The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence

Ninth Edition Kathleen Stassen Berger

Part I

Chapter Two

Theories

What Theories Do
Theorizing is Part of Human Nature. You will learn that Theory Theory states that young children spontaneously develop theories to explan whatever they observe, because that is what humans do. Questions and Answers
Chapter 2: Theories

What Theories Do
Produce Hyptheses Generate Discoveries Offer Practical Guidance

Facts and Norms

Norm is an average or typical, standard of behavior such as the norm for age of walking or the norm for greeting a stranger. Norms are not necessarily good or bad, although sometimes differences from the norm are mistakenly considered deficits.

Norms and Facts

Theories raise questions, suggesting hypotheses, leading to research that gathers empirical data. Those data are facts that may lead to conclusions.

Grand Theories
Psychoanalytic Theory: Freud and Erikson Behaviorism: Conditioning and Social Learning Psychoanalytic Versus Behaviorist Theories THINKING CRITICALLY: Toilet Training How and When? Cognitive Theory: Piaget and Information Processing
Chapter 2: Theories

Psychoanalytic Theory
One of Freud's most influential ideas was that each stage includes its own potential conflicts. According to Freud, how people experience and resolved these conflicts, especially those related to weaning, toilet training, and sexual pleasure determine personality patterns

Freud
Psychoanalytic theory interprets human development in terms of irrational and unconscious drives and motives, often originating in childhood.

Freud
The personality has three parts: the id (unconscious drives), the superego (the conscience), and the ego (the conscious self). Throughout life, the ego uses defense mechanisms to defend itself against attacks from the id and superego.

Eriksons Ideas
He proposed eight developmental stages, each of which is characterized by a particular challenging developmental crisis. Erikson emphasized each persons relationship to the social environment and the importance of family and cultural influences in determining how well prepared individuals are to meet these crises. Eriksons stages are lifelong.

Eriksons Stages
His stages include trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs. shame and doubt, initiative vs. guilt, industry vs. inferiority, identity vs. role confusion, intimacy vs. isolation, generativity vs. stagna- tion, and integrity vs despair.

Table 2.1 Comparison of Freuds Psy

Behaviorism
(also called learning theory) Formulated laws of behavior that operate at every age. The basis of all varieties of behaviorism is the idea that psychology should focus on the objective and scientific study of behavior.

Table 2.2 Psychoanalytic Theory vs.

Classical Conditioning
The process by which responses become linked to particular stimuli. As demonstrated by the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov, classical conditioning (also called respondent conditioning) involves learning by association: The organism comes to associate a neutral stimulus with a meaningful one.

Classical Conditioning

How can a doctors white coat affect a patient?

120/80 Healthy

140/90 Too High

the white coat syndrome is an everyday example of classically conditioned behavior. Just the sight of a doctors white coat (the stimulus) causes blood pressure to rise (the response) in some

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Operant Conditioning
(also called instrumental conditioning) Proposed by B. F. Skinner, the individual learns that a particular action produces a particular consequence. Pleasant consequences are sometimes called rewards and unpleasant consequences are sometimes called punishments. Any consequence that follows a behavior and makes the person (or animal) likely to repeat that behavior is called reinforcement.

Operant Conditioning

operant conditioning (instrumental conditioning): The learning process by which a particular action is followed by something desired or by something unwanted in order to promote or prevent an action. reinforcement: A technique for conditioning behavior in which that behavior is followed by something desired.

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Social Learning
An extension of behaviorism, social learning
theory emphasizes the ways in which people learn new behaviors by observing and imitating, or modeling, the behavior of other people they consider admirable, powerful, nurturing, or similar. Modeling is most likely to occur when the observer is uncertain or inexperienced.

Social Learning Theory

social learning theory: Emphasizes the influence that other people have over a persons behavior, involving learning by observation and imitation.

Is social learning theory an example of the saying, Actions speak louder than words?
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Self Efficacy
Social learning is connected to perceptions and interpretations of experience, including self-efficacy, the belief that personal achievement depends on personal actions. People develop self efficacy when they see other people solve problems successfully which teaches them to have high aspirations.

Behaviorism
Behaviorism: The study of observable behavior, and the theory (learning theory) explaining the acquisition of habits and competencies.

What are the three behavioral learning processes?

classical conditioning (respondent conditioning): The learning process by which a natural (unconditioned) response (e.g. fear when seeing a lion out of a cage) becomes triggered by a formerly neutral stimulus by repeatedly pairing it with the stimulus that naturally triggers that response. social learning theory: An extension of behaviorism that emphasizes the influence that other people have over a persons behavior. Even without specific reinforcement, every individual learns many things through observation and imitation of other people.

