Development Of Child's Personality Research Articles

BEHAVIOR DISORDERS OF CHILDREN WITH CEREBRAL DYSRHYTHMIAS; SUCCESSFUL TREATMENT OF SUBCONVULSIVE DYSRHYTHMIA WITH ANTICONVULSANTS.

For many decades, after psychoanalytic investigations revealed the important effects of early environmental influences on the personality development of children, there has been a tendency to assume that behavior problems in children stem primarily from parental mishandling, and treatment has been directed to psychotherapy for the child, or parents, or both. The success of this approach has tended to obscure the importance of another kind of environmental influence, namely the internal milieu of the central nervous system. With the advent of the electroencephalogram (EEG) as a new diagnostic tool, there has been increased interest in the general relationship of organic brain disease and behavior disorders. In 1955, Ounsted,1in discussing epileptic children, listed the following signs manifested in the behavior of brain-injured children. 1. Distractibility 2. Short attention span 3. Wide scatter on the test results when given formal intelligence tests 4. Fluctuation

Internal necessity and contradiction in children's thinking

AbstractSmedslund presents a hypothesis about logical (internal) necessity and contradiction as empirical contingencies in the determination of children's intellectual and personal development. The, difference is distinguished between Piaget's concept of equilibration (as “the accord of thought with itself”) and learning (as “the accord of thought with things”). Citing the similarity of the concept of equilibration to Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory, Smedslund holds that the direction of the changes in children's thinking is not determined by external reinforcement.

REINFORCEMENT AND PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT IN CHILDREN.

(1964). Reinforcement and Personality Development in Children. The Journal of Genetic Psychology: Vol. 104, No. 2, pp. 243-252.

The Toy Preference Test: A Measure of Sex-Role Identification

Experimental methods for the study of personality development in children are of fundamental importance. Tools used for this purpose should receive a pretesting similar to that given intelligence, aptitude, and some achievement tests. But formal testing requirements have often been overlooked in experimental research with children. This investigation attempts to apply such a formal pretesting to a test designed for use in the study of sex-role identification and preference. Recent studies concerning sex-role identification and sex-role preference have used a variety of experimental techniques and have produced a variety of experimental results. In an area of personality development like this, which has been experimentally approached only relatively recently, it seems appropriate to take a look at some of the measurement techniques used. We will also present data on a new measure in some detail. One technique used recently is Brown's It Scale for Children (2) which consists of pictures of toys, playmates, and activities, some of which are masculine and some of which are feminine. A sex-role preference score is determined on the basis of the choices the subject makes from among the alternatives presented to him. A technique for studying role-playing activity of

Personality Development in Children.

Personality Development in Children.

The relation between mothers' child-rearing ideologies and their children's perceptions of maternal control.

The theory that parent-child relationships definitely affect personality development of children has been tested in a number of studies (2, 4, 15, 17, 18, 25). Results seldom were clear-cut, especially when attempts were made to relate methods of child care to aspects of the child's later personality (8, 9, 19, , 2 22). The largely negative results have been explained by Parsons (i4) as being due to the fact that specific details of childtraining practices are likely to be primarily significant as expressions of the attitudes of the socializing agents, rather than through intrinsic effects (p. 215). This article describes the findings from a research project based on extending that idea. The authors hypothesized that most mothers have a general pattern of child-rearing values--of what constitutes the good child-and that this ideology affects the kind of behavior they encourage in their children. In turn, the child's perceptions of his mother are influenced by his contacts with her as she tries to inculcate in him her ideas of desirable behavior. Different child-rearing ideologies would presumably motivate mothers to adopt varying procedures for socialization with resultant differences in their children's perceptions. To discover whether this was actually the case was the purpose of this research project.2 The general ideology selected for analysis was that traditionally associated with the middle class (23, 26). Its values are those of Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard-property, morality, self-reliance, diligence, thrift, and achievement (7). For parents motivated by it, this ideology is highly

