• Children are eager to figure out social norms, which are informal rules that reflect what groups of people do or should do.
• Caregivers can intentionally shift the way they communicate norms to children by using the generic pronouns “you” and “we,” which frame information as applying to people in general rather than to a specific individual (e.g., “We treat others how we like to be treated” instead of “I treat others how I like to be treated.”).
• Parents, teachers, and even media can frame norms to children using the generic pronouns “you” or “we” (instead of “I”) to make a positive message more persuasive (e.g., conveying the “right” way to behave in a situation).

What are social norms and why do they matter?

Imagine a mother is trying to get her 5-year-old son, Logan, to wash his hands before dinner. “I wash my hands before dinner; that’s what I do,” she says. Unfortunately, Logan is unmoved by this plea. Imagine, now, that Logan’s mom tries a different approach: “We wash our hands before dinner; that’s what we do.” Or even, “You wash your hands before dinner; that’s what you do.”

Recent research shows that this simple shift – from “I” to “we” or “you” – can persuade Logan to wash up before dinner. Here, “we” and “you” are being used generically to describe not just what Logan and his mother do, but what people in general do. Research suggests that this subtle linguistic shift, from “I” to a more general “we” or “you,” is a powerful way to communicate social norms.

Children are strongly motivated to figure out the “right” way to act in new social situations. These social norms range from the mundane to the deeply moral. For example, conventional norms include which way to face in an elevator and how to take turns on the playground slide. Moral norms include refraining from harming others and expressing gratitude for a gift.

Both conventional and moral norms permit smoother sailing in a complex world by allowing people to coordinate their behaviors with one another. Yet learning norms poses a challenge for children. There are many norms that must be learned, and they can vary across cultures and contexts. For example, while it is acceptable to greet close family and friends with a hug, in many cultures, approaching a stranger this way may be less appropriate. How, then, do children figure out which norms apply in a particular context?

Do children rely on subtle language cues to figure out new norms?

A recent study addressed this question by turning to the power of language. Research with adults shows that a compelling way of expressing norms in English is to shift from using an individual pronoun (“I”) to a general pronoun (“we” or “you” — meaning “one” or “anyone”). For example, “I whisper in libraries” may express an individual preference, but “we/you whisper in libraries” expresses a general rule. The authors of this study asked whether children would be sensitive to these subtle shifts in pronouns and use them to figure out norms.

How we speak to children carries messages beyond what we say.

The researchers asked whether, and when in development, children rely on the generic pronouns “we” and “you” to figure out new norms. Addressing these questions may help identify subtle but commonly used linguistic devices that children can use to figure out their complex social worlds. It is well documented that children are rapid language learners, so they may be sensitive to these subtle shifts.

To examine these questions, researchers conducted an online experiment in which children were asked to figure out the right way to play a new game. A game context was chosen because games are engaging and involve norms – that is, there are rules that all players should follow.

Almost 150 midwestern U.S. children between ages 4-1/2 and 9 years participated in the study. First, they listened to two cartoon children describe how to play the game. Across five trials, one child consistently used a generic pronoun to describe what to do (e.g., “Here is what we do next, we move to the blue circle”) and the other child consistently used a specific pronoun (e.g., “Here is what I do next, I move to the green circle”). After each trial, the children were asked which action was correct; this was the key response that interested the researchers.

Photo: Tatiana Syrikova. Pexels.

Overall, the children were roughly twice as likely to judge that a game board move was the right way to play when it was described with a generic pronoun (“we” or “you”) as when it was described with “I.” Moreover, there were no changes with age: Both younger and older children used generic pronouns to guide their judgments.

How do these findings translate to daily life?

This study illustrates that how we speak to children carries messages beyond what we say. Simply shifting from “me” talk to “we” or “you” talk is a subtle but powerful way of signaling the “right” way to act. It is notable that framing an action in general terms was more powerful for children than “I” talk, because previous research shows that individual endorsements can be very persuasive, especially to young children.

Social norms are everywhere. There are times when children or adolescents may be particularly motivated to figure out the “right” way to do things, such as when they go somewhere they have never been before, like a museum; when they join a new team; or when they deliver an apology. Each of these situations is bound by social norms that dictate what behaviors are valued and appropriate. Communicating how to act in these contexts using generic pronouns may signal to children and adolescents that these expectations are shared and broadly applicable, infusing them with additional persuasive force.

In some contexts, parents, teachers, community leaders, and others may need to teach particular social norms to children or adolescents. These could encompass conventional norms, such as how to line up to ensure quick, safe transitions between classes, or norms that are more moral in nature, such as the importance of fairness. In these instances, caregivers may find that using “you” or “we” provides an additional nudge that encourages children and adolescents to follow the norm, especially if it is unfamiliar. 

Broader implications

In the study, researchers did not find any differences in persuasiveness between generic “we” and generic “you.” However, in some contexts, one word may be more powerful than the other in promoting a social norm. In situations in which a child is motivated to belong, using generic “we” language may be particularly effective.

Caregivers may find that using “you” or “we” provides an additional nudge that encourages children and adolescents to follow the norm.

Parents and caregivers should also be sensitive to the potential emotional consequences of using generic pronouns, such as signaling compassion. For example, a parent might say to a child who is feeling upset about losing something, “Sometimes we lose things; it happens.” This may communicate that loss is a shared human experience, assuaging the child’s feelings of guilt.

However, at other times, using generic pronouns may inadvertently normalize a less than optimal choice – such as when someone justifies a poor choice with a generic pronoun by saying, for example, “We all cheat sometimes.” A parent may not want to use generic pronouns to normalize these types of behaviors.

This research looked at how generic pronouns can shape children’s normative judgments about conventional norms. Some questions remain unanswered, including: Are children more persuaded to follow moral norms when they are framed using generic pronouns? How do the social identities of the speaker and listener – for example, their genders, ages, races/ethnicities, or statuses (i.e., whether they are in positions of authority) – influence the persuasiveness of generic pronouns?

