Summary Theorieën over Ontwikkelingsgebieden – Fundamentals of Development Psychology
Inhoud
Chapter 1 – Themes and perspectives in developmental psychology................................................5
Introduction....................................................................................................................................5
Behaviorism....................................................................................................................................5
Nativism..........................................................................................................................................6
Maturation and ethology................................................................................................................6
Stage theories: Freud and Piaget....................................................................................................7
Chapter 2 – Methodological approaches............................................................................................9
Developmental cognitive neuroscience..........................................................................................9
Research based on observations of behavior: infancy..................................................................10
Research based on children’s answers to questions.....................................................................11
Behavioral responses....................................................................................................................11
Chapter 3 – The development of thinking........................................................................................12
Introduction..................................................................................................................................12
Stages of cognitive development..................................................................................................13
Sensorimotor stage: Birth to 2 years............................................................................................13
Preoperational stage: 2-7 years....................................................................................................14
Stage of concrete operations: 7-12 years.....................................................................................15
Stage of formal operations: 12 years onwards.............................................................................16
Piaget’s explanation of cognitive development............................................................................16
Traditional learning theory as a contrasting explanation of development...................................17
A supplement to Piaget’s theory: self-centered adolescents.......................................................17
Chapter 4 – Does Piaget’s theory stand up to examination?............................................................19
Introduction..................................................................................................................................19
Infant competence.......................................................................................................................20
Competence in early childhood....................................................................................................21
Concrete thought in adolescence.................................................................................................23
The impact of post-Piagetian research.........................................................................................24
Constructivism and social constructivism.....................................................................................24
Chapter 5 – What children understand about the mind...................................................................26
Introduction..................................................................................................................................26
Young children’s understanding of beliefs....................................................................................26
Have children been underestimated?...........................................................................................27
Yes, young children have been underestimated!.........................................................................28
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, Is development stage-like?...........................................................................................................29
What causes development?.........................................................................................................29
Competence in deception.............................................................................................................31
Do infants actually understand false beliefs?...............................................................................31
Chapter 7 – Autism...........................................................................................................................32
Introduction..................................................................................................................................32
The theory of mind hypotheses....................................................................................................33
Can some children with autism acknowledge false belief?...........................................................33
Inflexibility in thought...................................................................................................................34
Weak central coherence...............................................................................................................35
Chapter 8 – Numerical development – What do young children understand about the world of
numbers?..........................................................................................................................................37
Introduction..................................................................................................................................37
What do infants know about numbers?.......................................................................................37
Has infants’ number understanding been overestimated?...........................................................38
Evidence for a firm understanding of some numbers in infants...................................................39
Born to do numbers?....................................................................................................................39
The numerical hypothesis: number sense from animals to infants..............................................39
Can a number sense explain infants’ understanding?..................................................................40
Count on me.................................................................................................................................40
Piaget revisited.............................................................................................................................41
Does counting replace number sense?.........................................................................................41
Two systems for numbers.............................................................................................................41
Chapter 9 – Developing an ability to draw........................................................................................41
Introduction..................................................................................................................................41
Intellectual realism.......................................................................................................................41
Is intellectual realism confined to early childhood?.....................................................................43
Size of drawing as an indication of significance of the topic.........................................................44
Children’s drawings in cases of incest...........................................................................................44
Chapter 10 – Developing an ability to see the world........................................................................45
Introduction..................................................................................................................................45
Perception of the world as 3D......................................................................................................46
Perception of social stimuli...........................................................................................................48
The role of experience and learning in perceptual development.................................................48
Chapter 12 – Language development...............................................................................................49
Introduction..................................................................................................................................49
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, The components of language.......................................................................................................49
A description of language development.......................................................................................50
Vocabulary development..............................................................................................................50
Theories of language acquisition..................................................................................................51
Chomsky’s theory of innate language development.....................................................................52
A second look at the environment................................................................................................53
Connectionism..............................................................................................................................53
