Themes and Theories
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- Created by: Meg Fraser
- Created on: 23-12-16 11:24
What are the main themes?
- Nature vs nurture
- Continuity vs discontinuity in change
- Critical vs sensitive periods of development
- Stability vs change
- The role of the child in development
- Individual characteristics vs context
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What is nature vs nurture?
- To what extent inherited or environmental factors affect development
- Nature is where development is determined by inherited factors
- Nurture is where development is determined by environmental influences
- Anything produced by the predetermined unfolding of genetic information is called maturation
- Environmental influences are social or cultural factors that affect us
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What is continuity vs discontinuity?
- Whether we think the same as we used to just more developed or we have a different way of thinking
- Continuity is small gradual cumulative changes
- Continuity has quantitative changes (better/quicker at the same skill)
- Discontinuity is distinct abrupt stages
- Discontinuity has qualitative changes between stages
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What is critical vs sensitive periods of developme
- To what extent specific experiences affect typical development
- Critical period is where specific experiences are vital for typical development
- If maternal deprivation surpasses this period, the child will find it difficult to form relationships/attachments and there could be lifelong consequences
- Sensitive period is where specific experiences are important for typical development but not vital
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What is stability vs change?
- To what extent to early traits persist through life
- Whether we become older versions of our younger selves
- Stability is where there is irreversible impact of early experiences
- Potential for change across the life span
- Diminishing capacity for change as we grow older
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What is the role of the child?
- Children originally seen as passive recipient of stimulation from environment
More recent views:
- Choose what to pay attention to
- Practice talking when alone
- Self-directed activities are their own reward
- Increased role in adolescence when choosing friends and activities
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What is individual characteristics vs contextual i
- Whether we behave in a similar way across a range of situations
- Whether the contexts we live in affect how we behave
- Example - aggressive children are more likely to seek out aggressive activities/experiences
- Modern view adopts the interactionist approach
- Interactionist approach is a combination of individual characteristics and situational factors
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What is the behaviourist view?
- Watson, Pavlov and Skinner
- Emphasis on role of learning in human behaviour
- Continuous development
- Operant conditioning used by parents and schools now
- Children are passive
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What is Piaget's view as a constructivist?
- Children have an active role in own development
- Construct schema to understand world
- Four main sequential stages of development
- Discontinuous development
- Development precedes learning
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What is Vyotsky's view?
- Social interaction is critical for development
- Assistance from experts or adults scaffolds a child's learning
- Children have cultural tools e.g. language and problem solving
- Learning precedes development
- Child can't be understoof individually as they are part of a society (criticising piaget)
- Zone of proximal development - what the learner could understand with guidance from adults
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What is Vygotsky's zone of proximal development?
- Child is the learner
- What the learner already knows
- What the learner could understand with guidance (zone of proximal development)
- What the learner is not ready or able to learn
- Adults help children move to the zone of proximal development
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What is maturation theory?
- Darwin, Gessell and McGraw
- Development according to maturational timetables
- Children's abilities predetermined by genetics
- Teaching is not useful if the appropriate maturational stage has not been reached
- Discontinuous development
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What is Bronfenbrenner's (1977) view?
- There are ecological systems that can change development
- Microsystem - immediate family/peers e.g. parents
- Mesosystem - connections between immediate environmental factors e.g. neighbourhood
- Exosystem - external but related environment e.g. community services
- Macrosystem - cultural and social norms e.g. law
- Chronosystem - changes over time
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What is Bandura's view?
- Social learning theory (1963)
Observational learning and modelling behaviour occurs under certain conditions:
- Attention - observer must see behaviour
- Retention - must be able to remember behaviour
- Reproduction - must have the skills to remodel it
- Motivation - depends on the reinforcement
Children chose who to model
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What is Erikson's psychosocial view?
- 8 stages of psychosocial development
- Based on Freud
- More emphasis on social and cultural factors than Freud
- Not as based on childhood experience as Freud
- Continuous development
- Successful completion of each stage is required for normal development
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Name as many of Erikson's psychosocial stages as y
- 1 - Trust/mistrust
- 2 - Independence/doubt
- 3 - Initiative/guilt
- 4 - Industry/inferiority
- 5 - Identity/role confusion
- 6 - Intimacy/isolation
- 7 - Generativity/stagnation
- 8 - Wisdom/despair
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What is Freud's psychoanalytic view?
- Discontinuous development
- Development shaped by experience in the environment
- Development shaped by interaction between the id, ego and superego
- Best known as a form of therapy
- Interactionist approach
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What are information processing theories?
- Considers input/stimulus and output/response
- How information flows through the cognitive system
- Neo-Piagetian theorists - improvements in memory and executive control at each stage
- Connectionist models - use of virtual environments to show how information might be processed in a neural network
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