THEORIES OF HUMAN

DEVELOPMENT

Chapter 2
Developmental Psychology
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 The Nature of Scientific Theories
• Scientific Theory a set of concepts and propositions designed
to organize, describe, and explain an existing set of
observations.
• empirical observations is far more useful than a theory that
requires many more principles and assumptions to explain
the same number of observations.
• Falsifiability a criterion for evaluating the scientific merit of
theories. A theory is falsifiable when it is capable of
generating predictions that could be disconfirmed.
• Good theories are falsifiable—that is, capable of making
obvious predictions about future events so that the theory
can be supported or disconfirmed.
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 PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES

1. Freud Psychosexual developmental stages

2. Erikson psycho-soical Developmental stages
3. Baumrind’s Parenting Styles theory:
4. Piaget Cognitive Development
5. Ainsworth’s Strange Situation theory
6. Kohlberg Moral Development

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 Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
Oral Stage: Birth to 18 Months
Anal Stage: 18 months to three years
Phallic stage: 3 years to 7-8 years
Latency Stage: 7-8 years to puberty
Genital Stage- Puberty to Adulthood
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ERIKSON CRISES DEVELOPMENT
• Crises Resolution and Development
• Epigenetic Principle
• Eight Stages
1. Basic Trust vs. Mistrust
2. Autonomy versus shame/dependence
3. Initiative vs. self-guilt
4. Industry vs. inferiority
5. Identity vs. confusion/identity crisis
6. Intimacy vs. isolation
7. Generativity vs. stagnation
8. Integrity vs. despair
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Erikson’s Life-Span Development Theory

 Development proceeds in
stages
 Each stage is characterized by
a psychosocial challenge or
crisis
 Stages reflect the motivation of
the individual
 Erik Erikson’s Eight Stages of Human
Development

8 - Integrity vs. despair

7 - Generativity vs. stagnation
6 - Intimacy vs. isolation
5 - Identity vs. identity confusion
4 - Industry vs. inferiority
3 - Initiative vs. guilt
2 - Autonomy vs. shame and doubt
1 - Trust vs. mistrust
 Erikson’s Human Development Stages

1 - Trust vs. Mistrust Developed through

0–1 years consistent love and
support

2 - Autonomy vs. Independence fostered

Shame and Doubt by support and
1–3 years encouragement

3 - Initiative vs. Guilt Developed by exploring

3–5 years and accepting challenges
 Erikson’s Human Development Stages

4 - Industry vs. Mastery comes from

Inferiority success and recognition
6 years–puberty
5 - Identity vs. Role Exploration of different
Confusion paths to attain a healthy
Adolescence identity

6 - Intimacy vs. Form positive, close

Isolation relationships with others
Early adult years
 Erikson’s Human Development Stages

7 - Generativity vs. Transmitting

Stagnation something positive to
Middle Adulthood the next generation

8 - Integrity vs. Despair Life review and

Late Adulthood retrospective
evaluation of one’s
past
Strategies for Erikson’s Stages of Development

Initiative
 Encourage social play
 Have children assume responsibility
 Structure assignments for success
Industry
 Nourish motivation for mastery
 Be tolerant of honest mistakes
Identity
 Recognize that identity is multidimensional
 Encourage independent thinking
 Stimulate students to examine different
perspectives
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The Baumrind Theory of Parenting
Styles

• During the 1970s, Diana Baumrind

conducted extensive studies of parent-
child interactions in the home.
• Baumrind developed the theory that there
were four main types of parenting styles
and that differences
• parenting styles accounted for the way
children functioned socially, emotionally
and cognitively.

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 Four Dimensions, Four Styles
• Baumrind's felt that there were four dimensions of parent-
child interactions:
1. "Parental control" is related to such issues as enforcing
rules.
2. "Maturity demand" is the parental expectation that
children perform up to their potential.
3. "Clarity of communication" reflects the parents’
willingness to communicate with their children, solicit
their opinions and use reasoning to obtain the desired
behavior.
4. "Nurturance" is related to parental expressions of
warmth and approval, and protection of children’s
physical and emotional well-being.

Using these four dimensions, Baumrind identified four

parenting styles: authoritative, authoritarian, permissive-
indulgent and permissive-uninvolved.
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 Baumrind’s Parenting Styles

Neglectful Authoritarian
Parents are uninvolved. Parents are restrictive and
Children have poor self- punitive. Children tend to
control, don’t handle be socially incompetent,
independence well, and low anxious, and exhibit poor
achievement motivation. communication skills.

