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It is important to understand the diverse backgrounds, cultural influences, and experiences of the children in your care. Understanding of these differences and similarities can help aide a provider in the success of supporting a child in their learning and development.

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How Does Culture Influence a Child’s Cognitive Development?

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Many perceive the role of the teacher as being the one to regurgitate regurgitated information to children. A facilitator of memory or doing things because this is the proper way to do them.

This is not the case. The role of the teacher is to get to know the needs and skill levels of the learners in their class. Using the example in the video above, is it developmentally appropriate to teach the concepts of the ABC's, (letters vs. numbers, tone, beat, rhyming words, ending sentence) to children who do not yet first understand the concept of song, pattern, or have not obtained the skill or interest to sing?

The role of the teacher is to support the gap of what knowledge a child may have and attainment of the skill they seek to acquire.

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Comedy for ELT - Teaching Young Learners

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Biological factors have one of the greatest impacts on a child's ability to learn and their development. Within a mother's womb begins the process of connections in the brain and with the brain to the body that later become the foundations of our capability to learn. Failure or alterations of these connections can cause impairments such as blindness, deafness, fetal disabilities, and even death. It is important that a mother gain access to vital prenatal treatment and care. Some factors cannot be avoided such as the inheritance of certain genes, others can such as the effects from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or environmental factors such as lead exposure, however later repercussions of most conditions can be greatly reduced with adequate care and support.

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Language is vital in a person's success later in life. Failure to communicate will make later interactions with teachers and colleagues difficult. 

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0:35 Language is responsible for how children behave, learn, receive, and interpret information.

It is the main source of transmitting knowledge, and attainment of skills allows children to acquire the tools needed to be successful in the understanding of cultural values and practices. Language barriers can slow down a child's learning speed, even if it does not slow down their learning capability (KidsMathTV 2021).

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Children preference memorization over asking questions, modeling a relationship of parental authority in which conversation and responses are minimal. (Rush to get to the answer, guess, look for cues from the provider).  Cultural attitudes and daily routines; including interactions with elders, affect preferences and feelings towards certain subjects.  (Holiday's, Celebrations, Math vs. English vs. VPA)

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1:16 Family is the basic unit of the community.

Authority exercised at home, models the relationship the child is to have with providers and other adults outside of the home (KidsMathTV 2021).

Authoritarian and Authoritative Parenting styles both set specific expectations for their children and respond to misbehavior, but while authoritative parenting carries a more warm, attentive, and respectful approach to mistakes that allow room for error, authoritarian parenting often results in harsh and commonly unattainable expectations. Difficulties in connection to learning can also be seen in children from parenting styles that are uninvolved or permissive.

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2:29 Spirituality requires religious leaders and specialists. Holding a set of guidelines, it exposes children to religious instruction by teachers. These interactions with spirituality and religious doctrine affect a child's cognitive development by challenging children to explore different paths.

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3:05 Varying Effects:

Children who are spanked a lot, will internally seek "spanking" from the teacher to feel successful in their learning (KidsMathTV 2021).

Families that prefer a reading culture over a mathematical may create a greater interest in children to prefer writing and drawing activities over building ones.

Further familial values, skills, and attitudes effect how children approach different subjects and situations outside of the home environment.

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Vygotsky believed that social interactions are vital to our cognitive learning and development. According to (Sprouts 2020) Vygotsky argued that we were born with 4 elementary mental functions; attention, sensation, perception, and memory and that it was our social interactions that help us to gain higher mental functions.

One example of this is the ability to communicate. Vygotsky believed that our inner speech was derived from external speech and that both develop each other until they inevitably become independent.

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Vygotsky's Theory of Cognitive Development in Social Relationships

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The Framework for Effective Teaching Practices

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The Framework for Effective Teaching Practices

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The Framework for effective teaching practices supports school readiness for all children.

Teachers play a vital role by using their interactions to maximize learning, foster thinking skills, help children to engage with materials and their environment, and deepen children's knowledge and understanding.

Under the Framework are Four teaching strategies:

1. The Scientific Method-Under this method teachers lead activities and encourage experiences that expose children to the scientific method. Children observe, predict, experiment, come to conclusions, and have opportunities to re-visit. (Exploring what different apples may taste like).

