1. PSYC 206
Lifespan Development
Bilge Yagmurlu 1

2. Chapter Overview Identity Development Socialization
Developing Prosocial Behaviors
Understanding Aggression
Developing Self-Regulation

3. Lack of Theory of Mind
Ability to represent others’ mental states such as thoughts, beliefs, and desires
There is a single reality and people may have different representations
Understanding false belief: how someone comes to have a mistaken belief about something
A child has a mature understanding of the mind around years of age

4. Universality of ToM and Language
2-6-years-old Baka children, who lived in the rain forests of southeast Cameroon.
Similar to findings reported for Western children, false belief understanding of Baka children displayed a significant development between 3 and 5 years of age.
This was the first study carried out with children growing up in a preliterate society with a hunter-gatherer life-style and with no school experience. Thus, it provided a strong support for the universality claim about ToM development.

5. Vinden (1996): cultures (Junin Quechue) without explicit mentalistic vocabulary
Junin Quechua children had an earlier understanding of appearance-reality distinction than of false belief.
While the understanding of the appearance-reality distinction improved with age, even children over 6 years of age performed poorly in tasks of false belief. In Western children, understanding false belief and appearance-reality distinctions tends to display parallelism in development and both abilities increase significantly from 3 to 5 years of age. Hence, Vinden suggested that abilities requiring the ability to represent may develop differently across cultures and this may be related to linguistic properties.

6. Universality of ToM and Language
Vinden and Astington (1998):
language and ToM are two interconnected abilities
language and aspects of the context where language is learned must be taken into account in developmental studies.

7. Information-Processing Approaches to Cognitive Development
The working of the mind as analogous to the digital computer

8. Information-Processing
Young children’s cognitive difficulties caused by limitations of general cognitive factors:
Knowledge
Memory
Attention control
Processing speed
Strategies for acquiring and using information

9. Chapter 9 Overview Identity Development Developing Prosocial Behaviors
Developing Self-Regulation
Understanding Aggression

10. Social and Emotional Development
Socialization:
The process by which children acquire the standards, values, and knowledge of their society.
Personality Formation:
The process through which children develop their own unique patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving in a wide variety of situations.

11. Identity Development Identification: Erikson:
A psychological process in which children try to look, act, feel, and be like significant people in their social environment.
Erikson:
initiative versus guilt

12. Identity Development
Acquisition of Sex-Role
The Sense of Self

13. Sex-Role Identity Psychodynamic View Social Learning View
Cognitive-Development View
Gender Schema View

14. Psychodynamic View Sigmund Freud
Still influential, even though not always substantiated by evidence
Assumes young children are caught in hidden conflicts between their fears and desires.

15. Psychodynamic View Phallic Stage:
The period around the fourth year when children begin to regard their own genitals as a major source of pleasure.

16. Phallic Stage Mental conflicts with same-sex parent Oedipus complex
Electra complex

17. Phallic Stage Resolution: Child identifies with same-sex parent
Differentiates self from opposite-sex parent

18. Phallic Stage Male Oedipus Complex Greek mythology (Sophocles)
Lusting for female in the home; intuitions about sexual life
Castration anxiety
Solution: a. develop superego
b. give up on sex

19. Phallic Stage Female Oedipus Complex
Penis envy: bigger is better but no protruding organ, no fear of losing
Sexual identification with mum, special relationship with dad
develop superego

20. Social Learning View Emphasizes two processes: Modeling
The process by which children observe and imitate individuals of their own sex.
Differential Reinforcement
The process by which girls and boys are differently rewarded for engaging in gender-appropriate behavior.

21. Cognitive-Development View
Central Idea:
A child’s own conceptions are central to the formation of sex-role identity.
Jean Piaget
Lawrence Kohlberg

22. Kohlberg Basic Sex-Role Identity: Sex-Role Stability:
Labeling oneself as a boy or girl
Sex-Role Stability:
Understanding the stability of sex roles over time
Sex-Role Constancy:
Understanding their sex remains the same no matter what the situation

23. Gender Schema View
Includes features of both social learning and cognitive-developmental theories.
Gender Schema:
A mental model containing with information about males and females that is used to process gender-relevant information.

24. How Gender Schemas Work

25. Developing Prosocial Behaviors
Voluntary actions intended to benefit others, such as sharing, helping, caregiving, and showing compassion.

26. Altruism
“intrinsically motivated, voluntary behavior intended to benefit another:
acts motivated by internal motives such as concern for others or by internalized values, goals, and self-rewards rather than by expectation of concrete or social rewards or the avoidance of punishment.”
Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998

27. Empathy Empathy: Relationship to egocentrism
The sharing of another person’s emotions and feelings.
Relationship to egocentrism
“an affective response that stems from the apprehension or comprehension of another’s emotional state or condition, and that is identical or very similar to what the other person is feeling or would be expected to feel.”

28. Sympathy Sympathy: Personal Distress:
Feelings of sorrow or concern for another.
Other-oriented emotional reaction to another’s emotional state or condition.
Personal Distress:
A self-focused aversive emotional reaction to another person’s distress.

29. Example
A man is talking about his father's death, which had occurred a week earlier. As he talks about missing his father and his powerful love for him, the man's voice gradually becomes filled with anguish and then he bursts into tears in front of a friend who is listening to him.
He is remembering his father with pain. Poor Roger. "I'm sorry for your loss"
"I feel your pain."
The person using empathy would share the grieving man's emotional pain, but not necessarily feel sorry for or pity him.

30. Hoffman’s Theory of Empathy Development
Biological preparedness: reflexive crying of infants
Empathic arousal without self-other differentiation
Unsure about what’s happening to who.
Self-other differentiation without perspective taking
Attribute own feelings to others and show comforting interventions
Perspective-taking
Finds true source of distress.

31. Hoffman’s Theory of Empathy Development
High level cognition
Extended range of reaction with awareness of continuing existence of others

33. Understanding Aggression
Two main categories of aggression:
Hostile aggression:
intended to hurt someone in some way
Instrumental aggression:
intended to achieve a particular goal

34. Forms of Aggression Physical aggression Teasing Relational aggression
By age 2, more likely to tease siblings than hurt them physically
Relational aggression

35. Gender Differences Boys: Girls
More often use direct, physical aggression
Girls
Use more relational aggression:
Indirect aggression aimed at excluding a child or harming their friendships