Normal child development

Significant themes underlying child development

Development as inherent in nature:

Organismic growth – internally generated, exquisitely programmed part of a child’s development.

Genes that are associated with behavioural traits and syndromes have been identified.

Development as transactional in nature:

Interplay of nature and nurture, forms the basis of most current thinking and research.

Normality in development:

A child’s development operates as a two-way street of regression and progression.

Normal regression – Typically occurring before growth spurts, environmental or internal changes can
create a degree of stress that causes developmental skills in a particular area to be lost.

Neurotic regression – a self-perpetuating psychosocial isolation—a break between individuals and

their environments— that impedes further development in other areas.

Distinct areas of development:

7 areas in child development – Physical, temperamental, cognitive, social, emotional, moral, and
psychosexual.

Each area is considered to mature independent of another; yet they interact in ways that ultimately
change the outcome of each separate event.

When infants and children do not mature in quantitative ways in each or all of these areas they are
said to have developmental delays.

Developmental disorders involve behaviour that is qualitatively different from the norm.
 Physical development

Temperamental Development

Involves the maturation of traits that allow children to respond to new situations, tasks, and
opportunities.

Principles:

Each child is born with specific temperamental patterns of behavioural response.

Temperamental traits can be stimulated or inhibited by external factors, including family

interactions, cultural and environmental influences, and social interactions.

Temperament remains the same until a child reached the age of 5 1/2 years. Sometime near the 7
1/2-year mark, however, the environment begins to shape such traits.

In the parent–child relationship, temperamental traits are particularly relevant for emotional
growth.

The compatibility of traits between children and their parents is termed a goodness of fit.

Various genetic studies show a range of 20% to 60% genetic determination in children.

Mirror Neurons and a Transactional Model of Temperamental Development:

fMRI studies showing various activities in cognitive, socioemotional, and mirror regions are
correlated with different degrees of risk-taking behaviour.

Children with risk-taking genes were more likely to engage in risk-taking behaviour in latency and
adolescent periods when increased activity was measured in inferior frontal and parietal regions of
mirror neuronal activity, as well as with increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior
cingulate cortex, and medial orbitofrontal cortex.

Assessment:

Chess and Thomas categorized temperament by three general clusters based on a continuum of
ease with which a child approaches the environment. 40% “easy,” 10% “difficult,” 15% “slow to
warm-up,” and 35% do not fall into any particular grouping.

The Carey Infant Temperament Questionnaire, based on Chess and Thomas’s model, uses family
interviews to rate temperament for 4- to 8-month-olds and for 1- to 3-year-olds.

Physiological measures – It has been demonstrated that 12-week-old infants can be assessed for
positive and negative traits on the basis of cardiac vagal tone, which is measured as the amplitude of
respiratory sinus arrhythmias. Infants who show higher baseline cardiac vagal tone rate higher on
assessments of temperamentally negative traits.

Practical implications:

Traits that coincide with a child’s chronologically determined developmental tasks are the most
significant because they frequently determine how children are received and how they are
perceived.

Verbal and nonverbal traits are significant at this age. A temperamentally verbal child often appears
“bright.”

As childhood progresses those traits that determine school success are predominant.

A strong degree of correlation has been shown between temperamentally verbal and cognitively
mature, verbally gifted suicidal preteens and hospitalization.

Cognitive development
Cognitive development in children includes all of the processes that lead to the maturation of their
mental activity (way to understand, to remember, to solve problems, and to organize their
environment).

Biological Approach (Piaget’s cognitive spatial stages):

Piaget explained cognitive maturation by using a biological model that focuses on schemes
(organized ways for children’s developing brains to make sense of their experiences).

To structure such schemes, children use two complementary processes – Assimilation and
accommodation.

Cognitive growth occurs in stages, which are always in fixed order

Overall, cognitive maturity is defined by a child’s increasingly more refined ability to conceptualize
space both internally and externally.

Sensorimotor –

From birth to 2 years.

