Chapter Two

Theory & Research

Theory & Reseach

Two models:

Mechanistic: locke

Organismic: Rousseau

John Locke- English philosopher• Tabula rasa: believed that the child’s mind is a

blank slate, experience is imprinted• Children born with different temperaments and

propensities; but the child could be infinitely improved and perfected through experience, humane treatment, and education

• Adults mold children’s moral character and intellect by conditioning them to have the “right” habits

• Child as malleable Key assumption: that children are mostly a product

of their environment; react to their environment almost like a machine

Jean-Jacques Rosseau- Swiss-born philosopher

• Introduced a romantic conception of children

• Born in a state of natural goodness

• Adults should not shape them forcibly but protect them from the pressures of society and allow them to develop naturally

• Each dimension of development (physical, mental, social, and moral) followed a particular schedule and should be respected and protected

Jean-Jacques Rosseau- Swiss-born philosopher

• Children are incapable of true reasoning until age 12

• During early period of development, children should be permitted to learn through discovery and experience

• Key assumption: the curriculum must evolve from the natural capacities and interests of the child, and must foster the child’s progression toward higher stage of development

• People are an active, growing organism that set their development in motion; initiate events, not just react; internal drive

Development continuous or stages

Continuous: Mechanist theorists; allows prediction of earlier behaviors from later ones; quantitative changes (frequency of response)

 

Stages: Organismic theorists; emphasis qualitative changes; stages, building on previous problems and developments.

Current theorists:

Active versus passive development

People change their world as it also changes them

Major developmental perspectives

1-Psychoanalytic Perspective

• Development shaped by unconscious forces that motivate human behavior

• Psychoanalysis helps give patients insight into unconscious emotional conflict

• The unconscious is the thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories that we are largely unaware

• Dreams are the “royal road” to the unconscious

 

The Mind as an Iceberg

• Freud believed the mind is like an iceberg—mostly hidden, with the unconscious containing thoughts and memories of which we are largely unaware. Some of these thoughts we store temporarily in a preconscious area.

• Our conscious awareness is the part of the iceberg that floats above the water.

Figure 15.1 Freud’s idea of the mind’s structureMyers: Psychology, Eighth EditionCopyright © 2007 by Worth Publishers

• Initially, he thought hypnosis might unlock the door to the unconscious. However, recognizing patients’ uneven capacity for hypnosis, Freud turned to free association, which he believed produced a chain of thoughts in the patient’s unconscious. He called the process (as well as his theory of personality) psychoanalysis.

• Freud believed that personality arises from our efforts to resolve the conflict between our biological impulses and the social restraints against them.

• He theorized that the conflict centers on three interacting systems: – the id, which operates on the pleasure principle

Immediate gratification);

– the ego, which functions on the reality principle, and

– the superego, an internalized set of ideals. The superego’s demands often oppose the id’s, and the ego, as the “executive” part of personality, seeks to reconcile the two.

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages of Development

• Freud maintained that children pass through a series of psychosexual stages during which the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct pleasure-sensitive areas of the body called erogenous zones.

• During the oral stage (0–18 months), pleasure centers on the mouth

• During the anal stage (18–36 months) on bowel/bladder elimination. Also independence.

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages of Development • During the critical phallic stage (3–6

years), pleasure centers on the genitals. Boys experience the Oedipus complex, with unconscious sexual desires toward their mother and hatred of their father. They cope with these threatening feelings through identification with their father, thereby incorporating many of his values and developing a sense of gender identity. Electra Complex- female equivalent

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages of Development • The latency stage (6 years to puberty), in

which sexuality is dormant • The genital stage (puberty on) when youths

begin to experience sexual feelings toward others.

• In Freud’s view, maladaptive adult behavior results from conflicts unresolved during the oral, anal, and phallic stages. At any point, conflict can lock, or fixate, the person’s pleasure-seeking energies in that stage.

Erikson

Each stage is a crisis in the personality that must be resolved

Erikson’s Eight Stages of Psychosocial

Development • Erik Erikson theorized eight stages of life,

each with its own psychosocial task.

• In infancy (the first year), the issue is trust versus mistrust.

• In toddlerhood (the second year), the challenge is autonomy versus shame and doubt.

• Preschoolers (age 3 to 5) learn initiative or guilt.

• Elementary school children (age 6 to puberty) develop competence or inferiority.

• A chief task of adolescence is to solidify one’s sense of self—identity versus role confusion.

• For young adults (twenties to early forties) the issue is intimacy versus isolation.

• For middle-aged adults (forties to sixties), generativity versus stagnation.

• Late adulthood’s (late sixties and older) challenge is integrity versus despair.

Learning Perspective

1- Learning Theory

• development results from learning, a long-lasting change in behavior based on experience or adaptation to the environment

• Behaviorism: describes observed behavior as a predictable response to experience

• React to environment when find it pleasing, painful, or threatening

• Associative learning: link is made between two stimuli/sensory events

Learning PerspectiveClassical ConditioningClassical conditioning is a natural form of

learning that occurs even without intervention.

• Pavlov: taught dog to salivate • A natural response to a stimulus is paired

with another stimulus through repeated associations. Learning a new response to an existing response.

