Child Developmental Theories
Constructivist
Developmental:
Constructivist
• Approach very concerned with socialization and
the lifecycle. (curvilinear) (end point)
• Draws from child psychologists, human
development researchers.
•
• Directs attention to the longitudinal career of the
family rather than focusing on one point in time.
Key Assumptions
• 1. Human conduct is best understood
through preceding as well as current social
milieus.
• 2. Human conduct cannot be understood
apart from human development
•
Key Assumptions
• 3. The human is both an actor and a
reactor
• 4. Individual and group development is
dependant upon inherent and developed
capacities.
• 5. The individual in a social setting is a
basic autonomous unit
The Developmental Approach
• Constructivists approach helps to
understand an individual’s internalization of
family from their formation to the various
stages of the lifecycle.
• i.e.. courtship, engagement, wedding,
divorce or death
•
• Besides these there are theories
dealing individual rather than the
family psychoanalytic, cognitive
and learning.
Summary
• Taken independently, these theories
describe only a portion of the realities of
the family.
• They should not be seen as mutually
exclusive from one another.
Developmental analysis
• Constructivist/development theories are
weak in situational analysis.
• Heavy emphasis on arbitrary stages in
theory, concept and method.
Concept• An abstraction used as a
building block for the
development of propositions
and theories.
Freudian Theory or
psychoanalytic tradition.
• Freudian theory essential deals
with the ego’s attempts to satisfy
the desires of the id while dealing
with opposition from both the
superego and the real world.
To Freud…
• Children are born with only the
primitive element of the
psychic structure-the idsexual and aggressive drives.
Psychic energy
• Freud’s theory essentially shows
that the personality functioning
was fueled by psychic energy that
becomes distributed among the
id, ego and superego.
ID =instincts, drives
• All psychological functioning requires
energy, and the id was the source of the
energy.
• The id is the only psychic structure
possessed by children for roughly the first
year of their lives.
The pleasure principle
• They are driven by the pleasure
principle, they are hedonistic
beings who seek pleasure and
avoid pain.
• Young infants are wildly
unsocialized creatures who seek
immediate gratification whenever
their sexual and aggressive urges
are aroused.
•
The Ego
• The ego is the rational, reasonable
component of personality. The ego
operates on the reality principle -it can
plan, delay gratification, and block the
irrational choices of the id.
The superego.
• The third aspect of the personality to Frued
is the superego.
• Freud maintains that it usually develops
within the child between the ages of 3 and
5
Psycho-Sexual Stages.
• Freud was the first to conceptual child
development in a stage pattern based
upon a biological foundation:
His stages include:
•
•
•
•
•
Oral -year one
Anal -year two
Phallic-years three to five
Latency- adolescence
Genital-adolescence
Healthy vs. Pathology
•
• Freud believed that in a healthy
person, sexual energy now
becomes focused on a loved person
of the opposite sex.
Critique of Fruedian Theory
• The following are the major criticisms:
• A. shortcoming in his methods used to
validate his hypotheses-Freud’s data were
the verbal reports of neurotic parents who
were asked to free associate -not reliable
indicator of the patients real thoughts….an
ivory tower approach.
Freud’s concepts-difficult to
measure
•
B. Freud’s concepts are not defined in
ways that make them amenable to
concrete behavior assessment
1. How do you measure a child’s level of
psychic energy?
2. How do you measure a child’s strength of
ego?
Generalizing
• C. A third criticism is that although
Freud’s theory can explain just about
anything, it is difficult to use in making
predictions….
• It is weak on relational rules if this
happens, then that will happen
Nature more than Nurture
• D. Lastly, it places too much emphasis on
intra-psychic determinants of behaviour,
paying little attention to environment.
• For example, although he acknowledges
parent-child relationships, he believed that
internal conflicts and defenses are
ultimately responsible for the child’s
personality.
Freud’s Legacy
There is little direct influence on
development today, but his
concepts have had impact on
research directions and issues…
On research and theory-Erikson
was student of Freud…..
