Developmental Psychology Assignment Sample

Introduction

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This study defines the situation of 400 children who are born in the small-scale society of Melanesian situated in Vanuatu. In this case, the children are between 3 to 14 years of age suffering from different problems in their country. These children belong from villages that are being misunderstood and provided with false beliefs from different people. Therefore, the case study aims to understand the problematic situations that will develop different children's lives that provide popper education, proper guidance in their development, and many more. This will be done through theories of the mental process, which is the psychological process to develop the children of Melanesian. In this case, the theories of the mind process are being used by several people in order to develop the growth of the children, that is, their ability and attributes of their mental state, which will be discussed in this study. In the next part, the Opacity Doctrine will be discussed, which includes the mindreading of the children.

Objectives

There are different objectives which will be discussed in this study which are:

• To understand the behavior of different children through the process of theories of mind.
• To understand the Opacity Doctrine of the children.
• To understand the issue as well as the difference of culture of Melanesian in order to develop the situation of cultural, regional issues and many more.
• To understand the issues as well as differences that occur due to culture, schooling, languages, socio-economic structure and many more which are in the areas of various countries by performing different tasks (Nielsen et al. 2017).
• To do experiments in order to solve this problem.
• To develop suitable outcomes which will develop the child's behavior.

Aspects of Theory of Mind (ToM)

Theory of Mind generally refers to the procedure which helps the children to develop their personality by promoting mental growth among them. The practice of Theory of mind plays a significant role for the children, which helps them in the development of their mental growth, especially among the children belonging to the society of Melanesian (Atkinson, Waterman & Allen, 2019). Theory of Mind consists of five steps that focus on developing miscellaneous aspirations and various beliefs among the children. Apart from that, this helps the children get rid of any false beliefs as it does not allow any unrealistic belief to grow within the mindset of the children. Theory of mind also helps the children develop the emotion they should not express in front of any people, which helps develop the hidden emotions. It also helps them to develop the skill to gather knowledge on various aspects of life. Thus, these are some of the important aspects of the Theory of Mind, promoting emotional development within children. Parents need to inculcate the Theory of mind among the children by various means, such as they should behave properly by showing respect towards each other (Kline Shamsudheen, & Broesch, 2018). This will provide a positive impact on the attitude of the children, and they will learn how to respect others and try to respect others. The parents should teach their children that honesty is one of the best practices in life, and the children should be honest to their parents as well as with other people.

Opacity Doctrine

In this case, it is being understood the minds of children that are the children's thoughts, which is learned by the children by themselves. This learning can be from the discussions from the adults, which can be inappropriate for the children in their development process. In this case, the children learn different offensive things, which are destroying the children's childhood. In this case, several processes are being done in order to make the children learn about the things in the time of their growth. These include different processes, which are kipping the child away in the time of adult discussions. If any child uses offensive language, then the parents should rectify all the mistakes and make the children understand the topic in a polite manner (Rutland & Killen, 2017). Therefore, this has helped the different children to develop their abilities and skills incorrect directions, which will help the children in order to become successful in the future.

Consideration of the issue of overgeneralization of findings

In this case, the over generation issues are the problem that occurs as the generations change. In this case, the children's minds are very sharp as they are grown in the current technological situations. The drastic issues are that many parents have permitted their children to use technological gadgets and have allowed the use of the internet. This has affected the children in a negative manner. As the internet contains the appropriate as well as nab appropriate things, therefore, the children are more attracted to those inappropriate things (Rutland & Killen, 2017).

Identify issues/differences in culture, schooling, language, socioeconomic status etc., which has accounted for differences in performance in various ToM tasks.

In this case, various issues are being found are cross-cultural diversity of children, which makes the sharing of culture in a negative direction, secondly, schooling, languages and many more. In this case, the theories of min play an important role in order to develop the minds of the children. Therefore, schooling helps the children in developing their ability which is from growth that helps the children to develop their abilities which are born. The cross-culture helps the children to learn about the different culture and their abilities which make the children successful in their future lives. Apart from this, the TOM method has developed the minds of different children. In this case, the children who faced the different issues that have made their abilities in the wrong direction are being studied by a theory of mind which will help to understand the current situation of the child and will help to understand what process should be used to clear the problem. In this case, different strategies are being used in the schooling, which helps to trigger the abilities of the children in greater output. These strategies include communication strategies, teamwork, group study and many more (Firmansyah, 2018). Communication skills help the children to communicate and develop great relationships among themselves. The second strategies are teamwork; in this case, teamwork is the essential work which helps children build not only great relationships but also remove the conflict among themselves as teamwork is the strategy which children need in their entire life. Thirdly, the group is the main aspect which helps the children to plan about work in different processes.

Summarize participant demographics and experimental tasks

In this case, the parents, school teachers do different experiments with the children in order to understand the behavior of the children. In this case, it is understood that the children are using their abilities in good or bad directions. If the children are in a good direction, the children are taught more in order to enhance their abilities to achieve success in their future. But if the children have learned the wrong thing then the parent, as well as the teacher, makes the children learn about the thing which the children should learn and due to their abilities will grow more and will help to solve their own problem by themselves. This has developed Melanesian children with great skills and abilities that will surely develop the children. Apart from this, many children are being found that proper guidance is not provided to them due to poverty; therefore, the government has taken the initiative to provide education for the children as well (McAuliffe et al. 2017). 

