Читать книгу The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Social Development - Группа авторов - Страница 13

This section has only one chapter, but it sets the stage for the rest of the volume. Gary W. Ladd is in an excellent position to provide a historical perspective. He has been a leading figure in developmental psychology for the past four decades, with an extensive scholarly publication record focusing on children’s friendships, peer group relations, and social competence. His research extends across the breadth of many social development topics covered in this volume, including child, family, and schooling factors that predict children’s success and difficulties in peer relationships. In his editorial roles with prestigious scientific journals, Ladd has witnessed much of the progress that has been made in this broad interdisciplinary field that covers the “modern era,” much of which emerged in the 1960s and blossomed in the 1970s and beyond with increasing sophistication that was evident by the 2021 bookend for this chapter.

The chapter builds upon the historical summary presented by Andrew Collins in the first and second editions of this Handbook that traces the developmental underpinnings of the modern era back to the 1800s. After briefly reviewing late 19th and earlier 20th century ideological forces, theory and scholarship that paved the way for modern era thinking and research on children’s social/emotional development, Ladd embarks on a journey through the empirical knowledge base on children’s social development that has emerged over the past half century. Guided by four overarching aims, Ladd takes us through some illustrative research emphases and findings that have contributed to our understanding of multiply determined social developmental phenomena across early and middle childhood.

Aim one focuses readers on how childrearing and socialization processes facilitate children’s social development. Research is reviewed that focuses on children’s relationships with caregivers, including the study of attachment processes, parenting characteristics and behaviors, family processes, moral socialization, culture, and dyadic features involving child and parenting effects as they play out in child social cognitive and social developmental outcomes. Recent decades of scholarly inquiry into children’s peer interactions, relationships, and groups are also explored that includes: seminal work on peer group dynamics and behavior and the contexts in which they occur; the associated relationship processes that are linked to friendships and peer group adjustment and difficulties; and the social cognitive, behavioral competencies and social skill deficits that drive them. Ladd concludes this section with an overview of the extensive research on the effects of childcare, schooling contexts, and media influences on children’s social development.

Aim two delineates the biological foundations, mechanisms, and processes that influence the course of children’s social development. Ladd begins with a brief survey of the behavioral genetics discipline that emerged in the 1960s and discusses how genetic influence on social characteristics has been ascertained indirectly by studying adopted children and twins. Scientific and theoretical advances led to a greater understanding of how environmental and genetic influences work together to influence behavior, along with ensuing controversies about the interplay between nature and nurture. He then addresses more direct approaches to studying genes that stem from genomic and molecular genetics disciplinary approaches that are facilitated by scientific advancements such as DNA sequencing and human genome mapping. Several illustrative findings are presented from this line of research showing how children’s genetic susceptibility to environmental influence plays out in some social behavioral characteristics. From there, Ladd briefly walks us through ways that the emergence of the neuroscience discipline in the 1960s has increased our understanding of how neurological and brain development processes are linked to children’s social development. More recent innovations in imaging technology have dramatically increased knowledge of how the construct of the “social brain” facilitates the analysis of social stimuli. A concluding section highlights the incremental refinements that have evolved in the study of variations in emotional, cognitive, and behavioral processes that tie child temperamental characteristics to social development.

Aim three takes readers through what Ladd refers to as the “nonobservables” such as social‐cognitive, psychological, and emotional representations and processes that are reflected in child social developmental outcomes. This includes sections on: self‐understanding (e.g., self‐recognition, self‐concept, self‐esteem); social cognition which focuses on inferences children make about others’ mental states and psychological characteristics and how they use these insights to navigate their social worlds; and moral development, which includes research on moral reasoning, children’s knowledge about social norms and conventions, and internalization of moral rules and the emotions that guide moral decision making that is reflected in social behavior.

Aim four illuminates the ways that aversive socialization practices and other risk factors predict adverse psychosocial outcomes for children. Ladd gives an overview of the knowledge that has accumulated over the past several decades from research on the family system regarding the adverse effects of child maltreatment, marital discord, divorce, poor mental health, and insecure attachment relationships. This is followed by a review of research on impoverished child rearing conditions that negatively impact children’s social and psychological adjustment, with a focus on institutionally reared children and inconsistent caretaking. Problems in the peer system has been another area of systematic inquiry. Ladd discusses how poor peer relations in childhood is one of the best predictors of later problematic social and mental health outcomes. Much of this stems from peer group rejection, peer exclusion, and peer victimization. Risky child characteristics that are manifest in behavioral tendencies towards different forms of aggressive or withdrawn behavior, along with difficult temperament and mental health challenges (e.g., childhood depression), are associated with a host of dysfunctional characteristics and outcomes in adolescence and adulthood.

Ladd concludes this chapter with an analysis of the major factors that have facilitated transformations in social development research over the past 50 years. Readers will be enlightened by his synthesis and evaluation of innovations in developmental theories and models of development, the sociocultural issues and public health crises that have given rise to new lines of investigation, and the unprecedented rate of knowledge that has been acquired through advances in research methodology and sophisticated analytic strategies.

Looking back and reflecting on the historical insights gleaned from this carefully crafted chapter and the chapters that follow can help advance interdisciplinary knowledge about children’s social development in new and potentially exciting ways. It is easy to ignore the past and forget how we got to where we are. But it is important to remember how the past still exerts a strong influence on the parameters of our present thinking. As we review the breadth of scientific literature on children’s social development that Ladd and the other authors in this Handbook have so eloquently organized and synthesized for us, we may learn something too from the successes and failures of our predecessors that will help strategically shape the next half century for the betterment of children around the world.