2. The Problem-Solving Method-Teachers create situations that require children to brainstorm. Children accumulate many ideas, create a plan, and then carry it out. (How to build an obstacle course).

3. The Application Method-Simply put, children apply their knowledge. Under this approach, teachers take note of children's interests and curiosity and then use this data to connect everyday experiences to their prior knowledge. Routines and activities are key in the success of this approach as it requires a provider to be purposeful in planning and/or productivity.

(Children find worms all over the school yard after a hard rain. The provider brings in materials about rain, worms, and life cycles).

4. The Project Approach Method- This method helps children to develop and ask questions. Using three phases, children explore their curiosity about a topic, formulate questions related to the specific topic, and finally play ways to show others what they asked and what data they collected. (Children are curious about how mail works. This may include visiting a post office or mailing letters to family).

(Administration for Children and Families 2015)

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50 seconds · Clipped by Joiandrea McKenzie · Original video "Fostering Children's Thinking Skills" by Administration for Children and Families (ACF)

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This theory is vital in the argument of social influence on learning and development. This theory lays out three elements that facilitate our ability to receive, process, and display information.

In the first zone lays the things we are able to do on our own, the middle zone are the things that we are able to do with the help of an adult, friend, aide of technology, or "other more knowledgeable adult". The final zone are the things that we are unable to do, whether we have help or not.

A reason for this could be a previous skill not attained (i.e. A child cannot run before they gain the physical skills to crawl).

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Humans have biologically adapted to seek relationships from the time of birth. Relationships are vital to survival and attainment of knowledge about our world. Having an attachment to a healthy and safe provider, motivates the child to trust their environment and acquired skills. Ultimately allowing them to reach their ultimate potential through the warmth, guidance, and affirmations received in early life stages.

Infants become securely attached when their parents respond sensitively to them, reinforcing the infants’ confidence that their parents will provide support when needed. Infants become insecurely attached when care is inconsistent or neglectful; these infants tend to respond avoidantly, resistantly, or in a disorganized manner (Belsky & Pasco Fearon, 2008). Such insecure attachments are not necessarily the result of deliberately bad parenting but are often a byproduct of circumstances (Thompson, R. Social and personality development in childhood)

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Our early years build the foundation for how we view and value the world and our relationships with others within it. How our cues our tended to (early language skills) dictate how we view ourselves and our impact. Failure to soothe early cues can lead a child later in life to not speak up for their needs or not to know when to. This can also impact a child's later interest in engaging with their environment.

Ex. A child who is not changed when soiled, may be difficult to conduct diaper changes on and may later refuse to potty train.

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Our social interactions influence our learning and development before we even speak our first word. Infants are able to conduct social referencing by looking at their mothers or other familiar adults faces when in a new situation or around a new person.

It is at this time that theory of mind is also developing as infants can determine mood changes and perceive the wants and needs of others.

These experiences later impact and shape our personality contributing to vital factors of our environment that aide in the building of our characteristics and future temperament.

As our conscience builds, so does our ability to take in and consider more information from the world around us. The thoughts, feelings, and considerations of the world and our peers begin to mean more. How we view ourselves, our ability to influence the direction of our lives, and our desire to articulate our likes and dislikes begins to become exceedingly important.

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Ross Thompson
University of California, Davis

Childhood social and personality development emerges through the interaction of social influences, biological maturation, and the child's representations of the social world and the self. This interaction is illustrated in a discussion of the influence of significant relationships, the development of social understanding, the growth of personality, and the development of social and emotional competence in childhood.

Learning Objectives

Provide specific examples of how the interaction of social experience, biological maturation, and the child's representations of experience and the self provide the basis for growth in social and personality development.

Describe the significant contributions of parent-child and peer relationships to the development of social skills and personality in childhood.

Explain how achievements in social understanding occur in childhood. Moreover, do scientists believe that infants and young children are egocentric?

Describe the association of temperament with personality development.

Explain what is "social and emotional competence" and provide some examples of how it develops in childhood.