This research was supported by funds awarded to Susan A. Gelman by the John Templeton Foundation. 

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Why does social isolation affect us so much? And how does answering this question lead us to examine the way human thinking develops?

Just how social we are as a species is made even more evident by the COVID-19 lockdowns that have restricted our everyday social interactions and affected our physical and mental health. Social engagement influences us at an even more fundamental level because it is crucial to the formation of human thinking and minds.

We address this issue in What Makes Us Human? How Minds Develop Through Social Interactions. In the words of a 9-year-old, the question is, “How do you go from a bunch of cells to something that thinks?” How are we as humans able to explore such questions about our own origins and the workings of our minds?

Humans are intrigued by the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, but a puzzle unfolding right before our eyes is how intelligence develops in our homes as babies start to communicate and then understand the world in ways that adults simply take for granted.

Relations with other people

In our book, we develop and justify the idea that the essential aspects of being human arise through our relations with other people.

To understand these processes and the way human intellect develops, it is essential to look closely at the nature of communication in infancy and childhood, with which much of our thinking is intricately entwined.

To explore the complexities of human language, we begin by describing the rich social and emotional niches in which human babies develop and the forms of interaction on which communication is based emerge.

We develop and justify the idea that the essential aspects of being human arise through our relations with other people.

Have you ever considered why human infants are born so helpless that they must be cared for over many years, yet they develop such powerful ways of thinking?

Our answer to this question follows a historical tradition that suggests that this helplessness is an important factor in the development of human thinking. This is because the need for constant care in the early years necessarily produces a social context in which complex human skills develop.

Although the infant is unable to fend for herself, she is born with a host of evolved biological characteristics that draw her into engagement with others.

For example, typically developing babies are interested in looking at human eyes, which are particularly striking compared to the eyes of other primates because the dark centre is surrounded by contrasting white sclera.

Such attentiveness to eyes may be interpreted as indicating babies’ apparent interest in other people, and this interest is typically reciprocated by parents, who love to engage with their infants. This bidirectional process of attentiveness promotes the infant’s development.

Initially, this consists of staring into the eyes of a caregiver, or cuddling into the caregiver for comfort, but these early and simple skills soon develop into more complex abilities like smiling or cooing. These new forms of interaction elicit even more positive experiences because they are so rewarding for parents.

We explore how essential social interaction is to the development of the human mind in: What Makes Us Human? How Minds Develop Through Social Interactions.

Daily social interaction

This repeated daily social interaction between infants and their parents becomes increasingly coordinated, which reflects early forms of communication. For instance, when a baby reaches her arms toward her parent, the meaning of this action — a desire to be held — is clear to the parent, who typically picks up the baby.

Through experiencing this response to her reaching, the baby learns to anticipate this outcome of her reaching action. That is, she comes to grasp the meaning that her action has for others, and then she gradually learns to communicate this desire intentionally.

This is a crucial change in ways of interacting, not seen to such an extent in other species that lack an extended period of helplessness. The baby becomes aware of the meaning in the interaction and can then anticipate the response and communicate intentionally. Later, she can learn to add words such as up or uppy to these sorts of shared social routines.

Sharing

Other acts, such as mutually sharing a toy with a caregiver or gesturing in a specific way, develop in a similar fashion as their meaning emerges within shared patterns of interaction.

Beginning at about 10 to 12 months, babies typically start to point, but not in a sophisticated way. It takes a lot of experience to realize that successful pointing involves the pointer gesturing to the object and checking that the receiver is following the line of the point. It also requires the receiver to identify what is being pointed to and why their attention is being drawn to it.

The hard-won reading of these sorts of gestures reveals the origins and nature of children’s understanding of other people. It shows how a grasp of simple experiences like reaching to be picked up facilitates further interaction in which children develop yet more complex communicative and social skills.

These are concrete examples of how increasingly sophisticated human thinking and minds emerge as communication develops in everyday interaction, a fact that makes their significance easy to overlook. They are instances of the sort of mundane interactions on which human ways of being and thinking are based.

The use of words is an extension of earlier communication with gestures. Language gradually becomes part of the way thinking can take place. Initially, the baby’s words refer to objects and actions in the here and now, but gradually they can be applied to experiences not directly perceptible – for example, toddlers can relate what happened at preschool or make up a story about an imaginary character.

More sophisticated forms of social understanding emerge when children gradually master the language skills needed to talk about human activity in psychological terms.

Most toddlers articulate what they want with words by age two, and soon afterwards use words like think and know to show that they are aware that they and the people around them are influenced by their own thoughts and motivations. By acquiring the ability to talk about the psychological world, children can begin to reflect on themselves and others in these ways.

Mutual affection and respect

From the perspective we have developed here, morality emerges at the level of interaction as children learn to coordinate their daily activities with others in relationships of mutual affection and respect.

These interactions based on equality are well suited for reaching mutual understanding because they require children to listen to others and explain themselves. This allows them to coordinate conflicts and develop a practical morality in their interaction with equals.

A further step is to begin to articulate what was first implicit in their activity, which then makes reflection possible. In this way, children become able to articulate and reflect on their initially practical ways of interacting with others.

Moral notions such as fairness and justice do not have their source in biology alone, nor are they pre-existing and passed on from a previous generation to be imposed on children. Instead, they arise through particular forms of cooperative interaction among equals based on mutual affection and respect.

To understand the way human intellect develops it is essential to look closely at the nature of communication in infancy and childhood, with which much of our thinking is intricately entwined.

Of course, explaining the origins of human thinking is controversial and not everyone will agree with our account.

In our book, we compare our developmental account, which is grounded in the processes of social interaction, with two competing explanations for human thinking: that it is either simply determined by biology or that the computer makes a good metaphor for the human mind.

First, we show that although biological factors are crucial in structuring the developmental system in which human skills emerge, the claim that thinking is determined by genes is incompatible with work in biology over the last 50 years.

