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The severe effect on adult mental health of an experience suffered by one in five children.
Category: Child Psychology
This Much Screen Time Increases OCD Risk In Children (M)
Screen time doubled during the pandemic.
Piaget Stages Of Development Theory
Piaget’s theory of four stages of development has the dubious claim to fame of being one of the most criticised psychological theories ever.
Piaget’s theory of four stages of development has the dubious claim to fame of being one of the most criticised psychological theories ever.
Jean Piaget was a developmental psychologist whose four-stage theory, published in 1936, has proved extremely influential.
From the sensorimotor stage, through the pre-operational stage, the concrete operational stage and the formal operational stage, his theory attempts to describe how childhood development progresses.
However, Piaget’s experiments and theories about how children build up their knowledge of the world have faced endless challenges, many of them justified.
Let me give you a flavour of why Piaget’s research on stages of development has faced so much criticism and also why psychologists often regard him with such awe.
First I’ll describe one of the observations he made of his own three children, then why his conclusions are probably wrong and finally the central insight at the heart of his four-stage theory of cognitive development.
Piaget’s research on his daughter
One of Piaget’s many careful observations was made when one of his daughters, Jacqueline, then 7 months old, dropped a plastic duck on the quilt and it fell behind a fold so that she couldn’t see it.
Piaget noticed that despite the fact that Jacqueline could clearly see where the duck had dropped, and it was within her reach, she made no attempt to grab for it.
Fascinated by this, Piaget put the duck in her view again but, then, just as she was about to reach for it, he slowly and clearly hid it under the sheet.
Again, she acted as though the duck had simply disappeared, making no attempt to search for it under the sheet.
This seemed strange behaviour to Piaget as Jacqueline was clearly interested in the duck while she could see it, but seemed to forget about it the instant it disappeared from view – out of sight and, apparently, out of mind.
What Piaget deduced from these observations, along with many experiments, was that children do not initially understand the idea that objects continue to exist even when out of sight (this is known as object permanence).
This concept, he thought, children had to work out by themselves by interacting with and experiencing the world.
It wasn’t until around 9 or 10 months of age that Piaget noticed his children began to search for a hidden object.
Piaget’s four-stage theory of development
While many parents play games with their children like this, what set Piaget apart was that he used these observations along with many experiments to develop a theory of how children acquire knowledge, the stages of development theory for which he is rightly best-remembered.
This theory is a four-stage ladder up which Piaget thought children climbed as they gathered knowledge about the world (Piaget, 1936).
1. Sensorimotor stage (birth to 18-24 months)
At the first of Piaget’s stages of development, the sensorimotor stage, infants are aware only of their sensations, fascinated by all the strange new experiences their bodies are having.
They are like little scientists exploring the world by shouting at, listening to, banging and tasting everything.
2. Pre-operational stage (18-24 months to 7 years)
At the second of Piaget’s stages of development, the pre-operational stage, children can process images, words and concepts but they can’t do anything with them, they can’t yet operate on them.
It’s like they’ve acquired the tools of thought, but don’t yet know how to use them.
E.g. in maths they can’t understand that 2 x 3 is the same as 3 x 2.
3. Concrete operational stage (7 to 12 years)
At the third of Piaget’s stages of development, the concrete operational stage, children gain the ability to manipulate symbols and objects, but only if they are concrete – abstract operations are still a challenge.
4. Formal operational stage (12 and up)
At the fourth of Piaget’s stages of development, the formal operational stage, children are able to think in abstract terms about the world.
Now they can understand concepts such as the future, values and justice.
From around this age children start thinking like adults.
Criticism of Piaget stages of development theory
It’s for this grand stages of development theory that Piaget is much admired.
Unfortunately, like many an ambitious theory, over time evidence was uncovered that contradicted aspects of this neat time-line.
For example, Piaget’s conclusions about his daughter Jacqueline’s failure to reach for the duck were probably wrong.
Subsequent studies have revealed infants as young as 3.5 months appear to understand object permanence.
Psychologists nowadays might explain Jacqueline’s behaviour as a failure of memory or an inability to grasp something that is out of view.
