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CHAPTER OUTLINE
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
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
FINAL THOUGHTS
SUMMARY
REVISION QUESTIONS
FURTHER READING
Infancy and
Childhood 9
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter you should appreciate that:
n there are arguments for and against stage theories of development;
n progression through the various domains occurs concurrently but at different rates;
n infants need other people for more than food and physical care;
n a toddler might use the same word to convey several different meanings;
n the child’s social development and sense of gender are influenced by stereotyping and peer conflict;
n preschoolers are egocentric in that they tend to see the world only from their point of view;
n children’s cognitive development can be reflected in the nature of their friendships.
Think about tadpoles for a moment. There are clearly some important differences between tad- poles and children, but they have some interest- ing features in common. It is remarkable how much change a frog undergoes as it develops. Its whole physical shape is transformed dramatically from its fishlike, long-tailed infancy to pot-bellied, pop-eyed, strong-legged adulthood. It has little to say for itself initially, but as a grown-up it can croak for hours. Although the human infant has more in common, visibly, with mature humans, it will also change 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 emergence of language dur- ing childhood presages a far more remarkable metamorphosis than the tadpole’s emerging legs. The social life of a six-year-old is much more diverse than that of an infant. And the reasoning powers of a ten-year-old provide for intellectual activity unimaginable in a toddler. The changes our bodies undergo are largely preordained by nature. There may be some vari- ations as a function of nutrition, exercise or expos- ure to environmental hazard but, by and large, the physical progress of a young human follows a predictable course, as in tadpoles or the young of other species. Can we say the same of the human child’s mental progress? The tadpole’s social future is dictated largely by nature – the need to find food, survive and repro- duce. Are human lives so predictable? Clearly, some of children’s major early tasks will be influenced by the surrounding culture. The lan- guage a child begins to learn reflects the lan- guage of his community. Whether a child spends her leisure time surfing the Internet or gathering
INTRODUCTION
How developmental psychologists study newborns
The research issue
Rigorous psychological research calls for careful control of test procedures. This is difficult enough to arrange even with adult participants, but how can we get infants to participate usefully in an experiment? Infancy researchers exploit many ingenious techniques, such as monitoring babies’ visual attention, heartbeats or sucking rates in response to changes in their sensory environments. In a good example of such work, Laplante, Orr, Vorkapich, and Neville (2000) investigated whether newborns can attend simultaneously to more than one dimension of visual stimuli. This is an important question: do babies perceive objects holistically from the outset or do they operate analytically, attending to only one component at a time?
Design and procedure
Babies just two to four days old were positioned to look into a visual chamber (see figure 9.2), where they saw an opening in which a 2 cm × 13 cm stripe appeared. The stripe was either horizontal or vertical. During each trial, the stripe moved: either right-left-right or down-up-down (each infant seeing only one direction). The researchers filmed the infant’s visual attention during a series of 30-second trials. First, the researchers established how long the baby watched the stimulus, and then kept on presenting it until the infant showed habituation (this was defined as a 40 per cent or more decrease in visual attention, as indicated by the baby’s eye movements). In other words, they waited until the baby had got used to the stimulus and how it moved. Next, the orienta- tion of the line was changed, or the direction in which it travelled was changed, or both orientation and direction were changed simultaneously. The researchers were keen to know whether the baby’s amount of looking changed, as this would indicate that the child was taking note of the altered visual environment.
Results and implications
The newborns exposed to the changes showed increases in looking times, while control infants (who were exposed to no changes) did not. Furthermore, the pattern of results indicated that looking time increases were greatest in the conditions in which two changes in the stripe occurred (orientation and movement). These findings suggest that, from the first days of life, stimuli involving modifications on two dimensions are processed differently from stimuli containing a change in only one dimension. These very young participants could not speak – but they could tell us a lot about how they perceive the spatial world from the way in which they behaved nonverbally.
Laplante, D.P., Orr, R.R., Vorkapich, L., & Neville, K.E., 2000, ‘Multiple dimension processing by newborns’, International Journal of Behavioral Development , 24, 231–40.
Resear ch close-up 1 Research close-up 1
Computer monitor Video camera
Visual chamber
Video monitor
Figure 9. Visual chamber and equipment used to assess newborns’ looking behaviour. Source: Laplante et al. (2000).
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between intersecting forms (Quinn, Brown & Streppa, 1998) and exploiting illusory contours to perceive boundaries and depth ( Johnson & Aslin, 1998). Babies appear to be particularly interested in faces, which hold their attention and elicit smiles (Fantz, 1961). Some evidence indic- ates that even neonates less than one hour old prefer illustrations of a human face to other patterns of similar complexity, and they prefer regularly organized representations to pictures that jumble the facial features ( Johnson & Morton, 1991). Such early prefer- ences raise the serious (if controversial) possibility that infants have innate ‘face detectors’, which direct their attention to this aspect of the visual environment (Slater et al., 2000).
