Psychology: Infancy & Childhood Development

What Is My Parenting Style? Four Types of Parenting 

Parenting styles and their descriptions

Freud's Psychosexual Stages of Development 

Information on Freud's Psychosexual Stages of Development from verywellmind.com

Developmental Psychology 

Overview of Developmental Psychology

Developmental Psychology - Topic 

Video playlist on developmental psychology

Parenting Styles

Diana Baumrind, a leading researcher in this area, identified three basic parenting styles:

authoritative: Authoritative parents set reasonable limits for their children but are not overcontrolling. The parent is the authority figure, firm but understanding, willing to give advice, but also willing to listen to children’s concerns. Parents explain the reasons for their decisions rather than just “laying down the law.” To Baumrind, authoritative parenting is the most successful parenting style.

authoritarian: Authoritarian parents are unresponsive to their children’s needs and rely on harsh forms of discipline while allowing their children little control over their lives. Children of authoritarian parents tend to be inhibited, moody, withdrawn, fearful, and distrustful of others. They are also at higher risk of becoming overweight

permissive: Permissive parents have an “anything goes” attitude toward raising their children. They may respond affectionately to children but be extremely lax in setting limits and imposing discipline. Children with permissive parents tend to be impulsive and lacking in self-control. Because they lack the experience of conforming to other people’s demands, they may not develop effective interpersonal skills 

Infancy Development

A reflex is an unlearned, automatic response to a particular stimulus. Babies are born with a number of basic reflexes

• rooting reflex: The reflexive turning of the newborn’s head in the direction of a touch on its cheek.
• eyeblink reflex: The reflexive blinking of the eyes that protects the newborn from bright light and foreign objects.
• sucking reflex: Rhythmic sucking in response to stimulation of the tongue or mouth.
• Moro reflex: An inborn reflex, elicited by a sudden noise or loss of support, in which the infant extends its arms, arches its back, and brings its arms toward each other as though attempting to grab hold of someone.
• palmar grasp reflex: The reflexive curling of the infant’s fingers around an object that touches its palm.
• Babinski reflex: The reflexive fanning out and curling of the infant’s toes and inward twisting of its foot when the sole of the foot is stroked.

Sensory and Perceptual Ability

Vision is the slowest of the senses to develop. Can recognize mothers face.

By 1 month of age, an infant can follow a moving object; by 2 months, the infant has developed basic color vision. Depth perception develops by around 6 months

Newborns can hear many different types of sounds. They are particularly sensitive to sounds falling within the frequency of the human voice and can discriminate their mother’s voice from other voice.

At 5 to 6 days of age, infants can detect their mother’s odor. 

By the age of 4 to 6 months, babies can discriminate among happy, angry, and neutral facial expressions and show a preference for faces reflecting their own racial characteristics

Infants are both active learners and active perceivers of their environment.

Fixation time: the amount of time spent looking at a visual stimulus

Motor Development

Newborns’ motor skills are not limited to simple reflexes. They can engage in some goal-directed behaviors, such as bringing their hands to their mouths to suck their thumbs.  Minutes after birth, newborns can imitate their parents’ facial expressions.

 the first 3 months: infants slowly begin replacing reflexive movements with voluntary, purposive movements. 2 months of age, infants can lift their chins

By the second or third month: they begin bringing objects to their mouths.

By about 6 months: they can reliably grasp stationary objects and begin catching moving objects.

5 months: they can roll over

9 months: they can sit without support.

By the end of the first year: infants will master the most difficult balancing problem they’ll ever face in life: standing without support. 

Childhood Development

Temperament: Many psychologists believe that children differ in their basic temperaments and that these differences are at least partially determined by genetic factors.

temperament: A characteristic style of behavior or disposition.

Types of temperament:

• Easy children. These children are playful and respond positively to new stimuli. They adapt easily to changes; display a happy, engaging mood; and are quick to develop regular sleeping and feeding schedules.
• Difficult children. These children react negatively to new situations or people, have irritable dispositions, and have difficulty establishing regular sleeping and feeding schedules.
• Slow-to-warm-up children. These children have low activity levels; avoid novel stimuli; require more time to adjust to new situations than most children; and typically react to unfamiliar situations by becoming withdrawn, subdued, or mildly distressed.

attachment: The enduring emotional bond that infants and older children form with their caregivers.

Psychologist Mary Ainsworth developed a laboratory-based method, called the strange situation, to observe how infants react to separations and reunions with caregivers, typically their mothers 

attachment types:

• Secure type (Type B). These infants used their mothers as a secure base for exploring the environment, periodically looking around to check on her whereabouts and limiting exploration when she was absent. 
•  Insecure-avoidant type (Type A). These infants paid little attention to the mother when she was in the room and separated easily from her to explore the environment.
• Insecure-resistant type (Type C). These infants clung to the mother and were reluctant to explore the environment despite the presence of desirable toys. 
• Created later: disorganized/disoriented attachment (Type D) These infants showed disorganized and unusual responses during separations and reunions, such as freezing in place or appearing dazed or confused when the mother left the room and was unable to approach her for support when she returned, even though they appeared fearful or distressed. 

imprinting: The formation of a strong bond of the newborn animal to the first moving object seen after birth

Many factors influence a child’s intellectual, emotional, and social development, including genetics, peer influences, and quality of parenting

Sigmund Freud Psychosexual Theory of Development

Sigmund Freud believed that personality develops during early childhood. For Freud, childhood experiences shape our personalities and behavior as adults. Freud viewed development as discontinuous; he believed that each of us must pass through a series of stages during childhood, and that if we lack proper nurturance and parenting during a stage, we may become stuck, or fixated, in that stage. According to Freud, children’s pleasure-seeking urges are focused on a different area of the body, called an erogenous zone, at each of the five stages of development: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital

Erik Erikson's Psychosocial Development Theory

Erik Erikson, a prominent psychodynamic theorist, believed our social relationships and interactions help shape our development. In his view, psychosocial development progresses through a series of stages that begin in early childhood and continue through adulthood. He believed our personalities are shaped by how we deal with a series of psychosocial crises or challenges during these stages

Trust Versus Mistrust: The first psychosocial challenge the infant faces is the development of a sense of trust toward its social environment. 
Autonomy Versus Shame and Doubt: Erikson believed the central psychosocial challenge faced during the second and third years of life concerns autonomy. The child is now becoming mobile within the home and is “getting into everything.” 
Initiative Versus Guilt: This stage, corresponding to the preschool years of 3 to 6, is a time of climbing gyms and play dates, a time at which the child is challenged to initiate actions and carry them out. 
Industry Versus Inferiority: At this stage, which corresponds to the elementary school period of 6 to 12 years, the child faces the central challenge of developing industriousness and self-confidence. 

Stages 5 - 8 will be discussed further in the Adolescent and Adulthood sections of the libguide

Jean Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory

schema: an organized system of actions or a mental representation that people use to understand the world and interact with it 

adaptation: To Piaget, the process of adjustment that enables people to function more effectively in meeting the demands they face in the environment.

assimilation: To Piaget, the process of incorporating new objects or situations into existing schemas.

accommodation: To Piaget, the process of creating new schemas or modifying existing ones to account for new objects or experiences.
 

Piaget proposed that children progress at about the same ages through a series of four stages of cognitive development: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages.

Sensorimotor Stage: Birth to 2 Years:

• At birth through 1 month, the infant’s behaviors are limited to inborn reflexes, such as grasping and sucking
• During months 1 through 8, the infant gains increasing voluntary control over some of its movements
•  By 8 to 12 months, the infant’s actions are intended to reach a particular goal. The child will perform purposeful actions
  • end of the sensorimotor stage the child begins to acquire the ability to form a mental representation of an object that is not visibly present
  • object permanence: the recognition that objects continue to exist even if they have disappeared from sight. 
• one and two years of age children begin to show interests in how things are constructed
• end of second year, children begin to engage in mental trial and error

Preoperational Stage: 2 to 7 Years:

• Characterized by the use of words and symbols to represent objects and relationships among them
• Think one-dimensionally- they focus on one problem or situation at a time
• world is a stage to meet there needs and to amuse them

Concrete Operational Stage: 7 to 11 Years:

• Show capacity for adult logic
• capable of decentration
  • decentration: simultaneous focusing on more than one dimension of a problem, so that flexible, reversible thought becomes possible
• show subjective moral judgement
• understands laws of conservation
  • conservation: In Piaget’s theory, the ability to recognize that the quantity or amount of an object remains constant despite superficial changes in its outward appearance.
     

formal Operational Stage: 

• begins around age 11 or 12, but some start later or may never
• represents cognitive maturity
• adolescents are capable of classification, logical thought, hypothesize, deductive reasoning, understanding problem solving as various outcomes

Lev Vygotsky's sociocultural theory

The Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky was concerned primarily with how children come to understand their social world. He believed that cultural learning is acquired through a gradual process of social interactions between children and parents, teachers, and other members of the culture.

Vygotsky emphasized that social learning occurs within a zone of proximal development (ZPD), also called the zone of potential development. 

• zone of proximal development (ZPD): In Vygotsky’s theory, the range between children’s present level of knowledge and their potential knowledge state if they receive proper guidance and instruction

 In Vygotsky’s view, the adult is the expert and the child is the novice, and the relationship between them is one of tutor and student. 

Scaffolding: Vygotsky’s term for temporary cognitive structures or methods of solving problems that help the child as he or she learns to function independently.

To Vygotsky, children are born as cultural blank slates. They must learn the skills, values, and behaviors valued by the given culture. 

Lawrence Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development

Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg extended upon the foundation that Piaget built regarding cognitive development. Kohlberg believed that moral development, like cognitive development, follows a series of stages. To develop this theory, Kohlberg posed moral dilemmas to people of all ages, and then he analyzed their answers to find evidence of their particular stage of moral development.

According to Kohlberg, moral development progresses through a sequence of six stages organized into three levels of moral reasoning:

• preconventional level: Children at the preconventional level base their moral judgments on the perceived consequences of behavior. 
  • Stage 1: is characterized by an obedience and punishment orientation: Good behavior is defined simply as behavior that avoids punishment by an external authority. 
  • Stage 2: represents an instrumental purpose orientation: A behavior is judged good when it serves the person’s needs or interests.

• conventional level: At the conventional level, moral reasoning is based on conformity with conventional rules of right and wrong
  • Stage 3: is characterized by a “good boy–good girl” orientation: Individuals believe that conformity with rules and regulations is important because of the need to be perceived by others as a “good boy” or a “good girl
  • Stage 4: has an authority or law-and-order orientation. Moral reasoning now goes beyond the need to gain approval from others: Rules must be obeyed and applied evenhandedly because they are needed for the orderly functioning of society. 

• postconventional level: Individuals generally reach the postconventional level of moral reasoning during adolescence, if they reach it at all. It involves applying one’s own moral standards or abstract principles rather than relying on authority figures or blindly adhering to social rules or conventions 
  •  Stage 5: the social contract orientation, involves the belief that laws are based on mutual agreement among members of a society, but they are not infallible
  • Stage 6: thinking involves adoption of universal ethical principles, an underlying set of self-chosen, abstract ethical principles that serve as a guiding framework for moral judgments.