October 04 2008

Santa Clarita

Three children are being observed inside a residence. My niece, Julia (6

year old girl), her brother Dylan (3 years old), and their playmate Noah (5

years old) are playing together, but with a different set of toys in the nursery

area with their mom. Julia was playing with her kitchen toys with her “baby”

which is a furry lamb stuff toy, and Dylan and Noah were playing and

pushing toy trucks and cars around them. When their mom left to get her

phone in the living room (which was only about 5 feet away from the

nursery) they still continued playing. Dylan was still able to see his mom

from a distance and he remained calm, until a few minutes later when he

realized that their mom was gone and started crying even if his sister was

there. Meanwhile, Julia remained calm and continued playing with her

kitchen toys. Their mom came back after a few moment tried to calm him

down. He didn’t stop crying until his mom hugged him and carried him into

her arms.

The situations demonstrated by the toddlers are familiar to some of the

theories on Piaget’s developmental stages. The children already have a

sense of gender identity and gender stability. They are already aware of each

other’s genders and that it is one of the stable aspects of their sense of self.

The children also displayed a sex-typed behavior. According to the text, sex-

typed behavior is composed of different patterns of behavior exhibited by

boys and girls which begins to show by their first 18-24 months in life. This is

when children begin to show some preference for stereotyped toys. In this

case, it was the kitchen play set for Julia and the toy trucks and cars for

Dylan. At Dylan’s age, he is beginning to show a preference of same sex

friends and is much more sociable with playmates of the same sex. As in

Julia’s case, she playing with her kitchen set would apply to sex-role

knowledge and imitation. She often sees her mother working in the kitchen

and cooking food for them. Also, she demonstrates an aspect in Piaget’s

preoperational stage which is the semiotic/symbolic function which is the

understanding that one object or behavior can represent another. In this

case, Julia is pretending to cook in her kitchen and feeding her doll stands for

a parent taking care of a baby. And clearly, Dylan still displays an act of a

mild separation anxiety. Dylan’s behavior well fit into the attachment theory,

originating in the works of John Bowlby. However, I could say that although

he is still seeking proximity to an identified attachment figure, he is pretty

much securely attached to his parents especially to his mom because his

mom seems to be sensitive and responsive to her children’s needs.

Moreover, parental responses lead to the development of patterns of attachment

which in turn lead to internal working models which will guide the individual's

feelings, thoughts and expectations in later relationships.

October 05

Valencia Park
 Children in the public park demonstrated many of the theories of

development in children. A lot of children of different age groups with their

peers and parents can be observed at the park. Each age group

demonstrated different ranges of abilities in the park. Some of them ran

around and played tag, some played catch, while some babies can only

awkwardly run to their parents, siblings, and guardians at the moment. It is

clear that a child goes though physical changes through time. As child grows,

the muscle coordination increases, as well as speed and strength, and hand-

eye coordination and fine motor coordination develop even more intricately.

Middle aged children of 6-12 years also demonstrated spatial perception and

spatial cognition. Spatial perception is the ability to Identify and act on the

relationship between object in space which the children in the park ranging

from 6-12 year olds are demonstrating while playing catch on the park. It

applies as well to spatial cognition. Children of this age range were able to

asses and predict the movement of the ball through space and make a

decision where exactly they should go and place their hand to catch the ball.

These are the ages were Piaget’s concrete operational rule fit. According to

text, Piaget’s concrete operational stage is when a child is able to construct

schemes that enable them to think logically about objects and events in the

real world. Children in the park in this age group are also able to

demonstrate decentration, a process where the child is thinking with multiple

variables into account. The children demonstrates it through the perception

of where and when is the right place and time to catch the ball on how fast
the ball was travelling, how strong the wind is blowing, and what direction

did the pitcher throw the ball at. Moreover, not only that you can observe the

children here at the park, but the parents and their behavior towards their

children is also observable. Different parenting styles were displayed at the

park that day. There were parents who demonstrated the authoritative type.

The authoritative type has been known to be the best type of parenting. This

was shown by a parent who responded to his child’s unwanted behavior

when his child didn’t want to go home by firmly sticking to his demands

without resorting to asserting his power over his child. Also this type of

parenting is said to have the most consistently positive outcomes out of all

the types. Authoritative parents also often use inductive discipline, where

they explain to their children why a punished behavior is wrong. Inductive

reasoning helps most children to control their behavior so they would not be

punished again.

October 14

Newport Montessori School

Children who attend this school are usually 18 months to 6 year olds.

One of the major things that I observed here is that children really increase

their vocabulary amazingly in a fast rate. Once the child learn the basic

grammar rule, he or she applies to everything else and that they

automatically link the new words to real world referents which the book

defines as fast-mapping. I observed that children at this very young age

develops and learn language almost instantly and most often overregularize

their statements. Many of the achievements of children during this stage

demonstrate a remarkable degree of systematic rule following. These are the

period of time where grammar explosion occurs, the child’s language

changes so rapidly at this stage. Ross is 18 month boys who I heard produce

this statement: “Yes, I did kick the ball”. Moreover, the child’s sensitivity to

the sound patterns that is specific to the language being acquired or what we

call phonological awareness is being highly developed at these stages in life.

Little 4 year olds are asked to write their classmate’s name in the paper by

just listening to the names and the toddlers’ wrote the names mostly by the

way they heard it. According to the text, phonological awareness appears to

develop primarily through word play. For example, reciting nursery rhymes

help improve phonological awareness. A child with a good phonological

awareness can produce a good invented spelling when they attempt to write.

Invented spelling is defines as a strategy you children with good phonological

awareness skill use when they write. Another thing that is very observable in

a class room setting is the development of the child’s sense of self. They

children had an activity where they had to sit around the table and each had

to tell everyone one thing about them that they think no one else has or is. A

little girl said she has red hair, a little boy said that he was the tallest boy in

the table… etc. Apparently, each child knows that they are unique in their

own ways. Another aspect about self-concept that was very observable was

the sense of emotional self of the children. when one of the little boys named
Jacob got scolded by the teacher because he was being uncontrollably all

over the place, throwing a tantrum and disturbing his fellow classmates, the

teacher made him sit on the corner and ordered everyone not to talk to him

because it was his “corner time”. The other students refrained to silence

because they didn’t want to end up in the corner like the Jacob did. Since no

one was allowed to take to Jacob, he just went and took a pencil and a piece

of paper and started drawing while he was in the corner. After a period of

time, Jacob was allowed to take his seat and his “corner time” is done

already. The teacher asked him if he knows why he had corner time and

explain to him why he got punished. Jacob remained silent and cooperative

all throughout the day. Jacob was demonstrating emotional regulation

because he found a way to cheer himself up when he was being sad in the

corner in that moment. According to text, the sense of emotional self

emerges in the earliest stage of the infant’s life (2-3 months of age) when

babies learn to identify changes in emotion express in others faces, and by 5-

7 months they can already read one channel of expression at a time,

responding to a facial expression or a vocal tone alone. Even when the

emotions are displayed by a stranger and not by an attachment figure (mom

or dad) and children in this early stage can already respond with a wider

variety of emotions. Moreover, the emergence of emotional regulation is a

slow gradual process over the course of development.

 ESSAY 2
Jacqueline Miranda

Psychology 16

October 20, 2008