Cognitive Perspectives on Children's Social and Behavioral Development

The Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology, Volume 18

M. Perlmutter

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317768258
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Psicologia dello sviluppo

This volume contains the papers presented at the eighteenth Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology, held October 27-29, 1983, at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. As has been the tradition for this annual series, the faculty of the Institute of Child Development invited internationally eminent researchers to present their research and to consider problems of mutual concern to scientists studying development. The theme of the eighteenth symposium, and the present volume was cognitive perspectives on social and behavior development.

1
Social-Cognitive and Social Behavioral Perspectives on Problem Solving

Kenneth H. Rubin
University of Waterloo

Linda Rose Krasnor
Brock University

I. Introduction

Experimenter: “Now let’s see; can we pretend that a new kid has come into town and that you would like to be friends with her/him? What could you do or say so that s/he will become friends with you?

Child A’s Response: (A normal 5-year-old female): “You wanna be my friend? I’ll let you sleep in my bed.”

Child B’s Response: (A withdrawn and socially rejected 8-year-old boy): “Can you teach me how to be your friend?”

Child C’s Response: (A normal 8-year-old girl): “That’s a neat pair of jeans. How’d you like to come over and play at my house? I’ve got lots of Barbie dolls.

(Two children in the Rubin backyard, Summer 1983)

Joshua: (A 3-year-old male): “Hey Cara; you wanna be my friend?”

Cara (A 4-year-old female): “No!”

Joshua: “Yes?”

Cara: “No!”

Joshua: “Yes!”

Cara: “No!”

Joshua: “Yes, you’re gonna be my friend!”

Cara: “No!”

Joshua: (Runs towards Cara’s mother) “Hey, Marianne, Cara won’t be my …”

Cara: “I’m your friend; I’ll be your friend!”

In the examples presented above, we provide the reader with a sample of the data and methodologies used commonly to study children’s abilities to think about and manage their interpersonal problems. We also illustrate the variability in the ways that children of different ages and sociability status solve their social problems. These examples, thus, set the stage for the remainder of this chapter, which as the reader may have guessed, concerns children’s social problem solving skills.

The social problems that children face with regularity include initiating friendship, acquiring objects, seeking and offering help, seeking attention or information, and stopping others from acting in some way or another. It would seem commonplace to predict that children who cannot achieve these social goals effectively and consistently will experience difficulties with normal adjustment and development. Inadequate social problem solvers, regardless of age, have long been held to be “at risk” for psychological adjustment problems (Goldfried & D’Zurilla, 1969; Jahoda, 1953, 1958; Muus, 1960). Yet, until recent years, there has been a dearth of research and theory concerning the development of social problem solving in childhood. Instead, our knowledge concerning problem solving has derived mainly from those who have focused theoretically and empirically on the abilities of people to deal strategically with syllogisms, puzzles, and other impersonal general-reasoning tasks (e.g., Newell & Simon, 1971).

The acceleration of efforts to examine social problem solving in childhood draws heavily from three sources. First, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the study of social-cognition in children began to blossom. Quite simply, the examination of how children cognized about their social worlds was a research topic whose time had come. Social psychologists had been investigating person perception and attribution theory for many years prior to the 1970s (e.g., Heider, 1958) but paid little attention to its developmental course. In the early 1960s, influential North American developmental psychologists began calling for a convergence between the social and cognitive developmental approaches (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1963). Shortly thereafter Flavell, Botkin, Fry, Wright, and Jarvis (1968) and Kohlberg (1964) were instrumental in bringing our attention to and extending the early work of Piaget (1926, 1965) on perspective-taking and moral development. Thus, the study of how children think about solving interpersonal dilemmas meshed well within the Zeitgeist.

Second, George Spivack and Myma Shure, two psychologists at the Hahnemann Community Mental Health Cener in Philadelphia, suggested that the well broadcast problem solving deficiencies of lower class children were evident not only in the impersonal domain (e.g., Sigel & McBane, 1967) but also in the interpersonal domain. Spivack and Shure’s early research (Shure & Spivack, 1970, 1972; Spivack & Shure, 1974) dove-tailed nicely with statements by central figures in the Head Start movement that the focus of compensatory education should be broadened. Throughout the late 1960s and the early 1970s compensatory early education efforts were aimed at preventing future or ameliorating present cognitive developmental deficits. As a reaction, in part, to the lack of breadth in intervention programming, Ed Zigler (1973), who was then Director of the Office of Child Development, noted that Head Start programmers should attempt “to bring about greater social competence in disadvantaged children.” His suggestions were echoed by Anderson and Messick (1974), two leaders of the early Head Start program. Thus, the call for more broadly focused compensatory education brought increased visibility to the research of Spivack and Shure.