"How have I become the kind of person I am today?" Every adult ponders this question from time to time. The answers that readily come to mind include the influences of parents, peers, temperament, a moral compass, a strong sense of self, and sometimes critical life experiences such as parental divorce. Social and personality development encompasses these and many other influences on the growth of the person. In addition, it addresses questions that are at the heart of understanding how we develop as unique people. How much are we products of nature or nurture? How enduring are the influences of early experiences? The study of social and personality development offers perspective on these and other issues, often by showing how complex and multifaceted are the influences on developing children, and thus the intricate processes that have made you the person you are today ( Thompson, 2006a).

Humans are inherently social creatures. Mostly, we work, play, and live together in groups. [Image: The Daring Librarian, https://goo.gl/LmA2pS, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]

Understanding social and personality development requires looking at children from three perspectives that interact to shape development. The first is the social context in which each child lives, especially the relationships that provide security, guidance, and knowledge. The second is biological maturation that supports developing social and emotional competencies and underlies temperamental individuality. The third is children's developing representations of themselves and the social world. Social and personality development is best understood as the continuous interaction between these social, biological, and representational aspects of psychological development.

This interaction can be observed in the development of the earliest relationships between infants and their parents in the first year. Virtually all infants living in normal circumstances develop strong emotional attachments to those who care for them. Psychologists believe that the development of these attachments is as biologically natural as learning to walk and not simply a byproduct of the parents' provision of food or warmth. Rather, attachments have evolved in humans because they promote children's motivation to stay close to those who care for them and, as a consequence, to benefit from the learning, security, guidance, warmth, and affirmation that close relationships provide ( Cassidy, 2008).

One of the first and most important relationships is between mothers and infants. The quality of this relationship has an effect on later psychological and social development. [Image: Premnath Thirumalaisamy, https://goo.gl/66BROf, CC BY-NC 2.0, https://goo.gl/FIlc2e]

Although nearly all infants develop emotional attachments to their caregivers--parents, relatives, nannies-- their sense of security in those attachments varies. Infants become securely attached when their parents respond sensitively to them, reinforcing the infants' confidence that their parents will provide support when needed. Infants become insecurely attached when care is inconsistent or neglectful; these infants tend to respond avoidantly, resistantly, or in a disorganized manner ( Belsky & Pasco Fearon, 2008). Such insecure attachments are not necessarily the result of deliberately bad parenting but are often a byproduct of circumstances. For example, an overworked single mother may find herself overstressed and fatigued at the end of the day, making fully-involved childcare very difficult. In other cases, some parents are simply poorly emotionally equipped to take on the responsibility of caring for a child.

The different behaviors of securely- and insecurely-attached infants can be observed especially when the infant needs the caregiver's support. To assess the nature of attachment, researchers use a standard laboratory procedure called the "Strange Situation," which involves brief separations from the caregiver (e.g., mother) ( Solomon & George, 2008). In the Strange Situation, the caregiver is instructed to leave the child to play alone in a room for a short time, then return and greet the child while researchers observe the child's response. Depending on the child's level of attachment, he or she may reject the parent, cling to the parent, or simply welcome the parent-or, in some instances, react with an agitated combination of responses.

Infants can be securely or insecurely attached with mothers, fathers, and other regular caregivers, and they can differ in their security with different people. The security of attachment is an important cornerstone of social and personality development, because infants and young children who are securely attached have been found to develop stronger friendships with peers, more advanced emotional understanding and early conscience development, and more positive self-concepts, compared with insecurely attached children ( Thompson, 2008). This is consistent with attachment theory's premise that experiences of care, resulting in secure or insecure attachments, shape young children's developing concepts of the self, as well as what people are like, and how to interact with them.

As children mature, parent-child relationships naturally change. Preschool and grade-school children are more capable, have their own preferences, and sometimes refuse or seek to compromise with parental expectations. This can lead to greater parent-child conflict, and how conflict is managed by parents further shapes the quality of parent-child relationships. In general, children develop greater competence and self-confidence when parents have high (but reasonable) expectations for children's behavior, communicate well with them, are warm and responsive, and use reasoning (rather than coercion) as preferred responses to children's misbehavior. This kind of parenting style has been described as authoritative ( Baumrind, 2013). Authoritative parents are supportive and show interest in their kids' activities but are not overbearing and allow them to make constructive mistakes. By contrast, some less-constructive parent-child relationships result from authoritarian, uninvolved, or permissive parenting styles (see Table 1).

