Chapter 1: Theories of development (2) – Flashcards

set of ideas that helps to explain phenomena and facilitate predictions.

describe development as primarily unconscious (beyond awareness) and heavily colored by emotion. Psychoanalytic theorists emphasize that behavior is merely a surface characteristic and that a true understanding of development requires analyzing the symbolic meanings of behavior and the deep inner workings of the mind.

As Freud listened to, probed, and analyzed his patients, he became convinced that their problems were the result of experiences early in life. He 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 five stages of psychosexual development: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital.

infants pleasure centers on the mouth

child's pleasure focuses on the anus

child's pleasure focuses on the genitals

child represses sexual interests and develops social and intellectual skills

a time of sexual reawakening. -source of sexual pleasure becomes someone outside of the family.

eight stages of development unfold as eight stages of development unfold as we go through life. At each stage, a unique developmental task confronts individuals with a crisis that must be resolved. According to Erikson, this crisis is not a catastrophe but a turning point marked by both increased vulnerability and enhanced potential.

cognitive theories emphasize conscious thoughts

Piaget's theory states that children go through four stages of cognitive development as they actively construct their understanding of the world. Two processes underlie this cognitive construction of the world: organization and adaptation. To make sense of our world, we organize our experiences.

infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences (such as seeing and hearing) with physical, motoric actions-hence the term sensorimotor.

children begin to go beyond simply connecting sensory information with physical action and represent the world with words, images, and drawings.

children can perform operations that involve objects, and they can reason logically when the reasoning can be applied to specific or concrete examples. ex. concrete operational thinkers cannot imagine the steps necessary to complete an algebraic equation, which is too abstract for thinking at this stage of development.

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.

A sociocultural cognitive theory that emphasizes how culture and social interaction guide cognitive development.

Emphasizes that individuals manipulate information, monitor it, and strategize about it. Central to this theory are the processes of memory and thinking.

operant conditioning- learning through reinforcement. classical conditioning- learning through association. * For Skinner 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.

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

stresses that behavior is strongly influenced by biology, is tied to evolution, and is characterized by critical or sensitive periods

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 graylag geese study: greylag geese, which will follow their mothers as soon as they hatch. Lorenz separated the eggs laid by one goose into two groups. One group he returned to the goose to be hatched by her. The other group was hatched in an incubator. The goslings in the first group performed as predicted. They followed their mother as soon as they hatched. However, those in the second group, which saw Lorenz when they first hatched, followed him everywhere, as though he were their mother.

Bowlby 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. *sensitive period, and an example of this is the time during infancy when, according to Bowlby, attachment should occur in order to promote optimal development of social relationships.

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

the setting in which the individual lives. These contexts include the person's family, peers, school, and neighborhood. It is in the microsystem that the most direct interactions with social agents take place—with parents, peers, and teachers

involves relations between microsystems or connections between contexts. ex. the relation of family experiences to school experiences - parent teacher conference

consists of links between a social setting in which the individual does not have an active role. 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.

involves the culture in which individuals live

the patterning of environmental events and transitions over the life course, as well as sociohistorical circumstances transition ex- divorce sociohistorical ex- how career opportunities for women have increased since the 1960s.

which does not follow any one theoretical approach but rather selects from each theory whatever is considered its best features * although theories are helpful guides, relying on a single theory to explain development is probably a mistake