To understand the end result of an IQ test that has constructed for children, one has to appreciate the science of child psychology.
Child Psychology is the study of children's behavior-including physical, cognitive, motor, linguistic, perceptual, social, and emotional characteristics-from birth through adolescence. Child psychologists attempt to explain the similarities and differences among children and to describe normal as well as abnormal behavior and development. They also develop methods of treating social, emotional, and learning problems and provide therapy privately and in schools, hospitals, and other institutions.
Two critical problems for child psychologists are (1) to determine how environmental variables (such as parental attitudes) and biological characteristics (such as health) interact and influence behavior, and (2) to understand how behavioral changes influence one another.
The History of Child Psychology
Both Plato and Aristotle wrote about children. Plato believed that children are born with special talents and that their training should stress those talents. His views are consistent with modern thinking about individual differences and education. Aristotle proposed methods for observing children's behavior that were forerunners of modern methods. For many centuries thereafter, little interest was shown in the development of children because they were regarded only as miniature adults. In the 18th century, the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau seemed to echo Plato when he stated that children should be free to express their energies in order to develop their special talents. His view suggests that normal development occurs best in a nonrestrictive, supportive environment. Similar concepts are popular today.
The Scientific Study of Child Psychology
In the 19th century, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution (q.v.) provided an impetus for the scientific examination of child development. His emphasis is on the survival behavior of different species stimulated an interest in observing children to identify their adaptive behaviors and to learn about the inheritance of human behavior. These studies were of limited scientific value because they lacked objectivity and often failed to describe adequately the behaviors being observed, making validation impossible.
Scientific research in child development flourished from the early 1900s. One major stimulus was the introduction (1916) by the American psychologist Lewis Terman of the test known today as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test. This test led to a number of studies about children's intellectual development. In the 1920s, scientists at more than a dozen leading universities began large-scale observational studies of children and their families; these included the Berkeley Growth Studies at the University of California (started in 1929 and still active today), the Fels Growth Study at Antioch College, and the Harvard Growth Studies. All used the longitudinal method, in which the same children are observed and tested over a specific period of time.
The American psychologist Arnold Gesell established a research institute at Yale University in the 1920s for the sole purpose of studying children. He developed the technique of analyzing children's behavior from film, frame by frame. Gesell also made much use of the cross-sectional method, in which different children are observed at each of several age levels.
The accumulated results of all the major studies reported over a period of 20 years provided information about patterns and rates of child development, as well as age norms for a wide variety of behaviors. Both professional workers and parents to assess children's development use these norms. One problem with the observational studies was that they emerged from an interest in evolution and genetics. Consequently, environmental influences were largely dismissed as unimportant and were excluded from the work on intelligence.
Environmental Studies in Child Psychology
About the time that the observational work was flourishing, other researchers were writing about the role of the environment in children's development and behavior. Sigmund Freud, who emphasized the effects of environmental variables on development, particularly stressed the importance of parental behavior during infancy. To the present day, Freud's theory continues to influence child psychologists.
The American psychologist John B. Watson also stressed the role of the environment in shaping children's development. His views were consistent with those of behaviorism (q.v.) , an approach to psychology that had a great impact in the 1950s on research about children. Although behaviorists emphasize environment, they almost totally deny the influence of biological variables on development. Their basic assumptions are that the mind of a newborn child is a blank slate, or tabula rasa; all behaviors are determined by environmental events; and differences among children are the result of those environmental variables. Behaviorists encouraged experimental studies and were responsible for moving child psychology into the mainstream of psychology. Although they contributed much to the study of children, their concepts eventually were viewed as being overly narrow.
In the early 1960s, attention was focused on the work of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, who since the 1920s had been writing about children's cognitive development. Piaget called himself a genetic epistemologist-that is, a person who studies the origins of human knowledge-and his theories led to more advanced work in child psychology. This work involves both experimental and observational methods and, in accounting for behavior, integrates biological and environmental variables. Thus, current studies have their origins in Darwin's theory of evolution but also incorporate Watson's concern for the influence of the environment.
Developmental Theories in Child Psychology
A theory of development should reflect an attempt to relate behavioral change to chronological age; that is, diverse behavioral characteristics should be related to specific stages of growth. The rules governing the transitions between these growth states also must be identified. The dominant developmental theories are Freud's theory of personality development and Piaget's theory of perception and cognition. Both explain human development in terms of interactions of biological determinants and environmental events.
Freud's theory is based on the concept that a healthy personality requires the satisfaction of instinctual needs. In Freudian theory, the personality is composed of the id, ego, and superego. The id is the source of instinctual drives. The role of the ego is to cope with the demands of the id while remaining within the rules of society, which in turn are represented by the superego. The physical focus of instinctual needs changes with age, and the periods of different focus are called stages. Infants, for example, achieve maximum id satisfaction from sucking; this is called the oral stage. Children progress through four stages, ending with adult sexuality. Freud clearly integrated biological and environmental variables in his theory.