Einstein though Piaget was a genius
Although findings such as these have chipped away at Piaget’s stages of development theory, his work has continued to attract interest and stimulate research.
From observations like hiding his daughter’s duck to his grand four-stage theory of development, Piaget’s central insight was that children think in a fundamentally different way from adults.
They don’t just have less knowledge, less experience or less processing power; the qualitative content of their thoughts is actually different.
Even though psychologists now question many of the details of Piaget’s observations and theories, this central insight remains intact.
And it’s this central insight that Albert Einstein once described as “so simple that only a genius could have thought of it”.
→ This article is part of a series on 10 crucial developmental psychology studies:
- When infant memory develops
- How self-concept emerges in infants
- How children learn new concepts
- The importance of attachment styles
- When infants learn to imitate others
- Theory of mind reveals the social world
- Understanding object permanence
- How infants learn their first word
- The six types of play
- Piaget’s stages of development theory
.
Attachment Styles: Secure, Avoidant, Anxious And Ambivalent
Attachment styles are important because we are social animals, relying heavily on our ability to form relationships with others.
Attachment styles are important because we are social animals, relying heavily on our ability to form relationships with others.
Attachment styles analyse how people respond to threats and problems in their personal relationships.
People who find relationships difficult often become unable to participate in the ordinary give-and-take of everyday life.
They may become hostile towards others, have problems in education as well as a greater chance of developing psychiatric disorders later in life.
These difficulties sometimes have their roots in the most important early relationships, evidenced in attachment styles.
It’s no wonder that child psychologists are so interested in the first relationships we build with our primary caregivers.
These attachment styles are likely to prove a vital influence on all our future relationships, including those with our spouse, our workmates and our own children.
While you can’t blame everything on your parents, early relationship attachment styles are like a template that we take forward with us in life.
Measuring attachment styles
So the development of early relationships – often called ‘attachment styles’ – is extremely important.
Naturally child psychologists realised it would be extremely useful to know how well attached children are to their parents.
But here’s the problem: how do you measure attachment styles?
Infants of eight months old tend not to say very much of any use and parents can’t be trusted.
Clearly psychologists needed to observe the caregiver and baby interacting.
It was well-known child psychologist Mary Ainsworth and colleagues who came up with what has now become standard procedure for investigating the emotional attachment styles between children and caregivers (Ainsworth et al., 1978).
Some have argued that this is the most powerful experiment for studying a child’s social and emotional development.
Ainsworth’s strange situation
Ainsworth based her test of attachment styles on fear, one of the most basic human emotions.
As the baby becomes attached to its caregivers, after about six months, it starts to display fear in two easily repeatable situations:
- Stranger anxiety: some time after six months of age children usually start to become scared of strangers. This is particularly pronounced when their caregiver is absent.
- Separation protest: from around the same time, at about six months, children also start to get upset when their caregiver leaves them.
To investigate how infants and their caregivers interact Ainsworth devised a series of interactions which were designed to test how the baby reacted to both stranger anxiety and separation anxiety.
The procedure is like a carefully choreographed ballet, each act lasting about 3 minutes:
- Caregiver and infant are placed in the experimental room by the experimenter, who then leaves.
- Caregiver does nothing while the infant explores.
- A stranger enters, saying nothing for 1 minute, then starts talking to the caregiver. Then, after a further minute, the stranger approaches the infant.
- Caregiver then leaves as discreetly as possible so that the stranger and the infant are left alone together.
- Caregiver then returns to comfort the infant, then leaves again.
- Infant is left all alone.
- Stranger enters and begins to interact with the infant.
- Caregiver returns and the stranger leaves.
As you can see the strange situation is designed to get more strange for the infant as it goes on.
For a start the infant is in an unfamiliar room, then a stranger enters, then the stranger starts trying to talk to them, then their caregiver is nowhere to be seen.
Each time the stress on the infant is ramped up.
The attachment styles
Analysing the results after repeating the experiment with many infants, Ainsworth discovered a fascinating pattern in the data.
It turned out that the most interesting aspect of the interactions observed was how the baby reacted when the caregiver returned.
