Chapter 1 (Part #3): Theories of Development

- psychoanalytic theories - cognitive theories - behavioral and social cognitive theories - ethological theory - ecological theory - an eclectic theoretical orientation

An approach that can be used to obtain accurate information - a four-step process: (1) conceptualize a process or problem to be studied (2) collect research information (data) (3) analyze the data (4) draw conclusions.

is an interrelated, coherent set of ideas that helps to explain phenomena and facilitate predictions. It may suggest hypotheses,

a theory may suggest a ___, which are specific assertions and predictions that can be tested to determine its accuracy.

In step 1(conceptualize a process or problem to be studied) of the ___ ___ when researchers are formulating a problem to study, they often draw on theories and develop hypotheses.

___ theories describe development as primarily unconscious (beyond awareness) and heavily colored by emotion. Behavior is merely a surface characteristic, and the symbolic workings of the mind have to be analyzed to understand behavior. -early experiences with parents are emphasized -Sigmund Freud -Erik Erikson

___ was a psychoanalytic theorist, who thought that as children grow up, their focus of pleasure and sexual impulses shifts from the mouth to the anus and eventually to the genitals. - As a result, we go through ___ stages of psychosexual development: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. - Our adult personality, he (1917) claimed, is determined by the way we resolve conflicts between sources of pleasure at each stage and the demands of ___. - Because he emphasized sexual motivation, his stages of development are known as psychosexual stages. In his view, if the need for pleasure at any stage is either undergratified or overgratified, an individual may become fixated, or locked in, at that stage of development. - Many of today's psychoanalytic theorists maintain that he overemphasized sexual instincts; they place more emphasis on cultural experiences as determinants of an individual's development. Unconscious thought remains a central theme, but conscious thought plays a greater role than he envisioned. One of the most influential revisionists of Freud's ideas was ___.

___ was a psychoanalytic theorist, who was one of the most influential revisionists of Sigmund Freud's ideas. - said said we develop in ___ stages, rather than in psychosexual stages - said the primary motivation for human behavior is social and reflects a desire to affiliate with other people - said developmental change occurs throughout the life span. Thus, in terms of the early-versus-later-experience issue described earlier in the chapter, Freud viewed early experience as being far more important than later experiences, whereas Erikson emphasized the importance of both early and ___ experiences.

___'s theory includes 8 stages of human development. Each stage consists of a unique developmental task that confronts individuals with a crisis that must be resolved. -According to his theory, this crisis is not a catastrophe but a turning point marked by both increased vulnerability and enhanced potential. The more successfully an individual resolves each crisis, the ___ development will be.

-Trust vs. Mistrust (infancy, first year) -Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt (infancy, 1 to 3 years) -Initiative vs. Guilt (early childhood, preschool years, 3-5 years) -Industry vs. Inferiority (middle & late childhood, elementary school years, 6 years to puberty) -Identity vs. Identity Confusion (adolescence, 10 to 20 years) -Intimacy vs. Isolation (early adulthood, 20s, 30s) -Generativity vs. Stagnation (middle adulthood, 40s, 50s) -Integrity vs. Despair (late adulthood, 60s onward)

- Contributions of ___ theories include an emphasis on a developmental framework, family relationships, and unconscious aspects of the mind. - Criticisms include a lack of scientific support, too much emphasis on sexual underpinnings, and an image of people that is too negative.

___ theories emphasize conscious thoughts. Three important cognitive theories are Jean Piaget's cognitive developmental theory, Lev Vygotsky's sociocultural cognitive theory, and the information-processing theory.

Three important ___ ___ are: - Cognitive Developmental theory (Jean Piaget) - Sociocultural Cognitive theory (Lev Vygotsky) - Information-Processing theory

- famous Swiss developmental psychologist - Cognitive Developmental theory -

- states that children actively construct their understanding of the world and go through four stages of development - Two processes underlie this cognitive construction of the world: organization and adaptation. - To make sense of our world, we organize our experiences. For Ex: we separate important ideas from less important ideas, and we connect one idea to another. - In addition to organizing our observations and experiences, we adapt, adjusting to new environmental demands

Piaget's Cognitive ___ Theory: - We go through four stages in understanding the world - Each stage is age-related and consists of a distinct way of thinking, a different way of understanding the world. - Thus, according to Piaget, the child's cognition is qualitatively different from one stage to another.

