Self-Awareness Development in Toddlers

This assignment examines the development of self-awareness in toddlers. It delves into how reflexive activities, social interactions, and language contribute to a child's growing understanding of themselves as individuals with thoughts, feelings, and a unique place in the world. The concept of 'theory of mind,' the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others, is also explored in relation to self-awareness development.

Running head: PSYCHOLOGY
Psychology
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Answer to question 1:
The developmental history of human beings indicates that nurture and nature both the
experience interact for the mental development of the human beings. After the birth of a
child, a lifelong procedure for mutual adaption gets triggered within the broad social
surroundings. The patterns and relationship of the childhood interactions during the early
stage of their lives serve as a prototype of the later life interactions; therefore it has a long
impact on the early mental development of the children. According to Bowlby, the
development of the attachment within a child can be strongly attached to one of his or her
early age caregiver under certain circumstances, mostly when they are ill or tired. It has been
also indicated that this attachment tends to develop with the responsive caregivers, mother in
most of the cases, from the age of six months to about two years of their age (Ryan, Deci &
Vansteenkiste, 2016). During this time, the child receives constant and adequate amount of
nurturing and physical care. The most significant contribution of Bowlby in this field has
indicates that the caring and close interpersonal relationship with the young children and
infants with their early age caregivers is very important for their later developments. During
this period, the responsive and sensitive care giving is considered to be the major features for
the positive behavior in care giving. These are also considered to be a key player in triggering
the positive mental and physical development for the young children. The sensitivity can be
considered to be a major awareness feature for the infants. These ensure the development for
the vocalization and help them acting according to the signals they receive in the early life.
The responsiveness of the caregivers also to the signals that the child sends, tend to increase
their capacity of responding more contingently and in a suitable way. The attachment theory
states that the earlier relationships between the child and mother and the other caregivers acts
as an underlying process for the relationship in their later life (Pearce, 2016). Any human

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child cannot survive alone in the early ages; they need constant care physical nurture and care
from their caregivers. This dependency between the child and caregivers also plays as a
attachment formulation for the child. If any child is not nurtured adequately in the early ages,
it is very much possible that they lack attachment in their later lives.
Answer to question 2:
The stress in early life tends to provide more exposure to various events during one’s
childhood which may exceed the coping resources and may also lead to the extended stress
phase. The term adversity in childhood refers to a wide set of exposures, mostly negative,
during childhood which may include sexual and physical abuse, chronic poverty or
institutional rearing. Several instances from the previous studies showed that childhood
adversity has been quite common factor which is associated with the consequent inception of
psychopathology in the adulthood and adolescent period. Smith, Cowie & Blades (2015) has
indicated that most of the individuals who have been exposed to such adverse experiences in
childhood develop an elevated risk of having various kinds of mental disorders such as
anxiety, mood swings, behavioral issues etc. A recent study has also shown that more than
thirty percent of the general population tends to have mental disorders in their later life due to
adverse experiences in their early life. In addition to adversities, deprivation is another
childhood experience that can have a prolonged psychological impact on the mental health of
the individual. Repeated experiences of deprivation and adversity also give birth to
psychological resilience, capability of the individual of adapting the regular life activities of
socially unfavorable. This is mostly a regular process which can develop unique personal
abilities. There are many factors which help an individual to grow and sustain the resilience.
After developing the ability the individual can have a positive self idea and believes in
oneself (Goldberg, 2014). They also have the capability of making realistic plans and can

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take necessary steps for reaching them. These factors are not essentially inherited; rather an
individual can develop such abilities gradually. However, an individual can also grow
emotional regulation which can help them to retrieve, remember, connect or transfer the
known information as well. However, adverse and deprived experiences in the childhood tend
to grow emotional competence in a very slow way. The emotional suppression regulates the
behavior of the individual targeting an expressive behavior. Early experiences tend to
influence the developmental phases in one; therefore, it can affect the individual cognitively,
socially and emotionally (Hill & Tisdall, 2014). As these developmental phases are internally
related, they can be influenced under such experiences. The emotional development in an
individual indicates to the right interpretation of situation; however hindrances in this
developmental area can also hamper the cognitive development and weaken the language
learning and other different stages of brain development.
Answer to question 3:
Emotional development in individual is a complicated procedure. Even if the
procedure is inevitable in human beings, it may vary, especially in children, it varies children
to children. Each one of them is born with different genetics and gets impacted by different
environmental conditions. High anxiety, undue aggression and unresolved oppositional
behavior tend to interfere and influence the emotional development in the children of three to
eleven years of age. These early emotional development also help to make a difference to the
emotion understanding, expressions and behavior in the later stages of life, mostly at the age
of twelve to nineteen years of age. Therefore, gaining the perceptive of the interactions
between the factors of environment and physiological aspects, tend to influence the emotional
development in an individual. Oppositional behavior, aggression and anxiety during both the
adolescence and childhood impact the mental development. The emotional experiences in the

