Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
The Theory
Gesell’s theory is known as a maturational-developmental theory. It is the foundation of nearly every other theory of human
development after Gesell. Early in the 20th century, Dr. Gesell observed and documented patterns in the way children
develop, showing that all children go through similar and predictable sequences, though each child moves through these
sequences at his or her own rate or pace.
This process is comprised of both internal and external factors. The intrinsic factors include genetics, temperament,
personality, learning styles, as well as physical and mental growth. Simultaneously, development is also influenced by
factors such as environment, family background, parenting styles, cultural influences, health conditions, and early
experiences with peers and adults. Gesell was the first theorist to systematically study the stages of development, and the
first researcher to demonstrate that a child’s developmental age (or stage of development) may be different from his or her
chronological age.
Gesell emphasized that growth always progresses in a pattern through predictable stages or sequences. Sequential
development begins within the embryo and continues after birth. While an individual progresses through these stages at his
or her own pace, the sequence remains the same. According to Gesell, growth can be thought of as a cyclical spiral. Each
cycle of the spiral encompassing the time it takes to move through six stages, or half-year increments. Notice that the time
to complete a cycle of the six stages is quite rapid in early life and slows down with age. Gesell’s cycles of development are
divided into six well-defined stages which are repeated throughout life. One cycle includes the following stages: Smooth,
Break-Up, Sorting Out, Inwardizing, Expansion, and Neurotic “Fitting Together”. See figure below of the cycles of
development.
Gesell’s research established normative trends for four areas of growth and development, namely:
(1) Motor, v b
f (2) Adaptive (Cognitive), b
b(3) Language, and n
v(4) Personal-Social behavior.
Originally published as the Gesell Developmental Schedules in 1925, these developmental schedules, most recently
updated in 2010, continue to serve and guide pediatricians and psychologist throughout the world today.
ERIK ERIKSON’S PSYCHOSOCIAL MODEL
Sigmund Freud:
Freud developed the psychoanalytic theory of personality development, which argued that personality is formed through conflicts
among three fundamental structures of the human mind: the id, ego, and superego.
According to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, personality develops through a series of stages, each characterized by a certain
internal psychological conflict.
Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality argues that human behavior is the result of the interactions among three
component parts of the mind: the id, ego, and superego. This theory, known as Freud’s structural theory of personality, places
great emphasis on the role of unconscious psychological conflicts in shaping behavior and personality. Dynamic interactions
among these fundamental parts of the mind are thought to progress through five distinct psychosexual stages of development.
Over the last century, however, Freud’s ideas have since been met with criticism, in part because of his singular focus on
sexuality as the main driver of human personality development.
The Id
The id, the most primitive of the three structures, is concerned with instant gratification of basic physical needs and urges. It
operates entirely unconsciously (outside of conscious thought). For example, if your id walked past a stranger eating ice cream, it
would most likely take the ice cream for itself. It doesn’t know, or care, that it is rude to take something belonging to someone
else; it would care only that you wanted the ice cream.
The Superego
The superego is concerned with social rules and morals—similar to what many people call their ” conscience ” or their “moral
compass.” It develops as a child learns what their culture considers right and wrong. If your superego walked past the same
stranger, it would not take their ice cream because it would know that that would be rude. However, if both your id and your
superego were involved, and your id was strong enough to override your superego’s concern, you would still take the ice cream,
but afterward you would most likely feel guilt and shame over your actions.
The Ego
In contrast to the instinctual id and the moral superego, the ego is the rational, pragmatic part of our personality. It is less primitive
than the id and is partly conscious and partly unconscious. It’s what Freud considered to be the “self,” and its job is to balance the
demands of the id and superego in the practical context of reality. So, if you walked past the stranger with ice cream one more
time, your ego would mediate the conflict between your id (“I want that ice cream right now”) and superego (“It’s wrong to take
someone else’s ice cream”) and decide to go buy your own ice cream. While this may mean you have to wait 10 more minutes,
which would frustrate your id, your ego decides to make that sacrifice as part of the compromise– satisfying your desire for ice
cream while also avoiding an unpleasant social situation and potential feelings of shame.
Freud believed that the id, ego, and superego are in constant conflict and that adult personality and behavior are rooted in the
results of these internal struggles throughout childhood. He believed that a person who has a strong ego has a healthy
personality and that imbalances in this system can lead to neurosis (what we now think of as anxiety and depression) and
unhealthy behaviors.
