Childhood Development and Learning Flashcards
Give some examples of common infant behaviors that illustrate some salient aspects of the Sensorimotor stage of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development
From birth until about 2 years of age, infants are in what Piaget termed the Sensorimotor stage of cognitive development. They learn through environmental input they receive through their senses; motor actions they engage in; and through feedback they receive from their bodies and the environment about their actions. For example, a baby kicks his legs, sees his feet moving, and reaches for them. He sees objects, reaches for them, and grasps them. Eventually, babies learn they can make some objects move by touching or hitting them. They learn through repeated experiences that when they throw objects out of their cribs, their parents retrieve them. They will seem to make a game of this, not to annoy parents, but as a way of learning rules of cause and effect by repeating actions to see the same results. They also enjoy their ability to be causal agents and their power to achieve effects through their actions.
Name and describe the first three substages of the Sensorimotor period of cognitive development according to Piaget’s theory, including some examples.
From birth to 1 month old, infants learn to comprehend their
environment through their inborn reflexes, such as the sucking reflex
and the reflex of looking at their surroundings. From 1-4 months old,
babies begin to coordinate their physical sensations with new schemas,
i.e. mental constructs/concepts they form to represent elements of
reality. For example, an infant might suck her thumb by chance and feel
pleasure from the activity; in the future, she will repeat thumb-sucking
because the pleasure is rewarding. Piaget called this second substage
“Primary Circular Reactions.” In the third substage, around 4-8 months,
which he called “Secondary Circular Reactions,” children also repeat
rewarding actions, but now they are focused on things in the
environment that they can affect, rather than just the child’s own person.
For example, once a baby learns to pick up an object and mouth it, s/he
will repeat this. Thus, babies learn an early method of environmental
exploration through their mouths, an extension of their initial sucking
reflex.
Define the term “object permanence” according to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. Identify the usual age when it emerges and give examples.
One of the landmarks of infant cognitive development is learning that concrete objects are not “out of sight, out of mind”; in other words, things still continue to exist even when they are out of our sight. Babies generally develop this realization around 8-9 months old, though some may be earlier or later. Some researchers after Piaget have found object permanence in babies as young as 3½ months. Younger infants typically attend to an object of interest only when they can see it; if it is removed or hidden, they are upset/confused at its disappearance and/or shift their attention to something else. A sign that they have developed object permanence is if they search for the object after it is moved or hidden. Babies only become interested in “hide and seek” types of games once they have developed this understanding that the existence of objects and people persist beyond their immediate vision or proximity. Another example of emerging object permanence is the delight babies begin to take in “peek-a-boo” games.
Define the term “schema” in Piaget’s cognitive
developmental theory. Explain how schemata (pl.)
develop in infants, including definitions of assimilation, accommodation, adaptation, and an
example
Piaget proposed we form mental constructs or concepts that he called schemata, representing elements of the environment, beginning in infancy. A schema does not represent an individual object, but a category or class of things. For example, a baby might form a schema representing “things to suck on,” initially including her bottle, her thumb, and her pacifier. Piaget said assimilation is when we can fit something new into an existing schema: the child in this example assimilates “Daddy’s knee” into her schema of things she can suck on when she discovers this action. When something new cannot be assimilated into an existing schema, we either modify that schema or form a new schema, which both constitute accommodation. The baby in our example, becoming a toddler, might modify her schema of things to suck to include straws, which require a different sucking technique. Piaget said assimilation and accommodation combined constitute the process of adaptation, i.e. adjusting, to our environment through interacting with it.
Name and describe the last three substages of Piaget’s Sensorimotor stage of cognitive development, including some examples.
According to Piaget, babies about 8-12 months are in the “Coordination of Reactions” substage of the Sensorimotor stage. Having begun repeating actions purposely to achieve environmental effects during the previous substage of Secondary Circular Reactions, in Coordination of Reactions, infants begin further exploring their surroundings. They frequently imitate others’ observed behaviors. They more obviously demonstrate intentional behaviors. They become able to combine schemas (mental constructs) to attain certain results. They develop object permanence, the understanding that unseen objects still exist. They learn to associate certain objects with their properties. For example, once a baby realizes a rattle makes a noise when shaken, s/he will deliberately shake it to produce the sound. In “Tertiary Circular Reactions,” at about 12-18 months, children begin experimenting through trial-and-error. For instance, a child might test various actions or sounds for getting parents’ attention. From 18-24 months, in the substage of “Early Representational Thought,” children begin representing objects and events with symbols. They begin to understand the world via not only actions, but mental operations.