-Issues
• -Issues such as Breast feeding can be
directly attributed to Frued….Rooted in his
notions of the oral stage of development.
•
•
• Freud’s theory is highly criticized
by Feminists who argue he is
sexist, conservative and
monolithic.
• Responsible for `mother blaming’
Unscientific
• Because Freud’s theory is so unscientific
and lead to few clear-cut empirical
predictions.
• Many other theories have been developed
emphasizing child’s formative years
Environment
• Freud does not see the the social
environment in influencing development.
• The emphasis is upon socialization of the
child becoming adult…
• The Child is placed on the margins
Superego
• . During this stage, children develop an
Oedipal crisis, which they resolve by
identifying with the same sex parent,
thereby developing a conscience or an
external representation of the values and
sanctions of society.
Erik Erikson (1902-1994) A
student of Frued
• Psychoanalytic Approach- Erikson’s
psychosocial theory was one of many
developed by followers of Freud.
• His theory stretched, rearranged and in
many ways improved on Freud’s model.
Erikson (1902-1994)
• Beginning in 1950 he expanded
understanding of each stage of Frued’s
developmental model.
• Erikson’s, Childhood and Society (1950)
•
Identity, Youth and Crisis (1968)
Culture + Personality
Erikson
• Firmly rooted in the psychoanalytic
tradition
• Beginning with Freud-hotly debated -still
with us- ie feminists
•
Easy to understand : Phases
Linear Pattern
• Divide into assumptions re.
biological endowment, perception,
learning and socialization
• Proposes a series of stages, specifies
adult practices associated with each,
postulates the maturation and timing
of the child's capacities and proposed
some relationships between
experiences at each stage and the
child's motivation for learning.
Erikson’s theory
•
•
• Eriksons theory goes beyond Freud-more
respect for the individual and his innate
ability to meet the challenges of a dynamic
society.
•
Goes beyond Freud
•
• -more respect for the individual
and his innate ability to meet the
challenges of a dynamic society.
Erikson
• Erikson believed that each stage does not
lead to an embattled ego that mediates
between the id and the superego. (Freud)
The ego
• The ego is a positive force (Erikson) in
development. At each stage the ego
acquires skills and attitudes that allow
individuals to become positive, functional
members of human society.
Three positions:
Different from Freud
1. Emphasized the ego over the id-instincts like
death wish may have their role but less significant
than the individuals capacity to adjust.
• 2. Goes beyond child-mother-father triad-stress
family and larger society
• 3. Optimistic view-believes hazards in life and
crises are conducive to growth
•
Basic Assumptions:
• 1. Unlike Freud dreams do not provide
signals to unconscious-play does...if you
want to understand a child's ego look at
play
• -emphasis on qualitative research,
psychoanalysis alone won't help-look at
history, anthropology
• 2. Child unfolds biologically and
psychologically from birth-child
learns to survive and promote
culture through the culture in him
Individual not evil (Hobbes,
Freud)
• 3. Each individual is badpotentially good or bad must be
prevented from being bad by
democracy
•
• 4. Believes in libido-but man not animaldiscards Freud notion of dynasty of drives
in favor of flexible modifyable-gives rise to
his notion of styles of life
• -One can manage inner and outer forces by
adaptive skills-play, speech, though and
actions.
Freud/Erikson agree on Libido
• 5. Erikson accepts Freud idea that Libido
influences all aspects of life…but Erikson
believes id, ego and superego can balance
through play in a child's development
•
Play teaches:
• Play teaches: a. how to organize inner life
in relations to the outer world.
