Child development theories

Ego (from Freud) acquires attitudes and skills that make the child an active, contributing member of society. Also development co-incides with each culture's life situation. Psychosocial development.

Trust vs Mistrust: Trust: Warm, responsive care infants gives trust/confidence. Mistrust: when handled harshly and wait too long for care.

Autonomy vs Shame & Doubt: With mental and motor skills, toddlers want to choose and decide for themselves. Autonomy is when parents permit reasonable choices and do not force shame on their child.

Initiative vs Guilt: Children experiment with who they want to become through play. Initiative is a sense of ambition and responsibility which is developed from the parent's support of their sense of purpose. Problem with parents is can over-control meaning too much guilt.

Children construct knowledge as they manipulate and explore their world.

Information processing.

Sensorimotor: Infants think with their eyes, ears, hands and mouth, resulting in creating ways of solving sensorimotor problems. Eg., finding hidden toys, putting objects in and out of containers. Pressing a button to hear a sound.

Preoperational: Preschool children use symbols to represent their earlier sensorimotor discoveries. Development of language and make-believe play, though lacking in logic.

A close, emotional bond between infant and caregiver that develops over a series of phases that includes recognising the caregivers' face, voice, and other features as well as expecting the caregiver to provide pleasure in social interaction and relief from distress. A child needs safety and security to be able to explore.

Emotional and Social Development. A child can be attached to an abusive parent.

Infants instinctively orientate to human figures who can elicit smiling or crying from the infant.

Attachment becomes focussed on one figure, usually the primary caregiver. They baby begins to distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar people.

Specific attachments develop with increased locomotor skills. They actively seek contact with regular caregivers.

Children become aware of others' feelings, goals and plans and begin to take them into account directing their own actions.

Children actively construct their knowledge through social interaction and and objects in the culture. It's not generated from themselves.

Development of memory, attention, reasoning involves learning to use inventions of society such as language, mathematical systems and memory strategies. The child needs assistance from someone more skilled for cognitive development. Teachers embrace his theory for education purposes.

Is the range of tasks that are too difficult for the child to master alone, but can be learned with guidance/assistance of adults.

Low Zone: Need assistance; High Zone: perform skill alone. It shows the child's cognitive skills that are in process of maturing and can only be accomplished with assistance of more abled person - to help them think beyond their 'Zone'.

Is changing the level of support - linked to the Zone. Dialogue is the tool of scaffolding in the 'Zone'. With Dialogue where the child interacts with more skilled person, their concepts go from being unsystematic, disorganised and spontaneous to systematic, logical and rational.

Use of Language/Dialogue in Scaffolding: important role in development. Use Language for social communication; solving tasks; planning, guiding and monitor their behaviour. Use of 'private speech' for self-regulation - important tool of thought. Governs their behaviour and guide themselves.

All mental functions have external or social origins.

A child's development reflects the influence of five environmental systems. It gives inadequate attention to biological factors as well as little emphasis on cognitive factors.

Where the individual lives. Includes family, peers, school, neighbourhood and work Where most direct interactions with social agents take place.

Are the relationships or connections between contexts in the microsystem. Eg, family and school experiences; school and church experiences; family and peer experiences. Eg. Rejected children from parents may have difficulty developing positive relationships with teachers.

A link between a social setting where the child does not have an active role and their immediate context. Eg., a child's experience may be influenced by a mother's experience at work.

The culture in which the child lives. The culture refers to behaviour patterns, beliefs and generational influences.

The patterning of environmental events and transitions over the life course as well as socio-historical circumstances. Eg., Divorce

Erikson - balanced biological/cultural interaction perspective. Early family experiences are important influences.

Discontinuity between stages. Piaget - emphasis on interaction and adaptation; environment provides the setting for cognitive development. Childhood experiences important influences. Discontinuity. Vygotsky - the interaction of nature and nurture with strong emphasis on culture.

Childhood experiences important influences. No stages in his theory. Brofenbrenner - strong environmental view - where all systems are important throughout the child's development. No stages.

Where development is primarily influenced by nature - the child's biological inheritance OR nurture - the child's environmental experiences.

Able to recognise cues/learning abilities according to development stages. Diagnose problems according to environment, culture and social/emotional and cognitive development stage of the child. Able to recognise use attachment theory to help caregiver develop a strong bond with the infant for good social/emotional development.