Good morning, afternoon, evening, night. Welcome back to the Mr. Sin channel. Today we're going to be exploring social development in childhood as we go over unit 6, topic 2 of AP Psychology. Human beings are social animals.
Right away from birth, we can understand familiar faces and voices. We as a species learn and grow from interacting with one another and thrive from social interaction. When we are children, we develop an attachment to the people that we are close with. This is normally an emotional connection with the people we trust, traditionally your parents or the people who raise you. To start this video off, let's just quick look at a couple experiments that were done that helped us better understand.
attachments and how they're formed. Harry Harlow and Margaret Harlow wanted to better understand learning and to do this, they created an experiment that used monkeys. During their study, they separated infant monkeys from their mothers and had the infant monkeys fed by an object that was made of wires and provided no comfort. They also had monkeys that were fed by an object that had a baby blanket on it and provided some comfort.
What they found was that the monkeys that were raised with the wire mother would go to the mother when they needed nourishment. But during stressful situations or times of ins- uncertainty, they would always go to the mother with the baby blanket for comfort. This showed that a bond between a child and a caregiver is more than just a need to satisfy their nourishment. Conrad Lorenzo expanded on our understanding of attachment in children by looking at the process called imprinting. This is when an animal creates a strong attachment during the early years of their life.
He wanted to see how strong attachments were. To do this, Conrad had the ducklings observe him right after they were born. What he noticed is that the ducks imprinted on him.
They formed an attachment. The ducklings would follow Conrad around everywhere he went. And we can see that while children do not imprint like animals, we do form attachments when we're very young. We can see that kids like familiar things. This is one of the reasons why kids like to watch the same TV show over and over again, or read the same book, or continue to practice the same tradition.
The repetition and familiarness provides security for the child. Mary Ainsworth sought to better understand the differences in children's attachments. To do so, she created the Strange Situation Experiment.
During this experiment, a child and their mother The mother would be put in a room that the child had never seen before. When the mother was in the room with the child, the child would explore and move around the room to play with some of the toys. This happened if the child had a secure attachment with the mother.
Eventually the experiment had the mother leave the room. What Ainsworth found was that the child would become distressed and uncomfortable. However when the mother returned to the room, the child would go to the mother and go back to being content. However, if the child did not form a secure attachment and formed an insecure attachment, they would often cling to the mother.
their mother. And when the mother left the room, they would cry loudly. When the mother returned, the infant would remain upset. Ainsworth showed how important it is that parents remain open and responsive to their children and their needs in order to help them form secure attachments.
If parents were unresponsive or neglective, the child could develop an insecure attachment. One other attachment that was observed was with children with an ambivalent attachment. This is when a child has an insecure attachment with their parents.
But instead of clinging to their parents, the child will show a mixture of positive and negative reactions. responses towards the parent. For example, we can see that in Amesworth's experiment, a child with an ambivalent attachment got upset when the mother first left the room.
However, when the mother returned and went to pick up the child to comfort the child, the child continued to cry and was upset and started to push back against the mother, almost resisting their care. Now, so far in this video, we've been looking at the nurture side of the nature versus nurture debate. We've been talking about how different ways in which we're raised in our environment impact and influence our development.
But some also argue that nature could be a at play as well. For example, how children react could also depend on their temperament, which is often influenced by genetics, which impacts their emotional responses. Psychologists such as Eric Erickson delved deeper into the concept of attachment. He believed that children who had a predictable environment and adults they could trust would develop basic trust and feel secure in the world around them. Erickson identified eight stages of development that people went through.
In this video, we're gonna be talking about the first four stages, since those are the ones that connect with children and development. But note that we'll be continuing to. come back to these stages throughout this unit as we go into adolescence and again with adulthood.
One of the reasons why you should subscribe so you don't miss out on any of that information. Erickson's first stage is trust versus mistrust. This is when a child is still an infant.
Here, the important thing in life is feeding the child, showing affection to the child, and providing security. This allows the child to form a secure attachment. If the child does not receive these things, it may lead to trust issues or an insecure attachment to form.
