Week 2.Montante. Theories of Development

Week 2. Theories of Development: Interpreting the Lifespan

 

      In this chapter we are introduced to a couple of theorist Freud, Erikson, Piaget, Vygotsky, Skinner, Pavlov, Bandura, and Maslow. Each of them had their own idea of their interpreting the lifespan. Theories are important for constructing meaning out of facts.

      Freud was presented first in the chapter. Through his work, he is the most known by his work. He came to believe that childhood experiences and unconscious desires influenced behavior. In Figure 2.1 on page 30, are Fredian stages of development. Each one has a specific age range. They are categorized as oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. He then argues that at different stages of a person's development personality is influenced by three distinct structures of the mind: the id, the ego, and the superego.

      Next is Erikson. He developed a psychosocial theory of development that highlights the impact of social experiences on stages of human development. He developed a theory of eight stages describing growth and change throughout life, social interaction and conflicts that rises during different stages of development. His eight stages are presented on page 32, table 2.1. By comparing Freud and Erikson they both have the similar ideas, but yet are very different. Based on the names of Freud stages compared to Erikson's eight stage names, you could tell that Freud focuses on sexual interest as a driving forces in development while Erikson cover age periods that extend more the age related stages than what Freud describes. 

      Then we have Piaget who was a Swiss psychologist. He viewed development as consisting of four distinct stages of mental demonstration that individual pass through to their way into adulthood. His four stages are sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Piaget stated that “we are able to form cognitive structures because we have inherited a method of intellectual functioning that permits us to respond to our environment” (pg. 34).

      Somewhat like Piaget, there is another psychologist names Vygotsky. He believed that children learn actively and through hands on experiences. He also suggested that parents, caregivers, peers and the culture were responsible for developing higher order functions. There are three fundamental themes that run through his work: the unique manner, the social origin of mind and the role of speech in cognitive development.

      The next two are together in the sense that they focused on classical conditioning. This opens up to behaviorism. It is mostly focused with observable behavior rather that internal events like thinking and emotion. On page 39, it reads about Pavlov’s famous experiment in which the ringing of a bell was paired with food being presented to dogs. Skinner’s theory is operant conditioning. It is the use of consequences to alter or shape voluntary behavior or actions. He believed that the best way to understand behavior is to look at the causes of an action and its consequences. I remember back when I took psychology 101 and Skinner was the name I would never forget because operant conditioning made sense to me because of how true it was. One thing I remember was token economy because it rewards good behavior with tokens that can be exchanged for something desired. An example that most connect this with is at school; teachers give students a token when their behavior matches the desired behavior. This to me is true that it does happen and I did not think of it as anything unless I read Skinners theory.

      Next we have Bandura and he is the chief architects of social learning theory, has stressed the potent influence of modeling on personality development (Bandura, 1997). People learn from one another by observation, imitation, and modeling. For me this is how I learn. For my job it is basically on hands learning. I learned by looking at my coworkers skills and then I applied them. I am an orthodontic assistant and for our skills it is not something to be taught by a book rather we show how to preform the work. I learned how to put in a wire for braces by observing the way my coworker did it.

      Lastly we have Maslow. Maslow proposed that motivation is the result of a person’s attempt at fulling five basic needs: physiological (hunger and sleep), safety (security, protection, and freedom), love and belongingness (need of family and friends), esteem (as a person) and self-actualization on page 46; figure 2.5.

      It was interesting reading everyone’s theory. It gets me thinking how this would be applied to me and the future career I plan to go into. I’ll be working with children and every day I would get to observed them each as their own person. These theories can help me explain why and how kids do the things they do and their reasoning for it. It also helped remind me how I am developing now as a person and also as a mother.