likely to head a

household than boys are. Other studies could find no significant
difference in this regard.
• Diverse views on possible outcomes
o On the one hand, siblings have the opportunity to remain together, stay
in their family home and to remain in the same school.
o On the other hand, children in such households are faced with the
challenges and problems of the adult world for which they are not yet
ready.
Same-sex parent families

• Historical viewpoints
o Society and courts have been opposed to giving homosexual couples the
rights to raise children because they are more mentally unstable and that
they will sexually molest their children and that these children will
become homosexual themselves
• Ways in which children become members of such families
o Adoption, artificial conception, and the use of surrogate mothers
o Also they have children from previous heterosexual marriages and
relationships
• Legal provisions in SA
o First adoption of this kind was in 1995 but parental rights were only
granted to one partner
o In 2002 the constitutional court allowed both homosexual partners to
share parental rights
o SA was the first in Africa to allow legal marriages between same-sex
partners
• Influence on child development
o Children are no more likely to become homosexual or bisexual than
children who are raised by heterosexual parents
o Such children compare favourable with other children concerning their
self-concept, interpersonal relations, emotional problems, antisocial
behaviour, academic achievement and social skills
o Children whose parent is homosexual have fewer problems than children
living with a single parent
o Homosexual parents are equally knowledgeable and effective regarding
child-rearing practices
o The relationship between homosexual parents is the same as
heterosexual parents
• What is important in child development: the gender of the parents or the quality
of the parent-child relationship?
o The gender composition of families is less important than the quality of
relationships and the quality of care given to the children
o It does not take a mother and father but a parent to raise a child
Street children
• Nature and incidence rate
o Street children occur in both developed and developing countries
o SA has between 10 000 – 20 000 street children

o Increasing daily due to AIDS, the increase in population, urbanisation

and poverty
• Categories of street children
o Children of the streets à these are children who live and work on the
streets 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They have no family support.
o Children on the streets. These children work on the streets and spend
most of their time there. However, they return to their family or relatives
at night.
• Characteristics of street children
o They often come to the streets to work in order to supplement their
families' income. Extreme poverty forces them to become at least
partially self-supporting.
o Most of the children of the streets still have families but have run away
from home. This is often as a result of sexual abuse or psychological or
physical neglect or abuse.
o The majority of street children are boys.
o Begging and stealing are viewed as a form of work and form part of their
daily activities. (however some do try work)
o Low self-esteem, below average academic intelligence, internal locus of
control, impulsivity, mistrust, apathy, fatalism and the manipulation of
adults
o They are exposed to risk factors on the streets
o Many suffer from malnutrition
o Street children are mostly very loyal to one another (this group is seen as
a replacement of their family)
o Drug abuse is common
MALTREATMENT
• Neglect
o Refers to the failure to provide the basic needs of children
o Neglect affects the child’s cognitive development, academic
achievement and socialising and their behaviour also varies between
undisciplined and extreme passivity
o Physical neglect à inadequate supervision and failing to provide
adequate housing, nutrition, and medical attention
o Emotional neglect à the basic needs for psychological care are not met
(neglecting to provide emotional affection or exposing the child to
conflict between the parents)
o Educational neglect à failing to enrol a child in school and allow
truancy
• Physical abuse
o Refers to physical acts of aggression (kicking, slapping and even murder)
o children are not affected negatively only by experiencing physical
violence personally, but also by witnessing violence, such as inter-
parental violence and general violence in the community.
o The visible physical injuries that physically abused children sustain often
belie the psychological wounds.
o emotional, cognitive and behavioural dysfunction is evident
• Sexual abuse

o Sexual abuse refers to any illegal sexual act committed against a child.
o It includes rape, fondling of the genitals or breasts, sodomy,
exhibitionism, exposing the child to indecent acts and using a child in the
production of pornography.
o Children display extreme stress, anxiety, anger, fatigue, depression,
passivity, difficulties concentrating and withdrawal from usual activities
o In younger children: bed wetting, sexualised behaviour and sleeping
problems
o Later in childhood and adolescence: low self-esteem, self-blame, guilt
feelings, eating disorders, antisocial behaviour, drug abuse, delinquency
and promiscuous sexual activities
• Emotional abuse
o Psychological abuse (verbal belittling, humiliation, rejection and failure
to provide emotional support, love and affection)
o Emotional abuse is often present in all other types of abuse
o Emotional abuse is hard to diagnose
o The parenting style may be characterised by overt aggression towards
their children (shouting, intimidation, manipulation)
o Emotional abusive parents are orientated towards fulfilling their own
needs and goals
o Emotional abuse does not only occur at home
o Emotional abuse has serious behavioural, cognitive and emotional
implications
• Racism
o Refers to the discrimination against people because they belong to a
different racial group
o Aggression and embitterment among South Africans of colour may be
traced back to the past and present experiences of racial abuse
o Racism can cause psychological harm as well as death
o It negatively influences several generations to come
o Children are still confronted with racial abuse because it deprives them
of much needed resources, can lead to internalised negative message
and representations of themselves, a compromised development of a
healthy sense of self and psychological well-being
o There are long term and traumatic effects of racism
POVERTY
• The nature of poverty
o Much more than only an insufficient income, lack of money and material
needs
o It affects the physical and psychological development of a person
o Health, nutrition, housing, education and employment, access to various
services and facilities, as well as the person's psychological well-being
(e.g. self-esteem and mental health).
• Poverty and the SA child
o Poverty affects 50% of the population
o Approximately 11 million South African children live in poverty.
Approximately two million children live in backyard shacks in townships,
with poor sanitation, water and other basic services.

