An increasingly expanding body of literature continually tells us that emotional development commences early in the lives of people. In addition, scientists are recurrently discovering that emotions remain a crucial aspect to the development of the overall architecture of the brain and that these advances have enormous repercussions in the eventual development if individuals over the course of their lives. Moreover, in the eyes of parents and policymakers, these findings in psychological development have implications that are far-reaching in nature. From the point of delivery, kids often grow their aptitudes to express and experience sentiments rapidly. Moreover, the ability to control a number of feelings effectively increases considerably (Thompson & Lagattuta, 2006; Saarni, Mumme & Campos, 1998). The prime development of such aptitudes takes place at a similar period as they also grow perceptible skills in cognition, suppleness, and communication (Thompson, 2001). While these pertinent developments transpire, emotional augmentation does not receive the necessary acknowledgment as a foundational incipient capability in early years of childhood. In essence, practicalities of emotional connections among children are normally developed within the first five years and are linked subsequently, to the child’s later capability in his or her functioning and adaptability in school. Besides, the propensity of them to form successful structural relationships throughout life relies on this development (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2011).
As people mature into adulthood, the essentiality of these social skills forms the innate substance of lasting friendships and intimate relationship. More studies indicate that the same foundational build up relates to competent childrearing, the aptitude work effectively with others and retain a job, and for morphing into noteworthy contributors to the overall community. Conversely, the disregard of this crucial element of child development leads policymakers and parents alike to undervalue its pertinent significance and to pay no attention to the inherent principles for future development and growth, which emotions create. As a result, it remains indispensable that the attention to the socio-cognitive development of children remains similar to the attention of their thinking development. Indeed, the maintenance of emotions remains entirely difficult in some children than the ability of counting and reading. While such occurrences continue to transpire, researchers and scientists alike debate on their effect on the psychological development of these types of children (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2011). As a premise, such research points to the direction that the focus on cognitive development, as opposed to emotional, may, in certain circumstances, bring about forthcoming problems in the psychology of individuals. While failure to address issues to do with psychological development transpires, this equally pertinent domain often leads to missed opportunities for the formulation of intervention strategies.
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All individuals regardless of their geographic location normally go through divergent psychological stages in life that are eight in number. Wurdeman (2015) wrote in his dissertation that according to world famous psychologist Erik Erikson, the most common and widely interpreted stages of development in all individuals usually occur in people’s lives from early childhood. These stages are domineering in an individual’s life and involve occurrences such as trust, self-governance, resourcefulness, uniqueness, intimacy, generality, integrity and their opposites. Further, according to Wurdeman (2015), just like Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychosexual development, Erikson’s posits on developmental stages closely related with the age in which people are more likely expected to go through various crises. As persons progress through such stages, from young ages, they are likely to experience various conflicts. In addition, how individuals handle these conflicts will subconsciously influence their lives. Erikson famously referred to these conflicts as crises, which have to be faced squarely before advancing to later stages in life. On the other hand, the unsuccessful resolution of pertinent conflicts influences the unfolding of subsequent stages within a child’s evolving curve. As such, the non-resolution of one stage curtails the overall psychological development of an individual. Moreover, the methodologies employed in resolving one stage indirectly controls the rest of the developmental curve.
Review of Scholastic Research
Cognitive Development and Its Relation to the Quality of Family Context: A Cross Sectional and Longitudinal Study
The intrinsic relationship between cognitive developments in children relating to the context of a family heavily influences a child’s psychological development. Such measures have continually been studied, resulting to an adverse determination of the effects of diverse family environments and the resources accorded by parents, which commensurately stimulate proper developments (Arranz, Oliva, Miguel, Olabarrieta & Richards, 2010). As such, through the various studies, a positive relationship between socio-economic prestige and family quality perspectives ensues. Moreover, the quality of care, which is non-parental, pooled with other contexts within the family also identify appropriate factors that continue to affect the development of cognition, which corresponds to psychological development (Arranz, Oliva, Miguel, Olabarrieta & Richards, 2010). Over time, researchers have also concluded a relationship between socio-economic status and higher levels of cognitive augmentation. Studies concluded by researchers depicting samples in low-income families of more than 2000 children, indicate that the superiority of parenting arbitrated the outcomes of the lack therein of family resources on the performance of children at 2-3 years. Other research which were done on HOME inventory developed in the 1980s by researchers to depict the quality of home environments, associated high performances in intelligence tests among children aged 6-8 (Arranz, Oliva, Miguel, Olabarrieta & Richards, 2010). In addition to the tests on intelligence, more assessments showed higher scores in social, linguistic and motor developments among children aged between 4-6 years performed using methodologies such as the Development and Maturity Inventory designs for preschool children.
