a.

Pavlov and Skinner’s Conditioning Theory - Adelyn Tutor

Pavlov’s classical conditioning which associates an involuntary response with a stimulus
and Skinner’s operant condition that ties a voluntary behavior to a consequence are both
behavior modification techniques that result in learning but differ significantly in their
approaches to the process.

Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning

Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist who worked in the late 19 th and early 20th centuries.
He is known for identifying classical conditioning, a process that forms an association
between a naturally existing stimulus and a neutral stimulus. Most people are familiar with
Pavlov’s dog experiment where he drew inspiration for the principle. As a physiologist,
Pavlov noticed that dogs began to salivate when hearing a sound associated with feeding
times.

The salivation occurred even before the food was presented. Pavlov determined this was a
learned response that stipulated the conditioning process. Salivation is a response to food is
a naturally occurring unconditioned response. Biological beings have little conscious control
over salivation as it is instinctual and does not need to be trained. However, a sound
associated with food is a neutral stimulus since it is not the food itself, but simply an indicator
that it is coming. After repeated exposure, the sound becomes a conditioned stimulus, while
salivation becomes a conditioned response (Myers & DeWall, 2016).

Skinner’s Operant Conditioning

B.F. Skinner was an American psychologist, behaviorist, and social philosopher working in
the mid-20th century. He is known for building on Pavlov’s classical conditioning research
and identifying what is known as operant (also known as instrumental) conditioning. This
type of conditioning focuses on changes to voluntary behavior which is followed by either
reinforcement or punishment. In theory, behavior followed by reinforcement will increase
and continue, while punishment to behavior will result in its decrease and cessation.
Reinforcement can be either positive where a positive reward is added, or negative, where
an undesirable aspect is removed.

Negative reinforcement is different from punishment since it results in the removal of a

negative consequence to increase response, meaning to increase it. While punishment is
the reverse, in positive punishment, a negative aspect is added, while in negative
punishment, a pleasing element is removed. Operant conditioning is inherently more
complex and challenging since it deals with a voluntary behavior and seeks to establish
specific consequences, through this making changes to old behaviors and creating new
ones (Myers & DeWall, 2016).

Having been established as prominent behavioral theories, Pavlov’s and Skinner’s works
have found practical applications in various fields, which will be compared in this section.
Classical conditioning is more straightforward and although it was tested on animals, it can
be applicable to humans. It sees significant use in therapeutic interventions as a successful
form of treatment for substance abuse. Various types of therapies have been developed
around the condition with the purpose of changing behavior. For example, aversion behavior
therapy encourages individuals to give up undesirable habits through association with a
negative effect.

b. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development- Garcia, Princess Izy C.

Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that intelligence changes as
children grow. A child's cognitive development is not just about acquiring knowledge,
the child has to develop or construct a mental model of the world.
Cognitive development occurs through the interaction of innate capacities and
environmental events, and children pass through a series of stages.
Piaget's theory of cognitive development proposes 4 stages of development.

 sensorimotor stage: birth to 2 years

 preoperational stage: 2 to 7 years
 concrete operational stage: 7 to 11 years
 formal operational stage: ages 12 and up

The sequence of the stages is universal across cultures and follow the same invariant
(unchanging) order. All children go through the same stages in the same order (but not
all at the same rate).
Piaget branched out on his own with a new set of assumptions about children’s
intelligence:

 Children’s intelligence differs from an adult’s in quality rather than in quantity.

This means that children reason (think) differently from adults and see the world
in different ways.
 Children actively build up their knowledge about the world. They are not passive
creatures waiting for someone to fill their heads with knowledge.
 The best way to understand children’s reasoning was to see things from their
point of view.

Piaget’s Four Stages

Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four
different stages of intellectual development which reflect the increasing sophistication of
children's thoughts.
Each child goes through the stages in the same order, and child development is
determined by biological maturation and interaction with the environment.
At each stage of development, the child’s thinking is qualitatively different from the other
stages, that is, each stage involves a different type of intelligence.
 Stage Age Goal

Sensorimotor Birth to 18-24 months Object permanence

Preoperational 2 to 7 years old Symbolic thought

Concrete operational Ages 7 to 11 years Logical thought

Formal operational Adolescence to adulthood Scientific reasoning

Although no stage can be missed out, there are individual differences in the rate at
which children progress through stages, and some individuals may never attain the later
stages.

c. Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalysis : Angeles, Fiona M.