Table 1: Comparison of Four Parenting Styles

Parental roles in relation to their children change in other ways, too. Parents increasingly become mediators (or gatekeepers) of their children's involvement with peers and activities outside the family. Their communication and practice of values contributes to children's academic achievement, moral development, and activity preferences. As children reach adolescence, the parent-child relationship increasingly becomes one of "coregulation," in which both the parent(s) and the child recognizes the child's growing competence and autonomy, and together they rebalance authority relations. We often see evidence of this as parents start accommodating their teenage kids' sense of independence by allowing them to get cars, jobs, attend parties, and stay out later.

Family relationships are significantly affected by conditions outside the home. For instance, the Family Stress Model describes how financial difficulties are associated with parents' depressed moods, which in turn lead to marital problems and poor parenting that contributes to poorer child adjustment ( Conger, Conger, & Martin, 2010). Within the home, parental marital difficulty or divorce affects more than half the children growing up today in the United States. Divorce is typically associated with economic stresses for children and parents, the renegotiation of parent-child relationships (with one parent typically as primary custodian and the other assuming a visiting relationship), and many other significant adjustments for children. Divorce is often regarded by children as a sad turning point in their lives, although for most it is not associated with long-term problems of adjustment ( Emery, 1999).

Peer Relationships

Peer relationships are particularly important for children. They can be supportive but also challenging. Peer rejection may lead to behavioral problems later in life. [Image: Twentyfour Students, https://goo.gl/3IS2gV, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/jSSrcO]

Parent-child relationships are not the only significant relationships in a child's life. Peer relationships are also important. Social interaction with another child who is similar in age, skills, and knowledge provokes the development of many social skills that are valuable for the rest of life ( Bukowski, Buhrmester, & Underwood, 2011). In peer relationships, children learn how to initiate and maintain social interactions with other children. They learn skills for managing conflict, such as turn-taking, compromise, and bargaining. Play also involves the mutual, sometimes complex, coordination of goals, actions, and understanding. For example, as infants, children get their first encounter with sharing (of each other's toys); during pretend play as preschoolers they create narratives together, choose roles, and collaborate to act out their stories; and in primary school, they may join a sports team, learning to work together and support each other emotionally and strategically toward a common goal. Through these experiences, children develop friendships that provide additional sources of security and support to those provided by their parents.

However, peer relationships can be challenging as well as supportive ( Rubin, Coplan, Chen, Bowker, & McDonald, 2011). Being accepted by other children is an important source of affirmation and self-esteem, but peer rejection can foreshadow later behavior problems (especially when children are rejected due to aggressive behavior). With increasing age, children confront the challenges of bullying, peer victimization, and managing conformity pressures. Social comparison with peers is an important means by which children evaluate their skills, knowledge, and personal qualities, but it may cause them to feel that they do not measure up well against others. For example, a boy who is not athletic may feel unworthy of his football-playing peers and revert to shy behavior, isolating himself and avoiding conversation. Conversely, an athlete who doesn't "get" Shakespeare may feel embarrassed and avoid reading altogether. Also, with the approach of adolescence, peer relationships become focused on psychological intimacy, involving personal disclosure, vulnerability, and loyalty (or its betrayal)-which significantly affects a child's outlook on the world. Each of these aspects of peer relationships requires developing very different social and emotional skills than those that emerge in parent-child relationships. They also illustrate the many ways that peer relationships influence the growth of personality and self-concept.

As we have seen, children's experience of relationships at home and the peer group contributes to an expanding repertoire of social and emotional skills and also to broadened social understanding. In these relationships, children develop expectations for specific people (leading, for example, to secure or insecure attachments to parents), understanding of how to interact with adults and peers, and developing self-concept based on how others respond to them. These relationships are also significant forums for emotional development.

Remarkably, young children begin developing social understanding very early in life. Before the end of the first year, infants are aware that other people have perceptions, feelings, and other mental states that affect their behavior, and which are different from the child's own mental states. This can be readily observed in a process called social referencing, in which an infant looks to the mother's face when confronted with an unfamiliar person or situation ( Feinman, 1992). If the mother looks calm and reassuring, the infant responds positively as if the situation is safe. If the mother looks fearful or distressed, the infant is likely to respond with wariness or distress because the mother's expression signals danger. In a remarkably insightful manner, therefore, infants show an awareness that even though they are uncertain about the unfamiliar situation, their mother is not, and that by "reading" the emotion in her face, infants can learn about whether the circumstance is safe or dangerous, and how to respond.

