The Psychology of Social and Emotional Development (PSY341 Section O)
Flipse Building (5665 Ponce de Leon, attached to Parking Garage) Room 301

You are responsible for having an up-to-date copy of this syllabus (only available on-line)

Daniel Messinger, Ph.D.
[email protected]
Homepage
Office Hours (Flipse 341): Mondays 11:30 - 12:30, Tuesdays 11 - 12, and by appointment 

Teaching Assistant: Sara Vagi  [[email protected]]
Flipse #363, 305-284-1742.
Office Hours: Tues 3:30 -4:30 and Wed 12:00-1:00

Readings are available on-line (click the indicated reading; they are in Acrobat which can be downloaded here). Other readings will be distributed in class. If a reading assignment does not specify page numbers, the entire article is assigned. If a reading assignment is marked as "Extra," it is not required. Almost all lectures will be available from the links below, usually after class.

All regular weekly writing assignments should be 300 words and should not be longer than 1 single-spaced page. (Honors credit is available and includes a more elaborate empirical and final project. Ask me.) All assignments should be submitted before the class for which they are due and a hard copy should be turned in at the beginning of class. The class is structured so that regular weekly writing assignments are due Tuesdays. Assignments related to your final projects are due Thursdays (additional references for final projects are the syllabi of my graduate student courses which you can find here). Writing Resources

Reading: Greenspan & Shanker (2004).

Extra: Thompson (2001). Development in the first years of life.  The Future of Children, 11(1), 20-33.

Final Project. Choose a preliminary (non-binding) final topic question from this syllabus (or select one of your own). A) Bring a copy of your question to class. B) Go to blackboard --> Discussion Board and go to the appropriate Forum; then add a thread to post your assignment on the class BlackBoard site. C) If you do not get these emails or have any other difficulties, change your preferred email address using the Easy system.

Critical Questions

Overview: Temperament, emotion, attachment, the self, and the broader context of social and emotional development.

Greenspan & Shanker. Describe Greenspan and Shanker's (G&S) description of the transformation in emotional and intellectual growth. How do they relate to Erikson's (E) levels? Using G&S (or E), identify times in your own development that correspond to their levels? Describe times in the development of someone younger than yourself and someone older than yourself in terms of Greenspan and Shanker's levels. Use the "developmental highlights" video from class to illustrate your discussion.

Reading: Caspi 2000

Extra: Kagan, J. (1997). Temperament and the reactions to unfamiliarity. Child Development, 68(1), 139-143.

Weekly Paper 1: Greenspan & Shanker.  A) Bring a copy of your question to class. B) Go to  BlackBoard --> Assignments and go to Weekly 1 to upload the file containing your assignment. Then click Submit (not Save).

Critical Questions

Temperament: What is temperament? Describe your temperament using theoretical constructs presented. What is goodness-of-fit (give examples)? 
What are pros and cons of laboratory behavioral and parent report measures of temperament? 
What are three types of infants distinguished by Fox/Henderson and how do they develop? Reference the DVD illustrating these infants from class. 
What is a person-centered approach? What are Caspi's three main categories and which one are you?  What does 3 year old behavioral type predict?
What does it mean that the child is father to the man? 

Reading: Fox, N. A., & Henderson, H. A. (1999). Does infancy matter? Predicting social behavior from infant temperament. Infant Behavior & Development, 22(4), 445-455. [Behavioral styles that appear early in life as a direct result of neurobiological factors, play a significant role in the development and expression of social behavior] 

Extra (see me): Eliot 290-303 (neural basis of emotion) 316-321 (temperament). Development 328-344.

Final Project. A) Select and read first final project article (article search) (see also http://www.library.miami.edu/research/r_p.html).

(Go to http://www.library.miami.edu/remote.html to learn more about doing research from off-campus.) B) Post citation (author, year, title, journal, volume, pages) of article to class along with your current version of your final topic question. Guidelines on how to cite research articles. C) Extra Credit: Bring baby picture

Critical Questions 

Discrete emotions. What evidence suggests suggests facial expressions of emotion are universal and what are the limitations of that evidence?
Do you think infants can have emotions without being reflectively aware of what they are feeling? [Extra: What are the biological bases of emotion? Are there feelings before there is a sense of self?]
What is discrete emotion theory? What are some alternatives? What evidence suggests infant emotion is discrete? What evidence suggests it is not discrete? Describe a study distinguishing between emotion and facial expression. 

Extra: What is emotion? Do facial expressions express emotions? Does this change with age? What emotions exist at what ages? How does emotion become regulated with age? What does facial expression exist among children and adults?

