Introduction to Developmental Psychology

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Introduction to Developmental Psychology
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O

• Module Objectives
  (Development)
• To examine the core stages of development in the
  period from conception through to adolescence
• Module Content (Development)
• - Theories of psychological development
• - Heredity and prenatal development
• - Motor, perceptual development and sensory
  deprivation
• - Cognitive development and the relative
  contributions of Piaget and
• Vygotsky
• - Social and emotional development throughout
  childhood

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Child Development

• This is a first year course designed to
  establish foundations in psychology, with a
  particular focus on the basic definitions and
  central questions that frame the study of human
  development This course is primarily concerned
  with- approaches to describing human
  development- the processes by which this occurs
  - the factors that contribute to development in
  
• various domains

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Course Outline

• Theories of Human Development
• Biological Development
• Social Development
• Emotional Development
• Cognitive Development

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Developmental Questions

• Should prospective parents seek genetic
  counselling?
• Is it better for intellectual growth for children
  to be in preschool or at home?
• Do we get more intelligent as we get older?
• Where does bad behaviour come from?

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Definitions

• As psychologists, we focus on an understanding
  of human development from a psychological
  perspective
• But this is an arbitrary and somewhat artificial
  simplification because all behaviour (overt and
  covert) is mediated by
• - biological
• - psychological
• - environmental influences

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Good Developmental Theory

• Historically, developmental psychologists were
  interested in both description and explanation
• Description
• - the depiction or representation of change or
  continuity
• Explanation
• - the specification of causes or antecedents of
  development
• To describe and explain what stays the same/what
  changes across life and to specify the conditions
  under which constancy (continuity) or change
  (discontinuity) arise

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Good Developmental Theory

• Describe changes within areas of behaviour (e.g.
  language or socialisation)
• Describe changes in the relationships between
  areas of behaviour (e.g. language and
  socialisation)
• Explain the course of development according to
  these descriptions
• That is, a theory must account for the
  transitions from one point in development to
  another and must identify causal variables
  affecting transition
• Put simply, what we are looking for are a set of
  principles or rules which can explain change

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Good Developmental Theory

• Two levels of analysis
• The differences in how individuals change across
  life in many specific processes are immense
• The differences in how some processes change
  across the life-span of specific individuals are
  impressive
• But, precisely how or why people or processes
  change is a very complex set of issues

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Good Developmental Theory

• Clearly most developmental theorists are not
  equally concerned with all three of the above and
  perhaps not concerned with all three at all
• This depends primarily on philosophical
  alliances

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Philosophical Differences

• Philosophical differences account for much of
  the discrepancy between various perspectives and
  methodologies
• Theories and views of development (and on all
  aspects of psychology) as proposed by a
  particular psychologist reflect her opinion of
  how the world works globally (i.e. world view)
• Both observation and theory tell us perhaps as
  much about the psychologist as about the subject

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Philosophical Differences

• The system to which I am aligned may well not
  stand up to any final canons of scientific
  procedure. But I do not much care. I have liked
  to think about psychology in ways that are
  congenial to me. Since all the sciences
  especially psychology, are still immersed in such
  tremendous realms of the uncertain and the
  unknown, the best that any individual scientist,
  especially any psychologist, can do seems to be
  to follow his own gleam and his own bent, however
  inadequate they may be. In fact I suppose this is
  actually what we all do. In the end, the only
  sure criterion is to have fun.
• (Tolman, 1959, p. 152)

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Philosophical Differences

• There are several families of developmental
  theory that emerged from the fertile soil of
  the 19th century
• But two major philosophical models provide the
  basis of many extant assumptions about human
  development
• Organicism
• Emphasises the qualitative features of
  developmental change and the active contribution
  of the organisms processes in this change
• Mechanism
• Emphasises quantitative change and the active
  contribution of processes outside the control of
  the organism

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Philosophical Differences

• There are five generic theoretical
  systems/models in Development Psychology
• - organismic
• - psychodynamic
• - mechanistic
• - dialectical
• - contextual

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World Views

• Organismic
• Derived from biological growth change is
  qualitative, unidirectional and irreversible
  active organism in a passive environment (Hall
  and Piaget)
• Psychodynamic Theory
  
• Organismic (end-state in development) and
  dynamic (regression possible) change is
  qualitative stage-like tension resolution
  focus on emotional and personality development
  (Jung, Feud and Erikson)
• Mechanism
• Organism analogous to a machine composed of
  discrete parts child passive in an active
  environment change is quantitative and additive
  (Galton and Watson)
• Dialecticism
• Child in dynamic active interaction with
  environment focus on social development
  (Vygotsky and Riegel)
• Contextualism
• Child and environment in dynamic interaction
  focus on individual-context relations (Sarbin and
  Reese)

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Fundamental Questions

• What is it that develops, and how?
• What is the proper unit of analysis? (e.g.,
  schemas, cognitive structures, strategies for
  information-processing or action patterns)
• The majority of developmental psychologists
  examine what changes occur in particular patterns
  of behaviour (usually in children), how, why and
  when

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Fundamental Questions

• This translates into questions about what can be
  expected of a normal child at a particular age
  (i.e. What is age-appropriate) within and across
  various domains
• Developmental psychologists look for levels of
  competence in physical (fine and gross motor),
  communicative (verbal and nonverbal), social
  (play and interactions with others), cognitive
  (intellectual), and even sexual and moral domains

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Biological Development
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Genetic Foundations of Human Development

• The human body is made up of trillions of tiny
  units called cells
• At the centre of each is a cell nucleus, where
  the functions of the cell are controlled
• Inside each cell nucleus, there are tiny
  structures that look like rods, called
  chromosomes
• Chromosomes contain the genetic information that
  makes each human being unique
• Human beings have a total of 46 chromosomes
  (other species have a different number, e.g,
  chimps have 4, and horses have 64)
• Chromosomes predominantly come in pairs (i.e. 23
  pairs of chromosomes in each human cell)

