Child Psychology E-Book

Jean-Pascal Assailly

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 574

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

This book reviews the current state of knowledge in the field of child and adolescent psychology. It distinguishes between what is new in child psychology, given that certain phenomena did not previously exist in a significant way in the lives of young people (such as homoparentality, attacks, cyber-bullying or Covid-19). It also examines new studies of subjects that already exist and have done so for a long time (intelligence, the mother-child relationship, etc.), but where significant theoretical developments have taken place in the contemporary period. Child Psychology explores the influences of culture and parenthood, parent-child attachment, cognitive development, the differences between boys and girls, gender and its stereotypes, health, illness and mortality, antisociality, activities and leisure

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Preface

1 Interdisciplinary Themes

1.1. The question of prediction

1.2. Development concepts

1.3. To what extent is a dialog or coming together possible between developmental psychology and psychoanalysis? Between the observable and the repressed

1.4. Between psychology and epidemiology, developmental psychopathology

1.5. Childhood and culture, anthropological approaches

1.6. Childhood and family in history

1.7. Adolescent development and its contemporary evolution

1.8. The family and its contemporary evolution

1.9. Social class, family income and poverty

1.10. Parenting and parenting styles: how do we find the “right balance”?

1.11. Maternal employment in early childhood

1.12. Child care

1.13. Ranking among siblings

1.14. Sibling size

1.15. Twins

2 The Fetus and Fetal Life

2.1. Conception and medically assisted procreation: children born through medically assisted procreation

2.2. The issue of genetic screening

2.3. Knowledge of the child’s sex

2.4. The sensory and psychological functioning of the fetus

2.5. Stress and maternal psychopathology

2.6. Prenatal exposures

2.7. Microbiota

3 Perinatal Care and the Infant

3.1. Perinatal care

3.2. The infant stage (0–2 years)

4 What’s New in Cognition?

4.1. The child’s brain

4.2. The question of universality

4.3. The theory of mind

4.4. Metacognition

4.5. Mirror neurons

4.6. Embodied cognition

4.7. The issue of programming, “starter kits”, neuroplasticity and the need for an integrative approach

4.8. Vygotsky and the zone of proximal development model

4.9. Contributions from the mother and father

4.10. Intelligence, its definition and measurements

4.11. The question of the “drop in level” of French children

4.12. Children with high potential (“giftedness”)

4.13. Learning disabilities, the “dys” disorders

4.14. Creativity

4.15. Moral development

4.16. Language

5 Attachment

5.1. The concept of attachment

5.2. The biological bases and correlates of attachment

5.3. The mother’s response to the need for attachment

5.4. The father and attachment

5.5. The concordance between attachment types

5.6. Paternal behavior

5.7. Sibling attachment

5.8. Attachment to objects

5.9. Attachment and child care

5.10. Attachment disorders

5.11. Attachment, the individual and the family

5.12. The character (or temperament) of the individual

5.13. Attachment and the child’s gender

5.14. Attachment in adolescence

5.15. Attachment and the Internet

5.16. Attachment and risk taking

5.17. Attachment and addictions

5.18. Attachment and transgression

5.19. Attachment, antisocial behavior and hyperactivity

6 The Differences between Boys and Girls, Gender and Stereotypes

6.1. Developmental data

6.2. Mathematics, spatial skills and stereotypes

6.3. Risk taking, risk perception and stereotypes

7 Health, Disease and Mortality

7.1. Health behaviors

7.2. The issue of vaccination

7.3. The age 4 health check

7.4. Laterality

7.5. Child size

7.6. Vision and myopia

7.7. Physical activity

7.8. Eating behavior

7.9. Anorexia

7.10. Obesity

7.11. Sleep

7.12. Dreaming

7.13. Consumption of psychoactive products

7.14. Children’s road safety

7.15. Emotions, emotional development and emotional intelligence

7.16. Hyperactivity

7.17. Suicide

7.18. Autism

7.19. Mortality

8 Socialization and Antisociality

8.1. Lying

8.2. Lying in parents

8.3. Antisociality

8.4. Abuse

8.5. Sexual abuse

8.6. Exposure to domestic violence

8.7. Foster care

8.8. Parental usage of psychoactive substances

8.9. Discord and separation of parents

8.10. Peer influence

9 Activities and Leisure

9.1. Play: from act to thought

9.2. Sports activities: Homo Ludens… Citius, Altius, Fortius… Bread and games…

9.3. The digital child and the issue of screens

9.4. Video games

9.5. The use of telephones

9.6. Social networks (TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, etc.)

9.7. Music

10 Emerging Issues

10.1. Children living in same-sex parent families

10.2. Homeless children

10.3. Migrants

10.4. Children of military personnel

10.5. Disaster psychology (wars, bombings, tsunamis, earthquakes)

10.6. Political influences

10.7. The environment (neighborhood, nature, city)

10.8. Cyberbullying

10.9. Covid-19

Conclusion

C.1. Awareness of the early influences (positive and negative) of the prenatal and postnatal (fetal, microbiota) environments

