Discuss the 4 Human development domains
Physical development
-Physiological factors influence psychological factors, and vice versa changes in the child’s body (weight/height)
-Development of the brain
-Effects of factors such as heredity, hormones & nutrition
-Motor development
Motor = movement
-Child’s gradual development concerning body movements
Personality development
-Personality is the totality of a person’s enduring (lasting) pattern of both inherent and acquired psychological, social, moral, and physical characteristics
-Unique to each individual
-The self: core of a person’s personality/ most important characteristics
- Self-concept: person’s evaluation of themselves
- Identity: the way a person identifies themselves in relation to others
Social development
Development of the individuals interaction and relationships with other people.
• Influence of society and significant others
• Includes: attachment, expansion of interpersonal relationships, modeling of behaviour, relationships between the sexes
• Social development ≠ Socialisation
• Socialisation: aspect of social development where the individual acquires socially acceptable behaviour through social interaction with others
• Moral Development: individuals views concerning what is right and wrong.
• Religion & Spirituality are learned in social contexts
Cognitive development
• How we acquire info about the world by means of our senses
• How we process and interpret such info
• How we store, retrieve and use knowledge to direct our behaviour
Cognitive Development:
• How children come to know and understand their world
• Includes perception, learning, memory, thinking, decision-making, imagination, creativity, language, intelligence
• Intelligence ≠ Cognition
• Intelligence is a subdivision of cognition
• Intelligence: the ability to solve problems and to adjust effectively to the environment
• IQ: persons score in an intelligence test
List and briefly explain the 5 stages of development
- Prenatal: subdivided into the germinal, embryonic and the foetal periods
- Neonatal stage: (the first two to four weeks of life) and infancy (the subsequent two years), which are usually grouped together
- Early childhood: age two to six
- Middle childhood: from age six to the beginning of puberty at age 12
- Adolescence: from puberty to age 18
Discuss the 4 Development Issues
Nature vs Nurture
-Nature refers to biological determinants such as genetic, neurological and hormonal factors
-Nurture refers to environmental factors such as the social and physical environment
The big debate:
1. Influence of political and religious systems, favours Nurture
2. Modern science favours Nature
-Cause-effect issue: if two factors co-exist, it is not easy to determine which factor caused which (ex. People who drink diet coke are overweight, thus diet coke causes obesity)
-Interaction between heredity and environment is much more important than the respective contributions of each
-The unique effect of the interaction is also acknowledged. Meaning the effect of the interaction between nature and nurture on an individual differs
-There is no set formula to determine the effect of the two factors in each situation, but there is consensus that heredity sets the limits, and the environment determines to what extent a specific characteristic will develop between these limits
Passive vs Active involvement
-Are children at the mercy of their environment, or can they play an active roll in their own development? (Personal initiative)
-Consensus: although the influence of the environment cannot be denied, children also take an active part in their own development
-The unique way in which children cognitively and emotionally interpret and process their experiences have a significant influence on their behaviour.
-Two major debated questions:
1. To what degree are children able to shape their own development
2. Which factors are responsible for children’s unique interpretation and processing of their world?
Continuity vs Discontinuity
-Core question: is human development a gradual process, or is it abrupt in distinct steps or stages?
-Both viewpoints are correct, and depends on the behaviour in question
-Example: learning to speak (continuous) and hormonal changes during puberty (discontinuous)
-Other debate: can early characteristics during childhood predict characteristics during adolescence and adulthood? Will the shy kid become a shy adult?
-Past and present behaviour is the best predicator of future behaviour, but it is in no way fully reliable
Universality vs Cultural context
-Do all children in the world follow universal developmental pathways, or are there clear differences along cultural lines?
