What are the different theories of human development? - Chapter 2

What are some developmental theories and which issues do they raise?

When working on a theory of human development, it needs organization. It should be clear what is most important to study, what can be hypothesized, how it should be studied and how findings should be interpreted. 

This chapter will look at 4 major theoretical viewpoints:

1. The psychoanalytic viewpoint (developed by Freud, revised by Erikson and other neo-Freudians)
2. The learning perspective (developed by pioneers like Pavlov, Watson, Skinner and Bandura)
3. The cognitive developmental viewpoint (associated with Jean Piaget)
4. The systems theory approach (following Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model) 

And there are four key developmental issues on which theorists often disagree: 

• nature/nurture. (as explained in Chapter 1) 
• activity/passivity. This issue focuses on whether humans can create and influence their own environments (and thus their development) or are passively shaped by forces beyond their control. For instance: does a child fail school because they actively choose to play outside instead of do their homework, or is this the result of the parents not providing them with enough motivation? 
• continuity/discontinuity. This focuses on if the changes people endure in life are gradual or abrupt. Small steps, or a major change? And are the changes quantitative (changes in degree, such as a person grows taller or gains more wrinkles: they indicate continuity) or qualitative (changes in kind, like a caterpillar into a butterfly: they indicate discontuinity). Discontuinity theorists state that people progress through developmental stages. They believe development involves transitions from each qualitatively different stage to another. 
• universality/context specificity. This asks: are the developmental changes common to all humans or different across (sub)cultures and individuals? Stage theorists believe the stages they propose are universal, but other theorists think that it is varied since it is influenced by context. Thus the issue: how diverse are the developmental pathways for people? 

What is the psychoanalytic theory?

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was the founder of the psychoanalytic theory, which states people are driven by subconscious motives/biological urges and emotional conflicts, and that very early family experiences play a big part. According to him a newborn is selfish and aggressive and is driven by instinct (inborn biological urges motivating behavior). Thus, it's all about unconscious motivation: instincts drive us without us being aware of it. 

Freud says there are 3 components of personality and they face conflict:

• The id. This is an impulsive, irrational, selfish component. It's all about satisyfing instincts as soon as possible. At birth only the id is available. 
• The ego. This is a rational perspective, that seeks realistic ways of fulfilling the instincts. It emerges in infancy, and has to do with developing cognitive abilities like learning and problem solving. 
• The superego. This comprises the moral standards of the individual. It develops from the ego when children are 3-6, and they take it from their parents. The superego makes sure people behave socially acceptable and ethical, so the id's undesirable impulses do not take over. So, it checks whether the ego's strategies are morally okay.

For a mature and well personality the 3 have to balance each other. 

Another part of Freuds theory has to do with psychosexual stages. He came up with the libido, which is the psychic energy of the sex instinct, and while the libido moves through the body and seeks to fulfill its needs during the child's development, the child moves through these stages:

1. Oral stage (birth - 1 year). The libido is focused in the mouth and oral gratification from a mother is essential for development.
2. Anal stage (1 - 3 years). The libido is focused in the anus, and toilet training causes conflicts between biological impulses and the demands of society (parents have to handle this well).
3. Phallic stage (3 - 6 years). The libido now focuses in the genitals. The resolution of the Oedipus (for boys) or Electra (for girls) conflict takes place in this phase (child feels desire for the parent of the other sex, and eventually this ends in identification with same-sex parent and development of the superego and gender role). 
4. Latent period (6-12 years). Now, the libido is quiet: the child focuses more on schoolwork and playing.
5. Genital stage (12+). Now with puberty the sexual instincts arise again (even the conflicting feelings for their parents can come up again) and sexual relationships become important.

According to Freud the stages have to go well since harsh child-rearing (e.g. getting mad at youngsters for being interested in their genitals, or at babies for putting things in their mouth) can disturb development, for instance through fixation (when a part of the libido gets stuck in an earlier stage, e.g. in the oral stage. Then a child can keep thumbsucking, and later chain smoking). 

To survive the anxiety that comes with the psychic conflicts in the stages, the ego develops defense mechanisms. For instance, identification with the same-sex parent, but also repression, thus removing their thoughts from their consciousness. This can also happen after a traumatic memory like an experience of rape. Another defense mechanism is regression when a child goes back to an earlier, less traumatic development stage. Those mechanisms can help to face anxiety, but can cause later trouble as well when reality is disturbed too much. 

Some well-known neo-Freudians are:

• Adler: stated siblings, and sibling conflicts, are important for development
• Jung: introduced the midlife crisis and stated that after that, people get more in touch with both their gender sides of personality
• Horney: challenged Freud's theories about gender differences
• Stack Sullivan: said close friendships in childhood are very important for later romantic relationships
• Freuds daughter Anna: developed psychoanalysis techniques for children.

The most important neo-Freudian for life span development was Erik Erikson. He also emphasized on the inner dynamics of personality and said personality goes through stages. However, in comparison with Freud:

• He did not emphasize sexual urges as much, he was more about social influences. He viewed nature and nurture as equally important and thought biological factors as well as the environment influence the development.
• He did not emphasize the id as much as Freud, he was more about the rational ego.
• He was more positive about human nature. He viewed people as active, rational and thought that they could overcome earlier traumas in childhood whereas Freud did not really think so.
• He paid more attention to development after adolescence (Freud focused on childhood).

Erikson came up with 8 psychosocial stages in life. He said a person goes to the next phase whether the conflict of the earlier stage is succesfully resolved or not, but if it's not it affects the later stages. With the solving/balancing of every stage a virtue (psychosocial strength) is gained: 

1. Trust vs. mistrust (birth - 1 year). Infants learn to trust their caregivers when it comes to meeting their needs. Good responsive parenting is essential! A child has to find a balanced trust though, so they won't become too gullible later in life. Virtue: hope.
2. Autonomy vs. shame and doubt (1 - 3 years). Children need to learn that they're autonomous and can do things for themselves, so they will not doubt themselves. Virtue: will.
3. Initiative vs. guilt (3 - 6 years). Children initiate and carry out their own plans, however need to learn to keep in mind others as well. Virtue: purpose.
4. Industry vs. inferiority (6 - 12 years). Children should master social and academic skills in line with their peers so they will not feel inferior. Virtue: competence.
5. Identity vs. role confusion (12 - 20 years). Adolescents need to find their identity so they will not feel confused about their role in life. Virtue: fidelity.
6. Intimacy vs. isolation (20 - 40 years). A close relationship and shared identity with another person is desired, but this is scary as well and feelings of loneliness or isolation may be experienced. Virtue: love.
7. Generativity vs. stagnation (40 - 65 years). People need to feel like they are truly creating something in their lives that will outlive them or they will become self-centered and stand still. Virtue: care.
8. Integrity vs. despair (65+). People must look at their lives as meaningful, so they can come to terms with dying without worry or regret. Virtue: wisdom.

The 3 major contributions Freud has made:

• The idea of unconscious processes influencing behavior.
• Viewing the early experiences in the family as very important for later development.
• Emphasizing emotions and emotional conflicts and their relationship with development, instead of just observable behavior/rational thoughts

What are the limitations of psychoanalytic theories? 

• Freud has a theory that is ambigious, not internally consistent, hard to test and thus not falsifiable. And whén tested, the theory is not always supported well by the results. 
• Eriksons theory is also sometimes vague or difficult to test. And however it describes development well, it does not explain how this actually all comes about. 

In conclusion: the theories are interesting and very helpful, however not really precise and testable. 

What are "learning theories?"

John B. Watson, of big importance for learning theory perspectives, basically said that nurture is everything, so the environment and other people in their lives completely cause how someone turns out. 

Early learning theorists (Watson, Skinner) said human behavior changes in direct response to environmental stimuli. Later theorists (e.g. Bandura) think humans are more active and cognitive, but still agree on how development is formed by learning experiences. 

Watson came up with behaviorism which states that conclusions about humans should come from observations of behavior instead of from theories about cognitive or emotional processes. Watson used classical conditioning to show that fears can be learned, so are not always inborn, as believed. Classical conditioning was found by Pavlov: it is about showing how a stimulus can come to elicit a response in a person by associating it with another stimulus that elicits this response. The most famous example is how Pavlov showed that dogs can start to salivate by just hearing a sound, if they had repeatedly heard that sound before in combination with seeing food (salivating when seeing food is their inborn tendency). So they are then conditioned to do that. Watson showed this for fears, conditioning a child to fear an initially neutral stimulus by associating it with a "scary" stimulus, which is actually quite unethical but it showed his point: emotional responses can be learned. 

So, learning theorists do not believe in the dinstinct stages that Freud and Erikson came up with, but think of development as just a learning process. 

Skinner came up with another type of learning, namely operant conditioning, which is about behavior becoming more probable or less probable depending on the consequences that come with it. People repeat behaviors that have desirable consequences and avoid behaviors that have undesirable ones and through operant conditioning they can learn skills or habits. So in operant conditioning, reinforcement is when a consequence makes a behavior more likely to happen. This can be positive reinforcement (when something desirable has been added to the situation and so behavior is strengthened (e.g. a hug after cleaning your room so you will do it more often) ) or negative (something undesirable has been removed from the situation and so behavior is strengthened (e.g. the annoying sound your car makes stops when you fasten your seatbelt so you do this quicker) ). It can also happen for bad habits (e.g. someone drinks alcohol because it makes them feel less socially awkward: this way behavior is strengthened through negative reinforcement, something undesirable for the person is removed). Opposing reinforcement is punishment: this weakens the strength of the behavior. Positive punishment is when an unpleasant stimulus is the consequence of behavior (a child has to stand in the hallway for misbehaving). Negative punishment is when a desirable stimulus is removed after a certain behavior (a child cannot watch TV for a week for misbehaving). Lastly, behavior that has no consequence, thus is ignored and not reinforced tends to go extinct and can stop happening. So ignoring a child that misbehaves instead of giving it attention (which can be a positive reinforcement) might work! 

Learning theorists are in support of reinforcing good behavior instead of for example physical punishment. Mild physical punishment can be effective if it (1) happens directly after the act, (2) happens consistently after each time, (3) is not too harsh (4) comes with explanations, (5) is done by a normally affectionate person and (6) isn't done much and is combined with reinforcing good behavior. However it can have a lot of undesirable effects like more aggression or mental health problems. Positive parenting shows to work a lot better.

Operant conditioning theory is helpful and still widely applied, however it lacks the role of cognitive processes completely. Therefore today Albert Bandura's social cognitive theory is in favor. 

Bandura's social cognitive theory/social learning theory states that the cognitive processing of information is very important for learning, behavior, and development. He believes operant conditioning is important, but he says people think about the connections between behavior and consequences and then anticipate. He also takes into account cognitions like self-criticism which also influences behavior. So his theory is more about cognition having a motivational, self-regulational role. He emphasized observational learning which is learning by observing other people (models). This is cognitive since it involves constructing and remembering mental representations of what they saw and then using those. Bandura also showed a process called latent learning: when learning occurs but it does not show in behavior. Thus when children learn from observing even though they do not perform the learned responses (this happens for example when they see the model is being punished for doing this. They learn, but they do not copy the act). It depends on vicarious reinforcement/punishment (meaning if the model experiences reinforcing or punishing consequences, the children will more likely or less likely act the same). Also the phenomenon of overimitation was discovered in children: every detail that is observed is imitated, even though it does not help achieving the goal. Funnily enough this does not seem to go for chimpanzees, they only take over the relevant actions! Why? Probably because overimitations has seemed useful for humans, helping us gain many skills and rituals including new problem-solving ways. It also helps us fit in. 

Later Bandura explored how people form intentions, foresee things, evaluate and regulate their actions, and reflect: all important cognitions. He for example looked at self-efficacy which stands for belief that you can effectively cause a desired outcome. If you want to score an A you need to have a high sense of self-efficacy about it. Bandura believes in reciprocal determinism: human development occurring through continuous reciprocal interaction among the person (biological, psychological characteristics, cognitions), their behavior, and their environment. So he believed in a more "active" human than Watson and Skinner did. He also did not believe in the universal stages, since he thought  development is very context specific and depends on the learning experiences.

Learning theories are precise and testable and have contributed a lot. Also they operate at any age and can therefore be applied across the whole life span. Moreover they have important applications such as treating developmental problems. So what is wrong? Firstly they do not provide a clear discription of how a human typically develops. Secondly, they do not show that learning is actually responsible for the behavior changes we see in development. And finally they do not focus enough on biological influences (do we learn to fear snakes quicker than we we learn to fear bunnies?) 

What is Piaget's cognitive developmental theory?

Piaget began to study children's development during the 1920s and has contributed more than any other theorist to the understanding of children's minds. He developed a both more cognitive and clearly developmental theory which dominated until around the 1980s. 

Piaget looked at intelligence as something to help an organism adapt to its environment. Piaget did not think children were born with innate ideas about reality, nor just learned everything from adults. His idea, named constructivism stated that children actively construct their own understanding of the world, which comes from their interactions with it. And their construction keeps getting more accurate as they mature. Piaget was an interactionist: biological maturation interacting with experience causes the child to go from one stage of development to another stage. 

Piaget came up with 4 major periods of cognitive development. These qualitatively different stages form an invariant sequence: universally children progress through these stages, there is no skipping ahead or regressing back. The ages are average. The stages:

1. Sensorimotor stage (birth - 2 years). Infants use senses and motor actions to get an understanding of the world. Firstly they only have innate reflexes, but this develops into "intelligent" actions. At the end of this stage they have symbolic thought (with images or words) and can mentally plan solutions to problems.
2. Preoperational stage (2 - 7 years). Preschoolers develop language, "pretend" play, solve problems. However their thinking is not really logical yet since they are egocentric (thus can not yet take other's perspectives) and are sometimes fooled by their perceptions (e.g. the same amount of water is more water in a big glass than in a small one).
3. Concrete operations stage (7 - 11 years). School-age children's thinking becomes more logical and they can solve practical problems, with a trial-and-error approach. They do well with performing operations on concrete objects in their minds. They have more trouble with hypothetical, abstract problems (= justice is a cop).
4. Formal operations stage (11/12+). Adolescents now can understand abstract problems (= justice is fairness). They can think about long-time consequences, and they can also form hypotheses about things and test them with the scientific method. 

Piagets beliefs are still accepted and also applied in e.g. education: children are active constructors of their own understandings, and their thinking changes fundamentally and qualitatively, being influenced by nature and nurture. But there's also criticism: do the stages really hang together for a variety of problems? Piaget may also  have underestimated infants, and he emphasized social and cultural influences too little. 

There are 2 approaches to cognitive development that challenged Piaget:

• The sociocultural perspective by Vygotsky. This states that cognitive development is formed by the sociocultural context. Culture provides language, but also pencils, media, computers, and shapes thought, through interactions with members of culture. So universal stages do not exist according to him.
• The information-processing approach. This became dominant from the 1980s on and is about the processes involved in thinking and the factors that influence those. Examines mental processes like attention and memory. Development is then changes in capacity and speed of the brain, the strategies used to process info, and the info in the memory.

What are systems theories?

Systems theories or contextual theories state that development comes from ongoing transactions in which a changing individual and a changing environment affect each other: a complex interplay of influences. Nature and nurture are not easily distinguished, it's all part of a dynamic system.

Bronfenbrenner came up with the bioecological model of development. He thinks the developing person, with a certain genetic makeup and biological and psychological characteristics, is part of several environmental systems. These systems interact with each other and with the person. The systems:

1. Microsystem: the closest environment, with face to face interactions. E.g. the family, or a friend group, and school.
2. Mesosystem: the interrelationships between 2 or more microsystems. Thus, what happens at school influences what happens at home and the other way around.
3. Exosystem: social surroundings that are not experienced directly but still have their influence. E.g. for a child, their parents friend group, or what kind of neighborhood they live in, or the police in the town that changes a law. 
4. Macrosystem: the cultural/societal context. The society's values, laws, economics etc. 
5. Chronosystem: the events that happen over time (e.g. 9/11) and influences the systems/individual, and also life changes like learning a new skill. 

Bronfenbrenner wanted to study proximal processes: recurring, reciprocal interactions between the individual and people/objects/symbols that have a good influence on development. For instance, bed time reading.

Bronfenbrenner & Morris advocated for people that wanted to study development to use the PPCT model. This model does not simply compare children at different social addresses (different race, different culture) but looks at 4 factors: process, person, context and time to get a good view. 

Systems theories are complex but then again, development is also complex. Many forces interact and influence. However, shortcomings are that these theories do not provide a clear picture of the course of development yet, and are only partially tested yet. And a coherent picture may never arise: because if we take everything into account, we can never generalize. So a compromise should be found: humans seem to go in similar directions when it comes to some aspects of development, but there is many things that can influence it which creates diversity.

How can you compare/contrast the different theories?

Theories can be grouped based on assumptions they make. For instance Freud, Erikson and Piaget are stage theorists: they believe in universal stages caused by biological-maturational forces and a nurturing environment to guide it. Learning theorists view the role of environment as way bigger. And system theorists view biology and environment as inseparable parts of a huge system. 

In sum, first the psychoanalytic theory emerged, a stage theory that emphasized biological forces. Then learning theories brought environment into the game. Then Piaget's cognitive stage theory that combined nature and nurture came up. And finally we found how many forces interact, this is also what is still adopted by most developmentalists. All these theories have guided research and practice in their own important way. Most developmentalists now are eclectics that use many theories, since no theory can explain everything but they can all help in their own way. 

All theories in sum when it comes to the major issues:

• Freud's psychosexual theory: biological sexual urges motivate behavior, children develop through 5 psychosexual stages. Emphasizes nature, but early family life also has influence. Humans are passive creatures. Discontinuous development (stages). Universal theory.
• Erikson's psychosocial theory: humans go through 8 psychosocial stages that have their own conflicts. Interactionist view (nature and nurture). Humans are active. Discontinous development (stages). Universal, but recognizes stages might be expressed differently in different cultures.
• Skinner's behavioral theory: development comes from learning through opernat conditioning. Emphasizes nurture. Humans are passively shaped by environment. Continuous, because habits gradually increase or decrease. Context specific, development depends on personal experiences.
• Bandura's social cognitive theory: development is the product of cognition, like observational learning. Emphasizes nurture. Humans are active. Continuous learning. Context specific, depends on experiences.
• Piaget's cognitive developmental theory: development goes through 4 stages of cognitive change. Interactionist view. Humans are active. Discontinuous and universal (stages).
• Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model: everything interacts! Nature and nurture influence one another. Humans are active. Both continuous and discontinuous change, and very context specific.