Chapter 2
THEORIES OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
THE NATURE OF SCIENTIFIC THEORIES
• Theory – set of concepts and propositions
that describe and explain observations
– Parsimonious: concise
– Falsifiable: capable of making specific
predictions which can be disconfirmed
– Heuristic: build on existing knowledge by
generating testable hypotheses
•
Figure 2.1 The role of theory in scientific investigation.
THEMES IN THE STUDY OF HUMAN
DEVELOPMENT
• The Nature/Nurture Theme
– Genetics versus environment
– Both interact to produce change
• The Active/Passive Theme
– Children are active, determining how
society treats them
– Children are passive, being molded by
society
THEMES IN THE STUDY OF HUMAN
DEVELOPMENT
• The Continuity/Discontinuity Theme
– Change occurs gradually and continuously
• Quantitative changes: change in degree
or amount
– Change occurs with abrupt changes or
stages (discontinuous)
• Qualitative changes: changes in form or
kind
•
Figure 2.2 The course of development as described by continuity and discontinuity (stage)
theorists.
THEMES IN THE STUDY OF HUMAN
DEVELOPMENT
• The Holistic Nature of Development Issue
– Are the different aspects of development
separate, or are they interrelated and
influence each other?
•
Figure 2.3 Psychologists attempt to tease apart the biological (red), cognitive (yellow), social
(blue), and contextual (white) factors that influence human development. However, development is
holistic and at a very early age the variables that we choose to study have already begun to
interact. A single domain or variable never influences development independently of other factors.
The chosen variable’s effect is modified and modulated by the influences of other domains and
their variables, just as they are modified and modulated by it. Like the colors in this illustration,
influences from the four domains interact to produce confluent effects that are not easily traced to
a single, or even a handful, of variables.
THE PSYCHOANALYTIC VIEWPOINT
• Freud’s Psychosexual Theory
– Unconscious motives are repressed
– Development is a conflictual process
• Sexual and aggressive instincts that
must be served, yet society dictates
restraint
THE PSYCHOANALYTIC VIEWPOINT
• Freud’s Psychosexual Theory
– Three Components of Personality
• Id: satisfy inborn biological instincts, now
• Ego: conscious, rational, finds a realistic
means of satisfying instincts
• Superego: seat of the conscience,
develops between ages 3-6 as morals of
parents are internalized
THE PSYCHOANALYTIC VIEWPOINT
• Freud’s Psychosexual Theory
– Stages of Psychosexual Development
• Sex instinct, broadly defined, was most
important
• Focus of sex instinct shifts during
development – shifts = stages
• Fixation – arrested development due to
excess or a lack of gratification of needs
•
Table 2.1 Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development
THE PSYCHOANALYTIC VIEWPOINT
• Freud’s Psychosexual Theory
– Contributions and Criticisms
• Little evidence that oral, anal and genital
conflicts predict adult personality
• Contributions
– Unconscious motivation
– Impact of early experiences
– Emotional side of development
THE PSYCHOANALYTIC VIEWPOINT
• Erickson’s Theory of Psychosocial
Development
– Comparing Erickson with Freud
• Children are active explorers, not
passive slaves to biological urges
• Emphasis on cultural influences, less on
sexual urges
THE PSYCHOANALYTIC VIEWPOINT
• Erickson’s Psychosocial Theory
– Eight Life Crises (Psychosocial Stages)
• Emerge at a time dictated by biological
maturation and social demands
• Must be resolved successfully for
satisfactory resolution at next stage
• Extend throughout life
•
Table 2.2 Erickson’s and Freud’s Stages of Development
•
Table 2.2 Erickson’s and Freud’s Stages of Development (continued)
THE PSYCHOANALYTIC VIEWPOINT
• Erickson’s Psychosocial Theory
– Contributions and Criticisms
• Stresses rational, adaptive nature
• Emphasizes social conflicts that we can
anticipate and observe in others
• Vague about causes of development
• Descriptive, not explanatory
THE PSYCHOANALYTIC VIEWPOINT
• Psychoanalytic Theory Today