“Infant-directed talk” and social constructivism...........................................................................54
Usage-based language theory and pragmatic cues.......................................................................54
Chapter 13 – Developing an ability to communicate........................................................................55
Egocentric speech.........................................................................................................................55
Young children’s sensitivity to their listener.................................................................................56
Strengths and weaknesses in young children’s communication...................................................56
Do young children treat utterances as clues to meaning?............................................................57
Children overestimate their ability to interpret correctly.............................................................58
Are young children too literal?.....................................................................................................58
Evaluating utterances and detecting ambiguity............................................................................59
Is egocentrism responsible for children’s communication difficulties?........................................59
Chapter 14 – Parenting and the development of love and attachment............................................60
Introduction..................................................................................................................................60
Authoritarian parenting................................................................................................................60
Permissive parenting....................................................................................................................61
Authoritative/democratic parenting.............................................................................................61
Love..............................................................................................................................................62
Attachment...................................................................................................................................63
Types of attachment.....................................................................................................................64
The sociobiology of attachment...................................................................................................65
Single versus multiple attachment................................................................................................66
Delinquency..................................................................................................................................68
Internal working model................................................................................................................68
Chapter 15 – Moral development.....................................................................................................70
Introduction..................................................................................................................................70
Piaget’s moral realist and moral subjectivist................................................................................70
Evaluation of Piaget’s theory........................................................................................................71
Kohlberg’s stages of moral reasoning...........................................................................................72
Evaluation of Kohlberg’s stage theory..........................................................................................73
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, Prosocial behavior........................................................................................................................74
The cradle or morality..................................................................................................................75
Moral emotions............................................................................................................................76
Chapter 16 – Development of antisocial behavior............................................................................77
Introduction..................................................................................................................................77
What is aggression?......................................................................................................................77
Are children born good or bad?....................................................................................................77
Catharsis, or learning to be violent...............................................................................................78
Aggressive behavior can be learned.............................................................................................78
Does watching violent TV make children violent?........................................................................79
Naturalistic and controlled studies of the link between TV and aggression.................................79
Exposure to violent TV promotes aggression................................................................................80
Other influences on aggression....................................................................................................80
Frustration as a cause of aggression.............................................................................................81
Attention seeking and rejection....................................................................................................82
Gender, class, and violence..........................................................................................................82
Exposure to media violence and aggression.................................................................................83
Key Terms.........................................................................................................................................83
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,Chapter 1 – Themes and perspectives in developmental psychology
Introduction
Some theories effectively posit that the only difference between babies and adults is that babies
don’t know much because they have had relatively little experience of the world. In a way, these
theories regard babies as being mini adults located at the starting point along a continuum of growth,
psychologically as well as physically. These theories thus assume continuity between childhood and
adulthood; an adult is essentially the same as a child, except bigger, stronger, and with more
knowledge. The
opposing view maintains that actually babies are far from being mini adults. In order to become
adults, children would need to undergo a psychological metamorphosis, one that is monumental and
profound. Advocates of this perspective regard development as discontinuous, insisting that children
must progress through developmental stages en route to adulthood. Children are not viewed as
being like adults with less knowledge; rather, they are presumed to have completely different
thought processes. No matter how much knowledge a child possessed, according to this view, a
child’s knowledge would never have the quality of an adult’s. Another pervasive
theme surrounds the nature-nurture debate. Some theorists think that psychological processes and
abilities are largely the product of our genetic inheritance (nature), whereas others think they are
largely the product of our environment and experiences therein (nurture).
Behaviorism
The behaviorist perspective stresses the importance of nurture in which children are effectively
regarded as mini adults. B.F. Skinner had by far the most influence over this approach. Skinner was
captivated by the pioneers of conditioning, such as Ivan Pavlov and John Watson. Pavlov
documented what he colorfully names “psychic learning” in his laboratory dogs. Having noticed that
his dogs were salivating before they began eating, he started to reflect on the factors that might be
at work. To investigate the possibility that an arbitrary sound could stimulate salivation, Pavlov
embarked upon a study in which he sounded a bell just prior to feeding.
It stand to reason that the dogs would associate two stimuli that naturally go together (smell
and taste of food) but making an association between two stimuli that do not go together naturally
(sound of bell and taste of food) demands an explanation. Pavlov duly advanced a theory that is now
known as classical conditioning, saying that individuals learn associations between pairs of stimuli
when they are presented at roughly the same moment in time. Building on Pavlov’s ideas about
conditioning, Skinner concentrated on associations between stimuli and responses (Pavlov focused
specifically on associations between pairs of stimuli). He said that in order to understand behavior,
we need to understand reinforcement.
According to Skinner, reinforcement is a stimulus that follows the emission of a response
which renders the same response more probable in the future. Why not use the word reward in
place of reinforcer? The reason is because we normally think of rewards as being positive, whereas
reinforcers can be positive or negative.
Skinner demonstrated that behavior is the product of the individual’s reinforcement history.
However, this does not explain how new actions are incorporated into an individual’s repertoire. To
account for this, Skinner introduced the concept of shaping via a process of successive
approximation. He proposed that selective reinforcement is capable of shaping the simple repertoire
of reflexes available to us in early infancy into the complex and sophisticated behavior typical of
adults.