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Chromosomes

• One chromosome from each pair comes from the
  biological mother, the other from the father
• Each chromosome in a pair corresponds to the
  other in terms of size, shape and the genetic
  code that the chromosome regulates
• Chromosomes are made up of a chemical substance
  called deoxyribonucleic acid, also referred to as
  DNA (a twisted ladder-like substance)

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DNA

• A gene is a segment (of differing lengths) of
  DNA along the length of a chromosome, which sends
  instructions for the composition of proteins to
  the cytoplasm (i.e. the area of the cell
  surrounding the nucleus) and these proteins
  trigger chemical reactions
• A unique feature of DNA is that it can reproduce
  itself, enabling a single cell at conception to
  develop into a complex human being with a complex
  body made up of trillions of cells
• In the process of cell duplication (called
  mitosis), the DNA splits down the middle (like a
  zip) and each open side of the ladder then is
  free to attach to a new mate from the cytoplasm
  of the cell
• This process then creates two identical DNA
  ladders, each containing one new side and one old
  side of the previous ladder

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Sex Cells

• At the level of the chromosomes, during mitosis,
  each chromosome replicates itself, such that each
  new cell contains an exact replica of the old
  cell, with identical genetic information
• The sex cells, sperm and ovum, ( gametes) are
  special in that they contain only a half set of
  chromosomes (n23, instead of 46)
• Gametes are produced in a form of genetic
  shuffling called meiosis, in which chromosomes
  exchange segments, so that the genes from one
  chromosome are replaced with the genes from
  another chromosome, resulting in new hereditary
  combinations
• This is why each individual is unique

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Sex Cells

• For males, each time meiosis occurs, 4 sperm are
  produced and the cells from which sperm arise are
  constantly produced throughout the life span
• Female gamete production is much more limited --
  a female only produces one ovum after each
  meiosis
• In addition, the female is born with all her ova
  already present in her ovaries and she can
  reproduce for only 3-4 decades

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Human Fertilisation

• When sperm and ovum unite at fertilisation, the
  cell that results is called a zygote and has the
  usual 46 chromosomes
• Sometimes a zygote that has started to duplicate
  separates into two clusters of cells, that
  develop into two individuals
• Identical or monozygotic twins occur at approx.
  3 in every 1,000 births
• This process is prompted by a variety of
  environmental influences including changes in
  temperature and oxygen levels and late
  fertilisation of the ovum
• Fraternal or dizygotic twins (the most common
  type of multiple birth) result when two ova are
  released from a woman's ovaries and both get
  fertilised
• The resulting twins are genetically no more
  alike than ordinary siblings

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Sex Cells

• Each of the 23 pairs of chromosomes in each cell
  can be distinguished from one another
• Twenty-two of these pairs contain chromosomes
  that match (autosomes)
• The 23rd pair consists of sex chromosomes
• In females, this pair is referred to as XX, in
  males it is referred to as XY
• When gametes form in males, the X and Y
  chromosomes separate into different sperm cells,
  so that the sex of a new organism depends on
  whether an X-carrying or a Y-carrying sperm
  fertilises the ovum
• In females, all gametes carry an X chromosome

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Alleles

• Two or more forms of each gene occur at the same
  place on the chromosomes, one inherited from each
  parent
• Each different form of a gene is called an
  allele
• If the alleles from both parents are alike, the
  child is said to be homozygous and will display
  the inherited shared characteristic
• If the alleles are different, the child is
  referred to as heterozygous and relationships
  between the alleles will determine which
  characteristic will appear
• In many heterozygous pairings, only one allele
  (dominant as opposed to recessive) accounts for
  the child's characteristics (e.g. hair colour is
  a dominant-recessive inheritance)
• The allele for dark hair is dominant, the allele
  for blonde is recessive
• Blond hair, therefore, can only result from 2
  recessive alleles
• However, heterozygous individuals with just one
  recessive allele can pass that characteristic to
  their children (carriers)

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Recessive Disorders

• Many disabilities and diseases are the product
  of recessive alleles
• Phenylketonuria (PKU) affects the way the body
  breaks down proteins that are contained in many
  foods (e.g. cow's milk)
• Infants born with two of these recessive alleles
  lack an enzyme that coverts one of the basic
  amino acids (phenylalanine) that makes up
  proteins into a by-product (tyrosine) essential
  for body functioning
• Without this enzyme, phenylalanine builds to
  toxic levels damaging the CNS
• Around the age of 3-5 months, infants with
  untreated PKU start to lose interest in their
  surroundings, by 1 year, they are permanently
  retarded
• New-born babies are given a blood test for PKU
  and if necessary placed on a low-phenylalanine
  diet
• Although babies treated early may still display
  delayed cognitive development (even small amounts
  of phenylalanine interfere with brain
  functioning) they usually attain an average as
  long as the dietary treatment continues

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Recessive Disorders

• Males and females have an equal chance of
  inheriting recessive disorders carried on the
  autosomes
• But when a harmful allele is carried on the X
  chromosome (i.e. X-linked inheritance) males are
  more likely to be affected because their sex
  chromosomes do not match
• In females, any recessive allele on one X
  chromosome has a good chance of being suppressed
  by a dominant allele on the other X, but the Y
  chromosome is only about 1/3 as long and lacks
  many corresponding alleles to override those on
  the X
• Haemophilia (blood fails to clot normally) is an
  X-linked inheritance, affecting twice as many
  males as females
• Males are also believed to have higher rates of
  miscarriage, infant and childhood death, learning
  disabilities, behaviour disorders, and mental
  retardation
• Nature however, seems to have adjusted for this
  male disadvantage with a greater number of male
  than female births

