How does environment affect child development

Research shows a link between the home environment and children’s development of self-regulation | IOE - Faculty of Education and Society

The home environment can directly impact children’s ability to control or direct their attention, thoughts, emotions and actions in childhood, UCL Institute of Education (IOE) research reveals.

The research by Hope T. Oloye and Professor Eirini Flouri explores the association between the indoor physical environment and self-regulation in early and middle childhood. The researchers focused on two areas of self-regulation: emotional dysregulation and independence.

The research team used data from the Centre for Longitudinal Studies’ Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), which included a sample of 13,774 children at ages three, five and seven years.

Self-regulation was measured using the Child Social Behaviour Questionnaire where parents reported on 10 different statements. Examples of items from the emotional dysregulation scale are ‘gets over excited’ and ‘is easily frustrated’. Whilst independence items include ‘persists in the face of difficult tasks’ and ‘chooses activities on his or her own’.

The MCS measured the home’s indoor physical environment using both experimenter reports and parent reports. Conditions such as home traffic, room traffic, darkness, cleanliness and clutter were recorded by the experimenter as observed during home visits. Parent-reported items included conditions such as level of damp or condensation, disorganisation, a ‘place that’s hard to think’ or ‘had a calm atmosphere’, access to a garden, presence of open fires, second-hand smoke and overcrowding (more than one individual per room).

Through their analysis of the MCS data, the research team found that damp, second hand smoke, background noise from the TV or radio, lack of calm and quiet, and home disorganisation were associated with poor self-regulation.

The organisation and atmosphere of the home were found to be associated with both emotional dysregulation and independence. Whilst damp, second hand smoke and background noise from the TV or radio predicted emotional dysregulation, but did not have a significant impact on independence.

The researchers also found that access to a garden, overcrowding, open fires, clutter, darkness and cleanliness did not impact either measure of self-regulation.

Home traffic, room traffic and background conversation were also not predictors of children’s self-regulation. The researchers noted that background conversation could be taking place because a caregiver was instructing or responding to a child, which indicates a supportive home learning environment.

Likewise, home and room traffic might be other family members coming to check on the parent’s welfare. However, these and factors such as clutter, darkness and cleanliness were recorded by the experimenter at one visit only, at three years old, so this may not show the long-term lived experience of the family.

In general, the variables indicating a more negative indoor housing environment reflected links with emotional dysregulation rather than low independence.

This research highlights the importance of a tidy, quiet and calm home environment for the development of self-regulation in children. This suggests that the careful consideration of these factors by policy that addresses the safety and suitability of the home’s physical environment may positively impact children’s developmental outcomes.

Read the paper: The Role of the Indoor Home Environment in Children’s Self-Regulation
View Eirini Flouri's research profile
Department of Psychology and Human Development

Image: Jessica West via Pexels

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Child Development and the Physical Environment

Cornell University environmental and developmental psychologist has conducted numerous research studies examining the effects of the physical environment on children’s well being. Evans’ large and diverse body of research reveals that the effects of the physical environment—noise level, overcrowding, and housing and neighborhood quality—are as significant for children’s development as psychosocial characteristics such as relationships with parents and peers. Indeed, the physical environment profoundly influences developmental outcomes including academic achievement, cognitive, social and emotional development as well as parenting behavior.

NOISE

Children’s reading abilities, cognitive development, physiological indicators, and motivational tasks are affected by exposure to noise. The most common noises that children are exposed to are transportation (e.g. cars, airplanes), music and other people. Evans’ research reveals significant reading delays for children living near airports and exposed to airport noise. He and his colleagues found these delays in reading to occur at noise levels far below those required to produce hearing damage or loss.

Chronic and acute noise exposure also affects cognitive development, particularly long-term memory, especially if the task is complex. Short-term memory appears to be less affected, but this is dependent upon volume of noise. One way that children adapt to chronic noise is by disregarding or ignoring auditory input. A consequence of this coping strategy is that children also tune out speech, which is a basic and required component of reading. As a result, not only are children’s reading abilities affected, but also their abilities at tasks that require speech perception.