Reading: Messinger ('Positive and negative' & 'Afterword')

Facial expression site:

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~face/index2.htm

Critical Questions

Intensification: What evidence suggests that some smiles are more positive than others? What evidence suggests that the same facial actions are associated with more intense of stronger positive and negative emotions? What implications does this have for discrete emotion theory and how we understand the link between facial expression and emotion? What do portraits of facial expressions in time tell us about emotion and what program creates them? What do joystick ratings tell us about emotion and interaction?

Extra: Keltner: Year-book smiles; Adolescents

Final 1: Write out your final project question. Summarize article. Indicate how first article answers question. Indicate your next reading. (300 words). How to write your summary. Example of analysis of a research article.

Critical Questions

Emotion Outcomes: How might positive emotion and its expression affect life outcomes? Describe how expressed emotion relates to: a) Adolescent behavior problems; b) The course of grieving in widows; c) Life outcome in college women. What is a functionalist emotion theory? What is emotion regulation?

Reading: Maccoby. Extra: Weinberg

Weekly 3. Intensification or Emotion Outcomes

Critical Questions

Sex differences. What factors influence sex differences? Describe biological factors, differential social expectations, face-to-face results. Describe Maccoby's theory of peer group sex-segregation and socialization. That is, how does children's peer play reflect and create gender differences?

What is relational victimization? 

Reading: Rogoff

Final 2: Write out your final project question. Summarize article. Indicate how second article answers question, integrate with previous article(s), and indicate your next reading (300 words).

Critical Questions

Social class and expectations, "28 Up".

How does social class affect social development?

Reading:   PrenatalExposure

Extra:  Bolger

Child maltreatment. Susan Acosta. Define the four types of maltreatment? What are some features that of families in which maltreatment occurs? What are potential consequences of maltreatment? What did Bolger find were the consequences of maltreatment? Why might these consequences occur? How might a child be "buffered" from adverse effects?

Reading: Tronick. 

Extra: Yale_et_al_2003

Final 3: Write out your final project question. Indicate how previous articles answered questions (stating what they found in a total of 3-5 sentences), then indicate how third article answers question (300 words). Reference these articles (APA) and put citations at end and indicate your next proposed reading.

Critical Questions

Face-to-face interaction and still-face: What does it mean that interaction is bidirectional? How, specifically, do baby and parent influence each other?
How does infant behavior in face-to-face interaction change during the first six months of life?
Does the still-face procedure show evidence that infants are intentional (what does the developmental evidence show? evidence from modified still-faces)?
What does still-face behavior predict? Do infants have expectations of social interactions? When and how can we know? Timing early expressive behaviors: How do infants coordinate expressive actions in time and how does this change with age? What is an event-based approach? Which pairs of infant expressive behaviors are coordinated in time (facial expressions and vocalizations, facial expressions and gazes at a parent's face, and/or vocalizations and gazes) and what does this suggest for the role of facial expressions? Indicate two patterns in which infant gazes and smiles are coordinated with mother smiles? How do all these patterns  change with age? What does this suggest about infant-mother interaction?

What does early interaction predict? How does conscience develop? What factors predict internalization of parental and cultural roles?

Reading: Kochanska1, Child-care outcomes

Extra: Moore_et_al.Kochanska2 

NICHD overview

Weekly 5. Child Maltreatment or Face-to-face  

Reading:  

Extra: Messinger & Freedman

Final 4: Write out your final project question. Indicate how previous articles answered questions (stating what they found in a total of 3-5 sentences), then indicate how fourth article answers question (300 words). Reference these articles (APA) and put citations at end and indicate/label your next proposed reading.

Critical Questions

Cultural Psychology. 

What is cultural psychology (give examples)?

Is psychology we've been studying cultural psychology?

How are toddlers' desires for objects handled differently in Salt Lake City and San Pedro? Do toddlers or siblings end up with object in each community and what do mothers believe about this?

What are differences between American and Japanese toddlers in toddler task and do they reflect differences in autonomy and interdependence — have reference to videotapes examples

What types of attributions characterize traditional Japanese child-rearing? What is the developmental discontinuity in Japanese development?'

Child care

How is the quantity and quality of child care associated with peer competence?

Reading: Lamb et al. Development 371-393

Weekly 6: Cultural Psychology

Follow links for how to code the Strange Situation.

Human Subjects Protection Extra Credit

Critical Questions

Attachment defined: What is the difference between being attached and being securely attached? What is the evidence (review Harlow) that attachment is a primary motivational system? How does it work and what is its evolutionary function? What is the difference between attachment behaviors, the attachment system, and the attachment bond?

