Category: Child Psychology

Is one parent enough to raise well-adjusted children?

Children who bond closely with one or other parent grow up the most well-adjusted, research finds.

Young children only need to feel a bond with one parent to boost their emotional stability later on.

A warm, secure and positive bond is enough to meet the child’s need for security.

Bonded children are less likely to grow up to be aggressive, troubled, or to display emotional and behavioural problems at school.

Dr Sanghag Kim, study co-author, said:

“There is a really important period when a mother or a father should form a secure relationship with their child, and that is during the first two years of life.

That period appears to be critical to the child’s social and emotional development.”

The conclusions come from research on 86 infants who were followed until the age of 8.

Both parents and teachers were asked about any concerns they had for the children.

Dr Kim said:

“Parents and teachers have different perspectives.

They observe children in different contexts and circumstances.

That is why we collected data from many informants who know the child.”

The news is good for both stay-at-home dads and single parents.

While being bonded with both parents is no bad thing, it is heartening to know that one parent can provide the required emotional closeness and support.

Dr Kim said:

“Some people think the father is not good enough to be the primary caregiver.

Our data show otherwise.”

Children who did not feel a secure attachment were more likely to report fears, worries and aggressive tendencies at school-age.

The study was published in the journal Child Development (Kochanska et al., 2012).

Discover ten classic developmental psychology experiments that study how children’s self, memory, language, learning and more emerge.

Once upon a time, although it seems barely credible to us now, we were all children.

We gurgled, we cried, we laughed, we explored, we fell down, and we had very little idea about the journey on which we had just embarked.

Barring mishap, over the first few years of our lives we developed memory, language, self-concept, cognitive, social and emotional abilities.

We took our first steps towards our future selves.

Child psychology — or, more broadly, developmental psychology — is not just the study of children, it is the study of you and me and how we came to be this way.

Just as discovering your history can teach you about the future, so developmental psychology shows us what we once were and even what we will become.

Here are 10 classic developmental psychology studies that have illuminated crucial areas of childhood development.

Each one is a piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is ourselves, and each one reminds us, through examining just one piece, how aspects of experience we now take for granted were once so complex.

Click the links for a more extensive description of each developmental psychology experiment.

1. Infant memory develops very early on

Some argue it’s impossible for us to remember anything much from before around two to four years of age.

Others think our memories can go way back – perhaps even to before birth.

The question of infant memory is thorny because it’s hard to test whether adults’ earliest memories are real or imagined.

What psychologists have done, though, is examine the emergence of memory in our first few years with a series of now classic experiments in developmental psychology.

These have found that our memory systems actually work quite well from very early on.

Infants’ memories also seems to work in much the same way as adult memories – it’s just that infant memories are much more fragile.

2. Developmental psychology: when the self emerges

To this day the ‘mirror test’ remains the best developmental psychology experiment yet developed for examining the emergence of self-concept in infants using the mirror test.

Most people look out for number one, themselves, which makes it strange to think that there was ever a time when we had no concept of ‘me’.

A simple study dating from the early 70s suggests that before the age of around two years old we can’t recognise ourselves in the mirror.

Because of this study, and the many variations in developmental psychology that have followed, some claim that it isn’t until our second birthday that our self-concept emerges.

3. How children learn

A classic study of childhood learning suggests true understanding comes from letting go of established preconceptions.

How children revise their understanding of the world is one of the most fascinating areas of developmental psychology.

But it is not just relevant to children; we all have to take on new concepts from time-to-time – even though they may not be as profound as the origin of the species.

It’s tempting to think that learning is largely about memory – especially since in the bad old days of education learning was largely accomplished by rote.

However, the idea of ‘mental models’ suggests children create, and then test, mental models of the way the world works in order to build up our understanding, and that is how children learn.

4. Attachment styles in developmental psychology

Attachment styles analyse how people respond to threats and problems in their personal relationships.

People who find relationships difficult often become unable to participate in the ordinary give-and-take of everyday life.

They may become hostile towards others, have problems in education as well as a greater chance of developing psychiatric disorders later in life.