Research in genetics and developmental neurobiology highlights that we must consider the complex developmental system in which multiple levels of biology and environment interact with each other to drive the individual’s development. Key aspects of human thinking, although based on neural activity, emerge only at the level of the person interacting with others.

Shared way of interacting

Second, the claim that thinking can be likened to computation is based on a flawed assumption that meaning is fixed, as it is in a computer. Instead, as we illustrate, human communication is rooted in shared ways of interacting. This is also why current approaches to artificial intelligence that attempt to model human intelligence are based on the wrong foundation.

Revealing the flaws in these two general approaches to human psychological development supports our argument that human communication and thinking emerges within interaction with others in a developmental system in which biological and social levels are thoroughly interwoven.

We trace this development by beginning as gestures emerge in early interaction, leading to language and then to human forms of thinking.

The post What makes us human? How minds develop through social interactions appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

They told each child four stories.

Two were about moral violations, drawn from the following three:

• A child hits another child to get a toy.
• A child makes fun of another child to classmates.
• A child steals food from another child.

Two stories were about breaking conventional rules, drawn from the following three:

• A child puts a backpack on the floor instead of in the cubby in order to start playing quickly
• A child gets up to get a snack from the teacher’s desk without raising a hand to ask permission
• A child calls the teacher by her first name instead of Mrs.

The researchers asked a question about each story: “How would you feel if _____?” The children selected a neutral, sad or in-between face to rate their reaction.

But the study of moral development in children faces a well-established challenge in: Are we measuring actual guilt or fear of punishment? To overcome this, the researchers then modified the question for all the stories: “If your teacher didn’t mind and let children like you do this, how would you feel if _____?”

Children who sustained their reaction to moral violations when told that the teacher did not mind, but relaxed their reaction to rule breaking, showed a greater drop in physical aggression between the time they were told the stories and nine months later, according to reports by their teachers. Put another way, among children who reacted the same way to both moral violations and rule breaking when a teacher said they were OK, aggression fell more slowly.

This finding adds to a growing body of evidence linking children’s moral development with their behaviour.

The researchers also asked teachers to assess the children’s relational aggression (e.g., excluding other children or gossiping), but they found no correlation between this type of aggression and the children’s reactions to the stories. They surmised that such correlations might emerge later, as children mature and develop a more sophisticated understanding of how relational aggression works.

This study of moral development in children is based on social domain theory, which focuses on children’s ability to distinguish between two domains: moral violations (pertaining to issues of justice, harm to others, fairness and rights) and violations of social conventions and rules. (See the Child & Family Blog article Child Development Milestones). By three or four years old, children judge moral violations to be wrong even in the absence of specific rules or authoritative prohibitions. Inability to distinguish between the two – either thinking that moral violations and rule breaking are both OK, or thinking that both are equally wrong in all circumstances – is linked to antisocial behaviour. An earlier study by the same researchers found a link between the inability to distinguish between these two social domains and aggressive behavior.

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Joe likes to be a lion, leaping onto the sofa, roaring. Sometimes, though, he’ll be mum or dad, setting out a cup and plate to give his teddy some tea. Then, he’ll put his teddy to bed, singing him a song. This is pretend play. Joe is pretending to be someone, something or somewhere else.

Contemporary conventional wisdom has elevated such imaginative pretend play to considerable heights. It’s been seen as a pathway to enhanced cognitive skills and more effective learning. It has also been thought to encourage creativity later on in life – providing a royal road to adult innovation. For some, particularly in the United States, today’s living rooms are the playing fields for tomorrow’s tech creatives.

However, respected and careful research over recent years has failed to justify these beliefs in the consequences of pretend play. Links between pretend play in early childhood and later cognitive development have not been systematically demonstrated.  The same goes for links to creativity in later life.

“Pretend play is strange, intriguing and consequential. It matters.”

These challenging findings, drawn together in an exhaustive and thorough evidence review by Angeline S. Lillard and colleagues, should not be ignored.  But the risk is that pretend play may, as a consequence, fall from favour with education experts.  That’s because it is losing its significance for what are regarded today as the educational essentials for child development – the building of cognitive skills, becoming ‘school-ready’ and preparing for the long journey towards fruitful employment and sound citizenship.

Repeating old mistakes about pretend play

And therein lies the problem – pretend play may end up being judged as largely irrelevant to child development. This important, imaginative activity is at risk of being re-characterised – as it once was by earlier observers of childhood – as little more than a charming but harmless distraction to be outgrown and eventually superseded by logical adult thinking.

Such a conclusion could greatly under-estimate pretend play’s significance. Yet it’s gaining traction for two reasons. First, because, whatever benefits actually accrue from imaginary play, Lillard’s review shows that they are not those that are typically championed.

Second, pretend play’s diminishing status reflects a narrowing view of child development, held by increasingly test-orientated educational systems. If pretend play no longer ticks certain achievement boxes, these systems may render it as unimportant.

Three reasons to value pre-school pretend play

We should be wary of such downgrading. It could lead educators, policy makers and parents to offer children fewer pre-school opportunities to play in imaginative ways. That would be unwise because early pretend play is so obviously important, even if we don’t yet fully understand why. Here are three reasons.

First, pretend play is distinctively and markedly human – there is scant evidence for pretend play in any species other than human beings. So it’s likely to have a key evolutionary role for humanity.

Second, pretend play emerges spontaneously in almost all normal children – it is ubiquitous across cultures.  Children all over the world pretend play, albeit in different ways and varying amounts. This occurs irrespective of whether adults pay attention or nurture the activity.

“We’d be wise to avoid jumping to policy conclusions or to strict rules of educational practice, given how little we really appreciate about its workings.”

So pretend play is intrinsic and natural to humans; it’s not merely a socialised behaviour. Indeed, where it does not emerge in a given child, or is very restricted, it’s often associated with major social and cognitive deficits. Thus, the absence of pretend play among, for example, children with autism, is linked to psychological difficulties.

