Summary Social Development: In the Community and Across the Lifespan Notes for BSc Psychology: Psychology and Development

4PAHPDEV Psychology and Development Week 10
BSc Psychology Year 1 Social Development: In the Community and Across the Lifespan




SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT: IN THE
COMMUNITY AND ACROSS THE
LIFESPAN

OUTLINE HOW SOCIAL INTERACTIONS DEVELOP THROUGHOUT
CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE

CHRONOLOGY OF DEVELOPMENT

• The development of social relationships is characterised in three stages
o Basic social interactions à social relationships à social groups

Age Description
0-6 months • Touches and looks at other infant, and cries in response to the other crying
• Tries to influence another baby by looking, touching, vocalising, or waving
6-12 months • Interacts with other infants in a generally friendly way, but may sometimes hit
or push another
• Begins to adopt complementary behaviour (e.g. taking turns, exchanging roles)
13-24 months • Engages in more social play throughout the period
• Begins to engage in imaginative play
• In play and other social interactions, begins to communicate meaning (e.g.
25-36 months invites another to play or signals that it’s time to switch roles)
• Begins to prefer peers to adults as companions
• Begins to engage in complex cooperative and dramatic play
3 years
• Starts to prefer same-gender playmates
4 years • Shares more with peers than 3 year olds
• Begins to sustain longer play sequences
4.5 years
• Is more willing to accept roles other than a protagonist
6 years • Reaches a peak in imaginative play
3-7 years • Main friendship goal: coordinated and successful play
7 years • Shows stable preference for same-gender playmates
7-9 years • Expects friends to share activities, offer help, and be physically available
8-12 years • Main friendship goal: to be accepted by same-gender peers
• Expects friends to accept and admire them and be loyal and committed
9-11 years
• Is likely to build friendships on the basis of earlier interactions
• Expects genuineness, intimacy, self-disclosure, common interests, and
11-13 years similar attitudes and values in friends
• Emergence of cliques
• Important friendship goal: understanding of the self
13-16 years
• Beginnings of cross-gender relationships, often in group contexts
• Expects friends to provide emotional support
16-18 years • Decrease in dyadic romantic ties and development of exclusive romantic
alliances


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,4PAHPDEV Psychology and Development Week 10
BSc Psychology Year 1 Social Development: In the Community and Across the Lifespan

PEER RELATIONSHIPS

Infancy
• Babies show simple social interactions
o However, they are still fairly sensitive to others’ emotional states
• In the first 6 months of life, they touch and look at each other and are surprisingly response
to each other’s behaviours
• In the second half of the first year, infants begin to recognise a peer as a social partner
(Brownell, 1990; Dunn, 2004)
• Between 6-12 months, they will start to influence each other through behaviours which is
usually friendly (Eckerman & Didow, 1988; Rubin et al., 2006)
• Eckerman et al. (1975) found that older children (towards 2 years) engaged in significantly
more social play than younger ones (10 months)
o They were more interested in playing with peers and in playing with their mothers
• Babies find mothers more reliable and more responsive than infants (Dunn, 2004; Rubin et
al., 2006; Vandell & Wilson, 1987)
o Exchanges with mothers are longer and more sustained, but they may be one-sided
o Mothers tend to bear the larger responsibility for maintaining the interaction, whereas
in exchanges between infant peers, the two contribute more equally

Early Childhood
• Between 1-2, locomotion—the ability to move themselves around—and language, improve
o This advances the complexity of their social exchanges (Rubin et al., 2006)
• They are more likely to smile or laugh or display positive affect (Mueller & Brenner, 1977)
• Their interactions last longer (Ross & Conant, 1992)

Pre-School Age
• They develop more pro-social behaviours within social interactions, by taking turns or
exchanging roles in play (Howes, 1987)
o They imitate each other’s activity and are aware that they are being imitated
(Eckerman, 1993)
o They also begin sharing with others
• The complexity of play (associative and cooperative play) increases with age and solitary and
parallel play tend to diminish
o Associative play—when children play with other children but are not fully engaged
with each other and cooperative play—when play is fully cooperative and reciprocal
o Solitary play—when children play by themselves and ignore other children who are
near and parallel play—when two children play in similar activities, but do not
engage with one another
• Negative exchanges and conflict increase (Dunn, 2004; Hay & Ross, 1982; Rubin et al., 2006)
o Notably, toddlers who frequently initiated conflicts with peers were also the most
sociable and the most likely to initiate interactions (Brown & Brownell, 1990)

Primary School Age
• Children are exposed to much bigger peer groups, meaning their network becomes larger
• Adult supervision decreases as they are not spending all of their time in the household
• They tend to show an increase in aggression and a preference to play with their own gender
• About age 6, pretend play tends to peak, and then declines in favour of other games or sports
o However, some argue that these other games still include pretend elements to them


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, 4PAHPDEV Psychology and Development Week 10
BSc Psychology Year 1 Social Development: In the Community and Across the Lifespan

Later Childhood and Adolescence
• Peer influence does appear to become increasingly important in adolescence, but parental
influence does not disappear altogether and continues to frame a young person’s behaviour
• Negative peer influence, which adolescents and early adults are particularly susceptible to,
can encourage more risk taking
o Gardner and Steinberg (2005) found that peer influence on decisions was greater for
adolescents (13-16) and youths (18-22) than for adults (24 and above)
o However, evidence suggests risk-taking is also due to more autonomy, freedom and
independence as well as neurocognitive changes in the adolescent brain (Albert et
al., 2015)

Choosing a Companion
• The kinds of peer’s children choose to spend time with changes
o Companionship with peers of the same age grows over time
o After age 3-4, children prefer same-gendered play partners to the opposite gender
o Around adolescence, cross-sex interactions increase

Social Learning Behaviours
• Peers serve as social models, whereby children acquire knowledge by observing their
behaviour and actions (Grusec & Abramovich, 1982)
• Imitation can sustain joint play and lead to more sophisticated forms of play (Eckerman 1993)
• Peers can also reinforce behaviour and are increasingly likely to reinforce one another
throughout the preschool age
o However, this can also lead to peer pressure and negative reinforcement for peer
compliance such as ostracism and mean talk (Lamb & Roopnarine, 1979)
• Reinforcement also leads to reciprocity where peers reinforce each other (Hartup, 1983)

Conflict
• Two year olds tend to argue more about objects and need adult intervention, whereas by age
4, conflict is more about ideas, which they can solve on their own (Chen et al., 2010)
o This demonstrates changes in cognitive abilities and in the nature of interactions


DESCRIBE THE INFLUENCE OF FRIENDS AND THE COMMUNITY ON
CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FRIENDSHIPS

Friendships
• A friendship involves reciprocity and commitment between people who seem themselves
more or less as equals (Hartup, 1996)
• Children with friends are less lonely and depressed and have better long-term outcomes
(Asher & Paquette, 2003; Dunn, 2004)

Childhood and Adolescence
• Children begin to develop friends around the toddler age
• By school age, they begin to develop a more nuanced idea of friendship and become more
aware of the importance of reciprocity
o This is likely due to advancements in Theory of Mind


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