Infancy And Childhood Chapter 9 PDF

CHAPTER 9 INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD  Chapter plan INTRODUCTION INFANCY Physical and sensory development Cognitive development The beginnings of language and communication Social and emotional development THE PRESCHOOL YEARS Perceptual and motor deve...

CHAPTER 9 INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD  Chapter plan INTRODUCTION INFANCY Physical and sensory development Cognitive development The beginnings of language and communication Social and emotional development THE PRESCHOOL YEARS Perceptual and motor development Cognitive development Language and communication Social and emotional development THE SCHOOL YEARS Perceptual and motor development Cognitive development Language and communication Social and emotional development SUMMARY  The human infant has quite a lot in common, visibly, with mature humans. But it also changes in appearance substantially over the course of its lifespan. For example, the body-to-head ratio changes, the limbs elongate and strengthen, the child becomes able to stand upright and move about independently, and it continues to increase in size over a period of about two decades.  The child also has a modest vocal repertoire at the start, but in due course can sing songs or discuss the sports results. As for our mental and social capacities, a moment’s reflection tells us that these change dramatically, too.  The changes our bodies undergo are largely preordained by nature. But can we say the same of the human child’s mental progress? Are developing minds shaped by the environment? How much is given by nature, and how much by experience? How does change come about? In particular, is change gradual or stage-like? These are the kinds of questions that are investigated by developmental psychologists.  Infancy People often think of infants as helpless and malleable. Clearly, in some quite fundamental respects, they are dependent upon others. They are unable to meet their own physical needs (feeding, cleansing, finding shelter) or to move around or engage in discussion. Observations such as these have led to a traditional belief that the child is shaped by experience.  The strongest expressions of this assumption have been provided by behaviouristic psychologists, like Watson, who assert that the child is the product of its reinforcement history. However, more recent research by developmental psychologists has radically altered our understanding, and the traditional notion of babies as empty vessels waiting to be filled by experience has now been abandoned.  Physical and sensory development Babies have a rich array of perceptual and physical capacities, which enable them to engage with the world in more complex ways than was once believed. Some of these capacities seem to be present at birth, some develop rapidly during the first year or so, and some vary according to the opportunities for exercising them. Sam is one hour old. What does he make of the world? How does he deal with the information from his senses: sight, hearing,  Vision Although newborns’ visual acuity is less than perfect, they can certainly take in a great deal of visual information, and they soon show signs of pursuing it actively. Babies appear to be particularly interested in faces, which hold their attention and elicit smiles.  Visual chamber and equipment used to assess newborns’ looking behaviour. (Fig. 9.2) Hearing, taste and smell The infant exploits all her senses as she learns about and reacts to her world. Hearing, although not fully developed at birth, is well developed at this stage, enabling young infants to discriminate among sounds that vary in volume, duration and repetitiveness, and to organize their perception of and responses to the spatial environment.  Perhaps one of the starkest pieces of evidence against the ‘empty vessel’ theory of human nature comes from the infant’s discrimination among tastes. Babies are not passive when it comes to food and drink, and display clear preferences. These preferences are by no means arbitrary and may well have survival value.  Infants react to smells in similar ways. Their facial expressions or head orientations reveal whether they find a smell pleasant or unpleasant. Again, these sensory preferences may have survival value.  Motor development The neonate has several reflexes (automatic physical responses to external stimulation), including: the rooting reflex – a tendency to orient the head and mouth towards an object touching the face; the sucking reflex – a tendency to suck on objects placed in the mouth; the grasping reflex – a response to stimuli (such as a finger) placed in the open palm;  the Moro reflex – a reaction to sudden loss of support to the neck and head in which the baby thrusts out his arms and legs as if striving for support;  the stepping reflex – the infant attempts to take ‘steps’ if held upright with feet touching a surface.  Some of these reflexes have important benefits; for example, the rooting and sucking reflexes ensure that the normal infant will respond to contact with the mother’s breast by seeking out the nipple and feeding. Although biology provides the reflexes, early experience is important insofar as it can affect their manifestation.  Cognitive development Developmental psychologists are interested in the origins and course of cognitive capacities, with a great deal of interest therefore being paid to their manifestation in infancy. When we examine what infants do with the data they obtain from the world, we find that they appear to behave in much the same way as scientists.  The idea that babies, without the benefit of a formal education and not even able to speak, could generate theories about the world seems surprising on first consideration. Yet, one of the most influential psychologists of the last century has argued exactly this, and his account has attracted enormous interest from other psychologists and educators.  Jean Piaget (1896 –1980), a Swiss psychologist, developed a model of cognitive development which holds that children’s thinking progresses through a series of orderly stages. According to Piaget, each stage reflects qualitative differences in the way the child understands and acts upon the world relative to its status at another developmental phase.  