THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT

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 NATURE OF SCIENTIFIC THEORIES

• Scientific theory is nothing more than a set of concepts and propositions that a scientist believes to be
true about a specific area of investigation.
• Some theories in the developmental sciences are broad in scope, seeking to explain the development
of global domains, such as personality or cognition.
• Others are limited to a specific issue, such as the impact of sports
• participation on women’s self-esteem.
• But the basis of all scientific theories is that they help us to organize our thinking about the
aspects of experience that interest us.
• In the developmental sciences, theories provide us with a “lens” through which we can interpret
our specific observations about developing individuals.

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 Psychoanalytic Theories – Freud

Psychosocial Theory - Erikson

THEORIES OF The Cognitive-Developmental Viewpoint- Piaget,

Vygotsky
DEVELOPMENT
Behavioral and social learning- Skinner’s operant
conditioning and Bandura’s social learning theory.

The Ethological and Evolutionary

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 • Psychoanalytic theories describe
development as primarily unconscious and
heavily colored by emotion.
• Behavior is merely a surface characteristics, and
the symbolic workings of the mind have to be
analyzed to understand behavior.
• As Freud listened to, probed and analyzed his
patients, he became convinced that their
PSYCHOANALYTIC problems were the result of experiences early
in life.
• Freud is the pioneering architect of psychoanalytic
THEORY- FREUD theory.
• As children grow up, their focus of pleasure and
sexual impulses shifts from mouth to anus and
eventually to the genitals.
• As a result human being go through five sexual
stages of development.
• Adult personality is determined by the way we
resolve conflicts between sources of pleasure
at each stage and the demands of reality.

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 PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACH

➢Propounded by SIGMUND FREUD who was a physician,and

developed this theory in the course of his clinical practice
➢ hypnosis to treat people with physical and emotional problems.
➢Freud used freeassociation (a method in which a person is
asked to openly share all the thoughts, feelings and ideas that
come to her/his mind), dream analysis, to understand the
internal functioning of the mind.
➢the role of the unconscious mind in the development of
personality.
➢ Biological causes of personality differences
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 PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACH

• ORAL • ID • CONSCIOUS
PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES OF

• ANAL • EGO • PRECONSCIOUS

• • SUPEREGO • UNCONSCIOUS
DEVELOPMENT

PHALLIC

CONSCIOUSNESS
• LATENCY
STRUCTURE OF
• GENITAL PERSONALITY

LEVELS OF
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 PSYCHODYNAMIC APPROACH
III. PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT

Freud proposed a five-stage theory of personality (also called psychosexual)

development. Problems encountered at any stage may arrest development, and have
long-term effect on a person’s life.
1)ORAL(0-1 yr): A newborn’s instincts are focused on the mouth. This is the infant’s
primary pleasure seeking centre. It is through the mouth that the baby obtains food
that reduces hunger. The infant achieves oral gratification through feeding, thumb
sucking, biting and babbling. It is during these early months that people’s basic feelings
about the world are established. Thus, for Freud, an adult who considers the world a
bitter place probably had difficulty during the oral stage of development.
2)ANAL(1-2 yrs): It is found that around ages two and three the child learns to respond
to some of the demands of the society. One of the principal demands made by parents
is that the child learns to control the bodily functions of urination and defecation.
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PSYCHODYNAMIC APPROACH
III. PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
• 3) PHALLIC(3-6 yrs): At around ages four and five children begin to
realise the differences between males and females. They become
aware of sexuality and the sexual relationship between their parents.
During this stage, the male child experiences the Oedipus Complex,
which involves love for the mother, hostility towards the father, and
the consequent fear of punishment or castration by the father
(Oedipus was a Greek king who unknowingly killed his father and then
married his mother) and female child experiences Electra complex
which involves love for father. A major developmental achievement
of this stage is the resolution of the Oedipus/Electra complex. This
takes place by accepting his father’s relationship with his mother, and
vice-versa.
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PSYCHODYNAMIC APPROACH
III. PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT(2)
4)LATENCY(6 to puberty): This stage lasts from about seven years until
puberty. During this period, the child continues to grow physically, but
sexual urges are relatively inactive. Much of a child’s energy is channelled
into social or achievement related activities.
5)GENITAL(puberty to death): The person attains maturity in
psychosexual development. The sexuality, fears and repressed feelings of
earlier stages are once again exhibited. People learn to deal with
members of the opposite sex in a socially and sexually mature way.
However, if the journey towards this stage is marked by excessive stress
or over-indulgence, it may cause fixation to an earlier stage of
development.
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Stages of Psychosexual Development

