PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

CHILD AND ADOLESCENT

REVIEW NOTES

Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory (Personality)

Psychosexual Development
Oral Stage (0-1 yrs. old) – Infant
Anal Stage (1-3 yrs. old) – Toddler
Phallic Stage (3-6 yrs old) preschoolers
Latency Stage (age 6 - puberty) school age
Genital Stage (adolescence /puberty onwards)

Personality Component
ID (pleasure principles) infancy
EGO (reality principles) preschooler
SUPEREGO (morality principles) near end of preschool

3 Levels of Mind
CONCIOUS - all that we are aware of that are stored in our conscious mind.
UNCONCIOUS - all that we go through (feelings, beliefs, impulses deep within)
SUBCONCIOUS (a.k.a. Pre-Conscious) – the part of us that’s hidden unless we search for it
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Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory
3 Basic Cognitive Concept
1. Schema – Building blocks of knowledge
2. Adaptation Processes (3)
Assimilation – using an existing schema to deal with a new object or situation.
Accommodation – happens when an existing schema does not work and needs to be changed to deal
with a new object or situation
Equilibration – occurs when a child’s schemas can deal with most new information through
assimilation. But when our experiences do not match our schemata, we experience cognitive
disequilibrium
3. Stages of Cognitive Development
Stage 1. Sensori-motor stage (birth - infancy)
Highlight:
Object Permanence - ability to know that an object still exists even when out of sight
Stage 2. Pre-operational stage (2-7yrs) preschool years
Intelligence at this stage is intuitive in nature
Child can now make mental representations and is able to pretend
Highlights on this stage:
Symbolic Function – ability to represent objects and events
Egocentrism – the tendency of the child to only see his point of view and to assume that everyone
also has his same point of view
Centration – the tendency of the child to only focus on one aspect of a thing or event and exclude
other aspects.
Irreversibility – inability to reverse their thinking
Can understand 2+3=5 but cannot understand that 5-3=2
Animism – attribute human like traits or characteristics to inanimate objects
(e.g. Mr. Sun is asleep)
Transductive Reasoning – reasoning appears to be from particular to particular
(i.e. If A causes B, then B causes A)
Stage 3. Concrete-operational stage (8-11 yrs.) elementary school years
This stage is characterized by the ability of the child to think logically but only in terms of concrete
objects.
Decentering – no longer focused or limited to one aspect or dimension which makes the child to be
more logical when dealing with concrete objects and situations
Reversibility – can now follow that certain operations can be done in reverse
Conservation – the ability to know that certain properties of objects like number, mass, volume or
area do not change even if there is a change in appearance.
Seriation – ability to order or arrange things in a series based on one dimension such as weight,
volume or size.
Stage 4. Formal-operational stage (12-15 yrs.)
Thinking becomes logical
Can solve problems and hypothesize
This stage is characterized by the following:
Hypothetical Reasoning – the ability to come up with different hypothesis about a problem and to
gather and weigh data in order to make a final decision. Can answer what if questions.
Analogical Reasoning – the ability to perceive the relationship in one instance and use it to narrow
down possible answers. Can make an analogy.
Deductive Reasoning – the ability to think logically by applying the general rule to a particular
situation.