A toddler on an airplane sees a nearby stranger who is
male, about 5’8”, with white hair and eyeglasses. Both of his grandfathers have these same general appearances. He murmurs to himself, “Hi, Granddaddy.” Explain this according to Piaget’s concept of the schema in his cognitive-developmental
theory.
The toddler in this example did not actually mistake a complete stranger for either one of his grandfathers. Notice that he did not directly address the stranger as “Granddaddy” with conversational loudness, but murmured it to himself. He recognized this man was not someone he knew. However, he recognized common elements with his grandfathers in the man’s appearance. According to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, the explanation for this is that the child had formed a schema, i.e. a mental construct, to represent men about 5’8” with white hair and eyeglasses, based initially on his early knowledge of two such men he knew, his grandfathers, and then extending to include other similar-appearing men, through the process of assimilation of new information into an existing schema. His description did not mean he thought the stranger was named “Granddaddy.” Rather, the word
“Granddaddy” was not only the name he called one grandfather, but also the word he used to label his schema for all men who appeared to fit into this category.
A toddler sees a large, brown dog through the window and says, “Moo.” Explain this according to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.
Piaget found that forming schemas, or mental constructs to represent objects and actions, is how babies and children learn about themselves and the world through their interactions with their bodies and the environment. If they can fit a new experience into an existing schema, they assimilate it; or when necessary, they change an existing schema or form a new one to accommodate a new stimulus. Therefore, in this example, the toddler had seen cows in picture books, photos, or on a farm, and learned to associate the sound “Moo” with cows, reinforced by the teaching of toys, books, and adults. She had formed a schema for large, brown, four-legged, furry animals. Because the dog she saw fit these properties, she assimilated the dog into her cow schema. If she were then told this was a dog that says “Bow-wow,” she would either form a new schema for dogs; or, if she had previously only seen smaller dogs, accommodate (modify) her existing dog schema to include larger dogs.
Define the term “conservation” regarding the
properties of objects in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. Identify its approximate age of
emergence according to Piaget. Give two examples of conservation experiments demonstrating absence or
presence of conservation.
Conservation is the cognitive ability to understand that objects or substances retain their properties of numbers or amounts even when their appearance, shape, or configuration changes. Piaget found from his experiments with children that this ability develops around the age of five years. He also found children develop conservation of number, length, mass, weight, volume, and quantity respectively at slightly different ages. One example of a conservation experiment is with liquid volume: the experimenter pours the same amount of liquid into a short, wide container and a tall, thin one. Children who have not developed conservation of liquid volume typically say one container has more liquid, even though they saw both amounts were equal, based on one container’s looking fuller. Similarly, children who have not developed conservation of number, shown equal numbers of beads, usually say a group arranged in a long row has more beads than a group clustered together. Children having developed conservation recognize the amounts are the same regardless of appearance.
Identify some key differences between Piaget’s Preoperational and Concrete Operational stages of cognitive development in children, including some general examples.
Piaget called the stage of most children aged 2-6 years Preoperational because children these ages cannot yet perform mental operations, i.e. manipulate information mentally. At around 6-7 years old, children begin to develop Concrete Operations. A key aspect of this stage is the ability to think logically. This ability first develops relative to concrete objects and events. Concrete Operational children still have trouble understanding abstract concepts or hypothetical situations, but they can apply logical sequences and cause and effect to things they can see, feel, and manipulate physically. For example, Concrete Operational children develop the understanding that things have the same amount or number regardless of their shape or arrangement, which Piaget termed conservation. They develop proficiency in inductive logic, i.e. drawing generalizations from specific instances. However, deductive logic, i.e. predicting specific results according to general principles, is not as well-developed until the later stage of Formal Operations involving abstract thought. Another key development of Concrete Operations is reversibility, i.e. the ability to reverse an action or operation.
Identify the approximate age range of Piaget’s Preoperational stage of cognitive development. Discuss the two key Preoperational aspects of
symbolic representation and egocentrism.