Indulgent Authoritative
Parents are highly involved Parents are nurturing
but set few restrictions. (encouragement) and
Children have poor self- supportive, yet set limits.
control. Children are self-reliant, get
along with peers, and have
high self-esteem.
 Bronfenbrenner’s Contexts for
Development
• assuming that natural environments are the major source of influence on
developing persons
• ecological systems theory Bronfenbrenner’s model emphasizing that the
developing person is surrounded in a series of environmental systems that
interact with one another and with the person to influence development.
1. The Microsystem
His inner most environmental layer, or microsystem, refers to the activities and
interactions that occur in the person’s immediate surroundings. For most young
infants, the microsystem may be limited to the family. Yet, this system eventually
becomes much more complex as children are exposed to day care, preschool
classes, youth groups, and neighborhood playmates. Children are influenced
by the people in their microsystems. In addition, their own biologically and
socially influenced characteristics—their habits, temperaments, physical
characteristics, and capabilities—influence the behavior of companions (that is, their
microsystem) as well.

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The second of Bronfenbrenner’s environmental layers, or mesosystem, refers to the
connections or interrelationships among such microsystems as homes, schools,
and peer groups.
Bronfenbrenner argues that development is likely to be optimized by strong, supportive
links between microsystems.

For example, youngsters who have established secure and pleasant relationships
with parents are especially inclined to be accepted by peers and to enjoy close,
supportive friendships during childhood and adolescence A child’s ability to learn
at school depends on the quality of instruction that his teachers provide and also on
the extent to which parents value academic activities and consult or cooperate with
teachers

Non-supportive links between microsystems can spell trouble.

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• exosystem, consists of contexts that children and adolescents are not a part of
but that may nevertheless influence their development. For example, parents’
work environments are an exosystem influence.
• Children’s emotional relationships at home may be influenced considerably by
whether or not their parents enjoy their work .Similarly, children’s experiences in
school may also be affected by their exosystem—by a social integration plan
adopted by the school board, or by a factory closing in their community that
results in a decline in the school’s revenue.

• macrosystem—that is, a cultural, subcultural, or social class context in which

microsystems, mesosystems, and exosystems are fixed. The macrosystem is
really a broad, overarching ideology that dictates (among other things) how
children should be treated, what they should be taught, and the goals for which
they should strive

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 Jean Piaget (pee-ah-ZHAY)
• (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist who became
leading theorist in 1930’s
• Developmental psychologist who introduced a 4
stage theory of cognitive development
• Believed these stages were BIOLOGICAL and
occurred in same order but environment &
culture could change how fast we progress
through them.
• Believed that children actively try to make
sense out of their environment rather than
passively soaking up information about the
world.
 Schemas (A cognitive structure)
• Concepts or mental frameworks that people
use to organize and interpret information
• Sometimes called schemes. A person’s
“picture of the world an organized pattern
of thought or
• action that a child constructs to make sense
of some aspect of his or her experience;
Piaget sometimes uses the term cognitive
structures as a replacement for schemes.”.
 Assimilation
• Interpreting a new experience within
the context of one’s existing schemas
• The new experience is similar to
other previous experiences
 Accommodation

• Interpreting a new experience by

adapting or changing one’s existing
schemas
• The new experience is so novel the
person’s schemata must be changed
to accommodate it
Assimilation/Accommodation
Assimilation/Accommodation
 Assimilation/Accommodation
As children assimilate new information and experiences, they eventually change their
way of thinking to accommodate new knowledge
 Piaget’s Approach

• Primary method was to ask children to solve

problems and to question them about the
reasoning behind their solutions
• Discovered that children think in radically
different ways than adults
• Proposed that development occurs as a series
of ‘stages’ differing in how the world is
understood
 Piaget’s 4 Cognitive Developmental
Stages
1. Sensorimotor stage,
– from birth to age 2
2. Preoperational stage,
– from age 2 to age 7
3. Concrete operational stage,
– from age 7 to age 11
4. Formal operational stage,
– begins during adolescence and continues into
adulthood.
• Each new stage represents a fundamental shift
in how the child thinks and understands the
world
 Sensorimotor Stage (birth – 2)
• Information is gained directly through
the senses and motor actions
• In this stage child perceives and
manipulates but does not reason
• Symbols become internalized through
language development
• Object permanence is acquired - the
understanding that an object continues
to exist even if it can’t be seen
 Object Permanence
• The awareness that things continue to exist even when
they cannot be sensed
• Occurs as babies gain experience with objects, as their
memory abilities improve, and as they develop mental
representations of the world, which Piaget called
schemas
• Before 6 months infants act as if objects removed from
sight cease to exist
– Can be surprised by disappearance/reappearance of a
face (peek-a-boo)
– “Out of sight, out of mind”
Object Permanence
 Preoperational Stage (2–7 years)
• The word operations refers to logical, mental activities; thus,
the preoperational stage is a prelogical stage
• Children can understand language but not logic
• Emergence of symbolic thought - ability to use words, images,
and symbols to represent the world.
• Centration - tendency to focus, or center, on only one aspect of
a situation, usually a perceptual aspect, and ignore other
relevant aspects of the situation
• Egocentrism - inability to take another person’s perspective or
point of view
• Lack the concept of conservation - which holds that two equal
quantities remain equal even if the appearance of one is
changed, as long as nothing is added or subtracted
• Irreversibility - child cannot mentally reverse a sequence of
events or logical operations back to the starting point
 Egocentrism