These difficulties sometimes have their roots in the most important early relationships, evidenced in attachment styles.

It’s no wonder that developmental psychologists are so interested in the first relationships we build with our primary caregivers.

These attachment styles are likely to prove a vital influence on all our future relationships, including those with our spouse, our workmates and our own children.

While you can’t blame everything on your parents, early relationship attachment styles are like a template that we take forward with us in life.

5. Infants imitate others when only weeks old

One of the most basic forms of social behaviour is copying another person.

Although imitation is something we adults take for granted, it’s actually a pretty demanding process for a young infant.

At the heart of imitation is understanding the difference between yourself and others – something that famous Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget thought didn’t emerge immediately in infants.

Consequently, he argued that infants could not imitate others until they were 8 to 12 months of age.

However, now some researchers think tiny infants who are between 12- and 21-days-old can imitate others.

6. When children can simulate other minds

Theory of mind is when we can put ourselves in other people’s shoes to try and imagine their thoughts, intentions and possible actions.

Without the ability to simulate what other people are thinking we would be lost in the social world.

The emergence of theory of mind in children is a vital developmental milestone; some psychologists think that a failure to develop a theory of mind is a central component of autism.

Some developmental psychology experiments suggest that at about 4- to 6-years old a range of remarkable skills start to emerge in young children that are vital for their successful functioning in society.

They begin to understand that others can hold false beliefs, they themselves can lie, and that others can lie to them — they have a theory of mind.

7. Object permanence in developmental psychology

Object permanence, or object constancy, in developmental psychology is understanding that things continue to exist, even if you cannot seem them.

Research in developmental psychology has found that infants as young as 3.5 months seem to have a basic grasp of object permanence.

It appears that young infants are not necessarily trapped in a world of shapes which have little meaning for them.

Instead, they seem to be intuitive physicists who can carry out rudimentary reasoning about physical concepts like gravity, inertia and object permanence.

8. How infants learn their first word

An infant’s very first step in their year-long developmental journey to their first word is perhaps their most impressive.

This first step is discriminating and categorising the basic sound components of the language they are hearing.

To get an idea how hard this might be think about listening to someone speaking a language you don’t understand.

Foreign languages can sound like continuous streams of noise in which it’s very hard to pick up where one word starts and another word begins.

Research in developmental psychology finds that until about 11 months of age infants are masters of discriminating phonemes used in all different types of languages.

But after 11 months infants settle down with one set of phonemes for their first language, and lose the ability to discriminate the phonemes from other languages.

9. Play and developmental psychology

The pioneering developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky thought that, in the preschool years, play is the leading source of development.

Through play children learn and practice many basic social skills.

They develop a sense of self, learn to interact with other children, how to make friends, how to lie and how to role-play.

The classic developmental psychology study of how play develops in children was carried out by Mildred Parten in the late 1920s at the Institute of Child Development in Minnesota (Parten, 1933).

She closely observed children between the ages of 2 and 5 years and categorised the types of play.

She found six different types of play, ranging from solitary, through associative to cooperative

10. Piaget’s developmental psychology theory

Jean Piaget was a developmental psychologist whose four-stage theory, published in 1936, has proved extremely influential.

Piaget’s four stages of development theory has the dubious claim to fame of being one of the most criticised psychological theories ever.

From the sensorimotor stage, through the pre-operational stage, the concrete operational stage and the formal operational stage, his theory attempts to describe how childhood development progresses.

However, Piaget’s experiments and theories about how children build up their knowledge of the world have faced endless challenges, many of them justified.

Read on about them here.

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Types of play that children exhibit, from solitary to cooperative, can signal their state of social development.

Types of play are central to children’s development.

In fact, the pioneering developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky thought that, in the preschool years, play is the leading source of development.

Through play children learn and practice many basic social skills.

They develop a sense of self, learn to interact with other children, how to make friends, how to lie and how to role-play.

The classic study of how play develops in children was carried out by Mildred Parten in the late 1920s at the Institute of Child Development in Minnesota (Parten, 1933).

She closely observed children between the ages of 2 and 5 years and categorised the types of play.

