Chapter II

PERSPECTIVES OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT

How psychologists view child development depends on what theoretical background

they seek to their support for explaining various issues in the field. Each perspective emphasise
a particular kind of developmental pattern. The kind of perspective one follows decides their
questions, methods, and interpretation. The major perspectives that explain human
development are:

1. Psychoanalytic perspective

According to the psychoanalytic perspective children move through a series of stages in

which they confront conflicts between biological drives and social expectations. The way these
conflicts are resolved determines the person’s ability to learn, to get along with others, and
cope with anxiety. Although many individuals contributed to the psychoanalytic perspective,
two have been especially influential: Sigmund Freud, and Erik Erikson.

(a) Freud’s Psychosexual Theory

Freud was a practicing neurologist who determined his theory of human development from
his analyses of his emotionally disturbed patient’s life histories seeking to relieve their nervous
symptoms and anxieties, he relied heavily on such methods as hypnosis, free association and
dream analysis, because they gave some indication of unconscious motives that patients has
repressed (i.e., forced out of their conscious awareness). By analysing these motives and events
that caused their repression, Freud concluded that human development is a conflictual process,
As biological creatures, we have basic sexual and aggressive instincts that must be served, yet
society dictates that many of these drives must be restrained. According to Freud, the ways in
which parents manage these sexual and aggressive urges in the first few years of their child’s life
play a major role in shaping their children’s personalities. This theory is known as psychosexual
theory of development.

Three components of Personality

Freud’s psychosexual theory proposes that three components of personality – the id,
ego, and superego – develop gradually and become integrated in a series of five developmental
psychosexual stages.

Only id is present at birth. It is the source of all biological needs and desires. It tries to
satisfy so immediately. i.e., it operates under pleasure principle. When gratification is delayed,
as when infant is hungry or wet. They fuss and cry until their needs are met.

The ego is the conscious, rational component of personality that emerges in the early
infancy to redirect id’s impulses so they are discharged in acceptable ways. This part of
personality reflects the child’s emerging abilities to perceive, learn, remember and reason. It
operates under the reality principle. The ego’s aim is to find realistic ways to qualify the id.
 However, realistic solutions to needs are not always acceptable. Between the age of 3
and 6 years of age, the superego the seat of conscience, develops from the interactions with
parents, who insist that children conform to the values of the society. It is period when child
develop its own value system. Now the ego acts as a mediator between the impulses of id and
the demands of the super ego i.e., ego faces the increasingly complex task of reconciling the
demands of the id, the external world and conscience. For example, when the ego is tempted to
gratify an id impulse by hitting a playmate to get an attractive toy, the super ego may warn that
such behaviour is wrong. The ego must decide which of the two forces (id or superego) will win
this inner struggle or work out a compromise, such as asking for a turn with the toy. According
to Freud, the relationship between id, ego and superego during the preschool years determine
the individual’ basic personality.

Freud’s Psychosexual stages

Psychosexual Approximate Description

Stage Age
Oral Birth - 1 year The sex instinct centres on the month because the child desires
pleasure from such oral activities as sucking, chewing, and biting.
Feeding activities are particularly important. If oral needs are not
met appropriately, the individual may develop such habits as
thumb sucking, finger nail biting, and pencil chewing in childhood
and overeating and smoking in later life.
Anal 1 - 3 years Voluntary urination and defecation become the primary methods
of gratifying the sex instinct. Young toddlers and preschoolers
enjoy holding and releasing urine and faces. Toilet training
become a major issue between parent and child. If parents insist
that children be trained before they are ready or make too few
demands, conflicts about anal control may appear in the form of
extreme orderliness and cleanliness or messiness and disorder.
Phallic 3 - 6 years Pleasure is now desired from genital stimulation. Children
develop incestuous desire fro the opposite sex parent (oedipus
complex for boys and electra complex for girls). To avoid
punishment, they give up this desire and, instead, adopt the same
sex parent’s characteristics and values. As a result, the super-ego
is formed. The relation between id, ego and super ego established
at this time determine individual’s basic personality.
Latency 6 - 11 years Traumas of the phallic stage cause sexual conflicts to be repressed
and sexual urges to be rechanneled into school work and vigorous
play. The ego and superego continue to develop as the child gains
more problem solving abilities at school and internalizes societal
values and play with same sex peers.
Genetal Age 12 onwards Puberty causes the sexual impulses to reawaken. Adolescents
(Adolescence) must now lean how to express these urges in socially acceptable
ways. If development has been healthy and successful during
earlier stages, it leads to mature sexuality, marriage, and the
rearing of children.

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages

Oral stage Birth – 1 year The sex instinct centres on the month because the
child desires pleasure from such oral activities as sucking, chewing, and biting. Feeding activities
are particularly important. If oral needs are not met appropriately, the individual may develop
such habits as thumb sucking, finger nail biting, and pencil chewing, in childhood and overeating
and smoking in later life.

Anal stage 1 – 3 years Voluntary urination and defecation become the

primary methods of gratifying the sets instinct. Young toddlers and preschoolers enjoy holding
and releasing urine and faces. Toilet training become a major issue between parent and child. If
parents insist that children be trained before they are ready or make too few demands, conflicts
about anal control may appear in the form of extreme orderliness and cleanliness or messiness
and disorder.

Phallic stage 3 – 6 years Pleasure is now desired from genital stimulation.

Children develop incestuous desire for the opposite sex parent (Oedipus complex for boys and
Electra complex for girls). To avoid punishment, they give up this desire and, instead, adopt the
same sex parent’s characteristics and values. As a result, the superego is formed. The relation
between id, ego and superego established at this time determine individual’s basic personality.

Latency 6 – 11 years Traumas of the phallic stage cause sexual conflicts

to be repressed and sexual urges to be rechannelled into school work and vigorous play. The ego
and superego continue to develop as the child gains more problem solving abilities at school and
internalizes societal values and play with same-sex peers.

Genital Age 12 onward (Adolescence) Puberty causes the sexual impulses to reawaken.
Adolescents must now learn how to express these urges in socially acceptable ways. If
development has been healthy and successful during earlier stages, it leads to mature sexuality,
marriage and the rearing of children.

