Child Development Theories

Child development theories explain how children change and grow, focusing on social, emotional, and cognitive development.
Developmental psychologists aim to understand, explain, and predict behaviors throughout the lifespan.

Child development was largely ignored throughout much of human history.
Children were often viewed as small versions of adults.
Interest in child development emerged in the early 20th century, initially focusing on abnormal behavior.
More recent theories outline developmental stages and identify typical ages for growth milestones.

Developmental theories provide a framework for understanding human growth and learning.
Understanding these theories offers insight into individuals and society.
An understanding of child development is essential to fully appreciate the cognitive, emotional, physical, social, and educational growth of children.

Grand theories attempt to describe every aspect of development using a stage approach.
Mini-theories focus on limited aspects of development, such as cognitive or social growth.

Psychoanalytic theory originated with Sigmund Freud.
Freud believed that childhood experiences and unconscious desires influenced behavior.
Conflicts during each stage can have a lifelong influence on personality and behavior.
Freud's psychosexual theory suggests that child development occurs in stages focused on different pleasure areas of the body.
The energy of the libido was focused on different erogenous zones at specific stages.
Failure to progress through a stage can result in fixation at that point in development, influencing adult behavior.
Successfully completing each stage leads to the development of a healthy adult personality.
Failing to resolve conflicts can result in fixations that influence adult behavior.
Freud believed that personality is largely set in stone by the age of five.

Erik Erikson expanded upon Freud's ideas, becoming one of the best-known neo-Freudians.
Erikson's eight-stage theory of psychosocial development describes growth and change throughout life, focusing on social interaction and conflicts.
Erikson believed that social interaction and experience played decisive roles, rather than focusing on sexual interest.
During each stage, people face a developmental conflict that impacts later functioning and further growth.
Erikson's psychosocial theory focuses on development across the entire lifespan.
At each stage, children and adults face a developmental crisis.
Successfully managing the challenges of each stage leads to the emergence of a lifelong psychological virtue.

Behaviorism rose to become a dominant force within psychology during the first half of the twentieth century.
Behaviorists focused on observable and quantifiable behaviors.
All human behavior can be described in terms of environmental influences.
Learning occurs through processes of association and reinforcement.
Behavioral theories focus on how environmental interaction influences behavior, based on theories from John B. Watson, Ivan Pavlov, and B. F. Skinner.
Development is considered a reaction to rewards, punishments, stimuli, and reinforcement.
This theory gives no consideration to internal thoughts or feelings, focusing purely on how experience shapes who we are.
Two important types of learning are classical conditioning and operant conditioning.
- Classical conditioning involves learning by pairing a naturally occurring stimulus with a previously neutral stimulus.
- Operant conditioning utilizes reinforcement and punishment to modify behaviors.

Cognitive theory is concerned with the development of a person's thought processes.
It also looks at how these thought processes influence how we understand and interact with the world.
Jean Piaget proposed one of the most influential theories of cognitive development.
Children think differently than adults.
Piaget's theory seeks to describe and explain the development of thought processes and mental states.

Sensorimotor stage: Birth to age two. Infant's knowledge is limited to sensory perceptions and motor activities. Behaviors are limited to simple motor responses caused by sensory stimuli.
Pre-operational stage: Ages 2 to 6. A child learns to use language but does not yet understand concrete logic, cannot mentally manipulate information, and is unable to take the point of view of other people.
Concrete operational stage: Ages 7 to 11. Children better understand mental operations and begin thinking logically about concrete events but have difficulty understanding abstract or hypothetical concepts.
Formal operational stage: Age 12 to adulthood. People develop the ability to think about abstract concepts. Skills such as logical thought, deductive reasoning, and systematic planning also emerge.

John Bowlby proposed one of the earliest theories of social development.
Early relationships with caregivers play a major role in child development and continue to influence social relationships throughout life.
Children are born with an innate need to form attachments.
Attachments aid in survival by ensuring the child receives care and protection.
Attachments are characterized by clear behavioral and motivational patterns.
Children strive to stay close and connected to their caregivers, who provide a safe haven and a secure base for exploration.
Children who receive consistent support and care are more likely to develop a secure attachment style, while those who receive less reliable care may develop an ambivalent, avoidant, or disorganized style.

Social learning theory is based on the work of Albert Bandura.
Conditioning and reinforcement processes cannot sufficiently explain all of human learning.
Behaviors can also be learned through observation and modeling.
By observing the actions of others, children develop new skills and acquire new information.
Observation does not necessarily need to be watching a live model.
People can also learn by listening to verbal instructions or observing real or fictional characters in books or films.

Lev Vygotsky proposed a seminal learning theory that has become very influential, especially in education.
Children learn actively and through hands-on experiences.
Parents, caregivers, peers, and the culture at large are responsible for developing higher-order functions.
Learning is an inherently social process.
Through interacting with others, learning becomes integrated into an individual's understanding of the world.
Vygotsky's theory introduced the concept of the zone of proximal development, which is the gap between what a person can do with help and what they can do on their own.
With the help of more knowledgeable others, people can progressively learn and increase their skills and scope of understanding.