Parten collected data by systematically sampling the children’s behaviour.

She observed them for pre-arranged 1 minute periods which were varied systematically.

Types of play

The thing to notice is that the first four types of play don’t involve much interaction with others, while the last two do.

Unlike Jean Piaget who saw types of play in primarily cognitive developmental terms, Parten emphasised the idea that learning to play is learning how to relate to others.

While children shift between the types of play, what Parten noticed was that as they grew up, children participated less in the first four types of play and more in the last two – those which involved greater interaction.

1. Unoccupied types of play

In the first type of play, the infant does not really appear to be playing at all.

The child is relatively stationary and appears to be performing random movements with no apparent purpose.

This is because everything is new to the child, so even the smallest or most mundane object is full of wonder.

There is nothing for parents to do at this stage of developing, as babies know what to do instinctively: they just explore their world at the own pace.

2. Solitary (independent) play

The second type of play is when the child mostly plays on their own.

Generally, the child is completely engrossed in playing and does not seem to notice other children.

Blocks, stuffed animals, costumes, toy-figures often hold endless fascination for children in this stage.

This type of play is most often seen in children between 2 and 3 years-old.

Children that are more extraverted may not spend long on this stage, while more introverted children may continue with solitary play for longer.

3. Onlooker play

For the third type of play, the child takes an interest in other children’s play but does not join in.

They may ask questions or just talk to other children, but the main activity is simply to watch.

Onlooker play is common around three-years-old.

The child is learning how to play from the other children.

4. Parallel types of play

The fourth type of play involves children playing alongside each other, but not quite together.

The child mimics other children’s play but doesn’t actively engage with them.

For example, they may use the same toy or copy what the other child is doing with the toy.

While the children may not appear to be paying much attention to each other, this is an illusion.

They are actually watching closely as they learn.

This is the final type of play before children truly learn to connect with others.

5. Associative play

By around age five, children are learning to relate to each other more.

In the associated type of play, they are more clearly involved with with what the other children or child is doing.

In fact, they are now more interested in each other than the toys they are using.

For example, two children in this stage might each build their tower out of blocks, but be talking to each other at the same time.

This is the first category that involves strong social interaction between the children while they play.

6. Cooperative types of play

All the stages come together in this type of play.

Now children — typically of around four and five-years-old — start to cooperate with others.

They will now build their towers together, try to complete a puzzle together and compete in a board game.

At this stage come organisation enters children’s play, for example the playing has some goal and children often adopt roles and act as a group.

Criticism of these 6 types of play

Critics have pointed out that children do not necessarily go through this sequence of types of play.

Some toddlers may be able to play cooperatively and playing on their own is not necessarily a sign of immaturity in an older child.

The type of play that children indulge in is also influenced by the situation they are in.

For example, familiarity with the other children will make the more likely to interact.

More types of play

While these six steps were the main types of play that Parten described, there have since been many different typologies.

Here are some more common types of play:

• Fantasy/dramatic play: dressing-up or role-playing are both examples of dramatic or fantasy play.
• Symbolic play: Jokes, drawing, colouring and singing are all examples of symbolic play.
• Physical play: for developing physical skills.
• Constructive play: teaches children to build, manipulate and cooperate.
• Competitive play: children learn rules, being part of a team and how to cope with winning and losing.

→ This article is part of a series on 10 crucial developmental psychology studies:

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

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Object permanence In Piaget’s theory is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when we can’t actually see them.

Object permanence, or object constancy, in developmental psychology is understanding that things continue to exist, even if you cannot seem them.

Infants younger than around 4-7 months in age do not yet understand object permanence.

Understanding object permanence is a key part of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.

What is object permanence?

Before they can develop an understanding of object permanence, young children must have a mental representation of an object.

Without understanding object permanence, though, young children must wonder where the world goes when they close their eyes.

Perhaps young infants, brand new in the world, experience their environment as a kind of nonsensical dream in which even the simplest properties of objects surprise them.

Or, perhaps they do have some intuitive understanding that objects continue to exist even when they can’t be directly experienced?