-Western culture: individualistic
-African culture: collectivistic
-Cultural context cannot be discarded
- Culture: beliefs, norms, customs, and general way of life of a specific group of people, which are passed on from generation to generation
- Context: the setting or specific environment in which development and behaviour occur
-Culture influences development by ensuring that children acquire appropriate cognitive, communicative, motivational, and social-emotional attributes (affective and spiritual), as well as practical skills that will make them competent adults who will contribute to their own survival and progress and that of their people and society
-To a great extent, human development is a cultural process
List and briefly explain the various Biological perspectives on human development
- Maturational theory emphasises development as the natural unfolding of a biological plan
- Ethological theory emphasises the survival value of many behaviours. These behaviours are inherited, but some kinds of learning must occur at certain critical periods
- Evolutionary theory emphasises that children and parent’s behaviour adapt over generations to meet specific environmental challenges
List and briefly explain the Learning theories on human development
Skinner’s operant conditioning emphasises the role of reinforcement and punishment
Bandura’s social cognitive theory emphasises children’s efforts to learn about their world, through imitation, modelling, and observation. The theory includes agentic and self-efficacy perspectives
List and briefly explain the Contextual theories on human development
Vgotsky’s theory emphasises the role of parents (and other adults) in developing skills and conveying culture to the next generation
Bronfenbrenner’s theory emphasises the reciprocal influences of the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem and macrosystem
Nsamenang’s theory views development as holistic, and spiritually and socially driven, that unfolds within a culture. He identifies three phases of selfhood and indicates seven stages in the social selfhood, each consisting of specific developmental tasks
Theory
An organised set of ideas that is designed to explain and make predictions about development
List and describe Freud’s psychosexual developmental stages
Oral (Birth-1 year):
-Erogenous zone: mouth
-Gratification through sucking, eating
-Possible problems: thumb sucking, fingernail biting, overeating and smoking
Anal (1-3 years):
-Erogenous zone: anus 💩
-Toilet training is a issue between parent and child
-Possible problems: extreme orderliness and cleanliness or messiness and disorder
Phallic (3-6 years):
-Erogenous zone: genitals
-Oedipus complex: sexual desire for opposite-sex parent and rivalry with same sex parent
-Superego forms since child identifies with the characteristics of the same sex parent
-Relations between the three personality components determine the child’s basic personality
Latency (6-11 years):
-No erogenous zone
-Superego develops further
-Social values are acquired as child interacts with other adults and same-sex peers
-Energy is channeled into school and social activities
Genital (Adolescence):
-Puberty: sexual impulses reappear
-Learn how to express these urges in a socially acceptable way
-If development is successful, it leads to sexual maturity, marriage and creating offspring
Schemas
A psychological template to organise encounters based on prior experience and memory
Explain Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model
Microsystem:
-Individual and immediate environment
- ex. home and school
Mesosystem:
-Reciprocal interactions between microsystems
- what happens in one microsystem influences the other
Exosystem:
-Social settings that influence development
- formal institutions like the parent’s work environment, the media, religious institutions, social network of friends
Macrosystem:
-Culture and subcultures in environment
-government policies
Chronosystem:
-The certain point of time at which changes occur in a child’s life
Psychoanalysis
A method of treating patients with psychiatric problems through dialogue between the patient and the psychoanalyst
List and describe Erikson’s eight stages of psychosocial development
BAIIIIGI/MSGIIISD
Basic trust vs. Mistrust (Birth-1 year):
-Challenge: to develop a sense that the world is a safe and good place
-Virtue: Hope
Autonomy vs. Shame and doubt (1-3 years):
-Challenge: To realise that one is an independent person who can make decisions
-Virtue: willpower
Initiative vs. Guilt (3-6 years):
-Challenge: to develop a willingness to try new things and handle failure
-Virtue: Purpose
Industry vs. Inferiority (6 years- Adolescence):
-Challenge: to learn basic skills and to work with others
-Virtue: Competency
Identity vs. Identity confusion (Adolescence):
-Challenge: to develop a lasting, integrated sense of self
-Virtue: Reliability/ Fidelity
Intimacy vs. Isolation (Young adulthood):
-Challenge: to commit to another in a loving relationship
-Virtue: love
Generativity vs. Stagnation (middle adulthood):
-Challenge: to contribute to younger people, through child rearing, voluntary community work or other productive work
-Virtue: care
Integrity vs. Despair (late adulthood):
-To view one’s life as satisfactory and worth living
-Virtue: wisdom
Social cognitive theory on development
- children learn through imitation, modelling and observational learning
- learning is not always a result of external reinforcement or observational learning, but that internal and cognitive factors also play a role
- the outcome one expects from a certain behaviour often is the determining factor when deciding on our actions
Core features of human agency:
1. Intentionality
2. Forethought
3. Self-regulation
4. Self-refelction
- self-efficacy refers to someone’s belief in their own ability to influence the events in their life
- if they believe they can produce the desired effect they are more likely to engage in certain behaviors
- plays a key role in motivation
Four main sources of influence:
1. Mastery experience: interpretation of performance outcomes. Success builds one’s belief in one’s ability to succeed, while failure undermines it
2. Vicarious experience: observing other’s behavior and its outcomes. When people have positive role models with a healthy level of self-efficacy, one is more likely to absorb positive beliefs of oneself
3. Social persuasion: receiving positive feedback while undertaking complex tasks persuades persons to believe that they have the skills and capabilities to succeed
4. Choice of environments: By choosing their environments, people can play a key role in shaping the course that lives take. For example, choosing friends that reflect one’s values and lifestyles (or not) can have profound effect on one’s self efficacy.