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Chromosomal Abnormalities

• Disease/disability can also result from
  chromosomal abnormalities, mostly from errors
  during meiosis when the ovum and sperm are formed
  (e.g. a chromosome pair may not separate properly
  or part of a chromosome may break off)
• Since these errors involve much more DNA than
  problems due to single genes, they usually
  produce disorders with many physical and mental
  symptoms
• The most common example of is Down Syndrome
  (approx. 1 in every 800 live births)
• In 95 of cases, this results from a failure of
  the 21st pair of chromosomes to separate during
  meiosis, so that the new organism inherits three
  of these chromosomes rather than the normal two

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Prenatal Development

• Prenatal development begins with conception
• The 38-40 weeks of pregnancy are divided into 3
  phases
• - Trimester 1 Weeks 1-9
• - Trimester 2 Weeks 13-24
• - Trimester 3 Weeks 25-38
• The age of viability is the point at which a
  fetus is likely to survive and usually falls
  between 22 and 26 weeks

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Prenatal Stages of Development

• A division is also made on the basis of the
  organisms development
• - Zygotic Period (Weeks 1-2)
• Lasts from fertilisation until the mass of cells
  leaves the fallopian tube and attaches itself to
  the wall of the uterus
• Events at this time are delicate and uncertain
• As many as 30 of zygotes do not make it through
  this first phase
• By preventing implantation in these cases,
  nature eliminates most prenatal abnormalities in
  the very earliest stages of development

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Prenatal Stages of Development

• Embryonic Period (Weeks 2-8)
• This is when the most rapid prenatal changes
  occur
• The groundwork for all body structures and
  internal organs is laid down at this times the
  embryo is particularly vulnerable
• However, because this rapid development occurs
  in such a short space of time, the risk of
  interference is generally minimised

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Prenatal Stages of Development

• Fetal Period (Weeks 9-3/40)
• Growth rates here are extraordinary, especially
  up to Week 20
• The brain continues to grow rapidly in the last
  3 months

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Prenatal Development

• With improved neurological development, the
  fetus is believed to spend longer periods of time
  awake
• No periods of alertness (measured by heart-rate
  variability) have been detected before 20 weeks,
  whereas at 28 weeks the fetus is believed to
  spend 11 of the time alert, and just before
  birth this increases to 16.
• The third trimester also brings greater
  responsiveness to external stimulation
• At about 24 weeks, a fetus can feel pain (all
  surgical procedures require pain-killers)
• By 25 weeks, a fetus can react to nearby sounds
  with body movements
• In the final weeks, a fetus can show preference
  for the tone and rhythm of its mother's voice

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Prenatal Defects

• Although the prenatal environment is relatively
  constant, there are many features of the external
  environment that are influential to development
• Teratogen is the term given to any agent that
  can damage the fetus, including
• - cigarettes
• - drugs
• - alcohol
• - radiation
• - environmental pollutants
• - diseases
• The embryonic period from weeks 2-9 is when
  serious defects are most likely to occur,
  although the brain, eye and genitals are still
  very much at risk during the fetal period

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Prenatal Defects

• Teratogens can cause physical and/or
  psychological damage, which may not be observed
  until long after birth (e.g. thalidomide)
• For example, high caffeine intake is associated
  with low birth weight, miscarriage and newborn
  withdrawal (i.e. irritability and vomiting)
• In USA 100,000-375,000 'cocaine babies' are born
  each year
• Unlike heroin and methadone (which increase the
  risk of death at birth and result in slow early
  motor development) prenatally exposed cocaine
  babies have lasting difficulties that persist in
  infancy and childhood
• These include inattention and behavioural
  problems, defects of the eyes, bones, kidneys,
  genitals, heart, and brain (including hemorrhages
  and seizures)
• Cocaine is particularly problematic because it
  can attach itself to sperm, enter the zygote, and
  thereby cause birth defects

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Prenatal Defects

• Similarly, smoking during pregnancy results in
  low birth weight and increased risk of other
  serious consequences such as prematurity,
  impaired breathing during sleep, miscarriage,
  infant death and childhood cancer
• Long-term studies have demonstrate that
  prenatally-exposed children have shorter
  attention spans and lower mental ability scores
  in early childhood
• Passive smoking during pregnancy is correlated
  with similar risks
• Besides teratogens, other maternal factors
  contribute to healthy or unhealthy prenatal
  development, including exercise, nutrition,
  emotional stress, maternal age and previous births

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Birth the Newborn Child
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Birth the Newborn Child

• Although birth is a difficult time for the baby,
  healthy babies are surprisingly well-adapted for
  this event
• For example, although strong contractions expose
  the head to pressure, the infant can produce
  stress hormones to alleviate this and can send a
  rich blood supply to the heart and brain to
  withstand oxygen deprivation

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Birth Complications

• Anoxia (inadequate oxygen supply)
• Risk of brain damage results from delayed
  breathing in excess of 3 minutes.
• Children deprived of oxygen during labour appear
  delayed in intellectual and motor progress in
  early childhood, but catch up in school years.
• When serious problems emerge (learning
  disabilities, epilepsy or cerebral palsy) the
  anoxia was probably extreme and could have
  occurred from brain damage before, during or just
  after birth

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Birth Complications

• Preterm and low-birth-weight
• Infants born 3 weeks before 38 weeks and/or
  weighing less than 5.5 pounds
• Birth weight is the best available predictor of
  infant survival and future healthy development
• Pre-term birth and low-birth-weight can result
  in serious physical problems and lasting
  behavioural or psychological problems for the
  child, including frequent illness, over-activity,
  language delay and deficits in motor co-ordination

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Infant Development (18-24 mos)

• Development during infancy constitutes only 2
  of the life-span but is one of the most
  rapidly-changing developmental periods
• Factors affecting physical growth at this time
• - heredity
• - nutrition
• - disease
• - emotional health