C.2. Early development of certain perceptual and cognitive skills

C.3. New concepts in the field of cognition

C.4. The need to develop an integrative approach

C.5. A spiral causality produced by interactions

C.6. At the heart of self-endangerment: the lack of sensitivity to loss

C.7. Gender differences, gender and stereotypes

C.8. The family environment, again and always

C.9. Historical developments

C.10. New research themes generated by societal developments

Appendix: Definitions of Some Concepts Used in this Book

A.1. Phylogenesis/ontogenesis

A.2. Factor/marker

A.3. Epigenetic factors

A.4. Externalized and internalized behavioral disorders

References

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

Chapter 1

Table 1.1. Average age at end of education in France

Table 1.2. Average age of mothers at first child in France

Chapter 4

Table 4.1. Historical trends in average reading scores

Chapter 7

Table 7.1. Experimentation with tobacco, alcohol and cannabis and first drunkenn...

Table 7.2. Usage of psychoactive products among high school students in 2018 and...

Table 7.3. Historical trends in child road deaths by mode of road use

Table 7.4. Historical trends in suicide

Table 7.5. Children under one year, deaths per million, all causes

Table 7.6. Latest mortality data (year 2016)

Table 7.7. Historical trends in mortality among children aged one to four years

Table 7.8. Historical trends in mortality of children aged five to nine years

Table 7.9. Historical trends in mortality among children aged 10–14 years

Table 7.10. Historical trends in mortality among 15–19-year-olds

Appendix

Table A.1. Historical evolution of the number of French subjects by age group

List of Illustrations

Chapter 7

Figure 7.1. Regular usage of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis by French school leve...

Chapter 8

Figure 8.1. The concept of “flocking”. For a color version of this figure, see w...

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Dedication

Title Page

Copyright

Preface

Begin Reading

Conclusion

Appendix: Definitions of Some Concepts Used in this Book

References

Index

Other titles from iSTE in Health Engineering and Society

End User License Agreement

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Dedicated to and in memory of René Zazzo, to whom I owe all my intellectual training as a researcher in child psychology...

And particularly the 1983 book, Où en est la psychologie de l’enfant, for continuing the cycle in the hereafter...

Health and Patients Set

coordinated by

Bruno Salgues

Volume 3

Child Psychology

Developments in Knowledge and Theoretical Models

Jean-Pascal Assailly

First published 2022 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:

ISTE Ltd27-37 St George’s RoadLondon SW19 4EUUK

www.iste.co.uk

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030USA

www.wiley.com

© ISTE Ltd 2022

The rights of Jean-Pascal Assailly to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021947915

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78630-423-0

Preface

Each child must be studied as a lock, unique in its mechanism; and then the special key must be devised to fit that lock, so that the door of opportunity may be pened, as wide as the constitution permits, for each child to develop their individual innate capabilities.

White House Conference, 1932

This book is the first in a two-part series:

1) In this book, we study the evolution of our knowledge in the field of child psychology over the last 40 years.

2) In a future work, we will analyze the impacts of this evolution on practices and policies in the field of childhood (schooling, health, safety, parenthood); for this, we will have to question the practitioners.

In 1983, my teacher, René Zazzo, published one of his last books, Où en est la psychologie de l'enfant? and dedicated it to us (“To my students at Nanterre, as a token of my gratitude”). After 40 years, we are picking up the baton.

He particularly pointed out the drifts and aporias in the media conception of psychology (“the psychology of philosophy professors is psychoanalysis, and what psychoanalysis!”); he was disenchanted with the wording and what it covered. The situation has not improved much.

Psychology was for a long time taught in 12th-grade philosophy, tackling various themes such as perception and intelligence, then disappeared from the curriculum in 2003 and was reduced to a few texts by Freud and Lacan. It is amusing to see that National Education adopts the very reductionist view that psychology is the same as psychoanalysis, and vice versa1.

