Chapter 10:
DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Source: Papalia & Martorell (15th ed.), Santrock (17th ed.), Boyd & Bee (7th ed.)
The Developing Self
• Self-Concept Development
o At around 7 or 8, judgments about the self become
more conscious, realistic, balanced, and
comprehensive as children form representational
systems.
Representational Systems
- In neo-Piagetian terminology, the third stage in development
of self-definition.
- Characterized by breadth, balance, and the integration and
assessment of various aspects of the self.
• Erikson’s Industry vs. Inferiority
o When children are unable to obtain the praise of
adults or peers in their lives, or lack motivation and
self-esteem, they may develop a feeling of low self-
worth and thus develop a sense of inferiority.
o Developing a sense of industry involves learning how
to work hard to achieve goals.
• Emotional Development
o Children are more aware of their own and other
people’s feelings.
o They can better regulate or control their emotions and
can respond to others’ emotional distress.
o Children also learn what makes them angry, fearful,
or sad and how other people react to displays of these
emotions.
o Prosocial children tend to act appropriately in social
situations, to be relatively free from negative emotion,
and to cope with problems constructively.
o Children who are good at self-regulation tend to be
socially competent and do well in school.
• Kohlberg’s Levels of Moral Development
o Level 1: Preconventional Reasoning
▪ Lowest level of mora reasoning.
▪ Children n interpret good and bad in terms
of external rewards and punishments.
▪ “What’s in it for me?”
o Level 2: Conventional Reasoning
▪ 2nd and intermediate level.
▪ Individuals abide by certain standards
(internal), but they are the standards of
others, such as parents or the laws of
society.
o Level 3: Postconventional Reasoning
▪ Highest level of moral reasoning.
▪ Individuals engage in deliberate checks on
their reasoning to ensure that it meets high
ethical standards.
▪ Individuals decides on a personal moral
code.
The Child in the Family
• Family Atmosphere
o Coregulation
▪ Transitional stage in which parent and child
share power.
o Family
▪ Constructive family conflict may help
children learn how to solve interpersonal
problems, communicate effectively, and
understand how to resolve conflict without
damaging social relationships.
▪ Both internalizing behaviors and
externalizing behaviors are more likely in
children who come from families with high
levels of conflict.
Internalizing Behaviors
- Behaviors by which emotional problems are turned inward.
- Common in children whose parents resolve conflict with
anger and depression.
Example:
▪ Anxiety, Fearfulness, Depression
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Psychosocial Development in Middle Childhood
Externalizing Behaviors
- Behaviors by which a child acts out emotional difficulties.
Example:
▪ Aggression, Fighting, Disobedience, Hostility
o Maternal Employment
▪ In general, the more satisfied a mother was
with her employment status, the more
effective she was likely to be as a parent.
o Poverty
▪ Parents who live in poverty are likely to
become anxious, depressed, and irritable
and thus may become less affectionate
with and responsive to their children.
▪ Poverty affects where children go to school
and the neighborhood they live in, features
that can exacerbate child stressors.
▪ Effective parenting can buffer children from
the potential consequences of poverty.
• Family Structure
o Two-Parent Families
▪ Children tend to do better in families with
two continuously married parents than in
cohabiting, divorced, single-parent, or
stepfamilies.
▪ A father’s frequent and positive
involvement with his child is directly related
to the child’s well-being and physical,
cognitive, and social development.
o Divorce
▪ Children whose parents later divorce show
more anxiety, depression, or antisocial
behavior prior to the divorce than those
whose parents stay married.
▪ Children do better with joint custody.
▪ When one parent has custody, children do
better after divorce if the custodial parent is
warm, supportive, and authoritative.
▪ Coparenting has been consistently linked
to positive child outcomes.
▪ A child’s adjustment to divorce depends in
part on the child’s age, maturity, gender,
temperament, and psychosocial
adjustment before the divorce.
▪ Children who are younger when their
parents divorce tend to suffer from more
behavioral problems.
▪ Older children are at higher risk with
respect to academic and social outcome.
▪ Children show fewer issues if their parents’
divorce does not lead to a decline in their
standard of living and they are able to
remain in the same neighborhood and
schools.
o One-Parent Families
▪ Children in single-parent families do fairly
well overall but tend to lag socially and
educationally behind peers in two-parent
families.
▪ They also have a higher risk of obesity and
tend to make less money as adults than do
children from two-parent families.
o Cohabiting Families
▪ Research shows worse emotional,
behavioral, and academic outcomes for
children living with cohabiting biological
parents than for those living with married
biological parents.
o Stepfamilies
▪ A child’s loyalties to an absent or dead
parent may interfere with forming ties to a
stepparent.
▪ Adjustment to the stepparents and the
potential negative influence of that on
development appear to be influenced by
 family relationships prior to the formation of
the stepfamily.
o Gay and Lesbian Parents
▪ There are no consistent differences
between homosexual and heterosexual
parents in emotional health or parenting
skills and attitudes.
o Adoptive Families
▪ Children adopted after the age of 1 are
more likely to show lower school
achievement and disturbances in their
attachment patterns than children adopted
before their first birthday.
• Sibling Relationships
o Having a warm and supportive sibling relationship is
associated with better adjustment, social
competence, prosocial behavior, and empathy.
o High sibling conflict has been associated with
internalizing and externalizing problems as well as
risky behaviors.
o Sisters are higher in sibling intimacy than brothers or
mixed-sex dyads.
o When a parent-child relationship is warm and
affectionate, siblings tend to have positive
relationships as well.
The Child in the Peer Group
• Peer Status
o Popular
▪ Frequently nominated as a best friend and
are rarely disliked by their peers.
o Average
▪ Receive an average number of both
positive and negative nominations from
their peers.
o Neglected
▪ Infrequently nominated as a best friend but
are not disliked by their peers.
o Rejected
▪ Infrequently nominated as someone’s best
friend and are actively disliked by their
peers.
o Controversial
▪ Frequently nominated both as someone’s
best friend and as being disliked.
• Peer Groups
o Peers can function as sources of information about
appropriate behavior, and norms developed within the
context of the peer group can influence development.
o Peer groups may reinforce prejudice.
o As children move into adolescence, social context
and what children learn from others seem to matter
more.
o Intervention programs, including direct or extended
contact, imagined contact, the promotion of empathy,
and perspective-taking, have been moderately
successful at reducing prejudice.
o Groups of boys more consistently pursue gender-
typed activities, whereas those of girls are more likely
to engage in cross-gender activities.
o Boys report liking friends high in positive affect and
low in anxiety, and they are not overly concerned with
how empathic their friends are.
o Girls prefer friends high in empathy and optimism but
lower in positive affect.
• Popularity
o Positive Nomination
▪ Children can say who they like to play with,
who they like the most, or who they think
other kids like the most.
o Negative Nomination
▪ Children can also easily describe which
children they don’t like to play with, like the
least, or think other kids don’t like.
o Popular children receive many positive nominations
and few negative nominations.
o Popular children have good cognitive abilities, are
high achievers, are good at solving social problems,
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are kind and help other children, and are assertive
without being disruptive or aggressive.
o Some unpopular children are aggressive; others are
hyperactive, inattentive, or withdrawn.
o Unpopular children are often insensitive to other
children’s feelings and do not adapt well to new
situations.
• Friendship
o Though children tend to choose friends with similar
ethnic backgrounds, cross-racial/ethnic friendships
are common and associated with positive
developmental outcomes.
o School-age girls seem to care less about having
many friends than about having a few close friends
they can rely on.
o Boys have more friendships, but they tend to be less
intimate and affectionate.
• Aggression and Bullying
o After age 6 or 7, most children become less
aggressive as they grow less egocentric, more
empathic, more cooperative, and better able to
communicate.
o As instrumental aggression declines overall, hostile
aggression, aggression intended to hurt another
person, proportionately increases.
o Being a boy, having a reactive temperament, parental
separation, early onset of motherhood, and
controlling parenting have all been shown to
contribute to physical aggression in 6- to 12-year-
olds.
o Children who are high in relational aggression tend to
have parents who are low in positive parenting and
high in harsh parenting, mothers who are uninvolved,
and fathers who are psychologically controlling.
o Aggression becomes bullying when it is deliberately,
persistently directed against a particular target: a
victim.
o Aggressive children tend to have social and
psychological problems, but it is not clear whether
aggression causes these problems or is a response
to them, or both.
Mental Health
• Disruptive Conduct Disorder
o Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)
▪ Pattern of behavior, persisting into middle
childhood, marked by negativity, hostility,
disobedience and defiance toward adult
authority figures.
▪ Lasting at least 6 months and going beyond
the bounds of normal childhood behavior.
▪ Children with ODD constantly fight, argue,
lose their temper, snatch things, blame
others, and are angry and resentful.
o Conduct Disorder (CD)
▪ Repetitive, persistent pattern of aggressive,
antisocial behavior violating societal norms
or the rights of others.
▪ Conduct disorder in childhood is strongly
predictive of antisocial and criminal
behavior in adulthood.
• Anxiety Disorders
o Separation Anxiety Disorder
▪ Condition involving excessive, prolonged
anxiety concerning separation from home
or from people to whom a person is
attached.
o School Phobia
▪ Unrealistic fear of going to school.
▪ May be a form of separation anxiety
disorder or social phobia.
o Social Phobia (Social Anxiety)
▪ Extreme fear and/or avoidance of social
situations.
o Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
▪ Anxiety not focused on any single target.
 o Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
▪ Anxiety aroused by repetitive, intrusive
thoughts, images, or impulses, often
leading to compulsive ritual behaviors.
o Childhood Depression
▪ Mood disorder characterized by such
symptoms as a prolonged sense of
friendlessness, inability to have fun or
concentrate, fatigue, extreme activity or
apathy, feelings of worthlessness, weight
change, physical complaints, and thoughts
of death or suicide.