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development
- Sensorimotor stage (birth - 2 years)
- understanding of the world is acquired through senses and movement
- object permanence develops - Preoperational (2-6 years)
- start using language and symbols to represent ideas and objects
- Animism and egocentric thinking develop - Concrete operational (7-11 years)
- logical thinking develops, but only as it applies to concrete objects
- abstract is still absent to a large extent - Formal operational (12 and older)
- think abstractly
- speculates on hypothetical situations
- reasons deductively about what may be possible
- children understand the world through schemas
cognitive development is based on the following principles:
1. Organization: cognitive processes become more complex, but also more systematic and coherent.
2. Adaptation: as children gain new experiences, they must deal with information that seems to be against what they already know. Occurs through assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation is the tendency to interpret new information according to existing schemas. Experience is changed to fit the schema. Accommodation occurs when a new schema is developed.
- Piaget calls the the process of constant striving for a stable balance or equilibrium between assimilation and accommodation, equilibration
The information-processing theory
- mental hardware refers to cognitive structures where information is stored
- mental software includes organised sets of cognitive processes that allow people to complete specific tasks or perform certain functions
- theorise that the brain works in a sequence
- interested in how people store information, how they process information, what cognitive processes they employ to process information, and how they make sense of the world and people around them
- various facets:
- The information stores
- the different places where information can be stored
- sensory memory (where information is recognised), working memory (where information is processed) and long-term memory (where information is stored permanently) - Cognitive processes
- how humans transfer information from one information store to another
- attention is important in information transfer from the sensory to the working memory
- selective attention (focusing on one thing at a time), divided attention (focusing on more than one event), sustained attention (focusing for a period), and executive attention (focusing on completing steps to achieve a goal)
- information is processed in the working memory through encoding to transfer it to the long term memory
- information in long-term memory can be retrieved through recall techniques - Executive function
- set of cognitive and mental skills that help individuals plan, monitor and execute goals successfully
- include attentional control, working memory, cognitive inhibition, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility
- oversees and guides almost all areas of information processing and learning
- metamemory refers to knowledge of memory skills and the appropriate use of these strategies
- metacognition refers to knowledge about and control of thought processes
- linked to the prefrontal cortex - The child as theorist
- another way to process information
- humans seek reasons, causes, and underlying principles to make sense of their experiences
- formulate theories about the world and the people around them
- naive theories or common sense
- Theory-theory refers to the idea that children naturally construct theories to explain whatever they see and hear
- Theory of mind refers to a set of opinions constructed by people to explain other people’s ideas, beliefs, desires, and behaviors
African perspective
- narrative in nature, because African lifestyles were based largely on oral tradition
- holistic perspective of humans and the universe; human behavior can only be understood in terms of the greater whole of which the individual is a part
- hierarchical view on the universe. inanimate objects < plants animals < humans < ancestors < God
- human behavior is viewed from a anthropocentric framework because humans are placed in the middle of the universe, from which position everything else is understood
- great emphasis on spirituality
- focus of behavior is to create a balance between people and spiritual forces
- cultural expressions through art, rituals and symbols are used to restore imbalance
- community plays a central role, represented by ubuntu
- Ubuntu is an African worldview in which people can find fulfilment only through positive interaction with other people
- horizontally we are connected to all the people around us
- vertically we are connected to the deceased and those who are yet to be born
- individuals obtain their strengths and identity from the family and community to which they belong
Nsamenang’s theory on development
- social ontogenesis (development from birth to death)
Spiritual selfhood
- begins at conception, or earlier, as a reincarnation of the ancestral selfhood
Social selfhood
- experiential phase of selfhood that develops in seven stages
- New-born
- a gift of life
- celebrations include verbalisations regarding the socialised adult the baby will be
- belongs to the spiritual world till the naming ceremony occurs and the child is integrated with the community - Social priming
- pre-social and characterised by reflexes
- there are markers for normality and their absence causes concern - Social apprenticeship
- family and cultural roles are learns gradually and systematically
- main task is to recognise the roles the child is being prepared for, and to internalise and practice these according to his or her ability. -Siblings and peers play an important role - Social entree:
- biological changes related to puberty
- social incorporation through initiation rites and rituals - Social internship
- at the end of developmental rites
- enters the status of socialised neophyte (recruit)
- period of internship where individual is prepared for the status and roles of adulthood through socialisation - Adulthood
- most sought-after stage
- defined by marriage and parenthood
- ideals and standards of the family and community must be maintained and responsibilities must be met - Old age
- responsible to maintain the unity of the family
- have the most complete memory of the family tree and are regarded as much closer to the ancestors
Ancestral self
- follows after biological death of the person and continues to play an important part in the daily lives of people