o More than 4 million children live in overcrowded homes, with risks for
especially sexual abuse.
• Consequences of poverty for the child
o Poor children tend to suffer more from a variety of health problems.
o There is a relationship between poverty and children's 10 scores, as well
as lower academic achievement.
o Children living in poverty are more exposed to parents who use harsh
discipline (e.g. physical punishment) rather than reasoning.
o The daily crises poor families have to deal with (e.g. bills to pay,
unemployment and exposure to an often high-crime environment), affect
all the family members.
o Poor children are more likely to develop social and emotional problems,
which are already evident from an early age. Examples are low self-
esteem and self-confidence, drug abuse and mental disorders, such as
depression.
• Poverty and the vicious circle
o poverty threatens all aspects of childhood by depriving children of the
capabilities and opportunities needed to survive, develop and thrive.
o poverty in childhood shows a correlation (relationship) with poverty in
adulthood.
o Impoverished children are more likely to become impoverished parents.
In order to stop this vicious circle, fighting poverty must begin with
children
SUBSTANCE ABUSE
• Nature and extent of substance abuse
o refers to illicit drugs, certain medications, alcohol and tobacco
o Just as in the case of many other social problems, the precise extent of
the phenomenon is difficult to determine.
o Alcohol and tobacco are permitted by the government and have become
a norm in many circle
o Alcohol and nicotine are as addictive as the more notorious substances
such as heroin and cocaine
• Worldwide deaths related to substance abuse
o 3% illicit drugs
o 30% alcohol
o 67% tabacco
• Substance use of SA learners
o Tabacco à 30% of learners reported that they had smoked at some
stage
o Alcohol à 50% of learners reported that they had smoked at some stage
o Illegal drugs à 13% have smoked weed at some stage, 12% for
inhalants, 7% for cocaine and 7% for “tik”
• Effects
o Effects on people’s physical and mental health
o Not only have a devastating effect on the abuser but also on innocent
persons
o Alcohol and dagga are in majorityh of crimes and fatal road accidents
o Effects on families (unhappy marriages, divorce, financial problems)

o Could lead to death

o Poor academic achievement, conflict with authority figure, antisocial
behaviour, mental disorders as well as abnormal neurological
development
o failed marriage, poor parenting skills and problems at work which may
lead to unemployment.
o This, in turn, encourages further substance abuse.
• Causes
o there is a strong indication of a genetic predisposition to substance
abuse. Children with family members who have alcohol and other drug
problems are therefore especially at risk.
o A disposition (tendency) towards sensation-seeking frequently paves the
way for risky behaviour such as substance abuse.
o underlying problems such as low self-esteem, depression and a search
for identity, children often experience a sense of despair and
hopelessness. The escape out of this emotional turmoil is often the
temporary relief brought about by the effect of drugs.
o Poor and inconsistent parenting practices, poor supervision (e.g. not
knowing where and with whom the children are), continuous conflict
between parents, negative parent-child interaction and parental
substance abuse (including alcohol and nicotine) are factors associated
with the substance abuse of children.
o Peer pressure is regarded as one of the major causes of substance
abuse, especially in adolescence.
• The false self-conviction factor (the belief that 'everyone else is doing it'), which
leads to the downfall of so many adolescents (e.g. high-risk sexual activity), also
plays a role in substance abuse.
AIDS
• Nature and prevalence of HIV and AIDS
o Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
o Acquired à contracted from the environment
o Immune à body’s immune system
o Deficiency à shortage or absence
o Syndrome à total group of symptoms of which a disease consist
o Human Immune Deficiency Virus à the virus that causes aids by
damaging a person’s immune system
o As a result the body has no protection against diseases, therefore people
don’t die from AIDS by die from diseases
o No cure for AIDS, however treatment is available
o HIV is spread by having unprotected sex with an infected person, from
and infected mother to her new born baby and through contact with
infected blood
• Incidence among children
o Infants born with HIV die before two years of age (without treatment)
o 35 million people globally
o More than 3 million are children
o 300 000 children are infected with HIV