• b. How to educate oneself and heal defeats
and pains
• c. How to master tasks to deal with inner
and outer world
• Play is particularly important
when the child does not have
language: it helps the child
progress in developmental stages
Stages =End Point
• Infant
Trust vs Mistrust
Needs maximum comfort with minimal
uncertainty
to trust himself/herself, others, and the
environment
Toddler
Autonomy vs Shame and Doubt
Works to master physical environment while
maintaining
self-esteem
Preschooler
• Preschooler
Initiative vs Guilt
Begins to initiate, not imitate, activities;
develops
conscience and sexual identity
School-Age Child
• School-Age Child
Industry vs Inferiority
Tries to develop a sense of self-worth by refining
skills
• Adolescent
Identity vs Role Confusion
Tries integrating many roles (child, sibling,
student, athlete,
worker) into a self-image under role model and
peer pressure
Young Adult
• Young Adult
Intimacy vs Isolation
Learns to make personal commitment to
another as
spouse, parent or partner
Adult
• Middle-Age Adult
Generativity vs Stagnation
Seeks satisfaction through productivity in career,
family, and
civic interests
• Older Adult
Integrity vs Despair
Reviews life accomplishments, deals with loss
and preparation for death
Summing Up
• 1. Erikson a cultural determinist, ego
psychologist and an optimist
•
• 2. Child development must be understood in
terms of the whole situation involves the
child the family and his culture.
•
Developing personality
• 3. The potential of a developing
personality must be protected against the
hazards of instinctual, parental, communal,
cultural and environmental pressures to
allow innate tendencies to develop
successfully.
Stages are Ideal typical• 4. Explains development within a specific
culture North America-assumes a
monolith bias-ideal typical-notions of
freedom of expression, opportunity, rapid
social change and role ambiguity-generation
gap underlie his thinking
Piaget's Background:
• 1. A Swiss zoologist, interested
in philosophy -wanted to link
God with life
• 2. . Career began with a zeal to link biology
and psychology...whereas learning theorist
sees development as a primary process of
learning...
• Piaget saw them as
independent -learning cannot
explain development, while the
stages of development can, at
least in part, explain learning.....
Development of cognition
• 3. Piaget's primary concern was to
understand the development of cognition
not cognitive development...
Effective socialization
• He explains that effective socialization is the
product of three elements:
• a. Maturation-differentiation of the nervous
system
• b. Experience-interaction with the physical world
• c. Equilibrium-self regulation, cognitive
adaptation
Piaget's Concept of the New
Born
• A newborn is a biological organism with a
psychological make-up..
Newborn Drives-sensory-motor
• He has a drive for hunger, a drive for
balance and a drive for independence.
•
Child development
• The child's development takes place in the
context of the environment, physical,
social and ideational. The environment can
promote, retard or change the order of the
succession of the individuals growth
process. But the sequence of the
developmental phases must remain the
same.
Linear Course of Development
• Piaget explains development in terms of
three phases...they are irreversible and
denote a course of development...'
• Stages-along a continuum
Piaget’s Phases of Cognition
• Each phase reveals an organizational
pattern, potential capacity, probable level of
behaviour and moves on to the next with a
concern for balancing.
•
Sensory-Motor Stage
• 1. Sensory-Motor (0-24 mos. -with six sub
phases)
• Use of reflexes through repetition and
adaptation...
• Voluntary movements- coordinationImitation- Play -Affect
• Continuous experimentation, greater
mobility, cyclical repetition
Preparation for Conceptual
Thought
•
• 1. Preconceptual2-4 2. Intuitive 4-7
3.Concrete Operations(7-11)
•
•
Pre-conceptual phase
• During the pre-conceptual phase events are
explained and experienced in terms of their
outward appearance without any logic.
•
• He does not perceive any connections
between relationships i.e.. quantity and
quality.
•
Intuitive phase
• During the Intuitive phase, he learns to balance
between assimilation and accommodation. i.e.
he does not think in a whole but in parts i.e.. parts
of a house not the whole house.
•
• Play becomes more social, language helps to
foster intuition, child reflects on events, projects
into the future
Concrete operations
• During the Concrete operations phase, the
child can consider several points of view
simultaneously...he can work out solutions,
he can establish systems of classification,
he can move from inductive to deductive
reasoning.