This is the question psychologists have been trying to answer while researching what infants in their first year of life understand about ‘object permanence’.

Jean Piaget’s theory of object permanence

From his research, Piaget concluded that children couldn’t properly grasp the concept of object permanence until they were at least 12 months of age.

In a typical experiment Piaget would show a toy to an infant, then hide it or take it away.

Piaget would then watch to see if the child searched for the toy.

From experiments like these, Piaget developed a six-stage theory of object permanence:

1. 0–1 months: Reflexes – First babies use their reflexes to understand and explore the world. Their awareness of objects is poor, as is their eyesight.
2. 1–4 months: Primary circular reactions – Babies start to notice some objects and movements are enjoyable. They discover their feet, arms and hands.
3. 4–8 months: Secondary circular reactions – These are when babies do something to create a reaction, such as reaching for an object that is partially hidden. However, babies do not yet reach for hidden objects, perhaps suggesting a lack of understanding of object permanence.
4. 8–12 months: Coordination of secondary circular reactions – One of the most important stages for cognitive development. Now the infant is goal-directed. This is when the earliest understanding of object permanence starts. Children can pull objects out from hidden locations.
5. 12–18 months: Tertiary circular reaction – The child starts using trial-and-error to learn and solve new problems. The child can retrieve an object when it is hidden several times, as long as they can see it first.
6. 18–24 months: Invention of new means through mental combination – A full understanding of object permanence occurs at this age. A child can understand when objects are hidden in containers. In Piaget’s theory, this is because children have developed mental representations. They can imagine the object without being able to see it.

Criticism of Piaget’s theory

Piaget has often been criticised for underestimating children’s abilities, in particular of object permanence.

Piaget’s ideas were challenged by a series of studies on object permanence carried out by Professor Renee Baillargeon from the University of Illinois and colleagues (e.g. Baillargeon & DeVos, 1986).

These studies used children’s apparent surprise at ‘impossible’ events to try and work out whether they understood object permanence.

Examples of modern object permanence research

In one study infants as young as 6.5 months watched a toy car travelling down a ramp.

Half way through its journey, though, it went behind a screen out of the baby’s view before exiting the other side, once more visible.

In one condition the infants saw a block placed behind the screen in the way of the toy car.

And yet when the car was released, experimental trickery was used so that the block didn’t stop the car’s progress.

Miraculously it still appeared from the other side of the screen.

This ‘impossible’ condition was compared with another condition where the block was placed near, but not in the way of, the car’s progress – the ‘possible’ condition.

Baillargeon found that the infants looked reliably longer at the seemingly impossible scenario.

This suggested they understood that the block continued to exist despite the fact they couldn’t actually see it.

They also must have understood that the car could not pass through the block.

This seems like reasonable evidence that infants can understand object permanence.

Object permanence from 3.5 months-of-age

In further studies Professor Baillargeon tested all sorts of variations on this theme.

Toy rabbits, toy mice and carrots were all used, with some defying the laws of nature in the ‘impossible’ conditions and others studiously following them in the ‘possible’ conditions.

Each time, though, infants looked longer at the apparently impossible events, perhaps wondering if they were dreaming.

These studies have now shown that infants as young as 3.5 months seem to have a basic grasp of object permanence.

While others have argued for alternative explanations and interpretations, when all these studies are taken together the idea that children understand object permanence is arguably the simplest explanation.

Infants are intuitive physicists

Using these results Baillargeon and others have argued that young infants are not necessarily trapped in a world of shapes which have little meaning for them.

Instead they seem to be intuitive physicists who can carry out rudimentary reasoning about physical concepts like gravity, inertia and object permanence.

So, perhaps infants don’t perceive the world as a completely nonsensical dream.

Sure, they have many new things to learn and many things surprise them, but they do seem to understand some fundamentals about how the world works from very early on.

→ This article is part of a series on 10 crucial developmental psychology studies:

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

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Babies do not start preferring mom until later than you think.

A misconception often entertained by rookie psychology students is that babies develop a very quick psychological connection to their mothers, perhaps within hours or days of birth.