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 (Kellman & Arterberry, 1998). So when exposed to the ‘approach’ of an illusory object (a sound increasing in volume), quite young infants lean away as the noise gets louder (Freiberg, Tually & Crassini, 2001). Perhaps one of the starkest pieces of evidence against the ‘empty vessel’ theory of human nature comes from the infant’s discrimination among tastes (Mennella & Beauchamp, 1997). Babies are not passive when it comes to food and drink, and dis- play clear preferences. Their sucking rate increases for sweet liquids, but decreases for salty or bitter liquids (Crook, 1978). They show by their facial or vocal expressions whether they like or dislike a particular taste, and will protest vigorously if offered something they find unpalatable (Blass, 1997). These preferences are by no means arbitrary and may well have survival value. Infants do not have conscious nutritional information to help them decide whether a foodstuff is good or bad for them, but they know what they like. For example, alcohol is potentially harmful to infants, and research suggests that they would prefer not to drink it. Mennella and Beauchamp (1994) compared babies’ consumption of breastmilk when their mothers had been drinking either alcoholic beer or non-alcoholic beer. In the alcohol condition, the babies drank significantly less milk. Babies’ taste preferences can also be exploited by adults – certain tastes, such as milk or sweetened drinks, help to calm down a crying infant (Blass, 1997). Infants react to smells in similar ways. Their facial expressions or head orientations reveal whether they find a smell pleasant or unpleasant (Soussignan, 1997). Again, the sensory preferences may have survival value. For instance, there is evidence that infants are attracted to the smell of amniotic fluid and to milk (Marlier, Schaal & Soussignan, 1998).
Motor development
The neonate has several reflexes (automatic physical responses to external stimulation), including:
n the rooting reflex – a tendency to orient the head and mouth towards an object touching the face; n the sucking reflex – a tendency to suck on objects placed in the mouth; n the grasping reflex – a response to stimuli (such as a finger) placed in the open palm; n 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; and n 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 (Widstrom & Thingstrom, 1993). Although biology provides the reflexes, early experience is important insofar as it can affect their manifestation. In one study, neonates who were separated from the mother during the first hour after birth were less likely to demonstrate correct suck- ing techniques, and babies whose mothers were sedated during the birth did not suck at all during the first two hours (Righard & Alade, 1990).
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
‘Cognition’ is a broad term encompassing reasoning abilities, knowledge and memory (see chapters 11, 12 and 17). The study of cognitive processes is fundamental to many topics in psycho- logy. 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. Infants react to information provided by their senses by attempting to organize experience, make sense of phenomena, and anticipate events or outcomes. In fact, 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. They try things out, they collect more evidence (by exploring and by trial and error), and they start to develop theories. 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.
The sensorimotor stage of development
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. Later in this chapter, and in the next, we will consider the other stages of Piagetian development, but for the moment we will
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perform simple arithmetical operations (Wynn, 1992). There is little basis for explaining the development of these abilities by the outcome of general changes resulting from continuous activity. Furthermore, whether these abilities are innate or not, they seem to develop at different times. Some emerge quite early, such as face perception, which is well developed (though not complete) in the preschooler. Others take a bit longer, such as language, which starts during the first year but progresses into middle childhood. Arithmetic ability is still developing into the teens. Maybe, then, 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. On the basis of observations like these, 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). This debate – between those who (like Piaget) favour domain- general theories and those who favour domain-specific theories – highlights fundamental questions about the nature of the human mind and is central to much of contemporary developmental psychology (see Garton, 2004; Hatano & Inagaki, 2000). Piaget made a key contribu- tion to psychology by high- lighting the importance of the infant’s actions as a source of development. Piaget was a constructivist : he saw devel- opment as a kind of self- directed building process, in which the individual constructs schemes of action, applies them repeatedly until reaching their limits, and then improves upon them in the light of new discoveries. Although details of his the- ory 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 cer- tainly communicate. Communication between the infant and others does not await the emergence of language but proceeds throughout the first year. Very young infants tell us about their feelings and needs by crying and smiling. They show responsiveness to voices, orient- ing their attention to speakers, and even their larger body move- ments indicate sensitivity to the rhythm of speech. Caregivers are usually very responsive to the infant’s sounds, treating vocaliza- tions – even the humble burp – as though they were contribu- tions to a conversation (Kaye, 1982). Initially, caregivers have to do much of the work to sustain the to-and-fro of the interchange, but gradually the infant comes to take an increasingly active role (Rutter & Durkin, 1987; Schaffer, 1996). Infants’ ability to discriminate among speech sounds appears to be quite general at first. In their first few months, they can