Children between (roughly) two and six years old are in Piaget's Preoperational stage of cognitive development. Having begun to use objects to represent other things, i.e. symbolic representation, near the end of the previous Sensorimotor stage, children now further develop this ability during pretend/make-believe play. They may pretend a broom is a guitar or a horse; or talk using a block as a phone. Toddlers begin to play "house," pretending they and their playmates are the mommy, the daddy, the mailman, the doctor, etc. The reason Piaget called this stage Preoperational is that children are not yet capable of performing mental "operations," including following concrete logic or manipulating information mentally. Their thinking is intuitive rather than following logical steps. Piaget termed Preoperational children "egocentric" in that they literally cannot adopt another's point of view, even concretely: in experiments, after seeing pictures of a scene as viewed from different positions, children could not match a picture to another person's position, selecting the picture showing the scene from their own viewpoint.
Explain and give examples of Piaget’s terms animism and magical thinking relative to the Preoperational stage in his theory of cognitive development.
Piaget found that children in the Preoperational stage are not yet able to perform logical mental operations. Their thinking is intuitive during the toddler and preschool years. One characteristic of the thinking of young children is animism, or assigning human qualities, feelings, and actions to inanimate objects. For example, a child seeing an autumn leaf fall off of a tree might remark, “The tree didn’t like that leaf and pushed it off of its branch.” Or a child with a sunburn might say, “The sun was angry at me and burned me.” A related characteristic is magical thinking, which is attributing cause and effect relationships between their own feelings and thoughts and environmental events where none exists. For example, if a child says “I hate you” to another person or secretly dislikes and wishes the other gone, and something bad then happens to that person, the child is likely to believe what s/he said/felt/thought caused the other’s unfortunate event. This is related to egocentrism-seeing everything as revolving around oneself.
Give an example contrasting Piaget’s Preoperational and Concrete Operations stages in the cognitive development of children, specifically regarding centration, conservation, and reversibility.
The different thinking found between Piaget’s Preoperational and Concrete Operations stages is exemplified in experiments he and others conducted to prove his theory. For example, the absence/presence of ability to conserve liquid volume across shape/appearance has been shown in experiments with differently aged children. A preschooler is shown a tall, thin beaker and a short, wide one. The experimenter also shows the child two identically sized and shaped containers with identical amounts of liquid in each. The experimenter then pours the equal amounts of liquid into the two differently shaped beakers. The preschooler will say either the thin beaker holds more liquid because it is taller or the short beaker holds more because it is wider. Piaget termed this “centration”-focusing on only one property at a time. An older child “decentrates,” can “conserve” the amount, and knows both beakers hold identical amounts. Older children also use reversibility and logic, e.g. “I know they are still equal, because I just saw you pour the same amount into each beaker.”
Identify six stages of growth and development in art and their associated age ranges.
Austrian and German art scholars established six stages in art. (1) The Scribble stage: from 2-4 years, children first make uncontrolled scribbles; then controlled scribbling; then progress to naming their scribbles to indicate what they represent. (2) The Preschematic stage: from ages 4-6, children begin to develop a visual schema. Schema, meaning mental representation, comes from Piaget’s cognitivedevelopmental theory. Without complete comprehension of dimensions and sizes, children may draw people and houses the same height; they use color more emotionally than logically. They may omit or exaggerate facial features, or they might draw sizes by importance, e.g. drawing themselves as largest among people or drawing the most important feature, e.g. the head, as the largest or only body part. (3) The Schematic stage: from 7-9 years, drawings more reflect actual physical proportions and colors. ( 4) Dawning Realism: from ages 9-11, drawings become increasingly representational. (5) Children aged 11-13 are in the Pseudorealistic stage, reflecting their ability to reason. (6) Children 14+ are in the Period of Decision stage, reflecting the adolescent identity crisis.
Explain some ways that music is involved in the development of infants and young children, and how music enhances child development.
Long before they can speak, and before they even comprehend much speech, infants respond to the sounds of voices and to music. These responses are not only to auditory stimulation, but moreover to the emotional content in what they hear. Parents sing lullabies to babies; not only are these sounds pleasant and soothing, but they also help children develop trust in their environment as secure. Parents communicate their love to children through singing and introduce them to experiences of pleasure and excitement through music. As children grow, music progresses to be not only a medium of communication but also one of self-expression as they learn to sing/play musical sounds. Music facilitates memory, as we see through commercial jingles and mnemonic devices. Experiments find music improves spatial reasoning. Children’s learning of perceptual and logical concepts like beginning/ending, sequences, cause-and-effect, balance, harmony /dissonance and mathematical number and timing concepts is reinforced by music. Music also promotes language development. Children learn about colors, counting, conceptual relationships, nature, and social skills through music.