Although developmental scientists used to believe that infants are egocentric-that is, focused on their own perceptions and experience-they now realize that the opposite is true. Infants are aware at an early stage that people have different mental states, and this motivates them to try to figure out what others are feeling, intending, wanting, and thinking, and how these mental states affect their behavior. They are beginning, in other words, to develop a theory of mind, and although their understanding of mental states begins very simply, it rapidly expands ( Wellman, 2011). For example, if an 18-month-old watches an adult try repeatedly to drop a necklace into a cup but inexplicably fail each time, they will immediately put the necklace into the cup themselves-thus completing what the adult intended, but failed, to do. In doing so, they reveal their awareness of the intentions underlying the adult's behavior ( Meltzoff, 1995). Carefully designed experimental studies show that by late in the preschool years, young children understand that another's beliefs can be mistaken rather than correct, that memories can affect how you feel, and that one's emotions can be hidden from others ( Wellman, 2011). Social understanding grows significantly as children's theory of mind develops.

How do these achievements in social understanding occur? One answer is that young children are remarkably sensitive observers of other people, making connections between their emotional expressions, words, and behavior to derive simple inferences about mental states (e.g., concluding, for example, that what Mommy is looking at is in her mind) ( Gopnik, Meltzoff, & Kuhl, 2001). This is especially likely to occur in relationships with people whom the child knows well, consistent with the ideas of attachment theory discussed above. Growing language skills give young children words with which to represent these mental states (e.g., "mad," "wants") and talk about them with others. Thus in conversation with their parents about everyday experiences, children learn much about people's mental states from how adults talk about them ("Your sister was sad because she thought Daddy was coming home.") ( Thompson, 2006b). Developing social understanding is, in other words, based on children's everyday interactions with others and their careful interpretations of what they see and hear. There are also some scientists who believe that infants are biologically prepared to perceive people in a special way, as organisms with an internal mental life, and this facilitates their interpretation of people's behavior with reference to those mental states ( Leslie, 1994).

Although a child's temperament is partly determined by genetics, environmental influences also contribute to shaping personality. Positive personality development is supported by a "good fit" between a child's natural temperament, environment and experiences. [Image: Thomas Hawk, https://goo.gl/2So40O, CC BY-NC 2.0, https://goo.gl/FIlc2e]

Parents look into the faces of their newborn infants and wonder, "What kind of person will this child will become?" They scrutinize their baby's preferences, characteristics, and responses for clues of a developing personality. They are quite right to do so, because temperament is a foundation for personality growth. But temperament (defined as early-emerging differences in reactivity and self-regulation) is not the whole story. Although temperament is biologically based, it interacts with the influence of experience from the moment of birth (if not before) to shape personality ( Rothbart, 2011). Temperamental dispositions are affected, for example, by the support level of parental care. More generally, personality is shaped by the goodness of fit between the child's temperamental qualities and characteristics of the environment ( Chess & Thomas, 1999). For example, an adventurous child whose parents regularly take her on weekend hiking and fishing trips would be a good "fit" to her lifestyle, supporting personality growth. Personality is the result, therefore, of the continuous interplay between biological disposition and experience, as is true for many other aspects of social and personality development.

Personality develops from temperament in other ways ( Thompson, Winer, & Goodvin, 2010). As children mature biologically, temperamental characteristics emerge and change over time. A newborn is not capable of much self-control, but as brain-based capacities for self-control advance, temperamental changes in self-regulation become more apparent. For example, a newborn who cries frequently doesn't necessarily have a grumpy personality; over time, with sufficient parental support and increased sense of security, the child might be less likely to cry.

In addition, personality is made up of many other features besides temperament. Children's developing self-concept, their motivations to achieve or to socialize, their values and goals, their coping styles, their sense of responsibility and conscientiousness, and many other qualities are encompassed into personality. These qualities are influenced by biological dispositions, but even more by the child's experiences with others, particularly in close relationships, that guide the growth of individual characteristics.