This analysis of the infant’s reaction to the mother’s return led to a distinction between three separate types of attachment, one of the ‘good kind’ and two so-called ‘disordered attachment styles’.
1. Secure attachment style
Infants considered securely attached will be reasonable upset when their caregiver leaves but will be happy to see them return and will be quickly soothed.
Extensive research has found that around 70 percent of infants fall into this category.
2. Avoidant attachment (insecure attachment)
Infants with this attachment style show little interest in their caregivers, although they will cry when they leave the room.
Strangely, though, they don’t seem that pleased when their caregivers return, often turning their backs on them and trying to get away.
Around 20 percent of infants fall into this category.
3. Ambivalent attachment (insecure attachment)
Infants with this attachment style initially don’t want to leave their caregiver to explore the room.
Then, like the insecure/avoidant, they cry when their caregiver leaves but then when they return seem to want to be consoled, but resist it.
They seem angry.
About 10 percent of infants fall into this category.
4. Disorganised attachment (insecure attachment)
Later research also identified a further insecure attachment style of disorganised attachment.
These infants don’t show much of a pattern: they seem constantly afraid of and confused by their caregiver.
The stress is often too much for the infant.
This type of attachment style has been associated with depressed caregivers or instances of child abuse.
Causes of attachment styles
An enormous amount of research on attachment styles has gone into examining what factors cause infants to be attached in these different ways.
Much emphasis has been placed on the way the caregiver treats the infant.
Secure attachment styles have been associated with caregivers being (Papalia & Olds, 1997):
- Sensitive and responsive.
- Encouraging of mutual interaction.
- Warm and accepting.
Clearly the reverse of these tends to result in insecure attachment styles.
Some research has also found that the infant’s temperament (personality) is also an important factor in attachment styles.
Consequences of attachment styles
Many researchers have argued that attachment styles have important social, emotional and cognitive consequences.
Some have argued that the more positive an infant’s early attachments are, the more likely it is to successfully separate from the caregiver later in life.
Other benefits of secure attachment styles include (Papalia & Olds, 1997):
- More self-confidence.
- More friends.
- Better adult relationships.
Meanwhile insecurely attached children tend to:
- Display more negative emotions.
- Have behaviour problems.
- Be hostile towards other children.
Attachment styles are a window to the future
Critics of the ‘strange situation’ have argued that it is just too strange.
For example:
- Why would caregivers specifically resist interacting with their infant?
- Can infants really keep track of all these comings and goings during the study?
- Is it valid in different cultures?
Despite these criticisms the ‘strange situation’ has fared relatively well in answer to many of these questions.
It provides a standardised way of examining the very earliest relationships we form with our caregivers.
It is a way of revealing the answers infants have arrived at to four major questions their social and emotional selves are asking:
- How do I have good relationships with other people?
- What happens when I explore my environment?
- What can I achieve?
- What do others do when I show that I’m unhappy?
It’s infant’s attachment styles that give us a clue to what answers they’ve formulated to these questions and so a window on both their past and their future.
→ This article is part of a series on 10 crucial developmental psychology studies:
- When infant memory develops
- How self-concept emerges in infants
- How children learn new concepts
- The importance of attachment styles
- When infants learn to imitate others
- Theory of mind reveals the social world
- Understanding object permanence
- How infants learn their first word
- The six types of play
- Piaget’s stages of development theory
.
Parenting Psychology: 12 Studies Every Parent Should Know
Parenting advice is an impenetrable maze of dos and don’ts, but these studies provide scientific tips on the best way to raise children and be a parent.
Parenting advice is an impenetrable maze of dos and don’ts, but these studies provide tips from psychology on the best way to raise children and be a parent.
One of the many reasons parenting is an impossible job is that everyone is giving you advice, and much of it is rubbish.
Frankly, it’s amazing we’ve all made it this far.
So, bucking the trend of random anecdote and superstition, here are twelve psychology studies about parenting that every parent should know.
1. Parents are happier than non-parents
First some good news for those worried about the burdens of parenting.
In recent years, some studies have suggested that the pleasures of parenting are outweighed by the pains.
“Ha!” said parents to themselves, secretly, “I knew it!”
