Chapter 8:
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Source: Papalia & Martorell (15th ed.), Santrock (17th ed.), Boyd & Bee (7th ed.)
The Self-Concept and Cognitive Development
• Self-Concept (sense of self)
o Descriptive and evaluative mental picture of one’s
abilities and traits.
• Self-Definition
o Cluster of characteristics used to describe oneself.
• Real Self
o The self one actually is.
• Ideal Self
o The self one would like to be.
• Cultural Differences in Self-Concept
o Children from individualistic cultures view the nature
of the self as stable and unchanging.
o Children from collectivistic cultures, where social
roles and interactions carry greater weight, are more
likely to believe the self to be malleable.
• Disability and Self-Concept
o Physical disabilities do not have a strong effect on
self-esteem but do affect beliefs about physical
competence and, to a lesser extent, physical
appearance and social acceptance.
o Children with learning disabilities are also equivalent
to nonaffected peers in global self-concept but lower
within the academic domain.
• Self-Esteem
o The judgment a person makes about their self-worth.
o Before about ages 5 to 7, young children’s self-
esteem is not firmly based on reality, and most young
children wildly overestimate their abilities.
o Children’s self-esteem also tends to be
unidimensional.
o High self-esteem is generally associated with positive
outcomes.
• Regulating Emotions
o Individualistic cultures tend to value the free
expression of emotions.
o Cultures with collectivistic and interdependent values
are more likely to encourage minimizing strong
emotional expressions, especially if those emotions
are negative.
• Understanding Emotions
o Social Emotions
▪ Emotions involved in the regulation of
social behavior that require self-awareness
and the understanding of others’
viewpoints.
• Erikson: Initiative vs. Guilt
o This conflict marks a split between two parts of the
personality: the part that remains a child, full of
exuberance and a desire to try new things and test
new powers, and the part that is becoming an adult,
constantly examining the propriety of motives and
actions.
o Virtue: Purpose
Moral Development
• Development that involves thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
regarding rules and conventions about what people should do
in their interactions with other people.
Piaget’s Moral Reasoning
• Heteronomous Morality (4 – 7 years old)
o Children think of justice and rules as unchangeable
properties of the world, removed from the control of
people.
o Immanent Justice
▪ If a rule is broken, punishment will be meted
out immediately.
• Transitional Stage (7 – 10 years old)
• Autonomous Morality (10 years old and older)
o They become aware that rules and laws are created
by people, and in judging an action they consider the
actor’s intentions as well as the consequences.
o Accepts change and recognize that rules are merely
convenient conventions, subject to change.
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Psychosocial Development in Early Childhood
Gender
• Gender Identity
o Awareness of one’s gender and all it implies in one’s
society of origin.
• Sex Differences
o Physically, among the larger sex differences are boys’
higher activity level, superior motor performance,
especially after puberty, and greater propensity for
physical aggression.
o Sex-typed play preferences increase between
toddlerhood and middle childhood, and the degree of
sex-typed behavior exhibited early in life is a strong
indicator of later gender-based behavior.
o Boys and girls do equally well on tasks involving basic
mathematical skills and are equally capable of
learning math but show variations in specific abilities.
o Girls generally show a verbal advantage.
• Gender Roles
o Behaviors, interests, attitudes, skills, and traits that a
culture considers appropriate for each sex.
• Gender-Typing
o Acquisition of a gender role.
• Gender Stereotype
o Preconceived generalizations about male or female
role behavior.
Perspectives on Gender Development
Biological Approach
• Across the life span and starting early in development, men, on
average, have larger brain volume than women.
• Girls’ brains have a higher proportion of gray matter (neurons)
and a thicker cortex, and show greater cerebral blood flow.
• Boys’ brains contain a higher proportion of white matter (axons
for communication between neurons) and larger volume in the
central subdivision of the bed nucleus stria terminalis.
• Variations in Gender Identity
o Transgender People
▪ Individuals whose gender identity is
different from their biological sex.