o 90% of HIV infections in children result from mother-to-child

transmission
o 2 million people die of AIDS related illnesses every year
o South Africa has the largest number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the
world
• Impact on child development
o Changes in family composition à As a result of death, relocation or
financial hardship, changes occur often in the family constellation of the
HIV/AIDS-affected family
o Role changes à As their parents become increasingly ill and dependent
on them, children's roles change from being a child to becoming the
primary caregiver for their parents, younger siblings and other
household-members such as grandparents.
o Education à The school attendance and/or academic achievement of
children in HIV/AIDS households decline because of their new
responsibilities, while the money allocated for school is used for basic
necessities, medication and health services.
o Stigmatisation à The stigma (disgrace) and resulting discrimination
associated with AIDS is often underestimated.
o Traumatic exposure to suffering and death à Children who live with
parents who have AIDS are exposed to their long-term suffering and
ultimate death.
o Emotional deprivation à Children who grow up without the love and
care of adults devoted to their emotional well-being are at a higher risk of
developing psychological problems.
o Economic decline à The average income of a family where a member
has HIV/AIDS can fall by as much as 60010 as expenditure on health care
increases dramatically, and savings are depleted.
o Mental health issues
SUICIDE
• Suicidal behaviour: suicide, suicide attempts, suicidal ideation (suicidal
thought)
• Suicide demographics in SA
o 10% of deaths are suicides , with about 20 times more non-fatal suicide
attempts
o Suicidal behaviour in black African cultures is increasing
o Suicide rates are the highest amongst whites and men
o 30% of reported suicidal behaviour involves children
o 10% of deaths in children is suicide
o Highest suicide rate among children occurs in the 15-19 age group
o In the age group 10-19 years, almost twice as many females than males
commit suicide
• Causes
o Mental Health issues (depression, stress, hopelessness, anger, low self-
esteem and low levels of family support)
o Genetic factors
o Homosexual and abused children are risks groups for suicide
o Troubled family relationships
o Stressful and traumatic life events

COMMUNITY VIOLENCE
• Defining community violence: narrow and broader definitions regarding place
and duration
o Community violence refers to exposure to acts of violence in the
neighbourhood where the person and his or her family live
o The person does not have to be a victim but that witnessing (or hearing
about) violence also qualifies
o Concerning the location of the violence:
§ The narrow definition of community violence does not include
violence that occurs at home, at school or in the media. It refers
to riots, the use of weapons, muggings, gang wars, drugs, racial
conflict and violent crimes in public places. The violence is
committed by individuals who are not necessarily related to the
victim.
§ The broader definition on the other hand, also includes violence
committed in one's home, school, the media or any other place in
the community. The non-relatedness between perpetrator and
victim is also not a precondition. This means that violence such as
sexual, physical and emotional abuse committed by an
acquaintance at home or at school also meets the criteria of
community violence.
o Concerning the duration of the violence:
o The narrow definition requires that the violence must be chronic (long-
lasting). However, no criterion is provided for the length of the duration of
the violence.
o The broader definition includes short-term exposure to violence as well,
but does not offer a definition of short-term exposure (e.g. whether it
includes a single exposure).
• Violence and other life stressors
o poverty, neglect, poor nutrition, overcrowding, and substance abuse,
lack of adequate medical care, parents' unemployment, and parents'
psychopathology (mental disorders).
• Effects
o These factors can aggravate and prolong the negative effects of violence
exposure in children.
o the effects of exposure to violence on children must be viewed in the
broader context in which the child is embedded.
o children and adolescents exposed to violence are at risk of developing a
range of developmental and psychological problems
o The major mental disorders associated with children who were exposed
to violence are depression and anxiety disorders, including
posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
o Other disorders such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder have also
been reported.
o Behaviour problems, such as poor interpersonal relationships,
aggression and delinquency are quite common.
o Scholastic underachievement often occurs.
• Factors that determine children’s reaction