Discuss some ways that sensory, concrete, and centration characteristics of cognitive development in young children dictate what kinds of premathematical learning experiences would benefit them.
Preschool children do not think in the same ways as older children and adults do, as Piaget observed. Their thinking is strongly based upon and connected to their sensory perceptions. This means that in solving problems, they depend mainly on how things look, sound, feel, smell, and taste. Therefore, preschool children should always be given concrete objects that they can touch, explore, and experiment with in any learning experience. They are not yet capable of understanding abstract concepts or manipulating information mentally, so they must have real things to work with to understand premath concepts. For example, they will learn to count solid objects like blocks, beads, or pennies before they can count numbers in their heads. They cannot benefit from rote math memorization, or “sit still and listen” lessons. Since young children “centrate” on one characteristic/object/person/event at a time, adults can offer activities encouraging decentration/incorporating multiple aspects, e.g. not only grouping all triangles, but grouping all red triangles separately from blue triangles.
Identify some of Viktor Lowenfeld’s background and contributions relative to the six stages of art development and to art education.
Viktor Lowenfeld (1903-1960) taught art to elementary school students and sculpture to blind students. Lowenfeld’s acquaintance with Sigmund Freud, who was interested in his work with people with visual impairments, motivated Lowenfeld to pursue scientific research. He published several books on using creative arts activities therapeutically. Lowenfeld was familiar with six stages previously identified in the growth of art He combined these with principles of human development drawn from the school of psychoanalytic psychology founded by Freud. In his adaptation, he named the six stages reflecting the development of children’s art as Scribble, Preschematic, Schematic, Dawning Realism, Pseudorealistic, and Period of Decision. Lowenfeld identified adolescent learning styles as haptic, focused on physical sensations and subjective emotional experiences, and as visual, focused on appearances, each demanding corresponding instructional approaches. Lowenfeld’s book Creative and Mental Growth (194 7) was the most influential text in art education during the later 20th century. Lowenfeld’s psychological emphasis in this text gave scientific foundations to creative and artistic expression, and identified developmentally age-appropriate art media and activities.
Describe some ways that musical activities enhance the emotional, social, aesthetic, and school readiness skills of young children.
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Young children who are just learning to use spoken language often cannot express their emotions very well verbally. Music is a great aid to emotional development in that younger children can express happiness, sadness, anger, etc., through singing and/or playing music more easily than they can with words. Children of preschool ages not only listen to music and respond to what they hear, they also learn to create music through singing and playing instruments together with other children. These activities help them learn crucial social skills for their lives, like cooperating with others, collaborating, and making group or team efforts to accomplish something. When children are given guided musical experiences, they learn to make their own judgments of what is good or bad music; this provides them with the foundations for developing an aesthetic sense. Music promotes preliteracy skills by enhancing phonemic awareness. As growing children develop musical appreciation and skills, these develop fundamental motor, cognitive, and social skills they need for language, school readiness, literacy, and life.
Describe some types of learning activities that help young children develop cognitive abilities of reversibility, accurate cause-and-effect relationships, and taking others’ perspectives.
As shown by Piaget, young children have difficulty reversing operations. Adults can ask them to build block structures, for example, and then dismantle them one block at a time to reverse the construction. They can ask children to retiell rhymes or stories backward. They can take small groups of children for walks and ask them if they can return by the same route as they came. Young children often assume causal relationships where none exist. Adults can provide activities to produce and observe results, e.g. pouring water into different containers; knocking over bowling pins by swinging a pendulum; rolling wheeled toys down ramps; or blowing balls through mazes, and then asking them, “What happened when you did this? What would happen if you did this? What could you do to make this happen?” Young children are also often egocentric, seeing everything from their own viewpoint. Adults can help them take others’ perspectives through guessing games wherein they must give each other clues to guess persons/objects and dramatic roleplaying activities, where they pretend to be others.
Describe some salient aspects of typical early childhood physical development, including brain growth.
Early childhood physical growth, while significant, is slower than infant growth. From birth to 2 years, children generally grow to four times their newborn weight and 2/3 their newborn length/height. From 2-3 years, however, children usually gain only about 4 lbs. and 3.5 inches. From 4-6 years, growth slows more; gains of 5-7 lbs. and 2.5 inches are typical. Due to slowing growth rates, 3- and 4-year-olds appear to eat less food, but do not; they actually just eat fewer calories per pound of body weight. Brain growth is still rapid in preschoolers: brains attain 55 percent of adult size by 2 years, and 90 percent by 6 years. The majority of brain growth is usually by 4-4.5 years, with a growth spurt around 2 years and growth rates slowing significantly between 5 and 6 years. Larger brain size indicates not more neurons, but larger sizes; differences in their organization; more glial cells nourishing and supporting neurons; and greater myelination (development of the sheath protecting nerve fibers and facilitating their efficient intercommunication).
