The Psychology of Human Social Development

From Infancy to Adolescence

Sandie Taylor, Lance Workman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138217164
• eBook ISBN: 9781315441306
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The Psychology of Human Social Development provides a comprehensive introduction to the essential core topics and exciting new findings in this thriving field of developmental psychology.

Following a thematic approach, the book looks at key topics in social development in childhood and adolescence, including personality development and research methods, taking the reader from first principles to an advanced understanding. The book explores socio-emotional development and social learning, as well as the history of thinking, and the evolutionary roots of social development, whilst also providing a clear balance between nature and nurture approaches. Taylor and Workman's user-friendly writing style accommodates readers with no previous knowledge of the subject area whilst exploring the most up-to-date theories and research from various areas of psychology which have gained relevance to developmental psychology.

Featuring student-friendly pedagogy throughout, including end-of-chapter summaries, further reading recommendations and questions for discussion, The Psychology of Human Social Development is essential reading for undergraduates on social development or developmental psychology courses and relevant for related fields such as education, gender studies and nursing.

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Chapter 1

Contents

Introduction

Themes of development

Theories considered in developmental psychology

Summary

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Introduction to themes and theories of development

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What this chapter will teach you

• The subject matter of social development.

• The main themes and debates surrounding social development including: biological–environmental explanation; continuity–discontinuity and individual–cultural influences.

• An understanding of the main perspectives that have been developed in order to examine social development including: biological and behavioural genetics; structural–organismic; learning; contextual; dynamic systems and finally ethological and evolutionary.

INTRODUCTION

The development of social behaviour is a continuous process occurring throughout the lifespan: from infancy to senescence. It is, however, during the earlier phases of lifespan development that the roots of social behaviour are established through both biological and environmental factors. Biological and environmental factors are often pitted against one another using a nature (innate biology) versus nurture (learned environment) framework. Over the years of research, however, a two-camp approach to understanding social development has proven to be simplistic and misleading. There is a bi-directional interaction between the effects of nature and nurture – hence nature and nurture influence each in a profound way. This will be explored in future chapters. In this chapter the importance of having a multi-varied theoretical approach to understanding social development will be considered. First, however, we need to consider what is meant by the term ‘social development’?

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What do we mean by social development?

Social development encapsulates a host of behaviours and skills considered to enhance interpersonal interaction – these behaviours are considered to be socially related. The following areas come under the remit of social development (all of which will be considered in future chapters):

• Emotional development

• Attachment behaviour

• Cognition

• Social cognition

• Communication

• Behaviour within the family

• Relationships with peers and friends

• Play behaviour

• Self-concept

• Morally influenced behaviour

• Impact of temperament and personality

• Antisocial and prosocial behaviour

Plate 1.1 Children playing. (Shutterstock 59018779.)

Social development has been studied within the context of the individual and how she or he interacts with others. The impact of the social, situational and cultural context on the individual and how the individual, in turn, further influences these is complex, often requiring more than one type of explanation. Despite these difficulties, developmental psychologists are in broad agreement about normative timescales for the development of different social behaviours based on age. What we mean by normative in this context is behaviours expected to occur at different ages based on the statistical frequency with which they present (see Figure 1.1). When children deviate long-term from these age-dependent expected behaviours, their behaviour becomes concerning and is assessed as being ‘different’ from most other children. Psychologists studying social development are therefore not only interested in normative behaviour but also in that which deviates from the norm.

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Below, in Figure 1.1, we present a flowchart of behaviours that are considered as antisocial or ‘challenging’ at various ages but that are not unexpected for each age range. Although these behaviours are frequently displayed by children, they are often unwelcoming and challenging to parents. Most children eventually learn through parental guidance that these behaviours are inappropriate and adopt behaviours considered as acceptable by society. For a few children, however, early challenging responses such as temper tantrums continue to be displayed through adolescence and into early adulthood. In cases where environmental factors can largely be ruled out as the main contributors to such behaviour, then a biological explanation might be more appropriate for the child in question. Hence, when considering social development, it is important to stress the heterogeneity of causes of behaviours (including antisocial behaviours). Children are, of course, all different despite some similarities in the way they express antisocial behaviour. They might exhibit similar trait clusters of antisocial behaviour, but that does not necessarily mean the same underlying causes are responsible for their expression. Normative behaviour and timescales will be an issue returned to in future chapters.

The content of Figure 1.1 suggests that most children are likely to portray challenging behaviours at different points during their childhood and adolescence. This is perfectly normal and will eventually disappear, provided they receive appropriate socialisation and nurturance from their parents. There are, however, some children who continue to exhibit challenging behaviours into late adolescence and beyond. These challenging behaviours in many cases are regarded as antisocial and can even develop into criminal behaviour. In some cases, however, the behaviours exhibited involve problems of social and verbal communication. The following case example of Tommy demonstrates this challenging problem.