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 PSYCHODYNAMIC APPROACH
II. STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY
According to Freud’s theory, the primary structural elements of personality are three:
1)Id: It is the source of a person’s instinctual energy. It deals with immediate
gratification of primitive needs, sexual desires and aggressive impulses. It works on
the pleasure principle, which assumes that people seek pleasure and try to avoid
pain. Id does not care for moral values, society, or other individuals.
2)Ego: It grows out of id, and seeks to satisfy an individual’s instinctual needs in
accordance with reality. It works by the reality principle, and often directs the id
towards more appropriate ways of behaving. Thus, while the id is demanding,
unrealistic and works according to pleasure principle, the ego is patient, reasonable,
and works by the reality principle.
3)Superego: The best way to characterise the superego is to think of it as the moral
branch of mental functioning. The superego tells the id and the ego whether
gratification in a particular instance is ethical. It helps control the id by internalising
the parental authority through the process of socialisation.
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 PSYCHODYNAMIC APPROACH
LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Freud’s theory considers the sources and consequences
of emotional conflicts and the way people deal with these.
In doing so, it visualises the human mind in terms of
three levels of consciousness:
1)Conscious: which includes the thoughts, feelings and
actions of which people are aware. The uppermost part of
one’s mind. This is very similar to STM.
2)Preconscious: which includes mental activity of which
people may become aware only if they attend to it closely.
Information is available but not currently conscious.
3)Unconscious : which includes mental activity that
people are unaware of. Information that cannot be
brought to consciousness easily or voluntarily.
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 • Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory Erik Erikson (1902–
1994) recognized Freud’s
• contributions but believed that Freud
misjudged some important
dimensions of human development.
• Erikson (1950, 1968) said we develop in psychosocial
stages, rather than in
ERIKSON’S • psychosexual stages, as Freud maintained. According
to Freud, the primary
• motivation for human behavior is sexual in nature;
PSYCHOSOCIAL according to Erikson, it is social and reflects a desire
to affiliate with other people.
THEORY • According to Freud, our basic personality is shaped in
the first five years of
• life; according to Erikson, developmental change
occurs throughout the life span.
• Thus, in terms of the early-versus-later-experience
issue described earlier
• in the chapter, Freud viewed early experience as far
more important than
• later experiences, whereas Erikson emphasized
the importance of both early and later
experiences.

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 • A Stage is a period in development in which people exhibit typical
ERIKSON’S behavior
• patterns and establish particular capacities. The various stage
EIGHT theories share these assumptions:
• People pass through stages in a specific order, with
PSYCHOSOCIAL each stage building on capacities developed in the
previous stage.
STAGES OF • Stages are related to age.
• Like Freud, Erik Erikson believed in the importance of early childhood.
• However, Erikson believed that personality development happens over the
DEVELOPMENT • entire course of a person’s life.
• According to Freud, the primary motivation is sexual in nature;
according to Erikson, it is social and reflects a desire to affiliate with
others.
• According to Erikson, in each stage people face new challenges, and the
• stage’s outcome depends on how people handle these challenges.

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ERIKSON’S EIGHT • Trust vs mistrust
PSYCHOSOCIAL •
•
Autonomy vs shame and doubt
Initiative vs guilt
STAGES OF • Industry vs inferiority
DEVELOPMENT •
•
Identity vs identity confusion
Intimacy vs isolation
• Generativity vs stagnation
• Integrity vs despair

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ERIKSON’S EIGHT PSYCHOSOCIAL
STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
In the years 1950, 1968, Erikson proposed a theory that describes eight
distinct stages of development.
• Stage 1: Trust vs. Mistrust
• In the first year after birth, babies depend completely on adults for
basic needs such as food, comfort, and warmth. If the caretakers
meet these needs reliably, the babies become attached and develop a
sense of security. Otherwise, they may develop a mistrustful, insecure
attitude. Trust in infancy sets in a lifelong expectation that the world
will be a good and pleasant place to live.
• Stage 2: Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
• Between the ages of one and three, toddlers start to gain
independence and learn skills such as toilet training, feeding
themselves, and dressing themselves. Depending on how they face
these challenges, toddlers can develop a sense of autonomy or a
sense of doubt and shame about themselves. 16
ERIKSON’S EIGHT PSYCHOSOCIAL
STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
• Stage 3: Initiative vs. Guilt
• Between the ages of three and six, children must learn to
control their impulses and act in a socially responsible way. If
they can do this effectively, children become more self-
confident. If not, they may develop a strong sense of guilt.

• Stage 4: Industry vs. Inferiority

• Between the ages of six and twelve, children compete with
peers in school and prepare to take on adult roles. They end
this stage with either a sense of competence or a sense of
inferiority.
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ERIKSON’S EIGHT PSYCHOSOCIAL
STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
• Stage 5: Identity vs. Role Confusion
• During adolescence, which is the period between puberty and
adulthood, children try to determine their identity and their direction
in life. Depending on their success, they either acquire a sense of
identity or remain uncertain about their roles in life.

• Stage 6: Intimacy vs. Isolation

• In young adulthood, people face the challenge of developing intimate
relationships with others. If they do not succeed, they may become
isolated and lonely.

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ERIKSON’S EIGHT PSYCHOSOCIAL
STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
• Stage 7: Generativity vs. Self-Absorption
• As people reach middle adulthood, they work to become productive
members of society, either through parenting or through their jobs. If
they fail, they become overly self-absorbed.
• Stage 8: Integrity vs. Despair
• In old age, people examine their lives. They may either have a sense
of contentment or be disappointed about their lives and fearful of the
future.

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 • Erikson’s theory can be criticized for being
vague about the causes of
• development.
• What kinds of experiences must people
have in order to successfully resolve
Criticism of various psychosocial conflicts? How does
the outcome of one psychosocial stage
Erikson’s theory influence personality at a later stage?
• Erikson is not very explicit about these
important issues. So his theory is really a
descriptive overview of human social and
emotional development that does not
adequately explain how or why this
development takes place.

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 The Cognitive-
Developmental
Viewpoint-
Piaget &
Vygotsky
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 • No theorist has contributed more to our understanding of
children’s
• thinking than Jean Piaget (1896–1980), a Swiss scholar who
began to study
• intellectual development during the 1920s. Piaget was

Jean Piaget’s truly a remarkable individual.

• At age 10, he published his first scientific article about the
behavior of a
Cognitive • rare albino sparrow. His early interest in the ways that animals
adapt to
• their environments eventually led him to pursue a
Development doctoral degree in zoology, which he completed in
1918.
• Piaget’s secondary interest was epistemology (the branch of
Theory philosophy
• concerned with the origins of knowledge), and he
hoped to be able to integrate his two interests.
• Thinking that psychology was the answer, Piaget went to Paris,
where he
• accepted a position at the Alfred Binet laboratories, working
on the first
• standardized intelligence
test.

His experiences in this position had a profound

influence on his career.

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• In testing mental ability, an estimate is
made of the person’s intelligence based on
the number and kinds of questions that
he or she answers correctly.
• However, Piaget soon found that he was
more interested in children’s incorrect
answers than their correct ones. He fi rst
noticed that children of about the same
age produced the same kinds of wrong
answers. But why?

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• he began to realize that young children
are not simply less intelligent than
older children—rather, their thought
processes are completely different.
• Piaget then set up his own laboratory and
spent 60 years charting the course of
intellectual growth and attempting to
determine how children progress from one
type (or stage) of thinking to another.

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• Influenced by his background in biology, Piaget
(1950) defined intelligence as a basic life process
that helps an organism adapt to its environment.
• By adapting, Piaget means that the organism is
able to cope with the demands of its
immediate situation. For example, the hungry
infant who grasps a bottle and brings it to her
mouth is behaving adaptively, as is the
adolescent who successfully interprets a road
map while traveling.
• As children mature, they acquire ever more
complex “cognitive structures”
• that aid them in adapting to their environments.
• Piaget’s stage of infant cognitive development: i)
Cognitive
processes

ii) Stages of cognitive development: a) The

sensorimotor stage b) The preoperational c) The
concrete operational stage d) The Formal
operational stage

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Cognitive
Processes
• What processes do children
use as they construct their
knowledge of the world?
• Piaget developed several
concepts especially
important are -
• schemes,
• assimilation,
• accommodation,
• organization,
• equilibrium, and
equilibration.

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SCHEME

A cognitive structure—or what Piaget

called a scheme—is an organized
pattern of thought or action that is
used to cope with or explain some
aspect of experience. These are actions
or mental representations that organize
knowledge.

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• In Piaget’s theory, behavioral schemes (physical activities)
characterize infancy, and mental schemes (cognitive activities)
develop in childhood.
• For example, A baby’s schemes are structured by simple actions that
can be performed on objects such as sucking, looking, and grasping.
• For example, many 3-year-olds insist that the sun is alive because it
comes up in the morning and goes down at night. According to
Piaget, these children are operating on the basis of a simple cognitive
scheme that “things that move are alive.”
• Older children have schemes that include strategies and plans for
solving problems.
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 • To explain how children use and adapt their
schemes, Piaget offered two concepts: assimilation
and accommodation.
• Assimilation occurs when children use their existing
schemes to deal with new information or
experiences.
• Think about a toddler who has learned the word
ASSIMILATION car to
• identify the family’s car. The toddler might call all
moving vehicles on roads “cars,” including
motorcycles and trucks; the child has assimilated
these objects to his or her existing scheme.
• Piaget believed that assimilation and
accommodation work together to promote
cognitive growth.

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ACCOMMODATION
• Accommodation occurs when children adjust their schemes to take new
information and experiences into account.
• The child soon learns that motorcycles and trucks are not cars and fine-tunes
the category to exclude motorcycles and trucks, accommodating the scheme.
• Assimilation and accommodation operate even in very young infants.
Newborns reflexively suck everything that touches their lips; they assimilate
all sorts of objects into their sucking scheme.
• By sucking different objects, they learn about their taste, texture, shape, and
so on. After several months of experience, though, they construct their
understanding of the world differently.
• Some objects, such as fingers and the mother’s breast, can be sucked, and
others, such as fuzzy blankets, should not be sucked. In other words, they
accommodate their sucking scheme. 31
 • According to Piaget, to make sense out of their
world, children cognitively organize their
experiences. Organization is the grouping of
isolated behaviors and thoughts into a higher-order
system according to him.
• Continual refinement of this organization
Organization is an inherent part of development.
• For example, A boy who has only a vague idea
about how to use a hammer may also have a
vague idea about how to use other tools. After
learning how to use each one, he relates these
uses, organizing his knowledge.

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 Equilibration
• equilibration
• Piaget explains equilibration as a mechanism that children use to shift
from one stage of thought to the next.
• Equilibration Assimilation and accommodation always take the child to a
higher ground, according to Piaget. In trying to understand the world, the
child inevitably experiences cognitive conflict, or disequilibrium.
• The child is constantly faced with counterexamples to his or her existing
schemes and with inconsistencies. According to Piaget, children constantly
assimilate and accommodate as they seek equilibrium.
• There is considerable movement between states of cognitive equilibrium
and disequilibrium as assimilation and accommodation work in concert to
produce cognitive change. 33
 STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

• Piaget (1954) also held that we go through four stages in understanding the world.
Each stage is age-related and consists of a distinct way of thinking, a different way
of understanding the world. Thus, according to Piaget (1896–1980), the child’s
cognition is qualitatively different in one stage compared with another.
• Piaget’s Stages of cognitive development:
• a) The sensorimotor stage
• b) The preoperational
• c) The concrete operational stage
• d) The Formal operational stage

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PIAGET’S FOUR
STAGES OF
COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

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 The Sensorimotor Stage (birth to 2 years of age)

• The sensorimotor stage ,

• which lasts from birth to about 2 years of age, is the first Piagetian stage. In this stage, infants
construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences (such as seeing and
hearing) with physical, motoric actions—hence the term sensorimotor .
• During the sensorimotor period, infants coordinate their sensory inputs and motor
capabilities, forming behavioral schemes that permit them to “act on” and to get to “know”
their environment.
• During the first 2 years, infants develop from reflexive creatures with very limited knowledge into
planful problem solvers who have already learned a great deal about themselves, their close
companions, and the objects and events in their everyday world.

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 The preoperational stage (2 to 7 years)

• The preoperational stage , which lasts from approximately 2 to 7

• years of age, is Piaget’s second stage.
• In this stage, children begin to go beyond simply connecting sensory information
with physical action and represent the world with words, images, and drawings.
• According to Piaget, preschool children still lack the ability to perform what he calls
operations, which are internalized mental actions that allow children to do
mentally what they previously could only do physically.

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 The concrete operational stage (7 to 11 years of age)
• The concrete operational stage ,
• it lasts from approximately 7 to 11 years of age, is the third Piagetian stage.
• In this stage, children can perform operations that involve objects, and they
can reason logically when the reasoning can be applied to specific or concrete
examples.
• For instance, concrete operational thinkers cannot imagine the steps necessary to
complete an algebraic equation, which is too abstract for thinking at this stage of
development.

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 • The formal operational stage ,
• It appears between the ages of 11 and 15 and continues through

The formal •
•
adulthood, is Piaget’s fourth and final stage.
In this stage, individuals move beyond concrete experiences and
think in

operational • abstract and more logical terms. As part of thinking

more abstractly, adolescents develop images of ideal
circumstances.
stage (11 to • They might think about what an ideal parent is like and compare
their

15 years of • parents to this ideal standard. They begin to entertain

possibilities for the future and are fascinated with what they
can be.

age) •

•
In solving problems, they become more systematic, developing
hypotheses
about why something is happening the way it is and then
testing these hypotheses.

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 • the Russian developmentalist Lev Vygotsky (1896–
1934) argued that children actively construct their
knowledge.
• Vygotsky (1962) gave social interaction and culture far
more important roles in cognitive development than

VYGOTSKY’S Piaget did.

• Vygotsky’s theory is a sociocultural cognitive theory that
emphasizes how

SOCIOCULTURAL • culture and social interaction guide cognitive development.

• He maintained that cognitive development involves

COGNITIVE learning to use the inventions of society, such as language,

mathematical systems, and memory strategies.
• In one culture, children might learn to count with the help of a
THEORY computer; in another, they might learn by using beads.
According to Vygotsky,
• children’s social interaction with more-skilled
adults and peers is indispensable to their
cognitive development (Holzman, 2009).

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• The Zone of Proximal Development

• Zone of proximal development (ZPD) is Vygotsky’s term for the range of tasks
• that are too difficult for the child to master alone but that can be learned
with guidance and assistance of adults or more-skilled children.

• Vygotsky believes in the importance of social influences, especially instructions

by adults , on

• children’s cognitive development

• Thus, the lower limit of the ZPD is the level of skill reached by the child working
independently.

• Contd..

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• The upper limit is the level of additional
responsibility the child can accept with the
assistance of an able instructor.
• The ZPD captures the child’s cognitive skills that are in
the process of maturing and can be accomplished
only with the assistance of a more skilled person.
• Vygotsky (1962) called these the “buds” or “flowers”
of development, to distinguish them from the “fruits”
of development, which the child already can
accomplish independently.

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 • Scaffolding
• Closely linked to the idea of the ZPD is the concept
of scaffolding.
• Scaffolding means changing the level of support.
• Over the course of a teaching session, a more-
skilled person (a teacher or advanced peer)
adjusts the amount of guidance to fit the child’s
current performance (Daniels, 2007).
• When the student is learning a new task, the
skilled person may use direct instruction. As the
student’s competence increases, less guidance is
given.

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❖ Language and Thought
• The use of dialogue as a tool for scaffolding is only one example of the
important role of language in a child’s development.
• According to Vygotsky, children use speech not only to communicate
socially but also to help them solve tasks.
• Vygotsky further believed that young children use language to plan, guide,
and monitor their behavior.
• This use of language for self-regulation is called private speech. For
Vygotsky it is an important tool of thought during the early childhood
years.
Contd…
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 Vygotsky reasoned that children who use a lot of private
speech are

more socially competent than those who don’t.