Piaget believed that from birth humans are active learners who do not require external incentives. He proposed that cognitive development occurs in four stages. Stage I, sensorimotor intelligence (birth-2 years), takes the child from unrelated reflexive movements to behavior that reflects knowledge of simple concepts. Stage II, preoperational thought (2-7 years), is characterized by an increasing use of abstract symbols as reflected in imaginative play. Stage III, concrete operational thought (7-11 years), involves relatively sophisticated problem-solving behavior and attainment of adult thought. Stage IV, formal operational thought (12 years and older), is characterized by the ability to develop hypotheses and deduce new concepts.
The Area of Child Development
The various aspects of child development encompass physical growth, emotional and psychological changes, and social adjustments. A great many determinants influence patterns of development and change.
Heredity, Environment, and Its Influence on Child Psychology
It is generally agreed that the joint interaction of genetics and the environment determine patterns of child development, although sharp disagreements occur about the relative importance of an individual's genetic makeup. Research on this problem involves the use of separately reared monozygotic (identical) twins. Their behaviors are compared for similarities and differences, and the results are then compared with behaviors of twins reared together. If genetics is critical, the twins reared apart will be as similar in most respects as those reared together will. (These studies usually assume that when twins are reared apart, their environments are different in important ways, an assumption that is not always true.) Except in instances of massive environmental deprivation, the patterns and rates of physical and motor development appear to be genetically controlled. Research also indicated that both genetic and environmental variables contribute to intellectual behavior. A genetic component also exists in personality characteristics such as introversion and extroversion, activity level, and predisposition to psychoses. Many advances have been made in identifying the genetic causes of mental disorders, but more research is needed to understand better, how genetic mechanisms operate among normal children.
Physical Growth and Child Psychology
On the average, a newborn baby weighs 3.4 kg (7.5 lb) and is 53 cm (21 in) long, with the head disproportionately larger than the lower part of the body. As the child grows, increments in height are greatest from birth to three years; thereafter they are relatively constant until adolescence. The growth spurt at adolescence is far less than during infancy. Weight increments are also large during the first three years but are equally large during adolescence. Research shows that growth rates are influenced by the health of the child. Rates of development decelerate during illness; after an illness is cured, however, growth rates accelerate until children attain their appropriate height and weight.
Motor Activities Associated With Child Psychology
Dramatic changes occur in motor skills from birth through the first two years. At birth, infants are capable of extensive uncoordinated movements. One feature of the early motor behavior of infants is the large number of reflex like actions. These actions appear for a short time after birth and then disappear. For example, when the palm of the hand is stroked lightly the fingers involuntarily close, forming a fist; this is called the palmar reflex. From these early movements, distinct sequential patterns of motor development occur. Walking, which occurs on the average between 13 and 15 months, emerges from a sequence of 14 earlier stages. Research shows that the rate of acquisition of motor skills is innately determined and that the acquisition of these skills is not influenced by practice. Severe restrictions on motor activities, however, will alter both the pattern and rate of development.
After basic motor skills are acquired, children learn to integrate their movements with perceptual skills, especially spatial perception. This process is critical for the achievement of eye-hand coordination and for the higher-level skills required for many sports activities.
The Development in Language
The ability to communicate and to understand language is a major achievement of human beings. An amazing feature of language development is the speed with which it is acquired: The first word is spoken at about 12 months; by two years of age most children have vocabularies of about 270 words, and this increases to 2600 words at the age of six. It is almost impossible to determine the number of sentence constructions that can be generated within a single language. Children, however, use syntactically correct sentences by the age of three and highly complex constructions by the age of five.
This extraordinary phenomenon cannot be explained by means of simple learning theory. The American linguist Noam Chomsky postulated that the human brain is especially constructed to detect and reproduce language; the mental system does not require formal learning and will function perfectly when language is available to the child. Although developmental psycholinguists do not agree with all of Chomsky's concepts, they do accept the idea of special mental language systems. Today theorists are concerned with the relationship between cognitive growth and language. It is now assumed that language reflects children's concepts and develops as their concepts expand.
Personality Formation
Theories of personality are attempts to describe how people behave in satisfying their physical and psychological needs. An inability to satisfy such needs creates a personal conflict. Personality formation is viewed as the process by which children learn how to avoid conflict when possible and how to cope with conflict when it inevitably occurs. Overly restrictive or overly permissive parents limit their children's options in avoiding and coping with conflict. A normal response to overwhelming conflict is to revert to a defense mechanism such as rationalization-the denial that one ever wanted a specific objective, for example. Al though everyone uses defense mechanisms at some time, they should not become a person's sole means of coping with conflict. A child with a balanced, integrated personality feels accepted and loved and has been allowed to learn a number of appropriate coping mechanisms.