Noise levels also indirectly influence children’s cognitive development via their effect on the adults and teachers who interact with children. Teachers in noisy schools are more fatigued, annoyed, and less patient than teachers in quieter schools. Teachers in noisy schools also lose instruction time due to noise distractions and have a compromised teaching style.

Children exposed to chronic loud noise also experience a rise in blood pressure and stress hormones. And children as young as four are less motivated to perform on challenging language and pre-reading tasks under conditions of exposure to chronic noise.

Technical Note: Data from studies on aircraft noise and reading include a cross sectional study with statistical controls for socioeconomic status (income) and a prospective, longitudinal study with the same children before and after the opening of a new airport. “Controlling for income” is a statistical procedure that allows a researcher to eliminate the effect of income on the results. Thus, we can conclude that it is the level of noise, not that low-income families may live closer to airports, which accounts for the findings. In other words, significant reading delays are found for children living near airports, regardless of income.

CROWDING

Research demonstrates that crowding has an effect on interpersonal behaviors, mental health, motivation, cognitive development, and biological measures. Family size has not been found to be a critical factor in crowding. Rather, Evans identifies density, or number of people per room, as the crucial variable for measuring effects of crowding on children’s development.

Regarding child development, Evans has found that 10-12-year-old children are more likely to withdraw in overcrowded situations. Children may engage in withdrawal behavior as a means of coping with an overstimulating environment. Evans’ research also reveals that a highly concentrated number of children in an activity area results in more distractions and less constructive play among preschool-aged children.

Overcrowding also influences parenting behaviors. Parents in crowded homes are less responsive to young children. Evidence of parental unresponsiveness begins early—before a child is one year old, and occurs at all income levels. Overcrowding also strains parent-child relationships. Parents in overcrowded homes are more likely to engage in punitive parenting, which in turn, affects the level of children’s distress. Evans’ research shows that strained parent-child relationships negatively influence social, emotional, and biological measures (e.g. elevated blood pressure) in 10- to 12-year-old children.

Children’s mental health status may be affected by overcrowding. Elementary school-aged children who live in more crowded homes display higher levels of psychological distress and they also have higher levels of behavior difficulties in school. Evans has found that overcrowding produces psychological distress among 3rd and 4th grade students as reported by both the children and their teachers. These effects are intensified if children reside in large, multifamily structures. Effects were also intensified among a group of 8-to10-year-olds if the family home was chaotic.

Chronic overcrowding influences children’s motivation to perform tasks. Independent of household income, children aged 6-12 show declines in motivational behavior and also demonstrate a level of learned helplessness, a belief that they have no control over their situation and therefore do not attempt to change it, although they have the power to do so. But there are gender differences: Evans found the link between overcrowding and learned helplessness among 10-to-12-year-olds to exist for girls, but not for boys.

Evans’ studies find several effects of overcrowding on both objective and subjective measures of children’s cognitive development. Elementary school children living in more crowded homes score lower on standardized reading tests and they see themselves as less scholastically competent than their classmates.

Parenting behaviors directly related to children’s cognitive and language development are also affected by density level. Evans found that parents in crowded homes speak less to their infants and use fewer complicated words during the period from infancy up to age two and a half. Research demonstrates that the quality and sophistication of speech as well as the quantity (number of words spoken) to children by parents are significant factors in the amount and types of words children produce.

Biological measures implicate the effects of overcrowding on children’s physiology. In one study, Evans found gender differences in measures of blood pressure among 10-12-year-old children with males in higher residential crowding situations demonstrating elevations in blood pressure, but not females. However, higher overnight levels of the stress hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine were found in both 8- to 10-year-old male and female children living in high-density apartments. This finding was especially relevant when chaos and disorder was present in the family.

