Aguilar, Joanne Camille T.

Developmental
Psychology
Salmon, Fiona Julienne A. Prof. Yolanda Bacani
2F1 January 3,
2012
EARLY SCHOOL AGE

Comprised of children who are 4 to 6 years old

In this developmental stage, children come face to face with new, exciting, and complex socialization
experiences.
Long before, it is required by law that children who are at least 6 years old must be enrolled at school.
However in 2007, 65% of 3 to 5 year old children were enrolled in schools.
School brings about fundamental learning, lots of opportunities exposed to success and failure, as well as the
formation of peer groups which initiates strong bonds or friendships. In short, school influences the lives of
children in a much bigger perspective which is beyond the walls of their households or beyond what their
families can teach.
The power of curiosity comes in (ex. Why do I have to stay at home? Why am I not allowed to do so?).
Children begin to question the notions set within their family due to what they see or hear within their peer
groups, neighborhood, or even from the television itself.
The independence of thought starts to sink in.

Changes in Gross Motor Skills During Early School Age

Age
Walking and Running
Jumping
Hopping
Throwing and Catching
Pedaling and Steering
4-5 years old
Walks downstairs, alternating feet, runs more smoothly, gallops, and skips with one foot
Improved upward and forward jumps, travels greater distance
Hops 7 to 9 times on same foot
Improved speed of hopping
Throws ball with increased body rotation and some transfer of weight forward. Catches ball with hands; if
unsuccessful, may still trap ball against chest
Rides tricycle rapidly
Steers smoothly
5-6 years old
Increased speed of run
Gallops more smoothly
True skipping appears
Jumps off floor about 1 foot
Broad jumps 3 feet
Hops 50 feet on same foot in 10 seconds. Hops with rhythmical alternation (2 hops on 1 foot and 2 on the
other)
Has mature throwing and catching pattern
 Moves arm more and steps forward during throw
Awaits thrown ball with relaxed posture, adjusting body to the size and path of the ball
Rides bicycle with training wheels

Developmental Tasks
Children in the early school age undergo the construction of their interpersonal world and determine where
they actually fit in. Children only have limited experiences during early school age so they broaden their
outlook in the years to come. However, the lessons established during this stage are very important because
these are the things that would guide the children in the near future. In simple terms, they must learn what it
means to be a good person. Children also have this increased sense of being loved and the fear of being
rejected during early school age.
Gender Identification

tackles about physical, cognitive, emotional, and social domains integrated into ones thinking as male or
female. In a society, male and female individuals play different roles, accomplish different tasks, and have their
corresponding strengths and characteristics. Children ask a lot of questions about these since they want to
make sense of their gender based on their inherited or acquired attributes, skills, preferences, and talents.

Three important concepts under gender identification:

1. a. Sex a persons biological gender brought about by chromosomal information. The external genitalia
are helpful in determining whether an individual is a male or female. The chromosomes and hormones formed
during prenatal stage lead to the concept of maleness or femaleness of a person. However, instances like
having underdeveloped genitalia or hormonal imbalances may cause uncertainties in the gender formation of a
person.

1. b. Gender refers to the integrated cognitive, social, emotional, and behavioral patterns associated with
being a boy or a girl, man or woman in ones culture. Gender identification during childhood includes meeting
the communitys expectations on how girls or boys must act or behave.
2. c. Sexual Orientation the preference for sexually intimate partners. Gender nonconformity may be traced
back during early childhood as well as the factors held responsible for resulting into such sexual orientation.

Four Types: asexual, heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual

Four components of gender identification:

1. Understanding the concept of gender

This involves the following:

1.1. Applying the correct gender label to themselves and others
- earliest component to be achieved
- categories: male and female
- Gender labels are helpful in guiding a childs attention to important distinctions between males and
females and these also help in gender-typed plays.
 - Children come to know that they are boys or girls by imitating their parents. Parents also continue to
instill gender identification to their children by saying Thats a good boy or Thats a good girl.

As early as 21 months a majority of infants produce at least one gender label such as boy or girl.
By the age of 2 children can accurately label other children as boys and girls.
By the age of 3 children are now able to accurately sort photographs of boys and girls. Gender labels such as
mommy, daddy, brother, and sister are also accurately used by this age.
Cues in making distinctions between males and females: body shape, hairstyle, clothes. Example: Abby is a
girl. Robert is a boy.

1.2. Understanding that gender is permanent

Example: Robert is a boy. When he grows up, he will be a man.

1.3. Understanding gender constancy

Analogous to that of object permanence. Example: Robert is a boy. Even though he plays with other girls, he is
still a boy.