Conflict within the mind: According to Freud, the job of the The id, ego, and superego: According to Freud’s structural model,
the personality is divided into the id, ego, and superego. On this diagram, the smaller portion above the water signifies the
ego is to balance the aggressive/pleasure-seeking drives of conscious mind, while the much larger portion below the water
the id with the moral control of the superego. illustrates the unconscious mind.
Piaget's theory of cognitive development is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence.
It was first created by the Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980). The theory deals with the nature of
knowledge itself and how humans gradually come to acquire, construct, and use it. Piaget's theory is mainly known as
a developmental stage theory.
To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes resulting from biological maturation and
environmental experience. He believed that children construct an understanding of the world around them, experience
discrepancies between what they already know and what they discover in their environment, then adjust their ideas
accordingly. Moreover, Piaget claimed that cognitive development is at the center of the human organism, and language is
contingent on knowledge and understanding acquired through cognitive development. [3] Piaget's earlier work received the greatest
attention.
Child-centered classrooms and "open education" are direct applications of Piaget's views. Despite its huge success, Piaget's
theory has some limitations that Piaget recognized himself: for example, the theory supports sharp stages rather than continuous
development (horizontal and vertical décalage).
"Coordination of sensation and action through reflexive behaviors". Three primary reflexes
are described by Piaget: sucking of objects in the mouth, following moving or interesting
Birth-
1 Simple reflexes objects with the eyes, and closing of the hand when an object makes contact with the palm
6 weeks
(palmar grasp). Over the first six weeks of life, these reflexes begin to become voluntary
actions. For example, the palmar reflex becomes intentional grasping.
"Coordination of sensation and two types of schema: habits (reflex) and primary circular
2 First habits and reactions (reproduction of an event that initially occurred by chance). The main focus is still
6 weeks-
primary circular on the infant's body". As an example of this type of reaction, an infant might repeat the
4 months
reactions phase motion of passing their hand before their face. Also at this phase, passive reactions, caused
by classical or operant conditioning, can begin.
5 Tertiary circular "Infants become intrigued by the many properties of objects and by the many things they can
12–
reactions, novelty, make happen to objects; they experiment with new behavior". This stage is associated
18 months
and curiosity primarily with the discovery of new means to meet goals. Piaget describes the child at this
juncture as the "young scientist," conducting pseudo-experiments to discover new methods
of meeting challenges.
"Infants develop the ability to use primitive symbols and form enduring mental
6 Internalization of 18–
representations".[24] This stage is associated primarily with the beginnings of insight, or
schemas 24 months
true creativity. This marks the passage into the preoperational stage.
Pre-operational stage
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, known as the Pre-operational Stage and his is the second stage. It starts when the child
begins to learn to speak at age two and lasts up until the age of seven. During the Pre-operational Stage of cognitive
development, Piaget noted that children do not yet understand concrete logic and cannot mentally manipulate
information. Children's increase in playing and pretending takes place in this stage. However, the child still has trouble seeing
things from different points of view. The children's play is mainly categorized by symbolic play and manipulating symbols. Such
play is demonstrated by the idea of checkers being snacks, pieces of paper being plates, and a box being a table. Their
observations of symbols exemplifies the idea of play with the absence of the actual objects involved.
The pre-operational stage is sparse and logically inadequate in regard to mental operations. The child is able to form stable
concepts as well as magical beliefs. The child, however, is still not able to perform operations, which are tasks that the child can
do mentally, rather than physically. Thinking in this stage is still egocentric, meaning the child has difficulty seeing the viewpoint of
others. The Pre-operational Stage is split into two substages: the symbolic function substage, and the intuitive thought substage.
The symbolic function substage is when children are able to understand, represent, remember, and picture objects in their mind
without having the object in front of them. The intuitive thought substage is when children tend to propose the questions of "why?"
and "how come?" This stage is when children want to understand everything.
Cf Egocentrism
Egocentrism occurs when a child is unable to distinguish between their own perspective and that of
another person. Children tend to stick to their own viewpoint, rather than consider the view of others.
Indeed, they are not even aware that such a concept as "different viewpoints" exists. Egocentrism
can be seen in an experiment performed by Piaget and Swiss developmental psychologist Bärbel
Inhelder, known as the three mountain problem. In this experiment, three views of a mountain are
shown to the child, who is asked what a traveling doll would see at the various angles. The child will
consistently describe what they can see from the position from which they are seated, regardless of
the angle from which they are asked to take the doll's perspective. Egocentrism would also cause a
child to believe, "I like Sesame Street, so Daddy must like Sesame Street, too."