HOUSING AND QUALITY OF NEIGHBORHOOD

Housing quality and the neighborhoods in which houses are situated have also been investigated in relation to children’s socioemotional development. For example, families living in high-rise housing, as opposed to single-family residences, have fewer relationships with neighbors, resulting in less social support. Studies on housing and quality of neighborhood have also examined the role of chaos in children’s environments finding an association between chaotic home environments and levels of psychological distress among middle school children.

Research has identified the physical characteristics of neighborhoods that significantly influence children’s development. These characteristics include: residential instability, housing quality, noise, crowding, toxic exposure, quality of municipal services, retail services, recreational opportunities, including natural settings, street traffic, accessibility of transportation, and the physical quality of both educational and health facilities. Perhaps not surprisingly, Evans’ research findings support the therapeutic effects of children’s exposure to natural settings. Natural settings are preferred by children and allow them to exercise gross motor abilities as well as engage in social interactions. In addition, these settings also alleviate the adverse effects of children’s exposure to chronic stress.

The research outlined above demonstrates both the direct and indirect effects of the physical environment on children’s development. Direct effects include cognitive, social, emotional, and biological outcomes. Indirect effects include interactions with parents and teachers, which in turn, influence developmental outcomes such as learning and language development. Although in several studies Evans demonstrates these effects for children at all income levels, low-income children experience excessive exposure to noise, overcrowding, and unfavorable housing and neighborhood conditions. Exposure to these poor-quality physical conditions is linked to other psychological and social aspects of the environment, especially poverty. Using a building block analogy, low-income children have more blocks stacked one on top of the other than children of other income levels. Thus, children living in poverty experience multiple exposures, rather than a single exposure to risk.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

⇒Guard against additional, interior noise sources. Individuals living in noisy environments often habituate, or become accustomed to the noise level. Aim to reduce the existing noise instead of adding other sources of noise.

⇒Check the volume level on your child’s music devices (e.g., iPod, walkman; it is too loud if someone else can hear the music). If he listens to his favorite music too loudly, make proper volume adjustments. Also monitor the volume level on computers, televisions, and other electronic devices, keeping them as low as possible.

⇒Engage your child. Children ignore and tune out speech as a way of coping with environmental overstimulation. Take notice if your child is not paying attention or listening to your speech and if so, intervene. Take your child to a quiet outdoor nature spot or a quiet indoor location such as the local library. This is especially important during the preschool and early elementary school years (ages 3-6 years) when children are learning to read.

⇒Tune in instead of tuning out. Parents living under high noise exposure appear to withdraw, be less responsive, and talk less to their children. The natural tendency is to disengage from speaking and reading to children so as not to compete with the noise. These coping strategies negatively affect children’s reading and cognitive abilities. Be alert to the occurrence of these behaviors and counter them by talking to your child, reading aloud to her, engaging her in discussions, and actively listening to what she has to say to you.

⇒Modify your environment. If your budget permits, consider purchasing extra noise attenuation devices for your child's room for use during homework activities and sleeping. Ear plugs are a low-cost alternative.

⇒Consider your child’s school environment. If you have a choice, send your child to a quiet, less chaotic school. This is particularly desirable if your home environment is also noisy. Be active in your community. The noisiest environmental conditions occur in low income and ethnic minority communities. One way to counteract this is to be active and involved. Ask your representative why it is noisier in these communities.

⇒Seek information. If a major source of noise in your community is road traffic, check with your local planning department. Note that traffic volume is closely aligned with traffic noise levels. The busiest streets are usually the noisiest.

The impact of the environment on the development of the child

Theme: Business

Modern parents are in favor of a comprehensive education of their children, so they strive to send them to the best kindergartens, gymnasiums, developmental schools, and sports clubs. But at the same time, they often ignore the influence of the environment on the mental development of the child. But it is the surrounding reality that educates children. And it depends on the parents what kind of society will surround the baby at the start of his conscious life.