Third, far from being annihilated by maturity, pretend play in children is actually remarkably similar to – and continuous with – what adults do. Like grown-ups watching a film or imagining a situation, children’s imaginative play is not fantastical.

Research shows that it abides by normal rules of logic and causality. At the same time, young children have little difficulty telling the difference between reality and make-believe. Like adults, they can enjoy the latter without confusion about how the world really is.

Photo: Bart. Creative Commons.

Children are realists, not fantasists

This is hardly surprising since children are not wildly imaginative. Much of their play involves the re-enactment of everyday scripts – having tea, a bath, pretending to go to the doctor’s. If one considered children as writers, one would say they invent realistic fictions, rather than fairy stories or sci-fi adventures.

They are not autonomous generators of grand fantasy, but they are receptive consumers of it. They can also easily rework into their pretend play what they consume from, say, cartoons or storybooks.  But left to their own devices they don’t invent a fantastical world. In traditional village communities where most people are engaged in pastoral activity or limited farming, and where television does not intrude, children play in ways that reflect ordinary life – such as taking a bowl, putting leaves in it, grinding it and re-enacting what adults do.

Freud and Piaget misunderstood pretend play

So, children’s imaginative play is not as desire-driven or undisciplined as Freud implied. It is deeply regulated by their understanding of the everyday and its causal constraints. Nor is it a mental cul-de-sac from which older children retreat in pursuit of more logical thinking, as suggested by Piaget.

It is true that young children invest great emotion in their imaginative play. They get caught up in it, often becoming enwrapped by this personal drama. But in this respect they are no different from adults. Moreover, like adults watching a horror film, older children can choose to become emotionally embroiled or take up a more detached position. Children and adults can let themselves become absorbed in a make-believe or fictional scenario. In this regard, children and adults are not fundamentally different – they sit on the same spectrum and are closely connected.

In short, childhood pretend play looks to be much more than harmless fun. It appears to have an important but as yet unquantified place in our humanity. The interesting question, then, is probably not whether it is a normal part of child development. ‘Of course,’ seems to the obvious answer. The more interesting question is likely to be: what and how exactly does pretend play contribute to human development?

Does it develop judgment on causality, morality and risk?

We don’t know the whole story yet. But it is clear that pretend play feeds children’s capacities to think about other possibilities, at a time when they still know little of the world. It nurtures abilities to shuttle back and forth between these possibilities and what actually happens. That may help, for example, to develop causal and moral judgments as well as in the assessment of risk. Childhood pretence may beget adult counter-factualism.

Pretend play is strange, intriguing and consequential. It matters. We should continue to research and think about it because we’re far from understanding it fully. We’d be wise to avoid jumping to policy conclusions or to strict rules of educational practice, given how little we really appreciate about its workings.

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What is social emotional development?

When social emotional development has proceeded well, children develop five key social and relationship skills. These include:

Self-awareness

They recognize their emotions, describe their interests and values, and accurately assess their strengths. They have a well-grounded sense of self-confidence and hope for the future.

Self-management

They manage stress, control impulses, and persevere in overcoming obstacles. They can set and monitor progress toward personal and academic goals and express their emotions appropriately in a wide range of situations.

Social awareness

Their social learning enables them to take the perspective of and empathize with others and recognize and appreciate individual and group similarities and differences. They seek out and appropriately use family, school, and community resources.

Relationship skills

They establish and maintain healthy and rewarding relationships based on cooperation. They resist inappropriate social pressure; constructively prevent, manage, and resolve interpersonal conflict; and seek and provide help when needed.

Responsible decision-making at school, at home, and in the community

In making decisions, they consider ethical standards, safety concerns, appropriate social norms, respect for others, and the likely consequences of various courses of action. They apply these decision-making skills in academic and social situations and are motivated to contribute to the well-being of their schools and communities.

Adapted from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL).

The social emotional development journey: baby steps

The first steps of social emotional development are gaze, attachment, attention and gestures.

1. Gaze

Even before birth, babies react to projections of faces through the abdomen into the womb. They will gaze into the eyes of their mother and father within days of being born. At 4-5 months, babies will stop smiling and frown if their carer stops smiling or smiles at the wrong time relative to the activity they are both engaged in. The foundations of relationship skills are being laid.

Photo: Shutterstock.

2. Attachment

Attachment is a cornerstone of early social emotional development. The strong emotional bonds that form between infants and caregivers over the first year of life are referred to as attachments, which are based on children’s experience with their caregivers. The originator of the idea of attachment, John Bowlby (1958), observed in the 1950s that infants go through a period between about 6 and 30 months when they require the care and proximity of one or two key people, known as “attachment figures”. Emotional learning starts within these intensely emotional relationships. Patterns of everyday love and care set up the infant’s expectations of how particular caregivers will respond to them. Bowlby called these “internal working models”.

3. Joint attention

This is the ability to home in on another person’s point of view while they are describing or pointing at something, such as a toy or book. It starts around the age of one. The baby learns gradually to switch attention between the carer and the object. Babies will also start to look to the carer when they don’t understand a situation, possibly as a bid to get information or just comfort. Joint attention is a foundation for relationship skills.

4. Intentional gestures

At this stage of social emotional development, around the first year, infants start to point at things. Some months later, they start to use head movements, for example, to indicate yes and no. Gestures can be learned through imitation, such as waving and nodding; others are not necessarily what carers are doing, such as lifting the arms.

Social emotional development: preschoolers’ social learning of others’ perspectives

The next key stage in the social emotional development journey is the emergence of an understanding of others’ perspectives.

The “false belief” test is one measure of this understanding. The child is presented with the story of Maxi, who returns home from shopping with his mother, and, before going out to play, puts his chocolate away. While he is outside, his mother moves the chocolate. When Maxi gets hungry and returns for his chocolate, where will he look for it and/or were will he think it is? A five-year-old will know immediately that Maxi will look for it where he left it, but a three-year-old will incorrectly claim that Maxi will look for it where Maxi’s mother put it.