Freud thought that sex was the most important instinct because he has discovered that
his patient’s mental disturbances often revolved around childhood sexual conflicts they had
repressed. His view of sex was very broad, encompassing such activities as thumb-sucking and
urinating that we would not consider erotic believed that as the sex instinct matured, its focus
shift from one part of the body to another and that each shift brought on a new stage of
psychosexual stages of development. Freud believed that parent’s permitting too much or too
little gratification of sexual needs would cause the child to become obsessed with what ever
activity was encouraged or discouraged. The child might fixate on that activity (that is, display
arrested development) and retain some aspect of it throughout life. For example, an infant who
was strongly punished for and thus conflicted about sucking her thumb might express this oral
fixation in adulthood through such activities as smoking or oral sex.

Freud believed that during childhood, sexual impulses shift their focus from the oral to
the anal to the genital regions of the body. In each stage, parents walk a fine gratification of
their child’s basic needs. If parents strike an appropriate balance, then children grow into well-
adjusted adults with the capacity for mature sexual behaviour, investment in family life, and
rearing of next generation.

This theory highlighted the importance of family relationships and early experiences for
children’s development. If claims that early childhood experiences and conflicts heavily
influence our adult interests, activities, and personalities.

Criticisms: (1) Over emphasis the influence of sexual feelings in child development. (2)
The theory is based on the problems of sexually repressed, well-to-do adults, of 19 th century
Victorian City. (3) He had not studied children directly. (4) Many of the psychoanalytic ideas such
as psychosexual stages and ego functioning are so vague so that they are difficult or impossible
to test empirically. (5) Many contemporary theorists place less emphasis on sexual instincts and
have stress on cultural experiences as determinant of individual’s development. (6) Most
contemporary theorist believe that conscious thought makes up more of the mind than Freud
envisioned. (7) Since they were deeply interested in the study of each child that they failed to
consider other methods.

Contributions

1. His ideas are a bit outlandish.

2. It is Freud who first proclaimed that vast majority of psychic experience lay behind the
level of conscious awareness.
3. He focused his attention on influence of early experience on later development.
4. Freud instigated the study of emotional side of human development – love, fear and
anxiety.
5. Emphasised individual’s unique life history as worthy of studying and understanding.
6. He used clinical and case study method to synthesis information from variety sources
for giving a detailed picture of a single child.
7. It inspired a wealth of research on many aspects of emotional and social development,
including infant care given attachment, aggression, sibling relationship, child rearing
practices, morality, gender roles, and adolescent identity.

(B) Erikson’s Theory – Psychosocial Theory of Development

Those followers of Freud who took useful parts of his theory or those who modified
Freud’s theory are called Neo-Freudians.

Erik Erikson (1902-1994), a German born psychoanalyst, modified and extended

Freudian theory by emphasizing the influence of society on the developing personality. While
accepting Freud’s basic psychosexual frame work, he expanded the picture of development at
each stage. In psychosocial theory, he emphasised that the ego does not just mediate between
id impulse and superego demands. It is also a positive force of development.

Erikson was the pioneer who emphasised developmental changes as a life span process,
against Freud’s view that personality is shaped in the first five years of life. He applied his own
theory to well-known public figures, writing psychosocial biographies or psychohistories of
Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. This made him to see human development has the
interaction between heredity and environment. He pointed out that normal development must
be understood in relation to each culture’s life situation.

Erikson stressed that children are active, curious explorers who seek to adapt to their
environment, rather than passive slaves, to biological urges who are molded by their parents.
Erikson has been labeled as “ego psychologists” because he believe that each stage of life,
people must cope up with social realities (in ego function) in order to adapt successfully and
display a normal pattern of development. So in Erikson’s theory, the ego is far more than a
simple mediator of the opposing demands of the id and superego.

Eriksons emphasised the social and cultural aspects of development in his own theory.

According to Erikson, human life progresses through a series of eight stages. Each of this
stage is worked by a crisis that needs to be resolved so that the individual can move on. Erikson
used the term crisis which is not a catastrophe but a turning point of increased vulnerability and
enhanced potential. The more successfully an individual resolves the crisis, the healthier
development will be.

1. Trust vs. Mistrust (birth to 1½ years old): In the first year of life the infant should develop a
sense of basic trust. For Erikson, trust has an unusually broad meaning. Trust in infancy sets
the stage for a life long expectation that world is not only a safe and pleasant place to live
but an orderly, predictable place where infants learn about causes and effects. Trust
flourishes with warmth, care and also discipline.

2. Autonomy vs. Shame or Doubt (1½ - 3 years): In the second stage of development, children
begin to gain control over their bodies and begins to discover that their behaviour is their
own. They start to asset their senses of independence or autonomy and start learning to be
self-governing in all of their behaviours.
If infants are restrained too much or punish too harshly, they are likely to sense a shame
and doubt.

3. Initiative vs. Guilt (3 to 5 years old): The third crisis, initiative vs. guilt, begins during the
preschool years. As preschool children encounter a widening social world, they are
challenged more than when they were infants. Building on the ability to control themselves,
children now learn to have some influence over others in the family and to successfully
manipulate their surroundings. Children are asked to assume responsibility for their bodies,
their behaviour, their toys, and their pets. Developing a sense of responsibility increase
initiative.
If parents and others make children feel incompetent, however they develop a
genearlised feeling of guilt about themselves. If the child is irresponsible and is made to feel
too anxious uncomfortable guilt feelings may arise. Erikson has a positive outlook on this
stage. He believes that most guilt is quickly compensated for a sense of accomplishment.

4. Industry vs. Inferiority (5 to 12 years old): The fourth stage corresponds closely to the child’s
elementary school years. Now the task is to go beyond initiating ideal models and to learn
 the basic technology of the culture. Children expand their horizons beyond the family and
begin to explore the neighbourhood. As they move into middle and late childhood, they
direct their energy toward mastering knowledge and intellectual skills. At no other time is
the child move, enthusiastic about learning than at the end of the early childhoods period of
expansive imagination. The danger in the elementary school years is that the child can
develop of a sense of inferiority – feeling incompetent and unproductive. Erikson believed
that the teachers have a special responsibility for children’s development of industry. If the
child do not have the sense of accomplishment he may develop a lasting sense of inferiority.