Indeed, personality development begins with the biological foundations of temperament but becomes increasingly elaborated, extended, and refined over time. The newborn that parents gazed upon thus becomes an adult with a personality of depth and nuance.

Social and personality development is built from the social, biological, and representational influences discussed above. These influences result in important developmental outcomes that matter to children, parents, and society: a young adult's capacity to engage in socially constructive actions (helping, caring, sharing with others), to curb hostile or aggressive impulses, to live according to meaningful moral values, to develop a healthy identity and sense of self, and to develop talents and achieve success in using them. These are some of the developmental outcomes that denote social and emotional competence.

These achievements of social and personality development derive from the interaction of many social, biological, and representational influences. Consider, for example, the development of conscience, which is an early foundation for moral development. Conscience consists of the cognitive, emotional, and social influences that cause young children to create and act consistently with internal standards of conduct ( Kochanska, 2002). Conscience emerges from young children's experiences with parents, particularly in the development of a mutually responsive relationship that motivates young children to respond constructively to the parents' requests and expectations. Biologically based temperament is involved, as some children are temperamentally more capable of motivated self-regulation (a quality called effortful control) than are others, while some children are dispositionally more prone to the fear and anxiety that parental disapproval can evoke. Conscience development grows through a good fit between the child's temperamental qualities and how parents communicate and reinforce behavioral expectations. Moreover, as an illustration of the interaction of genes and experience, one research group found that young children with a particular gene allele (the 5-HTTLPR) were low on measures of conscience development when they had previously experienced unresponsive maternal care, but children with the same allele growing up with responsive care showed strong later performance on conscience measures ( Kochanska, Kim, Barry, & Philibert, 2011).

Conscience development also expands as young children begin to represent moral values and think of themselves as moral beings. By the end of the preschool years, for example, young children develop a "moral self" by which they think of themselves as people who want to do the right thing, who feel badly after misbehaving, and who feel uncomfortable when others misbehave. In the development of conscience, young children become more socially and emotionally competent in a manner that provides a foundation for later moral conduct ( Thompson, 2012).

Social influences such as cultural norms impact children's interests, dress, style of speech and even life aspirations. [Image: Amanda Westmont, https://goo.gl/ntS5qx, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://goo.gl/Toc0ZF]

The development of gender and gender identity is likewise an interaction among social, biological, and representational influences ( Ruble, Martin, & Berenbaum, 2006). Young children learn about gender from parents, peers, and others in society, and develop their own conceptions of the attributes associated with maleness or femaleness (called gender schemas). They also negotiate biological transitions (such as puberty) that cause their sense of themselves and their sexual identity to mature.

Each of these examples of the growth of social and emotional competence illustrates not only the interaction of social, biological, and representational influences, but also how their development unfolds over an extended period. Early influences are important, but not determinative, because the capabilities required for mature moral conduct, gender identity, and other outcomes continue to develop throughout childhood, adolescence, and even the adult years.

As the preceding sentence suggests, social and personality development continues through adolescence and the adult years, and it is influenced by the same constellation of social, biological, and representational influences discussed for childhood. Changing social relationships and roles, biological maturation and (much later) decline, and how the individual represents experience and the self continue to form the bases for development throughout life. In this respect, when an adult looks forward rather than retrospectively to ask, "what kind of person am I becoming?"-a similarly fascinating, complex, multifaceted interaction of developmental processes lies ahead.

Outside Resources

Web: Center for the Developing Child, Harvard University

http://developingchild.harvard.edu

Web: Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning

http://casel.org

Discussion Questions

1. If parent-child relationships naturally change as the child matures, would you expect that the security of attachment might also change over time? What reasons would account for your expectation?

2. In what ways does a child's developing theory of mind resemble how scientists create, refine, and use theories in their work? In other words, would it be appropriate to think of children as informal scientists in their development of social understanding?

3. If there is a poor goodness of fit between a child's temperament and characteristics of parental care, what can be done to create a better match? Provide a specific example of how this might occur.

4. What are the contributions that parents offer to the development of social and emotional competence in children? Answer this question again with respect to peer contributions.