Another test that a three-year-old is unlikely to pass involves showing something to them that looks like a stone and which they identify as a stone. But once they touch it, they discover it is a sponge. Three-year-olds will then claim they knew it was a sponge all along and that another child would think it is a sponge too.

As children develop, they reach higher levels of social learning.

Photo: Shutterstock.

For example, the “faux pas” test is a measure of a child’s reaction to a situation in which a child says he does not like a picture and then realises he is standing next to the child who drew it. Social learning involves recognising the embarrassment and the feelings of the budding artist.

Six stages of social learning in childhood

Two researchers, Henry Wellman and David Liu (2004), developed a five-stage test of social understanding up to five to six years of age.

1. Grasping that people may want different things (diverse desires).
2. Understanding that different people may have and act on different beliefs about the same thing when it is not known whether these beliefs are true or false (diverse beliefs).
3. Appreciating that a lack of visual access results in not knowing something (knowledge access).
4. False belief understanding, as described above.
5. Grasping that the emotions that someone experiences may be different from what they display (hidden emotion).

More recently, a sixth stage has been added: understanding sarcasm, which is reported to emerge when a child is six to nine years old.

Emotional learning: the development of empathy

Empathy is the emotional reaction to another’s feelings. Reacting emotionally to another’s distress starts very early, before babies are one year old.

Researchers have observed four stages in the emotional learning of empathy:

1. Global empathic distress. A baby cries when another baby cries.
2. Egocentric empathic distress (11-12 months). As in the first stage, but the babies do something to soothe themselves, like seek refuge with their father.
3. Quasi-egocentric empathic distress (12-14 months). The toddler will attempt to soothe the distress of the other child.
4. Veridical empathy (two years). Toddlers will bring distressed children something to comfort them, like their own teddy bear.

Other research has shown that babies as young as 8-10 months show facial and vocal responses to the distress of another.

Parents who actively encourage emotional learning in their children, helping them see the perspectives of others, have children with more empathic skills. Children who are not just told the rules, but who are made aware of the consequences for others of their own actions, tend to have greater empathy and a feeling of responsibility for the feelings of others.

Relationship skills: prosociality or being nice to others

A key area of current research is the emergence of prosocial behaviour in children: that is, when one person acts for the benefit of another.

Toddlers around the age of 14 and 18 months typically love to help their parents with housework and picking up dropped objects, often so enthusiastically that it becomes very difficult to get any housework done at all. This may, however, not be prosocial, but just a desire to be involved in the activity.

Photo: Shutterstock.

Two-year-olds will stop playing to help someone, even if that person does not realise they need help – for example, if they have dropped something unknowingly.

Parents’ encouragement of helping in the home is associated with greater social understanding in children later. Giving a 20-month-old a reward for prosocial behaviour actually decreases the helping behaviour, whereas praise strongly encourages it. These things happen irrespective of a child’s temperament.

Nine influences on social emotional development in children

Social emotional development in childhood is a gradual process of social learning and emotional learning through activity and talking about the activity.

Culture

Children’s rate of social learning varies significantly, as does the age at which they are able to pass the false belief test. Australian and Canadian children understand false belief, on average, a little before British or American children. Austrian and Japanese children lag further behind. In some communities, children will pass the test only at the aged of eight, for example, Samoan children, Junin Quechaun children in Peru, Mofu children in Cameroon, or the Tola and Tainae children of Papua New Guinea.

Interestingly, authoritarian parenting reduces performance in the false belief test in European Americans, but not in Korean-American families where they a positively related.

Siblings

Interaction with siblings helps social learning and relationship skills. Children with siblings progress some months ahead of children without siblings, though the varied results from research suggests that more than just the fact of having siblings is involved. The quality of the interaction may be important. For example, a child with older siblings may be more exposed to discussions about what others know and don’t know. Also, the impact of siblings is less on a child with already advanced language abilities. One theory is that siblings help generate greater self-awareness through more frequent references to “me” and “mine”.

Play

Pretend play involves making plans and assigning roles, and this may develop social learning and relationship skills. It may also be a factor in the sibling effect.

Peers

Popular children tend to be better at the false belief test and children who have been rejected by peers tend to do worse on the faux pas test. It is unclear which way cause and effect are working here. Lack of friendship and a low level of social learning could contribute to each other.

Child characteristics

A shy and socially fearful temperament is associated with more advanced social understanding in preschool, though the evidence is not entirely consistent.

Blindness and deafness

An inability to see or hear delays social learning, though this is not the case for deaf children with deaf parents who communicate well with them, suggesting that language is important for social learning.

Parent-child interaction

The way that parents interact with their children and use language influences the children’s social development. Responsive conversations, with organised give and take, contribute to social understanding. So do conversations about thinking, desires, emotions and intentions.

Parents with more advanced social understanding have children with better social learning. Parents who talk to their children more about others’ feelings have children who do better on the false belief test. Authoritarian parenting, characterised by shouting and physical punishment, is associated with less social learning.

Earlier attachment

Children who have enjoyed secure attachment in their first year will tend to do better in the false belief test when they are five.

Mind mindedness

If a parent describes their child as someone with a mind, rather than just a physical being – so-called “mind mindedness” – and use psychological terms to describe their children, the children are likely to pass the false belief test at an earlier age. Hearing psychological terms used to explain and elaborate social events improves children’s social understanding. A mediating factor here is the higher language skills of these children.

Social emotional development: the role of language

Language has been shown to play a very important role in the whole process of social emotional development in the early years. Advanced language skills are linked to better performance on the false belief test, for example.

Purposefully teaching children the meaning of mental-state words, such as know, think, wonder, and figure out, has a positive impact on understanding of emotion at age three and performance in the false belief test at age four.