5. Identity vs. Identity Confusion (12 to 18 years old): Individuals experience, this 5 th stage of
development during the adolescent years. The main task of adolescent is to achieve a state
of identity. To identity is a state forward which one strives, not the general picture one has
of oneself. Adolescents are confronted with many new roles and adult statuses. Parents
need to allow adolescents to explore many different roles and different paths with a
particular role. If the adolescent explores such roles in a healthy manner and arrives at a
positive path to follow in life, than a positive identity will be achieved. If an identity is pushed
on the adolescent by parents, if the adolescent does not adequately explore many roles, and
if a positive future path is not defined, then identity confusion reigns. Erikson says if you are
in a state of identity, the various aspects of self-image would be in agreement with each
other, they would be identical. Ideally, a person in the state of identity has no internal
conflicts whatsoever.
6. Intimacy vs. Isolation (18 to 25 years): This sixth stage of development individual’s
experience during the early adulthood years. Forming intimacy with others is important at
this stage. Intimacy is the ability to relate one’s deepest hopes and fears to another person,
and to accept in turn another person’s need for intimacy, which is more than sexual
intimacy. If the young adult form healthy friendships and an intimate relationship with
another individual, intimacy will be achieved, if not, isolation will result.
7. Generativity vs. Stagnation (25 to 65 years old): Generativity means the ability to be useful
to ourselves and to society. The feeling of having done nothing to help the next generation
is stagnation.
To be productive and creative, will be the goal of this period. Further, a sense of trying
to make the world a better place for the young in general, and for one’s own children in
particular, emerges. In this stage, many people become menstors to younger individuals,
sharing their knowledge and philosophy of life. When people fail in generativity, they begin
to stagnate, to become bored and self-indulgent, unable to contribute to society’s welfare.
Such adult often act as if they are their own child.

8. Integrity vs. Despair (65 years old and older): During this stage, a person reflects on the past.
If the retrospective glances will reveal a picture of a life well spent, and the person will feel a
sense of satisfaction – integrity will be achieved. If the older adult resolved many of the
earlier stages negatively they feel despair at the impossibility of having just one more
chance to make things right.
To the extent that individuals have been successful in resolving the first seven crises,
they achieve a sense of personal integrity. Adults who have a sense of integrity accept their
lives as having been well spent. They feel a kinship with people of other cultures and of
 pervious and future generations. They have a sense of having helped to create a more
dignified life for humankind. They have gained wisdom:

Evaluation

I. Contributions

1. The psychoanalytic theories focus an socio-emotional process of development, but biological

and cognitive processes are ignored.

2. The theories highlight the role of early experiences in development.

3. Family relationships are examined as a central aspect of development.

4. Psychoanalytic theories take a developmental approach to personality and provide

developmental framework for understanding it.

5. Freud emphasised on unconscious aspects of the mind.

6. Erikson explained about changes that takes place the adulthood too.

II. Criticisms

1. Difficult to test the theories.

2. Much of the data used to support psychoanalytic theories come from individual
experiences.
3. Unconscious mind is given too much credit.
4. Psychoanalytic theories present an image of humans that is too negative.
5. Psychoanalytic theories are culture and gender biased.
6.
Learning Perspective

Learning perspective of human development holds the view that changes in behaviour
result from experience or adaptation to the environment. Learning theorists are concerned with
finding out the objective laws that govern changes in all age groups. They see development as
continuous and emphasise quantitative changes.

Learning theorists have helped to make the study of human development more
scientific. Their terms are defined precisely, and their theories are defined precisely, and their
theories can be tested in the laboratory. By stressing environmental influences, they help
explain cultural differences in Behaviour.

Two important Learning theories come under this perspective are behaviourism and
social learning theory.

Behavioural approach to the human development explains that predictable role of

environment in causing observable behaviour. Although biology sets limits on what people do,
behaviourists view environment as much more influencial. They hold that human beings at all
ages learn about the world the same way other organisms do, by relating to conditions, or
aspects of the environment that they find pleasing, painful or, threatening. Behaviourists look
for events that determine whether or not a particular behaviour will be repeated. Behavioural
research focuses on associative learning, in which a mental link is formed between two events.
One is classical conditions. Two is operant conditions.

Watson’s Behaviourism

It was John B. Watson (Father of the school of Behaviourism) a developmentalist who

claimed that he could take a dozen healthy infants and mold them to be whatever he chose –
doctor, lawyer, beggar and so on – regardless of their backgrounds or ancestry. A basic premise
of Watson’s (1913) behaviourism is that conclusions about development should be based on
observations of overt behaviour rather than speculations about unconscious motives or
cognitive processes that are unobservable. He believed that well-learned associations between
external stimuli and observable responses (called habits) are the building blocks of
development. Children have no inborn tendencies, how they turn out depends entirely on their
rearing environments and the ways in which their parents and other significant people in their
lives treat them. According to this perspective, children do not progress through a series of
distinct stages dictated by biological maturation, (as Freud and others) have argued. Instead,
development is viewed as a continuous process of behavioural change that is shaped by a
person’s unique environment and may differ dramatically from person to person.

Watson’s – doctrine of Environmental determinism – accordingly young, unknowing

children are viewed as passive recipients of environmental influence – they would become
whatever parents teachers and other aspects of society groomed them to be.

To prove how malleable children are, Watson set out to demonstrate that infants fears
and other emotional reactions are acquired rather than inborn. In one demonstration, for
example, Watson & Rosale Rayner (1920) presented a gentle white rat to 9 month old boy
named Albert. Albert’s initial reactions were positive, he crawled toward the rat and played with
it as he had previously with a dog and a rabbit. Then two months later, Watson attempted to
instill fear response. Every time Albert reached for the white rat, Watson would slip behind him
and bang a steel rod with a hammer, little Albert eventually associated the white rat with the
loud noice and came to fear the furry playmate. This illustrate that fears are easily learned.
Though he proved this he did not developed any theory as his own.

Classical Conditioning

Theory and classical conditioning is a natural form of learning that occurs even without
intervention. By learning what events go together, children can anticipate what is going to
happen, and this knowledge makes their world a more orderly, predictable place.

Operant Conditioning
 Theory and Techniques developed by Skinner are widely used conditioning how
behaviour or for changing undesirable behaviour. These learning models are useful to treat
children with behavioural problems or to substitute with behaviours. (It is effective among
children with special needs, such as autism, and among persons with eating disorders).

Skinner proposed a form of learning he believed is the basis of most habits. Skinner
argued that both animals and humans repeat acts that lead to favourable outcomes and
suppress that those that lead to unfavourable outcomes.