Intelligence and Learning
Intelligence may be defined as the ability to manipulate abstract verbal concepts effectively. This definition is reflected in the types of questions asked on intelligence tests for children. Two well-known tests-the Stanford-Binet and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Revised-are used to index children's mental growth and to predict learning performances. Because school learning seems to depend on the ability to reason verbally, the content of intelligence tests seems appropriate. Some relationship does indeed exist between intelligence-test performance and school achievement. Predictions based on tests are imperfect, however, because intelligence tests do not measure motivation and because knowledge about the skills needed for school learning is incomplete. In addition, intelligence tests are sometimes inappropriate when used with minority children, who may not understand or respond appropriately to certain items because of language difficulties or cultural differences. Thus, test scores must be interpreted with great care.
Family Relationships
The attitudes, values, and behaviors of parents toward their children clearly influence patterns of development. Likewise, children's characteristics influence parental attitudes and behaviors; handicapped children, for example, require more attention and cause more parental anxiety than do normal children.
Extensive studies have established that parental behaviors toward children vary widely, ranging from restrictiveness to permissiveness, warmth to hostility, and anxious involvement to calm detachment. These variations in attitudes produce different patterns in family relationships. Parental hostility and permissiveness, for example, are associated with highly aggressive, noncompliant children. Warm, restrictive behavior by parents is associated with dependent, polite, and obedient children. Punishment techniques also influence behavior. For example, parents who often use physical punishment tend to have children who rank above average in their use of physical aggression. It appears, then, that one of the ways children acquire patterns of behavior is by imitating their parents.
Social Relationships
Social relationships among infants involve mutual interest without interaction. This relationship is called parallel play. Beginning with the preschool years, peer-group relationships become increasingly sophisticated social systems influencing children's values and behaviors. The transition to the adult social world is aided by the organization of peer groups with a leader, members with varying strengths and weaknesses, and recognition of the need for cooperative behavior. Peer-group conformity reaches a peak when children are about 12 years of age. Conformity never disappears, but its manifestations among adults are less obvious.
The members of peer groups change with age. Preadolescent groups are homogeneous; that is, members are usually of the same sex and come from the same neighborhood. Among older children, social relationships are based on shared interests and values. Within a given group, the popular children tend to be more intelligent, higher achievers, and socially and emotionally, more mature.
Socialization
The process by which children learn acceptable and unacceptable behavior is called socialization. Children are expected to learn, for example, that extreme physical aggression, stealing, and cheating are unacceptable, and that cooperation, honesty, and sharing are acceptable. Some theories suggest that socialization is achieved only through imitation or through a process of rewards and punishments. Current theories, however, stress the role of cognition, or perceiving, thinking, and knowing; thus, mature socialization requires that a person explicitly or implicitly understand the rules of social behavior that function in all situations.
Socialization also includes understanding concepts of morality. The American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-87) has demonstrated that moral thinking exists on three levels. At the lowest level, a rule is obeyed in order to avoid punishment. This level characterizes the thought of very young children. At the highest level, a person has a rational understanding of universal moral principles necessary for society's survival. The understanding of such concepts, however, is often inconsistent with behavior. Research has shown that moral behavior varies with each situation and is not predictable for individuals.
Current Trends in Child Psychology
Child psychologists continue to be interested in the interaction of biological traits and environmental events that influence behavior and development; in the role of cognition in socialization, especially in sex-role learning; and in understanding the processes of cognition. Psychologists now generally agree those biological risk factors-such as low birth weight, oxygen deprivation before or during birth, and physical and psychological handicaps-are important in behavior and development. Extensive longitudinal studies are under way to determine how risk factors affect children's experiences, and how differences in these experiences affect their behavior. This research will provide methods for helping children with risk factors to develop more normally.
The role of cognition in children's sex-role learning and stereotypical thinking also is being examined. Although a few general sex differences have been established-for example, girls often excel in verbal ability, and boys often excel in mathematical ability-it is unclear how innate traits and environmental events interact to produce these differences. Sex roles have long been rigidly defined in society, but cultural pressures are slowly breaking down these stereotypes so that members of each sex can more easily change or adapt behaviors to fit specific situations.
Much current work involves identifying the cognitive components (such as memory and attention span) used in problem-solving activities. Researchers also are trying to identify the processes that occur in the transition from one level of thought to the next. Another area of investigation is the cognitive components in reading and arithmetic. It is hoped that this research will lead to improved methods of teaching academic skills and more effective remedial teaching.