The benefits of strong social emotional development: good relationship skills

Does a child who does better in the false belief test or the faux pas test have better relationship skills and a better social life with friends? The answer is yes. Such a child is likely to have better relationship skills, engage less in conflict, use more sophisticated arguments in response to others’ perspectives and interests, have better close friendships, and be less likely either to bully or be bullied. Greater social understanding and relationship skills are not linked to premeditated proactive use of aggression, but they are linked to the more unthinking reactive form.

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Some of these associations are small – for example, only 4% of the variance in peer popularity could be linked to difference in performance on the faux pas test.

Advanced social emotional learning: morality

Jean Piaget

In The Moral Judgement of the Child (1932/1965), Jean Piaget discussed children’s understanding of the rules of the game and their judgement of bad behaviours. He proposed that morality emerges as children develop relationship skills with peers.

Piaget observed how children play with marbles:

• At three years, children tend to be unaware of any rules.
• Between three and six years, children are inconsistent about rules and their application.
• From the age of seven, children understand the rules.
• From the age of nine, children start to understand that rules are not simply handed down from on high, but are agreed by mutual consent.
• From the age of 11, children master the rules completely and police them.

These are only approximate ages for the children Piaget interviewed. He thought that what is important in moral development are relationships of cooperation among equals. These are best suited for understanding others and working out a solution that is good for all. In contrast, within relationships of constraint, children have difficulty understanding others’ perspectives, so these relationships are not well suited for moral development.

Lawrence Kohlberg

Lawrence Kohlberg took another approach. He maintained that the key to morality is not behaviour itself but the reasons that a person has for behaving that way. For example, not paying taxes could be a selfish means of cheating the state, or an unselfish stand against the way the state uses the money.

Kohlberg posed painful moral dilemmas, often choices about who should be allowed to die in a situation with two possibilities. He then observed how people respond to them.

He described six stages or world views.

1. Might is right. Rules must be followed, and disobedience should be punished.
2. Do to others what you would want them to do to you.
3. Do to others as if they were yourself, with the perspective extending to family and friends only.
4. Communities need accepted rules to prevent breakdown, and these should be broken only in the most extreme cases.
5. Rules should be defined by fundamental human rights. The question should always be asked: are current rules and laws moral?
6. Everyone affected by a rule should have a say in how that rule is put in place and implemented.

Kohlberg observed that most adults reach stage 3 or 4, and few reach 5 or beyond. He believed that moral development occurs as people encounter situations where the current rules break down and they are faced with new moral dilemmas.

Objections raised to Kohlberg’s theory include:

• People are not always consistently in one stage at a time.
• Some cultures place more emphasis than others on social solidarity, harmony relationships and deep affection for others. This affects how rules are applied.
• The stages are not necessarily hierarchical. There are very good people who help others in their communities and yet are at stages 3 and 4.

Morality versus social conventions

Not all rules are the same, and children learn this early. Some rules are social conventions – calling a teacher “Mr” or “Mrs”, wearing a school uniform, how to hold a knife and fork. But other rules are moral, including those relating to protecting others from harm, such as not stealing or not fighting. Children as young as three years understand the difference between these types of rules.

Some have criticised both Piaget and Kohlberg for mixing up the learning of social conventions and morality. “Domain theory” holds that they are separate processes from the outset, though this idea creates the problem of rules that are somewhere in between, such as lining up and dressing in a way that may offend others.

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Some disagree with the very idea that there are distinct child development milestones. Children develop in such diverse ways, particularly if we look across different cultures. Even in a single culture, children develop differently, and can perform more or less competently within a given stage. Those who disagree with the idea of child development milestones see development as a gradual and uneven growth of various psychological mechanisms.

Variation in child development milestones: familiarity and culture

Variation in competence between child development milestones is strongly related to familiarity with a situation. In one experiment, conducted by psychologist Jean Piaget, preschool children were shown a diorama of three mountains, each with a distinctive object on top. The children were unable to say what the scene would look like to a doll sitting on the other side of it.

But later in 1975, another researcher, Helen Borke, found children of the same age could achieve this task if the landmarks were familiar objects – farms with animals, people, buildings and trees – and if the doll were replaced by Grover, a character from Sesame Street, driving around in a car.

What children learn in different cultures is extremely varied: using technology in the USA, finding water-bearing roots in the Kalahari desert, dancing in Bali, skiing and skating in Norway, and so on. Culture and environment determine what objects are available to learn with, what activities are frequent and normal, what people do together and what children learn at school.

The brain developments that underpin early child development milestones

At two years, the brain is 80% of its full adult weight; by five, it reaches 90%.

Three key brain development processes occur during these years:

• Improvement in the efficiency and speed of connections. Between the ages of 2 and 5, myelination is most prominent in the frontal cortex, which is important for things like planning and regulating behavior.
• Increase in length and branching of neurons connecting different parts of the brain.
• Synaptic pruning, whereby nonfunctional synapses die off.

Overall, the brain remains relatively immature during this period. The development of parts of the brain associated with memory (the hippocampus and the frontal cortex) is still incomplete. This may help explain why children of this age find it difficult to keep several things in mind at once.

Different parts of the brain develop unevenly. One illustration of this involves “scale errors.” A fully mature person can seamlessly integrate two different brain activities – the perception of scale or size, and actions towards an object. If these two abilities are not integrated, as in children up to around two and a half years, a child may try to do impossible things, like pushing a big peg into a small hole, or sitting in a doll’s chair or toy car. They cannot match their perception of size with their actions towards the object.

Brain development, like child development overall, comes with practice – it depends on experience. This it is highly influenced by the specific experiences afforded by different cultures. Brain areas associated with certain spatial abilities develop in response to children’s involvement in hunting or weaving. Language areas undergo increased growth where verbal expression is frequent and important. Brain processes associated with attention and memory are highly developed when children learn music.

Motor stages of development

A two-year-old and a five-year-old have enormously different physical abilities. During this period, children learn new gross motor skills. For example, they may learn to ride a tricycle and later a scooter, throw a ball overhand and climb. Fine motor skills also develop: drawing, dressing, tying shoes.