When Reinforcers applied to children, young girl may form a habit, of showing
compassion toward distressed playmates if her parents consistently reinforce has kindly
behaviours with praise. A teenage boy may become more studious if his efforts are rewarded by
higher grades.

Skinner’s theory was that habits develop as a result of unique operant leaning
experiences. One boy’s aggressive behaviour may increase overtime because his playmates
“give in” (reinforce) his forceful tactics. Another boy may become relatively non aggressive
because his playmates may become actively suppress (punish) aggressiveness by fighting back.
The two boys may develop in entirely different directions based on their different histories of
reinforcement and punishment.

According to Skinner, there is no “aggressive stage” in child development has an

“aggressive instinct” in people. Instead, he claimed that the majority of the habits that children
acquire - the very responses that make up their unique “personalities” – are freely emitted
operants that have been shaped by their consequences. This operant theory claims that
development depends on external stimuli (reinforce and punishers) rather than internal forces
such as instincts, drives or biological maturation.

Cognitive Social Learning Theory

According Bandura behaviours are learned by observing and initiating models called
modeling, imitation, observational learning.

He considered observation as a powerful source of development. For example, the baby who
claps her hands after her mother does so. They explain child development as a continuous
reciprocal interaction between children and their environments.

Bandura has shown that children’s ability to listen, remember, and abstract general
rules from complex sets of observed behaviours affects their information and learning.

Bandura argues that people are cognitive beings – active information processors – who
think about the relationships between their behaviours and its consequences. They are often
more affected by what they believe will happen than by what they actually experience. Consider
your own situation as a student your education is costly and time-consuming and imposes many
stressful demands. Yet, you tolerate the costs and toil because you anticipate greater rewards
after you graduate. Your behaviour is not shaped by immediate consequences but your thought
about the long term benefits of obtaining an education and have decided that the benefits
overweigh the short term.

Bandura emphasizes observational learning as a central developmental process.

Observational learning is simply learning that result from observing behaviour of other people.
Observational learning could not occur unless cognitive processes were at work. We must
attend carefully to a model’s behaviour, actively digest or encode, what we observe and then
store this information in memory (as an image or a verbal label) in order to imitate what we
have observed.

OL permits young children to quality acquire thousands of new responses in a variety of

setting where their models are pursuing their own interests and are not trying to teach them
anything. Children learn both desirable and undesirable behaviours because child development
proceeds very rapidly along many different paths.

Bandura, as against reciprocal determinism, stressed that children and adolescents are
active, thinking beings who contribute in many ways to their own development. OL, for
example, requires the child to actively attend to, encode, and retain the behaviours displayed by
social models. And children are often free to choose the models to whom they will attend, so
they have some say about what they will learn from others.

He proposed the concept of reciprocal determinism to describe his view that human
development reflects an interaction among an active person (P) the person’s behaviour (B), and
environment (E).

Unlike Watson and Skinner who maintained that the environment (E) shaped a child’s
personality and her behaviour, Bandura others proposed that links among persons behaviours
and environment are bidirectional. Thus a child can influence his environment by virtue of his
own conduct.
 His recent revisions of his theory (1992, 2001) places such strong emphasis on how
children think about themselves and other people that he called as social cognitive rather than
social learning approach.

According to the revised view, children gradually become more selective in what they
imitate. From watching others engage in self praise and self balme and through feedback about
the worth of their own actions children develop personal standards for behaviours and a sense
of self-efficacy – the belief that their own abilities and characteristics will help them succeed.

These cognitions guide responses in particular situations. For example, imagine a parent
who remarks “I am glad I kept working on the task, even though it was hard” who explains the
value of persistence and who encourages it by saying “I know you can do a good job on that
home work”. Soon the child starts to view herself as hardworking and high achieving and selects
people with these characteristics as models. In this way, as children acquire attitudes, values,
convictions about themselves, they control their own learning and behaviour.

Characteristics and Criticisms of Social Learning Theories

1. The wealth of information learning has provided about developing children and
adolescents.
2. L theories are very peruse and testable.
3. By conducting tightly controlled experiments to determine how children reacts to
various environmental influences, learning theorists have begun to understand how and
why children form emotional attachments, adopt gender roles, make friends, learn to
abide by rules, and change in countless ways over the course of childhood and
adolescence.
4. Learning theorists’ emphasis on immediate causes of overt behaviours has also
produced important clinical insights and practical applications. For example, many
problem behaviours can now be quickly eliminated by behavioural modification
techniques in which the therapist (1) identifies the reinforcers that sustain unacceptable
habits and eliminates them. (2) While modeling or reinforcing alternate behaviours that
are more desirable.
5. L techniques are widely used to relieve a wide range of serious developmental
problems, such as persistent aggression, language delays, and extreme fears.
6. It is also effective in dealing with common, every day difficulties includes poor time
management, unwanted habits, disruptive behaviour etc.
Limitations

1. These themes do not provide complete account of development. They argue that these
approaches offer too $ a view of important environmental influences, which extend
beyond immoderate reinforcement, punishment and modeled behaviour to children’s
rich physical and social world.
2. These theories have neglected children’s contributions to their own development. But
Bandura’s emphasis on cognitive elements in the latest version, granted children active
role in their own learning.
 3. Learning approach has over simplified the account of human development i.e., no
importance to individual differences because every individual have unique genetic
endowment.
4. Ecological system theorists disagree with behaviourists view by pointing out the
importance of natural settings and stress that the same type of behaviour could not be
elicited in artificial or lab situations.
5. Learning theorists give too little attention to cognitive influences on development.

Cognitive Perspective

Cognitive Perspective view that thought processes is central to development. It includes

(1) the Cognitive Stage Theory of Piaget, or Cognitive Development Theory, (2) Information –
processing view point and (3) neo-piagetian theories, which combines elements of both. For
example, Vygotsky’s theory.

(1) Cognitive Development Theory: Jean Piaget Psychologist, sought to understand the
cognitive structures of the intellect. According to him children actively construct knowledge as
they manipulate and explore their world.

Key concepts in Piaget’s Theory

Scheme: According to him a cognitive structure is an organised pattern of thought or

action that is used to cope with or explain some aspect of experience.

