FREUD'S PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT 

VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE

1. DETERMINISTIC -  Life is about gaining pleasure and avoiding pain

2. HUMAN AS ENERGY SYSTEM -  Freud believe that human is motivated by the unconscious, where the Id is found along with the aggression and sex instincts

FREUD’S THEORY OF THE PSYCHE

• Id: Part of the psyche that is unconscious and the source of primitive instincts, impulses, and drives.

• Ego: part of the psyche that contains consciousness and memory and is involved with control, planning, and conforming.

• Superego: Part of the psyche that acts as a conscious to the ego, developing moral standards and rules through contact with parents and society.

Three levels of consciousness

• Conscious mind, person's awareness and understanding of what is happening in his or her surroundings. 

• Unconscious mind, which exist outside of your awareness at all time.

• Preconscious mind which includes all the information that you are not currently aware of but can be recalled.

Psychosexual Development - Freud said that people’s personality form during their early childhood years. He outlines a series of psychosexual stages that the child pass through as the pleasure-seeking energy filters down the erogenous zone. The pleasure they are the oral stage, Anal stage, Phallic stage, latency, and Genital stage.

FREUD’S STAGES OF PSYCHOSEXUAL THEORY

1. Oral Stage (first year of life) - During this stage, the mouth is the pleasure center for development.

• Sucking, biting, and chewing produce erotic pleasure.

• Lack of love or food can result in fear loving, fear of trusting, a sense of isolation and withdrawal from others.

• At any point during development, a child can become fixated with the pleasures associated with a particular stage. Fixation is a result of either getting too much or too little pleasure during a stage.

• If this stage is not navigated well, children may develop oral preoccupation- oral receptive (smoking, overeating, drinking alcohol) or oral aggressive (biting nails, cursing, gossiping).

  2. Anal stage ( 1-3 years) - During this stage, toddlers and preschool-aged children begin to experiment with urine and feces.

• • • Pleasure comes from using bladder and sphincter muscles.

    • Learning independence and personal power.

    • Recognize and deal with negative feelings (i.e. learning discipline)

    • Strict toilets training can lead to anal-retentive personality. (neat/stubborn)

    • Over praising can equate with anal-expulsive personality. (messy/disorganized)

3. Phallic Stage ( 3 to 6 years) - The child learns to realize the difference between males and females and become aware of sexuality.

• Pleasurable feelings mostly associated with the genitals.

• Attention on the genitals (autoeroticism)

Oedipus complex - Boys feel sexually attracted to their mothers and jealous and have murderous feelings toward their fathers. Boys develop castration anxiety due to fears of retribution from fathers.

Electra Complex - Girls feel sexually attracted to their fathers and jealous and have murderous feelings toward their fathers. Girls develop penis envy as they feel that the penis is the superior sex organ.

4.  Latency period (6-12 years). The child continuous his or her development but sexual urges are relatively quiet.

• Sexual desires go dormant and enter a period of relative rest.

• Socialization takes place

• Interest in the larger world and learning is seen.

5. Genital stage (12 to 60 years) - The growing adolescent shakes off old dependencies and learns to deal maturely with the opposite sex.

• Pleasure comes from the genitals and strong sexual attraction to others.

• People form intimate relationships and relate to others in a sexually mature way.

• If this stage is not navigated well, then a person may develop defense mechanisms of repression and denial, which can block an acceptance of reality.

DEFENSE MECHANISMS

Projection - In this mechanism, an individual puts the blame of his own failure upon others and some unfavorable factors of his environment. Blaming others for his mistake.

Sublimation - It is a defense mechanism in which unacceptable desire are redirected into socially accepted channels. 

Repression- Pushes threatening thoughts back into the unconscious   

Rationalization - An individual tries to justify his failure by giving some excuses 

Compensation - It is an attempt to cover one’s deficiency in one field by exhibiting his strength in another field

Identification - It is a process which may operate outside and beyond conscious awareness. 

Displacement - An individual does something as a substitute for something else

Withdrawal- Some persons withdraw themselves from the circumstances that cause tension, frustration, or pain.

Day-dreaming - It is a defense mechanism which sometimes helps in making adjustment. Denial – Simplest form of self-defense.

Reaction Formation – It is the replacement in consciousness of an anxiety producing impulse or feeling by its opposite.

Introjection – taking in and accepting uncritically the values and standards of others.

Regression - reverting to an earlier stage.

Fixation - remaining at the present, more comfortable psychological stage.

PIAGET'S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 

Stage 1: Sensorimotor Thought (birth-2 years)

- Babies are stuck in the HERE AND NOW world they “know the world only in terms of their own sensory input (what they see, smell, taste, touch, and hear) and their physical or motor actions on it (e.g. sucking, reaching, grasping)

INFANTS ARE BORN WITH A SET OF CONGENITAL REFLEXES:

1. The first sub-stage, known as the reflex schema stage, occurs from birth to six weeks and is associated primarily with the development of reflexes. Three primaries are described by Piaget: sucking of objects in the mouth, when an object contacts the palm (palmar grasp.) Over these first six weeks of life, these reflexes become intentional grasping.