Behaviorism

operant conditioning (instrumental conditioning): The learning process by which a particular action is followed by something desired (which makes the person or animal more likely to repeat the action) or by something unwanted (which makes the action less likely to be repeated.)
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Psychoanalytic Versus Behaviorist

Toilet Training- How and When?

In the nineteenth century, many parents began their childrens toilet training in the first months of life. Psychoanalytic theory influenced parents to postpone toilet training to avoid the development of later problems in the childs personality. Behaviorists later suggested that toilet training depends on conditioning and should take place whenever the parent wished. Today, researchers believe that there is not a single best way to toilet train.

Cognitive Theory
Cognitive theory focuses on the structure and development of thought processes and their effect on attitudes, beliefs, values, assumptions, and behaviors. Jean Piaget viewed cognitive development as a process that follows a universal sequence of agerelated periods: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.

Periods of Cognitive Development

Thinking mistakes or steps in cognitive development? Piagets Periods of Cognitive Development
Age Range Birth to 2 years 2 - 6 years Name of Period Sensorimotor Preoperational Characteristics of the Period
Infants use senses and motor abilities to understand the world. Learning is active; there is no conceptual or reflective thought

Major Gains During the Period

Infants learn that an object still exists when it is out of sight (object permanence) and begin to think through mental actions

Children think magically and poetically, using language to understand the world. Thinking is egocentric, causing children to perceive the world from their own perspective Children understand and apply logical operations, or principles, to interpret experiences objectively and rationally. Their thinking is limited to what they can personally see, hear, touch and experience Adolescents and adults think about abstractions and hypothetical concepts and reason analytically. They can be logical about things they have never experienced

The imagination flourishes, and language becomes a significant means of selfexpression and of influence from others

6 11 years

Concrete operational

By applying logical abilities, children learn to understand concepts of conservation, number, classification, and many other scientific ideas Ethics, politics, and social and moral issues become fascinating as adolescents and adults take a broader and more theoretical approach to experience

12 years through adulthood

Formal operational

cognitive theory: Theory of human development that focuses on changes in how people think over time.
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Piaget
Each person strives for cognitive equilibriumthat is, a state of mental balance achieved through the development of mental concepts that explain his or her experiences.

Piaget
Cognitive disequilibrium (a state of imbalance) promotes a search for knowledge as the person modifies old concepts and constructs better ones to fit new experiences.

Piaget
According to Piaget, people adapt to new experiences either by reinterpreting them to fit into, or assimilate with, old ideas. Some new experiences force people to revamp old ideas so that they can accommodate new experiences.

Figure 2.2

Informational Processing
Explores the processes of thought, how minds work before responding. Not a single theory but a framework of a large number of research programs.

Informational Processing
Cognition begins with input picked up by the five senses: proceeds to brain reactions, connections, and stored memories; and concludes with some form of output.

Informational Processing
Provides many applications such as for children with ADHD- difficulties learning in school, obeying parents, making friends. Led to discovery that they have difficulty reading facial expressions and voice tone in order to understand emotions. Come here angry command or friendly suggestion?

Focuses of Grand Theories

Newer Theories
Sociocultural Theory: Vygotsky and Beyond The Universal Perspective: Humanism and Evolutionary Theory

Chapter 2: Theories

Sociocultural Theory
Seeks to explain human development in terms of the guidance, support, and structure provided by cultures and societies. Rather than considering the individual in isolation, sociocultural theorists focus on the dynamic interaction between developing persons and the surrounding social and cultural forces.

Lev Vygotsky
Russian psychologist believed that the development of cognitive competencies results from social interaction between children and more skilled members of the community in what has been called an apprenticeship in thinking. The basis of this apprenticeship is guided participation, in which a skilled tutor or mentor engages the learner in joint activities.

Zone of Proximal Development

In sociocultural theory, a childs social partners progressively challenge the childs ever-shifting abilities and motivation. To do so, the mentor draws the child into the zone of proximal development, which is the range of skills that the child can exercise only with assistance.

Humanism
The universal perspective centers on the shared impulses and common needs of all of humanity. One universal theory is humanism. Maslow believed that all humans have five basic needs, which he arranged in a hierarchy, beginning with survival and ending with self-actualization. Rogers believed that each person deserves respect, appreciation, and unconditional positive regard.

Evolutionary Theory
The recent application of evolutionary theory to human development emphasizes two long-standing and biologically based needs: survival and reproduction. Current humans react in ways that helped survival and reproduction millions of years ago because of selective adaptation, a process essential to evolutionary theory.