How the environment affects the development of a child

The development of a child's personality is a complex process. It occurs under the influence of external and internal factors. The former include the social environment (which parents can influence), and the latter include biology and heredity (what is beyond our control).

The closest society is of the utmost importance for the intellectual, psychological, moral development of the child. From the moment of birth, it is a family, in the future - a kindergarten, school, sections, friends, etc. The child grows, the coverage of the social environment expands. At the same time, he constantly adapts and looks for the environment that is most comfortable for him, where he is better understood, respected, accepted.

Positive influence of the environment

Psychological and financial well-being of the family has a positive effect on personality development: the child feels safe, does not experience fear or anxiety.
Environmental conditions that support the health of the baby: daily routine, walks, balanced nutrition, creative, mental and sports load.
Communication with peers and adults in kindergarten: involvement in the game, in educational and creative activities, manifestation of activity, development of character, speech.

Negative influence

Difficulties in the family

Alcohol, conflicts, child abuse. In such an environment, children often develop neuroses and fears, and have learning problems. They often lag behind their peers in physical and emotional development, are prone to somatic diseases and weakened immunity.

Negative impact from outside

Kindergarten, sports section, creative circle. Here, unconstructive pedagogical interaction, bullying, the presence of children from dysfunctional families in the environment of the child are dangerous.

Children develop and socialize through communication, activity and consciousness. And the sociocultural environment plays a paramount role in this process. The influence of the environment on the development of a child's personality is enormous. And here kindergarten comes to one of the first places, as a microenvironment in which the baby grows, learns to interact with society, enriches the experience of communication.

Binny kindergartens are an example of the most comfortable microenvironment for the comprehensive development of children - mental, physical, creative, psychological. Kindergarten franchise is a sought-after business with stable profitability in the niche of modern preschool education. The franchisor builds business processes and a turnkey marketing strategy, and partners recruit half of the group even before the opening of the kindergarten and pay back the investment in an average of 18 months.

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The influence of the environment on the development of the child

In social pedagogy, society, the social environment is considered primarily from the point of view of the process of including the child in it and integrating through the nearest social environment into society as a whole.

From this point of view, it becomes important that the relationship between a person and the external social conditions of his life in society has the character of interaction. The environment is not just streets, houses and things, the location of which is enough for a person to know in order to feel comfortable there when entering it. The environment is also the most diverse communities of people, which are characterized by a special system of relations and rules that apply to all members of this community. Therefore, on the one hand, a person introduces something of his own into it, to a certain extent influences it, changes it, but at the same time, the environment also influences a person, makes its demands on him. It can accept a person, some of his actions, manifestations, or maybe reject; may treat him kindly, or maybe hostilely.

The attitude of the environment towards a person is determined by how much his behavior corresponds to the expectations of the environment. The behavior of a person is largely determined by what position he occupies in society.

A person can occupy several positions in society at the same time. So, a woman can be a teacher, a wife, a mother. Each position presents a person with certain requirements and at the same time gives him some rights. Such a position of a person in society, characterized by certain rights and obligations, is called social status in sociology.

Some statuses are given to us from birth. So, the status of a person can be determined by gender, nationality, place of birth, surname and other factors. Such statuses are usually called congenital, or prescribed. Others are determined by what a person has achieved in society on his own, thanks to his own efforts. For example, the status of a social pedagogue is given to a person who has studied at an appropriate vocational school and received a diploma in this specialty. In this case, one speaks of the status achieved or acquired.

Status determines a person's behavior in society in the sense that in certain situations a person behaves not just as he wants, but in accordance with his status, by analogy with how other people behave in similar situations. It is also important that the people around expect a certain behavior from a person in these situations. That is, a person, as it were, is forced to play a certain role. Therefore, such expected behavior, due to the status of a person, is called a social role.

Assimilation of various social roles is the most important component of the process of socialization of the individual. However, the difficulty lies in the fact that in society there are statuses not only approved by it, but also those that contradict social norms and values. Therefore, in the process of formation and development, the child can master both positive and negative social roles.