According to Piaget, how a child thinks—not how much the child knows—determines the child's ___ of cognitive development.

According to Piaget, how a child thinks—not how much the child knows—determines the child's stage of cognitive development. - Sensorimotor stage (birth-2) - Preoperational stage (2-7) - Concrete Operational stage (7-11) - Formal Operational stage (11-15 & continues through adulthood)

- Stage #1 of Piaget's theory - lasts from birth to about 2 years of age - In this stage, infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences (such as seeing and hearing) with physical, motoric actions—hence the term sensorimotor.

- Stage #2 of Piaget's theory - lasts from approximately 2 to 7 years of age - children begin to go beyond simply connecting sensory information with physical action and represent the world with words, images, and drawings. - However preschool children still lack the ability to perform operations (which are internalized mental actions that allow children to do mentally what they previously could only do physically.For Ex: if you imagine putting two sticks together to see whether they would be as long as another stick, without actually moving the sticks, you are performing a concrete operation.)

- Stage #3 of Piaget's theory - lasts from approximately 7 to 11 years of age - children can perform operations that involve objects, and they can reason logically when the reasoning can be applied to specific or concrete examples. - But cannot imagine the steps necessary to complete an algebraic equation, which is too abstract for thinking at this stage of development.

- Stage #4 of Piaget's theory - appears between the ages of 11 and 15 and continues through adulthood - individuals move beyond concrete experiences and begin to think in abstract and more logical terms. - As part of thinking more abstractly, adolescents develop images of ideal circumstances. They begin to entertain possibilities for the future and are fascinated with what they can be. - In solving problems, they become more systematic, developing hypotheses about why something is happening the way it is and then testing these hypotheses

- Russian developmentalist - Sociocultural Cognitive theory

- Vygotsky's ___ ___ theory emphasizes how culture and social interaction guide cognitive development. - argued that children actively construct their knowledge. However, Vygotsky gave social interaction and culture far more important roles in cognitive development than Piaget did

- portrayed the child's development as inseparable from social and cultural activities - maintained that cognitive development involves learning to use the inventions of society (such as language, mathematical systems, and memory strategies) -children's social interaction with more-skilled adults and peers is indispensable to their cognitive development. Through this interaction, they learn to use the tools that will help them adapt and be successful in their culture.

- the ___ theory emphasizes that individuals manipulate information, monitor it, and strategize about it - central to this theory are the processes of memory and thinking

- Unlike Piaget's theory, but like Vygotsky's theory, information-processing theory does not describe development as ___ -like. - Instead, according to this theory, individuals develop a gradually increasing capacity for processing information, which allows them to acquire increasingly complex knowledge and skills

___ is a leading expert on children's information processing, - he states that thinking is information processing. - In other words, when individuals perceive, encode, represent, store, and retrieve information, they are thinking. - he emphasizes that an important aspect of development is learning good strategies for processing information. (For Ex: becoming a better reader might involve learning to monitor the key themes of the material being read)

- Contributions of ___ theories include a positive view of development and an emphasis on the active construction of understanding. - Criticisms include skepticism about the pureness of Piaget's stages and too little attention to individual variations.

___ essentially holds that we can study scientifically only what can be directly observed and measured. - Out of the behavioral tradition grew the belief that development is observable behavior that can be learned through experience with the environment. - the behavioral and social ___ theories emphasize continuity in development and argue that development does not occur in stage-like fashion. - two versions of behaviorism: Skinner's Operant Conditioning & Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory.

two versions of ___ : - Operant Conditioning (Skinner) - Social Cognitive theory (Bandura)

- according to B.F Skinner through ___ ___ the consequences of a behavior produce changes in the probability of the behavior's occurrence. (1938) - A behavior followed by a rewarding stimulus is more likely to recur, whereas a behavior followed by a punishing stimulus is less likely to recur. - In Skinner's view, such rewards and punishments shape development

- For ___ the key aspect of development is behavior, not thoughts and feelings. - He emphasized that development consists of the pattern of behavioral changes that are brought about by rewards and punishments. - For Ex: he would say that shy people learned to be shy as a result of experiences they had while growing up. It follows that modifications in an environment can help a shy person become more socially oriented.