• Conditioned response is a learned response•  Watson: little Albert

Learning PerspectiveOperant Conditioning- Skinner• Learning that behavior has consequences;

operates on environment• Baby cries, someone soothers- will cry to

be soothed.•  Reinforce, extinguish, use successive

approximations, learning through imitation of others

• Tend to repeat response that has desirable consequences and suppress a response that has a negative consequence (punishment)

Punishment: process of weakening a behavior, decreasing likelihood of repetition. Suppresses a behavior thought aversive consequence. Withdrawing a positive (not using car) or aversive (jail)

 Reinforcement can be positive or negativePositive: rewardNegative: taking away something the

person does not like (aversive event)

Extinguish: when no longer reinforce a behavior

Behavior modification: behavioral therapy; operant conditioning to instill positive behavior.

2- Social Learning Theory (Social Cognitive)- Bandura

• People learn

• Development comes from the person

• Learn appropriate social behavior mainly by observing and imitating models- Observational Learning

• Through feedback, gradually development standards for judging own behavior

• Self-Efficacy: confidence that have what it takes to succeed

3- Cognitive Perspective- PiagetAt each stage, child’s mind develops in a new

way from simple to complex Organization: tendency to create increasingly

complex cognitive structures (system of knowledge; ways of thinking that incorporate more and more accurate images of reality

 Schemas: organized patterns of behavior that a

person uses to think about and act in a situation.

Adaptation: how children handle new information in light of what they already knowAssimilation: taking new information and incorporating it into existing cognitive structures (sucking on sippie cup versus breats)Accommodation: adjusting one’s cognitive structures to fit new information (sipping from cup/glass, changes how uses tongue/mouth)

Equilibration: constant striving for a stable balance/equilibrium, dictates shift from assimilation to accommodation

Vygotsky Sociocultural Theory of Cognitive Development

• Vygotsky argued that children’s efforts to understand their world are embedded in a social context. Value educative processes.

• They strive to understand their universe by asking questions of others—

• The young child is an apprentice in thinking.• Parents, child-care workers, and older

siblings act as mentors stimulating intellectual growth

Vygotsky • Children learn to think through guided

participation in social experiences that explore their world- guided social interactions

• Vygotsky argued that what children can do with the help of others may be more indicative of their mental development than what they can do alone.

• Shared activities help internalize their society’s modes of thinking and behaving.

Vygotsky • The zone of proximal development, a range of

skills that the child can perform with assistance but not quite independently.

• How and when children master important skills is partly linked to the willingness of others to provide scaffolding, or sensitive structuring of children’s learning encounters.

• Cognitive accomplishment occurs in a social context- through collaborative help/direction from others

Information Processing Theory

• Explain cognitive development by analyzing the processes involved in perceiving and handling information.

• Compare brain to computer. Helps estimate later intelligence from early efficacy of sensory perception and processing.

4- Evolutionary/Sociobiological Perspectives

Wilson

• Concerned with evolutionary and biological forces of social behavior

• Emphasis on function of behavior in promoting survival of species.

• Darwin: survival of the fittest and natural selection.

5- Contextual Perspective

Development understood from a social context

 

Individual inseparable from environment

Vygotsky also in this camp.

Research

Quantitative research: objectively measurable data

Qualitative research: interpretation of nonnumerical data (subjective responses, feelings, beliefs)

Sampling

Sample: cannot study entire population. Adequately represents the population being studied; has relevant characteristics in same proportions as entire population; otherwise cannot be adequately generalized

ResearchQuantitative research: objectively measurable dataQualitative research: interpretation of

nonnumerical data (subjective responses, feelings, beliefs)

SamplingSample: cannot study entire population.

Adequately represents the population being studied; has relevant characteristics in same proportions as entire population; otherwise cannot be adequately generalized

Random selection: each person has equal chance of being chosen.

Scientific method: characterized by:

• Identifying a problem

• Formulation of hypothesis

• Collecting data

• Analyzing data

• Forming tentative conclusions

• Disseminating findings

Major Methods• Self-report, diary, interview, questionnaire: asked

about some aspect of their lives; highly structured or vague

• Naturalistic observation: observing in natural environment with no interaction

• Laboratory observation: observed in laboratory with no attempt to manipulate behavior

• Behavioral measures: tested on abilities, skills, knowledge, competencies, physical responses

• Operational definition: stated clearly in terms of operations and procedures used to measure a specific phenomenon

Research Designs

Case Studies: single person studied Emotions, beliefs, or life history of a single individual.

 

Ethnographic Studies: study of culture/subculture

 

Correlational study: attempt to find positive/negative relationship between variables. Correlations are reported as numbers from –1.0 (perfect negative correlation) to +1.0 (perfect positive correlation)

Experiment: controlled procedure; controls independent variable to determine effect on the dependent variable.

Experimental group: exposed to the treatment/item studied

Control group: do not receive the treatment

 

Independent variable: controls; wants to see if effects the dependent variable

Dependent variable: may/may not change as result of the independent variable

Longitudinal: involves repeated measurements obtained from the same subject over time.

 

Cross-Sectional: requires that a number of subjects of different ages be measured, tested, or observed at one given time.

Ethics: rules and guidelines to follow

 Informed consent, avoidance of deception when possible; not cause undue pain, anxiety or harm; debrief; share results; assess any harm/suffering.