In summary, Skinner effectively claimed that the things infants are capable of learning are
largely the same as the thing adults are capable of learning, notwithstanding various physiological
differences. Skinner regarded infants as mini adults: He saw development as a quantitative rather
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,than qualitative process, as continuous rather that discontinuous, whereas adults possess the same
kind of knowledge as infants, but more of it.
Nativism
The champion of this perspective is Chomsky who reacted against Skinner’s radical explanation of
language development. Chomsky drew attention to the paradox that infants learn to speak despite
being subjected to a grammatically degraded input of language. Indeed he cites examples of infants
who experienced only minimal levels of language but nevertheless learned to speak proficiently. This
seems all the more remarkable when considering that learning a language is an impressive
intellectual feat.
Chomsky tried to resolve the paradox by suggesting that infants are born with innate
knowledge of language. Chomsky argued, that we are born with knowledge of language on a more
general level. This would presuppose that on a deeper level, all languages have something in
common. Chomsky claimed that this is indeed the case, and asserted that underlying the surface
structure there is to be found a deep structure. This deep structure, is supposed to be universal and
innate. So, when we interpret language, we do so by translating from a deep structure. By proposing
an innate capacity, Chomsky felt able to explain the apparent miracle of infants learning something
as complex as language.
Being a linguist by training, Chomsky laid emphasis on innate capacities in the sphere of
learning language.
Chomsky leaned towards nature in preference to nurture as an explanation for abilities. Did
Chomsky regard infants as mini adults? The answer is probably yes in the sense that he assumed that
the core faculties that underlie sophisticated adult behavior are actually innate; and being innate,
these faculties exist in infants just as they exist in adults. The principal difference between infants
and adults relates to proficiency in utilizing innate capacities, but this proficiency can be thought of
as something that changes quantitatively with age: The kind of processing carried out by an adult is
essentially the same kind as carried out by an infant; it’s just that an adult does is better. Skinner and
Chomsky might actually be united in their perspective of continuity between childhood and
adulthood.
Maturation and ethology
On the face of things, it might appear that a baby learns to walk through experience, is coached by
adults, and improves through trial and error. Actually walking might in fact be the product of an
innate capacity, one whose expression results from maturational unfolding. Just because a capacity
develops after several months or even years, it does not necessarily follow that this development
depended on learning or experience.
We speak of maturational stages. The maturation of certain capacities and faculties
transforms us, step by step, from being a baby to being an adult. A maturational view is seated within
the nativist tradition and it rejects the notion of babies an mini adults.
Maturation could have an effect in at least two ways. One way is the obvious, which is that a
capacity, such as for walking, unfolds maturationally perhaps almost independently of experience
and learning. A less obvious effect would be in terms of readiness to learn.
Many of the actual details of language learning remain speculative, including the role of
biological preparedness, and therefore another example would be more informative: attachment.
Ethologist Konrad Lorenz devised some ground-breaking experiments. Following careful observations
of newly hatched goslings, he began to suspect that they attach themselves to, or imprint upon, the
first conspicuous moving object they see. To investigate that further, he hatched some eggs in an
incubator and then moved his wellington boots around them in the ensuing hours. Sure enough, the
goslings attached themselves to the boots, which became apparent in that they followed Lorenz
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,whenever he wore them.
Subsequent research revealed the circumstances and scope of the goslings’ learning. The
attachment began to be formed about 10 hours after hatching and was at a peak at 30 hours.
Thereafter learning did not occur so readily. After the gosling had formed an attachment, the
capacity for learning switched off. Evidently, a maturational clock set the temporal limits on this
attachment learning. Lorenz introduced the notion of biological preparedness to learn something
very specific, the timing of which is under maturational control. He added that there is a critical
period when learning optimally occurs.
Being highly influenced by Lorenz’s research, John Bowlby began to consider the implications
for human development. He suggested that humans also form a bond of attachment with their
parents and that because this is a natural process under maturational control, any disruption could
be seriously detrimental to emotional development. The time scale is quite different for humans.
Bowlby and his colleague Mary Ainsworth noted that the onset of separation distress seems to be
around 8 or 9 months of age. Prior to this time, the baby typically is unfazed by their mother’s
departure from the room, but at the age of 8 or 9 months the baby typically shows a very strong
reaction. The baby’s distress is not assuaged by the comforting attentions of an unfamiliar adult and
it seems the baby can only gain satisfaction from the mother’s return. Bowlby regarded separation
distress as a sign that the baby had formed a bond of attachment, something that would only be
possible when the baby is maturationally ready, namely at about the age of 8 or 9 months.