Figure 1.1 Flowchart of normative age-related challenging behaviour.

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Tommy, a five-year-old child, is assessed by a psychologist after concerns expressed by a teacher. Observations of the child over a couple of weeks suggest a communication problem. This is highlighted by Tommy’s refusal to do what he is told and seemingly to ignore the teacher by failure to form any kind of rapport – including no eye contact, no speech response to others except for the continuous repetition of specific words, fidgeting with pencils and being aggressive. In the playground Tommy stands alone shaking a wire fence and sometimes spinning. There is no attempt to interact with the other children who are busy playing games with each other.

In Tommy’s case we can see that some of the behaviours might be seen as normal, if challenging, but collectively the pattern of behaviour deviates from the norm. So how can this child’s behaviour be explained? Indeed, might there be more than one explanation? As highlighted earlier, there are many different developmental theories that can be used to account for social development (and problems with social development). In the case of Tommy, however, the behaviours exhibited are consistent with symptoms on the autism spectrum, which will be returned to in Chapters 3 and 4. The different developmental theories vary in the extent to which they err on a biological or environmental explanation; whether social development is a continuous process (building upon earlier experiences) or discontinuous (discrete steps or stages); and the extent to which individual factors such as temperament or contextual factors such as cultural influences impact on social development. These three themes are prevalent to varying degrees in the theories that will be considered below. While the biological–environmental theme is concerned with aspects of the origin of social behaviour, the continuous–discontinuous theme addresses patterns of developmental change throughout the lifespan. The individual–contextual theme considers how various individuals behave across similar situations. This allows us to unravel the extent to which a person’s specific characteristics or those inherent within the situation impact on the behaviour exhibited.

THEMES OF DEVELOPMENT

Biological–environmental

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Figure 1.2 Bi-directional interaction between nature–nurture.

As stated before, nature and nurture interact in complex ways (see Figure 1.2). Biological factors influence the development of an individual to progress in an orderly fashion. In other words, if the members of a cohort are compared, their pattern of growth and development would occur in broadly the same orderly pattern provided there are no environmental adversities causing abnormal developmental progression. According to Lewis (2007) this occurs as a consequence of having an evolutionary and genetic karyotype or blueprint that ensures a common developmental and growth experience. Some theorists have included this notion in their theories, such as Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget who considered cognitive development as progressing in a universal stage-like way courtesy of years of evolved adaptation. Plomin et al. (2007) consider human development as being genetically influenced, and this includes not only physical development but how some aspects of our socioemotional and cognitive abilities progress. They do, however, also include the important contribution of nurture. Hence this has been labelled an interactionist approach to understanding development. Plomin et al. (2001) for example, in their examination of maltreatment, demonstrated an interaction between having a genetic predisposition towards exhibiting behaviour problems and living in abusive environments. This is important as it shows the cumulative effect of biological traits expressed as problematic behaviour by the child, and an abusive environment such as inappropriate parenting – all contriving to put the child at risk of expressing future problems such as delinquency.

The importance of the environment in social development cannot be ignored. In conjunction with biological factors, the social environment contributes to how an individual will learn and respond towards others such as family members and peers. There has been a preponderance of research findings suggesting that if children and adolescents are appropriately socialised and supervised by their parents then they are less likely to engage in deviant behaviour in the way of delinquency or drug abuse (Maccoby 2007). Furthermore, research by Dodge et al. (2006) showed how children who are rejected by their peers can develop behavioural problems. A large body of research by developmentalist John Bowlby (1989) established the importance of parental engagement for the development of a secure attachment between carer and child. This was expanded by Ainsworth’s ‘strange situation’ where different types of attachment behaviours between carer and child were observed (Ainsworth 1979, see Chapter 3). An intergenerational effect occurred whereby the caregiver’s own attachment experience was later repeated by the grown-up child with his or her own children. This demonstrated a robust effect of repeating the attachment experiences in childhood later in adulthood.

Although studies have been designed to estimate the contributions biological and environmental factors make to development, it is important to realise that the two interact in complex ways. Nature can be driven by nurture and nurture can be driven by nature. This will be explored in future chapters.

A continuous–discontinuous process

Developmental psychologists have questioned whether our development occurs gradually but continuously or in distin...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• The Psychology of Human Social Development
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction to Themes and Theories of Development
• 2 Research Methods in Social Development
• 3 Emotional Development and Attachment
• 4 Cognition and Communication
• 5 Development of Social Cognition: Theory of Mind
• 6 Influence of the Family
• 7 Influence of Peers and Friends
• 8 Development of Self-Concept
• 9 Social Development Through Play
• 10 Moral Development and Prosocial Behaviour
• 11 Antisocial Behaviour
• 12 Individual Differences: Temperament and Personality
• 13 The Role of the Media
• 14 The Future for Our Understanding of Social Development
• References
• Glossary
• Index