2. The second sub-stage, primary circular reaction phase, occurs from six weeks to four months and is associated primarily with the development of habits. Primary circular reactions or repeating of an action involving only one’s own body begins. 

3. The third sub-stage, the secondary circular reactions phase, occurs from four to nine months and is associated primarily with the development of coordination between vision and apprehension. 

4. The fourth sub-stage, called the coordination of secondary circular reactions stage, which occurs from nine to twelve months, is when Piaget thought that object permanence developed. 

5. The fifth sub-stage, the tertiary circular reaction phase, occurs from twelve to eighteen months and is associated primarily with the discovery of new means to meet goals.

6. The six sub-stage considered “beginnings of symbolic representations”, is associated primarily with the beginnings of insight, or true creativity. 

Stage 2: Preoperational Thought (2-7 years) 

- The preoperational stage is the second of four stages of cognitive development. By observing sequences of play, Piaget was able to demonstrate that towards the end of the second year, a qualitatively new kind of psychological functioning occurs. (Pre) Operatory Thought in Piagetian theory is any procedure for mentally acting on objects. The hallmark of the preoperational stage is sparse and logically inadequate mental operations.

The Pre-Operational stage of development follows the sensorimotor stage and occurs between 2-7 years of age. It includes the following processes:

• Symbolic functioning -characterized using mental symbols, words, or pictures, which the child uses to represent something which is not physically present.

• Centration – characterized by a child focusing or attending to only one aspect of a stimulus or situation. For example, in pouring of quantity of liquid from a narrow beaker into a shallow dish, a preschool child may judge the quantity of liquid to have decreased, because it is “lower”- that is, the child attends to the height of the water, but not to the compensating increase in the diameter of the container.

• Intuitive thought – occurs when the child can believe in something without knowing why she or he believes it.

• Egocentrism- a version of centration, this denotes a tendency of a child to only think from her of his own point of view. Also, this refers to the inability of a child to take the point of view of others.

• Inability to Conserve- Through Piaget’s conservation experiments (conservation of mass, volume and number), Piaget concluded that children in the preoperational stage lack perception of conservation of mass, volume, and number after the original form has changed. 

• Animism – The child believes that inanimate objects have “lifelife” qualities and are capable of action. 

Stage 3: Concrete Operational Thought (7-11 years) 

- The concrete stage is the third of four stages of human development in Piaget’s theory. This stage occurs between the ages 7-11 years and is characterized by the appropriate use of logic.

Important processes during this stage are:

• Seriation – the ability to arrange objects in an order according to size, shape, or any other characteristic. For example, if given different -shaded objects, they make a color gradient.

• Classification – the ability to name and identify sets of objects according to appearance, size, and other characteristic, including the idea that one set of ·        objects can include another. A child is no longer subject to the illogical limitations of animism (the belief that all objects are alive and therefore have feelings).

• Decentering – where the child considers multiple aspects of a problem to solve it. 

• Reversibility- where the child understands that numbers or objects can be changed, then returned to their original state.

• Conservation- understanding that quantity, length, or number of items is unrelated to the arrangement or appearance of the object or items. 

• Elimination of Egocentrism- the ability to view things from another’s perspective (even if they think incorrectly). 

Stage 4: Formal Operational Thought (age 12 and up)

- The formal operational period is the fourth and the final of the periods of cognitive development in Piaget’s theory. This stage, which follows the Concrete Operational stage, commences at around 11 years of age (puberty) and continues into adulthood. It is characterized by acquisition of the ability to think abstractly, reason logically, and draw a conclusion from the information available. During this stage, the young adult can understand such things as love, “shades of gray”, logical proofs, and values.

5 IMPORTANT HIGHER-LEVEL COGNITIVE ABILITIES                    

1. Hypothetico-deductive reasoning -  “ability to plan systematic tests to explore multiple variables” 

2. Abstract Thought - “Thought about things that are not real or tangible”                       

3. Separating Reality from Possibility - direction of thinking about reality and possibility reverses: … reality is thought of as only one of many possible outcomes”                

4. Combinational Logic - Thinking about multiple aspects and combining them logically to solve problems.

5. Reflective Thinking - Thinking about your own thinking.      

VYGOTSKY'S SOCIO-CULTURAL THEORY 

   - This theory emphasizes society, the importance of social interactions and a child’s culture. Social interactions have a huge influence on cognitive development, much more than biological factors.

Zone of Proximal Development

• When a child attempts to perform a skill alone, she may not be immediately proficient at it. So, alone she may perform at a certain level of competency. We refer to this as the zone of actual development. 