Stages: After many years of observing children of all ages, Piaget believed that
intelligence matures through the growth of increasingly effective cognitive structures. These
structures can be best defined as the blueprints that enable us to organise and adapt to our
world. According to him thinking is composed of numerous operations that enable the individual
to manipulate the environment. Operations are mental, internalized actions. Mental operations
allow people to take things apart and reassemble them without actually touching the object.

Functional Invariants

He believed that cognitive growth occurs through three inter related processes.

(a) Organisation – is the tendency to create increasingly complex cognitive structures:

systems of knowledge or ways of thinking that incorporate more and more accurate images of
reality. These structures called schemes are organised patterns of behaviour that a person uses
to think about and act in a situation. As children acquire more information, their schemes
become more and more complex. An infant has a simple scheme for sucking, but soon develops
varied schemes for how to suck at the breast, a bottle, or a thumb. At first schemes for looking
and grasping operate independently. Later, infants integrate these separate schemes into a
single scheme that allows them to look at an object while holding it.

(b) Adaptation - is a Piaget’s term for new children handle new information in the light
of what they already know, adaptation involves two steps.
(1) Assimilation – taking new information and incorporating it into existing cognitive structures.

(2) Accommodation- is changing ones cognitive structures to include new information. Because
we use organisation and adaptation constantly throughout our lives, Piaget named them,
Functional Invariants.

(c) Equilibration – This is Piaget’s term for the tendency to seek a stable balance among
cognitive elements.

When children cannot handle new experiences within their existing cognitive structures
they experience disequilibrium. In order to restore a more comfortable state of equilibrium,
they organise how mental patterns that integrate new experience.

He believed that we are continually relying on the complementary processes of

assimilation and accommodation to adapt to our environments.

Piaget was an innovative renegade.

Piaget believed that cognitive development occurs in four qualitative different

stages, which represent the universal pattern of development. They are

(1) Sensory motor stage (Birth to 2 years) infants “think” by acting on the world with
their eyes, ears, hands and mouth. As a result, they invent ways of solving sensory motor
problems, such as pulling a lever to hear the sound of a music box, finding hidden toys, and
putting objects in and taking them out of containers. Infants use their bodies to form cognitive
structures symbolic-illogic thinking.

(2) Pre-operational stage (2 – 7 years) – Preschool children use symbols to represent

their earlier sensory motor discoveries. Development of language and make-believe play takes
place. However thinking lacks the logic of the two remaining stages. Use of symbols, rapid
language growth.

(3) The concrete-operational stage (7 – 11 years) – Children’s reasoning becomes logical,

schoolage children understand that a certain amount of lemonade remains the same even after
its appearance changes. They also organise objects into of classes and subclasses. However,
thinking falls short of adult intelligence. It is not yet abstract. Can reassure about physical
objects.

(4) Formal operational stage (ages beyond 11 years) – The capacity for abstraction
permits adolescents to reason with symbols, that do not refer to objects in the world, as in
advanced mathematics. They can also think of all possible outcomes in a scientific problem, not
just the most obvious ones. Abstract reasoning leads to reassuring with symbols.
II. Information Processing Approach – This approach study cognitive development by analysing
the processes involved in perceiving and handling information, it is not a single theory but a
framework, or set of assumptions, that underlies a wide range of theories and approaches.

Information processing approach has practical applications. It enables researchers to

estimate an infant’s later intelligence from the efficiency of sensory perception and processing.
It enables parents and teachers to help children learn by making them more aware of their own
mental processes, and of strategies to enhance them. And Psychologists can use information –
processing models to test, diagnose and treat learning problems.

(a) Computer based models – Some information processing theorists compare the brain
to a computer sensory impressions go in: behaviour comes out.

Information processing researchers infer what goes on between a stimulus and a

response. For example, they may ask a person to recall a list of words and then observe any
difference in performance if the person repeats, the list over and over before being asked to
recall the words. Through such studies, some information processing researchers have
develop3ed computational models or flow chart analysing the specific steps people go through
in gathering, storing, retrieving and using information.

(b) Neo-Piagetian Theories – These theories began to integrate some elements of

Piaget’s theory with information processing approach. Instead of describing a single general
system of increasingly logical mental operations, neo-Piagetians focus on specific concepts,
strategies and skills, such as number concepts and comparison of more and less. They believe
that children develop cognitively by becoming more efficient at processing information.

III. Cognitive Neuroscience Approach: This approach argues that an accurate understanding of
cognitive (and emotional) functioning must be linked to what happens in the brain.
Developmental cognitive neuroscience may explain how cognitive growth occurs as the brain
interact with the environment. It is giving scientists insight into why certain common memory
failures such absent mindedness and difficulty accessing information in memory occur.

Social cognitive neuroscientists use brain imaging and studies of people with brain
injuries to figure out how neural pathways control such processes as memory and attention and
that in turn influence attitudes and emotions.

Evolutionary Socio-biological Perspective :

This perspective borrowed the Darwin’s theory of evolution to explain the development
process. Individuals with traits better adapted to their environments survive: those less adopted
do not. Through reproduction, more adaptive characteristics are passed on to future
generations, while less adaptive characteristics die out. As environment change, some
characteristics become more or less adaptive than before, this account for the emergence and
extinction of species such as dinosaurs.
 Ethologists study the distinctive adaptive behaviours of species of animals that have
evolved to increase survival of the species. They try to identify which behaviours are universal
and which are specific to a particular species or are modified by culture.

Ethology is non identified with the sociobiological perspective proposed by E. O. Wilson

which focuses of biological bases of social behaviours. It looks beyond an individuals immediate
behaviour to its function in promoting the survival of the group or species. Socio biologist have
studied topics as reproductive patterns, altruism, parenting, and making behaviour.

Evolutionary psychology applies the Darwian principles of natural selection and survival
of the fittest to individual behaviour. They studies how biology and environment interact to
produce behaviour and development. According to this theory, people unconsciously strive not
only for personal survival, but also to perpetuate their own genetic legacy. The result for the
species is the development of mechanisms that have evolved to solve problems. For example,
there is evidence that “morning sickness” and sudden aversion to certain foods, common during
pregnancy may actually be a mechanism for protecting the fetus from toxic substances during its
most vulnerable periods of development.

Evolutionary developmental psychologists seek to identify behaviours that are adaptive

at different ages. For example, an infant needs to stay close to the mother, but for an older child
exploration is important.