He argued that private speech represents an early transition

in becoming more socially communicative.

For Vygotsky, when young children talk to themselves, they

are using language to govern their behavior and guide
themselves.

For example, a child working on a puzzle might say to herself,

“Which pieces should I put together first? I’ll try those green
ones first. Now I need some blue ones. No, that blue one
doesn’t fi t there. I’ll try it over here.”

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COMPARISON OF VYGOTSKY’S AND PIAGET’S THEORIES

46
BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL
COGNITIVE THEORIES
• Behaviorism essentially holds that we can study
scientifically only what can be directly observed and
measured.
• Out of the behavioral tradition grew the belief that
development is observable behavior that can be learned
through experience with the environment (Klein, 2009).
• In the behavioral and social cognitive theories emphasize
continuity in development and argue that development does
not occur in stage-
like fashion. Let’s explore two versions of
behaviorism: Skinner’s operant conditioning and
Bandura’s social cognitive theory.

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SKINNER’S OPERANT
CONDITIONING

Skinner’s Operant Conditioning According to B. F. Skinner (1904– 1990),

through operant conditioning the consequences of a behavior produce
changes in the probability of the behavior’s occurrence.

A behavior followed by a rewarding stimulus is more likely to recur,

whereas a behavior followed by a punishing stimulus is less likely to
recur.

For example, when an adult smiles at a child after the child has done
something, the child is more likely to engage in that behavior again than
if the adult gives the child a disapproving look.

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• In Skinner’s (1938) view, such rewards and punishments
shape
• development.
• For Skinner the key aspect of development is behavior,
not thoughts and feelings.
• He emphasized that development consists of
the pattern of behavioral changes that are
brought about by rewards and punishments.
• For example, Skinner would say that shy people learned to
be shy as a result of experiences they had while growing up.
It follows that modifications in an environment can help a
shy person become more socially oriented.
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A teenage boy may become more studious if his efforts
are rewarded by a reduction in his chores (negative
reinforcement).

Punishers are consequences that suppress a response

and decrease the likelihood that it will recur, and
again.

This operant learning theory claims that development

depends on external stimuli (reinforcers and
punishers) rather than internal forces such as instincts,
drives, or biological maturation.

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• Today’s many developmentalists agree that human
behavior can take many forms and that habits can emerge
and disappear over a lifetime, depending on whether
they have positive or negative consequences.
• Yet many believe that Skinner placed too much emphasis on
operant behaviors shaped by external stimuli (reinforcers
and punishers) while ignoring important cognitive
contributors to learning.
• One such critic is Albert Bandura, who proposed a
social cognitive theory of development that is widely
respected today.

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BANDURA’S SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY
• Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory
• American psychologist Albert Bandura (1925– ) is the leading architect of
social cognitive theory.
• Bandura (1986, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010a, b) emphasizes that
cognitive processes have important links with the environment and
behavior.
• Some psychologists agree with the behaviorists’ notion that development
is learned and is influenced strongly by environmental interactions.
However, unlike Skinner, they also see cognition as important in
understanding development (Mischel, 2004).
• Social cognitive theory holds that behavior, environment, and cognition are
the key factors in development.
Contd…..
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His early research program focused heavily on observational learning (also
called imitation or modeling), which is learning that occurs through
observing what others do.

For example, a young boy might observe his father yelling in anger and
treating other people with hostility; with his peers, the young boy later acts
very aggressively, showing the same characteristics as his father’s behavior.

Social cognitive theorists stress that people acquire a wide range of

behaviors, thoughts, and feelings through observing others’ behavior and
that these observations form an important part of life-span development.

What is cognitive about observational learning in Bandura’s view? He

proposes that people cognitively represent the behavior of others and then
sometimes adopt this behavior themselves.

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Bandura’s (2004, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010a, b) most recent model of
reciprocal determinism of learning and development includes three
elements: behavior, the person/cognition, and the environment.

An individual’s confidence that he or she can control his or her

success is an example of a person factor; strategies are an example
of a cognitive factor.

Cognitive learning theorists argue that child development is best

described as a continuous reciprocal interaction between children
and their environments. The environment that a child experiences
surely affects her, but her behavior affects the environment.

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Bandura’s model of reciprocal determinism.

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