Vocabulary

Authoritative

A parenting style characterized by high (but reasonable) expectations for children's behavior, good communication, warmth and nurturance, and the use of reasoning (rather than coercion) as preferred responses to children's misbehavior.

Conscience

The cognitive, emotional, and social influences that cause young children to create and act consistently with internal standards of conduct.

Effortful control

A temperament quality that enables children to be more successful in motivated self-regulation.

Family Stress Model

A description of the negative effects of family financial difficulty on child adjustment through the effects of economic stress on parents' depressed mood, increased marital problems, and poor parenting.

Gender schemas

Organized beliefs and expectations about maleness and femaleness that guide children's thinking about gender.

Goodness of fit

The match or synchrony between a child's temperament and characteristics of parental care that contributes to positive or negative personality development. A good "fit" means that parents have accommodated to the child's temperamental attributes, and this contributes to positive personality growth and better adjustment.

Security of attachment

An infant's confidence in the sensitivity and responsiveness of a caregiver, especially when he or she is needed. Infants can be securely attached or insecurely attached.

Social referencing

The process by which one individual consults another's emotional expressions to determine how to evaluate and respond to circumstances that are ambiguous or uncertain.

Temperament

Early emerging differences in reactivity and self-regulation, which constitutes a foundation for personality development.

Theory of mind

Children's growing understanding of the mental states that affect people's behavior.

References

Baumrind, D. (2013). Authoritative parenting revisited: History and current status. In R. E. Larzelere, A. Sheffield, & A. W. Harrist (Eds.), Authoritative parenting: Synthesizing nurturance and discipline for optimal child development (pp. 11-34). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Belsky, J., & Pasco Fearon, R. M. (2008). Precursors of attachment security. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (2nd ed., pp. 295-316). New York, NY: Guilford.

Bukowski, W. M., Buhrmester, D., & Underwood, M. K. (2011). Peer relations as a developmental context. In M. K. Underwood & L. H. Rosen (Eds.), Social development(pp. 153-179). New York, NY: Guilford

Cassidy, J. (2008). The nature of the child's ties. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory, research, and clinical applications (2nd ed., pp. 3-22). New York, NY: Guilford.

Chess, S., & Thomas, A. (1999). Goodness of fit: Clinical applications from infancy through adult life. New York, NY: Brunner-Mazel/Taylor & Francis.

Conger, R. D., Conger, K. J., & Martin, M. J. (2010). Socioeconomic status, family processes, and individual development. Journal of Marriage and Family, 72, 685-704

Emery, R. E. (1999). Marriage, divorce, and children's adjustment (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Feinman, S. (Ed.) (1992). Social referencing and the social construction of reality in infancy. New York, NY: Plenum.

Gopnik, A., Meltzoff, A. N., & Kuhl, P. K. (2001). The scientist in the crib. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

Kochanska, G. (2002). Mutually responsive orientation between mothers and their young children: A context for the early development of conscience. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11, 191-195.

Kochanska, G., Kim, S., Barry, R. A., & Philibert, R. A. (2011). Children's genotypes interact with maternal responsive care in predicting children's competence: Diathesis-stress or differential susceptibility? Development and Psychopathology, 23, 605-616.

Leslie, A. M. (1994). ToMM, ToBy, and agency: Core architecture and domain specificity in cognition and culture. In L. Hirschfeld & S. Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the mind: Domain specificity in cognition and culture (pp. 119-148). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Meltzoff, A. N. (1995). Understanding the intentions of others: Re-enactment of intended acts by 18-month-old children. Developmental Psychology, 31, 838-850.

Rothbart, M. K. (2011). Becoming who we are: Temperament and personality in development. New York, NY: Guilford.

Rubin, K. H., Coplan, R., Chen, X., Bowker, J., & McDonald, K. L. (2011). Peer relationships in childhood. In M. Bornstein & M. E. Lamb (Eds.), Developmental science: An advanced textbook (6th ed. pp. 519-570). New York, NY: Psychology Press/Taylor & Francis.

Ruble, D. N., Martin, C., & Berenbaum, S. (2006). Gender development. In W. Damon & R. M. Lerner (Series Eds.) & N. Eisenberg (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3. Social, emotional, and personality development (6th ed., pp. 858-932). New York, NY: Wiley.