Sensorimotor stage: the first stage of cognitive development, according to Piaget, extending from birth to approximately two years, when the child constructs an elementary understanding of the world and thought is tied closely to physical or sensory activity.  Object permanence Piaget maintained that very young infants have no conception of the durability of objects: according to Piaget, at this age, while something is within reach or sight, it exists, but ‘out of sight is out of mind’. The notion that an object can continue to exist even when we cannot see it is termed object permanence. Piaget believed that this is a relatively late achievement of the sensorimotor period (around nine months).  Piaget challenged Piaget’s descriptions and explanations of infant activities are persuasive and continue to have a great deal of influence upon developmental psychology. But they have been challenged. Subsequent research has demonstrated that Piaget tended to underestimate infants’ abilities.  In addition, some workers in the field believe that Piaget is mistaken to conceive of development as one all-embracing general process, with changes occurring at about the same time across all areas of knowledge. Instead, some psychologists believe that it may be better to regard the growth of knowledge as involving specific domains, each with its own developmental course (Keil, 1999).  Although details of his theory have been challenged, in the light of Piaget’s contributions most researchers agree that infants are active cognitive beings, not the blank slates supposed by the early behaviourists.  The beginnings of language and communication The word ‘infant’ means literally ‘without speech’. Babies cannot join us in verbal conversation, cannot answer our queries, and cannot articulate all of their needs and interests. Yet they can certainly communicate.  Communication between the infant and others does not await the emergence of language but proceeds throughout the first year. Infants’ ability to discriminate among speech sounds appears to be quite general at first. In due course, the child becomes able to understand some of the things that are addressed to him. Around the end of the first year, normally developing children typically have a few words available.  Exactly how the child begins to master language presents many mysteries, but two things are clear: 1. the process begins well before overt speech appears; and 2. it occurs in a social context.  Social and emotional development Human beings are social creatures. Connecting to the social world is all the more crucial for the infant, because without the attention and care of others, she would not survive.  Perceptual abilities are closely implicated in the infant’s early social experiences. For example, we noted earlier that infants reveal a very early interest in the human face. This is an interesting perceptual preference, but it is still more important as a social characteristic.  The other senses are exploited similarly. For example, infants as young as one or two weeks of age can discriminate the smell of their own mother’s breasts from those of other breastfeeding women (Porter et al., 1992). Babies as young as one or two weeks can recognize the smell of their own mother’s breasts. (Fig. 9.3)  Fear of strangers Anyone with an interest in babies and a little patience could provide much of the stimulation (coos, cuddles, facial displays, gentle handling) that infants enjoy, and babies will generally respond to opportunities for interaction with others. However, quite early in life, infants begin to show one of the distinguishing features of human social behaviour – selectivity (Schaffer, 1996).  Schaffer and Emerson (1966) followed a sample of Scottish infants during the first year, observing them in various social situations at home with their primary caregivers (mother, father, grandparents, etc.) and with female strangers. By monitoring the babies’ nonverbal reactions, they found a gradual increase in preference for specific individuals from around the age of five months.  It appears from research such as this that, by at least the middle of the first year, the child has formed an attachment (or attachments) to a specific person (or persons). Attachment: the close links formed between a human infant and caregiver (or the intimate bond that can form between adults).  At around the same time, the child begins to show a quite different reaction – anxiety – when approached by unfamiliar people. This child was playing happily until a stranger appeared. (Fig. 9.4)  Forming a relationship model The development of the two aspects of social selectivity – attachment and wariness of strangers – are closely related in onset and developmental significance. Many social developmentalists believe that the formation of attachments is a vital aspect of early relations.  According to Bowlby (a British psychiatrist who developed an influential theory of attachment and its consequences) through the course of the first attachment (i.e. to the principal caregiver) the infant also begins to formulate an internal working model of what a relationship involves. Internal working model: a set of basic assumptions (a schema) about the nature of relationships.  If this is correct, early attachment could be the most important relationship that the child ever forms. In fact, a great deal of research by attachment researchers indicates that the type of attachment formed during this first relationship has long-term implications.  Mary Ainsworth, an American colleague of Bowlby’s, proposed that there are three main types of attachment relationship formed by infants and their caregivers (Ainsworth et al., 1971). She tested her typology by observing infants’ reactions to a laboratory test – the ‘strange situation’. Based on a careful coding system for scoring details of the child’s responses throughout the session, Ainsworth identified three types of relationship:  Type A, Insecurely attached/avoidant: This infant is relatively indifferent to the mother’s presence, does not seem greatly disturbed by her departure, and does not show enthusiasm for contact on her return. Type B, Securely attached: The infant plays happily in the new environment, shows some distress when the mother departs (especially for a second time), but responds positively to her return. Type C, Insecurely attached/resistant. The infant tends to explore less, is greatly distressed by the mother’s departure, is difficult to console upon her return, and may struggle to be released from her embrace.  