Contextual Perspective

This perspective sees the individual as inseparable from the social context. One’s development
can be understood only in its social context.

Bioecological Theory – Bronfenbrenner

This theory is an attempt to understand the processes and contexts of development. It

describes the range of interacting influences that affect a developing person.

Every biological organism develops within the context of ecological systems that support
or stifle its growth. We need to understand the ecology of human environment if we wish to
understand how people develop.

According to him, development occurs through increasingly complex processes of

interaction between a developing person and the immediate everyday environment = processes
that are affected by more remote contexts of which the individual may not even be aware.

To understand these processes, we must study the multiple contexts in which the occur.
These begin at home, classroom, works\place, neighbourhood, connect outward to societal
institutions, such as educational and transport systems, and finally encompass cultural and
historical patterns that affect the family, the school and virtually everything else in a person’s
life. By highlighting the interrelated contexts of, and influences on development,
Bronfenbrenner theory provides a key to understanding the processes that underlie such
diverse phenomena as academic achievement and antisocial behaviour.

Bronfenbrenner identifies five interlocking contextual systems, from the most intimate
to the broadest, the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, aracrosystem, and chronosystem.
Although we separate the various levels of influence for purposes of illustration, in reality they
continually interact.

A microsystem is a pattern of activities, roles and relationships within a setting, such as

home, school, workplace or neighbourhood in which a person interact on. It is through the
microsystem that more distant influences, such as social institutions and cultural values, reach
the developing person.

A microsystem involves personal, face-to-face relationships, and bidiorectional

influences flow back and forth.

A mesosystem is the interaction of two or more microsystems that contain the

developing person. It may include linkages between home and school (such as parent-teacher
conferences) or between family and peer group. Attention to the mesosystem can alert to
differences in the ways the same person acts in different settings. For example, a child who can
satisfactorily complete the school assignments at home may become tongue-tied when asked a
question about the assignment in class.

Mesosystem – a linkage between two or more Microsystems.

An exosystem like major system consists of linkages between two or more settings; but
in an exosystem, unlike a mesosystem, at least one of these settings – such as parent’s
workplace and parents social networking – does not contain the developing person and thus
affects him or her only indirectly.

The macrosystem consists of overall cultural patterns, like dominant values, beliefs,
customs, and economic and social system of a culture or subculture, which filter down in
countless ways to individual’s daily lives. For example, whether a child grows up in a nuclear or
extended family household is strongly influenced by a cultures macrosystem. We can see a more
subtle macrosystem influence in the individualistic values stressed in the United States, as
centralized with the predominant value of group harmony is Chinese culture.

Chronosystem adds the dimension of time; the degree of stability or change in a child’s
world. This can include changes in family composition, place of residence, or parent’s
employment, as well as larger events such as wars, economic cycles, and viaves of migration.
Changes in family patterns (such as the increase in working mothers in Western Industrial
Societies and the decline of extended family household in developing countries) are
chronosystem factors.
 According to Bronfenbrenner, a person is not merely an outcome of development, but a
shaper of it. People affect their own development through their biological and psychological
characteristics talents and skills, disabilities and temperament.

_____________________

Lev Vgotsky’s Sociocultural Theory: The Russian psychologist Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (196-
1934) was a prominent proponent of the contextual perspective, particularly as it applies to
children’s cognitive development. In contrast with Bronfenbrenner, who sees contextual
systems as centered around the individual person. Vygotsky’s central focus is the social, cultural,
and historical complex of which a child is a part. To understand cognitive development, he
maintained, one must look to the social processes from which a child’s thinking is derived.

Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory, like Piaget’s theory of cognitive development,

stresses children’s active engagement with their environment. But whereas Piaget described the
solo mind taking in and interpreting information about the world. Vygotsky saw cognitive
growth as a collaborative process. Children, said Vygotsky, learn through social interaction. They
acquire cognitive skills as part of their induction into a way of life. Shared activities help children
to internalize their society’s ways of thinking and behaving and to make those ways their own.

According to Vygotsky, adults (or more advanced peers) must help direct and organise a
child’s learning before the child master and internalize it. This guidance is most effective in
helping children cross the zone of proximal development (ZPD), the gap between what they are
already able to do and what they are not quite ready to accomplish by themselves. (Proximal
means “nearby”) Children in the ZPD for a particular task can almost, however, they can do it
successfully. In the course of the collaboration, responsibility for directing and monitoring
learning gradually shifts to the child.

When an adult teaches a child to float, the adult first supports the child in the water and
then lets go gradually as the child’s body relaxes into a horizontal position. When the child
seems ready, the adult withdraws all but one finger and finally lets the child float freely. Some
followers of Vygotsky (Wood, 1980; Wood, Bruner & Ross, 1976) have applied the metaphor of
scaffolds – the temporary platforms on which construction workers stand – to this way of
teaching. Scaffolding, then, is the temporary support that parents, teachers, or others give a
child to do a task until the child can do it alone.

Vygotsky’s theory has important implications for education and for cognitive testing.
Tests based on the ZPD, which focus on a child’s potential, provide a valuable alternative to
standard intelligence tests that assess what the child has already learned; and many children
may benefit from the sort of expert guidance Vygotsky prescribes.
 A major contribution of the contextual perspective has been its emphasis on the social
component in development. Research attention has shifted from the individual to larger,
interactional units – parent and child, sibling and sibling, the entire family, the neighbourhood,
and broader societal institutions. The contextual perspective also reminds us that the
development of children in one culture or one group within a culture (such as white, middle-
class Americans) may not be an appropriate norm for children in other societies or cultural
groups.

How Theory and Research Work Together

No one theory of human development is universally accepted, and no one theoretical

perspective explains all facts of development. To understand how a child develops a sense of
right and wrong, a behaviourist would examine the way parents respond to the child’s
behaviour: what kinds of behaviour they punish or praise. A social learning theorist would focus
on imitation of moral examples, possibly in stories or in movies. An information processing
researcher might do a task analysis to identify the steps a child goes through in determining the
range of moral options available and then in deciding which option to pursue.

II

Methods of developmental psychology

Forms of Data Collection

Common ways of gathering data include self-reports (verbal reports by study

participants), tests and other behaviouiral measures, and observation. Researchers may use one
or more of these data collection techniques in any research design. Qualitative research tends to
depend heavily on interviews and on observation in natural settings, whereas quantitative
research makes use of more structured methods. A current trend is toward increased use of
self-reports and observation in combination with more objective measures.