As the child moves from infancy to early childhood, they move into the... the next stage which is autonomy versus shame and doubt. This is when the child starts to be able to separate items in the environment. They understand what is theirs and what is someone else's. Life events here will include being potty trained and positive reinforcement here is key.
This allows the child to develop autonomy and confidence. As children get older and move into their preschool years they go into the next stage which is initiative versus guilt. Here children want to learn and they want to be social.
They'll ask a ton of questions and they're mad Imagination takes off. This is also where independent activities are key. Children need to be allowed to have control over some aspects of their life in order to build their confidence and autonomy. If parents do not allow their children to take on some responsibilities and have some control over their own lives, it can weaken their child's confidence. and may have the child question themselves on whether they can do different things.
From there, we move into the next stage, which is industry versus inferiority. This is when children are in school. In fact, school is one of the most important events in this stage.
Here, children start to make more of their own decisions. And great. grapple with the concept of good and bad.
Here kids will start to identify with different social factors as well, such as what types of clothes they're wearing or what jobs their parents have. During this stage, children will compare themselves with other children to understand their own status. As you can see, each stage centers around a conflict. Depending on what happens in your life, it'll impact you in different ways.
And each of these stages builds off of the previous stage. We'll continue to go more into Erickson's model in future videos in Unit 6, so make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any of the other. Now we can see children learn and grow from a variety of different places. One of the ways in which children learn is through observational learning. This is when you learn by watching others.
Remember we talked about observational learning back in our Unit 4 Topic 1 video when we covered Albert Bandura's Bobo doll experiment. But it's not just observational learning that shapes development. Parenting styles also have a significant impact on a child's development.
Diana Baumrind sought to understand the impact of different parenting styles on the development of children. She then identified four different parenting styles. different parenting styles that are most commonly used. We have authoritarian parents who are parents who have imposed strict rules and expect their children to follow every rule without question.
Here parents will tell their kids what to do without an explanation. The child is expected to follow what the parent said because they are the child and they must listen to what their parents say. Now on the other side of the parenting spectrum are permissive parents who are parents who are loose with the rules and do not demand much of their children. This parenting style sits little to no limits on children and rarely uses punishment on the.
children. Oftentimes here parents might seek to be the child's friend instead of the rule enforcer. Then there are the negligent parents. These parents are completely uninvolved in their child's lives and because of this they don't have a strong attachment to the child. Lastly, there's the authoritative parents.
These are parents who have set an expectation for their children and do enforce rules. However, as the child gets older they encourage an open dialogue on why certain rules are in place. It'll explain the reasoning behind the rules instead of just saying because I said so. Now oftentimes students will confuse authoritarian parents with authoritative parents.
Remember that authoritarian there's no room for discussion and authoritative there is a room for discussion. Also a big difference between permissive parents and also the negligent parents is that permissive parents are active in their child's lives while the negligent parents is not involved. I do want to highlight there is also no perfect parenting style.
Each culture and family will have different values and ideas on what it means to be a quality parent and a good child. Those values will reflect differently in parents. parenting decisions which will influence the development of the child. Sometimes we can see that children who are raised under authoritarian parents may have a lower self-esteem and overreact when they make a mistake, while children raised by permissive parents may see their parents more as a friend instead of a rule enforcer and may be more immature.
Children who are raised by negligent parents may struggle with school since they don't have someone at home to keep them on task and motivate them to do their homework. And lastly, we can see children with authoritative parents often may develop higher self-esteem and autonomy. Again, these are just observations that that have been made in the past. Remember correlation does not always equal causation.
There are confounding variables that would also impact the development of a child besides just the parenting style. And just like that, another topic review video is done. Now you know the drill, answer the questions on the screen, and check your answers in the comments section down below. Also make sure you check out my ultimate review packet and Discord server for more help with everything AP Psychology related. Both these resources will help you get an A in your class and a five on your national exam.
As always, thank you for watching my video. Subscribe. subscribing and supporting the channel. I'm Mr. Sin and I will see you next time online.