However, in various countries (United States, Belgium, Switzerland), psychology is still taught in secondary schools.

When the Ministry of Education formed 40 working groups of professionals for curriculum reform, there was not a single psychologist.

In order to provide some balance to adolescents, during what is a risky time in their lives, importance should be placed on reintroducing knowledge of scientific psychology, on how emotions, relationships, self-knowledge, etc. work.

On bookstore shelves, the most noticeable evolution has been the shift from 90% scientific psychology/10% personal development in the 1970s to 90% personal development/10% scientific psychology today. This says much about the popular conception of psychology. Even in “child psychology” sections, there is still a lot of emphasis on personal development.

The divisions that Zazzo analyzed are still there:

– between practice and research;

– between child and genetic psychology;

– between the field and the laboratory;

– between the epistemic subject of Piaget and others and the individual in his totality (do we reduce the child to sectors or development indicators, as neuroscience does now

2

, or preserve the psychology of the person?).

Very schematically, the question on which this book is structured (where are we now, 40 years later, and where are we going?) covers two main analyses:

– new developments in child psychology, covering phenomena that did not exist before in a significant way in the real lives of children (e.g. homoparentality, attacks, Covid-19);

– new developments in already long established objects of study (e.g. intelligence, the mother–child relationship), where significant theoretical evolutions have taken place.

Table A.1.Historical evolution of the number of French subjects by age group

(source: INSEE 2016)

Less than 15 years old

15–19 years old

20–24 years old

1991

11,808,904

4,353,479

4,392,026

1992

11,846,294

4,186,630

4,399,883

1993

11,841,637

4,050,716

4,427,167

1994

11,809,628

3,934,183

4,428,102

1995

11,756,031

3,894,364

4,362,366

1996

11,676,351

3,949,740

4,242,118

1997

11,601,547

4,024,370

4,084,939

1998

11,532,939

4,067,056

3,956,287

1999

11,521,697

4,073,140

3,848,339

2000

11,558,446

4,068,194

3,809,829

2001

11,613,651

4,037,408

3,867,157

2002

11,645,716

4,033,889

3,945,290

2003

11,669,451

4,040,407

3,996,557

2004

11,680,487

4,103,486

4,014,148

2005

11,696,788

4,152,069

4,037,139

2006

11,715,950

4,171,803

4,044,928

2007

11,778,201

4,146,595

4,029,070

2008

11,827,212

4,121,673

4,003,665

2009

11,917,951

4,059,357

4,030,922

2010

11,998,951

4,011,584

4,030,881

2011

12,060,943

3,977,327

4,014,582

2012

12,123,714

3,923,399

3,985,089

2013

12,186,689

3,909,392

3,955,259

2014

12,221,427

3,944,210

3,877,125

2014

12,318,645

3,966,973

3,890,578

2015

12,349,774

4,009,445

3,819,678

2016

12,320,073

4,075,385

3,765,556

With regard to historical developments, one question keeps coming up: are the trends in this or that behavior, situation, phenomenon, etc. decreasing, increasing or remaining stable?

This immediately raises the question of the validity of the measurement of the phenomenon: is it actually increasing, or is it just because it is more often detected? Is it actually decreasing, or is it just because we do not pay attention to it anymore?

One of the variables to be controlled in order to know if a phenomenon is stable, increasing or decreasing is, of course, demography: generally, we can say that the number of children and teenagers in France has been stable for 30 years, in a context of strong aging of the population, as the following data shows:

– all ages:

- 1992: 58 million;

- 2019: 67 million (increase of 14%);

– between 0 and 19 years old:

- 1992: 15.5 million;

- 2019: 15.4 million (increase of 0%, in fact a decrease);

– 65 years and older:

- 1992: 8.2 million;

- 2019: 13.1 million (increase of 60%).

The population concerned: how many young people are there?

Schematically, there are 800,000 young French people per age group (12 million children, 4 million adolescents, 4 million young adults). Compared to the birth rate of the 30 years following the end of World War II, there was a certain drop in birth rate in the 1990s, which explains the lower number of 15–24-year-old cohorts today, but we can see how the birth rate has increased since 20003.

October 2021

1

For other actors, another version is that psychology is only neuroscience today.

2

Neuroscience or the death of the small horse of psychology.

3

A more vigorous parentality policy in France compared with that of our neighbors, is often cited as a factor in this phenomenon.