▪ Children, especially girls, who will later
identify as transgender generally show
strong and persistent gender dysphoria
early in childhood.
o Intersex
▪ Those born with sexual or reproductive
anatomical variations not typical for male or
female bodies.
Gender Dysphoria
- The feeling of psychological distress experienced by
individuals when there is a mismatch between gender
identity and biological sex.
Evolutionary Approach
• Children’s gender roles underlie the evolved mating and child-
rearing strategies of adult males and females.
• Theory of Sexual Selection (Darwin)
o Gender roles developed in response to men’s and
women’s differing reproductive needs.
 Psychoanalytic Approach
• Identification
o Adoption of characteristics, beliefs, attitudes, values,
and behaviors of the parent of the same sex.
Cognitive Approach
• Kohlberg’s Cognitive-Developmental Theory
o Gender knowledge precedes gendered behavior.
o Gender Constancy (Sex-Category Constancy)
▪ Awareness that one will always be male or
female.
o Gender Identity
▪ Awareness of one’s own gender and that of
others typically occurs between ages 2 and
3.
o Gender Stability
▪ Awareness that gender does not change.
o Gender Consistency
▪ Realization that a girl remains a girl even if
she has a short haircut and plays with
trucks and a boy remains a boy even if he
has long hair and earrings typically occurs
between ages 3 and 7.
• Bem’s Gender-Schema Theory
o Children socialize themselves in their gender roles by
developing a mentally organized network of
information about what it means to be male or female
in a particular culture.
Social Learning Approach
• Walter Mischel
o Children acquire gender roles by imitating models and
being rewarded for gender-appropriate behavior.
o Behavioral feedback, together with direct teaching by
parents and other adults, reinforces gender-typing.
o Gender behavior precedes gender knowledge.
• Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory
o Children learn gender roles through socialization.
• Family Influences
o Parents with more traditional gender-role beliefs tend
to react more negatively to children playing with
cross-gender–typed toys.
• Peer Influences
o Preschoolers generally play in sex-segregated
groups that reinforce gender-typed behavior.
• Cultural Influences
o Cultural influences around us will influence the
degree to which we become gender-typed.
Play
• Early locomotor play is believed to support gross motor skill and
neuromuscular development.
• Exercise play increases from early childhood to the early
primary school years, and vigorous activity may help develop
muscle strength, endurance, efficiency of movement, and
athletic coordination.
• Social play allows children the opportunity to develop and
sustain friendships, practice cooperation, negotiate conflict, and
build complex social skills in coordination with peers.
• Pretend play has been linked to cognitive functions, such as
creativity, flexible thinking, perspective taking, and exploring the
bounds of fantasy and reality.
Cognitive Levels of Play (Smilansky, 1968)
• Functional Play (Locomotor Play)
o Simplest level.
o Play involving repetitive large muscular movements.
Example:
▪ Rolling a ball
• Constructive Play (Object Play)
o Play involving use of objects or materials to make
something.
Example:
▪ House of blocks
▪ Crayon drawing
• Dramatic Play (Pretend/Fantasy/Imaginative Play)
o Play involving imaginary people or situations.
o Peaks during the preschool years.
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• Formal Games with Rules
o Organized games with known procedures and
penalties.
Example:
▪ Four square
▪ Freeze tag
Social Dimension of Play (Mildred Parten, 1932)
• As children get older, their play tends to become more social;
that is, more interactive and more cooperative.
• Parten incorrectly regarded nonsocial play as less mature than
social play.
• A preference for solitude is not necessarily associated with
negative outcomes in adulthood, so it is reasonable to think the
same might be true for children.
Gender and Play
• Gender Segregation
o Tendency to select playmates of one’s own gender.
• Boys tend to engage in more exploratory and rough-and-tumble
play.
• Girls enjoy more symbolic and pretend play, as well as more
structured, adult-supervised activities.
• In mixed-sex groups, play tends to revolve around traditionally
masculine activities.
• The more salient gender is made, the more children believe in
gender stereotypes and the less they play with other-sex peers.
• Sex-typed play preferences increase between toddlerhood and
middle childhood.
