Important Concepts or Ideas in Developmental Psychology
Students Should Remember
Bioecological Theory- Bronfenbrenner Bioecological Theory explains the development of relationships between people and their environments or contexts. Classifying all individual and contextual variables Bronfenbrenner used circles to state that the contexts of development are circles within circles. The outermost circle is the Macrosystem (cultural context) which states values and beliefs of the culture that the child is growing up in. The next circle is Exosytem (socioeconomic context) which states institutions of cultures that affect children’s development indirectly. The next stage is Mesosystem (microsystem) immediate context, which states the following; family, school, religious affiliation, and neighborhood because these are the things people are exposed to directly. This system is made up of the interconnections between these components. The last state and the innermost one is Person (biological context) which states the child’s genetic makeup and developmental stage. His/her biological context, and influences his/her development. Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory is a way of thinking about development of individual and contextual variables.
Cognitive Developmental Theory- Piaget Cognitive theories are the mental processes in development like logic and memory. Piaget studied the development of logical thinking in children. He found that all children go through the same discoveries, make the same mistakes but come out with the same solutions. He came up with a guide to show how as children age their cognitive developmental stages.
Learning Theories (Behavioral) - Pavlov, Skinner, and Bandura Classical Conditioning is learning that results from the association of stimuli. Pavlov’s principles of classical conditioning was the key to understanding human development. He felt developmental change was nothing more than the connections between stimuli and responses.
Operant Conditioning is learning to repeat or stop behaviors because of their consequences. In Skinner’s operant conditioning theory there are key concepts that explain the behavior/consequence relationship. Reinforcement is anything that follows the behavior and causes it to be repeated. Punishment is anything that follows a behavior and causes it to stop. Positive reinforcement is a consequence that follows a behavior and increases the chance of that behavior to happen again. Negative reinforcement happens when a person learns to repeat a specific behavior in order to cause something bad to stop.
Social Learning is learning from one another, by observation, imitation, and modeling. Bandura felt that what observers learn from watching others depend on two cognitive elements. The first is what the observer is paying attention to and the other is what the observer is able to remember. To learn from a model, they must be able to imitate the behavior and physically perform it on their own. He thought attentional abilities, memory, physical capability and motivations change with age. What children learn from a model may be different from what an adult learns from an identical model or event.
Psychoanalytic Theories- Freud and Erikson
Psychosexual Theory are Freud’s