Positive roles include, first of all, the role of a family member. In the family, the child learns several of these roles: son or daughter, brother or sister, nephew, grandson, and also gets acquainted with the roles of father and mother, grandparents, etc.

The next important role that a child learns in the process of his development is that of a member of a team. In kindergarten and school, in the sports section and children's public organizations, in communication with peers, the child learns the roles of a team member, comrade, friend, student, leader, and many others.

Each person acts as a consumer, because throughout his life he constantly needs what he needs for life: food, clothes, shoes, books and much, much more. Understanding this role, the ability to reasonably use the services that society provides to a person, the child must master from early childhood.

An important social role is to be a citizen of one's fatherland, to love one's homeland, to be proud of it, to be a patriot of one's homeland. There may be other social roles that a child learns, for example, the role of a specialist that a student can get within the walls of a school, lyceum, gymnasium, or in educational institutions of primary vocational education. There are other positive social roles that a child learns in the process of growing up.

Negative roles include such as a tramp, most often they are homeless and neglected children. On the streets, especially in large industrial cities, in shops, markets, in transport, we meet beggar children who have become accustomed to this role and often quite skillfully beg for money from passers-by. Among them there are those who are engaged in theft, sometimes they are pushed to this by adults, sometimes the children trade on their own. Some other social roles of a negative nature can also be included here.

Mastering the mechanism of role-playing behavior by a child ensures his successful involvement in social relations, since it gives him the opportunity to adapt, adapt to each new situation or position for him throughout his subsequent life. This process of adaptation of the individual to the conditions of the social environment is called social adaptation.

Social adaptation is an indispensable condition and the result of a child's successful socialization, which, as you know, occurs in three main areas: activity, communication and consciousness. In the field of activity, the child expands the types of activity, orientation in each type, its comprehension and development, mastery of the appropriate forms and means of activity. In the sphere of communication, the circle of communication is expanding, filling and deepening its content, mastering the norms and rules of behavior accepted in society, mastering its various forms that are acceptable in the social environment of the child and in society as a whole. In the sphere of consciousness - the formation of the image of "one's own" as an active subject of activity, understanding one's social belonging and social role, the formation of self-esteem.

In the process of socialization, and in particular the social adaptation of a child, the objective need of a person to be “like everyone else” is manifested. However, in parallel with this, in the process of individual development of the personality, the child gradually forms another objective need - to express himself, his individuality. The child begins to look for ways and means to express it, to manifest them, as a result of which his individualization occurs, which is expressed in the fact that certain socially significant qualities and personality traits are manifested in an individual form inherent in this particular person, that his social behavior all the general external similarity with the behavior of other people acquires the features of originality, uniqueness.

The child's social development thus proceeds in two interrelated directions: socialization (acquisition of sociocultural experience, its appropriation) and individualization (acquisition of independence, relative autonomy).

If, when a child enters society, a balance is established between the processes of socialization and individualization, when, on the one hand, he learns the norms and rules of behavior adopted in this society, and, on the other hand, makes his significant “contribution” to it, his individuality, child is integrated into society. In this case, a mutual transformation of both the individual and the environment takes place.

These processes manifest themselves at all levels of society, including when a child enters a particular group, a community of people, and influence the formation of certain personal qualities.

So, if the process of adaptation of the child to the group does not take place, then he may develop shyness, self-doubt, lack of initiative, which can lead to serious personal deformation.

If a child has overcome the adaptation phase and begins to present his individual differences to others, which they reject as inconsistent with their ideas and needs, this can lead to the development of negativity, suspicion, aggressiveness, and high self-esteem in the child. The positive entry of the child into the group, its integration contributes to the formation of a sense of camaraderie in the child. When a child enters an asocial group, he may develop antisocial qualities.