Bowlby proceeded to study the plights of babies who were separated from their mothers for
long periods. In some cases that Bowlby documented, babies were reared in an institution in which
there was no opportunity for the baby to form any attachment. This terrible circumstance had a
profound and devastating effect on the babies’ development. They failed to thrive and exhibited
serious developmental delay physically, intellectually and emotionally.
The concepts of maturation and biological preparedness help us to understand how innate
factors combine with learning and experience as a driving force of development. Learning is steered
by innate processes and the timing of this steer is maturationally determined. But the way in which
the process comes to fruition depends on the environment and one’s experiences. Innate factors
combine with learning and experience in allowing the individual to achieve developmental
milestones. It would not be psychologically valid to think of a baby as a mini adult.
Stage theories: Freud and Piaget
Stage theories maintain that children undergo a succession of psychological metamorphoses in their
odyssey to adulthood. We can try to understand these stages as the product of the combined
influence of, on the one hand, innate factors such as maturation and biological preparedness, and,
on the other hand, experiential factors associated with learning opportunities and characteristics of
the environment.
Sigmund Freud was one first stage theorists. He set himself the challenge of explaining
personality development and suggested that this largely depends on sexual fixations. He suggested
that babies start out in the oral stage, in which the focal erogenous zone is the mouth. The baby
supposedly gains a kind of erotic gratification from feeding. This is followed by the anal stage
whereupon the focal erogenous zone is the anus and the baby gains gratification from the sensation
of withholding and then expelling excrement. This is followed by the phallic stage, in which the child
gains gratification from touching the genitals and from contemplating differences between the
anatomy of males and females.
Freud’s theory had tremendous influence, perhaps because it somehow resonated with the
repressed sexual ethos that prevailed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Conceivably, Freud’s great popular impact inspired Jean Piaget also to formulate a theory based on
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,stages.
Piaget’s early interest focused on biology and his first publication on that subject appeared
when he was only aged 10. At the age of 21 he concentrated attention on cognitive development,
whereupon he began working on the idea that intelligence is a crucial factor in determining how
creatures adapt to their environment. In order to acquire insight into intelligence, he focused on the
most intelligent creatures of all: the human beings. Furthermore, Piaget believed that insight into the
nature of intelligence could best be gained by studying its development.
Piaget suggested that children pass through a series of stages on the way to adulthood. He
championed the idea that cognitive development is not a continuous process, he thought that
cognitive development proceeds not by gradual evolution, but rather by way of cognitive revolution.
As the child shifts onto a new and more sophisticated plane of intelligence, she sheds many of the old
cognitive limitations in a single sweep. In this respect, Piaget did not regard young children as mini
adults. Piaget considered that children’s thought is qualitatively different from that of adults; and
their long journey to full competence would only be possible by processing through a succession of
stages. According to
Piaget, intelligence is a faculty whose purpose is to help us adjust to the environment. We can
broadly divide the environment into two. On the one hand there is the human, social, or
psychological environment, while on the other hand there is the physical environment. Adjusting to
both kinds of environment is very important. So, we can think of an individual adapting to (or
perhaps changing) their physical environment to allow then to function optimally. And similarly, we
can think of an individual coming to terms with problems in the human environment. Piaget
assumed that a singular factor stood in the way of good adjustment – namely, egocentrism. By this
term, he meant that people see the world from their own perspective and setting aside their own
particular viewpoint is achieved only as a monumental intellectual feat. He suggested that
egocentrism presents such a formidable challenge to adjustment that overcoming it is something
that could only be possible through a series of stages. Each successive stage confers better
adjustment to the environment, along with a concomitant reduction in egocentrism. During
infancy, egocentrism is claimed to be most severe; so severe, supposedly, that the baby does not
even discriminate between self and the rest of the universe. In other words, the infant cannot
distinguish between the subjective and the objective. The individual then progresses to early
childhood and, in doing so, sheds the severe egocentrism of infancy. Now the child understands that
she herself is different from the rest of the world but she is still hampered by a milder form of
egocentrism. Specifically, the child finds it difficult to acknowledge that her perspective on reality is
relative to her vantage point and to her framework of knowledge. In middle childhood the individual
manages to overcome this more subtle form of egocentrism, but nevertheless is still mentally
trapped in the here and now. Only during adolescence can the individual break free of the shackles of
the world as it is and imagine how things might have been different depending on key events in
history.
If Piaget were correct about the form development takes, then it would have important
implications for education. We see signs of an aptitude for make-believe in early pretence, which
appears from about the age of 18 months. But can easily apply that to the task of working out that
their own perspective on reality is relative.
Piaget was a stage theorist without a maturationist. While Piaget talked about his stages
having biological significance, that is not the same as saying that the stages are under the control of a
genetically determined maturational clock. He was also found of the phrase “genetic epistemology”.
