Test 3 Study Guide Chapter 9 Socioemotional Development in Early Childhood Children become more themselves in early childhood They have their own ideas including gender ideas Socialization the process of developing cultural values and rules for behavior Children begin spending more time with peers The Development of the Self o The self is both a cognitive construction that reflects the child s level of mental development as well as a social construction that reflects the child s interactions and experiences with other people especially parents o Self Conceptions and Self Esteem Self conceptions a cognitive construction that reflects the child s level of mental development and a social construction that reflects the child s interactions and experiences with other people Self esteem a global assessment of self worth Sets the tone for inner experiences and outward behavior Young children s self conceptions are composed primarily of concrete observable characteristics Conceptions tend to be unrealistically positive Young child s self image is a bit disjointed with separate bits of information pasted together Young children s self esteem reveals itself in behavior High self esteem confident curious independent Low self esteem lack confidence curiosity independence Self esteem is not related to actual competence o Initiative Versus Guilt Erik Erikson identified the development of children s feelings of initiative vs guilt The third stage in Erikson s theory of psychosocial development during which mastery of new skills becomes the primary goal Physical and brain maturation enable the young child to attempt activities that were previously beyond their capabilities Children with accepting and encouraging parents eagerly try new activities Children with strict and critical parents easily give up and blame themselves for failure o Internal Working Models A child s evaluation of his or her worth as a person growing out of attachment relationships Warm sensitive supportive parents lead to secure attachments Also lead to a view of self who is worthy of love Rejecting interfering parents lead to insecure attachments Model of self unworthy of love Children s model of self can and do change o Family Stories Construction of autobiographical memories is a collaborative process with adults providing the scaffolding Memories anchor and enrich a child s self concept When parents ignore or dismiss children s expressions the result can be an impoverished self with no grounding in the past and few hopes for the future Gender Development o Virtually all cultures expects males and females to differ in many ways like appearance mannerisms temperament dreams and values o Gender Awareness Identity and Constancy Gender awareness develops early Before infants can walk and talk they discriminate between males and females Gender identity a person s sense of self as male or female Develops around age2 Gender constancy the concept that gender is permanent and immutable Small proportion 2 5 of young children display gender identity disorders of childhood Express strong wishes to be another sex o Behavioral Differences By age 3 most boys and girls are moving in different directions toward gender typical often stereotypical behaviors Boys and girls style of play also differ Boys are more physically active engage in more rough and tumble play enjoy fantasy play with superheroes play with trucks Legos action figures Girls are more likely to play indoors quietly cooperative play dress up o Sources of Gender Differences house Parents who don t adapt stereotypes themselves often find that their children pick up on gender stereotypes Biological differences Androgens hormones that control the development of masculine characteristics generally found in higher levels in males than females Testosterone an androgen secreted by the testicles or the ovaries Hormones contribute to sexual differentiation of the brain and behavior Congenital adrenal hyperplasia CAH a condition cause by fetal exposure to androgens early in pregnancy o In early childhood girls with CAH prefer typically male toys Sex differences may lie in his or her brains o At 5 boy s brains have more white matter in the cerebral cortex o Girls have greater neuron density and a relatively larger corpus Gender socialization callosum Mothers talk more to their daughters and provide more input when they are playing Parents allow and expect boys to be more independent Parents emphasize sharing with girls and competition with boys Girls given more appeal to dancing and gymnastics boys to sports Gender socialization social norms conveyed to children that concern characteristics associated with being male or female o Interactions with peers contribute Rough and tumble play physically vigorous behaviors such as chasing jumping and play fighting that are accompanied by shared smiles and laughter Gender schema A mental network of beliefs and expectations about males versus females Children first become aware of stereotypic differences in appearance and then possessions then behavior Knowledge of activities typically associated with gender increase rapidly between ages 3 and 5 o Tend to see deviations from gender stereotypes as bad Gender stereotyping peaks between 5 and 6 Once children accept constancy they can more easily accept that males and females can share traits and activities Emotional Development o Emotional development in early childhood is marked by advances in children s awareness of their own and others emotional states and in children s ability to regulate their emotional expressions o Understand Emotions Between ages 2 and 3 children begin to label their and other people s emotions Begin to identify the object or target the feeling Begin to develop a more accurate and nuanced understanding of the causes and consequences of emotion Secondary Self conscious emotions an emotion that involved evaluation of oneself such as embarrassment pride guilt and shame Require an objective sense of self as distinct from others awareness of standards for behavior an evaluation of one s own performance in terms of these standards and a sense of responsibility for success or failure Lewis and Ramsay identified two types of embarrassment When a child is the object of positive attention When a child fails a task o Individual Difference in Emotional Understanding Emotional intelligence the ability to monitor one s own and others feelings and to use that information to guide