discriminate among sounds that are critical in the language of their own community but, interestingly, they can also distinguish sounds in foreign languages that are not used in their own (Hernandez, Aldridge & Bower, 2000; Werker & Tees, 1999). But this capacity does not last, which is why you (depending on your linguistic background) may now experience difficulties with some of the sounds of, say, Cantonese or Estonian. Sometime during the second half of your first year of life, you probably began to lose your sensitivity to phonetic contrasts in languages other than the one(s) you were learning. Polka and Werker (1994) found that while four-month-old American infants could discriminate vowel contrasts in German, six-month-old Americans could not. In due course, the child becomes able to understand some of the things that are addressed to him. Labels for key objects or events (e.g. ‘biscuit’, ‘bedtime’) are repeated frequently in mean- ingful contexts, and many parents try to coax words out of the infant (e.g. ‘Da-da. Say “da-da”’). Around the end of the first year, normally developing children typically have a few words available (Barrett, 1995; Barrett, Harris & Chasin, 1991). At this stage, these words may not always con- form perfectly to the structure of the adult language (e.g. ‘da’ for ‘daddy’, ‘mi’ for ‘give me’), but they are typically used appropri- ately, and people familiar with the child usually know what is meant. At this stage, the child’s utterances typically consist of just single words, but, by changes in intonation, and coupled with gesture, these can be used to express a variety of meaningful rela- tions, including possession, location, negation and interrogation. For example, ‘da’, in different situations, could mean ‘It’s daddy’s’, ‘Daddy has it’, ‘Not daddy’, or ‘Did daddy do it?’ Exactly how the child begins to master language presents many mysteries, but two things are clear: the process begins well before overt speech appears, and it occurs in a social context.
SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Human beings are social creatures (see chapters 17 and 18). Con- necting to the social world is all the more crucial for the infant, because without the attention and care of others, she would not survive. Fortunately, others (particularly parents) tend to be strongly motivated to involve children in the social world, and to attend to their needs. Just as importantly, the infant is well equipped to participate in the social world from the beginnings of life. 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 inter- esting perceptual preference, but it is still more important as a social characteristic. After all, faces are one of the best means of differentiating between people, and a valuable source of information about how others are reacting to us or the environ- ment. There is evidence that infants can gather information about faces remarkably swiftly. Researchers using visual preference techniques or measurements of sucking rates have shown that newborns only days or even hours old prefer their mother’s face to that of a female stranger (Bushnell, Sai & Mullin, 1989; Walton, Bower & Bower, 1992). The other senses are exploited
constructivist theorist who attributes the acquisition of knowledge to the active processes of the learner, building on increasingly complex representa- tions of reality
Infancy 187187
ally broadens. However, before long, it becomes very clear that the infant prefers the company of particular individuals – not surprisingly, but importantly, the primary caregivers. Schaffer and Emerson (1964) 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). At around the same time, the child begins to show a quite different reaction – anxiety – when approached by unfamiliar people. At this point, spare another thought for the tadpole. One of the gravest problems about being a tadpole is that fish consider them a gourmet delight. As a result, tadpole survival rates are poor. But evolution has given tadpoles a chance of escaping the unwelcome attentions of passing fish. Tadpoles respond to chemical and tactile cues from predators, and swim fast to get as far away from them as they can (Stauffer & Semlitsch, 1993). This response appears to be built in, as it has been observed in laboratory-reared tadpoles, which have had no opportunities to learn about escape tactics. What does this have to do with the human infant? At around five to eight months, human infants begin to display a form of behaviour that has much in common with that of the cue- sensitive tadpole: they start to show wariness of strangers and strive to maximize their distance from them. Human infants also seem to be sensitive to a number of cues emitted by the stranger. All of their perceptual capacities seem to
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).
Fear of strangers
Anyone with an interest in babies and a little patience could pro- vide much of the stimulation (coos, cuddles, facial displays, gen- tle 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). During the first few months, much of the infant’s early social experience takes place in the microcosm of the family, and the most intens- ive interactions will usually be with the primary caregiver(s). But other people appear from time to time (healthcare profes- sionals, visitors, neighbours) and the infant’s social world gradu-
Figure 9. Babies as young as one or two weeks can recognize the smell of their own mother’s breasts.
Figure 9. This child was playing happily until a stranger appeared.
The Preschool Years 189189
catching, jumping and hopping. And a five-year-old is quite com- petent in basic movements. Motor development during these years reflects an inter- action between biological maturation, experience and cognition (Thelen, 2000).
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. These kinds of developments enable the child to engage in a higher level of representation. While the early sensorimotor infant’s schemes consisted of concrete actions, towards the end of this stage he becomes able to develop mental schemas.
Figure 9. 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 develop skills such as throwing and catching, jumping and hopping.