In Piaget’s sense, genetic means “origin” and epistemology means “knowledge”. He was interested in
the origin of knowledge – the knowledge that an individual acquires within a single life time.
According to Piaget, each successive stage is an adaptation to a prevailing state of
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,egocentrism. Thus, the individual’s efforts of adaptation to the profound egocentrism of infancy
culminate in a stat where it becomes possible to distinguish between self and the rest of the
universe. However, the new adaptation, although good in some ways, also has limitations with the
consequence that a more subtle form of egocentrism survives. Eventually, the child finds an even
better level of adaptation in overcoming this subtle form of egocentrism, and so on. Knowledge (or
levels of adaptation) is built stage by stage, where each not only serves as good adaptation but also
provides a foundation for the next stage.
Siegler suggested that when children formulate a new way of understanding the world, their
old way of understanding can linger for a while and actually co-exist with the new adaptation. Siegler
observed that at the point of transition, children vacillate between new and old kinds of strategies in
solving problems, but the new way, being a better adaptation, eventually takes precedence. He calls
this the overlapping-waves theory, in recognition that children have strategies that co-exist, or
overlap in time. He uses the wave metaphor because as the prominence of the old strategy recedes,
so the new strategy might swell. Siegler advocates a microgenetic approach to research, which
involves repeated testing of children over a period of days or weeks at the time of transition.
Chapter 2 – Methodological approaches
Developmental cognitive neuroscience
The most well-known imaging technique is magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) which is capable of
generating exquisite and high-resolution images of the brain. Structural MRI provides a snapshot of
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, virtual “slices” of the brain. This technology generates an image that has some features in common
with X-ray, in that we can see structures beneath the skin, but unlike X-ray, the quality, resolution,
and detail of the image can be quite exquisite. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) gives
an image of how areas of activity change within the brain over time. The scanner is capable of
detecting concentrations of blood, and providing it is correct to assume that areas of activity draw
larger volumes of blood, we can gain an impression of which areas or structures of the brain are
responsible for which mental activities. High concentrations of blood can be displayed graphically as
“lighting up”.
When the participant speaks, we would expect to see high levels of activity adjacent to part
of the motor cortex, in the frontal lobe, which is known as Broca’s area, but we would not expect to
see strong activity in Wernicke’s area, located in the temporal lobe. Conversely, when the participant
is listening to speech, we would expect to see high levels of activity in Wernicke’s area but not in
Broca’s area. Under one condition, the control condition, the participant might hear nonspeech,
which could include scrambled speech, music, sounds of animals, or other stimuli.
Another method of brain imaging employs an electroencephalogram (EEG). This is a net of
perhaps 128 or 256 tiny electrodes that the participant wears on their head. The electrodes are so
sensitive that they are capable of picking up minute electromagnetic activity generated by the
electro-chemical processes occurring at the surface of the cortex of the brain. Admittedly, EEG is not
as precise as MRI in telling us where activity is located in the brain; however, it is even more accurate
than MRI in telling us how neural activity changes over a very brief period of time. This technique
provides valuable information about attention at the level of the cortex, especially the speed of shifts
in attention.
Generally simply knowing where a cognitive process is located is unlikely to be particularly
helpful in itself. Besides, recent research reveals that most cognitive processes are not located in any
one particular place.
In summary, brain imaging has huge potential to advance our understanding of how the mind
develops; but there are limitations associated with obtaining data that are generalizable to the real
world and there are distinct ethical considerations.
Research based on observations of behavior: infancy
Two techniques that have been used to good effect with infants are nonnutritive sucking and
preferential looking.
Recently, preferential looking is a procedure that has become more widely used than a
nonnutritive sucking procedure on the grounds that it is a more simple and versatile technique of
investigation. This approach is based on the principle that, all things equal, babies prefer to look at
novel rather than familiar objects. Such preference indicates that babies are able to recognize novel
objects. Babies tend to prefer the genuinely novel object even if it projects the same retinal image as
the familiar object presented during the familiarization phase. This tells us that babies encode
objects according to their true size and not according to projected size. It effectively means that
babies recognize a given object as being the same despite the fact that different retinal sizes are
projected at different distances. In short, babies perceive depth.
The preferential looking procedure is versatile and sensitive for investigating babies’
perceptual, cognitive, and emotional development. The biggest challenge it presents is in coding the
data.
A method that employs modern technology is based on the recording of eye movements by
an eye-tracker. Specifically, the eye-tracker will generate a recording of the scene that the baby
observed and superimpose a succession of fixation points, coupled with a scan path. In other words,
we will have a precise and objective recording of what the baby looked at and when. The problem
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