The reality is, though, that newborn babies don’t have much of a clue what’s going on right after birth.

Although mother (and father) are likely to very quickly form close attachments to their offspring, from the baby’s perspective it takes longer, much longer.

Newborn babies do not begin to prefer mother, father or anyone at first.

When babies start preferring mom

In fact, it usually takes infants until they’re about 2 or 3 months old before they start to show a strong preference for mom, dad or anyone.

While a baby is primed for social interaction soon after birth, its abilities are pretty limited.

Here’s the timeline (Simpson, 1999):

• After 16 hours babies prefer the sound of human language to other noises (at least they start making rhythmic body movements which psychologists assume means they’re excited). But they don’t show any preference for particular voices.
• After 2 days babies can tell the difference between their mothers’ faces and that of a stranger, but they still appear to show no preference.
• After 3 days babies clearly prefer human voices, especially their mother’s.
• After 3-5 weeks babies become especially interested in faces, and particularly in their mother’s eyes.

Overall, though, the preference for the mother (or other caregiver) is usually fairly weak at first.

Real communication from the baby’s perspective probably doesn’t begin until they’re about 3 or 4 months old.

At around that time they start to initiate social contact with their mothers.

Only between about 3 and 7 months of age do babies start to show a strong preference or attachment for mothers, fathers or members of their own family in general.

Newborn preference for mom

This misconception that babies show a preference for mom very quickly may stem from the study of other animals.

Famously, ducks and geese will ‘imprint on’ and follow around the first thing they see after they hatch.

Konrad Lorenz, a pioneer in ethology (animal psychology) found that newly born geese would imprint on him, then try to follow him everywhere, as though he were their mother.

Babies are much more fickle and probably wouldn’t follow you anywhere, even if they could.

The misconception might also stem from a confusion with research from the 1970s that found there was a critical ‘sensitive period’ shortly after birth that was particularly important for bonding between mother and baby.

Again, this research refers to the mother’s bonding with the baby and not vice versa.

Also, as later researchers have pointed out, this so-called critical period turns out not to be that critical at all.

Attachment between mother, father or another caregiver and child can successfully be done at a later stage, just as well as early on.

→ This post is part of a series on 10 myths about the mind.

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The two best parenting strategies help raise the happiest, wealthiest and most moral children.

Research finds that the happiest, wealthiest, most moral and smartest children are raised by parents who:

1. Pay their children a lot of positive attention,
2. and use supportive child-rearing techniques.

In contrast, parents who combine a strict upbringing with positive attention tend to produce children who are less happy.

These children were, however, just as academically and financially successful.

Naturally, harsh parents produce children with the most negative mentalities who felt the least secure.

Children raised by easygoing parents, though, perform relatively poorly.

They were second only to those raised by harsh parents for low levels of security, financial success, and happiness.

The conclusions come from a Japanese study of 5,000 men and women.

For the research, an online survey asked people a series of question about their relationships with their parents during childhood.

These included statements like:

• “My parents trusted me.”
• “I felt like my family had no interest in me.”

From this, the researchers found six different types of child-rearing:

“Supportive: High or average levels of independence, high levels of trust, high levels of interest shown in child, large amount of time spent together.

Strict: Low levels of independence, medium-to-high levels of trust, strict or fairly strict, medium-to-high levels of interest shown in child, many rules.

Indulgent: High or average levels of trust, not strict at all, time spent together is average or longer than average.

Easygoing: Low levels of interest shown in child, not strict at all, small amount of time spent together, few rules.

Harsh: Low levels of interest shown in child, low levels of independence, low levels of trust, strict.

Average: Average levels for all key factors.”

These findings are from a discussion paper by Professors Kazuo Nishimura and Tadashi Yagi to be presented at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry in Japan.

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

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

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

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

Professor Seth Pollak, who led the study, said:

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

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

Study on why people don’t learn from their mistakes

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

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

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

Professor Pollak said:

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

We didn’t see people improving over time.

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

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

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

Professor Pollak continued:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Childhood spanking research

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cool kid problems

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

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

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

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

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

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

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