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, and substantial progress will take place over the next few years. By the age of two, many children have begun to walk unaided and can manipulate objects independently, but their gait is unsteady and their manual dexterity is limited. Over the next cou- ple of years, they gain competence in these respects, becoming more certain of their control over their bodies. A three-year-old is likely to be quite mobile (e.g. able to run) but may find it difficult to respond to a need to change direction or stop – leading to mishaps with inconveniently placed furniture or walls – and may have difficulties with balance (Grasso et al., 1998). A four-year-old is more agile and beginning to develop skills such as throwing and
190190 Infancy and Childhood
Figure 9. 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 for another.
The child can now use objects to symbolize others, and is beginning to use sounds (words) for the same purpose. These skills are very useful, and the child exploits them increasingly. This leads to a new stage in develop- ment, which Piaget called the preoperational period.
The preoperational period
This stage of development extends from approximately two to six years, and a number of important cognitive developments are achieved during this time. Foremost is the ability to symbolize – to represent the world in images and language. This enables chil- dren to extend their understanding fundamentally. The child becomes able to represent past and future, and to think about objects or events that are not immediately present. This soon becomes evident in forms of activity like pretend play (figure 9.6). If the sensorimotor child disappoints her parents by playing more with the wrapping than the present, the preoperational child will surprise them with the news that the box is actually a helicopter and it plans to land on the building – represented by the coffee table. Although Piaget saw the preoperational period as a time of important cognitive advances, he also emphasized the limita- tions of the child’s thought processes at this stage. He believed that one of the most pro- found limitations during this phase is egocentrism – a ten- dency to see the world from our own point of view, along with an inability to take
another person’s perspective. Piaget found many illustrations of egocentrism in his interviews with children, in his studies of their language in preschool settings, and in his experiments. The next time you get an opportunity to listen to the language of preschool children, consider the extent to which they are con- versing in the way you and I would understand a conversation, such as exchanging a series of linked remarks about the same topic. A typical preschooler in one of Piaget’s major studies, Lev, engaged regularly in monologues, talking about his own activit- ies to no one in particular:
(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. (Piaget, 1926, p. 14)
Preschoolers like Lev accompany their actions with words in this way when alone and when in the presence of audiences. Close connections to others’ utterances do not appear to be essential to the activity:
Pie (aged 6y 5m): Where could we make another tunnel? Ah, here, Eun? Eun (4y 11m): Look at my pretty frock. (Piaget, 1926, p. 58)
Pie (the older child) is trying to establish coordinated efforts but Eun has her own concerns. 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. So, 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 per- son 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. Probably the best known example of this is Piaget’s famous conservation test. A preoperational child is pre- sented with two beakers of the same shape and size. The equivalent amount of water is poured into each beaker, and the child is asked whether the amount in each is the same. Once this is agreed, a new beaker, taller and thinner than the original, is produced. The liquid from one of the original beakers is transferred to the third. The child is asked again whether the amount is the same. Preoperational children often insist that the amount has changed. They might
preoperational period the second major phase of cognitive development, according to Piaget, extending from approximately two to six years, when the child begins to represent the world symbolically but remains intuitive and egocentric
egocentrism inability of the preopera- tional child to distinguish between his/her own perspective on a situation and the perspectives of others
centration when a preoperational child focuses on only one aspect of a problem at a time
conservation ability to recognize that an object or amount remains the same despite superficial changes in appearance
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Piaget’s three mountains experiment
The research issue
Can young children appreciate how the world appears from someone else’s perspective? Or are they bound by their own outlook (egocentrism)? One of Piaget’s best known demonstrations of egocentrism comes from his ‘three mountains’ experi- ment (Piaget & Inhelder, 1956).
Design and procedure
One hundred children were tested, aged between 4 and 12 years. Each child was asked to stand in front of a model of three mountains. The mountains differed in height, colour and other characteristics. Once the child was familiar with the layout of the mountains, a doll was placed at another location (say, at the opposite side). The children were tested in various ways. First, they were given three miniature cardboard mountains, and asked to lay them out in the way the doll saw them. The children then looked at a set of pictures taken from various positions around the mountains and had to decide which one represented what the doll would see from its current position. Finally, the chil- dren were shown a picture and asked where the doll would have to stand to get that view of the three mountains. The doll was moved to different positions and the children tested again. The children were also moved to different posi- tions and asked to select the picture that represented their new perspective.