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Infant Development (18-24 mos)

• Neonates were previously believed to be largely
  passive, incompetent, and even defenseless, but
  are presently believed to be capable of many
  complex abilities
• Even newborns display a wide variety of
  typically-human capacities that are critical for
  survival and serve to evoke attention and
  care-giving from adults

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Motor Development

• Infants come into the world with dozens of
  reflexes, including eye blink, withdrawal,
  sucking, swimming, grasping etc.
• The palmar grasp, for example, is so strong that
  during the first week of life, a newborn can use
  it to support his/her entire body weight
• Most newborn reflexes disappear during the first
  5 months, due to a gradual increase in the
  voluntary control of behaviour

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Motor Development

• Motor skills are divided into
• - Gross motor development
• Control over actions that help infants navigate
  their environment (e.g. crawling and walking)
• -Fine motor development
• Refers to smaller movements, such as reaching
  and grasping

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Motor Development

• Motor development occurs along two plains
• - in a head-to-tail sequence (cephalocaudal
  trend) with motor control of the head first, then
  arms, trunk and then legs
• - from the centre of the body outward
  (proximodistal trend) with head, trunk, and arm
  control before coordination of arms and fingers

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Motor Development

• Motor skills do not develop in isolation and
  each stage of development results from the
  successful achievement of the previous stage
• According to 'dynamic systems theory of motor
  development' mastering motor skills involves the
  development of increasingly complex systems of
  actions, in which separate abilities are blended
  together, producing more effective ways of
  controlling and exploring the child's environment
• Children also display the development of motor
  skills idiosyncratically

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Perceptual Development

• Touch, taste, smell and hearing are well
  developed at birth
• An innate sense of balance and self-orientation
  becomes increasingly refined with maturation and
  experience of motor control
• Sight is the least mature at birth
• Visual acuity, scanning, tracking and colour
  perception improve in the early months, followed
  by depth perception
• Of all perceptual developments, visual skills
  are perhaps the most intricately bound with
  social development
• For example, babies of a very young age prefer
  human faces over more inanimate forms, and such
  discriminations are often interpreted by
  care-givers as the beginnings of social
  interactions are heavily reinforced

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Cross-modal Sensory Integration

• Young babies have a remarkable ability to
  combine information across sensory modalities
• According to Gibsons' differentiation theory,
  children adapt to constantly changing
  environments by searching for constants
• This effect is demonstrated both with the
  internal features of a stimulus, as with a range
  of features among stimuli
• Acting on the environment plays a major role in
  perceptual differentiation and according to the
  Gibsons is guided by affordances (i.e. the action
  possibilities a situation offers a particular
  individual with particular motor skills)

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Sensory Deprivation

• Stimulating physical environments coupled with
  warm care-giving provide a critical backdrop to
  development on all levels
• In motor development, for example, children
  reared in severely deprived environments show
  delays in achieving early motor milestones,
  typically displaying stereotypical movements and
  immature play
• Whilst motor development frequently reaches
  normal levels for these children, mental
  development frequently remains significantly
  behind even in adolescence
• Dennis (1973) studied Lebanese children who were
  orphaned shortly after birth and spent their
  first year of life lying in a cot with no
  individual attention from caregivers
• Extreme retardation in both motor and language
  development emerged - many of these children did
  not sit up until age 1 and did not walk until
  preschool
• Their IQ's were also extremely retarded

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Sensory Deprivation

• As a result of legal changes, many of these
  children were then adopted by normal parents and
  lived in normal family environments
• Dennis compared those adopted at different ages
• Those adopted before age 2 achieved the average
  IQ within 2 years, but those adopted after age 2
  had persistently low IQs (70's), even with 6 or
  more years with the adopted family
• This study suggests that there is a sensitive'
  period of development (at least intellectually)
  around the age 2
• A similar study by Rutter (1998) suggested that
  cognitive attainment was greatest for children
  adopted before 6 months of age

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Cognitive Development
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Cognitive Development

• Cognitive/intellectual development has been
  addressed from a number of different conceptual
  and psychological perspectives
• There are 3 key approaches to this area of
  development
• Qualitative Changes
• - Piaget's cognitive-developmental stage theory
  and Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective
• Quantitative Changes
• - psychometric or 'intelligence' approach.
• Process Changes
• - information-processing approach

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Qualitative Approaches to Cognitive Development

• Both Piaget and Vygotsky began by asking the
  same fundamental question
• Do children learn to think and then speak, or
  does language facilitate or establish complex
  cognitive abilities?
• Piaget believed that language was relatively
  unimportant for cognitive development
• Conversely, Vygotsky suggested that language was
  critical for cognitive development, since
  according to his sociocultural perspective, it is
  through language-based social interactions that
  cognitive abilities become refined

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Piaget primarily believed that the child was a
  motivated, active learner
• In line with an organicist worldview, he
  suggested that the mind adapted to the
  psychological environment with structures that
  enabled it to become increasingly complex, in the
  same way that the body adapted to the biological
  environment with similar structures
• Piaget outlined 4 specific stages of cognitive
  development
• - Sensorimotor
• - Preoperational
• - Concrete operational
• - Formal operational
• According to Piaget, all stages are invariant
  and universal

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Piagets Schemes

• According to Piaget, the psychological
  structures that enable adaptation are called
  schemes
• First schemes take the form of simple motor
  action patterns such as the "dropping scheme
• For example, for a very young baby, this scheme
  will take the form of simply grasping an object
  and then releasing it
• This scheme then becomes increasingly complex,
  such that by 18 months, an infant will not only
  drop objects, but will throw, bounce and
  manipulate
• Schemes shift from being action-based to being
  mentally-based, so, for example, a child can
  think about objects in complex ways before
  manipulating them
• Two processes were said to account for changes
  in schemes
• - adaptation and organisation

