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Pyschology. Developmental Psychology. Explains how we change and offers a variety of theories to help us understand what we can expect and what is happening to us at different times in our lives. . Sigmund Freud 1856-1939.
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Developmental Psychology • Explains how we change and offers a variety of theories to help us understand what we can expect and what is happening to us at different times in our lives.
Sigmund Freud 1856-1939 • Freud’s STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT theory was based on his observations of how children focus on pleasure as they mature. • These stages occur one after the other, but individuals can become FIXATED at the oral, anal, or phallic stage if they have not fully resolved the conflict in this stage. • Freud believed that this could cause those people to over-or under-indulge in that area in adulthood, which would lead to engaging in behaviours like smoking, nail biting, or overeating.
Jean Piaget 1896-1980 • French Psychologist Jean Piaget was a highly influential figure in developmental psychology as well as in cognitive psychology • Through his work on the Binet IQ test, he became interested in why children’s answers at various ages were qualitatively different. • Eventually his case study observations led to the creation of his stages of COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT THEORY. • Like Freud’s theory, children moved through stages in order as they grow.
Erik Erikson 1902-1994 • German-born psychologist and child analyst Erik Erikson was a neo-Freudian in terms of child development and his understanding of the ego. • Freud’s stages of psychosexual development influenced his thinking, but he believed that humans continue to develop over their lifetime rather than just in childhood. • He also differed from Freud in that he believed that individual growth depends on society, not just personal experiences. • Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development outline the development tasks that must be resolved during each stage of life.
Identity Crisis • Erikson believed that adolescents sometimes experience what he called an IDENTITY CRISIS. • What this looks like will often depend on the society in which the teenagers live and the concerns of their time period. • He described it as a time when the teenager feel extremely self-conscious and engages in a lot of conflicts that were started unconsciously.
Gender Differences? • Erikson’s stages of development may be useful for understanding major concerns as we age, but are these concerns the same for girls as they are for boys? • Psychologist Mindy Bingham and Sandy Stryker think there are some differences. They created a five-stage model for girls that is based on Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development. • Bingham and Stryker’s theory suggests that development is influenced by society, not just biology. • Adolescents may have different needs based on the 21st Century economy that they did before, so their development might necessarily look different than their parents’ or grandparents’ development.
LetaStetterHollingworth 1886-1939 • An American psychologist who worked at a time when the field was dominated by men. • She found that their theories, while thought-provoking, largely ignored the concerns of women. • Men were more variable in their physical and mental abilities, and women were basically the same in their abilities.
Boys vs. Girls • This was used to explain why there were more male geniuses and led to the belief that women had neither the same cognitive ability nor the same range of talents as men and would not achieve anything extraordinary • Hollingsworth hypothesized, and proved, that this belief was wrong. • She conducted an experiment with 1000 men and 1000 women newborns, and, just as she had predicted, there was no statistical difference between the genders in these areas.
Gifted Children • Hollingsworth focused on the cognitive abilities of children and was the first psychologist to study gifted children. • Her work led to the needs and development of gifted children.
Harry Harlow 1905-1981 • An American psychology professor, who was responsible for developing many of the tests using primates that are standard today. • He devised the SURROGATE MOTHER EXPERIMENT using rhesus monkeys because of their similarities to human infants’ behaviours with their mothers. • He removed the young monkeys from their mothers before they had a chance to bond and kept them isolated. • The monkeys were kept in a cage with two “mothers”, both made of wire mesh. One of the mothers was covered with tan terry cloth; the other offered food in the form of a bottle from its breast area. Both mothers were warmed with radiant heat.
SURROGATE MOTHER EXPERIMENT - Results • The monkeys overwhelmingly preferred the cloth mother, even though she did not provide food. • When they were anxious the monkeys would cling to the cloth monkey. • Harlow’s experiment showed that infants depend on their caregivers for more than just their physical needs: meeting emotional needs is crucial for attachment.
Mary Ainsworth 1913-1999 • Ainsworth was a Canadian developmental psychologist known for her work in early emotional attachment with "The Strange Situation" as well as her work in the development of ATTACHMENT THEORY. • Ainsworth’s classic STRANGE SITUATION experiment was important to help psychologists understand the nature of attachment between an infant and his or his caregiver.
Infant-Mother Attachment • Attachment theory describes the dynamics of long-term relationships between humans. Its most important tenet is that an infant needs to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver for social and emotional development to occur normally • Infant behaviour associated with attachment is primarily the seeking of proximity to an attachment figure.
