OCR Psychology For A Level Book 1 sample

Different images of childhood Not all childhoods are the same It is estimated that there are 300,000 child soldiers worldwide (UNICEF website) in at least 18 countries. Although the term ‘child soldier’ commonly brings up a picture of gun-waving teenage boys, the reality is a little different. A number of child soldiers are girls, maybe as many as 40% in some countries, and many of the soldiers are as young as seven or eight. The effect of being a child soldier However they came to be soldiers, children suffer from their involvement in military activity. It is an abuse of their right to be protected from the effects of conflict. Not only is their childhood destroyed but they are also separated from their homes, communities and families. Children’s education is brought to a brutal end and military activity damages them physically and mentally as many of them have witnessed or taken part in terrifying acts of violence – even against their own families and communities. Child labour then and now The exploitation of children was outlawed in the UK by a series of laws including the 1819 Cotton Mills and Factories Act which prohibited children under the age of nine years from working in cotton mills, and restricted those over the age of nine to a 12-hour day. The special status for young people in these laws reflected a changing view of childhood. If only all international clothing companies could follow suit today. ‘ A child’s mind is a blank book. During the first years of his life, much will be written on the pages. The quality of that writing will affect his life profoundly. ’ Walt Disney (Pinker 2002). Child soldier: some words don’t belong together. Babies in Zambia and the USA Do babies from different cultures behave differently? Berry Brazelton et al. (1976) studied the behavioural differences between a group of urban Zambian newborns, and urban North American newborns. They made extensive structured observations of 10 newborn babies from each culture. The babies were measured in a variety of ways on the first, fifth, and tenth days of their lives. The most important measure was the Neonatal Behavioural Assessment Scale (Brazelton 1973). This scale measures infants on more than 24 dimensions to do with interactive, perceptual and motor abilities. Examples of these dimensions are: social interest in experimenter, motor activity, hand to mouth activity, alertness, following with eyes. On day one the Zambian infants scored lower on a number of measures, mostly to do with alertness and activity. The researchers put this down to the relatively stressed intra-uterine environment of the Zambian babies, resulting in early dehydration and an overall lack of energy. By the tenth day, however, the Zambian group had started to score more highly than the US group on measurements of social interaction (for example, social interest and alertness). The reason for this turnaround might be to do with the differences between the environments of the two groups of children. Due to the good health and diet of their mothers, the US infants had a good physiological environment in the womb but after birth they had a ‘ relatively nonstimulating environment ’. The US babies were less likely to be handled than the Zambian infants and their mothers followed the ‘ cultural emphasis in the United States on quieting the infant and protecting him from external stimulation ’. In contrast, the Zambian infants improved as they began to be rehydrated and to receive nutrition by feeding from their mother. The increased social responsiveness of the Zambian babies may have been influenced by the more active, contact-oriented, stimulating child-rearing practices of the Zambian women. Romanian orphanages It is now more than 25 years since the world found out about the thousands of children locked away in Romania’s state institutions. When British teacher Monica McDaid first came across the orphanage in Siret she was horrified. ‘ One thing I particularly remember was the basement. There were kids there who hadn’t seen natural light for years. I remember when they were brought out for the first time. Most of them were clinging to the wall, putting their hands up to shield their eyes from the light. ’ (BBC website 2005). Many children were adopted by families across Europe and the USA, but did they manage to adapt and recover? A group of these children, adopted by UK parents, have been studied by Michael Rutter from the Institute of Psychiatry in London. When they arrived in the UK as babies, more than half the 165 children he studied showed severe delays in development compared with British children. Later he found that, even at the age of 11, many of these children had not caught up. ‘ Contrary to popular opinion at the time, we found there were definite long-term effects from being in an institution ’ (Rutter 2005) and the effects were more damaging the longer the child had spent in institutionalised care. This spread is extra reading and you won’t be examined on it. It’s just to set the scene and whet your appetite for the developmental area of psychology. 169 Introduction to the developmental area of psychology AS & A level