Cognitive Development in Children

Study Notes

Between 3-6 years, children develop the ability to distinguish between their own self and others.
Self-consciousness increases, leading to the expression of more negative emotions (anger) and defiant behavior.
Self-evaluation becomes stronger, resulting in emotions like guilt, embarrassment, shame, and pride.
Children develop an increasing sensitivity to moral and social norms.

Emotions arise from relationships with others and oneself, and are mediated by language and social context.
Social and emotional orientation of newborns:
- Preference for human faces
- Orientation towards mother's voice
Emotional expressions of infants:
- Social smile (3 months)
- Anger (4-6 months), surprise (6 months), fear (7 months)
- Emotions requiring self-consciousness (18 months): shame, pride, envy
Around 2 years, children can:
- Identify and label basic emotions (happiness, fear, sadness, anger)
- Talk about past and future emotions
- Begin to develop skills to regulate fear, anger, and frustration

Mirror theory (Mead, 1934; Gergen, 1992): Individuals see themselves in the image reflected by significant others.
Social learning theory (Bandura, 1989): Children learn behaviors and attitudes from significant others and create a similar self-concept.
Teachers can promote a positive self-concept and self-esteem by:
- Treating students as worthy individuals
- Making compliments (personal, specific, effort-based)
- Showing affection
- Providing opportunities for success and mastery
- Promoting positive self-statements

The family is the first socialization context for children, providing:
- Survival and nurture
- Cognitive, emotional, and social development
- Transmission of social and cultural values
- Sense of belonging and independence
Changes in Western societies over the last 50 years:
- Single adults, postponed marriage, remarriage, and patchwork families
- More adoptive families and families with homosexual parents

Freud's theory: development of the superego during the phallic stage (3-6 years):
- Oedipus complex: internalization of father's moral standards
- Electra complex: internalization of mother's moral standards
New ideas on early development of conscience (Kochanska et al., 2001):
- Committed compliance develops in a warm, mutually responsive relationship
- Situational compliance is learned from insensitive, aloof parents

Piaget's theory: moral development according to children's understanding of justice, lies, and stealing:
- Moral content (what) vs. moral criteria (how)
- Young children learn that certain behaviors are punished or rewarded
- Egocentric speech declines towards the end of the preoperational period, becoming more social

The function of thought:
- External talk > Egocentric talk > self-talk
- Language as a symbolic mediation tool: changing function from communicative to regulative and self-regulative

Learning is a process that produces change, with relatively permanent results, and occurs through experience.
Learning theories:
- Behavioral
- Cognitive
- Constructivist
Types of learning:
- Acquisition of responses
- Acquisition of knowledge
- Construction of knowledge