Similar to preoperational children's egocentric thinking is their structuring of a cause and effect relationships. Piaget coined the
term "precausal thinking" to describe the way in which preoperational children use their own existing ideas or views, like in
egocentrism, to explain cause-and-effect relationships. Three main concepts of causality as displayed by children in the
preoperational stage include: animism, artificialism and transductive reasoning.
Animism is the belief that inanimate objects are capable of actions and have lifelike qualities. An example could be a child
believing that the sidewalk was mad and made them fall down, or that the stars twinkle in the sky because they are happy.
Artificialism refers to the belief that environmental characteristics can be attributed to human actions or interventions. For
example, a child might say that it is windy outside because someone is blowing very hard, or the clouds are white because
someone painted them that color. Finally, precausal thinking is categorized by transductive reasoning. Transductive reasoning is
when a child fails to understand the true relationships between cause and effect. [27][33] Unlike deductive or inductive
reasoning (general to specific, or specific to general), transductive reasoning refers to when a child reasons from specific to
specific, drawing a relationship between two separate events that are otherwise unrelated. For example, if a child hears the dog
bark and then a balloon popped, the child would conclude that because the dog barked, the balloon popped.
Justification: After the child has answered the question being posed, the experimenter must ask why the child gave that
answer. This is important because the answers they give can help the experimenter to assess the child's developmental age.
Number of times asking: Some argue that if a child is asked if the amount of liquid in the first set of glasses is equal then, after
pouring the water into the taller glass, the experimenter asks again about the amount of liquid, the children will start to doubt
their original answer. They may start to think that the original levels were not equal, which will influence their second answer.
Word choice: The phrasing that the experimenter uses may affect how the child answers. If, in the liquid and glass example,
the experimenter asks, "Which of these glasses has more liquid?", the child may think that his thoughts of them being the
same is wrong because the adult is saying that one must have more. Alternatively, if the experimenter asks, "Are these
equal?", then the child is more likely to say that they are, because the experimenter is implying that they are.
Piaget stated that "hypothetico-deductive reasoning" becomes important during the formal operational stage. This type of thinking
involves hypothetical "what-if" situations that are not always rooted in reality, i.e. counterfactual thinking. It is often required in
science and mathematics.
Abstract thought emerges during the formal operational stage. Children tend to think very concretely and specifically in earlier
stages, and begin to consider possible outcomes and consequences of actions.
Metacognition, the capacity for "thinking about thinking" that allows adolescents and adults to reason about their thought
processes and monitor them.
Problem-solving is demonstrated when children use trial-and-error to solve problems. The ability to systematically solve a
problem in a logical and methodical way emerges.
While children in primary school years mostly used inductive reasoning, drawing general conclusions from personal experiences
and specific facts, adolescents become capable of deductive reasoning, in which they draw specific conclusions from abstract
concepts using logic. This capability results from their capacity to think hypothetically.
"However, research has shown that not all persons in all cultures reach formal operations, and most people do not use formal
operations in all aspects of their lives".
Experiments
Piaget and his colleagues conducted several experiments to assess formal operational thought.
In one of the experiments, Piaget evaluated the cognitive capabilities of children of different ages through the use of a scale and
varying weights. The task was to balance the scale by hooking weights on the ends of the scale. To successfully complete the
task, the children must use formal operational thought to realize that the distance of the weights from the center and the heaviness
of the weights both affected the balance. A heavier weight has to be placed closer to the center of the scale, and a lighter weight
has to be placed farther from the center, so that the two weights balance each other. While 3- to 5- year olds could not at all
comprehend the concept of balancing, children by the age of 7 could balance the scale by placing the same weights on both ends,
but they failed to realize the importance of the location. By age 10, children could think about location but failed to use logic and
instead used trial-and-error. Finally, by age 13 and 14, in early adolescence, some children more clearly understood the
relationship between weight and distance and could successfully implement their hypothesis.
At the individualism and exchange stage of moral development, children account for individual points of view and
judge actions based on how they serve individual needs. In the Heinz dilemma, children argued that the best course of
action was the choice that best-served Heinz’s needs. Reciprocityis possible at this point in moral development, but
only if it serves one's own interests.
This stage is focused on maintaining social order. At this stage of moral development, people begin to consider
society as a whole when making judgments. The focus is on maintaining law and order by following the rules, doing
one’s duty and respecting authority.
Kohlberg’s final level of moral reasoning is based on universal ethical principles and abstract reasoning. At this stage,
people follow these internalized principles of justice, even if they conflict with laws and rules.