A.

Charles Darwin
1. Evolutionary Theory and the possibility that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny
2. A biological sketch of an infant (published in 1877)
James Baldwin (1861 1934) The first to suggest that childrens abilities progress
through stages; that childrens minds are not the same as adults
Alfred Binet (1857 1911) You probably know of him from the Stanford-Binet IQ test. He
was interested in intelligence and how it can be measured.
The extent of plasticity (changeability, malleability of features, qualities, thinking and other
aspects of development)
1. adaptive abilities 2. critical periods
3. sensitive periods
A. Features of discontinuity or discontinuous development (after John Flavell, b 1928)
1. qualitative differences
2. simultaneous changes across many domains or areas of
development
3. rapid & sudden changes
4. changes in patterns across different areas (domains) seem
to form a pattern
B. Features of continuous development
Here development is seen as gradual changes where new abilities are built on old capacities.
I. Psychoanalytic Theories (Freud, Jung) Early 20th C
A. Biological drive underlies 5 stages associated with goal of sexual reproduction
B. Personality concepts of Id, Ego and Superego
II. Erik Erikson: Psycho-Social Theory
A. Ego identity B. Development as a life-long process C. Genetically inevitable
D. Transitions between stage are overlapping
III. Behavior and Social Learning Theories: Development comes from learning;
focus is on
behavior
A. John Watson (1978-1958) and B. F. Skinner (1904-1990)
1. Behavior changes in response to consequences of actions
2.
Rewards
and
punishments: shaping behavior
3. Skinners concept of conditioning (operant conditioning) 4. An e.g. of what it can explain
in development
B. Albert Bandura (b. 1925):
Social Learning Theory (people learn from each other via observation,
imitation
and
modeling)
1. Bridge between behaviorist and cognitivist learning theories
2.
Examples
in
childrens development
(3. Bobo doll experiment in VTK for early childhood)
schema, these are basically mental representations and a framework for understanding
things.
Assimilation and accommodation use similar things to explain new things vs adapt new
info
B. Lev Vygotsky (1896 1934): Socio-cultural Theory of Development
Culture provides tools of intellectual adaptation
Zone of Proximal Development (what child can do on own and what capable of when a more
competent person is in proximity who can facilitate)
Ethology and Evolutionary Theories: come from looking at development in other species;
behavior is explained as contributing to survival of the species.
Behavioral Genetics: A highly interdisciplinary field
1. highly interdisciplinary 2. epigenetic phenomenon
3. heritability studies
Dynamic Systems Theories 1. elements in many, perhaps all, of the theories outlined
above influence development
2. there is clearly interaction and interdependency among the various aspects of human
development (cognition, social skills, emotions, culture, personality, etc. 3.
beyond
a
dichotomy of nature & nurture