Results and implications
Children aged around four years find this task very difficult and do not appear to understand the instructions. Children below about age seven seem to fail to discriminate between their own perspective and that of the doll: instead, almost invariably, they pick the picture that represents their own point of view. For example, one six-year-old boy selected his own point of view, even though the doll was to his right, and announced: ‘It’s this one because the green [mountain] is here [points to his right] and so is the little man [also on his right]’ (Piaget & Inhelder, 1956, p. 219). At around eight years, children show awareness that people in different locations have different perspectives on the mountains, but they are not very consistent in working out exactly how things look from positions other than their own. For example, in the situation described above, they might realize that an object to their own right would be to the left of the doll, or that an object that is in front from their perspective is behind from another’s perspective, but they find it difficult to process these cues simultaneously. You might be thinking this would be hard for an adult too. It is certainly a challenging task, but by around ages eight and a half to nine, Piaget and Inhelder found that most children were able to handle it successfully. They concluded that the transition from egocentric thinking to being able to coordinate relations in space is a lengthy process, developing over sev- eral years in middle childhood.
Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B., 1956, The Child’s Conception of Space , London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Resear ch close-up 2 Research close-up 2
Figure 9. 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.
The Preschool Years 193193
but not for older children. If you can, try the tasks out yourself with a few children aged three to eight. Invite the children to explain their responses, and judge for yourself whether Piaget has provided us with fascinating (or misleading) insights into developmental changes in children’s thinking.
Theory of mind
Another 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 (one- self and others) have mental states (thoughts, beliefs, feelings, desires) and that these mental states influence our behaviour. It seems pretty obvious to you and me that we have minds. But how do we know? We can never see or touch a mind; we cannot directly observe mental processes in action. The ‘mind’ is quite an abstract concept. Indeed, perhaps you are studying psychology because you would like to find out more about this intriguing but elusive possession. Preschoolers cannot read psychology textbooks. So how do they find out about minds? Do young children appreciate that they and other people are thinking beings? Do they understand that what a person thinks or believes can affect what she does?
Imagine this scenario, put to young children by the develop- mental psychologists Wimmer and Perner (1983):
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?
Would you expect Maxi to look in the green cupboard, where he last saw his chocolate and where he believes it still to be? Or would he look in the blue cupboard, where you know the choco- late is now? If you have a theory of mind – so you understand that people act according to what they believe to be the case – then you will answer that Maxi will look in the green cupboard. Interestingly, Wimmer and Perner found that children under the age of about five or six often answer, with great confidence, that Maxi will look in the blue cupboard. So preschoolers seem to be dominated by their own knowledge and find it difficult to grasp that Maxi would be guided by his own false belief. Slightly older children are more likely to take account of Maxi’s mental state. They know that he is wrong, but they can understand that, on the evidence available to him, he is likely to think that his chocolate should be where he stashed it. The researchers also checked whether the preschool participants could remember where this was: they could, yet they still insisted that Maxi would look in the new location. This experiment led to a great deal of discussion about young children’s grasp of mental processes. It seemed to indicate that preschoolers have serious difficulties understanding that people’s behaviour is an outcome of their mental states (in this case, their beliefs). Because the difficulty could not be explained merely as a problem with memory, Wimmer and Perner suggested that some special cognitive skill must be emerging around the period between four and six years of age: the child is developing a the- ory of mind. This topic excited a great deal of subsequent research. Other investigators showed that, if the task is simplified a little, four- year-olds demonstrated understanding of false belief (Baron- Cohen, Leslie & Frith, 1985). In non-experimental settings (such as everyday conversations), others found that even younger children do make spontaneous and contextually appropriate references to mental states, which suggests that they do have some early awareness of the relevance of mind to human beha- viour (Flavell, 2000). For example, Dunn (1999) reports that a three-year-old participant turned to her four-month-old sibling and said: ‘You don’t remember Judy. I do!’ This brief remark indicates not only that the child had some understanding of the phenomenon of memory but also that she could simultaneously (and accurately) appraise the relevant contents of her own mind and that of her baby sister. The emergence of theory of mind raises some fascinating ques- tions and has provoked a lot of ingenious research (see Smith, Cowie & Blades, 2003). For our purposes, it is enough to state that 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
Pioneer
Paul L. Harris (1946– ) is currently based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Harris is interested in the early development of cognition, emotion and imagina- tion. His recent book, The Work of the Imagination , gathers together several years of research carried out at Oxford University, where he taught developmental psychology. Currently, he is studying how far children rely on their own first-hand experience or alternatively on what people tell them – especially when they confront a new domain of knowledge.
Pioneer
Margaret Donaldson (1926 – ), author of the highly influential book Children’s Minds , worked as a child devel- opment psychologist at Edinburgh University. Donaldson challenged Piaget’s method of studying egocentricity in children, after producing different results when she applied a social dimension to Piagetian tasks given to preschoolers. Donaldson argued that the preschoolers’ inability to per- form Piaget’s tasks was due to their difficulties with under- standing (or abstracting) the questions, and not to their egocentricity or lack of logical skills.