Identify some gender differences in early childhood motor development and generally characterize how overall preschool physical and motor development compares between genders.
On average, preschool boys have larger muscles than preschool girls, so they can run faster, climb higher, and jump farther. Boys at these ages tend to be more muscular physically. Preschool girls, while less muscular, are on the average more mature physically for their ages than boys. While boys usually exceed girls in their large-muscle, gross-motor· abilities like running, jumping, and climbing, girls tend to surpass boys in small-muscle, fine-motor abilities like buttoning buttons, using scissors, and similar activities involving the manipulation of small tools, utensils, and objects. While preschool boys exhibit more strength in large-muscle, gross-motor actions, preschool girls are more advanced than preschool boys in large-muscle, gross-motor skills that do not demand strength so much as coordination, like hopping, balancing on one foot, and skipping. While these specific gender differences in preschoolers’ physical and motor development have been observed consistently in research, it is also found that preschool girls’ and boys’ physical and motor development patterns are generally more similar than different overall.
Identify the general abilities in perceptual development that occur in infancy. Describe additional perceptual abilities that develop in visual modality during early childhood.
In normal development, babies have usually established the ability to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel and also the ability to integrate such sensory information by the age of six months. Additional perceptual abilities, which are less obvious and more complex, continue to emerge throughout the early childhood years. For instance, young children develop increasing precision in recognizing visual concepts like size and shape. This development allows children to identify accurately the shape and size of an object no matter from what angle they perceive it. Infants have these capacities in place, but have not yet developed accuracy in using them. For example, a baby might realize that objects farther away occupy less of their visual fields than nearer objects; however, the baby has yet to learn just how much less of the visual field is taken up by the farther object. Young children attain this and similar kinds of learning by actively, energetically exploring their environments. Such activity is crucial for developing accurate perception of size, shape, and distance.
Discuss some significant signs of progress in the typical motor development of young children.
Genetics, physiological maturation, nutrition, and experience through practice combine to further preschoolers’ motor skills development. Newborns’ reflexive behaviors progress to preschoolers’ voluntary activities. Also, children’s perception of the size, shape, and position of the body and body parts becomes more accurate by preschool ages. In addition, increases in bilateral coordination of the body’s two sides enhance preschoolers’ motor skills. Motor skills development entails both learning new movements and gradually integrating previously learned movements into smooth, continuous patterns, as in learning to throw a ball with skill. Both large muscles, for gross-motor skills like climbing, running, and jumping, and small muscles, for fine-motor skills like drawing and tying knots, develop. Eye-hand coordination involves fine-motor control. Preschoolers use visual feedback, i.e. seeing whether they are making things go where and do what they want them to, in learning to manipulate small objects with their hands and fingers.
Discuss the nature-nurture interaction in early childhood physical development. Use failure to thrive syndrome as an example.
The physical development of babies and young children is a product of the interactions between genetic and environmental factors. Also, a child’s physical progress is equally influenced by environmental and psychological variables. For the body, brain, and nervous system to grow and develop normally, children must live in healthy environments. When the interaction of hereditary and environmental influences is not healthful, this is frequently reflected in abnormal patterns of growth. Failure to thrive syndrome is a dramatic example. When children are abused or neglected for long periods of time, they actually stop growing. The social environments of such children create psychological stress. This stress makes the child’s pituitary gland stop releasing growth hormones, and growth ceases. When such environmental stress is relieved and these children are given proper care, stimulation, and affection, they begin growing again. They often grow rapidly enough to catch up on the growth they missed earlier. Normal body and brain growth-as well as psychological development-depend upon the collaboration of nature and nurture.
Briefly discuss the visual perceptual aspects of interpreting pictures and eye movements of young children, including how preschoolers’ eye movements are found to differ from adult eye movements.
