theories of development Flashcards
prenatal period
conception to birth
infancy
birth to 18 months
toddlerhood
18 months to 3 years
preschool period
3 to 5 years
middle childhood
6 to about 12 years
adolescence
12 or so to 20 or so
development
the systematic changes and continuities that individuals display over the course of their lives
- its a continuous and cumulative process
- a holistic process
- shows plasticity
- is dependent on historical and cultural contexts
maturation
the developmental changes in the body or behaviour that results from the ageing process
learning
a developmental change in behaviour that results from ones experience or practice
normative development
typical patterns of development that are seen across most or all individuals
individual development
individual variations in the rate, extent or direction of development that is unique to the individual
baby biographies
often carried out on researches own children
however the problem with this was these were very subjective
Hall
in order to obtain more reliable data, he distributed questionnaires to larger samples of children
psychoanalysis
seeks to understand human behaviour in terms of the unconscious drives and motives that stem from early life experiences
Freud
unconscious sexual drives
5 stages of development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital)
use of defence mechanism
Erikson
cultural demands
more active
8 stages of major conflicts that should be resolved (trust, autonomy, initiative, industry, identity, intimacy, generatively, ego integrity)
more focused on the social world
behaviourism
human behaviour is learned through experience with the environment
classical conditioning
pairing with a stimulus
operant conditioning
behaviour is shaped by consequences
social learning
behaviour is learned through observation and imitation of role models
cognitive developmental
understands development in children’s thinking in terms of the acquisition of new mental operations
Piaget
active explorer
construct schemas
four stages: sensorimotor(0-2), pre operational(2-7) concrete operational(7-11), formal operational (11/12+)
Vygotsky
cognitive growth is a socially mediated process
heavily influenced by culture
information processing
computer model of cognitive development and thinking
ethological perspective
concerned with the contribution of human evolution to psychology
assumes behaviour and devlopement depend on inborn motives that are species specific due to natural selection
ecology approach
a newer approach, considers the contest of how an individual child grows up
bronfenbrenners theory
environmental influences