The Preschool Years 195195
As children’s utterances increase in length, there are clear consistencies in terms of what they include and omit (Brown, 1973). Children select the words with high informational con- tent (‘daddy’, ‘book’, ‘cookies’), and economize on the minor (function) words and inflections. They produce occasional over- regularizations – ‘mans’, ‘foots’, ‘runned’, ‘shooted’ – in which a regular rule (such as add –s to get the plural, or add –ed to get the past tense) is applied to an irregular word. Three main points have emerged from research conducted in this field so far:
- Children are selective and structured in their early attempts at language.
- Children sometimes commit errors, but their errors sug- gest that they are trying to convey meanings as effectively as they can, and they are sensitive to grammatical rules.
- Progress is quite rapid, from a handful of words at 12– 15 months to large vocabularies and complex word com- binations at age three or four.
Chomsky and the innate nature of language
We have only touched upon a few examples of how language is acquired, but they speak directly to the debate about the nature of child development. Many laypeople and some psychologists have assumed that language is learned by observation, imitation and reinforcement (Skinner, 1957; Staats, 1968). But the examples given above pose some fundamental challenges to this account. Whom 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. In fact, even when adults produce a sentence deliberately and invite the child to imitate it, toddlers and preschoolers frequently respond with versions of the original sentence that reflect the processes of selectivity and omission discussed above (Fraser, Bellugi & Brown, 1963). 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 (see chapter 4). As we have seen, children are learning many aspects of lan- guage quickly. Chomsky points out that the rules of language children have to master are very complex, and most parents are not able to articulate them. In fact, in much of everyday adult speech we do not even reveal the rules very clearly – we make errors, false starts, inject ‘er’s and ‘um’s, leave sentences incom- plete. Yet not only do children make rapid progress in their lan- guage development (mastering most of the basic rules by about age five), but they are able to create and understand novel lin- guistic expressions. Chomsky argues that language acquisition in the normal child constitutes ‘a remarkable type of theory con- struction’ (1959, p. 58). Chomsky seems here to be agreeing with Piaget, who also saw the child as constructing theories (see above). 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. It must be general enough to accom- modate any language that a child is exposed to, and it must be shared by all normal humans (because we all learn a language, and we all do so at roughly the same pace). 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 concern- ing the social context of early communication, and the ways in which adults modify their speech for the benefits of the learner (see Durkin, 1995). There are also objections from Piagetians, who regard lan- guage not as an innate, highly specific ability, but as one aspect of the child’s broader representational capacity, which emerges dur- ing the preoperational period (Sinclair-de-Zwart, 1969).
SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
The family is the primary social environment for children dur- ing 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 in the kinds of social behaviour it fosters, and with respect to the kinds of social contacts it offers for the preschooler (Dunn, Creps & Brown, 1996; Schaffer, 1996).
Making friends
Many researchers believe that the patterns of behaviour pre- dominant in the preschooler’s home influence the behaviour the child manifests outside the home (Barth & Parke, 1993; Rubin et al., 1998). A good illustration of this principle is Russell and Finnie’s (1990) study of Australian preschoolers and their mothers in situations where the child had to join unfamiliar peers. The researchers found that the mothers guided their children towards strategies that affected the child’s acceptance. Mothers of popular children suggested ways in which they might join in with peers’ current activity, while mothers of children neglected by their peers were more likely to guide them to focus on the materials to hand. There is also evidence that children with a Type B (securely attached) attachment relationship in infancy tend to score higher on measures of social participation with peers at preschool (LaFreniere & Sroufe, 1985). In other words, aspects of the relationship with the primary caregiver are
196196 Infancy and Childhood
of information about what is expected of males and females (Kohlberg, 1966). Unlike tadpoles, by the end of infancy most children know whether they are a boy or girl and can distinguish men from women (Thompson, 1975). During the next few years, they begin to appreciate how fundamental this distinction is. For example, preschoolers discover an interesting fact about gen- der 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. Children learn the labels for male and female and begin to apply these during their third year of life (Fagot & Leinbach, 1993). Over the next couple of years, they build up an increasing amount of knowledge about what it means to be a male or a female (Martin, 2000), and this learning appears to be linked to broader cognit- ive development (Szkrybalo & Ruble, 1999). Rather than simply absorbing messages from parents or the mass media, by age four or five children can predict accurately the gender of a person stereotypically associated with a particular activity (such as fixing a car or doing the sewing) before they have actually seen the person (Durkin & Nugent, 1998). It is clear that, even at this early age, gender is a fundamental category around which the social world is organized, and that children are active in determining their own social experiences.
reflected subtly but influentially in how the preschooler begins his peer relations. Peer relations among preschoolers show another continuity with early relations: they are selective. Although children of this age will play with a wide array of peers if given the opportunity, they do demonstrate clear preferences (Hartup, 1999). Individuals identify others with whom they play more frequently; they seek out each other’s company and they become friends (Hartup, 1999). These early friendships serve a number of important func- tions, including fostering the growth of social competence and providing sources of emotional support (Asher & Parker, 1989; Erwin, 1993). The value of these relationships is made clearer by the prob- lems suffered by children who lack them. 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 (Coie et al., 1995).