Phase of Formal Operations
(11-15)
• It is in this phase that childhood
ends, around 14 and youth is
reached, with the maturation of
cerebral structures.
Formal Operations
• He moves in a world of ideas: The growing
youth possesses:
• 1. Qualitative understanding of objects and
events
•
• 2. Knowledge of metrical activities
•
Deductive reasoning
• 3. Deductive reasoning develops to a point
where he is able to establish personal rules
and values...His personality is
crystallizing.....
• His/her interests center around weighing,
classifying and reevaluating....(this is why
adolescents are so critical)
At 15,
• 4. At 15, he/she has the following developmental
accomplishments:
•
• a. Sees the social world as an organic unit-laws,
roles social functions
•
• b. Egocentricity is dissolved by a sense of moral
solidarity
•
Formal Operations complete
•
• 5. Personality has developed through intracommunication
•
• 6. Submission to adult authority is related
by a sense of equality
•
Summary
• Piaget's developmental framework,
provides a model for individual potentialitya frame of reference
• Regular patterns of cognitive development
bound to be experienced by everyone
• We are able to predict an individuals
mode and range of comprehension along a
developmental plane
Robert Sears: The Learning
Theory
• Sears,
an
empiricist
experimentalist.
and
an
• Taught at Stanford-Social Learning Psych
Department
•
Stimulus/Response
• Explains child development through the
S.R. (stimulus-response) sequence.
•
• SR-the effect of an action can be the learned
cause of future behaviour.
• Many of his ideas were formed with the
help of a colleague-Clark Hull who
stressed reinforcement-secondary drive,
motivation and frustration and aggression
hypothesis advanced by Dollard, Miller and
others.
SR and Behaviour
•
• For example, -hunger (stimulus) activates the
individual and determines how he/she (will
respond) thus producing an action sequence and a
goal.
•
• Behaviour to Sears, is the cause and effect of
other behaviour –Behaviour is Learned
•
Learning Theory
• Behaviour is self motivated towards
tension reduction
• Behaviour is reinforced by goal
achievement
producing
secondary
motivational systems
•
Concept of Development in
Phases
Constructivist
•
• For Sears, development is a continuous
chain of events, some of which replace
previous acquisitions.
•
• The development of the child occurs in
three phases:
Stages of Learning
•
• 1. Rudimentary behaviour (1-16 months)
•
• 2. Secondary motivational systems- family
cantered learning (1.5 years to 5 years)
•
• 3. Secondary motivational systems- extra
familial learning (5-)
•
Phase One: Rudimentary
Behaviour
•
Like Freud’s Id, and Piaget’s Sensory
Motor Phases,
• Sears’ Rudimentary Stage
• -Phase of gratification of immediate needs
•
• -Primary drives = the cry
•
• -Environmental learning -fulfilment of
needs =reduction of tension=rewards,
experience (crying and the breast)
•
• -
• the child learns he/she can manipulate the
environment-learns that he is not only controlled
but can control
•
• -child begins to learn techniques for cooperation
•
• Child development to Sears occurs in dyadic
units of behaviour..
Dyadic relationships
• The prime dyad is between mother and
child-the mother looks after the biological
needs of the child, enforcing dependency,
regulating appropriate behaviour on the part
of the child seeking gratification
•
• This dyadic relationship eventually serves
to control and modify behaviour because as
mothers permissiveness becomes more
discriminately offered it give rise to
frustration and aggression
The second dyad
•
• The second dyad is child-environment-child's sex,
position in the family structure, mother's
personality, social status and education
•
• In brief, it is in the rudimentary phase that the
child bonds with the mother and is introduced to
the environment, which leads to ever increasing
interaction with it...