Using the HOME scale, high scores were relatable to more augmented development in overall cognition among children aged 3-6 and assessed using the Stanford-Binet scale (Arranz, Oliva, Miguel, Olabarrieta & Richards, 2010). While this study transpired, an association materialized, and data obtained by the NICHD confirmed it in 2002, in the course of a children assessment who were under the age of three years. The NICHD data employed the use of the Bailey Scale of Infant development II (Arranz, Oliva, Miguel, Olabarrieta & Richards, 2010). In essence, more researchers are coming to the conjecture that there is an inherently strong and profound relationship between the overall superiority of family contexts and the development of the thinking process in children, which largely translates to their psychological understanding and augmentation. Other researchers continue to analyze the inherent relationship between particular contexts within families and their resultant effect on the cognition of children and their subsequent psychological development. Such research identified symbolic play with mothers being the predictors of skills that are representative in nature in 20-month old toddlers (Arranz, Oliva, Miguel, Olabarrieta & Richards, 2010). Other research acknowledged the synchrony and quality of interactions between mothers and children at early ages of three to nine months. In these types of research, the synchrony of mother-child relations turned out to be germane predictors of emblematic abilities when the child reached the age of two years. As such, it became common knowledge that family interactions influence cognitive and behavioral developments among children
Overall, vast majorities of studies continue to employ the use of assessments in the superiority of family setting at specified moments periodically; subsequently, analyzing the inherent impact of specific variables, such as the use of the socioeconomic status (SES). Additionally, family context assessments in most longitudinal studies covering divergent variables in time tended to place their focus more on those specific variables, failing to focus on retrospective data gathering in order to bring about a determination of the constant presence of applicable variables over time (Arranz, Oliva, Miguel, Olabarrieta & Richards, 2010). Moreover, while some family context variables such as inter-partner conflicts, low social support, and parental stress have been associated with the consistently several problems among children’s psychological and cognition development, they have not been researched sufficiently. Recent developments in the instruments used to evaluate the superiority of family setting have progressed. One of such instruments is the Developmental History (DH) scale, which came from an interview that was designed for the assessment of factors of an ecological nature, such as the superiority of non-maternal caution, and the death of relatives of the parents’ SES (Arranz, Oliva, Miguel, Olabarrieta & Richards, 2010). These ecological factors are pertinent to the development of the psychological structure of children. This scale also placed into assessment relevant interactive factors such as the use of punishments by parents. This system employed the consideration of inter-systemic evaluations on the quality of family contexts, through relying on externalities, thereby reflecting the psychological development of children.
This study employed the use of relatable methodologies in its sampling, procedures, and measures. The study procured samples through the random representation of the overall sampling population in the Basque Country or Spain. Through the study of the population, the author managed to use proportions that were representative of age, gender, and school types. Within the study, 551 children and their families participated, undergoing stringent assessments. The demography revealed an average balance between boys and girls with their percentage being 54.3 and 45.7 respectively. With a standard deviation of + or – 4 months, the relative mean of the children ages was 70-90 months. The standards employed to define SES comprised of professional and scholastic levels and total family income amount. These became the variables of the study. The procedures used required each interviewer to organize a date for the interview by contacting 40 families and commensurately scheduling dates of interviews with the kids. The discussions were carried out both in the children’s homes and their schools. Measurements used consisted of two that assessed the quality of family context and the assessment of cognition among children. Such measures evaluated the dependent cognition among independent variables such as general family situations; conflict levels within and outside the home setting; peer stability; quality of non-parental care; punitive discipline; conflicts between partners; physical harm; among others (Arranz, Oliva, Miguel, Olabarrieta & Richards, 2010).
