1. Freud Made developmental psychology a legitimate field of study
Psychoanalytic perspective
Psychosexual theory

2. Components of personality
Id: biological needs and desires (innate)
Ego: conscious, rational, determines how to meet desires of Id (early infancy)
Superego: conscience (develops 3-6 years by interaction with parents)

3. Stages of psychosexual development
Oral
Anal
Phallic
Latency
Genital
Sexual impulses shift over development

4. Contributions and criticisms:
First theory to stress role of early experience
Importance of family relationships, unconscious motivation
Overemphasis on sexual feelings
Lack of generalizeability
No direct study of children
Little evidence of influence of early conflict on later personality

5. Erikson
Neo-Freudian
Psychosocial theory, emphasis on ego = complex, positive force
More emphasis on cultural influences
Children as active explorers

6. Erikson’s stages Trust vs. mistrust (birth-1 yr.)
Autonomy vs. shame (1-3)
Initiative vs. guilt (3-6)
Industry vs. inferiority (6-11)
Identity vs. role confusion (Adolescence)
Intimacy vs. isolation (Early adulthood)
Generativity vs. stagnation (Middle adulthood)
Ego integrity vs. despair (Late adulthood)

7. Contributions and criticisms:
Unique life history as worthy of study
Encouraged research on social and emotional development
Difficult to test
Emphasis on clinical interview approach

8. Behaviorism (learning theory #1)
Locke’s tabula rasa
Watson’s ideas inspired by Pavlov’s work on animal learning
Classical conditioning (e.g., Little Albert)
Animals and humans repeat or suppress behavior based on outcome

9. Operant conditioning: Skinner (learning theory #2)
Behavior can be increased by following it with reinforcers
E.g., give 3yr. old praise (“good job!”) for good behavior; give 10 yr. old money for good grades
Behavior can be decreased by following it with punishment
E.g., rats in a cage get a shock when they press a bar for food; teenager gets “grounded” for getting home late

10. Social learning theory (learning theory #3)
New interest in if behaviorism (vs. Psychoanalytic theory) explains children’s social behavior
Bandura’s emphasis on modeling (imitation, observational learning) as basis for behavior
Current work emphasizes cognition
A social cognitive approach: development of personal standards and self-efficacy to guide responses

11. Learning theories: Three mechanisms
Classical conditioning
Stimulus-response
Operant learning
Reinforcers and punishers
Social learning
Modeling

12. Learning theories: Contributions and criticisms:
Precise and testable
Behavior modification
Address how and why questions of development
Oversimplified
Narrow view of environmental influences
Downplays contribution of biological influences
Underestimation of child’s contribution to development

13. Piaget Greatest influence on modern study of child development
Children are explorers who actively construct knowledge of world
Study using open-ended clinical interviews
Four broad stages of development (he
(assumed NO changes past adolescence!)

14. Important Piagetian concepts
Scheme: organized pattern of though/action to explain experience (e.g, your idea of what going to a movie is like: arrive, buy tickets, sit down, etc.)
Assimilation: interpretation using existing cognitive structures (e.g., You like Sara and think she’s nice. She hits your car, you assume it was an accident.)
Accommodation: changing existing schemas to explain new experience (e.g., You hear a nasty rumor about Sara. You believe it and so you decide that she’s not a nice person and stop talking to her.)

15. Four stages of development
Sensorimotor: infant sensation and movement to explore (birth-2 yrs.)
Preoperational: symbolic, but illogical thinking based on early action patterns
(2-7)
Concrete-operational: more organized cognition and reasoning (7-11)
Formal-operational: complex, abstract reasoning system (11 yrs.+)

16. Contributions: Great heuristic value
Children as active learners with rich knowledge structures
Educational philosophy & practice: discovery learning and direct contact with environment
Linked moral and cognitive development
Development of social cognition (thinking about people)

17. Criticisms: Underestimated abilities of infants and young children
Improvement of performance and training questions and discovery learning vs. teaching
Little attention to social, cultural influences
Vygotsky challenges idea of children as independent explorers
Invariant sequence of stages