– Largely rejected because propositions are
difficult to falsify or confirm
• Most hypotheses can only be tested
through interviews or the clinical method
–Time consuming
–Expensive
–Least objective
THE LEARNING VIEWPOINT
• Watson’s Behaviorism
– Conclusions based on observations of
overt behavior
– Development is continuous
– Habits develop from learning experiences
– Development depends on environment
THE LEARNING VIEWPOINT
• Skinner’s Operant Learning Theory
– Repeat acts if outcomes are favorable,
suppress acts if outcomes are unfavorable
• Operant – initial voluntary act
• Reinforcer – increases probability of act
• Punisher – decreases probability of act
– Development is passive
– Development depends on external stimuli
THE LEARNING VIEWPOINT
• Bandura’s Cognitive Social Learning Theory
– People are active information processors
– Observational learning – observing models
– Rejects Watson’s environmental
determinism – passive recipients
– Proposed reciprocal determinism –
interaction between person, behavior, and
the environment (bidirectional links)
BOX 2.1 FOCUS ON RESEARCH: AN
EXAMPLE OF OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING
• Bandura’s classic “Bobo Doll” Study
– Demonstrated importance of observational
learning
– Demonstrated no-trial learning
– Distinguished learning from performance
•
Box 2.1 Average number of aggressive responses imitated during the performance test and the
learning test for children who had seen a model rewarded, punished, or receive no consequences
for his actions. ADAPTED FROM BANDURA, 1965.
•
Figure 2.4. Bandura’s model of reciprocal determinism. ADAPTED FROM BANDURA, 1978.
THE LEARNING VIEWPOINT
• Contributions of Learning Theories
– Wealth of information
– Very precise and testable
– Clinical insights and practical applications
including behavior modification
THE LEARNING VIEWPOINT
• Criticisms of Learning Theories
– Oversimplified, ignores contribution of
biological influences
– Children must be studied in their natural
settings to understand how environments
influence development
– Too little attention on cognitive influences
on development
COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENTAL VIEWPOINT
• Piaget’s View of Intelligence
– Intelligence: a process that helps an
organism adapt to its environment
– Scheme: organized pattern of thought or
action used to cope with or explain
experience
– Children actively construct understandings
of the world through experience
COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENTAL VIEWPOINT
• Piaget’s View of Intelligence
– Disequilibrium: contradictions between
understanding and facts
– Assimilation: interpretation of new
experiences in terms of existing schemes
– Accommodation: alter existing schemes to
account for new experiences
COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENTAL VIEWPOINT
• Piaget’s View of Intelligence
– Four Stages of Cognitive Development
• Sensorimotor (0-2)
• Preoperational (2-7)
• Concrete-operational (7-11/12)
• Formal operational (11/12 – beyond)
– Invariant developmental sequence
•
Table 2.3 Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENTAL VIEWPOINT
• Piaget’s Viewpoint
– Contributions
• Legitimized study of children’s thinking
• Contributed to new area of social
cognition
• Strong impact on education
COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENTAL VIEWPOINT
• Piaget’s Viewpoint
– Criticisms
• Underestimated young children’s
intellectual capacities
• Training can improve performance on
tasks, challenging assumption that
individualized discovery learning is best
COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENTAL VIEWPOINT
• Sociocultural Influences: Vygotsky’s viewpoint
– How is culture transmitted from generation
to generation?
– Cognitive growth is a socially mediated
activity
– Not all children progress through same
stages of cognitive growth, some are
culturally specific
COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENTAL VIEWPOINT
• The Information-Processing Viewpoint
– The mind is like a computer, information
flows in, is operated on, and is converted
to output (answers etc.)