• The degree of sex-typed behavior exhibited early in life is a
strong indicator of later gender-based behavior.
Culture and Play
• Cultural values affect the play environments adults set up for
children, and these environments in turn affect the frequency of
specific forms of play across cultures.
• Cultural values also affect the opportunities children are given
to play.
• Children who behave in ways that are contrary to cultural values
may be met with rejection from peers, while those who embody
those values are likely to be accepted.
Parenting
Forms of Discipline
• Discipline
o Methods of molding children’s character and of
teaching them to exercise self-control and engage in
acceptable behavior.
• Reinforcement
o Children usually learn more from being reinforced for
good behavior.
o External reinforcements may be tangible (treats, more
playtime) or intangible (a smile, a word of praise, or a
special privilege).
o Whatever the reinforcement, the child must see it as
rewarding and must receive it fairly consistently after
showing the desired behavior.
• Punishment
o There are occasions when punishment is necessary,
but it should be administered calmly, in private, and
aimed at eliciting compliance, not guilt.
o Most effective when accompanied by a short, simple
explanation.
o It is important to remember that, in addition to
punishment for undesired behaviors, the desired
behaviors should be made clear.
 o Children who are punished harshly and frequently
may have trouble interpreting other people’s actions
and words and may attribute hostile intentions where
none exists.
o Young children who have been punished harshly also
show more externalizing behaviors such as physical
aggression and impulsivity.
• Corporal Punishment
o Use of physical force with the intention of causing
pain, but not injury, so as to correct or control
behavior.
o Counterproductive and should be avoided.
• Other Disciplinary Techniques
o Inductive Techniques
▪ Disciplinary techniques designed to induce
desirable behavior by appealing to a child’s
sense of reason and fairness.
▪ Tends to arouse empathy for the victim of
wrongdoing as well as guilt on the part of
the wrongdoer.
o Power Assertion
▪ Designed to discourage undesirable
behavior through physical or verbal
enforcement of parental control.
▪ Includes demands, threats, withdrawal of
privileges, and spanking.
o Withdrawal of Love
▪ Involves ignoring, isolating, or showing
dislike for a child.
Relationships with Other Children
• Sibling Relationships
o The quality of sibling relationships tends to persist
over time and to carry over to relationships with other
children.
• The Only Child
o As adults, only children, overall, were less likely to
show signs of anxiety or depression than those
children born in families with siblings, particularly if
they were born after the policy was reversed.
o Only children’s academic achievement and physical
growth were about the same as, or better than,
children with siblings, although the differences were
small.
• Playmates and Friends
o Through friendships and interactions with casual
playmates, young children learn how to get along with
others.
o They learn how to solve problems in relationships and
how to put themselves in another person’s place, and
they see models of various kinds of behavior.
o They learn moral values and gender-role norms, and
they practice adult roles.

Parenting Styles
• Baumrind’s Model of Parenting Styles
o Authoritarian Parenting
▪ Emphasizes control and unquestioning
obedience.
▪ Try to make children conform to a set
standard of conduct and punish them
forcefully for violating it.
▪ Less warm than other parents.
▪ Children tend to be more discontented,
withdrawn, and distrustful.
o Permissive Parenting
▪ Emphasizes self-expression and self-
regulation.
▪ Parents consult with children about policy
decisions and rarely punish.
▪ Warm, noncontrolling, and undemanding.
o Authoritative Parenting
▪ Emphasizes a child’s individuality but also
stresses limits.
▪ Loving and accepting but also demand
good behavior and are firm in maintaining
standards.
▪ Impose limited, judicious punishment when
necessary, within the context of a warm,
supportive relationship.
▪ Preschoolers with authoritative parents
tend to be the most self-reliant, self-
controlled, self-assertive, exploratory, and
content.
o Neglectful or Uninvolved Parenting
▪ Added by Eleanor Maccoby and James
Martin.
▪ Parents who focus on their needs rather
than on those of the child.
▪ Linked with both externalizing (such as
delinquency and defiance) and
internalizing (such as depression and
anxiety) behavioral problems in childhood
and adolescence.

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