Behavioral theory (Skinner's operant conditioning) Social Cognitive theory (Bandura's theory) - the ___ between Behavioral and Social Cognitive theories is: the behaviorists' hold the notion that development is learned and is influenced strongly by environmental interactions. However, unlike Skinner and other behaviorists, some psychologist also see COGNITION as important in understanding development

The view of psychologist who emphasize behavior, environment, and cognition as the key factors in development.

- American psychologist ___ ___ is the leading architect of social cognitive theory. - he emphasizes that cognitive processes have important links with the environment and behavior. - his early research program focused heavily on observational learning (also called imitation or modeling), which is learning that occurs through observing what others do - he proposes that people cognitively represent the behavior of others and then sometimes adopt this behavior themselves.

- Bandura's most ___ model of learning and development includes three elements: - behavior - the person/cognition - the environment. *An individual's confidence that he or she can control his or her success is an example of a person factor; strategies are an example of a cognitive factor. As shown in Bandura's model behavior, person/cognitive, and environmental factors operate interactively.

- Contributions of the ___ and ___ theories include an emphasis on scientific research and environmental determinants of behavior. - Criticisms include too little emphasis on cognition in Skinner's view and inadequate attention paid to developmental changes.

- stresses that behavior is strongly influenced by biology, is tied to evolution, and is characterized by critical or sensitive periods. - These are specific time frames during which, according to ___, the presence or absence of certain experiences has a long-lasting influence on individuals. -Konrad Lorenz -John Bowlby

- European zoologist who brought ethology to prominence - studied the behavior of greylag geese - process of imprinting—(the rapid, innate learning that involves attachment to the first moving object seen) - imprinting needs to take place at a certain, very early time in the life of the animal, or else it will not take place. This point in time is called a *critical period.

___ illustrated an important application of ethological theory to human development. - he stressed that attachment to a caregiver over the first year of life has important consequences throughout the life span. - In his view, if this attachment is positive and secure, the individual will likely develop positively in childhood and adulthood. - If the attachment is negative and insecure, life-span development will likely not be optimal. - according to him their is the concept of a *sensitive period (related to the concept of a critical period), and an example of this is the time during infancy when attachment should occur in order to promote optimal development of social relationships.

- Contributions of ___ theory include a focus on the biological and evolutionary basis of development, and the use of careful observations in naturalistic settings. - Criticisms include too much emphasis on biological foundations and a belief that the critical and sensitive period concepts might be too rigid.

- While ethological theory stresses biological factors, ___ theory emphasizes environmental factors. -Urie Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory has important implications for understanding life-span development

- ___ theory holds that development reflects the influence of several environmental systems. - The theory identifies five environmental systems: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem

- In Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory the ___ is the setting in which the individual lives. - These contexts include the person's family, peers, school, and neighborhood. It is in this environmental system that the most direct interactions with social agents take place —with parents, peers, and teachers, for example. The individual is not a passive recipient of experiences in these settings, but someone who helps to construct the settings.

- In Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory the ___ involves relations between microsystems or connections between contexts. - Ex's are the relation of family experiences to school experiences, school experiences to religious experiences, and family experiences to peer experiences. For example, children whose parents have rejected them may have difficulty developing positive relations with teachers.

- In Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory the ___ consists of links between a social setting in which the individual does not have an active role and the individual's immediate context. - For Ex: a husband's or child's experience at home may be influenced by a mother's experiences at work. The mother might receive a promotion that requires more travel, which might increase conflict with the husband and change patterns of interaction with the child.

- In Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory the ___ involves the culture in which individuals live.

- In Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory the ___ consists of the patterning of environmental events and transitions over the life course, as well as sociohistorical circumstances. - For Ex: divorce is one transition. Researchers have found that the negative effects of divorce on children often peak in the first year after the divorce By two years after the divorce, family interaction has become more stable - As an Ex of sociohistorical circumstances, consider how career opportunities for women have increased since the 1960s.

- Contributions of the ___ theory include a systematic examination of macro and micro dimensions of environmental systems, and attention to connections between environmental systems. - A further contribution of Bronfenbrenner's theory is an emphasis on a range of social contexts beyond the family, such as neighborhood, religion, school, and workplace, as influential in children's development - Criticisms include giving inadequate attention to biological factors, as well as too little emphasis on cognitive factors.

- An orientation that does not follow any one theoretical approach, but rather selects from each theory whatever is considered the best in it -. In this way, you can view the study of development as it actually exists—with different theorists making different assumptions, stressing different empirical problems, and using different strategies to discover information