Human Development, Diversity, and Behavior in the Environment Flashcards
Wilhelm Wundt: Structuralism
Analyzed the human mind by a process termed Introspection. He believed that there are basic elements, or structures, which constitute the mind
and that consciousness could be broken down into elements of sensations and feelings. He believed that when confronted with an experience an individual’s emotions emerge first and then the individual cognitively understands the experience and reacts behaviorally
William James: Functionalism
Believed function of consciousness was more adaptive than the structure of consciousness. Unlike Wundt, James believed that humans
first experience a situation and then the emotional reaction occurs. He believed that human mental states (thoughts and behaviors) arise because of their functional role in adaptation to the individual’s environment.
Sigmund Freud: Psychoanalytic Theory
Freud believed that psychoanalysis seeks to relieve the person of neuroses (distressing psychological disorders that are not associated with an extreme distortion of reality) via the use of free association and dream analysis to uncover repressed conflicts that are, subsequently, re-lived on an emotional and intellectual level. This process continues until a mature understanding is achieved and integrated in new form into the personality
Conscious
mental activities that we are fully aware of
Preconscious
feelings, thoughts, and ideas of which we are not currently aware, but can bring to our awareness relatively easily.
Unconscious
feelings, thoughts memories, and desires of which we are unaware=
ID
It is the unconscious and includes everything inherited, including instincts. It operates upon the pleasure principle and seeks immediate gratification of instinctual urges with no regard for anything or anyone else. A newborn is seen as “id” and only has a desire to
satisfy its needs
EGO
The development of the ego is intertwined with the psychosexual development of the child. The ego operates on the reality principle and is aware of the individual’s needs, as well as the realities of the real world. The ego seeks to gain gratification of these needs in a socially acceptable manner. The ego has defenses designed to keep the anxiety level of the individual to a manageable level by keeping anxiety-producing impulses out of consciousness. These defenses can be adaptive since they maintain the stability of the personality by keeping the individual from being overwhelmed by anxiety and stress
Superego
child adopts values form his or her environment and a belief about what constitutes good and bad.
Alfred Adler: Individual Psychology
theories include personality development, importance of birth order, self-image, and methods of psychoanalysis.
Alfred Adlers personality Development
Human beings begin in a state of inadequacy or inferiority, human beings have a basic drive toward self-actualization or superiority, an individual must be seen in relation to his environment and is not composed of an id, ego, and superego, an individual’s degree of functioning successfully in groups is the primary indicator of an individual’s wellness, birth order of a child, physical problems, pampering, and neglect all have a significant impact on the development of personality, children develop a self-image or “fiction” about themselves, which influences how children interpret and respond to events in their lives.
Methods of Psychoanalysis
clinicians task is to help an individual identify dysfunctional “fictions” and and to develop a new more positive self-image and life goals.
John Watson: Behaviorism
“little albert” stimulus-response conditioning.
Ivan pavlov- classical conditioning
Pairing conditioned stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus to form a conditioned response
Unconditioned Stimulus
stimulus that innately evokes a response in the organism
Unconditioned Response
is an innate response to a stimulus
Conditioned Stimulus
a stimulus that does not innately evoke a response in an organism but that the organism learns to respond to because it has been paired with an unconditioned stimulus in the past
Conditioned Response
the organism’s learned response to a conditioned stimulus
Jean Piaget: Cognitive Development
A child’s cognitive ability develop over time, she divided them into 4 stages. Sensorimotor, Pre-operational, concrete operations, and formal operations
Sensorimotor
Occurs birth- 2years. During this stage, an infant’s knowledge
of the world is limited to his or her sensory perceptions and motor activities. The child
has simple motor responses to sensory stimuli. Children utilize skills and abilities from
infancy (such as looking, sucking, grasping, and listening) to learn more about the
environment. This stage consists of six sub-stages that are the precursors of
intelligence. The sub-stages include reflex actions, primary repetitive actions,
secondary repetitive actions, coordinating secondary schemes, experimentation, and
mental combinations
Pre-operational
2-7 years. In this stage, children use new abilities to
represent objects in a wide variety of activities, but not in an organized, fully logical
fashion. This stage involves children using objects to represent something in a play
and/or pretend manner. For example, a child uses an object to represent something
else, such as pretending a box is a car or a banana is a phone.
Concrete Operations
7-11 years. This may be the highest level of
cognitive development attained. During this stage, children begin thinking logically
and are able to utilize their new cognitive skills of reversibility and de-centration
to think about the steps of a process in any order. They understand that if they pour
water from a wide glass to a tall, thin glass the amount of water stays the same.
Formal Operations
11- adulthood. The
young person now has the ability to reason not only about tangible objects and events,
but also about hypothetical or abstract ones. They utilize rational thinking and abstract
reasoning. This is the highest stage of cognitive development and is rarely achieved.
Lev Yvgotsky: Child Development
Lev Vygotsky proposed ideas of human development (largely focused on child development) with relation to how children learn. He believed that the development of individuals does not occur in stages but proceeds in a more complex and continuous process.
Zone of Proximal Development
the range of tasks that an individual can complete while learning new information
Scaffolding
an experienced adult providing more help to a child who is attempting a difficult task and then less help and support as the task becomes easier for the child