Treatment Techniques
• Individual Psychotherapy
o A therapist sees a troubled person one-on-one.
• Family Therapy
o Therapist sees the family together, observes how
members interact, and points out both growth-
producing and growth-inhibiting or destructive
patterns of family functioning.
• Behavior Therapy (Behavior Modification)
o Therapeutic approach using principles of learning
theory to encourage desired behaviors or eliminate
undesired ones.
• Art Therapy
o Therapeutic approach that allows a person to express
troubled feelings without words, using a variety of art
materials and media.
• Play Therapy
o Uses s play to help a child cope with emotional
distress.
• Drug Therapy
o Administration of drugs to treat emotional disorders.

Resilience
• Resilient children are those who weather circumstances that
might blight others, who maintain their composure and
competence under challenge or threat, or who bounce back
from traumatic events.
• Protective factors that contribute to resilience:
o Good family relationships
o Good cognitive functioning
o Child’s temperament and personality
▪ Resilient children are adaptable, friendly,
well liked, independent, and sensitive to
others.
▪ Competent and have high self-esteem.
o Compensating experiences
▪ A supportive school environment or
successful experiences in studies, sports,
or music, or with other children or adults
can help make up for a destructive home
life.
o Reduced risk
▪ Children who have been exposed to only
one of a number of factors for psychiatric
disorder are often better able to overcome
stress than children who have been
exposed to more than one risk factor.

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