Attachment through the life cycle: What predicts security and what security predicts

Reading: Development 385-393

Final 5: Write out your final project question. Indicate how previous articles answered questions (stating what they found in a total of 3-5 sentences), then indicate how fourth article answers question (300 words). Reference these articles (APA) and put citations at end and indicate/label your next proposed reading.

Critical Questions

Describing secure and insecure attachment: How is security of attachment assessed in the Strange Situation? Describe secure attachment and avoidant, anxious, and disorganized attachment?  Use descriptions of strange situations observed in class to inform your paper.

Reading: De_Wolff

Weekly 7: Define attachment and describe secure and insecure attachment.

Critical Questions

Predicting attachment security: What different roles might infant temperament have in predicting security of attachment?
What is the experimental evidence that caregiver sensitivity factors predicts secure attachment? 
What is the meta-analytic evidence that caregiver sensitivity factors predicts secure attachment? 

Reading: van IJzendoorn et al (Child_Outcomes or Infant_Parent) 

Final: Propose your empirical project (300 words) and a draft of your consent letter if you are using human subjects. Submit a draft of your questionnaire for your empirical project (if you are using one) and a draft Consent Form. You may not conduct your empirical project with live human beings without an approved Consent Form.

What does secure attachment predict? What evidence is there for the stability (or instability) of infant attachment security within infancy and on to adulthood? What does insecure and disorganized attachment predict in childhood? Describe and explain correspondences between parental and infant security of attachment. 

Reading: Hazan and Shaver (1994)

Extra: Furman (2002). Collins & Sroufe (1999). 

Capacity for Intimate Relationships:

A Developmental Construction

Weekly  8: Predicting security of  attachment or what  security of  attachment predicts

Critical Questions

What attachment processes are active in adulthood? How do they impact intimate relationships?

Reading:

Final: Outline of your final project integrating readings and outlining empirical project. 300 words indicating how you will answer your final project question. A sentence here will correspond to a paragraph of the final paper. 

EXTRA CREDIT: 

Empirical Project Review.

Empirical Project Review.

Final: First draft of your empirical project. Indicate what steps you will take to finish the project..

Special Class.

Reading: Venezia et al.

Critical Questions

Gesture (give and take): Is infant communication necessarily verbal?
What is the gestural advantage?
What is the evidence that gestures have different social approach & instrumental functions? 
Do they change with age differently? 
Do they involve different expressive behaviors?
How do Anticipatory Smiles unite dyadic and triadic communication
From joint attention to self-concept.  :  

Mundy

Read: Development 279-285 & 296-327

Weekly 11: Gesture 

Critical Questions

Gesture, Language, Autism, and Theory of Mind: What are infant initiated joint attention (IJA) and receptive joint attention (RJA)? How are they measured and what do they predict? How might early deficits in IJA associated with autism lead to more long-term deficits? What is theory of mind? How do autistic infants and infants with Down Syndrome differ?

Read: De Vaal.  Crick.

Final. Summary hand-out of poster. 

Critical Questions 

Peers. Are siblings similar and do they share exactly the same environment?
Describe 3 levels of analysis used to understand peer relations.
Describe two dimensions of social status and how they give rise to four types of kids.
What is pro-social behavior and what type of parenting promotes it?
How does abuse affect social development and what social factor can moderate the impact of abuse?

Last Weekly. Gesture, Language, Autism, and Theory of Mind:  or Peers

Aggression: Sibling and Peer Relationships: Pro-social and anti-social influences through adolescence. In the relational model, what is the function of aggression and what determines whether there will be reconciliation? Describe genetic and environmental factors that could influence the stability of aggressive behaviors
Describe similarities in attachment representations of parents, peers, and intimate partners. What is relational victimization?  

Final. Prepare and display poster with summary hand-out (please bring 30 summary hand-outs) (24 point font is smallest allowed).

Poster Session. Overview of Poster and Presentation 

By the date of your presentation, please submit complete (revised) PowerPoint handout. Present 5 slides: 1) Question 2) Abstract (could be intro) which - point-by-point tells us what you will cover 3 & 4) 2 slides of studies and/or empirical project which demonstrate those points, 5) conclusion which answers question and mirrors your initial point-by-point (with more depth because now we know more). Please bring 25 summary hand-outs (24 point font is smallest allowed).

Oral presentations. More info on Oral Presentations

Prepare and email PowerPoint presentations of final projects. Example

Oral presentations. More info on Oral Presentations

Final Project Paper Due Paper Example 

Paper Guidelines Paper Example (Empirical Project Focus)