THE RELATIONSHIP OF EARLY INFANT REGULATION AND LATER BEHAVIOR IN PLAY INTERVIEWS

Experiences of early infancy and childhood are alleged to be crucial in the formation of personality and in the etiology of behavior deviations. Much attention has been paid to the infant's first social contacts, those with his parents, most of them involving the handling of his feeding, sleep, and elimination needs. Sewell and Mussen (6) suggest that these relationships are probably the most important aspects of the infant's early environment, and that early treatment and care must somehow be influential in determining the course of the child's later personality development, although the relationship between specific techniques of child guidance and particular personality traits may not be as direct or as great as many psychoanalyticallyoriented writers and others believe. The available data do not provide unequivocal evidence of the exact nature in which early life conditions are related to later development. The present study was initiated to investigate the relationship between fantasy aggression of 4- and 5-year-old children and early child-rearing experiences. It was hypothesized that there is a positive relationship between such aggression and strictness of regulation during infancy so that, if a mother uses very strict child-rearing practices, the child will display a high level of aggression. PROCEDURE Subjects Sixty children ranging in age from 4 to 6 years, and their mothers, from white, native-born, urban, intact families living in Tallahassee where the father followed a profession, served as subjects for this study. Of the 60 families represented, 50 of the fathers were members of the faculty at Florida State University and io followed a profession such as law or medicine. According to the Index of Social Status-Short Form, as devised by McGuire and White (2), which is based on occupation, source of income and education, 58 of the families were in the upper middle class, and two were in the lower upper class. The children were the biological offspring of both parents with whom they lived, i.e., families with either adopted or stepchildren were not included in the study. There were 15 male and 15 female 4-year-olds, and

Attitude formation, personality and family

SUMMARYThis presentation aims at contributing to a clarification of some of the dynamic aspects of the attitude problem. The main assumption is that attitudes, like personality traits, are basically established in an emotional context in the family. Variations in the structure of this social system, the family are thus perceived as decisive both for the child's personality development and for the establishment of its social attitude patterns. Special importance is attached to the question of the division of authority between the parents, the degree and quality of contact between the child and either parent, and the sex of the child. This is because the adoption of attitudes is seen as determined largely by the child's basic parent and sex identifications.This reasoning places attitude development within the field of ego psychology. The function of attitudes for ego development and integration is discussed. An attempt is made at listing some functions of attitudes in this respect. It is held that attitudes...

The Role of the Children's Bureau and Other Federal Agencies in Juvenile Delinquency Prevention

Delinquency prevention has different meaning to different people2 Some view delinquency prevention as almost synonymous to the promotion of healthy personality development of children. Under this view of delinquency prevention would be included services to all children or to those who live in particularly disadvantaged environments or situations. The activities of Federal agencies that could be included under this concept of prevention are very extensive. Aid to Dependent Children, vocational guidance, housing,

The need for simplicity in research in child psychology.

suffice: (a) the effects of interference on crank turning behavior (16); (b) an experiment involving the learning of concepts of size (6); (c) an investigation of reinforcement variables affecting the resistance to extinction of a simple response of placing a ball in a hole (I). In each of these problems the behavior studied is relatively simple, particularly in relation to far more complex responses involved in studies of social development, or in investigations of the effects of child rearing methods on personality growth. It is felt that the best way to begin the argument for the current need for simple research in child psychology is to make an analysis of a characteristic area of research involving exceedingly complex variables. For this purpose, the writer has selected the general area involving the effects of child rearing variables on personality development. Out of this analysis and subsequent argument should come the impression that the writer's main reason for favoring basic research is a methodological one. Following this discussion, the writer will present some of the important uses of the study of simple processes in child psychology, and follow this with a treatment of the advantages that such a research orientation has. The research literature in child development is replete with investigations concerned with the relationships between early guidance or child rearing procedures and personality development of children. The independent and dependent variables of these studies are typically complex, hard-to-measure processes. Many of them involve attempts to measure the effects of such variables as punishment, affection, rejection, breast feeding, and home atmosphere on the adjustment of the child. Measures of these child rearing variables are usually obtained through interviews, rating scales, projective tests, or observational procedures. The adjustment or response measures are typically scores on paper and pencil personality tests, clinical judgments, teacher ratings, or responses in projective doll play situations.

Size of Family and Adjustment of Children

The relationship between family size and adjustment of children was studied in 256 Midwestern children. The Rogers test of personality adjustment was used. The children in the sample lived in rural areas and towns with populations under 10,000 in Ohio, Kansas, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Family sizes ranged from 2 to 11 children. Results indicated that a small family environment does not have a detrimental effect on the children's personality development and suggested that children from smaller families might fare better psychologically than children from larger families. These findings tend to agree with those of Nye but are at variance with those reported by Bossard and Boll and by Ellis and Beechley. It is noted however, that the purpose, samples used, and methods of analysis employed in the studies were different, which makes comparisons difficult.

