Category: Child Psychology

Not learning from mistakes? Part of the reason is down to childhood and how people weigh risk and reward.

Adults who don’t learn from their mistakes often have had stressful childhoods and find it harder to sense risky situations approaching, research finds.

As a result, looming health, financial or legal problems could be more difficult to spot for people who were maltreated early in life.

But when the bad luck hits, people who have had stressful childhoods get hit harder — perhaps because it is more of a surprise.

Professor Seth Pollak, who led the study, said:

“It’s not that people are overtly deciding to take these negative risks, or do things that might get them in trouble.

It may very well be that their brains are not really processing the information that should tell them they are headed to a bad place, that this is not the right step to take.”

Study on why people don’t learn from their mistakes

For the study, young adults — some of whom were highly stressed as children — were given a series of tests of risk and reward.

The study showed that those who were maltreated at around 8-years-old found it harder to learn from their mistakes and to sense that loss was coming.

They made the same poor decisions when weighing risks against reward over and over again.

Professor Pollak said:

“It was our observation not that they couldn’t do math, but that they weren’t really attending to the right things.

We didn’t see people improving over time.

You might say, ‘Well, they don’t get how it works.’

But the people with high-stress childhoods, even after many trials, they weren’t using negative feedback to change their behavior and improve.”

Brain scans also revealed that there was relatively low activity in areas related to loss as people were considering their choice — helps to explain why some people don’t learn from their mistakes.

Professor Pollak continued:

“And then, when they would lose, we’d see more activity than expected—an overreaction—in the part of the brain that responds to reward, which makes sense.

If you didn’t catch the cue that you were likely to lose, you’re probably going to be pretty shocked when you don’t win.”

Professor Rasmus Birn, the study’s first author, said they want to expand this finding:

“Now that we have this finding, we can use it to guide us to look at specific networks in the brain that are active and functionally connected.

We may find that childhood stress reshapes the way communication happens across the brain.”

The study was published in the journal PNAS (Birn et al., 2017).

55% of people reported childhood spankings, with men more likely to have been spanked than women.

Childhood spanking can lead to many adult mental health problems, research concludes.

Adults spanked as children are more likely to feel depressed, drink too much, use illegal drugs and attempt suicide.

Dr Andrew Grogan-Kaylor, who led the research, said:

“Placing spanking in a similar category to physical/emotional abuse experiences would increase our understanding of these adult mental health problems.”

Childhood spanking research

The study involved over 8,300 people aged 19 to 97.

They were asked how often they endured childhood spankings and whether they were abused in any way.

55 percent reported childhood spankings, with men more likely to have been spanked than women.

Those who were spanked had a higher risk of being depressed as adults, along with increased risk of other mental health problems.

It is important to avoid harsh parenting at all costs, said Dr Shawna Lee, an expert in the effects of child mistreatment:

“This can be achieved by promoting evidence-based parenting programs and policies designed to prevent early adversities, and associated risk factors.

Prevention should be a critical direction for public health initiatives to take.”

The study was published in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect (Merrick et al., 2017).

Cool kid problems mean that despite being popular in high school, things can go wrong after that.

Teenagers who try to ‘act cool’ in early adolescence grow up to experience a range of problems in early adulthood, research finds.

‘Cool kids’ tend to do things like hang out with more attractive people, become romantically involved at an early age and engage in delinquent activity (smoking, drinking and petty crimes).

However, by the age of 22, these ‘cool kids’ are rated as less socially competent than their peers.

They were also more likely to have substance abuse problems and to be engaged in criminal activities.

Cool kid problems

The conclusions come from a study of 183 teens who were followed from the age of 13 through to the age of 23.

They all attended public schools and were from ethnically and racially diverse backgrounds.

Professor Joseph P. Allen, the study’s first author, said:

“It appears that while so-called ‘cool’ teens’ behavior might have been linked to early popularity, over time, these teens needed more and more extreme behaviors to try to appear cool, at least to a subgroup of other teens.