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 gen- der and to show different behavioural preferences. Boys tend to be more physical and active in their play, while girls often like to play with dolls (Maccoby, 2000). One theory is that these dif- ferences reflect biological pre-programming. We know that the young of other species – such as tadpoles – are pre-programmed to develop particular patterns of behaviour according to their gender, and these behaviours underpin later social and repro- ductive activities, such as patterns of aggressiveness or how they call out to attract mates (Emerson & Boyd, 1999; Summers, 2000). It has been argued that, in a similar way, evolution has designed human males and females for different functions (‘males as providers’, ‘females as caregivers’), and children’s play behaviours are early emerging signs of this ‘biological imperative’ (Hutt, 1978). An alternative view is that children are ‘shaped’ by the sur- rounding culture. Unlike tadpoles, human young receive a lot of direct and indirect advice from their parents about gender expectations. This could serve to reinforce some behaviours (see chapter 4) and extinguish others (e.g. by dressing daughters in pink or telling sons not to cry). Children themselves try to influence each other’s gender behaviour, too. Even preschoolers develop strong opinions about how boys and girls should behave. For example, boys might intervene to stop a peer playing with ‘girls’ toys’ (Bussey & Bandura, 1992). Finally, children also receive many stereotyped messages from the larger community and the mass media about gender role expectations (Durkin, 1985). But some developmentalists have argued that both of these explanations (biology versus environment) overlook a still more basic question: how does a child know that he or she is a male or female in the first place? This brings us to another aspect of gender role development
- cognition, or the child’s active search for and interpretation
Figure 9. 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.
198198 Infancy and Childhood
Gender role development
We saw above that 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. By this stage, children know quite a lot about the traditional expectations of their society concerning gender. For example, by the age of five or six years, children have firm views on who will be most competent as a car mechanic or aeroplane pilot, or as a clothes designer or secretary (Levy, Sadovsky & Troseth, 2000; see figure 9.11). Yet there is a broad difference in terms of how boys and girls conform to traditional roles. During middle childhood, boys tend to follow the requirements of masculinity more rigidly than girls follow the requirements of femininity (Archer, 1992). Cross-sex activities are disapproved of by most boys, while girls are often happy to participate in leisure activities that are perceived as mas- culine (e.g. some girls of this age will play soccer, climb trees, ride skateboards, wear ‘male clothes’). A large study of North American women of different genera- tions found that a clear majority recalled engaging in ‘tomboyish’ activities during their childhood, with the mean age of starting these activities being five years and the mean age of concluding them being around 12 and a half (Morgan, 1997). This type of behaviour therefore appears to be normative for females and socially accepted as such, whereas the corresponding cross-sex behaviour in boys (e.g. taking an interest in sewing, playing with dolls, dressing up) results in peer hostility and parental concern (Archer, 1992; Raag, 1999). Seems unfair? Indeed, but this pattern of behaviour during middle childhood seems to reflect a social advantage for males. Archer (1992) argues that because males have traditionally been the most powerful gender, socialization patterns have developed
of practical examples came later, in the formal operational period (see chapter 10).
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. These include improving phonological skills in co- ordinating speech production, pronouncing multisyllabic words, and understanding speech in noisy contexts (Dodd et al., 2003; Hoff, 2001). Vocabulary growth continues at an impressive pace (Biemiller & Slonim, 2001), and children become increasingly competent at using and understanding complex grammatical constructions (Hoff, 2001). There are marked improvements in the ability to construct and understand narratives (Hoff, 2001; Low & Durkin, 2000). As well as improving their use and understanding of language during school years, children also get better at reflecting on lan- guage. In other words, they develop metalinguistic awareness – the ability to think and talk about language and its properties (Bialystock, 1993). Ask a preschooler which is the bigger word – ‘horse’ or ‘caterpillar’ – and she is likely to answer ‘horse’. Young children find it difficult to conceive of the word as an object in its own right. But school age children become increasingly com- petent in such tasks. During middle childhood, they learn to dis- tinguish words according to whether they obey the phonological rules of their language (‘kerpod’ versus ‘kzkdff ’) (Edwards & Kirkpatrick, 1999). The emergence of metalinguistic awareness is important because it facilitates many other cognitive and educa- tional processes. For example, once a child knows what words are and is able to conceive of manipulations upon them (‘What does “cow” sound like if we take away the “c”?’), he is better equipped to handle the demands of learning to read and write (Tunmer & Chapman, 2002; Wood & Terrill, 1998).
