Social Development as Preference Management Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Baby “Preference Game”
- 2 Children's Expression of Preferences
- 3 Emerging Meta-Preferences
- 4 Other People's Preferences
- 5 Parenting and Preference Management
- 6 Channeling Children's Preferences
- 7 Temporizing Preferences
- 8 Restricting Children's Preferences
- 9 Disciplining Noncompliance
- 10 Planes of Transformational Thought: Temporal, Imaginal, and Mental
- 11 Manipulating Others
- 12 Coping and Self-Regulating
- 13 Mind Play: Applying Transformational Thought
- 14 Minding One's Own Versus Others' Preferences: Altruism, Aggression, and Morality
- 15 Tying Up
- References
- Subject Index
- Name Index
3 - Emerging Meta-Preferences
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Baby “Preference Game”
- 2 Children's Expression of Preferences
- 3 Emerging Meta-Preferences
- 4 Other People's Preferences
- 5 Parenting and Preference Management
- 6 Channeling Children's Preferences
- 7 Temporizing Preferences
- 8 Restricting Children's Preferences
- 9 Disciplining Noncompliance
- 10 Planes of Transformational Thought: Temporal, Imaginal, and Mental
- 11 Manipulating Others
- 12 Coping and Self-Regulating
- 13 Mind Play: Applying Transformational Thought
- 14 Minding One's Own Versus Others' Preferences: Altruism, Aggression, and Morality
- 15 Tying Up
- References
- Subject Index
- Name Index
Summary
At 35;13, Karen explains why she needs her Panda bear in her bed at night: ‘Daddy you know maybe you put Panda in my bed so my pacifier won't fall – because I don't like to sleep without my pacifier.’
(Karniol, Diary)Orren at 3;3;20 years accounts for his friendship with a boy, saying: ‘I like Omri in my daycare so Omri is my best friend.’
(Karniol, Diary)With repeated experience with offers, rejection of offers, expression of preferences, and experience with having such preferences satisfied, deferred, and rejected, children acquire an encyclopedic knowledge of their preferential world. They attempt to organize this preferential world in terms of valence: liking versus disliking, and in terms of context: cross-situational versus situation-specific. That is, they encode their preferences in terms of their stability or change across time and context. The lyrics of Cole Porter's timeless song ‘I love Paris’: “I love Paris in the springtime, I love Paris in the fall …”, capture such attempted codification of one's preferential world, the topic of this chapter.
AWARENESS OF CHANGING PREFERENCES
Some preferences are not stable. Preference instability can reflect temporary changes in hunger and interest. Food preferences may change with the degree of one's hunger; toy preferences may change in the context of playing with a toy. The instability of preferences can also reflect developmental change as children outgrow certain toys and activities. At 32:4, Orren shouts at me angrily, “Why do you give me milk in a bottle – I'm big already.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Social Development as Preference ManagementHow Infants, Children, and Parents Get What They Want from One Another, pp. 45 - 62Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010