User:PsychStudent1992/Sandbox

Annotated bibliography section
1. The author of this online article writes textbooks. I think this qualifies him enough to be considered a reliable source and I can't find his credentials currently. I will keep looking, though. The scope of the article is developmental milestones for children ages five to eight and the main purpose of the article is to inform future parents on various parenting styles and to influence them to follow some of the more proven styles. The only bias I can detect is that this article pleases only developmental psychologists as opposed to, for example, cognitive psychologists. Because this article is an excerpt from a textbook, I assume the intended audience is students. Due to the semi-simple lauguage and lack of jargon, I make the assumption that this is intended for juniors and seniors in high school and possibly freshmen and sophomores in college. This article examines developmental milestones and helps parents understand how to change their parenting styles accordingly. In order to accurately do this, psychologist must first have examined the co-regulatory effect of uninfluenced, natural parenting styles and the child's response and co-regulatory actions. Then, the psychologists must have determined what parenting styles created the most desired results in children. It does not talk about co-regulation much by itself, but through parenting styles it does.

2. The authors of this article all have long histories in the psychological field and have come together to publish this study. The scope of this article covers many different aspects of mother-infant dyads such as, but not limited to, the restlessness of both individuals when touch, but not non-physical contact, is prohibited. This article is a product of a study so the main purpose of it is scientific discovery. I cannot identify any biases whatsoever. The language presented in this article is mostly simple, but there are some concepts that I have a bit of trouble grasping, so I would have to conclude that the intended audience of this article is other psychologists, but perhaps anybody of a college background who is interested enough to look up and study different concepts. This article specifically studies coregulation in mother-infant dyads.

3. The author of this article is a licensed doctor of human development of which he attained from Harvard. The scope of this article is from defining coregulation to how successful use of it can affect a child as he or she develops. The main purpose of this article is to inform parents and teachers on how to use coregulation to positively change a child's behavior. I could not find a bias in this article. The language used in this article is fairly simple and so are the sentence structures, therefore I believe anyone from mid-high school to parenthood is the intended audience. This article begins with defining coregulation and giving examples of it. It then moves on to the possible outcomes of participating in it or not. Next, Meyerhoff talks about the trends of styles of parenthood and the possible negative impacts it has on children, Finally, he discusses the positive impact that mistakes have on children, if they learn from them and how the parents should respond, thus completing coregulation.

Written portion
This section will be for my actual written portion of the assignment. It will be divided out into sections just like this, but if approved, they will go on the Coregulation Page that I am editing.

Presence and quality of touch influence coregulation in mother-infant dyads
In an experiment using 79 mothers and their infants, all of equal age, researchers tested the differences in allowing and disallowing the mothers to touch their infants during face-to-face communication on coregulation. The results showed that when touch is prohibited, both the mothers and their infants experience more active and less relaxed states of mind. These results were attributed to the notion that when the child sees its mother, but doesn't feel her touch, it becomes restless. The mother, seeing this, feels restless as well and through coregulation, both mother and child experience similar feelings. In this case, coregulation leads the mother into comforting the infant until the infant becomes calm, then the mother feels more relaxed.

Coregulation changes parenting style
As preschool aged children become school aged children the major milestones that a child reach will drastically change from developmental to social and psychological in nature. As the child's needs make these changes, the parenting style of the caregivers must change as well. However, there is no manual on how and when to change parenting styles. Instead, parents rely on coregulation to help them determine when and what to change. Coregulation, is not an instant phenomenon. It has to develop over a short period of time in the child's life. As children grow into grade school, the parents train the child to be more self-sufficient and have more self-control. This, in effect, begins to equalize the social power between the child and parents. In order for this to take place successfully, coregulation is necessary. For example, when a preschool aged child pulls the hair of another child, a simple ten or twenty minute time-out would successfully discipline the child. As the child grows into elementary school age, a short twenty minute time-out might not work as well, depending on the child. If the child is upset about the time-out, then the parents know that this is truly punishing the child effectively. If the child doesn't get upset, then the parents know that the punishment is no longer sufficient and, through coregulation, they worsen the punishment by extending the time-out to an hour or taking toys and games away from the child for periods of time. Coregulation can work in the opposite way too. For example, if the child wants to go outside and play with his or her friends and one parent says no, the child might just find something else to do. As the child ages, it may learn that if it asks one parent and that parent says no, it should ask the other parent or try asking one or both of them repeatedly until they give in. A recent trend in parenting has lead to less coregulation and more micro-managing of the child's everyday life past preschool age and well into mid to late adolescence. This is extremely problematic because it is creating a generation of young adults who don't know how to manage their own lives.

Coregulation and child nutrition
When an elementary school aged child wants a snack, he or she will most likely ask the parents for a snack. Then, as they age into adolescents, the child will usually stop asking for snacks and will just go ahead and sift through the refrigerator and search for whatever food they want. Now, as a child, the hope is that the parents will, through coregulation, teach them how to eat healthy. For example, if a child were to ask for a snack, the parent wouldn't say "Go eat what you want". They would take the child to the kitchen and show them what kinds of foods they are allowed to eat, and let the child pick from that selection. If the child selects something healthy, the parents praise them and allow them to eat more. If the child chooses something unhealthy, the parents discourage their choice and allow them to have less of that food. The child should pick up on the benefits of choosing something healthy and as they age into adolescents when they are sifting through the kitchen, they should make more healthy choices thanks to coregulation.

Coregulation and punishment
As psychological studies have been showing us that corporal punishments and other positive punishments have damaging affects on the aging child's psyche, such as increased uses of violence to solve social problems and repeating these types of punishments on their own children, parents of the last and upcoming generations have been searching for better, more constructive ways of punishing and rewarding their children. This back and forth learning and relearning of information over several decades is very similar to coregulation and might in fact be considered coregulation by some. The only thing this phenomenon is lacking is the instant action-reaction portion of coregulation. But some examples of coregulation can be derived from this example; these situations include events where the parent punishes the child by spanking them and over time the child becomes more violent in school or other social situations. As the parent who punished the child with a spanking sees the child becoming more violent in class, he or she decides to stop corporeally punishing the child and in exchange begins talking through issues with the child. Then, the parent observes the child's problem solving and social skills change from hitting others to talking out problems with others.