HEARING AND SPEECH DEFECTS

The presentation stressed the importance of speech and language in the child's social and personality development; the far-reaching effects of speech and language disorders; the latitude of factors contributing to the various types of such disorders in children; and the therapeutic approach to the child with defective speech. Speech consists of sounds produced by the upper respiratory and alimentary tracts and is described in terms of its phonologic elements (vowels and consonants); vocal pitch, volume and quality; melody and stress pattern; temporal factors of rate, rhythm, duration and phrasing; and expressive gestures. Spoken language is the symbolic use of these sounds. Functions of speech and language are threefold: Emotional expression, self-communication and interpersonal communication. The last, in turn, serves the purposes of social interchange, interchange of information and social control. Disorders of speech and language result in impairment of sociability, communication and effective social control. A child thus handicapped is likely to become socially retarded and psychologically maladjusted. Of high school children in the United States, roughly 5% suffer from some speech defect and over 2,000,000 of them would benefit from special help. Symptomatically, speech and language disorders may be classified into five groups: (1) "articulatory disorders," characterized by substitutions, omissions and distortions of sounds; (2) "cluttering," defined as rapid, dysrhythmic slurring and clustering of sounds; (3) "stuttering," the repetition, prolongation or blocking of sounds and words, often associated with overflow facial grimacing and spasmodic movements of trunk and extremities and, usually, psychologic reactions to stuttering; (4) "voice disorders," ranging from complete absence to abnormalities in quality, pitch, intensity and melody; and (5) "language disorders," subdivided into (a) "delayed speech" (after age 3 years) and (b) "aphasia," resulting from lesions in the central nervous system. An additional group of speech disorders has as etiology some physical abnormalities: (1) "cleft palate speech," with disturbed voice quality and articulation; (2) "cerebral palsy speech," with disturbances in articulation, voice, rhythm and sometimes also delay in language development; and (3) "hearing impairment," which results in improper development of articulation, voice and language.

Child psychiatry and the general practitioner.

• Child psychiatry is, in its truest and best essence, family psychiatry. Emotional sickness in a child denotes a disturbed relation to the most important people in his life, usually his mother, father, and siblings. With a detailed knowledge of the family constellation in all of its references, the general practitioner will be able to evaluate the possible emotional components in the clinical conditions presented by individual children in the families under his care. This knowledge, together with the medical and social data on the individual child, enables him to give the needed comprehensive medical care. This involves sitting down with the parents, together or singly, and obtaining the necessary data when he is first designated by the family as their family physician. Trust in the physician on the part of the child is essential and depends on his over-all attitudes, prestige, personality, and approach. These must not be thought of as the armamentaria of the incompetent or unscrupulous practitioner; they are of primary importance and must be established deliberately. The fact that time is required must be recognized by both the physician and the parents and must be reflected in the physician's fees, which should be graded on a time rather than on a visit basis. Some referrals to psychiatrists or clinics can be avoided in this way, and the family physician can promote the orderly personality development of children from their earliest years onward.

The Adjustment of the Family to Alcoholism

THERE is a sizable literature on alcoholism and on families in crisis. However, there have been few publications dealing with families who are attempting to make an adjustment to the crisis of alcoholism. Individual members of the families of alcoholics have been studied. Psychologists and social workers have evaluated the personalities of wives of alcoholics. While these studies offer descriptions of some of the characteristic behaviors involved in the crisis, they tend to conceptualize this behavior as arising from the pre-crisis personality pathology of the wives, and to focus on those personality attributes and behaviors which appear to prolong and intensify the crisis (1-4). Comments have been published on some effects of the alcoholic father on the personality development of children (1, 5). Sociological studies of families in crisis (6) have concentrated on crises of a rather differ-

Education's Part in the Development of Healthy Personality in Children and Youth

Education's Part in the Development of Healthy Personality in Children and Youth

When Teachers Know their Pupils as Personalities

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsRalph OjemannThe ounce of prevention necessary to effect many pounds of cure is found in the teacher's understanding of children's personality development. If the classroom teacher knew how to follow the development of personality as she follows the development of skills in subject matter learnings, she could detect the beginnings of behavior problems and redirect development long before the difficulties become serious. Mr. Ojemann is Associate Professor of Education at the State University of Iowa and Mrs. Wilkinson is Assistant Professor.Frances R. WilkinsonThe ounce of prevention necessary to effect many pounds of cure is found in the teacher's understanding of children's personality development. If the classroom teacher knew how to follow the development of personality as she follows the development of skills in subject matter learnings, she could detect the beginnings of behavior problems and redirect development long before the difficulties become serious. Mr. Ojemann is Associate Professor of Education at the State University of Iowa and Mrs. Wilkinson is Assistant Professor.

Personality Development in Childhood: A Survey of Problems, Methods and Experimental Findings

Personality Development in Childhood: A Survey of Problems, Methods and Experimental Findings

Some Family Life Patterns and their Relation to Personality Development in Children

(1939). Some Family Life Patterns and their Relation to Personality Development in Children. The Journal of Experimental Education: Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 148-160.

Family Influences on Children's Personality Development

Family Influences on Children's Personality Development

Book Review: I. Psychology and Education: Personality Development in Children

Book Review: I. Psychology and Education: Personality Development in Children