Temperament and Self-Regulation in Childhood

Unit 4: Personality and Socio-emotional Development in Childhood

• Covers the development of emotions, temperament, identity formation, and moral development in children.

Organization of Contents

• Development of emotion and its regulation
• Temperament as the foundation of personality
• Construction of the individual identity
• Moral development

Part 1: Development of Emotion and its Regulation

1.1 Components of Emotional Development

• Emotion: An internal reaction of aversion or preference, forming the basis of feelings.
• Affect: The external expression of emotions.
• Positive emotions: Joy, pleasure, smiling, laughter
• Negative emotions: Discomfort, anger/frustration, fear, sadness

1.1. Aspects of emotional development

• Emotional expression: How people experience and express their emotions
• Emotional comprehension: Understanding the emotions of others
• Self-regulation: Modifying inner states and behavior to adapt to situations

1.2 Development of Emotions

• Initial emotions: Children enter early childhood with various negative and positive emotions (e.g., discomfort, fear, anger, sadness, smiling, laughter, pleasure).
• Self-consciousness: New emotions emerge as a consequence of self-consciousness development (awareness of oneself, one's appearance, or one's actions), including self-confidence and pride.
• Social awareness: Shame or embarrassment involve distress from not meeting group standards and expectation of negative evaluation by others
• Guilt: Distress arising from feeling responsible for actions perceived as having negative outcomes. Internalization of rules is involved.
• Empathy: The ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, particularly when those feelings differ from one's own.
  • Cognitive Empathy: Understanding others' feelings
  • Affective Empathy: Feeling in consonance with others' feelings; necessary for social competency
• Antipathy: Feelings of dislike or hate towards another person; encouraged when parents express negative emotions predominantly.

1.3 Development of Self-regulation

• Self-regulation: Adapting behavior to meet environmental demands.
• Emotion-related self-regulation: Intrinsic and extrinsic processes through which emotional reactions are modified
• Developmental course:
  • Children progressively become more autonomous in using self-regulation strategies.
  • Strategies become more sophisticated and efficient over time.
• Mechanisms present before childhood: Attentional distraction, approach/withdraw, behavioral inhibition, intentional communication

1.3. Development of self-regulation in early childhood

• New skills: Adapting to social demands, inhibitory control, resisting temptation, delay of gratification, and first self-instructions.
• Limitations: Inconsistency obeying norms, poor working memory, and episodes of lack of control (e.g., temper tantrums).

1.3. Development of self-regulation in middle childhood

• More complex strategies: Developing better executive function, social awareness, improving cognitive and linguistic abilities (e.g., private speech), hiding emotional responses, positive cognitive restructuring, valuation, proactive coping

1.3 Factors Influencing Emotional Self-Regulation

• Developmental factors: Brain maturation (especially the prefrontal cortex), social awareness (understanding social situations, people's emotions, intentions, and needs)
• Individual differences: Temperament, early stress, family climate, parenting styles, and current experiences.

1.3 Consequences of Poor Self-regulation

• Externalizing Problems: Difficulties arising when negative emotions are externalized (e.g., showing rage, harming others, breaking things).
• Internalizing Problems: Difficulties arising when negative emotions are internalized (e.g., withdrawal, self-aggression, self-blame).

Part 2: Temperament as the Foundation of Personality

2.1 Defining Temperament

• Temperament: Individual differences in tendencies to express and experience emotions and arousal (reactivity) and to regulate such tendencies (self-regulation).

2.2 Temperament & Personality

• Personality: A set of enduring characteristics that distinguish one individual from another.
• Temperament Subset: Temperament refers to the subset of personality traits that have a constitutional origin, influenced by genetic inheritance, neural processes and hormonal activity.
• Influence: Temperament is influenced by maturation and experience.

2.3 Traits Composing Temperament

• Surgency/Extraversion/Exuberance: High intensity pleasure, activity level, assertiveness/dominance, low shyness
• Negative Mood/Neuroticism: Anger/frustration, fear/behavioral inhibition, sadness, discomfort, low self-soothing
• Effortful Control: Attentional focusing, inhibitory controls, activation control, low impulsivity
• Affiliation: Affiliation, perceptual sensitivity, low intensity pleasure

2.4 Modifying Temperament

• Parenting influences: Firm but inductive discipline can lead to optimal self-regulation, while coercive or punitive discipline can lead to lower self-regulation.
• Sensitive parenting: Sensitive parenting without intrusiveness can lead to optimal self-regulation, whereas overprotective parenting has negative effects.