Infants use body senses and activity to explore their environment.

Learn to anticipate an experience by internally constructing a model of each of their

experiences.

Cognitive growth results in forming new skills, such as object permanence, which is the
ability to remember an object once it is out of sight.

Children discover that objects can be assimilated into an experience that they have already
encountered (example – apple juice tastes sweet; hot food burns etc.).

Eventually, infants discover that each experience does not necessarily assimilate with the
same function. By adjusting to this newer function—accommodating—infants broaden their
cognitive development.

Piaget asserted that infants and children have the cognitive challenge of internally
constructing new schemes to fit old and new experiences into a universally uniform reality.

Preoperational –

Ages 2 to 7 years.

Children become intuitive, anticipating experiences with consequences.

Think symbolically but illogically and with egocentricity and a distinct inability to perceive
self from others in their environment.

The preoperational processes combine to create a child’s inner world, which is populated
with the creations of magical thinking (Example – a stuffed kitty becomes a ferocious tiger, a
darkened room is transformed into a dungeon etc.).

Concrete operational –

Ages 7 to 11 years.

An ability to think logically and in an organized fashion.

 The magical woes of the younger child are replaced by a more realistic set of concerns that
are stimulated by a new-found conception of cause and effect.

At the end of this stage, children develop the capacity to think abstractly.

Formal operations –

By adolescence.

Abstract thought and the interesting imaginary audience phenomenon, which joins
egocentrism and the capacity for abstraction to “torment” adolescents into thinking that the
entire world is capable of watching whatever they are doing in public.

In the Piagetian schema, language becomes important as a tool only after a child reaches the phase
during which hypothetical thought is possible.

Many researchers feel that certain social contexts obscure valid cognitive assessments, and they
argue that much younger children can display logic.

Sociocultural Schema for Cognitive Development (Vygotsky):

An infant has a basic instinctive cognition that includes some basic memory and perceptual capacity.

Until the age of 2 years, children simply develop this primitive cognition by interacting with their
environment.

Language is the essential tool for cognitive maturation.

Cognition is developed by children’s social dialogues—cooperative conversation with others—that

are incorporated internally into private speech. Private speech, once internalized, is then used by
children as a support, or scaffolding, to guide them through new learning.

The motivation for cognitive development is created by a zone of proximal development, which is
the distance between children’s developmental levels and their potentials for tasks that can only be
accomplished with adult help.

Critics of Vygotsky’s explanation for cognition argue that he eliminated the biological line of
cognition.

Cognition develops even in cultures and families that do not emphasize language. That there are
children who are able to learn primarily by observation raises questions about Vygotsky’s claims as
well.

Information-Processing Model Explaining Cognitive Development:

The processing strategies have been compared to software for the brain’s hard drive system.

children use four strategies to develop cognition –

Taking in information from their environment.

Encoding the information into a symbolic mental system.

Recoding the information into a meaningful, effective model for knowing their environment.

Decoding the information so that task solutions are possible.

Detractors of this theory argue that selective attention must be present and that it drives the
cognitive process. They reason that prelinguistic children could not use this process for cognitive
development because they do not have the attention that is required.

Recent work, however, has confirmed that prelinguistic children do, indeed, have the capacity for
selective attention, as well as for explicit memory.

Measurement of cognitive development:

Measuring cognition and measuring intelligence have in the past been viewed as synonymous.

Many clinicians have begun to rely on clinical assessments that are based on Piaget’s work to assess
cognition. Advantages include their ability to remove cultural influences; they are also capable of
adapting cognitive assessments to everyday situations that a child faces.

Social development

The process by which children learn to develop a sense of self and then relate that knowledge to
their experience of others constitutes social development.

4 distinct phases in the social maturation process –

Period of attachment (develop a sense of self).

Period of self-understanding (analyse their makeup).

Period of perspective taking (apply their self-knowledge to others).

Period of true friendships and peer orientation.

Attachment theories best describe the first phase of socialization.