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Authors

Creative Commons License
Social and Personality Development in Childhood by Ross Thompson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available in our Licensing Agreement.

How to cite this Noba module using APA Style
Thompson, R. (2021). Social and personality development in childhood. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/gdqm6zvc

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Social and Personality Development in Childhood

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Childhood social and personality development emerges through the interaction of social influences, biological maturation, and the child's representations of the social world and the self. This interaction is illustrated in a discussion of the influence of significant relationships, the development of social understanding, the growth of personality, and the development of social and emotional competence in childhood.

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This was an awesome resource to not only gain information about how our interactions (verbal, nonverbal, physical, and cultural) affect children in our learning environments, but also how we as educators can make simple changes that make big impacts. One thing that I liked, beyond the addition of knowledge checks and real-life examples was the inclusion of knowing children's needs and interests. I appreciated that the perspective of this tip was not the typical likes of cars or Disney characters, but an acknowledgement of the importance of knowing children's temperaments and desires/ attempts to connect.

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Supporting Cognitive Development: Interactions | Virtual Lab School

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Working with preschoolers is about so much more than planning lessons. Good teaching is all about relating, interacting, and enjoying time with children. Your interactions create opportunities to help children learn.

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Exploring Anti-bias Education with 4 goals

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Early-childhood educators have deep faith in the principle that all people deserve the opportunities and resources to fulfill their complete humanity. Moreover, we have a unique role in making this principle real, in promoting all children's chances to thrive and to succeed in school, in work, and in life. Anti-bias work is essentially optimistic work about the future for our children. It provides teachers a way to examine and transform their understanding of children's lives and do self-reflective work to more deeply understand their own lives.
Anti-bias education has four core goals:
Goal 1: Each child will demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities.
Goal 2: Each child will express comfort and joy with human diversity, accurate language for human differences, and deep, caring human connections.
Goal 3: Each child will increasingly recognize unfairness, have language to describe unfairness, and understand that unfairness hurts.
Goal 4: Each child will demonstrate empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, against prejudice or discriminatory actions.

The heart of anti-bias work is a vision of a world in which all children are able to blossom, and each child's particular abilities and gifts are able to flourish. In this world:

All children and families have a sense of belonging and experience affirmation of their identities and cultural ways of being.

All children have access to and participate in the education they need to become successful, contributing members of society.

The educational process engages all members of the program or school in joyful learning.

Children and adults know how to live, learn, and work together in diverse and inclusive environments respectfully and easily.

All families have the resources they need to fully nurture their children.

All children and families live in safe, peaceful, healthy, comfortable housing and neighborhoods.

Adapted from Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves, published by NAEYC in 2020.

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Early-childhood educators have deep faith in the principle that all people deserve the opportunities and resources to fulfill their complete humanity. Moreover, we have a unique role in making this principle real, in promoting all children's chances to thrive and to succeed in school, in work, and in life.

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How to create positive interactions and give productive criticism and praise

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We all learn from positive interactions and like to get encouragement. Preschool children need to be noticed, recognized, and encouraged, too. Here are some sample phrases you can use to celebrate and encourage a preschool child:

I am glad to see you. How are you today?

You are working so hard on that (puzzle, structure, artwork).

You read that entire book. That took a lot of concentration!

I can see that you are really interested in that book.

I see that you are taking turns and working together.

I bet you are proud of your painting!

Look at how happy your friend is that you helped with that heavy basket!

You look so excited to try the new game!

I noticed you wrote your name all by yourself.

Tell me about your structure.

That was really challenging, and you stuck with it.

You can do hard things.

Can I take a picture of you and your creation?

Let me write down your words, so we remember this.

Let's take a picture of this for your family.

I notice you seem frustrated. Can we work together to find a better solution?

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We all learn from positive interactions and like to get encouragement. Preschool children need to be noticed, recognized, and encouraged, too. Here are some sample phrases you can use to celebrate and encourage a preschool child: I am glad to see you. How are you today?

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Scenarios that facilitate learning in the natural environment

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Reflecting on Interactions and Learning | Virtual Lab School

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Read through the following scenarios and then answer the questions below. Think about the unique ways preschoolers are interacting and developing thinking skills. Think about how you might respond.