ERIK ERIKSON – PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT Eight stages of personality development

Trust vs. mistrustAutonomy vs. shame and doubt Initiative vs. guilt Industry vs. inferiority Identity vs. role confusion Intimacy vs. isolationGenerativity vs. stagnationEgo integrity vs. despair

ERIK ERIKSON – PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT Trust vs. mistrust (to 1 year)

Infants come to trust that their parents will meet their needs

If needs are met, they come to trust environment and themselves; if not, mistrust and fear develop.

Autonomy vs. shame and doubt (1-3) Children gain increasing autonomy. They learn to

walk, hold onto things, and control themselves. If they repeatedly fail to master these skills, self-

doubt may take root. If their efforts are belittled by adults, shame and a

lasting sense of inferiority may develop

ERIK ERIKSON – PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT Initiative vs. guilt (3-6)

Children undertake new projects, make plans, and conquer new challenges.

Parental encouragement for these initiatives leads to a sense of joy in exercising initiative and tackling new challenges.

If children are scolded for these initiatives, strong feelings of guilt, unworthiness, and resentment may take hold

ERIK ERIKSON – PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT Industry vs. inferiority (6-12)

Children learn the skills needed to become well-rounded adults, including personal care, productive work, and independent social living

If children are stifled in their efforts to become competent and industrious, they may conclude that they are inadequate and lose faith in their power to become self-sufficient

PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

According to Piaget, children progress in their thinking through the complementary processes of assimilation and accommodation

Assimilation – Interpreting one’s new experience in terms of one’s existing schemas A 2 year old whose simple schema for dog

is four legged animalThis does not work for the catsThe toddler must accommodate or

modify her schema

PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Accommodation – Adapting one’s current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information The toddler now realizes that not all four legged

animals are dogs Helpful Mneumonic – Some People Can’t

Formally Operate

PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT Sensory-Motor Stage (birth to 2

years)Object permanence – awareness that

objects continue to exist even when out of sight An important outcome Hiding a toy - If the baby looks around you

to find the toy, they have developed this goal

Mental Representation – they can even imagine the movement of an object that they do not actually see move Another important outcome

By the end of the sensory-motor stage, toddlers have also developed a capacity for self- recognition

PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT Preoperational Stage (2-7 years)

Their increasing ability to use mental representations allow for the development of language, for engaging in fantasy play ( a cardboard becomes a castle) and for symbolic gestures (slashing the air with an imaginary sword to slay an imaginary dragon) Egocentric – what children are in this stage

They have difficulty seeing things from another person’s point of view

Children are also easily misled by appearances I.e., Two identical glasses; then taller vs.

shorter glass

PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT Concrete Operations (7-11 years)

Become more flexible in their thinkingPrinciples of conservation – able to look at a

situation from someone else’s viewpoint The volume of a liquid stays the same regardless

of the size and shape of the container into which it is poured

PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT Formal Operations (11-15 years)

Understand abstract ideasThey can formulate hypotheses, test them

mentally and accept or reject them according to the outcome of these mental experiments

CRITICISMS OF PIAGET'S THEORY Many question assumption that there

are distinct stages in cognitive development

Criticism of notion that infants do not understand world

Piaget may have underestimated influence of social interaction in cognitive development

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT Babbling

Make the sounds of all languages

HolophrasesOne word is used to mean a whole sentence

THEORIES OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT Skinner theorized that language

develops as parents reward children for language usage

Chomsky proposed the language acquisition deviceA neural mechanism for acquiring language

presumed to be “wired into” all humans Bilingualism and the development of a

second language

SEX-ROLE DEVELOPMENT Gender identity

Knowledge of being a boy or girlOccurs by age 3

Gender constancyChild realizes that gender cannot changeOccurs by age 4 or 5

SEX-ROLE DEVELOPMENT Gender-role awareness

Knowing appropriate behavior for each gender

Gender stereotypesBeliefs about presumed characteristics of

each gender Sex-typed behavior

Socially defined ways to behave different for boys and girls

May be at least partly biological in origin

KOHLBERG’S STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT

Preconventional (preadolescence) “Good” behavior is mostly to avoid

punishment or seek reward Children tend to interpret behavior in terms

of its concrete consequences “Heinz should not steal the drug because he

might get caught and put into prison” Conventional (adolescence)

Behavior is about pleasing others and, in later adolescence, becoming a good citizen

To put oneself in “other person’s shoes” “Heinz should steal the drug because he

could save his wife and be thought of as a hero”

KOHLBERG’S STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT Postconventional

Emphasis is on abstract principles such as justice, equality, and liberty

Personal and strongly felt moral standards become the guideposts for deciding what is right and wrong

People may become aware of discrepancies between what they judge to be moral and what society has determined to be legal

Heinz should steal the drug because his wife’s right for life outweighs the store owners right to property”

CRITICISMS OF KOHLBERG’S THEORY Research shows that many people never

progress past the conventional level Theory does not take cultural

differences into account Theory is considered by some to be

sexist in that girls often scored lower on tests of morality