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Piagets Adaptation

• Adaptation involves constructing schemes from
  direct contact with the environment
• It consists of 2 complementary activities
• - Assimilation
• During assimilation, current schemes are used to
  interpret the external world (e.g. preschooler
  sees her first camel and calls it a horse,
  thereby using her already-existing 'horse' scheme
  to name a novel stimulus)
• - Accommodation
• In accommodation, we adjust old schemes or
  create new ones when our current schemes do not
  adequately inform us of what the environment is
  presenting, (e.g. the preschooler who calls a
  camel 'a horse with humps', has thereby revised
  her horse scheme, in recognition of the fact that
  not all horses have humps)

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Piagets Adaptation

• According to Piaget, these processes work
  closely together in every organism-environment
  interaction
• When children are not embarking upon significant
  cognitive change (cognitive equilibrium), Piaget
  suggested that they are assimilating more than
  accommodating.
• During times of rapid change (disequilibrium or
  cognitive discomfort) they do more accommodating
  than assimilating, but once the schemes have been
  modified, individuals then revert to more
  assimilation
• Piaget employed the term equilibration to
  describe the back-and-forth movement between
  equilibrium and disequilibrium that defines
  development
• Each time equilibration occurs, more effective
  schemes are produced

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Piagets Organisation

• During organisation, schemes change internally
  (i.e. not as a result of direct contact with the
  external environment)
• Once children form new structures, they start to
  rearrange them, linking them with other schemes
  to create a strongly interconnected cognitive
  system
• For example, eventually the baby will relate
  dropping (i.e. the dropping scheme) to 'throwing'
  and to the developing understanding of 'here'
  and 'there' and 'near' and 'far' etc.

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Sensorimotor Stage (0-2)

• Infants "think" by acting upon the world with
  their eyes, ears, hands and legs
• The sensorimotor stage consists of 6 sub-stages
  that enable a child to progress from simple
  reflexive schemes to mental representation
  schemes
• Here basic play and imitation first appear and
  both exert an important influence on this stage
  of cognitive development
• By Sub-stage 4 infants begin to organise schemes
  and perform complex action sequences

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Sensorimotor Stage (0-2)
Goal-directed/intentional behaviour By 8 months,
infants can coordinate schemes to solve
sensorimotor problems (e.g. pulling a level to
hear the sound of a music box) Piaget described
this as an appreciation of physical causality
(i.e. the causal action one object exerts over
another through contact) which he believed was
the foundation of all later problem-solving.
Object permanence At the sensorimotor stage,
infants begin to understand that objects continue
to exist even when they cannot be seen Object
permanence is not complete because they do not
have a clear image of the object persisting when
hidden from view This is demonstrated when
infants make the A-B error - if an object is
moved from one hiding place to another (A to B),
babies will search for it only in the first
hiding place (A)

62
Preoperational Stage (2-7)
The greatest changes here occur in the
development of symbolic or representational
activity Language and imaginary play first
appear Whilst generally unconcerned with
language, Piaget acknowledged that it is the most
flexible means of engaging in mental
representation Imaginary play enables children
to acquire and strengthen representational
schemes Other modes of symbolic representation
that begin to develop at this stage are drawing,
and the use of spatial symbols (e.g. photographs,
models and maps) Preschool children can now use
symbols to depict what they learned during
sensorimotor development, but thinking, still
lacks more complex logical qualities

63
Concrete Operational Stage (7-11)

• Conservation
• Piaget studied conservation in terms of number,
  length, quantity, mass, weight, and volume.
  Children here pass the conservation task (i.e.
  changing liquid from a container of one size to a
  container of another size conserves the amount of
  liquid, although the appearance is altered)
• Hierarchical classification
• Children here organise objects and events into
  classes and subclasses (i.e. they pass the class
  inclusion problem)
• Seriation
• Children here can order items along a
  quantitative dimension (e.g. ordering a series of
  sticks from shortest to longest)
• Spatial operations
• They can deal with distance, directions and the
  spatial relationships between objects
• Although reasoning becomes logical at this
  point, it is not yet abstract

64
Formal Operational Stage (11)

• Abstract thought permits adolescents to reason
  with symbols that do not relate directly to
  objects or events in the real world
• Hypothetico-deductive reasoning
• When faced with a problem, they can start with a
  general theory of all possible factors that might
  affect the outcome and deduce from it specific
  hypotheses about what might happen)
• Propositional thought
• They can evaluate the logic of propositions
  without referring to the real world)

65
Formal Operational Stage (11)

• Proposition 1
• If elephants are bigger than dogs
• And dogs are bigger than mice
• Then, elephants are bigger than mice
• Proposition 2
• If mice are bigger than dogs
• And dogs are bigger than elephants
• Then, mice are bigger than elephants

66
Evaluating Piagets Contribution

• Piaget made an overwhelming contribution to
  child development, not only in terms of the
  implications of his findings, but also in terms
  of later research these stimulated in cognitive
  development and how children conceptualise
  themselves, others, and social relationships in
  genera
• Piaget's theory also had a major impact on
  education, particularly in enhancing
  child-centered learning styles, discovery
  learning and direct contact with the environment
• But Piagets theory as not gone without its
  opponents

67
Evaluating Piagets Contribution

• - Clarity (his model of the process of
  equilibration is ill-defined)
• - Accuracy (overall, infants appear more
  competent and adults less competent than Piaget
  suggested)
• - Training (training has been found to enhance
  performance on Piagetian tasks)
• Variables such as task familiarity and the kind
  of knowledge being tested also influence task
  performance
• This finding challenges Piagets belief that
  discovery learning rather than adult teaching is
  the most effective way to facilitate cognitive
  development

