Unit 1: Theories Flashcards
(26 cards)
What are the two primary goals of developmental psychology?
1) Nurture vs Nature: understanding the biological and cultural processes that account for the complexities of development
2) to devise ways to safeguard/improve children’s health and well-being
What are the five divisions / phases of life according to developmental psychologists?
- prenatal (conception to birth)
- infancy (0-2)
- early childhood (2-6)
- middle childhood (6-12)
- Adolescence (12-18)
What are the four domains of development?
1) social
2) emotional
3) cognitive
4) physical
What were the philosophical theories of Plato and Aristotle on development?
Plato - Nature
Children are born with an innate knowledge of abstractions (courage, love, goodness) and a child’s sensory experience triggers the knowledge they have had since birth
Aristotle - Nurture
Knowledge is rooted in a child’s perceptual experience and that they acquire knowledge piece by piece
What was Thomas Hobbe’s theory on development?
Hobbes - Nature (authoritarian)
Children are born evil and stubborn and must be civilized.
Parents must actively control their children - not uncommon for children to be beaten
What was Jean Jacque Rousseau’s theory on development?
Rousseau - Nature
Children are born with an inherent sense of right and wrong
Rather than constraining a child with rules, parents should give their children the freedom to follow their positive inclinations
Emphasized the value of caregivers who are responsive to their child’s needs
What was John Locke’s theory on development?
Locke - Nurture
Belief that children are a “Tabula Rasa” aka blank slate and believed that nurture was key to a child’s healthy development = parent should mould a child into a decent human being
What was Charles Darwin’s theory on development and how did he contribute to the study of developmental psychology?
Darwin - Nature
Best known for his theory of evolution
Argued that individuals differ where some are better adapted to a particular environment, making them more likely to survive and pass along their traits to future generations
Darwin made observations of children in Baby Biographies and published his son’s development
Weakness: highly subjective, single case
What was Stanley G Hall’s contribution to developmental psychology?
Popularized the normative approach where measures of behaviour are taken on large numbers of individuals and age-related averages are computed to represent typical development EX. when a child starts to walk
- One of the first researchers to view adolescence as a unique phase between childhood and adulthood
What are the five recurring themes in childhood development?
1) Source of Development
Nurture vs Nature
2) Plasticity:
To what degree and under what conditions is development open to change and intervention
Critical Periods: a period where a specific biological or environmental event are required for normal development to occur
Konrad Lorenz: Study of imprinting with baby ducks
3) Continuity / Discontinuity:
Continuous (quantitative) = involves gradual accumulation of small changes EX. starfish grows overtime
Discontinuity (qualitative): series of abrupt, radical transformations EX. butterfly
children have a mix of both
4) Active vs Passive:
Active: to what extent do children’s actions shape their own development
Passive: How responsible are parents for their child’s actions
5) Individual Differences:
What combination of nurture vs nature makes children different from one another
What is Psychodynamic Theory?
The idea that we progress through stages of development where we are faced with conflicts between our biological wants and social expectations.
What is Sigmund Freud’s Psychosexual Theory?
The idea that our personality develops through a series of stages centered on the erogenous zones / pleasure seeking zones:
1) Oral (0-1)
2) Anal (1-3) - potty training
3) Phallic (3-7) - recognizes opposite sex
4) Latency (7-11) - dormant sexual feelings
5) Genital (12-adulthood) - Active sexual feelings
What is a key criticism of Sigmund Freud?
He did not study children directly - he drew his hypotheses from his work with his adult clients.
What is Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory?
Theory proposes that our personality develops through a series of conflicts as a result of the interaction between maturation and our social/cultural environment.
1) Trust vs Mistrust (0-1)
2) Autonomy vs Shame (1-3)
3) Initiative vs Guilt (3-6)
4) Industry vs Inferiority (6-adolescence)
5) Identity vs. Confusion (adolescence - adulthood)
What is the theory of behaviourism?
The theory that focuses on learning rather than on internal mental processes. Stresses that behaviour is shaped by reinforcement and punishment.
Who is John Watson and what was his experiment?
John Watson was the first to apply John Locke’s view that the child’s mind is tabula rasa (blank slate) and focused his research on classical conditioning.
Experiment: conditioning a distress response in little albert by pairing a white rat with a loud noise
Who is BF Skinner and was his theory on behaviour?
BF Skinner’s research was based on operant conditioning and believed that the consequences of behaviour determines whether that behaviour is repeated.
What is Piaget’s Constructivist Theory?
Idea that children acquire knowledge by manipulating and interacting with their world. Children move through universal stages which leads them to acquiring more knowledge and becoming more logical in their thinking:
1) Sensorimotor Stage (0-2) - object permanence
2) Preoperational Stage (2-7) - imaginative thinking, egocentrism, lacking conservation
3) Concrete operational stage (7-11) - increased logical thinking, understands conservation and reversibility
4) Formal Operational Thinking (12+) - abstract thinking, moral reasoning, hypothetical reasoning etc.
What is Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory?
Idea that a child’s cultural background shapes their development - first theorist to propose this.
What are the four primary modern theories on development?
1) Evolutionary Theory
2) Social Learning Theory
3) Information Processing Theory
4) Ecological Theory
What is the Evolutionary Theory of Development?
The idea that there is adaptive value to human traits that we acquire through our development.
Ex. Crying from baby ensures its survival
What is the Social Learning Theory of Development?
Modern take on behaviourism which highlights the direct and indirect experiences to learning that occurs from observing others behaviour and the consequences.
What is the information processing theory of development?
Focus on a child’s cognitive development by equating similar processes to that of a computer (storing, retrieving and manipulating information). Views children as actively making sense of their experiences and as modifying their own thinking in response to environmental demands.
What is the ecological systems theory ?
Proposed by Bronfenbrenner that children are embedded in a series of complex and interacting systems:
1) microsphere : immediate environments
2) mesosphere: interaction of microspheres
3) exosphere: influence of secondary environments
4) macrosphere: values, laws and cutoms in the child’s environment
5) Chronosphere: systems are changing and are constantly in flux
