PSYCH EXAM ONE IMPORTANT PEOPLE

Jefferey Arnett

emerging adulthood

Paul Baltes

points out, development across the life span involves both gains and losses. With age, certain capabilities become more refined and sophisticated, whereas others involve loss of skill and capacity. For example, vocabulary tends to grow throughout childhood, and this growth continues through most of adulthood. At the same time, certain physical abilities, like reaction time, improve until early and middle adulthood, when they begin to decline

Sigmund Freud

psychoanalytic theory

• suggests that unconscious forces act to determine personality and behavior

• the unconscious is a part of the personality about which a person is unaware.

• id, ego, and superego

• psychosexual development

• Freud’s theory was based on a limited population of upper-middle-class Austrians living during a strict, puritanical era, its application to broad, multicultural populations is questionable. Finally, because Freud’s theory focuses primarily on male development, it has been criticized as sexist and may be interpreted as devaluing women

Erikson (psychoanalyst)

stages of psychosocial development (humans continue to grow throughout their life)

• 8 distinct stages

John B. Watson

american psychologist

• advocate a behavioral approach, summed up the behavioral perspective.

• classical conditioning

B.F. Skinner

operant conditioning

• consequences, reinforcement, punishment

albert bandura

social cognitive learning theory

• modelling behavior

Jean Piaget (swiss)

Piaget proposed that all people pass in a fixed sequence through a series of universal stages of cognitive development.

• He suggested that not only does the quantity of information increase in each stage, but the quality of knowledge and understanding also changes. His focus was on the change in cognition that occurs as children move from one stage to the next

• assimilation and accomodation

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Carl Rogers

humanistic perspective

• people have a natural capacity to make decisions about their lives and to control their behavior. According to this approach, each individual has the ability and motivation to reach more advanced levels of maturity, and people naturally seek to reach their full potential

• Self-actualization is a state of self-fulfillment in which people achieve their highest potential in their own unique way

bronfenbrenner

bioecological approach

• In acknowledging the problem with traditional approaches to lifespan development, psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner (2000, 2002), who lived from 1917 to 2005, proposed an alternative perspective, called the bioecological approach. The bioecological approach suggests that five levels of the environment simultaneously influence individuals. Bronfenbrenner noted that we cannot fully understand development without considering how a person is influenced by each of these levels

Vygotsky

sociocultural theory (reciprocal transaction)

• Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory emphasizes how cognitive development proceeds as a result of social interactions between members of a culture

• Vygotsky believed that people and settings influence the child, who in turn influences the people and settings. This pattern continues in an endless loop, with children being both recipients of socialization influences and sources of influence.

konrad lorenz

ethology, which examines the ways in which our biological makeup influences our behavior.

psychodynamic

Behavior throughout life is motivated by inner, unconscious forces, stemming from childhood, over which we have little control.

• Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson

behavioral

Development can be understood through studying observable behavior and environmental stimuli.

• John B. Watson, B. F. Skinner, Albert Bandura

cognitive

Emphasis on how changes or growth in the ways people know, understand, and think about the world affect behavior.

• Jean Piaget

humanistic

Behavior is chosen through free will and motivated by our natural capacity to strive to reach our full potential.

• Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow

contextual

Development should be viewed in terms of the interrelationship of a person’s physical, cognitive, personality, and social worlds

• Urie Bronfenbrenner, Lev Vygotsky

evolutionary

Behavior is the result of genetic inheritance from our ancestors; traits and behavior that are adaptive for promoting the survival of our species have been inherited through natural selection.

• Influenced by early work of Charles Darwin, Konrad Lorenz