Week 5

Question 1

What is social development?

Answer 1

The gradual acquisition of certain skills (e.g., language,
interpersonal skills), attitudes, relationships, and behaviour
that enable the individual to
interact with others and to
function as a member of society

Question 2

Define developmental themes

Answer 2

*Continuity & discontinuity
*Mechanisms of change
*Active child
*Nature and nurture

Question 3

Discuss Freud’s theory of psychsexual development

Answer 3

Concerned with:
the relationship between the
conscious & the unconscious

Relevance to development:
how personality (& psyche)
develop across different stages of psychosexual development
(oral, anal etc.)

Different conflicts develop in different stages in life

Rejected for lack of evidence and cannot be validated, but helped a lot of other theories develop

Id: direct/biological needs

Superego: society says is right/correct thing to do

Ego: compromise between the two

Question 4

Discuss Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development

Answer 4

Infancy 0 – 1 Trust v. mistrust Can I trust my caregivers?
Toddlerhood 1 – 3 Autonomy v. shame Can I make choices and do things myself?
Early-mid ch. 4 – 6 Initiative v. Guilt Can I imagine or invent who I am?
Mid-late ch. 6 – 11 Industry v. Inferiority Can I learn / be accepted by peers?
Adolescence 12 – 18 Identity v. Identity confusion Can I define who am I and how I fit in?
Early adult. 19 – 39 Intimacy v. Isolation Can I form close relationships?
Mid adult. 40 – 65 Generativity v. Stagnation Can I do meaningful work & contribute to next generation?
Late adult 65 + Integrity v. Despair Can I say that the life I have lived was worthwhile?

Question 5

Strengths of EE’s theory

Answer 5

covers a lot of time, emphasises importance of social interactions on a person and their social behaviours etc

Question 6

Weaknesses of EE’s theory

Answer 6

Static and fixed, can’t cover all types of diversity

Question 7

Discuss Learning theories

Answer 7

MBB1 slides

Question 8

What is Kanner’s definition of Autism?

Answer 8

Kanner et al. (1943)* Described 11 children who showed “powerful desire for aloneness, and an obsessive insistence on persistent sameness”.
- Early infantile autism - an inborn difference in emotional connection and communication.
- First systematic description of autism as a distinct neurodevelopmental disorder.

Question 9

DSM - 5 definition of autism

Answer 9

1) Social communication and interaction deficits

• Social reciprocity (back and forth communication)
• Nonverbal communication
• Social relationship

2) Restricted and repetitive behaviour and interests

• Stereotyped or repetitive motor movements (stims)
• Insistence on sameness
• Restricted and fixated interests (narrow)
• Hyper- or hypo-reactivity to sensory input

Question 10

Define neurodiversity model

Answer 10

Natural variation of human beings

Strengths and talents of autistic people

Question 11

Describe current understandings of autism

Answer 11

1) ~1% of the population in the world

2) more common in males than females

3) highly heritable & highly genetically heterogeneous

4) commonly cooccurs with other conditions or disorders

5) usually diagnosed after 2-3 years of age

6) no standard therapies (or medications)

Question 12

Describe DTT therapy (1960s)

Answer 12

• Based on Skinner’s operant conditioning
• Highly structured
• May be effective in improving certain skills
• Criticisms:
• Lack of care for children’s feelings and needs
• Learned skills may not be generalisable

Question 13

Describe NDBIS (1980s)

Answer 13

Behavioural therapy +developmental theories- - Integrating children’s interests and natural settings

Question 14

Describe Wang et al (2019)

Answer 14

Effects of pivotal response

treatment (PRT) on language

development, naturalistic

• Randomized controlled trial
• you will learn if you are motivated to do so

Question 15

What are Emotions?

Answer 15

• A combination of physiological and cognitive responses to thoughts or experiences
• Neural responses
• Physiological factors
• Subjective feelings
• Emotional expressions
• The desire to take action

Question 16

Describe the Discrete/basic emotion perspective

Answer 16

Paul Ekman

Emotions are innate, biologically based and universal

6 basic emotions: joy, sadness, anger, disgust, fear, surprise

Did study with indigenous people in PNG, could identify emotions from Western culture and vice versa, therefore thought they were unique

was consultant for Inside Out and Lie to Me

Question 17

Describe the Development of the Concept of Emotion study (Widen S.C. 2016)

Answer 17

In this study, children asked to freely label faces with some emotion text and study looks at agreement between children, and what they associated the facial expressions to mean.

Found that happiness, sadness and anger can be identified very early on (~2 years old), but less accurate for fear, surprise and disagreement.

All agreements increase up to 50% as they grow up.

So seems unlikely that they can identify all 6 emotions from a young age.

People’s understanding of emotions tend to become more consistent and more close to what adult community believes as they grow up

Question 18

Describe limitations of Widen S.C.’s study

Answer 18

focusses on discrete emotions, don’t know understanding of other emotions outside the big 6 (could be more)

methodology: is it a good way of measuring? do children understand emotions before they understand language?