All these processes can occur spontaneously, spontaneously in the course of a child's life, or they can be regulated, at least in part, by a purposeful influence on the child's development - upbringing.

Over the past ten years in pedagogy and other social sciences, the question of the relationship between the concepts of "socialization" and "education" has been widely discussed. Particular attention is drawn to this problem in connection with a change in the ideology of the state (rejection of the communist ideology), a revision of the goals, content and methods of education. At the same time, some authors try to replace education with socialization, others consider education as part of the socialization of the child's personality, while others understand civil and moral education as socialization. There are other points of view. However, it is indisputable for everyone that education is one of the fundamental factors in the socialization of the child's personality. In its most general form, upbringing is a purposeful process that contributes to the development and formation of the moral qualities of the individual, thereby affecting the socialization of the child. Being an integral part of the influence of social factors on a person, it has its own characteristics. This process, unlike others, is always purposeful and is carried out by people consciously tuned in to it or specially trained for this: parents, teachers, educators, counselors, social pedagogues, etc.; Through upbringing, other social factors that affect the socialization of the child are taken into account - the environment in which he is located, the means of mass communication, culture, etc. In the process of education, the individual identity of each child is also taken into account. However, it should be remembered that education occupies a very definite place among other social factors and can neither replace nor exclude them.

Another issue is that the impact of upbringing on a child's development changes dynamically over time. The smaller the child, the stronger the educational impact on the formation and development of the individual. Over time, as the child grows older, its share decreases, but the degree of independence of the child in the choice and preference for certain social values and guidelines, his own influence on his development increases. This can be represented as two pyramids connected by vertices. The basis of the first pyramid is the educational impact on the child from birth. Gradually, this influence weakens, but another process is gaining strength - self-education, the conscious independent activity of the child to improve his personality, self-development and self-realization, which contributes to his independent integration into society, becomes more active. It is known that the need for self-education is the highest form of personality development, which is predetermined by the leading personal qualities of a person and provides him with the position of a subject of socialization. Therefore, the role of the educator begins to decline. But the motives that come directly from the person himself come to the fore. According to our model, a person will strive to the base of the second pyramid, which he is unlikely to reach, since the process of self-education lasts almost a lifetime.

As a result of upbringing, self-education and the positive influence of other social factors (cultural, historical and religious traditions, the media, children's public associations, school staff, friends, etc.), a natural process of integrating the child into society, "growing into human culture" takes place. "(L.S. Vygotsky), i.e. his socialization. Moreover, the more significant and diverse the influence of the social environment on the child, the freer and more independent of it the child becomes.

However, the process of a child's socialization is often complicated for some objective or subjective reasons. Thus, the entry of a child into society can be difficult due to the peculiarities of his physical or mental development. Or the assimilation of social norms and values by a child is distorted as a result of the negative - spontaneous or deliberate - influence of the environment in which he lives, etc. As a result, the child "falls out" of normal social relations and therefore needs special assistance to successfully integrate him into society.

The process of socialization of such children also occurs, first of all, through education, through which purposeful influence and management of this process is carried out. However, at the same time, for each category of children, their own methods and technologies of the educational process should be developed, which make it possible to activate positive factors and neutralize negative ones.

In general, the efforts of educators and specialists should be directed to the social adaptation of a child in a difficult life situation, i. e. on its active adaptation to the rules and norms of behavior accepted in society or on overcoming the consequences of the influence of negative factors. If the degree of loss or unformedness of socially significant qualities is so high that it prevents the child from successfully adapting to the conditions of the social environment, i.e. there is his social maladaptation, then in this case the social rehabilitation of the child is necessary, which provides for the use of a special system of measures aimed at restoring the social ties and relations lost by the child, restoring his social status, which ensures social adaptation in society.

Thus, in the process of a child's development in society, his socialization, which includes social adaptation, must be carried out. If this does not happen, another phenomenon is observed - maladjustment, then there is a need for the social rehabilitation of the child.

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