Self-Reports: Diaries, Interviews, Questionnaires

The simplest form of self-report is a diary or log. Adolescents may be asked, for
example, to record what they eat each day, or the times when they feel depressed. In studying
young children, parental self reports – diaries, journals, interviews, or questionnaires – are
commonly used, often together with other methods, such as videotaping or recording.

In a face-to-face or telephone interview, researchers ask questions about attitudes,

opinions, or behaviour. In a structured interview (such as the one used in the study of reaction
to Sep. 11, described in the preceding “Sampling”), each participant is asked the same set of
questions. An open-ended interview, more often used in qualitative research, is more flexible,
the interviewer can vary the topics and order of questions and can ask follow up questions
based on the responses. To reach more people and protect their privacy, researchers sometimes
distribute a printed questionnaire, which participants fill out and return.

By questioning a large number of people, investigators get a broad picture – at least of

what the respondents say they believe or do or did. However, people willing to participate in
interviews or fill out questionnaires tend to be unrepresentative of the population as a whole.
Furthermore, heavy reliance on self-reports may be unwise, since people may not have thought
about what they fed and think, or honestly may not know. Some people forget when and how
events actually took place, and others consciously or unconsciously distort their replies to fit
what is considered socially desirable.

How a question is asked, and by whom, can affect the answer. When researchers at the
National Institute on Drug Abuse reworded a question about alcohol use to indicate that a
“drink” meant “more than a few sips,” the percentage of teenagers who reported drinking
alcohol dropped significantly (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1996). When questioned about
risky or socially disapproved behaviour, such as sexual habits and drug use, respondents may be
more candid in responding to a computerized survey than to a paper-and-pencil one.

Behavioural and Performance Measures

In quantitative research, investigators often use more objective measures instead of, or
in addition to, self-reports. A behavioural or performance measure shows something about a
person rather than asking the person or someone else (such as a parent or friend) to tell about
it. Tests and other behavioural and neuropsychological measures, including mechanical and
electronic devices, may be used to assess abilities, skills, knowledge, competencies, or
physiological responses, such as heart rate and brain activity. Although these measures are less
subjective than self-reports, such factors as fatigue and self-confidence can affect results.

Some tests, such as intelligence tests, compare performance with that of other test
takers. Such tests can be meaningful and useful only if they are both valid (that is, the tests
measure the abilities they claim to measure) and reliable (that is, the results are reasonably
consistent from one time to another). To avoid bias, tests must be standardised, that is, given
and scored by the same methods and criteria for all test takers.

Naturalistic and Laboratory Observation

 Observation can take two forms: naturalistic observation and laboratory observation. In
naturalistic observation, common in qualitative research, researchers look at people in real-life
settings. The researchers do not try to alter behaviour of the environment; they simply record
what they see. In laboratory observation, researchers observe and record behaviour in a
controlled situation, such as a laboratory. By observing all participants under the same
conditions, investigators can move clearly identify differences in behaviour not attributable to
the environment.

Both kinds of observation can provide valuable description of behaviour, but they have
limitations. For one, they do not explain why people behave as they do, though they may
suggest interpretations. Then, too, an observer’s presence can alter behaviour. When people
know they are being watched, they may act differently. Finally, there is a risk of observer bias:
the researcher’s tendency to interpret data to fit expectations or to emphasise some aspects
and minimize others.

Basic Research Designs

Case Studies: A case study is a study of an individual, such as Victor, the wild boy of
Aveyron (discussed on CH. 1). A number of theories, most notably Freud’s, have grown out of
clinical case studies, which include careful observation and interpretation of what patients say
and do. Case studies also may use behavioural or neuropschological measures and biographical,
autobiographical, or documentary materials.

Case studies offer useful, in-depth information. They can explore sources of behaviour
and can test treatments. They also can suggest further research. Another advantage is flexibility:
the researcher is free to explore avenues of inquiry that arise during the course of the study.
However, case studies have shortcomings. From studying Victor, for instance, we learn much
about the development of a single child, but not how the information applies to children in
general. Furthermore, case studies cannot explain behaviour with certainty, because there is no
way to test their conclusions. Even through it seems reasonable that Victor’s severely deprived
environment caused or contributed to his language deficiency, it is impossible to know how he
would have developed with a normal upbringing.

Ethnographic Studies

An ethnographic study seeks to describe the pattern of relationships, customs, beliefs,

technology, arts, and traditions that make up a society’s way of life. Ethnographic research can
be qualitative, quantitative, or both. It uses a combination of methods, including participant
observation. To understand how children grow up under varied environmental conditions, one
must be willing to go to where those conditions already exist, to examine them with respect and
in detail, and to change one’s assumptions in the face of new observations.

Correlational Studies: A correlational study is an attempt to find a correlation, or

statistical relationship, between variables, phenomena that change or vary among people or can
be varied for purposes of research. Correlations are expressed in terms of direction (positive or
negative) and magnitude (degree). Two variables that are related positively increase or decrease
together. A positive or direct correlation between televised violence and aggressiveness would
exit if children who watched more violent television hit, bit or kicked more than children who
watched less violent television. Two variables have a negative, or inverse, correlation if, as one
increases, the other decreases.

Correlations allow us to predict one variable on the basis of another. Although strong
correlations may suggest possible causes, these possible cause-and-effect relations need to be
examined very critically.

Experiments: An experiment is a controlled procedure in which the experimenter

manipulates variables to learn how one affects another. Scientific experiments must be
conducted and reported in such a way that another experimenter can replicate them, that is,
repeat them in exactly the same way with different participants to verify the results and
conclusions.

Groups and Variables: A common way to conduct an experiment is to divide the

participants into two kinds of groups. An experimental group is composed of people who are to
be exposed to the experimental manipulation or treatment – the phenomenon the researcher
wants to study. Afterward, the effect of the treatment will be measured one or more times to
find out what changes, if any, it caused. A control group is composed of people who are similar
to the experimental group but do not receive the treatment, or receive a different treatment.
An experiment may include one or more of each type of group. Or, if the experimenter wants to
compare the effects of different treatments (say, of two methods of teaching), the overall
sample may be divided into treatment groups, each of which receives one of the treatments
under study.

