Child Development EDN: 101 (Spring Semester: 1 st Pry. – 2009) __________________________ 2. The Science of Child Development Brief Overview of the Theories.

Child DevelopmentEDN: 101

(Spring Semester: 1st Pry. – 2009)__________________________

2. The Science of Child Development

• Brief Overview of the Theories• Research Methodologies of Child Development

Module TutorSangay Tsheringl

What is a theory?

A theory is a coherent set of ideas that helps explain data and make predictions. It contains hypothesis, assumptions that can be tested to determine their accuracy.

The scientific method:

An approach that can be used to discover accurate information about behaviour and development that includes the following steps:

•identify and analyze the problem•collect information/data•draw conclusions•revise the theory

2.1 Overview of the theories of Child Development

2.1.1 Psychoanalytic Theory

Development is primarily unconscious – beyond awareness and is heavily coloured by emotion. Psychoanalytic theorists believe that behaviour is merely a surface characteristic and that to truly understand development, we have to analyze the symbolic meanings of behaviour and the deep inner workings of the mind. They stress that early experiences with parents extensively shape our development.

Sigmund Freud 1856 - 1939 Erik Erikson

1902-1994

Psychoanalysts

1. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory (1856-1939)

Three structures of personalitya. The Id: - the Freudian structure of personality that consists of instincts, which an individual’s reservoir of psychic energy. (Unconscious and has no contact with reality).

b. The ego: - deals with the demands of reality. It is called the executive branch of personality because it makes rational decisions. (the id and ego have no morality- they do not take into account whether something is right or wrong).

c. The superego: - the moral branch of personality. We often refer to it as our ‘conscience.’

The anxiety of the conflict of these structures of personality according to Freud is reduced through repression, which is the most powerful and pervasive defense mechanism.

1. The oral stage (first 18 months of life)

The infant’s pleasure centers around the mouth. Chewing, sucking and biting are the chief sources of pleasure.

2. The anal stage (between 18 mths. and

3 years)

The child’s greatest pleasure involves the anus or the eliminative functions associated with it. Freud believes that the exercise of anal muscles reduces tension.

3. The phallic stage (between 3 and 6 years)

-Pleasure is mainly focused on the genitals as the child discovers that self-manipulation is enjoyable.(Oedipus complex).

4. The latency stage (approx. between 6 and

puberty)

The child represses all interest in sexuality and develops social and intellectual skills.

5. The genital stage (from puberty on …..)

The source of sexual pleasure becomes someone outside of the family. It is a time of sexual reawakening.

Freud’s five stages of psychosexual development

Erickson’s Theory (1902-1994)

• He argues that we develop in psychosocial stages, in contrast to Freud’s psychosexual stages.

• Emphasizes developmental change throughout the human life span, where as Freud argued that our basic personality is shaped in the first 5 years of life.

• Eight stages of development unfold in Erickson’s theory.

Psychosocial stages\Erickson.docPsychosocial Stage.doc

2.1.2 Cognitive Theories

Cognitive theories emphasize the importance of children’s conscious thoughts.

Jean Piaget (1896-1980)

•The developing child’s rational thinking and stages of thought are emphasized.

•Thoughts are the central focus of development, the primary determinants of children’s actions.

Stages Age Description

Sensori-motor

Birth to 2 yrs.

An infant progresses from reflexive, instinctual action at birth to the beginning of symbolic thought. The infant constructs an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences with physical actions.

Pre-Operational

2 to 7 yrs.

The child begins to represent the world with words and images, reflect increased symbolic thinking and go beyond the connection of sensory information and physical action.

Concrete Operational

7 to 11 yrs.

The child can now reason logically about concrete events and classify objects into different sets.

FormalOperational

11 to 15 yrs.

The adolescent reasons in more abstract and logical ways. Thought is more idealistic.

Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934)

-argued that human development occurs in a socio-cultural context.

-He emphasized social interaction as the primary source of cognition and behavior.

Cognitive Theory : Contd-

Information Processing

Information processing is concerned with how individuals process information about their world – how information enters the mind, how it is stored and transformed, and how it is retrieved to perform such complex activities as problem solving and reasoning.