18. Information-processing
1970s cognitive psychology + computer science
Human mind is a symbol-manipulating system
Biological maturation as an important contributor to cognitive development
Sensory “input,” information coding, transformation, organization, and behavioral “output”
Small quantitative changes

19. Contributions and criticisms:
Fills gaps in Piaget’s cognitive-developmental theory
Artificial laboratory studies and oversimplification of cognition
Commitment to careful, rigorous research methods
Some very narrow models of cognition and task mastery
Ignores aspects of cognition that are not linear and logical (e.g., imagination)

20. Ethology
Adaptive or survival value and behavior and evolutionary history & natural selection
Biologically programmed behaviors to promote survival (e.g., imprinting)
Early experience is important
Critical vs. sensitive periods in development

21. Critical vs. sensitive periods
Critical: limited time span, biologically prepared to acquire adaptive behaviors, but requires appropriate environment
Sensitive: time period optimal for specific capacities to emerge because person is especially responsive to environmental influences

22. Critical vs. sensitive periods
Critical: e.g., specific time window for Salmon to learn a smell that helps them find their way back to the correct river location to spawn
Sensitive: e.g., formation of the parent-child attachment relationship (0-3 years)

23. Contributions and criticisms:
Focus on study in natural environments and comparison of human development to other species development
Inspired Bowlby’s theory of attachment
Inspired new areas of study: evolutionary developmental psychology (the study of adaptive behaviors across different ages and time)
Difficult or impossible to test, retrospective

24. Vygotsky
Emphasis on cultural context and unique environmental conditions
Focus on culturally specific practices and relation to development
Cultural transmission of beliefs, values, and customs over time
Social interaction (i.e., cooperative dialogues) essential to child’s acquisition of cultural beliefs and practices

25. Contributions and criticisms:
Influence of cultural context on development and cross cultural research
Study of development as a socially-mediated process
Focus on unique strengths of children in different cultures
Little attention to the role of heredity and brain maturation in cognitive development
More passive view of children’s role in development

26. Bronfenbrenner
Children develop within a complex system of relationships
Multiple levels of environmental influences
Biological predispositions combine with environmental influences to direct development
Focus on bi-directional relationships
Five contexts of development

27. Five contexts of development:
Micosystem: activities, interaction patterns of immediate surrounding (e.g., parents, family, daycare, church)
Mesosystem: connections between microsystems (e.g., connections between home and school)
Exosystem: social systems that affect child’s immediate surroundings that do not contain children (e.g., parent’s work- factory closing; community school board decisions)
Macrosystem: cultural laws, values, customs, and resources (e.g., cultural norms and beliefs about how to treat children)
Chronosystem: temporal dimension-age of child (e.g., experiencing your parents’ divorce at age 4 vs. 15)

28. Five contexts of development:

29. Contributions and criticisms:
View of children as products and producers of their environment
Rich description of environmental influences
View of environment as ever-changing influence on development
Incomplete account of development (primary focus on environmental influences)

30. Dynamic systems theory:
Description of variation in development
View children’s minds, bodies, and physical and social worlds as an integrated system
Dynamic system of development: any change affects organism- environment relationship
Goal: to understand how children attain new levels of functioning by studying child behavior while in transition

31. Dynamic systems theory:
e.g., DS Theory was recently used to describe and explain the movement patterns of fish swarms

32. Dynamic systems theory:
e.g., DS theory was recently used to explain and understand the formation and movement of locust swarms. The results of this research will have important implications for prediction and minimization of destructive swarms that destroy vital crops in Africa and other parts of the world.

33. Dynamic systems theory:
When change occurs: children actively reorganize behavior so system components work together again in a more complex, effective manner
Common genetic heritage and regularities of physical/social world are sources of universal, broad outlines of development
BUT, there are wide individual differences in skills
Primary application to cognitive and motor development, but more and more focus on social and emotional development

34. Comparing theories:
Different domains (e.g., social, cognitive) of development
Different points of view about development (3 issues)
Strengths and weaknesses-none is a complete view of development!
Best approach: multi-method and eclectic (=no 1 theoretical bias)