Chapter 2THEORIES 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