Behavioural Theories Behaviourism emphasizes that we should examine only what can be directly observed and measured. The belief that development is observable behaviour, learned through experience with the environment grew out of the behavioural tradition (emphasizing the scientific study of observable behaviour responses and their environmental determinants).

Figures in the history of Behaviourism

Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) Russian physiologist (Nobel prize for work on digestion, 1904). Pioneer of the theory of “classical conditioning”.

The association of automatic responses with new stimuli is known as classical conditioning.

B.F. Skinner (1904 – 1990)

Best known of all behaviourists, and explorer of operant conditioning: the process whereby the probability of behaviour being repeated is increased it is reinforced.

These deliberate, goal-directed actions are called operant.

E.L. Thorndike (1874-1949) US animal and later educational psychologist, developed the theory of trial and error learning through experiments with animals having to escape from puzzle boxes.

John Watson (1878-1958)

Apostle of Behaviourism, building on Pavlov's ideas to maintain that the reflex was the basic unit of behaviour.

Social learning theory

Albert Bandura (1925 – present)

Social learning theorists emphasize behaviour, environment, and cognition as the key factors in development.

Bandura and Mischel believe that cognitive processes are important mediators of environment-behaviour connections. Bandura focused heavily on observational learning, learning that occurs through observing what others do.

Ethological TheoryKonrad Lorenz (1930-1989)

Ethologist stresses that behaviour is strongly influenced by biology, is tied to evolution, and is characterized by critical or sensitive periods.

- observed behaviour patterns programmed within the bird’s genes

- process of imprinting

Lorenz followed by his imprinted geese

British psychoanalyst John Bowlby (1969) applied ethological theory to the understanding of the human infant—caregiver relationship. He argued that attachment behaviours of babies, such as smiling, babbling, grasping, and crying, are built-in social signals that encourage the parent to approach, care for, and interact with the baby.

ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS THEORYUrie Bronfenbrenner (1917 - present

-views the child as developing within a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment, from the immediate settings to broad cultural values, laws, and customs.

The five systems of Ecological theory1.The microsystem2.The mesosystem3.The exosystem4.The macrosystem5.The chronosystem

Research

Methodologies

Research Methodology

• Measures: To find out how children actually behave, a researcher may choose systematic observation.

1. Naturalistic Observation 2. Structured ObservationLimitations

Observer influence: The tendency of participants to react to the presence of an observer and behave in unnatural ways. 

Observer bias: The tendency of observers who are aware of the purposes of a study to see and record what is expected rather than participants’ actual behaviours.

Finally, systematic observation provides a very little or no information on thinking and reasoning that underlie the behaviour.

Self Reports-Interviews & Questionnaires

Self-reports are instruments that ask research participants to provide information on their perceptions, thoughts, abilities, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, and past experiences.

a. Unstructured interview: (Clinical Interviews) A method in which the researcher uses flexible, open-ended questions to collect information from the participants or to probe for the participant’s point of view.  b. Structured interview: (Tests and Questionnaires:It is a research method in which the researcher asks each research participant the same question in the same way.

General Research Designs

Two main types of research designs are used in all research on human behaviour

1.Correlational The goal is to describe the strength of the

relation between two or more events or characteristics- the more strongly events are correlated, the more we can predict one from the other.

2. Experimental.It reveals the causes of the behaviour involving

manipulation of influential factors – independent variables – and measurement of their effect on dependent variables.

Time Span of Inquiry Cross-Sectional ApproachResearch strategy in which individuals of different ages are compared all at one time.

The Longitudinal ApproachA research design in which one group of participants is studied repeatedly at different ages, and changes are noted as the participants mature.

Practice effects: changes in participants’ natural responses as a result of repeated testing, not because of factors commonly associated with development.

Cohort effects: Cohort effects refer to the effects of cultural-historical change on the accuracy of findings: Children born in one period of time are influenced by a particular set of cultural and historical conditions.

Being a wise consumer

• Be cautious about what is reported in the media

• Be aware that a single study is usually not the defining world

• Remember that causal conclusions cannot be drawn from Correlational studies