• The child’s inability to take another

person’s point of view
– Child on the phone says, “See the
picture I drew for you Grandpa!” and
shows the picture to the phone.
• Includes a child’s inability to
understand that symbols can
represent other objects
 Conservation

• An understanding that certain

properties remain constant despite
changes in their form

• The properties can include mass,

volume, and numbers.
 Concrete Operational Stage
(7–12 years)
• Ability to think logically about concrete
objects and situations
• Child can now understand conservation
• Classification and categorization
• Less egocentric
• Inability to reason abstractly or
hypothetically
 Formal Operational Stage
(age 12 – adulthood)
• Ability to think logically about abstract
principles and hypothetical situations
• Hypothetico-deductive reasoning (What if….
problems)
• Adolescent egocentrism illustrated by the
phenomenon of personal fable and
imaginary audience
KOHLBERG'S SIX STAGES OF MORAL
DEVELOPMENT
 Level 1. Preconventional Morality
• Stage 1. Obedience and Punishment
Orientation. Kohlberg's stage 1 is similar to
Piaget's first stage of moral thought. The child
assumes that powerful authorities hand
down a fixed set of rules which he or she
must unquestioningly obey.
 Stage 1. Obedience and Punishment
Orientation.
• The View is "It's against the law," or "It's bad
to steal," as if this were all there were to it.
When asked to elaborate, the child usually
responds in terms of the consequences
involved, explaining that stealing is bad
"because you'll get punished" (Kohlberg,
1958b).
Stage 2. Individualism and Exchange.
• This stage children recognize that there is not
just one right view that is handed down by the
authorities. Different individuals have
different viewpoints.
• At stage 1 punishment is tied up in the child's
mind with wrongness; punishment "proves"
that disobedience is wrong. At stage 2, in
contrast, punishment is simply a risk that one
naturally wants to avoid.
 Level II. Conventional Morality
• Stage 3. Good Interpersonal Relationships. At this
stage children--who are by now usually entering
their teens--see morality as more than simple deals.
They believe that people should live up to the
expectations of the family and community and
behave in "good" ways. Good behavior means
having good motives and interpersonal feelings such
as love, empathy, trust, and concern for others.
Stage 4. Maintaining the Social Order.
• Stage 3 reasoning works best in two-person
relationships with family members or close friends,
where one can make a real effort to get to know the
other's feelings and needs and try to help. At stage
4, in contrast, the respondent becomes more broadly
concerned with society as a whole. Now the
emphasis is on obeying laws, respecting authority,
and performing one's duties so that the social order
is maintained.
 Level III. Postconventional Morality
• Stage 5. Social Contract and Individual Rights. At
stage 5, people begin to ask, "What makes for a
good society?" They begin to think about society in a
very theoretical way, stepping back from their own
society and considering the rights and values that a
society ought to uphold. They then evaluate existing
societies in terms of these prior considerations.
 Stage 5. Social Contract and Individual
Rights.
• Stage 5 subjects,- then, talk about "morality"
and "rights" that take some priority over
particular laws. Kohlberg insists, however,
that we do not judge people to be at stage 5
merely from their verbal labels. We need to
look at their social perspective and mode of
reasoning.
 Stage 6: Universal Principles.
• Kohlberg believes that there must be a higher stage--stage 6--
which defines the principles by which we achieve justice.
Kohlberg's
• the principles of justice require us to treat the claims of all
parties in an impartial manner, respecting the basic dignity,
of all people as individuals. The principles of justice are
therefore universal; they apply to all. Thus, for example, we
would not vote for a law that aids some people but hurts
others. The principles of justice guide us toward decisions
based on an equal respect for all.