– Cognitive development
• Changes in brain and mental processes
• Due to both maturation and experience
• Is continuous, NOT stagelike
COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENTAL VIEWPOINT
• Information-Processing Viewpoint
– Contributions
• Insights on growth of cognitive abilities
• Filled gaps in Piaget’s theory
• Know how children approach problems
• Know why they make errors
• Can suggest strategies to improve
performance
COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENTAL VIEWPOINT
• Information-Processing Perspective
– Criticisms
• May not reflect thinking in everyday life
• Computer model may underestimate the
richness/diversity of cognition
– Both are being addressed by researchers
THE ETHOLOGICAL (OR EVOLUTIONARY)
VIEWPOINT
• Ethology: scientific study of evolutionary basis
of behavior and the contributions of evolved
responses to survival and development
– Assumptions of Classical Ethology:
• Born with biologically programmed
behaviors (through natural selection)
–Products of evolution
–Adaptive to survival
THE ETHOLOGICAL (OR EVOLUTIONARY)
VIEWPOINT
• Assumptions of Ethology
– Focus on instinctual responses that
• All members of species share
• May steer individuals along similar
developmental paths
– Study subjects in natural environment
THE ETHOLOGICAL (OR EVOLUTIONARY)
VIEWPOINT
• Ethology and Human Development
– Crying (for example)
• Ensures infant’s basic needs are met
• Ensures sufficient contact to form
primary emotional attachments
– Critical periods: limited time span when
biologically prepared to display adaptive
patterns of development, given right input
THE ETHOLOGICAL (OR EVOLUTIONARY)
VIEWPOINT
• Ethology and Human Development
– Sensitive periods:
• Optimal time for emergence of behaviors
• Particularly sensitive to environmental
influences
• Development can occur outside a
sensitive period, but is more difficult
THE ETHOLOGICAL (OR EVOLUTIONARY)
VIEWPOINT
• Contributions
– Children have adaptive, genetically
preprogrammed characteristics that
influence development
– Value of studying human development in
normal, everyday settings
– Value of comparing human development
with that of other species
THE ETHOLOGICAL (OR EVOLUTIONARY)
VIEWPOINT
• Criticisms
– Difficult to test
– Is a retrospective explanation of
development, little ability to predict
– Learning tends to modify most biological
predispositions
THE ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS VIEWPOINT
• Bronfenbrenner – ecological systems theory:
a detailed analysis of environmental
influences
– Contexts for Development
• Natural environments are the major
source of influence for development
• Environment is a set of nested
structures
•
Figure 2.5. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model of the environment as a series of nested structures.
The microsystem refers to relations between the child and the immediate environment, the
mesosystem to connections among the child’s immediate settings, the exosystem to social settings
that affect but do not contain the child, and the macrosystem to the overarching ideology of the
culture. BASED ON BRONFENBRENNER, 1979.
THE ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS VIEWPOINT
• Bronfenbrenner’s Contexts for Development
– Microsystem: activities/interactions in the
immediate surroundings
– Mesosystem: connections between
microsystems
– Exosystem: contexts children are not a part
of but which may influence development
THE ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS VIEWPOINT
• Bronfenbrenner’s Contexts for Development
– Macrosystem: context in which other
systems are imbedded
– Chronosystem: changes in the child or any
of the other systems can affect the
direction of development
THE ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS VIEWPOINT
• Contributions
– Rich description of environment
– Need to study development in natural
settings
– Suggests ways to optimize development
• Criticisms
– Little on specific biological contributors
– Lack of focus on normative development
THEORIES AND WORLD VIEWS
• World View – broader philosophical
assumptions
– Mechanistic model: people are machines
• Collections of behaviors that can be
decomposed
• Passive – change due to outside
influences
• Change is gradual or continuous
THEORIES AND WORLD VIEWS
• Organismic Model
– People are like other living organisms
• Whole beings who are more than a
collection of parts
• Active in development
• Developing through discontinuous
stages
THEORIES AND WORLD VIEWS
• Contextual Model
– Development is a result of the interplay
between person and environment
• People and the environment are active
• There are universal and unique aspects
• Change is qualitative AND quantitative
• Development can take different paths
• Today: eclectic – use many theories
•
Table 2.4 A summary of the Philosophies Underlying Seven Major Developmental Perspectives