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. Consider the range of tasks to be met in the course of middle childhood. The young person has to figure out who she is – what makes her unique. This involves discovering her own capacities and limitations (during a period of continual change) and com- ing to terms with the emotions that these assessments provoke (pride, shame, anxiety, ambition). It also involves comparison with others – we discover ourselves partly through measuring how we stand relative to our peers. In fact, during this phase of life, children come to assess themselves and their peers in increas- ingly profound ways.
Percent
M-Msup M-Fsup Gender typing of occupation
F-Msup F-Fsup
Boys
100 80 60 40 20 0
Girls
Figure 9. Five- to six-year-olds’ judgements of who will be most competent in masculine stereotyped occupations (car mechanic, pilot) and feminine stereotyped occupation (clothes designer, secretary). Key: M-Msup : Masculine occupations, men rated more competent M-Fsup : Masculine occupations, women rated more competent F-Msup : Feminine occupations, men rated more competent F-Fsup : Feminine occupations, women rated more competent Source: Based on Levy, Sadovsky & Troseth (2000).
The School Years 199199
to ensure that young males are prepared for their ultimately dominant role in society. As a result, their gender role may become more rigid during the school years, whereas females are seemingly allowed a longer period of ‘gender flexibility’, although not an indefinite one, as Morgan’s (1997) findings reveal (see also chapter 10).
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. We saw earlier that preschoolers begin to demonstrate selec- tivity and preferences among their peers. Although some of these relationships are close and enduring, many are short-lived. If five-year-olds are asked to identify their friends, they will most
likely mention whichever peer is nearby, or children with whom they have played recently (Damon, 1983; Erwin, 1993). These affiliations may be quite transitory and subject to termination when disagreements occur. During middle childhood, however, friendships become more enduring, more dependent upon per- sonality compatibility, and characterized by a greater degree of mutual expectation (Damon, 1988; Erwin, 1993; Hartup, 1998). Researchers have investigated children’s concepts of friendship using interview techniques. Typically, interviewers ask questions such as: ‘What is a friend?’ ‘How do you make friends?’ ‘How do you know someone is your friend?’ (Damon, 1983). Younger children (aged four to seven) tend to define friendships in terms of mutual liking and shared activities. Children at this age do have interpersonal expectations (like being nice to each other and sharing toys), but they rarely express psychological dimensions of the relationship. In middle childhood, by contrast, there is more emphasis on provision of mutual support and trust (Erwin, 1993). For example, at around the age of seven or eight, children still tend to describe friends in relatively concrete terms, but they
Gender identity: when boys want to be girls (and vice versa)
Adults often make the throwaway comment that ‘boys will be boys’ to account for rough-and-tumble games or permanently grazed knees. But when during childhood does our gender identity become fixed? And what if there is a mismatch between our gender self-identity and the biological sex we have been allocated through our genes? For most children, their gender identity conforms to the physical body they are born in. But for a small minority of chil- dren, this question can raise important issues. When someone’s biological sex does not match their gender identity, we use the term gender identity disorder (GID). People with GID often describe themselves as ‘trapped inside the wrong body’. They often have a strong conviction or a wish to belong to the opposite gender. Nobody really knows what determines this self-perception. It could depend on a range of factors working together, such as significant environmental events, hormonal influences or different life experi- ences at critical points of brain development (these events may occur after birth or in utero). It is common for children to face gender issues while they are growing up. For example, plenty of girls adopt stereotypic- ally boyish traits, such as cutting their hair short or climbing trees – what we often refer to as being a ‘tomboy’. They do not identify themselves as boys or struggle with emotional issues related to their gender. But in some children, GID becomes a permanent feature of their personality that stays with them into adulthood. Some adults may even elect to have surgery in order to seek to resolve the discrepancy between their appearance and their gen- der identity. Children with GID may insist they belong to the opposite sex. Boys may show a preference for cross-dressing or playing the female role, while girls may wear masculine clothing and be drawn towards rough games and contact sports. Children with GID may also choose friends of the opposite sex and show signs of unease about their own body. To date, GID has been identified more in children who are biologically boys than girls. According to research, roughly six times more boys than girls seek guidance on how to respond to GID. As noted in this chapter, Western society is much more accepting of girls being tomboys than of boys engaging in ‘girlish’ behaviour. So adults may detect differences in boys’ gender-related behaviour much sooner than they would in a girl. So the prevalence of GID may in fact be similar for both sexes, but occurrence in girls is less often picked up. Most of us feel at ease with our gender, and we tend to assume that other people do, too. But individuals with GID remind us that there is a range of experiences and perspectives even in something as fundamental as which sex people feel they belong to. Developmental–clinical psychologists play an important role in understanding and ameliorating the obstacles and ostracism that some individuals with GID may face.
Bradley, S.J., & Zucker, K.J., 1997, ‘Gender identity disorder: A review of the past 10 years’, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry , 36 (7), 872–80.
Ever yday Psychology Everyday Psychology
