Social Development as Preference Management: How Infants, Children, and Parents Get What They Want from One Another

by Rachel Karniol

• ISBN13: 9780521119504
• ISBN10: 0521119502
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780511740510
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-04-12
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

This engaging book presents social development in children through the language of preference management. Conversational excerpts garnered from around the world trace how parents talk about preferences, how infants' and children's emergent language conveys their preferences, how children themselves are impacted by others' preferences, and how they in turn influence the preferences of adults and peers. The language of preferences is used to crack into altruism, aggression, and morality, which are ways of coming to terms with other people's preferences. Behind the scenes is a cognitive engine that uses transformational thought - conducting temporal, imaginal, and mental transformations - to figure out other people's preferences and to find more sophisticated means of outmaneuvering others by persuading them and playing with one's own mind and other people's minds when preferences are blocked. This book is a unique and sometimes amusing must-read for anyone interested in child development, language acquisition, socialization, and communication.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The baby 'preference game'

Children's expression of preferences

Emerging meta-preferences

Other people's preferences

Parenting and preference management

Channeling children's preferences

Temporizing preferences

Restricting children's preferences

Disciplining non-compliance

Planes of transformational thought: temporal, imaginal, mental

Manipulating others

Coping and self-regulating

Mind play: applying transformational thought

Minding one's own versus others' preferences: altruism, aggression and morality

Tying up

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