• The zone represents a learning opportunity where a knowledgeable adult such as a teacher or parent or a more advanced peer can assist the child’s development.

Scaffolding

• Assistance provided by more competent peers or adults to enable the task to be done successfully

•  Scaffolded instruction allows the learner to move through the ZPD

• Modelling; feedback; instruction; questioning; encouragement; task structuring; chunking; breaking the problem down

• Scaffolding is gradually withdrawn

More Knowledgeable Other (MKO): someone who has a better understanding or a higher ability level than the learner, with respect to a task, process, or concept.

ERIKSON'S PSYCHOSOCIAL THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT 

OVERVIEW OF THE 8 STAGES

- Psychosocial (‘psycho’ relating to the mind, brain, personality, etc. and ‘social’ which means the external relationships and environment). Biopsychosocial, in which “bio” refers to life as in biological.

- If a stage is managed well, we carry away a certain virtue or psychosocial strength which will help us through the rest of the stages of our lives.

• Syntonic – for the first listed “positive” disposition in each crisis.

• Dystonic – for the second listed “negative” disposition.

• Malignancy – it involves too little of the positive and too much of the negative aspects of the tasks, such as a person who cannot trust others.

• Maladaptation – is not quite as bad and involves too much of the positive and too little of the negative such as a person who trusts too much.

KHOLBERG'S THEORY OF MORAL DEVLOPMENT

Level 1 (Pre-Conventional) - Moral reasoning is based on the consequence/result of the act, not on the whether the act itself is good or bad. 

• • Obedience and punishment orientation: Whatever lead to punishment is wrong.

  • Self- interest orientation (What is in it for me?): The right way to behave is the way that is rewarded.

Level 2 (Conventional) - Moral Reasoning is based on the conventions or “norms” of society. This may include approval of others, law and order.

• Interpersonal accord and conformity (The good boy/good girl attitude): Behaving in ways that conform to good behavior

• Authority and social order maintaining orientation (Law and order morality): importance of “doing one’s duty”

Level 3 (Post Conventional) - Moral reasoning is based on enduring or consistent principles. It is not just recognizing the law, but the principles behind the law. 

•  Social contract orientation: Recognition that rules should sometimes be broken, especially if found unjust

•  Universal ethical principles (Principled conscience): Takes account of likely views of everyone affected by a moral decision.

BRONFENBRENNER'S ECOLOGICAL THEORY 

CONCEPTUAL MODEL

SERIES OF SYSTEM

– each is contained within the other so that literally children are affected by all systems but some are more immediate to the children and are able to be influenced by them.

Individual – the elements of temperament, the child’s personality, and attitude.

• Social – a lot of time spent with friends as well as staying connected via internet and mobile

• Confident – with the ability to converse with students and adults alike with ease.

• Mature – well- mannered and appropriately behaved when required

• Responsible – is well presented and understands his responsibilities in the family

Microsystem – the environment closest to the child where he is educated about the world physically, socially, and psychologically.

• Family – values and beliefs are derived from here that he chooses to follow and live by and where support and nurture is found.

• Friends – a diverse range of nationalities where he has learnt to acknowledge and appreciate different cultures.

• University – place where he is educated and embraces opportunity of education

• Work – learning the difficulties that are part of life and the hard work that comes with everyday necessities

Mesosystem – the connection of the systems, mainly the connection of elements within the microsystem.

• University and Family both share the same belief (Catholic) that has helped him develop into a strong believer.

• University and Work have taught him appreciation for what he has as well as preparation for the real world.

• Family and Friends combined have created a grounded, mature, and responsible young man.

• Friends and Work combined have created balance and taught him about time management in life.

Ecosystem – where the child is affected directly but is experienced vicariously.

• Older cousins went to University – pressured to follow in their footsteps.

• Grandfather is ill – with the natural concern he has (especially with such a close family) affecting him at times especially during class.

• Parents late at work – he is left at home alone for majority of the afternoon into the evening creating independence.

• Concern for age – mother was at a low- point in her life turning 40 and was very emotional affecting him as he is now also concerned with ageing.

Macrosystem – the most distant layer in the child’s environment.

• Community – involvement such as door knock appeals has created for him a better understanding of society around him and appreciation for what he has.

• Church – where he is taught how to live a fulfilling life

• Family Origin – recognizing his heritage and what it took to get where they are today with his grandparents originally from Italy

• Media – the influence on his opinions and views about the world and his understanding of global issues.

Chronosystem - the timing of different elements within the system of the child’s life.

 The chronosystem covers the element of time as it relates to child’s environments. The involves “pattern of stability and change” in the child’s life. This involves whether the child’s day is subjected to sudden changes in routine. We can also investigate the pace of the child’s everyday life. This system can affect or influence the child externally, like the timing of other siblings coming or the timing of parental separation or even death.