Social Cognition in Middle Childhood and Adolescence

Integrating the Personal, Social, and Educational Lives of Young People

Sandra Bosacki

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781118938027
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Bridging psychological theory and educational practice, this is an innovative textbook on the emotional and social aspects of young people's development. Bosacki's Social Cognition in Middle Childhood and Adolescence, First Edition moves beyond tradition cognitivist representations of how children learn and grow, focusing on how to integrate the emotional, cognitive, moral, spiritual and social in young people's experiences. This text bridges the gap between theory and practice; analyses cutting edge research and translates it into culturally sensitive and developmentally appropriate strategies for future educational practice.

Part I
Foundations

“…such beautiful, sacred memory, preserved from childhood, is perhaps the best education.”

(Dostoevsky, 1990/1880, p. 774)

Section Overview

Based upon the assumption that children’s capacity to think about themselves and others both influences, and is influenced by, their social interactions and peer relationships (Wellman, 2014), I will discuss theoretical and empirical literature that supports plausible correlates of social cognitive development including (a) self‐cognitions and emotions, and (b) social interactions and peer relationships. This book also addresses the need to examine gender and culture in the links among higher‐order social reasoning, emotionality, spirituality, and social behavior. Within the context of a relational and developmental theoretical approach, the next two chapters will describe research studies on social cognition in late childhood and early adolescence. Chapter 1 provides a critical overview of developmental and educational frameworks that aim to explain social and emotional growth in young people. Building on theory and conceptual foundations, Chapter 2 will focus on research methods used to study advanced social cognitive skills such as Theory of Mind (ToM) in late childhood and early adolescence.

1
Social Cognitive Abilities and School Experiences of Young People
Theory and Evidence

“… education is a leading out what is already there in the pupil’s soul.”

(Spark, 1962/2009, p. 36)

Introduction

This chapter provides a critical overview of developmental and educational theoretical frameworks that aim to explain social and emotional growth in young people. In addition, I will address the recent applied neurocognitive research’s interest in the transition between middle childhood and adolescence, and how this guides empirical research and neuroeducational programs.

Research

The maturation of social cognitive research

In the quarter‐century that followed the first wave of developmental social cognitive science of the 1970s and 1980s, human resilience science has expanded and matured, becoming more global and multidisciplinary in scope. Advances in the measurement of genes and biological processes have also boosted research on the neurobiology of resilience. Models, methods, and findings have become more dynamic and more nuanced with a focus on multiple levels of analysis. And finally, as international and multicultural social cognitive research has gained traction, global perspectives on resilience have emerged and stimulated the need to constantly review and refine developmental theory and research methods. Key changes are highlighted in the next section.

Resilience and social cognitive research in developmental science has deep roots in research and theory in child development, clinical sciences, and the study of individual differences (Luthar, Barkin, & Crossman, 2013; Masten, 2014a, 2014b). The history of research on resilience is closely tied to the history of developmental psychopathology (see Masten, 2014a; Moffitt, 2006), and the relational developmental systems theory (RDST) and evolutionary developmental systems theory that infuses this integrative approach to understanding variations in human adaptation over the life course (Del Giudice, 2014; Lerner, Lerner, Von Eye, Bowers, & Lewin‐Bizan, 2011; Mueller, 2014; Overton, 2013).

Over the decades since the science on resilience in children began, the conceptualization of the construct grew more dynamic and reflected a broader systems transformation in developmental science (Lerner et al., 2011; Mueller, 2014; Zelazo & Lyons, 2012). This relational developmental systems framework (RDST; Overton, 2013) integrated ideas from developmental systems theory (Lerner et al., 2005), ecological‐developmental systems theory (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006; Del Giudice, 2014), family systems theory (Bretherton, 2010), biological systems (Kim & Sasaki, 2014), and developmental psychopathology (Cicchetti, Toth, & Handley, 2015; West‐Eberhard, 2003). Contemporary systems models assume that many systems interact or “co‐act” to shape the course of development, across levels of function, from the molecular to the macro levels of physical and sociocultural ecologies.

The resilience of an individual over the course of development depends on the function of complex adaptive systems that remain in constant interaction and transformation. As a result, the resilience of a person remains fluid and dynamic and enables an individual to remain flexible within, and adapt to, multiple interacting systems and contexts. Many of the widely observed protective factors for individual resilience in children reflect adaptive systems shaped by biological and cultural evolution (Del Giudice, 2014; Masten, 2014a, 2014b).

Research has suggested that protective factors that strengthen one’s emotional resilience include the development of close and secure attachment relationships, reward systems and mastery motivation, intelligence and executive functions, and forms of cultural belief systems and traditions including religion (Masten, 2014a, 2014b). Each of these adaptive systems are considered at various levels of analysis from multiple disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, biology, ecology, economics, psychology, and sociology. Thus, overall, multilevel dynamics or processes that link levels of function within and across systems hold considerable interest in resilience theory.

For example, there remains great interest in the processes by which adversity is biologically embedded and mitigated (Kim & Sasaki, 2014); researchers are interested in how violence at the community level influences family function and thus may cascade to affect children (Main & Solomon, 1990). Other resilience researchers explore how good parenting influences the development of executive function skills in children at the neural and behavioral levels (e.g., Masten, 2014a).

In addition, research on environmental or ecological disasters underscore the interdependence of individual, family, and community systems, as well as biological, physical, and ecological systems across levels (Masten, 2014b). Large‐scale catastrophic life events like the 2006 hurricane in the United States, or the 2011 tsunami in Japan, challenge or may impair many adaptive systems simultaneously across large areas and groups of people. Consequently, recovery and growth can take some time, and adequate preparation for disasters usually requires an integrated perspective with consideration of multiple, interdependent systems.

Why emerging adolescence?

Recently, the academic discourse of middle to late childhood and early adolescence has become increasingly complex and multivoiced (Blakemore & Mills, 2014; Del Giudice, 2014; Siegel, 2013). The assumptions that underlie the developmental period known as emerging adolescence help shape teaching practices, curricular decisions, and social roles. However, such discourse has the potential to construct “terministic screens” that may homogenize students, and may render many of their behaviors invisible to school personnel and researchers. As Burke (1990) explains, terministic screens work like multicolored photographic lenses to filter attention toward and away from a version of reality: “Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality” (p. 1035).

Researchers have suggested that in addition to biological and physical changes such as adrenarche (Del Giudice, Angeleri, & Manera, 2009; Geary, 2010), students’ gender stereotypic beliefs may also help explain gender differences in academic self‐belief (Bosacki, 2015) and peer relations (Hughes & Devine, 2015). However, given the complexity of the social world of older children and emerging adolescents, research on why girls and boys may view self‐confidence and competencies in multiple contexts through different lens remains sparse (Rose & Rudolph, 2006). For example, recent findings suggest that stereotypic gender‐role and cultural expectations may influence emerging adolescents’ developing sense of self and their social relations. Furthermore, the lack of attention on sociocultural issues in developmental social cognitive science advocat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Foundations
• Part II: Social Cognitive Educational and Developmental Research
• Part III: Social Cognitive Educational and Developmental Research
• Part IV: Ecologies of Social Cognitive Development
• Part V: Future Questions and Implications for Practice
• Conclusion
• Index
• End User License Agreement