2.5 Temperament in Infancy and Later Development

• Temperament at 6 months of age: Anger and negative emotionality are associated with later behavioral problems at school (externalizing, e.g., aggression, discipline; internalizing, e.g., phobias, depression, isolation).

2.6 Temperament and School

• Positive school functioning: Children with low negative emotions and high effortful control tend to exhibit positive school functioning (e.g., good academic achievement, adaptive behavior in classroom, managing conflicts with peers). Teachers tend to have high expectations and interactions are positive

2.7 Understanding Temperament in School

• Goodness of fit: Degree of consonance between a child's characteristics and the opportunities and demands given by the school (harmony = good fit, disharmony = poor fit).
• Interventions: Training self-regulation skills and school adaptations attend to children's characteristics.

2.8 Teacher Intervention

• Longitudinal study (T1: 6 years; T2: 7 years): Children with poorer inhibitory control obtained lower scores in reading and mathematics. Children with low inhibitory control did NOT obtain lower scores in reading in classrooms where teachers gave much support.

Part 3: Construction of the Individual Identity

3.1 Gender Identity

• Biological sex: Expressed via genes, genitals, and hormones.
• Sex differences: Biological differences in organs, hormones, and body type between males and females.
• Gender differences: Differences in roles and behaviors prescribed by culture; gender-typed and cross-gender behaviors.

3.2 Developmental Patterns of Gender Identity

• Toddlerhood: Categorizing humans into males/females based on observable characteristics; developing gender-related expectations about objects.
• Preschool: Applying gender labels (e.g., boy/girl); preferring gender-typed toys; gender segregation (playing with same-sex peers); concept of gender linked to physical appearance.
• Middle Childhood (early): Realizing biological sex is unchanging; distinguishing sex from gender; strong preference to play with same-gender peers.
• Middle Childhood (late): Distinguishing between sexual and gender identity; gender as social category; recognizing unfairness discrimination but gender exclusion persists.
• Adolescence: Understanding gender roles as socially constructed, with potential for gender role intensification or flexibility; girls tend to be more flexible.
• Adulthood: Less stereotyped personalities and behaviours; androgyny (combining male and female traits) viewed as positive.

3.3 Self-concept and Self-esteem

• Self-concept: Understanding of oneself (cognition).
• Self-esteem: Extent to which a person likes, accepts, and approves of self; involves positive or negative evaluation (emotion).
  • Early childhood: Optimistic view; overestimating skills; high self-esteem.
  • Middle childhood: Self-concept based on actual experiences. Include relationships with parents, peers and evaluating one's own abilities. Includes emotions, behaviours, tendencies and skills (self-criticism emerges, decreasing self-esteem related to this).

Part 4: Moral Development

4.1 Moral Development

• Moral judgment: Principles for how individuals should treat one another, respecting justice, welfare, and rights
• Role of moral reasoning: Reasoning influences social behaviour through social emotions like prosocial behaviors/antisocial behaviors

4.2 Piagetian Stages of Moral Development

• Morality of constraint: Preoperational period; justice is whatever authorities say; unchanging rules; consequences determine morality.
• Transitional period: Concrete operational period. Rules can be changed by the group. Intentions/motives determine morality.
• Autonomous morality: Formal operational period; rules are product of social agreement; rules and judgments consider intentions/motives and authority is no longer blindly obeyed.

4.3 Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development

• Characteristics: Based on Piaget's theory; proposes six stages; stages are qualitatively different; study of boys, 10yrs to adulthood. Stage analysis focuses on reasons behind moral choices.
• Levels of Development (in order from lowest to highest moral stages):

  • Preconventional: Values are based on external events; stages: punishment avoidance, getting what you want (by trade off)

  • Conventional: Performing right roles and meeting expectations of others; fulfilling duties/upholding laws (stages: "meeting expectations of others," upholding laws and duties)

  • Postconventional: Shared standards of rights & duties; self-selection of universal principles (stages: "sense of democracy, and relativity of rules" and "self-selection of universal principles")

4.4 More About Children's Moral Values

• Influences: Family, peer group, community, and personal experiences (e.g., empathy) all impact moral values.
• Examples: Children develop their own moral values. In middle childhood, peers are important. Example values: not telling adults what is happening, protecting friends, and conforming to peer behaviour standards
• Studies: Example study of punishment orientations with 9-yr olds. Those who discuss moral concerns with peer tended to endorse restorative punishment more than those who did not participate in this peer discussion.

This quiz covers key concepts related to temperament and self-regulation, focusing on their definitions, influences, and effects on emotional and behavioral problems in children. It includes aspects of internalizing and externalizing problems, as well as strategies for improving self-regulation during middle childhood.