Much subsequent research has supported this classification, which has been used in studies of early child development around the world (Van Ijzendoorn & Sagi, 1999). If it is true that the primary attachment is the base from which the infant begins to tackle the rest of life’s challenges, then you can see at once that the Type B child appears to have an advantage.  The preschool years During infancy, children develop considerably and learn a great deal about themselves and the world. In some respects, the child has already undergone major transformation, from the relatively dependent neonate to an individual capable of expressing and meeting many of her own needs. Nevertheless, there is much development ahead; next we consider some of the developments of the preschool years, from approximately age two to five years.  Perceptual and motor development By the end of the second year, the child’s perceptual abilities have developed considerably. In many respects, they are now on a par with those of an adult. But there is still a long way to go in terms of motor skills and coordination (e.g. refining walking skills and the manipulation of objects), and substantial progress will take place over the next few years. By the age of two, many children have begun to walk unaided, but their gait is unsteady. Over the next couple of years, they become surer of their control over their bodies. By the age of four, the child is more agile and beginning to  Cognitive development When we left the infant towards the end of the sensorimotor period, he had attained object permanence, was increasingly able to manipulate objects as playthings and tools, and was exploiting the greater skills of others by copying behaviours that appeared successful. According to Piaget, the preoperational period is the second major phase of cognitive development, extending from approximately two to six years, when the child begins to represent the world symbolically but remains intuitive and egocentric. Abel uses building blocks as traffic lights: he is clearly capable of forming mental representations of objects not immediately present, and of making one object stand in  Egocentrism: inability of the preoperational child to distinguish between her own perspective on a situation and the perspectives of others. For example (Piaget, 1926, p. 14): (Sitting down alone at a table): “I want to do that drawing, there... I want to draw something, I do. I shall need a big piece of paper to do that.” (After knocking over a game): “There! Everything’s fallen down.” (Upon finishing his drawing): “Now I want to do something else.”  In a major study of the language of preschoolers (1926), Piaget noted that, although the children were being studied in close proximity to their peers, more than one third of their utterances were either not directed to anyone or were so esoteric that nobody else could understand them.  According to Piaget, the preoperational child tends to be dominated by his perceptual experiences and finds it difficult to imagine other aspects of an experience, such as how another person perceives things. The preschooler talks but does not always link her remarks to those of others.  In an experimental task, the child centres attention on one aspect of a task, and fails to consider the relevance of other dimensions. Piagetians call this cognitive bias centration. Centration: when a preoperational child focuses on only one aspect of a problem at a time.  Probably the best known example of centration is Piaget’s famous conservation test (another example is the ‘three mountains’ perspective task). Conservation: ability to recognize that an object or amount remains the same despite superficial changes in appearance. Piaget’s famous conservation test is the best- known example of an experimental task in which the child centres attention on one aspect of a task and fails to consider the relevance of other dimensions. Piagetians call The three mountains task. The child walks around the display and is then asked to choose from photographs to show what the scene would look like from different perspectives. (Fig. 9.8)  Piaget challenged Piaget certainly pointed to some intriguing aspects of child thought, indicating that preschoolers may sometimes interpret the world quite differently from adults. Subsequent research indicating that he may have underestimated the competence of the preschooler (see also Bryant, 1974; Donaldson, 1978) qualifies rather than invalidates his work. After all, even if the conservation task and the ‘three mountains’ task do have methodological limitations, these tasks do appear to pose problems for preschoolers but not for older children.  Theory of mind An important aspect of early cognitive development is a capacity that we take for granted. And yet it is a distinctive human ability whose origins and developmental course prove difficult to uncover. This is the phenomenon of theory of mind.  Theory of mind refers to the understanding that people (oneself and others) have mental states (thoughts, beliefs, feelings, desires) and that these mental states influence our behaviour. Wimmer and Perner (1983) put the following scenario to young children: “Maxi has a bar of chocolate, which he puts in the green cupboard. He goes out to play, and while he is out his mother moves the chocolate to the blue cupboard. Then Maxi comes in, and he wants to eat some chocolate. Where will he look for the chocolate?”  The emergence of theory of mind raises some fascinating questions and has provoked a lot of ingenious research. Important developments in children’s understanding of mental states seem to occur at around age three to four years. Given the complexity of the concept of mind, this is remarkably early. Yet, given the centrality of mind to our everyday interactions with other people, it is clearly an essential capacity, and it would be hard to imagine life without it..  