Not so fast though: research has found that, on average, parents feel better than non-parents each day and derive more pleasure from parenting than from other activities (Nelson et al.,. 2013).
Fathers, in particular, derive high levels of positive emotions and happiness from parenting.
2. Child-centric parenting is worth it
Underlining the pleasures of parenting, research finds that child-centric attitudes are beneficial.
A psychology study by Ashton-James et al. (2013) found that parents who were the most child-centric were also happier and derived greater meaning in life from parenting.
Performing child-care activities was associated with greater meaning and fewer negative feelings.
“These findings suggest that the more care and attention people give to others, the more happiness and meaning they experience.
From this perspective, the more invested parents are in their children’s well-being — that is, the more ‘child centric’ parents are — the more happiness and meaning they will derive from parenting.” (Ashton-James et al., 2013)
So, what’s good for your kids, is also good for you and your parenting.
3. Good parenting involves supporting emotional expression
Parents who encourage their offspring to express their emotions raise happier children, psychological research finds (McKee et al., 2019).
When parents support emotional expression, young adults experience less depression and anxiety.
They are also more mindful, better able to regulate their attention and more open and accepting towards themselves and the world.
Children need ’emotional socialisation’: the ability to understand and deal with one’s own emotions.
Key parenting skills that achieve this include listening, giving comfort and helping children to solve problems.
4. Helicopter parenting may be depressing
As with many things in life, though, it’s a fine line between caring and smothering; especially when children have grown up.
Schiffrin et al. (2013) asked 297 undergraduate students about their parents’ behaviour and how they felt about it.
The study found links between ‘helicopter parenting’ and higher levels of depression amongst the students, as well as lower levels of autonomy, relatedness and competence.
“Parents should keep in mind how developmentally appropriate their involvement is and learn to adjust their parenting style when their children feel that they are hovering too closely.” (Schiffrin et al., 2013)
Other studies have also suggested that helicopter parenting raises maladjusted children.
5. Avoid strict discipline
Around 90 percent of American parents admit at least one instance of using strict verbal discipline with their children, such as calling names or swearing at them.
Rather than helping keep adolescents in line, though, be aware that this may just exacerbate the problem.
A child psychology study of 967 US families and their parenting found that harsh verbal discipline at 13-years-old predicted worse behaviour in the next year (Wang et al., 2013).
And it didn’t help if parents had a strong bond with their children.
The study’s lead author Ming-Te Wang explained:
“The notion that harsh discipline is without consequence, once there is a strong parent-child bond–that the adolescent will understand that ‘they’re doing this because they love me’–is misguided because parents’ warmth didn’t lessen the effects of harsh verbal discipline.
Indeed, harsh verbal discipline appears to be detrimental in all circumstances.”
Studies also find that harsh parenting practices when children are small is linked to smaller brain structures in adolescence.
6. Regular bedtimes are vital to parenting
Regular bedtimes really matter to children’s developing brains, psychology research on parenting finds.
Researchers followed 11,000 children from when they were 3-years old to the age of 7 to measure the effects of bedtimes on cognitive function (Kelly et al., 2013).
The researchers found that:
“…irregular bedtimes at 3 years of age were associated with lower scores in reading, maths, and spatial awareness in both boys and girls, suggesting that around the age of 3 could be a sensitive period for cognitive development.”
Regular bedtimes are important for both boys and girls and the earlier these can be implemented, the better for cognitive performance.
7. Do the chores together
Bringing up happy children is easier if Mum and Dad’s relationship isn’t too rocky.
One frequent bone of contention between parents is the chores.
A trick for achieving marital satisfaction over the chores is to do them together.
When partners perform their chores at the same time–no matter who is doing what — both people are more satisfied with the division of labour (Galovan et al., 2013).
Getting the children involved in chores is also a positive parenting step.
8. Good parenting means letting children see negative emotions
Surprisingly, it is good parenting to allow children to see negative emotions like anger and frustration, psychology research finds (Karnilowicz et al., 2018).
Many parents, though, try to hide all conflicts from their children.
However, children often know when their parents are trying to hide conflict and it confuses them.
They know something is wrong, but see no change in their parent’s behaviour, which is confusing.