For children who perform better, generally it is because they have heard the words (happiness, sadness, anger) more than the others, so may therefore have more knowledge of them
Are 6 emotions enough? Another one was later added (contempt) so now are 7

Could be less (2, 4, 5 etc)

Or could be far more (8, 9, 10 etc)

How do we define what the basic emotions are?

Question 19

Describe criticisms of the basic emotion perspective

Answer 19

• Disagreement about which emotions are the basic ones
• Vagueness of the biological bases
• Problematic cross-linguistic mapping (language is problem)
• Rejection on the assumption that emotions are discrete categories

Question 20

What is the constructivist perspective?

Answer 20

• Emotions are learned through individual experiences, cultural context, and social interactions
• Not innate or universal
• A fluid continuous idea
  1. Encounter event
  2. Enter core-effect status (2 dimensions, arousal and valence) - abstract and objectivist
  3. Based on social, cultural experiences, as well as individual experiences you form a response
  4. Then you form a different emotion

Question 21

Criticisms for the constructivist perspective

Answer 21

• Very abstract
• Can’t be critically validated
• Overestimate cultural influences (contradicts Ekmans work)

Question 22

What is the functionalist perspective?

Answer 22

• Emotions are biologically evolved responses that serve adaptive functions, helping individuals navigate and respond to environmental challenges for survival and well-being
• Emphasis on adaptive role of emotions
• Different emotion types, flow on type effect for emotions based on goals
• Subconscious/abstract
• simultaneous

Question 23

Criticisms of the functionalist perspective

Answer 23

• Has potential reductionism - simplifies emotion process quite a bit
• Neglects social and cultural contexts
• Hard to apply to complex emotions

Question 24

What is emotional regulation/why is it important?

Answer 24

• a set of both conscious
  and unconscious processes used to
  both monitor and modulate emotional experiences and
  expressions

Importance

• • affects social functioning and relationships
• affects mental health and overall well-being
• affects academic and professional success

Question 25

Describe regulatory strategies for emotion

Answer 25

*co-regulation, self-comforting behaviours, self-distraction, social support (how community can help), cognitive reappraisal (how to re-interpret situation - challenge = opportunity), mindfulness etc. * developmental (coping strategies change with age)

Question 26

Describe Schoppmann et al's 2021 tripartite model

Answer 26

Children develop emotional regulation through 3 coping strategies 1. Observation (when child observe parents, will pick up info) 2. Parenting practice (how parents teach children) 3. Emotional climate of the family (atmosphere child grows up in) All these can effect emotional regulation in children and also inform how well children can then adapt themselves in different social situations (adjustment) which can be broken into 3 parts: 1. Internalising (how to manage internal stress such as anxiety and depression) 2. Externalisation (how well child controls outward behaviour such as aggression or defiance 3. Social competence (how well child adapts to social situations) Characteristics of parents and children also influence emotional regulation. Parent = personality, relationship, how monitor own emotions). Child = own strategies, play active role in developing own emotional regulation methods

Question 27

Describe the Can You Teach Me To Not Be Angry study (Schoppman et al, 2021)

Answer 27

Want to see how child learns from adults to obtain own emotional regulation strategies 87 child-parent groups Baseline time where parent and child play freely 2 waiting situations (children waiting for gift/toys they really want) Introduce frustration After first waiting time, divided into 3 conditions 1. Watched the adult play actively with the toys 2. Watched adult play calmly with toys 3. Control had child not observing any play How did children distract themselves? Measured from 0 ( no distraction) to 4 (tried to distract themselves for the whole time) Results: Main finding with stat. significance: Positive scores = more distraction in second waiting time compared with first waiting time Children tend to use more combined distractions in active and calm model compared to control model Also found that the more active the toddlers were rated by their parents, the more active distraction child is likely to use in the experiment waiting time (same for calm children) Takeaway: children observing adults have learned some emotional regulation strategies Do not just replicate what they saw, develop own regulation strategies

Question 28

What is temperament?

Answer 28

- Individual differences in emotion, activity level and attention that are exhibited across contexts - Influenced by both genes and environment - Trait of a person

Question 29

Describe 1956 New York Longitudinal study

Answer 29

Followed 100+ children from birth to adulthood. Identified nine temperament dimensions. Classified infants into three temperament clusters: – Easy (40%) regular routines, easily adapt to new experiences, generally happy/positive emotions – Difficult (10%) irregular routines, upset with new experiences, show negative emotions – Slow to warm up (15%) initially hesitant, but gradually warm up to things – Mixed (35%) Temperament in infancy predicted later psychological adjustment Interviewed parents who rated the children’s behaviours using the 9 dimensions Found temperament identified in infancy can predict psychological adjustment later on and wellbeing and behaviours

Question 30

Describe the Rothbart questionairre

Answer 30

- Every child has some level of same set of dimensions. - Developed questionnaires to measure temperament from infancy to adulthood. – The Infant Behaviour Questionnaire – The Child Behaviour Questionnaire - Temperament can be measured in five dimensions: fear, distress/anger/frustration, attention span, activity level, smiling and laughter. - Ratings tend to be stable over time and predict later behavioural problems, anxiety disorders, and social competence

Question 31

Limitation of questionairres for Rothbart/all temperament measures

Answer 31

subjective and prone to bias