1.4. Understanding the genital basis of gender

Example: A person is a girl or a boy depending on how his or her body is made. Males have the penis while the
females have the vagina.

2. Learning gender role standards and stereotypes.

3. Identifying with parents.
4. Forming a gender preference

Early Moral Development

based on the notion of children between what is right from wrong despite an escalation of independence
regarding thought and exposure to a much wider range of social influences.

Culture and Self-Theory

Involves understanding the self which is continuously molded through the expansion of social influences.
Involves the discussion on self-esteem.
During early school age, the self-theory becomes more differentiated. Children can distinguish between the
real self (how one actually is) and the ideal self (how one would like to be). They recognize some discrepancies
between how they describe themselves and how their parents or friends may describe them (Oosterwegel
&Oppenheimer, 1993).
 They can differentiate among various areas of activities like math, reading, and music indicating their
corresponding strengths and weaknesses in each area.
The self is understood as an accumulation of categorical identifications (Damon & Hart, 1988). No additional
linkage or significance is taken from these categorical statementssimply a recognition that they exist. In
simple terms, children do not have the right explanations to questions given to them.

Example: What kind of person are you? I have blue eyes.

Why is it important? It just is.

A shift to comparative assessments is also evident at early school age. Self-understanding depends on
comparison between oneself and others.
Example: What are you like? Im bigger than most kids.

Why is that important? I can run faster than everybody.

Self-consciousness begins through the following: conversations, stories, photos, experiences.

1. Western Countries and Independence

Self-reliance autonomy and distinctiveness.

Self is the figure and others are the ground.
US students memories, based on a study, were discreet events where they had a lead role (self-memories).
Uniqueness of self.

1. Asian Countries and Interdependence

Fitting into a group and preserving harmonious relationships.

Emphasis on inherent interconnectedness of group members.
Emphasis on appreciation that ones feelings, thoughts, and behaviors depend on the desire to fit into a group.
Chinese students memories involve family and neighborhood.
Self as an interdependent and relational being.

Theory of Mind

This involves the natural way children understand themselves and others mentally.
Children understand that ones mental state is either a cause/explanation for their behavior.

Researches on Theory of the Mind:

1. 1. Method

- Children are given situations to understand how they view someones beliefs and desires.

1. Examples

- Childrens answers on what they think Maxi will do or think when he comes back to his room and
discovers that his candy isnt where he placed it.

1. Findings

- Children aged 3 years old considers what others might want but have trouble considering others
beliefs.
- Children aged 5 years old considers the existence of false beliefs, separating what they know from
what another person might know.
- A persons actions are influenced by his or her beliefs which may be incorrect.

1. Implications of Differences of Beliefs

- Enhances self-awareness.
- Opens the mind as to how others might think and how their behavior may be interpreted.
- Creates conformance to gender role standards: moral imperatives
- Responsiveness to social pressure.
- Experiences of guilt, failure, social comparison, self-criticism, and self-evaluation.
Self-Esteem

Evaluation of worthiness/self-evaluation.
Sources:

1. messages of love, support, and approval from others

contribute to self-worth or pride.

1. specific attributes/competencies

- success or failure experiences

- athletics, problem solving, and social skills

1. how one regards these aspects of self in relation to others and his or her ideal self

- value one assigns to specific competencies in relation to ones overall life goals and ideals.
- contrasting views of others and oneself
With high or positive self-esteem:
- buffer against anxiety or negative feedback
 - explain failure by examining a task, time for completion, people involved, and criteria for evaluating
success and failure
- use of strategies to minimize negative feedback
- doesnt allow failure to increase doubt of their worth
- copes with negative feedback and reclaiming of self as someone with socially valued qualities
With negative or low self-esteem:
- feel worse after a failure
- less likely to cope effectively with negative feelings
- rarely take action to improve oneself
- cautious in situations which would bring about criticism
Peer Play

Through playing, children start to create a mental representation on how to participate within groups and how
to build friendships. Example: Hopscotch

Friendship Groups

Friendships are based on mutual enjoyment and sharing of toys, food, or other goods. Children are more
generous to their friends rather than to children they are not acquainted with because they expect fairness and
cooperation. Hence, friendships are maintained through constructive play.
Children at the age of 4 to 5 who maintain stable friendships are willing to compromise in pretend games and
decide with their friends which activities are nice to engage into where everyone could enjoy. However,
friendships may be broken through selfish attitudes, hitting, or name calling.
Friendships benefit young children because these enhance their interpersonal sensitivity, social reasoning skills,
and conflict resolution skills (Volling, Youngblade & Belsky, 1997).