Cognitive Development In Relation To Patterns of Childcare
Early childhood development is crucial to the patterns of cognitive development, which translate to the psychological state of children. As such, the impact of apropos childcare on the development of child cognition has undergone continual extensive examinations. In a United Kingdom study, the mid amount of non-parental supervision weekly indicated that initial childcare, predominantly, those that are center-based, indicated superior abilities in cognition at the age of merely 18 months, indicative of psychological acumen in both child and later adolescent behavior (Barnes & Eryigit-Madzwamuse, 2014). Other research investigated the divergent types of childcare, such as those that exhibit care based at home or in care centers; the relationship between childcare and environmental factors, and the stability of care. Such studies aid in understanding the degree of exposure to certain types of variables that influence the outcomes of children. Nonetheless, uncertainty remains concerning the premise that non-maternal children in childcare perform better than those in maternal childcare do. While this is the case, analytical approaches undertaken in studies can presage a significant role in consequentially shaping the results of various studies (Barnes & Eryigit-Madzwamuse, 2014). Before this study, prior studies concentrated on child supervision as an inherent prognosticator through obtaining the mean of different childcare types across specified periods. As a result, using a novel strategy, this study conceptualizes childcare as a data-driven pattern that is longitudinal, thus creating grouping variables when assessing its impact on children, yielding conclusions that are more suitable (Barnes & Eryigit-Madzwamuse, 2014).
To comprehend this study, the sequences and types of childcare arrangements remain significant. Childcare arrangements are crucial in early childhood psychological development and typically have the categorization of being a family care or a one-to-one childcare and a center-based childcare. In a one-to-one or family setting, childcare takes place through a family member, child-minder or a nanny, while in center-based cares, playgrounds or nurseries take the responsibility of childcare. In this study, the assessment of maternal care along with these two types of care took place. The reasons for not encompassing proper maternal care is due to issues in the methodological structure, such as the examination of childcare attributes as apposite predictors (Barnes & Eryigit-Madzwamuse, 2014). Such characteristics included the onset of childcare, the existence of childcare and the amount of childcare. To make the study unambiguous, the exclusion of such attributes took place, since it made maternal care extremely problematic to operationalize and compare with the care that was non-maternal in nature. On the other hand, in contemporary countries in the west, close to half of the kids still go through care that is based on maternal prerogatives, particularly in their first years. As such, assessing a comparison between children in a non-maternal care setting and those fully looked after maternally; significantly augments the comprehension of non-maternal influences in care.
Under the patterns of childcare and their resultant effect on cognitive progress, the longitudinal analysis shows inconsistent findings; in some cases, studies suggest significant correlations, while in others, the association is minimal (Barnes & Eryigit-Madzwamuse, 2014). However, there was the occurrence of significant correlations through the examination of childcare separately. In this respect, the attendance of childcare based on centers posited advanced socio-cognitive abilities by one and a half years of age and progressively through to the age of three (Barnes & Eryigit-Madzwamuse, 2014). Another research indicated that cognitive scores in childcare that was based at home reduced meaningfully than those in a care setting that was home-based and later transferred to center-based care. In as much as pertinent literature continues to suggest an immense influence on various patterns of childcare on their cognitive augmentation, there is a scarcity in the educations on the influence of childcare settings in the stabilization of the advances in child cognition. As such, this study concludes that concerning the relations between the divergent types of childcare mental processes, resulting from the same categories of babysitting arrangements of up to more than four years brings about more stability (Barnes & Eryigit-Madzwamuse, 2014).
The methodologies for this study included a sample that was obtained from the Families, Children and Childcare (FCCC) study (Barnes & Eryigit-Madzwamuse, 2014). The participant sample included 1201 children from two locations within the United Kingdom, Oxfordshire, and London, who were monitored since birth to 51 months old; commensurately, representing whole populations in those areas. Regarding key demographic factors, no significance differences ensued. Procedurally, the study entailed comprehensive information concerns in family settings, parents, and childcare schedules, which was acquired through the home-based visitation of the families. Such visitations ensured interviews with the mothers, parents’ surveys, and pertinent progressive observations when the child was between the months of 3 to 51 months old. The procedures also entailed direct assessments of the child. Among the measurements undertaken were the type of childcare; the cognitive and language ability of the child; maternal stimulation of the language; the difficult temperament; and the control factors (Barnes & Eryigit-Madzwamuse, 2014).