•
Learning Primary
• Sears gives little consideration to the role of
punishment and more to reward
• The child learns positive roles and
relationship from primary agents,
significant others…mother, father, siblings
Phase II: Secondary
Motivational System-Family
Centered Learning
• During this phase the child's primary needs
continue to motivate, but these are incorporated
into social learning and secondary drives
•
• ie. before child would cry because the stomach
contracts, now cry might occur because of the
sight of the bottle or the refrigerator
Learning and Affection
•
• Learning occurs and depends upon affection
and
learned
dependencymere
permissiveness reinforced the status quo so
direction teaches the child and serves to
protect him/her
Second year
• In the second year the child shows successful
partial withdrawl from the care of mother.
•
• The child begins to see there is a larger world
around him/her gratification, affection, esteem can
come from other sources-father, siblings and
family friends and relatives
•
Weaning• Sears places a great deal of interest in
factors such as weaning-weaning has four
aspects:
• 1. new food intake
• 2. solid food
• 3. learning to handle food orally
• 4. to eat without being held
Toilet Training• All of these must occur within 20 months to avoid
setbacks-can start as early as six months
•
• Another developmental phenomenon is toilet
training. For Sears, it is vital to behavioural
learning-associated with reward and punishment
and maternal rejection
Sexual modesty
• A third vital aspect of development is sexual
modesty -to Sears parental attitudes shape
the conscience of children
• If parents are too restrictive may lead to the
feminization of boys, sex anxieties,
aggressiveness.
•
Social aggression
• A less restrictive attitude will lead to the
encouragement of masculine qualities in
both boys and girls.
•
• Social aggression, for Sears is not learned
by accident-it is learned in the family-can
be avoided by careful balance of
permissiveness and restraint.
Third year
• In the third year identification and role
playing are significant characteristics of
development... a child remembers gratifying
experiences in infancy and in the absence of
mother, begins to reproduce mother's caring
activities.
•
A child’s upbringing
• To Sears involves five clusters of dependency:
• 1. negative attention seeking-defiance, disruption,
aggressiveness
• 2. reassurance- seeking protection, apologizing
because of high demands
• 3. positive attention- seeking praise,
• 4. touching- holding and clutching others
• 5. being near-
Summary Phase Two
• Thus, Sears hold that this second phase is vital for
the child's social development.
•
• The progression from parental control to partial
self control affects the child's ability to give
affection, identify with adults, deal with criticism
and cope with adult role and sex-appropriate
behaviour.
•
Phase Three: (extra-familial
learning)
• At age 5 the child's dependency on parents of both
sexes begins to give way because of participation
in the outside world.
• Teachers, peers and other adults reinforce
operate dependency behaviour.
• The child's ability to identify with extra familial
role models is rooted in the previous stage of
his/her development.
Learning through phases
•
• As the child matures permissiveness grows
narrower and controlled areas become expanded,
defined and reinforced by various adults...
•
• Thus, for Sears, the learning theorist, a child's
development is the product of his interaction with
the social world...
• His behaviour is the product of environmental
experiences and child rearing practices...
Sears: The Learning Theorist
• The most open-ended of the developmental
theorists’
• A constructivist-he adopt the phase concept
of socialization and development
• Sears places the most emphasis on social
environment compared to Piaget, the
Cognitive Theory, and the Psychoanalytic
theorists, Freud and Erikson.
Innate Aggression
• Aggression is an innate drive that may be aroused
when an individual encounters frustration or
threat.
• The individual is automatically directed towards
the goal of injuring or destroying the source of
irritation. Furthermore, when the aggressive
drive is aroused energy is
Ecological Systems
Theory
•
• -Developed
by
Urie
Bronfrenbenner,
is
a
classical psycholical model
emphasizing
how
certain
biological
dispositions
combine
with
environmental
forces to mould development.
•
Systems micro meso, exo
• His theory looks at the micro
system,
mesosystem,
and
mesosystem.
•
• The microsystem-refers to the
child's immediate environment
•
• The
mesosystem
-encompasses
broader agents of socialization
such
as
home,
neighbourhood,
daycare center.
•
• The exosystem- involves social
settings
beyond
the
childs
environment that effect the child
in some way. These might include
work schedules, maternity leaves,
sick pay etc.
•