Conflict Among Friends

Peer play is disturbed through quarrels.

Many 5 and 6-year olds participate in play fighting.

Groups and Dyads

Early school age girls enjoy more in dyadic (two-person) interactions while boys enjoy with a larger group of
friends. These 2 configurations provide different intimacy opportunities, different needs to exercise dominance
and control and different problems in the coordination of action. The dyad is associated to intimate
relationships between partners or parent and child while the group is associated to better relationship within
teams, work groups, and families.

Video Games, Media, and Computer Programs

Disrupt the importance of peer play.

These are somewhat seen by parents as materials having educational value and help in enhancing their
childrens cognitive development. These contribute in spatial visualization, visual attention, manual dexterity,
speed of response, reading skills, enhancement of creativity and imagination, goal attainment, multitasking,
 and early readiness for computer literacy. Immediate reinforcement is also provided through increasing points
and gaining access to new levels. However, only a few studies support this idea.
Boys spend more time playing video games than girls

The Psychosocial Crisis: Initiative vs. Guilt

Initiative

Is the active, conceptual investigation of the world (Erikson, 1963). It can be recognized in a childs curiosity,
exploratory behaviour, and active coping strategies in the face of obstacles (Frese, 2001).
The childs motivation for and skill in investigation depend on the successful development of a strong sense of
autonomy in toddlerhood. Having acquired self-control and self-confidence, children can perform a variety of
actions and observe the consequences.

Example: They discover what makes parents or teachers angry and what pleases them. They may intentionally
perform an aggressive (hostile) act in order to draw out hostile response. Their curiosity ranges from physical
to supernatural so they may ask random questions about the color of the sky, the purpose of hair, the nature
of God, the origin of babies, or the speed at which fingernails grow. They take things apart, explore, and
invent toys and games out of odds and ends.

Things to be aware of concerning initiative:

1. 1. One expression of initiative is childrens playful exploration of their bodies. Boys of this age may
occasionally be observed in a game of the longest urine trajectory; Girls report on occasions on which they
have attempted to urinate from a standing position, imitating to imitate how a boy does; Both boys and girls
engage in some form of masturbation. These behaviors are evidence of childrens growing curiosity about and
pleasure in their bodies and physical functioning.
2. 2. A positive sense of initiative can be applied in social settings. Children may express initiative in social
situations by asking questions, asserting their presence, and taking leadership.
3. 3. Initiative can be expressed when children are alone just as readily as when they are in social situations.
Children may express initiative when they are alone by building or inventing novel devices.

Guilt

Is an emotion that accompanies the sense that one has been responsible for an unacceptable thought, fantasy,
or action (Izard, 1977).
Recognized as a fundamental moral emotion that is usually accompanied by regret (remorse) and a desire to
make compensation for real or imagined wrongdoing.
It has the adaptive function of promoting social harmony, because it disrupts or inhibits aggressive actions and
leads people to ask for forgiveness or compensate for the wrong things they have done.
Guilt is typically tied to constructive efforts to repair the harm done to others (Tangney, 2001).

Three Theories About Guilt

1. The psychoanalytic perspective views guilt as an emotional reaction to ones unacceptable sexual and
aggressive impulses. These impulses are especially threatening during the phallic stage, when hostility and
feelings of sexuality toward ones parents become a focus of the childs wishes and must be repressed.
2. Research on empathy suggests that guilt may be awakened at a very early age through emotional arousal and
sensitivity to another persons emotional distress. This view of guilt based on empathy is not defensive; it is
closely linked to prosocial feelings and the basic emotional ties between infants and their caregivers (Hoffman,
1982).
3. Cognitive perspective suggests that guilt occours when one fails to act in accord with ones own personal
standards and beliefs. This view supposes a more advanced level of self-reflection and the ability to compare
ones behaviors against personal standard. In this theory, guilt begins to be experienced in early and middle
adulthood as children begin to be more comparative in their organization and evaluation of self.

Central Process for Resolving Psychosocial Crisis: Identification

Children incorporate their parents values and behaviors into their own behavior. In this way, children are able
to:

1. Feel that their parents are with them even when they are not, and
2. Develop a growing sense of independence from their parents (since the child is confident that he/she can do
the parents job of guiding their own behavior).

This leads to the development of an ideal self image, which will be more unrealistic now that later.
Identification with parents is the process by which the ideal self-image and moral prescriptions are
blended into the childs personality.