Better, say psychologists, to allow children to see healthy conflict and how it is resolved — that is good parenting.
9. Limit infant TV viewing
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children should watch no more than two hours of TV per day after two years of age, and none before that age.
Here’s why: a study that followed almost 2,000 Canadian children from birth found that an extra hour’s TV viewing at 2.5-years-old predicted worse performance later when they attended kindergarten (Pagani et al., 2013).
The more children exceeded this recommendation at 2.5 years old, the worse their vocabulary, math and motor skills were at 5-years-old.
10. Exercise boosts kids’ school performance
Kids are increasingly sedentary and, as I frequently write here on PsyBlog, exercise is a wonderful way to boost brain power, and it has many other benefits.
A study of 11-year-olds has found that moderate to vigorous exercise was associated with increased academic performance in English, Maths and Science (Booth et al., 2013).
These gains from exercise were also seen in exams taken at 16-years-old.
Interestingly, girls’ science results benefited the most from extra exercise.
11. Intense mothering makes stressful parenting
Some women say that parenting is more stressful than being at work.
There are strong links between parenting and stress and guilt.
How can we square this with the reports and research findings that children fill your life with joy and meaning?
It may be down to differences in attitudes to parenting.
In particular, being an ‘intense mother’ may be bad for you.
In their child psychology study of 181 mothers of children under 5, Rizzo et al. (2012) found that mothers who most strongly endorsed the idea that children were sacred and that women are better parents than men, were more likely to be depressed and experience less satisfaction with life.
Yes, nurture your children, but don’t sacrifice your own mental health.
12. Why siblings are so different
Anyone with more than one child will have noticed a curious thing: their personalities are often very dissimilar.
In fact, according to a study by Plomin and Daniels (1987), siblings have no more in common in their personalities than two completely unrelated strangers.
This is very weird given that 50 percent of their genetic code is identical.
The answer isn’t in the genes at all, but in the environment in which children grow up.
Far from having the same environments, each child has:
- a different relationship with their parents,
- a different relationship with their other siblings,
- different friends and experiences at school…
…and so on.
And all these differences add up to quite remarkable dissimilarities between siblings — often such that if they didn’t look alike, you’d never know they were related.
All this means, of course, that because their personalities are often so different, parenting strategies that work with one child, may not work with another.
It’s just one more challenge of parenting!
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Robert Fantz: The Looking Chamber Experiment
Psychologist Robert Fantz investigated what babies really understand about the world with his looking chamber experiment.
Psychologist Robert Fantz investigated what babies really understand about the world with his looking chamber experiment.
Robert Fantz, a developmental psychologist, in his 1961 series of experiments, investigated what babies really understand about the world.
The eyes of tiny infants look glazed and they mostly seem concerned with the bare necessities of life.
What do they understand about the world and how can you possibly find out, given that babies are not so hot on answering complex questions about their perceptual abilities?
In 1961, when Fantz carried out his experiment, there wasn’t much you could do to find out what was going on in a baby’s head – other than watch.
And watching the baby is what he did.
An enduring feature of human nature is if there’s something of interest near us, we generally look at it.
So Fantz set up a display board above the baby to which were attached two pictures (Fantz, 1961).
On one was a bulls-eye and on the other was the sketch of a human face.
Then, from behind the board, invisible to the baby, he peeked through a hole to watch what the baby looked at.
The results
What he found was that a two-month old baby looked twice as much at the human face as it did at the bulls-eye.
This suggested that human babies have some powers of pattern and form selection.
Before this it was thought that babies looked out onto a chaotic world of which they could make little sense.
In modern psychology the descendants of this experiment are still used today to find out what babies understand about the world.
These have discovered that we’re remarkably early developers.
At one month we can follow a slow-moving object.
At two months we can move both our eyes together and begin to appreciate how far away things are.
At three months we can tell the difference between members of our family (Hunt, 1993).
As a result of these and similar studies, psychologists have suggested that we are born with a definite preference for viewing human faces.
This would certainly make evolutionary sense as other human faces hold all sorts of useful information which is vital for our survival.
Not a bad set of conclusions from simply watching a baby’s eyes!
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