So they became involved in more serious criminal behavior and alcohol and drug use as adolescence progressed.

These previously cool teens appeared less competent – socially and otherwise – than their less-cool peers by the time they reached young adulthood.”

The study was published in the journal Child Development (Allen et al., 2014).

Research on the psychology of play suggests that both children and adults benefit.

Children who play outdoors have a stronger sense of purpose and self-fulfilment than those who don’t, a study finds.

The study, published in the Journal of the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, found that kids who were outdoors playing for between 5 to 10 hours a week had a stronger spiritual connection to the Earth (Van Wieren & Kellert, 2013).

The study’s lead author, Gretel Van Wieren, said:

“These values are incredibly important to human development and well-being.

We were surprised by the results.

Before we did the study, we asked, ‘Is it just a myth that children have this deep connection with nature?’

But we found it to be true in pretty profound ways.”

The small study of the psychology of play involving 10 children from a mostly Christian background (7 of the 10) examined how they interacted with the natural world through in-depth interviews, diaries and simple observation.

The children who spent more time outside felt more humbled by nature’s power as well as feeling a sense of belonging in the world.

Being outdoors more also enhanced the children’s appreciation of beauty.

These children took greater notice of colour, symmetry and balance in nature as well as displaying greater imagination and curiosity themselves.

Van Wieren continued:

“This is the first generation that’s significantly plugged in to a different extent and so what does this mean?

Modern life has created a distance between humans and nature that now we’re realizing isn’t good in a whole host of ways.

So it’s a scary question: How will this affect our children and how are we going to respond?”

In a fascinating coda, the researchers also interviewed the parents and it emerged that the children who spent the most time outdoors had parents who had done the same when they were children.

The parents felt that this experience had significantly shaped their adult lives.

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Toxic early life stress may critically affect memory, learning and the way emotions are processed.

Chronic early life stress — like that from abuse, neglect or poverty — can have a lasting impact on the developing brain, according to research.

Toxic stress at an early age may critically affect memory, learning and the way emotions are processed, finds a study published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

The research investigated exactly why early life stress can lead to such a wide range of negative outcomes later in life, including depression, anxiety, poor educational achievement and also physical problems (Hanson et al., 2014).

Seth Pollak, co-leader of the study, said:

“We haven’t really understood why things that happen when you’re 2, 3, 4 years old stay with you and have a lasting impact.

Given how costly these early stressful experiences are for society…unless we understand what part of the brain is affected, we won’t be able to tailor something to do about it.”

Study of early life stress

The researchers recruited 128 children at around the age of 12 who had experienced neglect, abuse or other serious, chronic stressors in the first few years of their lives.

The children and their caregivers were interviewed about their early life experiences and any behavioural problems they now had.

Their brains were also scanned, with a special focus on the hippocampus and amygdala, both of which are heavily involved in how the brain processes emotions.

The results from these children were compared with other children from middle-class backgrounds who had not been maltreated.

What emerged was that those who had suffered chronic stress in early life had smaller amygdalas than those who had not.

In addition, those who were from very poor backgrounds or who had been physically abused also had smaller hippocampi.

While the implications of the reduced size of the amygdala is unknown, a smaller hippocampus is a recognised risk factor for negative outcomes.

Unsurprisingly the children who’d suffered early life stress also had more behavioural problems, and the smaller the affected brain structures were, the greater the behavioural problems.

Seth Pollak said:

“For me, it’s an important reminder that as a society we need to attend to the types of experiences children are having.

We are shaping the people these individuals will become.”

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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:

1. When infant memory develops
2. How self-concept emerges in infants
3. How children learn new concepts
4. The importance of attachment styles
5. When infants learn to imitate others
6. Theory of mind reveals the social world
7. Understanding object permanence
8. How infants learn their first word
9. The six types of play
10. Piaget’s stages of development theory

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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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