The Measurement of 4-Year-Olds’ Implicit Attitudes Of Though the Preschool Implicit Association Test
The determination of early childhood psychological development requires proper measurements. The preschool test measuring implicit associations (PSIAT) refers to an edition of pre-established measurements in social cognition used in preschool children. Such measures are imperative in determining overall psychological developments in children. Although this is the case, numerous scholars disagree as to its efficiency in calibrating proper measures of socio-cognition among children (Cvencek, Greenwald & Meltzoff, 2011). This study analyzes the effectiveness of the Preschool Implicit Association Test in defining psychological development among children (Cvencek, Greenwald & Meltzoff, 2011). As such, two types of research involving children of four years indicate that the PSIAT is efficient in assessing two apropos aspects. These aspects include attitudes towards commonly liked objects such as the goodness of a flower, and gender attitudes, which include whether a boy or a girl is good. In the study, the sex assertiveness was correlated on a positive aspect with conforming measures in outlook. Moreover, the novel measures of explicit and implicit gender attitudes indicated a validity that was discriminant in nature. Such discrimination originated from the fact that the predicted variance on gender play activities was well above those predicted by others (Cvencek, Greenwald & Meltzoff, 2011). The significance of this study is such that PSIAT portrays potentiality in its use for investigating the developmental social attitudes within children that are significant to their overall development.
The study’s methodology entailed 65 4-year olds whose demography was 32 girls and 33 boys. Recruitment was done through calls from the college’s group of participants. In relation to the parents, all progenies were practically in their development stages. To ensure unbiased results, the racial makeup was reshuffled and entailed 3.1 percent Asians, 83.1 percent white, 1.5 percent Native American, 7.7 percent represented a multicultural race, 7.7 percent were Hispanic, and 4.6 percent represented an unknown race. The procedure entailed the testing of children individually in a quiet environment through procedures such as measure of attitudes in flower-insects, which was unequivocal; implicit measures using the PSIAT; the PSIAT’s variations for children; the use of visual reminders; and the employment of instructional procedures (Cvencek, Greenwald & Meltzoff, 2011).
Conclusion
In the first study, there was the representation of two groups; those exposed to factors related to the quality of families such as the absence of conflict, sociability and child family adjustments. Those exposed to these factors related exemplary well with profound socio-cognitive developments. Conversely, in the other group participants exposed to more conflict who resultantly scored highly in the HOME scale appeared to exhibit more stability in their emotions. As such, the study concludes that psychosocial family contexts that accelerate exposure to manageable conflicts result in more cognitive development and the subsequent stabilization of emotions (Arranz, Oliva, Miguel, Olabarrieta & Richards, 2010). While numerous studies exist about the positive relationship between intrapsychic conflict, socio-cognitive conflict and the initialization of cognitive acumen in children, the underlying conjecture suggests that conflict is an activator of socio-cognitive development and this augments the psychological development of children.
The second study concludes that cognitive developments among children who followed divergent childcare paths exhibited high levels of cognitive and emotional stability over time; indicative of psychological development. However, those based in a center setting showed elevated average intensities of operational cognition within their first one and a half years. Contrariwise, the lack of significant socio-cognitive development indicated that center-based childcare alone was not a contributory factor in psychological development, other factors such as maternal stimulation and family SES appeared more relevant (Barnes & Eryigit-Madzwamuse, 2014). While this study did not examine growth over time, its premises on cognition relate to overall child development. The third study concluded that the PSIAT test reveals interesting factors for the development of children’s psychological ability. Among its conclusions were that children are intrinsically sensitive to variances in sex in their imbedded attitudes and that discriminant validity exists in children. Such findings were correlated with analyses from both the self-report procedures and the PSIAT, which denoted the success of such measurements in determining psychological childhood development (Cvencek, Greenwald & Meltzoff, 2011).
References
Arranz, E., Oliva, A., Miguel, M., Olabarrieta, F., & Richards, M. (2010). Quality of Family Context and Cognitive Development: A Cross sectional and Longitudinal Study. Journal of Family Studies , 16 (2), 130-142.
Barnes, J., & Eryigit-Madzwamuse, S. (2014). Patterns of Childcare Arrangements and Cognitive Development. Journal Of Child & Adolescent Behavior , 2 (5), 2-9. http://dx.doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.4172/jcalb.1000165
Cvencek, D., Greenwald, A., & Meltzoff, A. (2011). Measuring implicit attitudes of 4-year-olds: The Preschool Implicit Association Test. Journal Of Experimental Child Psychology , 109 (2), 187-200. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2010.11.002
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Thompson, R., & Lagattuta, K. (2006). Feeling and understanding: Early emotional development. In K. McCartney & D. Phillips (Eds.). The Blackwell Handbook of Early Childhood Development , 317-337.
Wurdeman, M. (2015). Impact of Abuse throughout a Child’s Psychological Development (Master of Science Degree). Winona State University.