Theories of Infant Socialization—Attachment Theories:

John Bowlby described attachment in 4 phases –

Preattachment – first 6 weeks; recognizes caregiver’s smell and voice.

Attachment – able to prefer one particular person; ends approximately at 8 months.

Clear-cut attachment follows – till 2yrs; shows separation anxiety.

After age 2 years – securely attached; have learned 3 things – trust, reciprocity (people take
turns interacting), effectance (their behaviour produces some kind of result in the parenting
person).

Children with inadequate or faulty forms of attachment fail to develop a whole sense of self, which is
a prerequisite to having good social relationships.

Using psychoanalytic theory, Margaret Mahler proposed a more complex sequence whereby an
infant arrives at some basic sense of self. According to her theory, a child’s ability to separate and
individuate as a person is important.

Most researchers recognize that attachment of a primary caregiver—whether mother or father—is

essential for developing an internal working model for future relationships.
Father’s role –

Engrossment – father’s initial attachment to his child.

It was shown that children reared in single-parent households with the mothers as heads
have dramatically different social relationships with peers, as well as with other adults,
including teachers, when warm and positive social interactions aremaintained with their
non-residential fathers.

Daughters who have close attachments to their fathers, whether living in the same
household or apart, develop higher levels of critical thinking and cause-and-effect processing
cognitive skills.

Measuring social interaction:

Ghuman-Folstein Screen for Social Interaction (SSI) –

Questionnaire designed to measure preschool children’s capacity for basic social interaction
skills in a variety of contexts.

Most valid and reliable for assessing children from 2-5 years.

Helpful when a relatively quick assessment of children is required.

Consequences of abnormal attachment:

In toddlers, feeding problems, such as infantile anorexia and picky eating, have been shown to be
significantly higher in children with faulty attachments.

Cognitive and emotional development suffers when attachment is inadequate or faulty.

Disruptive school behaviour, poor social interactions, and a lack of appropriate long-term
relationships correlate with inadequate attachment.

The most severe deficiencies appear to be a lag in right brain development and emotional
regulation.

Socialization in the childhood years:

3 skills are generally considered essential for children to take the next social step with peers –

People perception—the ability to size up others.

Intention taking—the ability to understand motives.

Perspective taking—the capacity to understand what others think and feel.

Robert Selman’s stages of perspective taking –

Level 0 – Undifferentiated (thoughts of self and others overlap); 3-6yrs.

Level 1 – Social information (can understand qualities of friends in terms of trust); 4-9yrs.

Level 2 – Self-reflective (know they have ideas and attitudes); 7-12yrs.

Level 3 – Third party (can understand third-party point of view); 10-15yrs.

Level 4 – Societal (society is weighed in actions); 14yrs onwards.

Motor neurons and social development:

In the inferior parietal lobes, mirror neuronal activity increases as humans are exposed to situations
in which their behaviour demonstrates that they understand the intentions of people they are
observing.

The absence of mirror neurons has been demonstrated in autism, where social deficit is significant.
In autistic children there is demonstrably less activity in learning situations in which imitation is
critical.

Emotional development

Theories of emotional development:

Behavioural and social learning theory –

Emotions as developing secondary to either stimulation or classical conditioning.

John Watson postulated a theory of three innate emotions which are available and are easily
stimulated from birth – fear, rage, and love.

Others postulate that operant conditioning stimulates emotions.

However, none of these theories adequately explains the appearance of spontaneous

emotion in older children.

Cognitive theory –

Emotions are simply the byproduct of the cognitive process.

Discrepancy theory – emotional learning results when children attempt to rectify the
discrepancy between a previously learned experience and a new one.

This theory does not explain why old situations can be interesting and new ones boring and
also why some children react different than others to the same situation.

functionalist theory –

Includes Anna Freud’s defence model and the adaptation of emotional acquisition.

Emotions are acquired inherently to help children adapt to their world.

They are applied through a learned practice, which derives from cognitive and social
maturation, called social referencing—infants use parents for cues as to how to react.