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early stages of life also affect the physical development of brain, in a similar way; brain
affects different kinds of emotional development (Immordino-Yang & Gotlieb, 2017). Payne
& Isaacs (2017) have indicated that the children who are more exposed to such aversive
experiences in the childhood, they are more open to risk for developing adjustment issues.
There are innumerable factors which are linked to the behavioral issues in children. More
exposure to the adverse family experiences also foreordains difficulties in adjustment.
However children who are being raised in an adverse family situation, also exhibits better
adjustment skills in their later lives. Therefore this can indicate to the psychological resilience
that the children grow while they face deprived and resilient situations. As stated by Newman
& Newman (2015) the socialization with the peers have stressed the punitive and harsh
relationships and their negative impacts on the individual. It has also been found out that the
children who are with less warmth mothers, but they have been accepted by their peers, tend
to grow less behavioral issues. The social provisions can attribute to the friendships
consisting the trust, intimacy and support, therefore these previous features of poor
experiences tend to overlap and do not influence the social development in children.
However, the difficulties in the mental development due to the early age experiences is
mostly seen in the males, females tend to exhibit less aggressive behavior. However, the
researchers still did not find out any direct relationship between the later life experience and
the emotional development during childhood, but it can definitely have a huge impact on the
behavioral issues in the family and peer groups.
Answer to question 4:
From the very moment a child is born, he or she is exposed to various information
which create their sense of identity gradually. At the initial stage, they tend to grab their faces
or kick other things for enjoying their influence on different functions within the world. The

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toddlers demonstrate their self awareness in a natural way with their capability of using and
understanding the languages that reference to their self. The child also starts developing the
emotions of being self conscious such as pride, embarrassment, shame or guilt gradually. The
concept of one’s self is considered to be a creation of the reflexive activities. This concept is
also related with the idea an individual has about his or her own self as the social, moral,
physical or spiritual being. Newman & Newman (2017) has defined the concept of self as the
"the totality of an individual's thoughts and feelings having reference to himself as an object".
Not to mention that, human beings are diverse and complicated. Therefore in order to become
more self conscious and self aware, the individual tends to develop the major areas of the
personality traits such as personal habits, values, emotions and the other personality traits.
The needs and values of an individual develop the personalities and help the individual to
find their self awareness. The social interactions with other people also help the children to
grow their sense of awareness. The theory of mind refers to the capability of attributing
various mental states such as intents, beliefs, pretension, desires, knowledge etc. to the self
which help them to understand that other individuals also have the same kind of feelings.
This only develops when the individual starts developing more and more self awareness and
they have a continuous experience of social interactions (Dowling, 2014). These interactions
help the individual to develop a sense of self awareness as well.

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Reference list
Dowling, M. (2014). Young children's personal, social and emotional development. Sage.
Goldberg, S. (2014). Attachment and development. Routledge.
Hart, K. (2015). The influence of maternal mental health, attachment and hormonal factors
on a mother’s attachment to her fetus during pregnancy (No. DPsych (Clin)). Deakin
Univeristy.
Hill, M., & Tisdall, K. (2014). Children and society. Routledge.
Immordino-Yang, M. H., & Gotlieb, R. (2017). Embodied brains, social minds, cultural
meaning: Integrating neuroscientific and educational research on social-affective
development. American Educational Research Journal, 54(1_suppl), 344S-367S.
Newman, B. M., & Newman, P. R. (2015). Theories of human development. Psychology
Press.
Newman, B. M., & Newman, P. R. (2017). Development through life: A psychosocial
approach. Cengage Learning.
Payne, V. G., & Isaacs, L. D. (2017). Human motor development: A lifespan approach.
Routledge.
Pearce, C. (2016). A short introduction to attachment and attachment disorder. Jessica
Kingsley Publishers.
Ryan, R. M., Deci, E. L., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2016). Autonomy and Autonomy
Disturbances in Self‐Development and Psychopathology: Research on Motivation,
Attachment, and Clinical Process. Developmental psychopathology.

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Smith, P. K., Cowie, H., & Blades, M. (2015). Understanding children's development. John
Wiley & Sons.
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