There are people who do have particular difficulty with theory of mind tasks – children with autism (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985). One of the defining characteristics of people with autism is that they have severe difficulties communicating and interacting with other people. Could this be because they lack a theory of mind? The nature of children’s theory of mind, and its implications for other aspects of their reasoning and social behaviour, are central topics in contemporary developmental psychology.  Language and communication By the end of infancy, children are beginning to attempt words. They add to these first efforts slowly for a while, but then during their second year (usually between 18 and 24 months) they enter a period that some developmental psycholinguists call the naming explosion (Barrett, 1995). During this time, vocabulary increases rapidly, with children adding between eight and forty new words to their productive lexicon each month (Goldfield & Reznick, 1990).  Putting words together Learning a lot of words is useful, but it is only one component of language acquisition. Children also have to discover how to put words together, and this proves to be a still more remarkable process.  Cumulative plots, at weekly intervals, of the number of new words and new word combinations of a boy learning American English (studied from 15–24 months). An exponential  Three main points have emerged from research conducted in this field so far: 1. Children are selective and structured in their early attempts at language. 2. Children sometimes commit errors, but their errors suggest that they are trying to convey meanings as effectively as they can, and they are sensitive to grammatical rules. 3. Progress is quite rapid, from a handful of words at 12-15 months to large vocabularies and complex word combinations at age three or four.  Chomsky and the innate nature of language Many laypeople and some psychologists have assumed that language is learned by observation, imitation and reinforcement (Skinner, 1957; Staats, 1968). But real world examples pose some fundamental challenges to this account.; who is the child imitating when she says, ‘Ow. Eye’, ‘daddy bread’, ‘I brush my toothes’ or ‘Me don’t want none’? The child is very unlikely to have heard adults produce these strings of words.  An influential American linguist, Noam Chomsky (1965, 1972), argued that it is impossible to account for children’s language acquisition in terms of traditional learning theories. Chomsky points out that the rules of language children have to master are very complex, and most parents are not able to articulate them. Chomsky argues that language acquisition in the normal child constitutes ‘a remarkable type of theory construction’.  Chomsky seems here to be agreeing with Piaget, who also saw the child as constructing theories. But Chomsky took the argument in a different direction; he maintained that any theory involved in coming to grips with a human language has to be extraordinarily complex. Where could such a theory come from if parents are not able to teach it or even model it? How does everybody get access to it?  Chomsky’s controversial answer is that it must already be there: the child must have some innate knowledge of what the structure of language will be like. In fact, Chomsky insists that language is not learned at all – it grows and matures, rather like limbs and organs grow.  Chomsky challenged Chomsky has many supporters, but also many critics. There is much research to confirm that language acquisition is complex and relatively rapid. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that parents do play a role in their children’s language acquisition.  Consider, for example, the research we discussed above concerning the social context of early communication, and the ways in which adults modify their speech for the benefits of the learner. There are also objections from Piagetians, who regard language not as an innate, highly specific ability, but as one aspect of the child’s broader representational capacity, which emerges during the preoperational period.  Social and emotional development The family is the primary social environment for children during the preschool years, but it is also the base from which they venture into new social contexts. The family is influential in several ways, particularly with respect to social behaviour and contacts.  Making friends Many researchers believe that the patterns of behaviour predominant in the preschooler’s home influence the behaviour the child manifests outside the home. Peer relations among preschoolers show continuity with early relations; e.g. they are selective.  Unfortunately, some children do not establish friendships and are either neglected or rejected by their peers. Children who experience difficulties like this in the preschool years are at risk of continuing problems in peer relations and personal adjustment throughout childhood and even into adulthood.  Learning about gender One of the major areas of social development during the preschool years is learning about gender. Even in the preschool years, children tend to segregate by gender and to show different behavioural preferences. Children learn the labels for male and female and begin to apply these during their third year of life. Children receive many messages from the larger community and the mass media about gender role expectations. In the past, these messages have been more stereotyped than they are today. (Fig. 9.10)  Preschoolers discover an interesting fact about gender that is not apparent to the infant: whichever gender one belongs to, it is going to be a lifelong commitment. While this seems obvious to an adult, it is not understood instantaneously by toddlers.  The school years Middle childhood is a period of relatively steady growth in physical terms, but great progress in cognitive and social development. It is also a period in which individual differences in the rate and extent of development become more evident.  