Emotional maturity is based on the number of available emotional defences acquired

successfully by the child.

Defences include denial, repression, sublimation, regression, projection, reaction formation,

substitution, rationalization, compensation, and escape.

Mirror Neurons and Emotional Development:

Most critical skills essential for maximal emotional development is the acquisition of empathy.
Neurons with mirror properties have also been demonstrated to be interconnected to the limbic
system.

Mirror behaviour may be viscerally and emotionally connected in a way that explains the acquisition
of the cornerstone of emotional maturation—empathy.

A gender difference showing some evidence that girls are potentially more inherently empathetic
than boys seems to be substantiated by MEEG data that show that the mirror system is stronger in
girls than in boys.

Proposed Model of Emotional Behavioural Milestones:

Stage of acquisition of basic emotions –

Throughout the first year.

Learned directly or inferred from facial expressions, including happiness, anger, sadness, and
fear.

Mirror neurons are postulated as an essential pathway for this stage.

Emotions grow as they are stimulated and rewarded.

Stage of self-conscious emotions –

Appearing at the end of the 2nd year.

Arise from injury to or enhancement of the sense of self – Shame, envy, pride,
embarrassment, and guilt.

Stage of emotional self-regulation –

Begins as early as 2-4months but markedly increases in middle childhood.

Strategies to adjust emotion to a comfortable level of intensity.

Stage of empathy –

Rudimentary empathy occurs at age 1 year with the development of some self-awareness,
and continues to mature until the age of 5 years.

Emotional maturity is reached, when true empathy is attained.

Empathy is a major underlying theme that supports each of the stages of maturation.

Stage of altruism –

By late childhood.

Empathy develops into altruism—empathy directed toward strangers and people with
different life experiences.

Psychosexual development

Involves the process of infants and children learning to view themselves and others in terms of
gender.
3 stages describe psychosexual maturation in children – The development of gender identity; gender
roles; and gender relationships (attractions to a particular gender in others).

Gender identity begins at 3-4 years. In girls, gender identity generally appears earlier than in boys.

Changing gender identity, however, is very difficult after age 4 years.

Gender roles tend to appear at approximately the same ages.

Gender roles can appear, especially in boys, as early as age 2 years, even before gender identity,
with gender labelling (A 2-year-old can say, “He is a boy).”

Gender roles are refined through early childhood, so that by the early school years a child has a
sense of gender stability as well.

Behaviours that are labelled clearly masculine or feminine are relatively fixed by ages 4-5 years.
Gender stereotyping is well set by age 5 years.

Between ages 2-5 years, however, there is a marked increase in genital interest and sex play.
Children between the ages of 5 years and puberty have an ongoing interest in sex.

To explain psychosexual development in infants and children there are four significant areas of
theory – biological, cognitive developmental, social learning, and psychoanalytic.

No single school of thought accounts for the complexity of sexual development.

Moral development

Moral maturation refers to children’s acquisition of internal standards that guide their observable
actions or behaviour.

Ethologists suggest that moral principles are innate and universal in origin. They suggest that moral
principles are inherited by humans as a species and are developed through social experiences. They
see moral development as adaptive.

Neuroscientists see the cornerstone of moral development in the ability of the human mind to
recognize intent in others. Mirror neurons are responsible for a person’s understanding the intent of
another, even if that other is fictional.

Cognitive theories:

Moral maturation as an active process of acquiring a moral sense through a set of cognitively derived
constructions, which operate in conflictual situations.

Piaget’s 2 stage theory –

Heteronomous Morality of constraint – morality based on authority’s rules; 4-7yrs.

Autonomous morality – morality of negotiation; 7-11yrs.

Kohlberg’s theory –

Pre-conventional level – morality due to external controls; presence or absence of

punishment defines morality; 4-7yrs.

Conventional level – morality as rules for society’s order; knowing right and wrong; 7-11yrs.
Post-conventional level – morality as value defined; justice and fairness with society’s good
more important; teen to adulthood