Cognitive child development milestones

According to Piaget, children between the ages of two and six are at the “pre-operational” stage.

At this stage, children can

• represent reality to themselves through the use of symbols, including mental images, words, and gestures;
• think about objects and events even when these things are not actually present;
• struggle to distinguish their point of view from that of others;
• become easily captured by surface appearances; and
• be confused about causal relations.

A key characteristic of the pre-operational stage of development is overcoming “centration,” which is the tendency to be “captured” by a single feature of a situation to the exclusion of all others. A child can be shown two balls, both with red stripes but where the other color is different. Before centration is overcome, children will, when asked to “point to the red ball”, confidently pick one at random and stick to their choice with confidence.

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Piaget called the ability to pull away from one aspect of a problem and consider multiple aspects simultaneously “decentration,” which leads directly to objectivity. Piaget regarded this as a major stage in child cognitive development.

Early cognitive development stage: learning a different person’s perspective

Egocentrism is the tendency to center things on oneself. Children might believe that the moon follows them around when they walk at night. They won’t understand this can’t be true because another child walking in the other direction will have the same experience.

The mountain diorama test described above is a test of egocentrism: can the child understand a different person’s perspective?

The development of an understanding of others’ perspectives is called “theory of mind,” demonstrated by the false belief test. In this test, the child is presented with the story of Maxi, who returns home from shopping with his mother and, before going out to play, puts his chocolate away. While he is outside, his mother moves the chocolate. When Maxi gets hungry and returns for his chocolate, children are asked, where will he look for it and/or were will he think it is? A five-year-old will know immediately that Maxi will look for it where he left it, but a three-year-old will incorrectly claim that Maxi will look for it where Maxi’s mother put it.

Early cognitive development stage: learning the difference between appearance and reality

Two-and-a-half-year-olds can be frightened by someone putting a witch or dragon mask on. They have difficulty distinguishing between appearance and reality.

For example, researchers have presented children with objects whose appearance is deceptive: a sponge that looks like a stone, a stone that looks like an egg, a bar of soap that looks like a block. Children are asked to name the objects before touching them, and then they are given the objects to touch so they discover their true nature. Then they are asked what the object looks like. Three-year-olds change their minds and will now insist that the stone-like sponge looks like a sponge, the stone-like egg looks like an egg and the block-like soap looks like soap. Five-year-olds will not, because they are able to differentiate between appearance and reality.

Early cognitive development stage: learning cause and effect

At this stage of development, children learn more about cause and effect. Four- to five-year olds typically ask endless questions about cause and effect: “Why is the sky blue?” “Where do babies come from?” “What makes clouds?” In contrast, Piaget described his own daughter at three years confusing cause and effect after missing an afternoon nap: “I haven’t had a nap, so it isn’t afternoon.”

Children at this stage of development show more attention to confusing situations where they cannot deduce cause and effect. They start to search for new explanations. In one experiment, a blue object is shown to activate a light box and turn it on, while a green object does not. Once they have learned this, children particularly take note when the experiment is rigged and the blue and green objects start to do unexpected things.

Early cognitive development stage: distinguishing between living and nonliving things

The distinction between animate and inanimate things is a complex capacity. It involves being able to understand quite abstract biological processes – growth, the ability to move independently, the possession of internal parts and internal thoughts. In computer screen tests, four-year-olds show an emerging but incomplete ability to categorise objects between living and nonliving.

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Some scientists believe this ability is a specific and separate domain of child development. Whatever the theory, it is a milestone for all children.

Early cognitive development stage: understanding physics

Children below the age of four understand gravity—they know that an object falls down if dropped. But when presented with an arrangement where balls cannot drop directly down but are diverted sideways, they often get it wrong. As with other tasks, this one can be made easier so that children are more likely to get the answer right. In this, case, how the tubes and buckets are matched up color-wise will influence how children predict the ball will fall.

The development of identity in early childhood

Child development milestones: gender identity

Gender identity is a key stage of development between the ages of two and five. It has begun already at two, with girls and boys using more same-gender-type words, such as boy, girl, truck, dress. By the time they enter school, boys and girls generally have different toy preferences. Boys are more likely to engage in rough-and-tumble play, while girls show more verbal and nurturing behavior. Gender segregation – the selection of friends of the same gender – starts at two in girls and three in boys.
There are a number of ways that child development psychologists understand this stage of development.

The “social learning” understanding observes that children model their behavior by observing and imitating others. Then they experience differential reinforcement – rewards for behaving in particular ways. Two- to five-year-olds are influenced not just by their parents, but by siblings, peers, other adults and what they see on TV and other media. Girls with older sisters and boys with older brothers are more stereotyped in their behavior than if their older sibling is of the other gender.

The “constructivist” understanding – based on Piaget’s stages of development – proposes that children create a “gender schema”, a mental model that is used to process gender-related information. Information can be objects, such as “boy things” and “girl things”, and routines, such as what Daddy does and what Mommy does.

Early experiences in school have an important influence on gender identity. If teachers emphasise gender more or less, children are more or less stereotyped in their behaviors.

Culture evaluates how children do and do not conform to gender roles.  In many Western cultures it is OK for girls to want to engage in stereotypical boy behavior, but it is much less acceptable the other way round. These unwritten rules can regulate behavior with some force.

Child development milestones: ethnic identity

The development of ethnic identity is an important stage for two- to five-year-olds. The process by which parents communicate ethnicity-related messages to children has been termed “ethnic socialisation.”

Researchers have identified two types of socialisation. “Cultural socialisation” emphasises ethnic heritage and pride. “Preparation for bias” emphasises awareness of ethnic bias and how to cope with it. Children whose parents promote ethnic pride and provide a home rich in culture tend to have stronger cognitive abilities and problem-solving skills and fewer behavior problems.