o The nature of the violence à The various forms of violence (such as

family violence, community violence and political violence) can affect
the lives of children in different ways.
o The duration and intensity of exposure à Evidently, children who are
exposed to high levels of violence for relatively long periods are more
likely to develop problems than children who are exposed to only brief
and/or relatively low levels of violence.
o Involvement in violence à Children who personally are victims of
violence usually are more distressed by such violence than children who
merely witness the violence.
o Mental health history à Children with pre-existing psychopathology are
at a higher risk for negative outcomes.
o The child’s age à In general, children of different ages are differentially
vulnerable to the psychological effects of violence, due to a range of
developmental factors such as cognitive and emotional maturity.
o The child’s gender à Although there are many similarities regarding
boys' and girls' reactions to violence, there are also important
differences.
§ Adolescent boys are more likely to show stress-related symptoms
following exposure to violence than their female counterparts.
§ The most significant difference is that adolescent boys tend to
direct their inner struggles outward, while adolescent girls tend to
direct them inward.
§ This means that boys become more aggressive and delinquent,
while girls seem to be more likely to exhibit psychological
symptoms, especially depression and anxiety.
o The child’s temperament à Children with easy temperaments appear
to cope better with violence than children with difficult temperaments.
o The availability of social support à Mental health professionals widely
accept the protective effects of good social support with regard to the
effect of violence.
o Past exposure to violence à Most children who are exposed to
violence are usually exposed to more than one incident of violence.
o Scholastic performance à There is evidence that good scholastic
performance may serve as a protective factor in children's responses to
adversities, such as violence
o The socio-economic status of the child à A low socio-economic
status generally correlates positively with problems in children who have
been exposed to extreme violence.
o The child’s appraisal of violence à If children can make sense of the
violence to which they are exposed, they are less likely to be traumatised
by it than when violent encounters are incomprehensible.
o Children’s experience of hope à In a South African study it was found
that a child's experience of hope is a stronger predictor of his or her well-
being than community violence

DEATH
• Factors which may influence children’s understanding of death
o Age, the level of cognitive development, nature of the relationship with
the person that died, cultural influences and the way parents
communicate with their children about death
• Children’s concept of death at different ages
o Ages 0 to 2 à Infants do not recognise death, although they do
experience feelings of loss and separation when someone significant
dies.
o Ages 3 to 5 à Children in this age category do not fully separate death
from life and may believe that the deceased continues to live (e.g. in the
ground where he or she has been buried). As they do not understand the
concept of 'forever', they tend to consider death as a temporary or
gradual event.
o Ages 6 to 9 à Children of this age often become curious about death,
asking very concrete questions, Death is personified and takes on a
specific identity such as a skeleton or a ghost. Children nonetheless
believe that death happens to other people and especially the elderly-
but not to themselves or their family members. They may also view death
as a punishment
o Ages 10 to 18 àBy the time children reach the age of 10 they usually
understand that death is inevitable: "Everyone will die one day, even I."
They also realise that death is final and cannot be changed.
• Children’s grief
o Physical and emotional reaction to death
o A child will grieve in his or her own unique way
• The dying child
o Children are often aware of what is happening to them
o Preschool children à tend not to talk about dying although they will act
out their feelings
o School age children à have a relatively good understanding about their
situation and talk about it, it’s important to them to participate in normal
activities
o Adolescents à their reaction reflects their development stage, they are
concerned with body image and acceptance by peers, they struggle with
a sense of identity
• Culture
o Xhosa culture shows a preference for using symbolic expressions when
referring to death
o Cultural belief systems influence the way children perceive and
experience death and dying
CHILDREN’S REACTION TO TRAUMA

• Trauma refers to an experience that is emotionally painful, distressing or
shocking, which often results in lasting mental and physical effects.
• Trauma in children may result from various events such as abuse, violence, loss
of a parent, illness, injuries and natural disasters, such as floods and
earthquakes.