Finally, the third source responsible for the proliferation of social problem solving research emanates from current concerns about the causes and consequences of abnormal peer relationships and social skills in childhood. In the past decade, researchers have discovered that those who experience poor peer relations in the middle years of childhood are “at risk” for a variety of social, psychological, and educational ills when they reach adolescence and early adulthood (e.g., Cowen, Pederon, Izzo, Babigian, & Trost, 1973; Roff, Sells, & Golden, 1972). It has been further assumed that some peer relations problems (e.g., social withdrawal) are mediated, in part, by social problem solving dificits (Shure & Spivack, 1972; Shure, Spivack, & Jaeger, 1971).

Given the rapid accumulation of published research concerning social problem solving in the past few years, and given the potential of its impact for educators and for applied developmental and clinical child psychologists, it would seem appropriate, at this time, to pause and reflect on the conceptualization of the construct and on the research findings. We have several goals in writing this chapter. First, it is our intention to provide a brief review of the issues that have guided extant social problem solving research efforts. Second, we introduce a model of interpersonal cognitive problem solving skills. Despite a decade of social problem solving research, it is surprising to note that the field is largely devoid of attempts at model building and/or testing; we attempt to remedy this deficiency. Moreover, in describing our model, we provide the reader with a summary of some of our own current research efforts to assess components of this model. We further delineate those areas that remain barren of data in an attempt to stimulate further research in what we believe to be a complex and rich area of study.

II. Historical Overview of Social Problem Solving Research

One of the initial conceptualizations of social problem solving was articulated by Goldfried and D’Zurilla (1969; D’Zurilla & Goldfried, 1971). They defined social competence as “the effectiveness or adequacy with which an individual is capable of responding to various problematic situations which confront him” (p. 161). They stated further that ineffective problem solving can be labeled “abnormal behavior,” and that any individual who repeatedly experiences an inability to resolve interpersonal dilemmas is at risk for a variety of psychological problems (D’Zurilla & Goldfried, 1971).

The model of problem solving developed by D’Zurilla and Goldfried (1971) was not unlike many that had been proposed earlier by those working in the impersonal problem solving domain. Briefly, D’Zurilla and Goldfried sketched a multi-step process of problem solving that included:

1. the identification of a situation as problematic;
2. the generation of possible alternatives to solve the problem;
3. the decision of choosing the appropriate alternative for the situation; and
4. strategy implementation.

One major limitation of D’Zurilla and Goldfried’s model was the lack of focus on developmental issues. For example, there was no consideration given to how and when the components of the social problem solving process developed. Perhaps because the authors did not deal specifically with social problem solving development in childhood, the major burden of introducing social problem solving to developmental psychologists fell to Spivack and Shure (1974). These psychologists, in their long-standing programmatic research efforts, have attempted to demonstrate that social problem solving skills are necessary elements for the development of normal mental health. As such, their research has always been guided by applied concerns.

Spivack and Shure (1974) have indicated that social problem solving or interpersonal cognitive problem solving skills consist of a number of interrelated elements. These elements include: (a) sensitivity to or the recognition of interpersonal problems; (b) the ability to generate alternative solutions to solve these problems; (c) the ability to consider step-by-step means to reach social goals (“means-ends thinking”); (d) the ability to articulate consequences of social acts (“causal thinking”); and (e) the ability to identify and understand the motives and behaviors of others.

To a very limited extent, these elements were cast into a developmental framework. Spivack and his colleagues (Spivack & Shure, 1974; Spivack, Platt, & Shure, 1976) suggested that the ability to produce alternative solutions to alleviate social problems is a developmental precursor to “means-ends” and “consequential thinking” and to sensitivity to social dilemmas. The last three elements listed above are presumed to require perspective-taking skills and the appreciation of consequences, which, according to Spivack et al., are virtually non-existent in early childhood.

In support of their developmental perspective, Shure and Spivack cite data from a number of correlational and experimental studies. For preschoolers, measures of casual thinking, means-ends thinking, and sensitivity to interpersonal problems do not add significantly to the variance accounted for by alternative thinking performance when predicting teacher ratings of behavioral adjustment (Shure & Spivack, 1973). As predicted, the relation between the ability to produce alternative strategies to hypothetical social problems and ratings of behavioral adjustment declines in the middle years of childhood. Instead, the theoretically more “advanced” interpersonal cognitive problem solving skills appear to be better predictors of adjustment (Spivack et al., 1976).

Despite some evidence to support their developmental propositions (e.g., Shure & Spivack, 1973, 1974), Spivack and Shure’s attempts at theorizing fell short on a variety of conceptual and empirical grounds. For one, the development of each of the problem solving skills is likely not an “all-or-none” process; rather, children show evidence of each of these abilities to varying degrees throughout childhood. Given that this is the case, it may well be that the developmental sequence of problem solving skills is not as readily fixed as originally suggested. Thus, sensitivity to some interpersonal problems may appear long before children can articulate alternative strategies. For example, Zahn-Waxier, Iannotti, and Chapman (1982) indicated that 2-year-olds are sensitive to needs for help-giving and help-seeking and are able to deal strategically with these problems before they could possibly generate verbal solutions to hypothetical versions of dilemmas. As such, it would appear as if the concept of sensitivity predates rather than postdates the production of alternative solutions in actual interpersonal situations.