68
Evaluating Piagets Contribution

• The most controversial question is whether
  development takes place in these or any other
  precise stages
• For example
• - Few abilities are absent during one stage
  and are then present in another
• - Few periods of cognitive equilibrium, instead
  children appear to be constantly changing.
• There is general consensus that cognitive
  development is not as broadly stage-like as
  Piaget believed, and they reject the concept of
  the stage of cognitive development to a lesser or
  greater extent

69
Vygotskys Sociocultural Theory

• Another qualitative perspective on cognitive
  development was proposed by Vygotsky
• He agreed with Piaget that children are active
  in the learning process but he viewed cognitive
  development as socially-mediated
• His sociocultural theory of cognitive
  development was inherently both social and
  language based, and was generally more
  contextualistic, especially at the cultural level
  
• According to Vygotsky, social interaction is
  necessary for children to develop the ways of
  thinking and behaving that define a culture
• He believed that such developments are not
  stage-like and that as soon as children acquire
  language, their improved ability to communicate
  with others leads to continuous changes in
  thought and behaviour that are culturally-specific

70
Vygotskys Sociocultural Theory

• A good example of the distinction between
  Piaget and Vygotsky is in self-talk

71
Vygotskys Sociocultural Theory

• Piaget referred to this as 'egocentric speech'
  and suggested that it served little personal or
  social functions other than as "talk for self
• Vygotsky believed that self-talk had important
  functions of self-guidance and self-direction for
  the child
• There is more evidence in favour of Vygotsky in
  this regard -- Berk, (1992a) found that children
  engage more readily in this form of self-talk
  when tasks are more difficult
• There is also evidence to show that with age,
  self-talk goes underground, becoming more like
  silent lip movements (Bivens Berk, 1990)

72
Process Changes in Cognitive Development

• Shortcomings in the explanation of process,
  inherent in qualitative theories such as
  Piaget's, were partly responsible for the birth
  of the more recent information-processing (I-P)
  account of cognitive development
• This particular approach was not developed
  specifically to address developmental concerns
  but reflects more of a new way of looking at the
  processes of cognition in general
• Information-processing psychologists construct
  detailed and testable theoretical models of what
  the cognitive system actually does (step by step
  in real time) when dealing with a specific
  cognitive task
• The language of computer science is borrowed by
  all models to describe the physiology of the
  brain and the range of strategies (cognitions)
  the brain requires to run particular tasks

73
Information-Processing Development

• The mind is a complex symbol-manipulating
  cognitive system through which units of
  information pass, from input to output
• Units of information of differing magnitudes and
  complexity are encoded and retained in symbolic
  form
• Internal processes then operate to recode or
  revise the symbolic structure

74
Information-Processing Development

• Development from this perspective is not
  stage-based, but occurs as a pattern of
  continuous growth in terms of specific mental
  processes, or in terms of a cognitive system
  based upon these processes
• These processes are assumed to be similar at
  all ages, but present to a lesser extent in
  children
• Like Piaget's account, this perspective views
  the child as an active sense-making agent

75
Information-Processing Development

• From a developmental perspective, we can ask,
  for example, whether the changes in cognitive
  performances observed over time reflect increases
  in capacity or efficiency of the
  information-processing system.
• I-P Capacity
• There is some memory-span evidence demonstrating
  that children can remember increasingly long
  lists of numbers, letters, words etc.
• I-P Efficiency
• Kail (1990) demonstrated that speed of
  processing exponentially increases with age
  across a variety of tasks (there is also some
  biological evidence in support of this)

76
Information-Processing Development

• Siegler's 'rule-assessment approach' is a
  contemporary example of how cognitive development
  can be investigated from an I-P perspective
• Siegler argued that cognitive development
  consists largely of the sequential acquisition of
  increasingly powerful rules for solving problems
  and that children of various ages devise rules to
  solve particular tasks
• Siegler has been quite successful in identifying
  orderly developmental sequences of
  rule-acquisitions in several problem areas

77
Information-Processing Development

• Flavell proposed seven general features of
  cognitive development
• - Information-processing Capacity
• - Domain-specific Knowledge
• - Concrete and Formal Operations
• - Quantitative Thinking
• - A Sense of the Game
• - Metacognition
• -Improving Existing Competencies

78
Information-Processing Development

• A major strength of the I-P approach to
  cognitive development is the wealth of research
  it has generated
• For example, one important applied contribution
  is that the human cognitive system has severe
  limitations on its ability to process information
  and the quality of an individual's cognitive
  performance will suffer greatly when these
  limitations are exceeded (i.e. under conditions
  of information overload)
• However, it remains the case that many of the
  findings from this tradition have yet to be
  integrated, and they do not readily suggest links
  with other areas of development

79
Quantitative Changes in Cognitive Development

• The psychometric approach to cognitive
  development is more product than process oriented
• A variety of intelligence and cognitive tests
  have been used to assess mental abilities since
  the early 1900'swhen Alfred Binet developed the
  first intelligence test
• The 'Stanford-Binet' devised by Terman computed
  the IQ score as mental age /chronological age x
  100 (MA/CAx100) which provided a general score of
  100 for children with a mental age above the
  chronological age and below 100 if the reverse is
  the case.
• The majority of children score around 100
  (WISC-III -- Weschler Intelligence Scales for
  Children)

80
Quantitative Changes in Cognitive Development

• The WISC, for example, cannot be used to assess
  children below age 3, although a number of infant
  tests have been devised (e.g. the Bayley Scales
  of Infant Development examines sensory, motor and
  cognitive skills)
• IQ scores are stable and it is generally
  accepted that they become increasingly stable
  with age, especially after age 12
• Furthermore, these scores are largely predictive
  across a range of social groupings, with high
  scores correlated with positive (academic)
  outcomes such as going to college and low scores
  correlated with a number of negative long-term
  outcomes, including illiteracy and delinquency
• There are no gender differences in general
  scores, though a number of differences have been
  identified in sub-scores
• For example, males produce generally higher
  scores on spatial tasks with females producing
  higher scores on verbal tasks