Perceptual and motor development By the early school years, children’s sensory capacities are generally well developed and, in many respects, functioning at adult levels. Physical development is well advanced, too, though of course the child is still growing and there are certainly many skills that undergo further development.  Individual differences in physical growth and development are influenced by genetic and environmental factors. Some evidence indicates that some disadvantages can persist throughout middle childhood. For example, high proportions of children born prematurely exhibit perceptual– motor problems at age six.  Cognitive development Once again, researchers’ perspectives on this period have been influenced strongly by Piagetian theory – but once again, this is not to say that all researchers accept the details of Piaget’s account.  The period of concrete operations Early in the school years, at around age six or seven, children undergo another major stage transition, entering what Piaget called the concrete operations period. The concrete operational child is able to draw upon logical abilities that Piaget thought were unavailable during the preoperational stage.  With respect to the liquid conservation task, these novel abilities include the ability to: reverse the operation mentally (reversibility) – ‘If the water filled this much of the first beaker, it must fill the same amount when it is poured back’; maintain identity (identity) – ‘Nothing has been added or removed, so it must be the same amount’; compensate to take account of combined changes (compensation) – ‘It’s higher, but it’s also thinner – these changes cancel each other out, so there’s no change in amount’.  Concrete operations period: the third major phase of cognitive development, according to Piaget, lasting from approximately seven to 11 years, when the child’s problem solving is more logical but his reasoning is largely dependent on application to immediate physical entities and tasks. Other developments and some limitations There are many other advances during these concrete operational years, too. Children now have greater facility in classifying objects and sorting them into sets and subsets. All of these cognitive skills afford the child new means of acting upon the world to build greater understanding.  All of these cognitive skills afford the child new means of acting upon the world to build greater understanding. But there are still some important limitations. In particular, Piaget saw the concrete operational child’s newfound intellectual organizational abilities as restricted to readily accessible (i.e. concrete) contexts, such as immediately present objects and events or easily imagined imagined circumstances.  Language and communication By the school years, typically developing children have mastered the basic grammar of their language and are generally able to make themselves understood as well as understand others. Nevertheless, important developments continue through middle childhood.  As well as improving their use and understanding of language during school years, children also get better at reflecting on language. In other words, they develop metalinguistic awareness.  Social and emotional development While the family remains the principal context of social relations for most children during the school years, interactions with others become much more extensive. Children are learning more about themselves while participating in increasingly complex social networks. Gender role development During the preschool years, children begin to organize their social worlds around gender and to accumulate information about what it means to be male or female. These processes continue during middle childhood.  Five- to six-year- olds’ judgements of who will be most competent in masculine stereotyped occupations (car mechanic, pilot) and feminine stereotyped Key: occupation (clothes designer, M-Msup: Masculine occupations, men ratedsecretary). more competent (Fig. 9.11) M-Fsup: Masculine occupations, women rated more competent F-Msup: Feminine occupations, men rated more  Peer relations Middle childhood is also a time of increasing peer interaction. The school years present a dramatic increase in the amount of time spent with peers, and the relationships themselves become more complex as cognitive development progresses and social demands increase.  Summary We began in this chapter considering the developmental progression in the tadpole, and reflecting on how the human child’s development may be compared to the progression from tadpole to frog. The progression through infancy, the preschool years and the school years takes place concurrently in several important domains: physical and sensory development, cognitive development, language and communication, and social and emotional development. Progression in these separate domains occurs at different rates as the child develops.  One of the most salient issues that we tackled was the extent to which the human infant’s capacities are determined a) by innate abilities, b) via interaction with the environment or c) via a complex interaction of innate abilities and environmental input. Piaget proposed a series of orderly sequences (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational) through which the infant and child progresses. Piaget’s framework has been very influential, but it has been criticized for underestimating the developing child’s abilities because of the way in which Piaget’s tasks (such as the conservation task) are presented.  Language acquisition is one of the most complex and impressive feats that the child achieves. Given the complexity of human language acquisition, Chomsky proposed that this was dependent upon an innate language acquisition device. However, Chomsky’s views have been challenged as under-representing the role of the environment in language acquisition.  Children’s emotional and social development can be turbulent, as they face gender stereotyping and peer conflict. Boys develop a more rigid gender role during childhood and adolescence, whereas girls enjoy a longer period of gender flexibility. As friendships become more complex, children begin to understand concepts such as trust, cooperation and obligation, bringing a cognitive aspect to emotional development.