Laboratory, Field, and Natural Experiments: The control necessary for establishing cause and
effect is most easily achieved in laboratory experiments. In a laboratory experiment the
participants are brought to a special place where they experience conditions manipulated by the
experimenter. The experimenter records the participants’ reactions to these conditions, perhaps
comparing them with their own or other participants’ behaviour under different conditions.

Laboratory and field experiments differ in two important respects. One is the degree of
control exerted by the experimenter; the other is the degree to which findings can be
generalized beyond the study situation. Laboratory experiments can be more rigidly controlled
and thus easier to replicate. However, the results may be less generalized to real life. Because of
the artificiality of the situation, participants may not act as they normally would.

Developmental Research Designs

Longitudinal, Cross-Sectional, and Sequential Studies: In a longitudinal study, researchers study

the same person or persons more than once, sometimes years apart and sometimes over
decades. They may measure a single characteristic, such as vocabulary size, height, or
aggressiveness, or they may look at several aspects of development to find relationships among
them.

In a cross-sectional study, people of different ages are assessed at one time. In one
cross-sectional study, researchers asked 3-, 4-, 6-, and 7-year-olds about what a pensive-looking
woman was doing, or about the state of someone’s mid. There was a striking increase with age
in children’s awareness of mental activity.

The sequential study – a sequence of cross-sectional and/or longitudinal studies – is a

complex strategy designed to overcome the drawbacks of longitudinal and cross-sectional
research. Researchers may assess a cross-sectional sample on two or more occasions (that is, in
sequence) to find out how members of each age cohort have changed. This procedure permits
researchers to separate age-related change from cohort effects.

Microgenetic Studies

Developmentalists rarely can observe change directly in everyday life because it usually
happens so slowly. But what if the process could be compressed into a very short time frame? A
microgenetic study does just that, by repeatedly exposing participants to a stimulus for change,
or opportunity for learning, over a short period of time, enabling researchers to see and analyse
the processes by which change occurs. Vygotsky ,for example, used what he called
“microgenesis experiments” in which he manipulated conditions to see how much children’s
performance could be improved over a short period of time.

-----

Observational studies, interview, experimental studies, correlational studies,

developmental studies, cross-sectional studies, longitudinal studies, sequential studies, micro-
genetic studies, ethnographic studies, psychophysiological studies, standard tests.

----

In order to understand the pattern of development of children psychologists have made as

many techniques at possible. For this purpose child psychologists carefully observe their
subjects, analyse the information they collect and use these data to draw conclusion about the
ways children develop. The different methodologies used for collecting such data can lead to
new discoveries and new ideas.

Whatever be the area of interest of the researchers they have to collect data by chosing
one or several ways.

Important methods used in studying the human development are

 1. Observation Studies
Since the study of child behaviour difficult to understand even with the support of their
parents or caregivers, often researchers prefer to observe behaviour directly. The type of
observation used for the study of behaviour vary from researcher to researcher and to from
person to person.

In Naturalistic observation the developmental scientists test hypothesis by observing

people as they engage in everyday activities in their natural habitats (for example at school,
home or on the playground).

One strength of naturalistic observation is that it can be used to infants and toddlers,
who often can not be studied through methods that demands verbal skills. Scientific observation
requires an important set of skills. Unless the observer is a trained person he can conduct or
communicate the same to the scientific community. Because naturalistic observation is done in
the actual life situation one can confidently say about the authenticity of his observation. First
the most important disadvantage of this method is that same behaviour occur so infrequently or
those are socially undesirable are unlikely to be witnessed by an unknown observer in the
natural environment. Second, since the causes of any behaviour are many, observer cannot
assure that the cause of a specific behaviour he observed was the one he identified. Third, even
the presence of an observer on a natural setting ‘can disturb’ the child’s original behaviour. As a
means of control, to minimise, observer influence could be reduced by using videotaping in a
hidden manner or spending more time with the children to collect the “real” data as long as
they are accustomed to the presence of the observer and behave more naturally.

When researchers find it difficult to study unusual or undesirable behaviours that are
unlikely to observe in the natural environment.

Structured Observation (Experimental Method)

Surveys

Surveys is the best and quickest way to get information about a large number of people.
It makes use of some type of questionnaire. A standard set of questions is used to obtain
people’s attitudes or beliefs about a particular topic. In a good survey, the questions are clear
and unbiased, allowing respondents to answer unambiguously. Surveys can be conducted in
person, over the telephone or over the internet.

The most important drawback of survey is that participants have a tendency to answer
questions in a way that they think as socially acceptable or desirable rather than what they truly
think or feel.

Interview
 Interview is a face to face interaction of a psychologist to a client or a child or its parent
or parents. It is the direct technique through which information is collected. Interviews can be
used to study a wide range of topics from parenting attitudes to perceptions of their peers.
Interviews are of different types. (See the Nursing Book)

Standardised Tests

Standardised Tests is a test with uniform procedures for administration and scoring.
Many standardised tests allow a person’s performance to be compared with the performance of
other individuals. Scores of standardised tests are often stated in percentiles, which indicate
how much higher or lower one person’s score is than the scores of people who previously took
the test.

Standardisation tests provide information about individual differences among people.

1. Standardised tests do not always predict behaviour in non-test situations. i.e.,

2. Standardised tests are based on the belief that a person’s behaviour is consistent and
stable, but personality and intelligence – two primary target of standardised testing –
can vary with the situation. For example, child may perform poorly in a testing situation
but get much higher score at home.
3. Psychological tests developed in affluent cultures might not be appropriate in other
cultures.
Psychophysiological Methods

These are the techniques that measure the relationship between physiological
responses and behaviour – to explore the biological underpinnings of children’s perceptual,
cognitive, social and emotional responses. Psychophysiological methods are particularly useful
for interpreting the mental and emotional experiences of infants and toddlers also are unable to
report such events. It is one method through which individuals biological functioning are
assessed.

With the help of psychophysiological methods sensitive psychological experiences can

be studied. For example, by studying the heart rate (an involuntary physiological response) we
can make interpretations about the child’s psychological experiences. i.e., by comparing the
normal resting (or baseline levels of heart beat) one can say whether the child is disturbed by
some external stimuli or not.

Brain functions in the form of psychophysiological measures like Electroencephalogram,

Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Positron Emission Tomography and other advanced types of
techniques.