- When children are unable to control their behavior that they werent able to meet their ideals and
conforms to internalized sanctions, they will experience guilt.
- When childrens behavior approaches their ideals and conforms to internalize sanctions, they will
experience feelings of self-confidence that allow them to take initiative.
The Prime Adaptive Ego Quality and Core Pathology: Purpose and Inhibition
Purpose

Is thought or behaviour with direction and meaning.

Purposefulness is the courage playfully to imagine and energetically to pursue valued goals (Erikson, 1978).
It is a cognitively more complex extension of the will gained in toddlerhood, in that it combines a sense of
action (agency) with a plan. In contrast to the toddler who exercises the will through the mere delight in
action, the early school age child imposes intention and goals on action.
A sense of purpose suggests not only that the action does have meaning, but also the person initiating it has
meaning.

Example situation: Sofia enters a play situation and says, I have an idea. Lets play Barbie dolls. This kind of
suggestion reflects Sofias sense of a goal-directed plan, and a sense of confidence about introducing his idea
into the ongoing activities of the group.
Inhibition
 Refers to the restraint or suppression of thoughts and behavior.
Is assumed to emerege when parents or caregivers use high levels of love withdrawal and guilt-inducing
interactions with their children. These kinds of interactions suggest to the child that the parents love,
affection, and approval are conditional on the child matching certain specific parental standards.
In order to adapt in this kind of environment and avoid risking loss of love, the child becomes self-conscious
and restrained in action.
A child who is inhibited doesnt want to take the risks associated with imposing a plan or suggesting a
direction, for fear that suggestions will result in parental disapproval.

(According to Lois Murphy (1972), inhibition has early origins in the mother-infant relationship. When
mothers are very depressed or psychologically unavailable, they may be unable to engage in the kinds of
consistent, rhythmic behaviors that produce early experiences of cause and effect. Their babies dont have
opportunities to participate in the typical give-and-take exchanges that provide a model for caus-effect
interactions. As a result, by early school age, some children have a very passive orientation toward play and
social interaction. Their inhibition is due to a lack of basic early structures or schemes for how to direct the
flow of play or have a positive impact in the course of social interactions.)

Inhibited children are likely to emerge as shy, withdrawn, and often lonely during the succeeding period of
middle adulthood.
Without some form of social intervention, they become increasingly withdrawn, not knowing how to impose
their ideas into the ongoing activites of the group, and not experienceing the confidence-building effects of
making suggestions and having them accepted.
Consequently, by the end of the early school age period, their inhibition produces new deficits in social skill
development.

Applied Topic: School Readiness

Defining Readiness

Typically, the term is used to refer to a time when the childs physical, cognitive, social, and emotional
maturation are at a level to undertake new learning or to engage in a more complex, demanding type of
activity or relationship.
It is sometimes referred to as a critical or sensitive period or a teachable moment.
Zone of proximal development another way of conceptualizing readiness wherein it is the next higher
level of performance one can achieve with the help of more competent teachers.
When thinking about the goal that all children should come to school ready to learn, the concept of readiness
becomes somewhat more complicated does it refer to readiness to learn or readiness to start school? One
might argue that all children except those with sever neurological damage are both ready and eager to
learn.
However, not all children have the combined physical, cognitive, emotional, and social skills that allow them to
adapt to the demands of the kindergarten environment or to succeed at the academic challenges of its
curriculum without support (Bowman, Donovan, & Burns, 2000; Early, Ptanta, Taylor, & Cox, 2001).

Measuring Kindergarten Readiness

In efforts to prevent early school failure, some states in the USA began to administer school readiness tests.
However, there is no universal agreement of a measure of kindergarten readiness, and some educators argue
 whether any test given to 5-year-olds can accurately predict a childs ability to learn in the school environment
(American Academy of Pediatrics 1995; Pyle, 2002).
Many pre-school educators emphasize that cognitive skills in reading, mathematics, and general knowledge are
not enough to understand the childs readiness for school. Physical development and motor coordination, social
skills, communication skills, and a childs enthusiasm for learning all play a pary in how well a child will adapt to
the school environment.
In two separate national surveys in the US, parents and teachers were asked what characteristics a child needs
to be ready to start school. Teachers emphasized that children need to be physically healthy, well rested, and
well nourished as the most important aspects of readiness. They emphasized the ability to communicate
effectively, demonstrate enthusiasm and curiosity, follow directions, not be troublesome, and show sensitivity
to the feelings of other children as important indicators (Lewit & Baker, 1995).
Parents tended to emphasize the importance of specific skills such as using pencil or scissors, knowing the
alphabet, or counting to 20 more frequently than the teachers (Lewit & Baker. 1995).