These conceptual weaknesses aside, it behooves us to provide the reader with a brief review of Spivack and his colleagues’ empirical contributions to the social problem solving literature. Basically, Spivack and Shure wanted to develop procedures to identify children with social problem solving deficits. They then set out to design programs to alleviate these deficits. In an effort to meet their applied goals, Spivack and Shure developed a set of hypothetical-reflective tests to measure a variety of social problem solving abilities. We label their procedures as “hypothetical-reflective” because hypothetical problem situations are presented to the children in an attempt to measure their abilities to “reflect” on a response.

In studies employing hypothetical-reflective techniques, the social goals are presented to the child by the experimenter. These goals have included object acquisition (Spivack and Shure, 1974), providing help to someone in need (Ladd & Oden, 1979), and initiating friendship (Asher & Renshaw, 1981). The interviewer attempts to elicit from the child relevant strategies to meet these selected social goals. Spivack and Shure’s work with children has relied heavily on the use of four particular tests in which basically only two social goals are presented. In the Preschool Interpersonal Problem-Solving (PIPS) test, children are asked to generate alternative strategies to deal with (1) a peer oriented dilemma in which a child seeks to obtain a toy that is in the possession of another child and (2) an adult-oriented dilemma in which a child seeks to avoid his mother’s anger after damaging property. The child is provided with a number of stories, each of which has the same theme; the test is scored by totaling the number of different relevant solutions suggested by the child. The PIPS test thus measures one element of interpersonal problem solving, namely the production of alternative solutions.

For older, elementary school-aged children, Spivack et al. (1976) have developed the Means-Ends Problem-Solving (MEPS) test; a measure that purportedly assesses the ability to plan goal-directed strategies in step-by-step fashion and to consider alternative actions and potential obstacles. The test consists of six stories, each of which includes only the beginning and end of the tale. As with the PIPS, the primary focus is on the number of alternatives suggested for how the given end could have been achieved. Other hypothetical-reflective tests designed by Spivack et al. (1976) for older children include the What Happens Next Game (WHNG), in which consequential thinking is measured, and the Sensitivity to Interpersonal Problems test (SIP). Details for administration and scoring of these four hypothetical reflective measures may be found in Spivack and Shure (1974), Spivack et al. (1976), and Shure and Spivack (1974).

In their research, the Hahnemann group found that lower-class children were less able to provide quantitatively as many solutions to the various hypothetical measures than their middle-class age-mates. Moreover, children rated by their teachers as maladjusted or “aberrant” (i.e., withdrawn or impulsive/aggressive) seemed to produce fewer alternative solutions on various subsets of the Spivack and Shure hypothetical-reflective battery of social problem solving tests.

In an effort to assess the hypothesis that social cognition mediates behavior, a series of training studies was carried out by Spivack and his colleagues in the early 1970s. The training curricula (Shure & Spivack, 1978; Spivack et al., 1976; Spivack & Shure, 1974) usually involved teaching small groups of children emotion recognition, perspective-taking, and social problem solving skills (alternative thinking, consequential thinking, etc.) over a number of weeks. As an outcome of this curriculum, trained groups of children appeared to have improved their social adjustment scores (as rated by teachers) and their social problem solving reasoning skills to a greater extent than control groups of children who did not receive the tutorial sessions (see Shure & Spivack, 1980 and Spivack et al., 1976 and Urbain & Kendall, 1980 for discussions of the training research findings). These findings, reported mainly at regional conferences, in unpublished documents, and in two books (Spivack et al.,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Social-Cognitive and Social Behavioral Perspectives on Problem Solving
• 2. Comments on Rubin and Krasnor: Solutions and Problems in Research on Problem Solving
• 3. A Social Information Processing Model of Social Competence in Children
• 4. Needed Steps for Social Competence: Strengths and Present Limitations of Dodge’s Model
• 5. Becoming a Different Person: Transformations in Personality and Social Behavior
• 6. Lumping and Splitting in Developmental Theory: Comments on Fischer and Elmendorf
• 7. Children’s Comments about their Friendships
• 8. Comments on Berndt: Children’s Comments About Their Friendships
• 9. Understanding the Developing Understanding of Control
• 10. Comments on Weisz: “Understanding the Developing Understanding of Control”
• 11. Adult Social Cognition: Implications of Parents’ Ideas for Approaches to Development
• 12. Comments on Goodnow, Knight, and Cashmore: A Family Perspective on Cognition and Change
• Author Index
• Subject Index