CHYS 1F90
Dr. John McNamara
Fall 2023 – Lecture 2 Notes
1F90 so far…
§ Sakai (lecture notes, seminar readings, etc)
§ Seminars began this week
§ Midterm assignment (end of Sept)
§ Emails (mention name, student #, seminar #)
§ Etc.?
Foundations of Development
Overview
§ Theories of child development
– How do humans develop?
– How do children grow?
– What is the nature of development?
Overview
• Sigmond Freud
• John Watson
• B.F. Skinner
• Urie Bronfenbrenner
• Joscha Bach
Psychoanalytic Theories
Freud - Psychosexual Theory
– Three components of personality
§ Id
§ Ego
§ Superego
How do children develop?
§ Parenting role?
§ Educator role?
§ Therapist role?
Psychoanalytic Theories
§ Freud’s stages of psychosexual development
§ Stages propose shifts in focus on parts of body
• Oral (birth – 1 year)
• Anal (1 – 3 years)
• Phallic (3 – 6 years)
• Latency (6 -11 years)
• Genital (12 onward)
Freud’s Theory
§ The beginning of the important idea that “early matters”
§ The unconscious matters
Learning Theories
John Watson’s Behaviourism
§ Strong emphasis on environmental influences
§ Development is continuous and based on learning
Little Albert
Application of Watson’s Behaviourism
§ “Anyone can be anything”
B.F. Skinner’s Behaviourism
§ One can condition behaviour
§ Reinforcers ↑ probability of behaviour occurring again
§ Punishers ↓ probability of behaviour occurring again
ABA
Behavioural or Learning Theories of Development
§ Environment matters
§ Implications for parenting?
§ Implications for education?
Cognitive-Developmental Theories
Piaget’s Cognitive-Developmental Theory
§ Children actively engage with their environment
– Cognition
– Thinking
– processing
§ Schemes become more complex with development
– An organized pattern of thought or action a child uses to make sense of experience
– Interpretation of the world changes with age
§ How do children use schemes?
– Assimilation
§ Using an existing scheme to interpret a novel experience
– Accommodation
§ Modifying an existing scheme to incorporate new experiences
Equilibrium
§ All intellectual activity is undertaken to produce a balanced, harmonious, relationship between one’s
thought processes and the environment
Cognitive Stress
Strain on your cognitive processing
Piaget’s Cognitive-Developmental Theory
§ Implications for parenting?
§ Implications for education?
§ Understanding cognitive load and strain
Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory
Ecological Systems Theory
§ Detailed characterization of various environmental influences on development
– Environment is a series of nested systems
§ Microsystem
§ Mesosystem
§ Exosystem
§ Macrosystem
Ecological Systems Theory
Joscha Bach Developmental Theory
• A stage theory of how children develop their sense of self
• There is only our “self”
• Even the outside work is just our model of the outside world
§ Stage 1 - Reactive survival (infant)
– Building a world model (compared to a game engine like Minecraft)
§ Stage 2 - Personal self (young child)
– Placing ourselves in the world model that we created, testing what works and doesn’t work
§ Stage 3 - Social self (adolescent)
– Think about teens (sports, similar interest groups, etc.)
– Relate to others and other world models
– Develop empathy and compassion (or not)
§ Stage 4 – Rational agency (young adult)
– Begin to direct yourself within your group
– Build on the value system you know you now have
§ Stage 5 – Self authoring (full adult)
– Understanding your values and your abilities
– Develop agency of your how your identity is constructed
– Understand that others have different agencies/values
§ Stage 6 – Enlightenment
– Not all people reach this stage
– Understand that self is not separate from others
Development shaped by risk and protective factors
§ Risk factors = factors that increase the possibility of a poor developmental outcome
§ Individual (temperamental difficulty, chromosomal abnormality)
§ Environment (poverty, family violence)
§ Protective factors = factors that increase possibility of good outcome
§ Individual (good health, etc)
§ Environmental (supportive parents, strong social network)
§ Cumulative effects = vulnerable individual or resilient individual
Development can be altered via effective interventions
§ Change balance between risk and protective factors
– Shifts odds towards favorable outcomes
Nature through Nurture