Summarize and discussion of the findings of the study

The report provides a vivid knowledge of the psychological development among the children who belong to the society of Melanesian, which is situated in Vanuatu. The report provides an insight regarding the issues faced by the children present in that society and the ways to mitigate these issues. The report further discusses the Theory of Mind and the advantages of this Theory among the children and how it can be implemented among the children, which will help them to resolve their problem. The use and implementation of the Theory of minds will help the children to be a better human being in society with high moral values that will help them to increase the quality of their life and living.

Discuss the interpretation of the outcome

Sometimes it is often seen that the elderly persons or the parents of the children discuss such topics in front of their children, which can have an adverse effect on the children. In fact, after hearing such discussions from adults, the children start developing negative effects which hamper the mental growth of children (Sala & Gobet 2017). The adverse effect on the mental growth of the children stops the children from developing their character and deforms the shape of their characters. Thus, the parents and the elderly people need to maintain and restrict their conversions in front of the children so that the children do not get affected because of their conversions.

Theory of Mind helps the adults and the parents to shape the character of their children by maintaining a few of their activities which can affect the children. The parents need to provide moral value to their children with the help of this Theory, and with the help of real-life stories, the parents need to develop the mental growth of the children (Masten & Barnes, 2018). Good stories with moral values help the children to provide a positive outlook towards life, and they start implementing and practicing those values in their everyday life. This helps the children to become a good human being and militate the negative impacts of their life.

Consideration of imitations and ways to improve the study or expand its outcome

In this case, not only Melanesian, situated in Vanuatu children should be focused, but also all the other children should be focused in order to develop their abilities and help those children move incorrect directions which will help those children to achieve success in future. This study can be improved by the collection of more data from various journals, online articles and many more, which should provide more data on this case study that is the same problem that arises in different countries as well. The ToM should be used in other countries in order to understand the behavior of the children and solve it for the wellbeing of the child and other children as well (Reed, Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff, 2017). 

References

Journal

Atkinson, A. L., Waterman, A. H., & Allen, R. J. (2019). Can children prioritize more valuable information in working memory? An exploration into the effects of motivation and memory load. Developmental Psychology, 55(5), 967. Retrieved from: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/141376/1/Atkinson%20et%20al_Can%20children%20prioritise%20info%20in%20WM_DevPsy_Dec2018.pdf [Retrieved on: 10.04.2021]

Firmansyah, D. (2018). Analysis of language skills in primary school children (study development of child psychology of language). PrimaryEdu-Journal of Primary Education, 2(1), 35-44. Retrieved from: http://www.e-journal.stkipsiliwangi.ac.id/index.php/primaryedu/article/download/668/736 [Retrieved on: 10.04.2021]

Kline, M. A., Shamsudheen, R., & Broesch, T. (2018). Variation is the universal: Making cultural evolution work in developmental psychology. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 373(1743), 20170059. Retrieved from: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstb.2017.0059 [Retrieved on: 10.04.2021]

Masten, A. S., & Barnes, A. J. (2018). Resilience in children: Developmental perspectives. Children, 5(7), 98. Retrieved from: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9067/5/7/98/pdf [Retrieved on: 10.04.2021]

McAuliffe, K., Blake, P. R., Steinbeis, N., & Warneken, F. (2017). The developmental foundations of human fairness. Nature Human Behaviour, 1(2), 1-9. Retrieved from: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10045323/1/Steinbeis_Foundations%20of%20Fairness_FinalVersion.pdf [Retrieved on: 10.04.2021]

Nielsen, M., Haun, D., Kärtner, J., & Legare, C. H. (2017). The persistent sampling bias in developmental psychology: A call to action. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 162, 31-38. Retrieved from: https://ujcontent.uj.ac.za/vital/access/services/Download/uj:23638/SOURCE1 [Retrieved on: 10.04.2021]

Reed, J., Hirsh-Pasek, K., & Golinkoff, R. M. (2017). Learning on hold: Cell phones sidetrack parent-child interactions. Developmental psychology, 53(8), 1428. Retrieved from: http://www.mnafee.org/uploads/1/3/7/0/13709464/d-1_reed_cell_phone_2017.pdf [Retrieved on: 10.04.2021]

Rutland, A., & Killen, M. (2017). Fair resource allocation among children and adolescents: The role of group and developmental processes. Child Development Perspectives, 11(1), 56-62. Retrieved from: https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/19632/1/Rutland.ABedit_AR%20MK%2016sep2016FINAL.pdf [Retrieved on: 10.04.2021]

Sala, G., & Gobet, F. (2017). Working memory training in typically developing children: A meta-analysis of the available evidence. Developmental Psychology, 53(4), 671. Retrieved from: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/102203/1/Working_memory_training_in_typically_developing_children.pdf [Retrieved on: 10.04.2021]