Child development milestones: personal identity

By the age of four, children have developed the ability to recount their own personal experiences by themselves. This personal story has been termed their “autobiographical memory.” As they develop this ability, they are likely to get assistance from their parents. At bedtime, for example, a two-year-old may ask a parent to tell them the story of their day. The parent and child together construct the story, with the parent shaping the story, playing some things up, such as the child’s capabilities, and playing some things down, such as the child’s fears. Some parents may introduce moral lessons to the story. This stage of development is very much shaped by the interaction with parents.

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At the early childhood stage of development, the child does not develop a subjective sense of self, for example, “I am shy” or “I am smart”. This comes later in middle childhood. Rather, two- to five-year olds communicate their identity by means of more objective characteristics: “I live in a big house.” “I have blue eyes.” “I have a kitten.”

Children of this age also do not distinguish well between what they can do and what they aspire to do, leading to rather exaggerated notions of their abilities. A child might say “I know all my ABCs” or “I can swim the whole way across the pool” when in fact they can do nothing of the sort. The ability to distinguish between aspiration and ability comes at a later stage of development.

The development of morality

The development of morality represents one of the key child development milestones. Two- to five-year-olds, when presented with moral stories, tend to focus on the objective consequences of the action, rather than the nature of the person’s motivation. Piaget, who examined the development of a sense of right and wrong, called this “heteronomous morality.”

Piaget asked children to consider the following two stories. Luke is warned by his mother to stay away from the freshly baked cookies cooling on the kitchen counter. When she leaves the room, Luke snitches a cookie and, in his clumsy haste, knocks over a cup that falls to the floor and breaks. Meanwhile, Zack is helping his mother to set the dining room table for dinner. With hands full of napkins and silverware, he pushes open the door leading from the kitchen to the dining room. When the door swings open, it hits a tray on which are stacked a dozen cups, all of which fall to the floor and break.

At the preoperational stage of development, the four-year-old will declare that Zack is the naughtier child because the consequences of his action are more severe. Older children regard Luke as naughtier, because he was deliberately disobeying his mother. Piaget terms this later stage of development “autonomous morality.”

(These stories also illustrate gender identity formation. Mommy is cooking and laying the table.)

“Social domain theory” distinguishes between different types of right and wrong:

• • Moral rules are based on principles of justice and the welfare of others. These rules are about not harming others.

• • Social conventions coordinate social behavior. These rules are about how to behave and dress and who has authority over whom.

• • Personal rules. An example is how to thank an uncle for a birthday present, by phone or letter.

Three- and four-year-olds can distinguish between these types of rules, responding quite differently to violations of the different types. The borders between the rules are sometimes blurred. Swearing could be considered a moral rule or a social convention. Running around naked on a beach could be breaking a social convention or be a personal rule.

The development of self-regulation: controlling actions

Further development of the capacity to regulate one’s own thoughts, emotions and behaviors takes place during early childhood.
Developing “effortful control” – the ability to concentrate on a task and inhibit impulsive or distracting actions – is a key stage of development in early childhood.

The ability can be tested by giving children a task that requires self-control or concentration. One test involves putting a desirable toy in front of children and asking them not to touch it. Another test involves sorting toys into different boxes in ways that require careful thought.

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Another measure is observation by parents and/or teachers: can the child wait before entering new activities when asked, can the child quit working on a project when asked, does the child concentrate when drawing?

Higher capacity for effortful control varies among children and predicts better academic performance and better social adjustment, such as stronger friendships and less aggression.

The two tests above are different in nature. The first – resisting the toy – is more emotional than the task of sorting toys, and it has been termed a “hot task”. Children good at hot tasks have been found to be better at working cooperatively with other children and less aggressive with their peers.

Some cultures, such as those influenced by Confucianism, emphasise self-control, and children in these cultures show greater ability in this area. Socioeconomic circumstances also influence this stage of development. Children from poorer backgrounds tend to show less self-control, though preschool progams can teach these skills successfully.

Play is an important part of this stage of development: playing a particular role in a game requires regulating thoughts and behaviors according to the imaginary situation. When the link has been tested, three- and four-year-olds who engage more in socio-dramatic play showed higher levels of self-regulation a few months later, even though there was no correlation between these variables at the start. These children were more attentive to post-activity clean-up and more attentive when gathered in a circle to listen to their teachers.

The development of self-regulation: socioemotional competence

At this stage of development, two- to five-year olds develop the ability to keep their emotions under control. They may avoid or reduce their exposure to an adverse experience by closing their eyes, turning away or blocking their ears. They may distract themselves with pleasurable activities. They may use their budding language and cognitive abilities to reinterpret events in a more palatable way (“I didn’t want to play with her anyway, she’s mean”), to reassure themselves (“Mommy said she’ll be right back”), and to encourage themselves (“I’m a big girl; big girls can do this”).

During this stage of development, children learn the difference between experiencing an emotion and expressing it. They can see when someone might be concealing an emotion. This ability develops in widely different ways from culture to culture. Children in cultures that more highly value social hierarchy and group harmony show earlier abilities to control their emotions than do children in cultures that emphasise autonomy and individual needs and desires.

The development of empathy and sympathy

Empathy and sympathy are defined as “prosocial behaviors” – voluntary actions to benefit others.

Empathy matures through early childhood, enabling a child to respond more sensitively to another’s distress. Their increased language ability expands the scope for them to empathize with people who are expressing their feelings verbally.

This developing understanding of others’ perspectives can work the other way, of course. A child may understand perfectly well why another child is in distress and may feel glad as a result!

Researchers have distinguished two reactions to the distress of another. Sympathy involves feelings of sorrow or concern for another person. This has been termed “other-oriented concern”. Personal distress, by contrast, is a self-focused reaction. Sympathy is more likely to lead to prosocial behavior. The capacity for self-regulation of emotion is key to the ability to respond with sympathy rather than just personal distress. Similarly, children with a greater capacity to focus their attention have a greater capacity for sympathy.

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