• Individual nature of children’s reactions to trauma

o First, the reactions may differ from child to child.
o The range of factors that could influence children's reactions to
community violence, as discussed earlier, also pertains to children's
reactions to other trauma.
o Second, traumatised children may also show symptoms that differ
significantly from one another.
o Third, reactions to a traumatic event do not necessarily occur
immediately after the event. They may appear days or weeks (in
exceptional cases, even years) after the event.
o Fourth, children's reactions to trauma also vary according to age. This is
understandable, because children interpret their experiences within the
context of their specific stage of cognitive and emotional development.
• Expected age-related reactions to trauma
o Infancy
§ They are quite sensitive to their surroundings.
§ The result is that they find loud noises and visual images
associated with trauma, as well as negative emotional signals
(e.g. anger from their caregivers) distressing.
§ There is strong indication that this could interfere with the infant's
need for attachment. Therefore, it is understandable that many
infants who are exposed to domestic violence tend to cry
excessively and have eating and sleeping problems.
o Early childhood
§ Children in this age group are learning how to express their
emotions, including those of aggression and anger.
§ Being exposed to trauma and especially violence, children can
imitate unhealthy ways to express anger and aggression.
§ They also become confused with mixed messages of what they
see versus what they are told.
§ These children exhibit fear of abandonment, which is often
expressed in excessive clinging.
§ This in turn could interfere with play and subsequent learning.
§ Regressive behaviour is also common and includes bedwetting,
thumb sucking, as well as fear of the dark, strangers and
"monsters". Other symptoms include eating and sleep disorders
(especially nightmares).
o Middle childhood
§ During middle childhood behaviour problems become more
obvious and serious.
§ Difficulties in concentration and attention, and poor academic
performance are usually in the foreground.
§ They have poor social skills and tend to see the intentions of
others as hostile.
§ Aggressive behaviour such as fighting with siblings and friends are
therefore common.
§ They are confused about right and wrong. Their confusion is also
embodied in their emotions which often switch between shame,
fear and rage.

§ The child could have physical complaints (e.g. stomach aches)

that have no medical explanation.
§ A preoccupation with the traumatic event or situation is not
uncommon. The result is that children want to talk about it
continuously and/or incorporate it into their play.
o Adolescence
§ Adolescence is usually the culmination of the aforementioned
problems.
§ Behaviour becomes more excessive, and acting out behaviour
tends to be more prominent, for example alcohol and drug abuse,
involvement in gangs, truancy and sexual promiscuity.
§ Violent behaviour is common with physical fights and even
physical aggression in dating relationships occurring.
§ The meaning and purpose of life are questioned and psychological
problems seem to intensify: depression, anxiety, withdrawal and
suicidal thoughts are quite common.

Psychology 223

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Psychology 223

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Made by: Daryan Van der wath

Psychology 223 WEEK 4

Not for Resale or Distribution! 1

§ By the age of 5 children would be able to ride a bicycle and engage

Not for Resale or Distribution! 2

§ 5% experience wasting (extreme loss of body tissue, especially

THEORIES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT:

PIAGET’S THEORY: PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (2-6/7 YEARS)

• The term Operation is used to refer to a mental representation that is preformed

Not for Resale or Distribution! 3

o Spoken language à with the development of language, thinking occurs

o Irreversibility à cannot reverse an operation (for example they are able

o Animistic thinking à young children assume that non-living objects

Not for Resale or Distribution! 4

o Current research findings does not support Piaget’s view

Not for Resale or Distribution! 5

• Kurt Fischer’s viewpoint

• Children as theorists à children’s theories are usually called naïve theories

Not for Resale or Distribution! 6

NAÏVE PSYCHOLOGY AND THE THEORY OF MIND

Not for Resale or Distribution! 7

o Theory of mind is when children have to ability to attribute mental states

VYGOTSKY’S SOCIALCULTURAL THEORY

• Criticised Piaget for disregarding cultural influences

Not for Resale or Distribution! 8

THEORY OF INFORMATION PROCESSING

• Cognitive development is less consistent and more multi-faceted process than

Not for Resale or Distribution! 9

o As a child progresses through early childhood they are increasingly able

Not for Resale or Distribution! 10

PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY

GRAMMER AND SYNTAX

THE PRAGMATIC USE OF LANGUAGE

Not for Resale or Distribution! 11

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT AND THE MEDIA

Not for Resale or Distribution! 12

• Effect of other media à Heavy TV usage, watching non-educational shows

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCTAION

Not for Resale or Distribution! 13

• Early childhood education policy in SA

THEORIES OF PERSONAILTY DEVELOPMENT

Not for Resale or Distribution! 14

Not for Resale or Distribution! 15

§ Nightmares in children tend to reach a peak by the age of ten,

o Childhood fears research in SA (Muris et al.,2008)

Not for Resale or Distribution! 16

Not for Resale or Distribution! 17

• Emotion-coaching approach à used by parents to monitor the

Not for Resale or Distribution! 18

§ Research indicates that in a society that is more individualistic in

Theories of gender-role development

Not for Resale or Distribution! 19

o Social environment is the way in which the child is treated by their

Not for Resale or Distribution! 20

§Children’s gender typing only develops after they have acquired a

§ Emphasizes the importance of the development of a gender

Not for Resale or Distribution! 21

§ Secondly children develop what is called an Own gender schema

FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS à PARENTS OR CAREGIVERS

Not for Resale or Distribution! 22

parent- child relationships is the core content of intervention to

Not for Resale or Distribution! 23

Not for Resale or Distribution! 24

The causes of aggression - theoretical grounding: