Psychology : Semester I : Development and Individual Differences

Sections:

Introduction  |   Section 1  |  Section 2  |   Section 3 | Section 4 | Section 5 | Section 6 | Section 7 | Section 8

Psychology : Development and Individual Differences : Section Two Childhood and Adolescence Cognitive development was studied extensively by a man named Jean Piaget. His basic premise was that the mind of a child was different from the mind of an adult. He spent his life researching children and finding out what happens cognitively over time. The basic idea of his theory is that we are always building schema or mental maps.  Children especially are building schema at a rapid rate. The building of schema is a two part process. During the first part of this process, we assimilate experiences or try to label them.  For example, try to assimilate the illustration below.You can imagine this as a triangle sitting on a rectangle, such as an arrow or a x-mas tree.  All of these attempts are assimilation. The second part of schema building is accommodation.  Accommodation is expanding of present schema or the formation of new schema.  For example, if a child has a dog and then sees a wolf, the child will label the wolf “doggie”. The parent has to explain that even though it looks like a dog is it a different animal called a wolf.  The child has to build a new schema for “wolf” and that is known as accommodation. Piaget believed that cognitive development happened in four stages. These stages are sequential in that one follows the other in order.   Some children may go through them quicker but they still go through all of the stages.  The four stages of cognitive development are: Sensorimotor, which is from birth to two years, is the first stage of cognitive development. This is characterized by the child learning to coordinate their senses with their motor activities.  They grab for objects, manipulate them with their hands and then experience them with their senses.  Do you understand why everything ends up in their mouth? At around 9 months the child develops object permanence. Object permanence is the ability to understand that objects exist even when they cannot be seen.  Piaget thought that this happens because the child is able to form a schema of the objects and this is symbolic thought.  Prior to that, if a child is playing with a toy and you take it away and hide it, the child thinks that it does not exist anymore.  Can you guess why children love to play peek-a-boo and can play it for hours?                                When you put your hands up, the child thinks you are gone and when you put your hands away, they are excited to see you again. The second stage is the preoperational stage.  It extends from ages two to six.   There is a greater acceleration of language and schema formation than in any other stage.  The child is also egocentric, which means that they can only see the world from their perspective.  They know who “grandma" is but don’t know who their mother’s mother is.  Grandma is grandma and not someone’s mom. They can only see grandma as grandma since it is their perspective.    They also display animism which is thinking that inanimate objects are alive and conscious. They believe that they can talk to and be talked to by their stuffed animals.                                                                             The third stage is the concrete-operational stage.  It begins around age six and extends to about eleven years old. The child is developing adult like thinking but only with concrete objects.  They are still incapable of abstract thought.  They also can understand the Laws of Conservation which means that they can understand that you can change the shape of matter and not the amount.  Figure 1 Figure 2 Consider the two figures above. Each cylinder in Figure 1 holds the same amount of liquid, while each group of marbles in Figure 2 contains an equal number of marbles. A child who has not mastered the Laws of Conservation will think that the tall cylinder in Figure 1 holds more liquid than the shorter cylinder. That same child will also believe that the quantity of marbles on the right in Figure 2 is greater than the quantity of marbles that are on the left. Once children grasp the Laws of Conservation, they finally understand that the quantities are equal, regardless of their shape. The fourth and final stage is the formal-operational stage.  People in this stage can think abstractly.  They can truly understand the meaning of the terms "justice, democracy and love".  Ask a child in the pre-operational stage or concrete operational stage what love is and they will respond with concrete objects.  They would tell you that they love their parents, their teddy bears and chocolate chip cookies. Children in this stage also begin to understand logic as in : If A is greater than B and B is greater than C then………. Piaget has been criticized in that he may have underestimated the abilities of children and that they may accomplish some of the tasks earlier.  Also many of the abilities may develop more continuously than in separate distinct stages.  This is the continuity vs. discontinuity debate that was brought up before.  Try this Piaget crossword puzzle A Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, who was doing work at the same time as Piaget but in Russia, came up with a theory of sociocultural cognitive development.  He believed that children develop schema through culture and language and adults play a major role in that development. In the 1960’s and inspired by Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg developed a theory of moral development.  He believed that children went through three levels with six stages of moral development. He presented children with a moral dilemma story and then asked them who was right and who was wrong.    He was more concerned with the process they used to decide right from wrong.  He believed that children went through six stages and did not skip any of them.  Here are the stages and levels.  PRECONVENTIONAL LEVEL Stage 1 Avoidance of punishment Stage 2 Satisfying one’s needs CONVENTIONAL LEVEL Stage 3 Approval of others Stage 4 Law and order POST CONVENTIONAL LEVEL Stage 5 Judgments based on personal values Stage 6 Individual conscience The preconventional level begins about the age of nine.  Children base all of the moral reasoning on the consequences of their behavior to them .  The conventional level bases right and wrong on what society, family and religion say.  The post conventional level is based on a person’s own standards of goodness. Criticism of Kohlberg is that he was biased to males. Another psychologist, Carol Gilligan believes that girls score equally to males.  Kohlberg began to correct the gender bias in his theory before his death in 1987. Parenting also has a huge impact on development.    Research has identified three styles of parenting. Authoritarian parents are rigid and dictatorial.  They set the rules and there is no amending of them. Authoritarian parents tend to have children who are either overly passive or excessively rebellious and sometimes hostile.  The second style of parenting is authoritative.  These parents tend to approach parenting with a more democratic style.  They set rules that are not set in stone, and will listen to children’s ideas and concerns and change the rules, if necessary. Children of authoritative parents tend to be well adjusted and thrive.   The third type of parenting is the permissive parenting style or the setting of few rule and expectations.  These children do not feel equipped to deal with the demand of growing up.  These findings only show a correlation, which is a relationship, and cannot be considered cause and effect (remember this from unit 1?). These findings include reports from children and how they view their parent's styles (open to biasing). Erik Erikson developed a theory of psychosocial development. He believed that humans go through eight stages during a normal lifetime. In Erikson's model, each stage has a specific task that needs to be accomplished along with a consequence, or danger, if the task is not accomplished. For example, the basic conflict, or task, of the final stage is ego integrity vs. the satisfaction of life.  Being able to look back at your accomplishments and believe that life is still ahead even though retirement and health are issues to deal with.  The consequence, or danger, is despair or a feeling that death is quickly coming and life is over. Below is a list of Erikson's eight stages and their explanations. STAGE BASIC CONFLICT EXPLANATION Infancy Trust vs. mistrust Infants must form loving relationship with caregiver or they will develop mistrust. Toddler Autonomy vs. shame and doubt The child learns to do things for themselves like walk, talk, etc.  If the child does not, he/she will feel shame and doubt. Pre-schooler Initiative vs. guilt Pre-schoolers get an idea and follow through with it.  If a child is punished too forcefully or made to feel that she was "bad" when she followed through on an idea, then the child will feel guilt about trying to do anything. School –aged Industry vs. inferiority Must feel that they are good at something or will feel like a failure and develop a sense of inferiority. Adolescent Identity vs. role confusion Adolescents have to discover their own identity or they will always follow the crowd. Young adult Intimacy vs. isolation Young adults are able to open themselves up to others or suffer feelings of isolation. Middle adult Generativity vs. stagnation Middle adults need to be open to new ideas of young generation or they will be stuck in the “good old days”. Senior adults Ego identity vs. despair Senior adults feel ok about life and accomplishment or they complain and find no happiness in later years. This matching game will help you learn Erikson’s stages:  Erikson’s theory is well accepted with the exception that many feel that there are other major social events that people face throughout their lifespan.  Erikson believed that the experiences throughout the stages help accomplish the task.  He also believed that most people are a mixture of both the task and the danger.   Assignment 4-2: Create a power-point for each of Erickson's stages and give the good points of the stage, the bad points of the stage and interesting things about the stage.  For the ones you have been through reflect on your own development or ask parents and siblings about your experience. For the ones that you have not been through yet, find someone in that stage and ask them what is good, bad and interesting about being where they are in development.  Use pictures and illustrations.  This assignment is worth 20 points. Rubric for Assignment 4-2 Correct explanation of each stage with good, bad and interesting points of the stage 8 points (2 pts for each stage) Overall effort 4 points Partial credit will be given for incomplete work. Gender identity begins at birth and at five years of age, children can tell their gender. From that time on they develop their gender roles or how they fit into society as a member of their gender identity. They will either follow or discard the gender roles as modeled by their environment. Again we see the nature/nurture debate. Physical growth continues but at a slow pace during childhood.  This stable growth pattern changes abruptly in adolescence where there is an abrupt growth spurt that lasts about two to three years.  This spurt happens in girls at about ages ten to eleven and in boys about two years later. This quick spurt leaves adolescents feeling awkward and self-conscious and it signals their transition from childhood to adolescence. Adolescence is defined as the period between childhood and adulthood which makes  these years awkward because teens aren’t children and they aren’t adults either, they feel caught in between.  In our society adolescence is considered the time from the onset of puberty to the age that adult responsibilities are taken on, usually around ages 21 or 22.  Circumstances can make this earlier or later.                                                                                                                                                                               With the exception of infancy, the biological changes that occur during adolescence are greater than at any other time in life.  Puberty is the marked beginning of adolescence and it includes the developmental changes that lead to the ability to reproduce. The changes that occur are referred to as the primary and secondary sex characteristics. The primary sex characteristics are the ones directly involved in reproduction. For females it is marked by menarche, the menstrual cycle. In males it is marked by the production of sperm cells. The secondary sex characteristics are the ones that are not directly involved in reproduction such as hair growth on body parts, deepening of the voice in males and spreading of the hips in females. Hormone production is also increased. Both male and female hormones are present in all children from birth but at puberty males see an increase in testosterone production which accounts for the primary and secondary sex characteristics.  Females experience an increase in the production of estrogens which accounts for the female’s primary and secondary sex characteristics. Maturation for boys and girls is not exact.  Maturation can be early or late for boys and girls. As stated before, girls mature earlier than boys. This maturation can also differ within the genders.  Boys who mature early are usually more muscular, taller and popular than their peers. Boys who mature late may lack self confidence and be the object of teasing. Girls who mature early feel awkward and may experience some lack of self confidence. Girls who mature late may feel anxious about their maturity and feel unpopular.  G. Stanley Hall, founder of the American Psychological Association, described the time of adolescence as a time of “storm and stress” due to hormonal changes.  Research has shown that although there are mood swings, changes in activity levels and aggression tendencies due to hormone changes, the greater impact on maturation appears to be from society and culture. Socially, peers take on a great impact.  Peers influence dress, hairstyles, music tastes and speech. Modern research shows that although adolescents start pulling away from parents and begin to establish independence, the parent child relationship is not the stormy situation that is often depicted. Conflicts about school, curfews, chores, money and appearance arise but most are resolved in a positive rather than negative way. Research supports the influence of peers and the importance of cliques (peer groups who spend a good amount of time together sharing activities and beliefs) to the adolescent. Opposite sex relationships are initially recreational and then begin to take on a dating and more intimate nature. Many psychologists, including Erik Erikson, believe that the main task of adolescence is finding identity (the adolescents attempt to find out who they are). Some teens experiment with dangerous situations such as drugs, sex, and eating disorders. Some researchers believe that connections between the emotional limbic system and the prefrontal cortex, which is the decision-making structure, do not reach their full strength until the late teens or early twenties. This explains why strong emotions often overwhelm the rational decision making part of the brain.  This helps explain why adolescents are more impulsive and readily do dangerous things.  At times this lack of connections can cause the teens to do things that they know might not be the best decision but they lack reasoning abilities to foresee the consequences of their actions.   Many people believe that adolescents have huge problems in the area of self-esteem and that is why they get involved in dangerous situation.  Analysis of studies of over 150,000 teens have not found low self-esteem among teens. In fact, most report a supportive family, a sense of self-confidence, good friends and support to deal with their problems in a positive way.   Discussion 4-3:  Teens are easily caught up in fads.  There have been many fads during your years.  Here is one that has gotten a lot of attention lately - My Space.  Is this good or bad?  Should parents limit time on it?  Why?  At what age should a child be allowed to go to this site?  Post a discussion thread with your reactions to My Space and respond to another student. This discussion is worth 10 points, 5 for your posting and 5 for responding to another student.   Go on to the next section.

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