As adults, our ability to look at pictures of people and things in the environment is something we usually take for granted. Researchers have established that 3-year-old children’s responses indicate their ability to recognize shading, line convergence, and other cues of depth in two-dimensional pictures. However, scientists have also found that children’s sensitivity to these kinds of visual cues increases as they grow older. The eye movements and eye fixation patterns of young children affect their ability to get the most complete and accurate information from pictorial representations of reality. When viewing pictures, adults sweep the entire picture to see it as a whole, their eye movements leaping around; to focus on specific details, adults use shorter eye movements. Preschool children differ from adults in using shorter eye movements overall, and focusing on small parts of the picture near the center or an edge. They therefore disregard, or do not see, a lot of the picture’s available information.
Describe the main characteristics of the fourth and fifth stages of development according to Freud’s
psychoanalytic stage theory of development and how
these relate to children’s emotional and social development.
Each of the stages in Freud’s theory centered on an erogenous zone. Infants are in the Oral stage as they nurse; toddlers in the Anal stage as they are toilet-trained; preschoolers are in the Phallic stage as they focus on genital discovery, unconscious sexual impulses toward their opposite-sex parent, and unconscious aggressive impulses toward their same-sex parent, and resolving conflicts over these urges. Freud labeled he stage when children are six years old to puberty the Latency stage. During this time, children begin school. They are occupied with making new friends, developing new social skills; participating in learning, developing new academic skills; and learning school rules, developing acceptable societal behaviors. Freud said that children in the Latency stage repress their sexual impulses, deferring them while developing their cognitive and social skills takes priority. Thus, sexuality is latent. From puberty on, children are in Freud’s Genital stage, when sexuality reemerges with physical maturation and adolescents are occupied with developing intimate relationships with others.
Identify a few of the ego defense mechanisms described by Sigmund Freud in his psychoanalytic theory of development using examples related to early childhood behaviors.
Freud identified and described many ego defense mechanisms in his theory. He said these are ways the ego finds to cope with impulses threatening it, and hence the person. Just a few of these that can be apparent in young children’s behavior include the following. Regression-for example, if a child has received parental attention exclusively for four years, but then the parents introduce a new baby, not only is parental attention divided between two children, but the baby naturally needs and gets more attention by being a helpless infant If the child feels displaced/threatened by the younger sibling, s/he may regress from normal four-year-old behaviors to more infantile ones in a bid for similar attention. Projection-if a child feels threatened by experiencing inner aggressive impulses, e.g. hating another person, s/he may project these feelings onto that person, accusing, “You hate me!” Denial-if a child cannot accept feelings triggered by losing a loved one through divorce or death, s/he may deny reality: “S/he will come back.”
Summarize similarities and two key differences between Freud’s and Erikson’s developmental theories. Name and describe the first stage of childhood psychosocial development according to Erik Erikson’s theory.
Erikson’s theory was based on Freud’s, but whereas Freud’s focus was psychosexual, Erikson’s was psychosocial. Both emphasized early parent-child relationships. Freud believed the personality was essentially formed in childhood and proposed five stages through puberty and none thereafter; Erikson depicted lifelong development through nine stages. Each stage centers on a “nuclear conflict” to resolve, with positive/negative outcomes of successful/unsuccessful resolutions. Erikson’s first, infancy stage (birth-18 months) is Basic Trust vs. Mistrust. When an infant’s basic needs-such as being fed, changed, bathed, held/cuddled, having discomfort relieved, and receiving attention, affection, and interaction are met sufficiently and consistently, the baby develops basic trust in the world, gaining a sense of security, confidence, and optimism. The positive outcomes are hope and drive; negative outcomes are withdrawal and sensory distortion. If infant needs are inadequately and/or inconsistently met, the baby develops basic mistrust, with a sense of insecurity, worthlessness, and pessimism.
Name and describe the third stage in Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory of human development.
Each of Erikson’s nine developmental stages involves a “nuclear crisis” the individual must resolve; success or failure results in positive or negative outcomes. Babies develop basic trust or mistrust; toddlers develop autonomy or shame and self-doubt. Erikson’s third stage, Initiative vs. Guilt, involves preschoolers. At this age, young children are exploring the environment further commensurately with their increasing physical/motor, cognitive, emotional, and social skills. They exercise imagination in make-believe/pretend play and pursue adventure. Having gained some control over their bodies in the previous stage, they now attempt to exercise control over their environments. When they succeed in this stage, the positive outcomes are purpose and direction. Children who receive adult disapproval for exerting control over their surroundings-either because they try to use too much control or because parents are overly controlling-feel guilt. Negative outcomes include excessive inhibition against taking action or ruthless, inconsiderate behavior at the opposite extreme.