81
Quantitative Changes in Cognitive Development

• There are no gender differences in general
  scores, though a number of differences have been
  identified in sub-scores
• For example, males produce generally higher
  scores on spatial tasks with females producing
  higher scores on verbal tasks

82
Social Development
83
Developing A Sense of Self

• A fundamental feature of our social
  relationships and the social roles that we adopt
  is a unique understanding of who we are as
  individuals (i.e. are we male or female, good or
  bad, popular or unpopular?)
• One of the first and certainly most significant
  individuals with whom one interacts is oneself
• Who am I? -- permeates all aspects of all of our
  lives and takes up much of our time, past present
  and future

84
Developing A Sense of Self

• Freud believed that the initial bond between
  caregiver/mother and child was a
• very close symbiotic relationship, in which the
  infant has no real sense of
• being a separate self
• In fact, some psychoanalysts in the same
  tradition as Freud suggested that
• several months after birth, infants have a
  psychological birth in which a
• sense of self emerges
• Many other developmentalists disagree with this
  and believe that infants
• are born with the foundations of a sense of self
  or separateness and this
• sense simply becomes more complex as the infant
  develops
• increasingly complex control over the world of
  objects, events and people

85
Developing A Sense of Self

• Subjective self
• A sense of an inner self, characterised by
  self-efficacy
• Objective self
• A sense of the self that can be observed by
  others, characterised by self-awarenes
• Self-awareness in particular has attracted a
  great deal of research interest

86
Developing Self-Awareness

• Self-awareness first appears around 15-18 months
  of age
• A common test involves allowing a baby free
  exploration of her/his own mirror image
• While apparently wiping the child's face, the
  experimenter places a red spot on the child's
  nose
• To pass the self-awareness test, the child is
  required to touch her own nose before touching
  the nose in the mirror
• Lewis and Brooks (1978) demonstrated that no
  9-12 month-olds passed, compared to 3/4 of
  21-month-olds
• An emerging sense of self also correlates with
  increases in self-naming and requests to conduct
  tasks independently

87
Developing A Social Self

• By 24 months of age children also begin to
  demonstrate a social self
• Play, for example, incorporates distinct roles
  (e.g. being the 'mummy)
• But this pattern reflects a self with distinct
  concrete features that relate to specific
  physical settings and specific tasks
• What is yet to emerge is a more abstract,
  internally-aware global sense of self (a
  developmental trend from concrete to abstract
  that also signifies cognitive development in
  general)

88
Developing An Internal Self

• In the early school years, this concrete sense
  becomes more formal and abstract and more focused
  on internal traits and characteristics than on
  physical features
• This emerging complex sense of self will
  incorporate self-worth and related
  self-evaluations, social comparisons and will be
  related more directly with internal states such
  as feelings
• This developing identity becomes increasingly
  complex until teenage years, at which point it
  appears to go through something of a crisis, from
  which a more stable identity usually emerges

89
Developing Self-Esteem

• The most distinctive feature of this
  increasingly complex sense of self is the extent
  to which it incorporates self-evaluations,
  collectively referred to as self-esteem
• Three sources of self-esteem
• Direct experience with success or failure across
  areas (academically, socially and artistically)
• Values dictated by parents, peers, teachers etc.
  - the extent to which each area is valued will
  render one area more important than another
• Judgements and labels provided by others
  (especially parents)

90
Developing Self-Esteem

• Self-esteem is believed to be characterised by
  the relationship between what a person would like
  to be (ideal self) and what the person perceives
  her/him-self to be (real self) -- this may amount
  to achieving what is valued
• Low self-esteem (where the real self des not
  achieve what is valued to the point of
  equivalence with the ideal self) is often
  correlated with feelings of depression and a
  number of studies have reported a significant
  negative correlation between low self-esteem and
  depression in early childhood and in adolescence
• That is, the lower the score of self-esteem, the
  more depressed the child describes him/herself to
  be
• Depression is believed to be highly likely when
  an individual sets standards that are very high
  and even unrealistic

91
Developing Self-Esteem

• Support systems can be important for affirming
  self-evaluations
• Self-esteem is particularly unstable, as any
  exposure to adolescence will indicate
• One point in life at which it is particularly
  unstable is in the transition from primary to
  post-primary school, as a coherent sense of self
  is unfolding

92
Gender Identity

• An understanding of gender is a fundamental
  feature of
• one's identity and involves
• - a gender concept (understanding what an
  individual's biological gender is and how this
  feature is permanent)
• - a sex-role
• (what is appropriate behaviour for each gender)

93
Gender Identity

• Three stages in the development of gender
  concept
• Gender Identity
• (correctly labeling the gender of the self and
  others, usually well established by age three)
• Gender Stability
• (understanding that people stay the same gender
  throughout life (e.g. when you grow up will you
  be a mummy or a daddy?), usually established by
  age four
• - Gender Constancy
• (understanding that gender is more than what is
  simply observed (e.g. if a boy wears a dress,
  does that make him a girl?), usually established
  by age five

94
Gender Identity

• A well-established gender identity also requires
  the consistent display of gender-appropriate
  behaviours -- by 18-24 months, children show
  preferences for gender-appropriate toys (even
  though it may be months before they can identify
  their own gender)
• Sex-role stereotypes have been observed
  universally
• Williams and Best (1990) found that across 28
  countries, the most
• strongly held stereotypes for women were
  weakness,
• gentleness, appreciativeness and
  soft-heartedness, whereas for men,
• these were aggression, strength, coarseness and
  cruelty
• We also know that these stereotypes develop early

