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PSKA PARKE SUMMARY - PEDAGOGICAL SYSTEMS IN CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE
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Parke et al. Summary all chaptersDo developmental psychologists own social development?
Developmental psychologists are the scientists who most commonly study children’s social
development. They are not the only ones though - > pediatrics, psychiatry, philosophy, demography
and sociology.
Is social development focused on only basic research or on applied and policy relevant
concerns as well?
Social development focuses on many different aspects. The effects of the rise in childcare by
caregivers outside the family on infant and child attachment relationships with their parents and
others can provide an opportunity to explore issues about the attachment process such as the range
of agents of attachment to whom a child can develop a close relationship. Studies about adoption
enlighten the role of genetics. Also, research can inform social policies that alter children’s lives such
as child welfare programs or early education opportunities (Head Start). Applied, basic and policy
research mutually inform each other.
Theoretical perspectives on social development
Theories serve two main functions. Firstly, they help organize and integrate existing information into
coherent and interesting accounts of children’s development. Secondly, they lead to testable and
falsifiable hypotheses and predictions about children’s behavior. Some theories from the past were
attempts to explain development in a general way, were as today scientists are focused on specific
domains.
Psychodynamic perspective
Siegmund Freud’s views on critical roles played by instinctual urges and by events in the early years of
childhood were radical in the early 1900’s and het an enormous influence on psychological an
psychiatric thinking.
- Freud’s theory: according to Freud’s psychodynamic theory of development, psychological
growth is governed by unconscious biologically based drives and instincts, such as sex,
aggression and hunger; and is shaped by encounters with the environment, especially other
family members. The developing personality consists of three interrelated parts;
1. The id: operates on the pleasure principle and tries to maximize pleasure and
satisfy needs immediately.
2. The ego: attempts to gratify needs through appropriate, socially constructive
behavior.
3. The superego: appears when the child internalizes, it accepts and absorbs
parental or societal morals, values and roles and develops a conscience or ability
to apply moral values to his or her own acts.
To Freud, development was a discontinuous process, organized in 5 stages:
1. The oral stage: infants are preoccupied with activities such as eating, sucking and
biting objects.
2. The anal stage: children are forced to learn to postpone the pleasure of expelling
feces -> toilet training.
3. Phallic stage: the sexual curiosity is aroused, and their pleasures are heighten.
, ➔ Oedipus complex: during the phallic stage boys are attracted to their
mothers and feel themselves jealous rivals of their father. Also, they fear
their father will cut of their genitals. It resolves when they give up their
sexual feelings for their mother and identify with their father.
➔ Electra complex: during the phallic stage girls resent their mothers for not
having a penis, and focus their sexual feelings on their father. When they
relinquish their feelings towards their father they transfer those to other
males, also relinquish the resentment towards their mother and identify
with her.
4. Latency period: sexual drives are temporarily submerged, 6-puberty, children
avoid relationships with opposite-sex peers and become intensely involved with
same-sex peers.
5. Genital period: sexual desires reemerge, but this time they are more
appropriately directed towards peers.
Erikson’s theory
His psychosocial, like Freud’s psychosexual theory was based on the belief that development is
discontinuous and proceeds through a series of stages, however Erikson extended his theory through
adulthood.
1. First stage: the main task is acquiring a sense of basic trust. If children find others
untrustworthy, they develop mistrust of both themselves and the world.
2. Second stage: they must learn self-control and develop autonomy, they develop
shame and self-doubt if they remain worried about their continuing dependency
and their inability to live up to adult expectations.
3. Third stage: the play stage, children struggle to develop initiative and master their
environment, but they often feel guilty if they are too aggressive.
4. Fourth stage: school age, children develop a sense of industry, largely by
succeeding at school. Also the period of constant social comparison.
5. Fifth stage: adolescents’ main focus is the search for a stable definition of the self
(self-identity) and the danger is role confusion if they cannot determine who or
what they want to be.
6. Sixth stage: young adulthood, the task is to achieve intimacy with others and a
stable intimate and sexual relationship. Problems in earlier stages may lead to
avoidance of relationships with others and thus to isolation.
7. Seventh stage: middle age, the task to create something, like children, ideas or
products. If not given expression, this quality of generativity can deteriorate into
stagnation.
8. Eight stage: adult, ego integrity is the older adult’s goal. When reflection on one’s
past accomplishments and failures leads to doubt and regret, despair may be the
result.
Psychodynamic perspective
Many problems plague the theoretical perspective of Freud.
1. The central claims of Freud’s theory are difficult to test empirically.
2. His theory was based on information gathered via retrospective methods from adults
undergoing therapy rather than children behaving socially.
, 3. Freud’s methods of collecting information, such as free association, recollections of childhood
experiences, and reports of adult dream, were potentially biased: Freud’ selectively focused
on certain childhood experiences and the patients themselves may have forgotten or
distorted their earlier childhood experiences, a common problem with retrospective data
gathering methods.
4. The focus on childhood sexuality was both too narrow and too exaggerated to provide a solid
base for a theory of development. It did reflect common views at that time.
Erikson studied real children, but his work suffered from many of the same methodological problems
as Freud’s. He limited his specifications, as there is room for interpretation.
Traditional learning theory perspective
Learning theories offer a quite different perspective on development.
Classical and operant conditioning: according to Watson, Pavlov and Skinner, development is a
continuous process, not occurring in stages.
Classical conditioning: Pavlov’s experiment
Operant conditioning occurs when a behavior is systematically followed by a reward or punishment.
In another version of learning theory, drive-reduction theory, argued that the association of stimulus
and response in classical and operant conditioning results in learning only if it is accompanied by
drive reduction. Primary drives such as hunger and thirst act as motivators.
Learning theory approaches: learning theories continue to be useful for explaining some aspects of
children’s social development. Classical conditioning seems to account for the development of strong
emotions in response to certain specific objects, and, more important, it can be used to reduce such
strong emotions through systematic desensitization. Children can learn to overcome fear by gradual
exposure to the feared object or event. Current researchers have also shown the value of operant
conditioning for understanding how children’s behaviors develop and how they can be modified.
Although these approaches can help, they are not enough:
5. They are not sensitive to developmental changes in children’s cognitive, emotional and social
abilities.
6. Alternative strategies, such as reasoning and problem solving, which use children’s cognitive
and verbal skills, become more effective.
7. Learning theories offer some general principles of social development but do not provide a
complete explanation or account for all individual differences among children.
Cognitive learning perspective
According to cognitive-social-learning theory, children learn social behaviors by observing and
imitating other people. As the name implies, observational learning goes beyond simple imitation.
Children do not imitate automatically; cognition is part of the process. Bandura suggested that four
sets of factors determine how well children learn by observing another person’s behavior.
8. Attention: there are factors that affect whether children pay attention to the model’s
behavior. Rewarding imitated behavior is a positive stimuli.
9. Retention: there are factors that affect children’s retention of the observed behavior. To be
able to imitate a behavior, children must be able to remember it, and children who use
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