95
Gender Identity

• Two-year-olds already associate hoovers and food
  with women and cars and tools with men
• Three-year-olds assign occupations, tasks and
  toys according to gender stereotypes
• Five-year-olds associate personality traits
  according to traditional stereotypes
• In the early formation of these stereotypes,
  children have been found to be extremely rigid
  and biased (these patterns which decline as
  societal rules are discovered to be flexible)
• For example, a six-year-old is likely to say
  that a boy who plays with dolls is "wrong",
  whereas a nine-year-old will say that he is not
  wrong, but that most boys simply don't do it

96
Early Friendships-Parents

• The parent-child relationship is the first
  intimate social relationship -- Bowlby suggested
  that children's internal working models of how
  relationships operate are based on this even by
  age five
• Particular parent-child relationships appear to
  dictate later social practices
• For example, children securely attached to
  their mothers in infancy, (compared to those
  insecurely attached) were later observed to be
  more sociable, more positive in their
  relationships with friends and siblings, less
  clinging and dependent on teachers, less
  aggressive and disruptive, more empathetic and
  more emotionally mature in their approach to
  school and other contexts outside of the home
• Even in adolescence these individuals have more
  intimate friendships, are more likely to be rated
  as leaders and have higher self-esteem
• Those with insecure attachments (particularly
  avoidant attachments) not only have less positive
  and supportive friendships in adolescence, but
  also appear more likely to become sexually active
  at an earlier age and even to conduct riskier
  sexual encounters

97
Early Friendships-Siblings

• Sibling relationships in the early school years
  are generally believed to be less central to the
  lives of school-age children than peer
  relationships and children of this age group are
  more likely to turn to a parent or a peer for
  intimacy or companionship than to a sibling
• Characteristic sibling relationships at this age
  include
• - caregiver
• - buddy
• - critical
• - rivalrous (likely with the close in age and
  boy-boy)
• - casual

98
Early Friendships-Peers

• By six months of age, two babies placed together
  will touch, pull hair
• and reach for each others clothing
• By 14-18 months, infants engage in parallel
  play, in which they
• simply play side by side with different toys and
  occasionally
• co-operate
• It is only around 18 months that we see the
  beginnings of co-operative
• play, such as chasing
• By age three or four, children prefer to play
  with others than to play
• alone and this takes the form of co-operative
  and co-ordinated
• exchanges, including instances of group pretend
  play

99
Early Friendships-Peers

• At age three to four, we also see the first
  signs of exclusive
• peer preferences -- more than half of the
  children of this age
• will have at least one mutual friendship likely
  to last at least six
• months
• These relationships show many features
  associated with friendship
• that are not observed with strangers, including
  interactions that are
• longer, more positive and less negative, and
  disputes that are more
• likely to be resolved
• Early friendships are an important forum in
  which children can practise essential social
  skills
• By age 7, peers take up the largest portion of a
  child's social life

100
Gender in Friendships

• Gender segregation is perhaps the most
  distinctive feature of
• school-age socialisation and appears to exist in
  every culture
• Gottman (1986) reported that as much as 65 of
  preschool
• friendships are with same-sex peers
• Between 6 and 12 years, favouritism for the same
  gender and
• antagonism and negative stereotyping towards the
  opposite gender
• are common practice, if not the norm
• Gender segregation is even more pronounced as
  friendships become
• more intense and lasting (e.g. less than 3 of
  3rd and 4th graders
• have a close opposite-sex friend)

101
Gender in Friendships
102
Gender in Friendships

• As children proceed through early school, the
  number of
• acquaintances and friends increases and these
  relationships
• generally become more intense and exclusive
• There are also sex differences with regard to
  friendships
• Waldrop and Halverson (1975) used the terms
  extensive and intensive
• to describe the different patterns observed in
  boys' and girls'
• friendships, respectively
• Boys groups are larger, more accepting of
  newcomers, play more
• outdoors and roam a larger area
• Girls commonly play more indoors and nearer to
  the home

103
Adolescent Friendships

• Many new features characterise adolescent
  friendships
• Gender segregation is reduced, group conformity
  increases
• and adolescents strive to become even more
  independent
• from parents
• Teenagers spend over half their waking lives
  with peers
• and less than 5 with parents
• Adolescent friendships are more intimate
  loyalty within
• the friendship becomes highly valued they last
  longer
• and peers become the primary confidant as
  self-disclosure
• with parents drops abruptly

104
Common Peer Patterns

• - Altruism (behaviour that explicitly benefits
  another)
• First observed around age two to three with
  children sharing a
• toy or offering to help another child who is
  hurt
• - Aggression (behaviour that reflects intent to
  injure another)
• Observed in two to three year-olds when they
  throw things at, or hit
• With increasing age, these patterns of physical
  injury are replaced
• with more psychological and subtle hurt (e.g.
  taunting)
• At all ages, boys show more physical aggression
  than girls,
• who display what is referred to as relational
  aggression
• This female aggressive behaviour appears to be
  more aimed at
• damaging the self-esteem or peer relationships
  and commonly
• includes threats of social exclusion

105
Bullying

• Repeated torments of another with words,
  gestures, intentional exclusion from a group, or
  physical injury)
• Is a characteristic of school-age aggression
• Olweus reported that as many as 9 of elementary
  school children are victims
• Victim characteristics include anxiety,
  passivity, sensitivity, low self-esteem, lack of
  a sense of humour and comparative lack of friends
• Victims are often unpopular with peers because
  they appear unable to assert themselves (e.g.
  they do not initiate play)
• Common consequences (especially of more
  serious/protracted episodes) include loneliness,
  school avoidance, low self-esteem and even
  depression in later years

106
Popularity

• Features that children prefer in forming
  friendships include
• physical characteristics such as attractiveness
  and height
• But even at a young age, behaviour is deemed
  more important
• than appearance