Sigmund Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) is considered to be the founder of
the psychodynamic approach to psychology, which looks to unconscious drives to
explain human behavior. Freud believed that the mind is responsible for both conscious
and unconscious decisions that it makes on the basis of psychological drives. The id,
ego, and super-ego are three aspects of the mind Freud believed to comprise a
person's personality. Freud believed people are "simply actors in the drama of [their]
own minds, pushed by desire, pulled by coincidence. Underneath the surface, our
personalities represent the power struggle going on deep within us".
Freud did not believe in the existence of a supernatural force that has pre-programmed
us to behave in a certain way. His idea of the id explains why people act out in certain
ways when it is not in line with the ego or superego. "Religion is an illusion and it
derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires." [2] Freud
believed that people rely on religion to give explanations for anxieties and tension they
do not want to consciously believe in. Freud argued that humanity created God in their
image. This reverses the idea of any type of religion because he believed that it is
constructed by the mind. The role of the mind is something that Freud repeatedly talked
about because he believed that the mind is responsible for both conscious and
unconscious decisions based on drives and forces. The idea that religion causes people
to behave in a moral way is incorrect according to Freud because he believed that no
other force has the power to control the ways in which people act. Unconscious desires
motivate people to act accordingly. Freud did a significant amount of research studying
how people act and interact in a group setting. He believed that people act in different
ways according to the demands and constraints of the group as a whole. In his
book Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Freud argued that the church and
organized religion form an "artificial group" which requires an external force to keep it
together. In this type of group, everything is dependent on that external force and
without it, the group would no longer exist. Groups are necessary, according to Freud in
order to decrease the narcissism in all people, by creating libidinal ties with others by
placing everyone at an equal level. The commonness among different people with
different egos allows people to identify with one another. This relates to the idea of
religion because Freud believed that people created religion in order to create these
group ties that they unconsciously seek for.

Psychoanalysis Theories
Psychoanalysis is based on Freud's theory that people can experience catharsis and
gain insight into their state of mind by bringing the content of the unconscious into
conscious awareness. Through this process, a person can find relief from psychological
distress.

Psychoanalysis also suggests that:

 A person's behavior is influenced by their unconscious drives.

 Emotional and psychological problems such as depression and anxiety are often
rooted in conflicts between the conscious and unconscious mind.
 Personality development is heavily influenced by the events of early childhood
(Freud suggested that personality was largely set in stone by the age of five).
 People use defense mechanisms to protect themselves from information
contained in the unconscious.

Skilled analysts can help a person bring certain aspects of their unconscious mind into
their conscious awareness by using psychoanalytic strategies such as dream analysis
and free association.

History of Psychoanalysis
Many of Freud's observations and theories  were based on clinical cases and case
studies. This made his findings difficult to generalize to the larger population. Still,
Freud's theories changed how we think about the human mind and behavior and left a
lasting mark on psychology and culture.
Freud's theories of psychosexual stages, the unconscious, and dream symbolism are
still popular among both psychologists and laypeople, but others view his work with
skepticism.

Today, psychoanalysis encompasses:

 Applied psychoanalysis (which applies psychoanalytic principles to the study of

art, literature, and real-world settings and situations)
  Neuro-psychoanalysis (which applies neuroscience to psychoanalytic topics such
as dreams and repression)
 Psychoanalytic therapy

Although traditional Freudian approaches have fallen out of favor, modern approaches
to psychoanalytic therapy emphasize a non-judgmental, empathetic approach.
Important Milestones

 1856 – Sigmund Freud was born

 1882 – Josef Breuer described the case of Anna O to Freud
 1886 – Freud first began providing therapy
 1895 – Anna Freud was born
 1900 – Sigmund Freud published his book The Interpretation of Dreams
 1896 – Sigmund Freud first coined the term psychoanalysis
 1908 – The Vienna Psychoanalytic Society was formed and the first international
meeting of psychoanalysts was held
 1909 – Freud made his first and only trip to the United States
 1910 – The International Psychoanalytic Association was formed
 1913 – Jung broke from Freud and psychoanalysis
 1938 – The Vienna Psychoanalytic Society was dissolved
 1939 – Sigmund Freud died in London following a long battle with oral cancer

Psychoanalysis Theorists
Sigmund Freud was the founder of psychoanalysis and the psychodynamic approach to
psychology. Freud believed that the human mind was composed of three elements: the
id, the ego, and the superego.
Other thinkers—including his own daughter, Anna Freud—also left a significant mark on
the field. Among the most prominent names in psychoanalysis were Erik Erikson, Erich
Fromm, and Carl Jung

Erik Erikson expanded on Freud's theories and stressed the importance of lifelong
growth. Erikson's psychosocial stage theory of personality remains influential today in
our understanding of human development.
Karl Abraham, Otto Rank, John Bowlby, Melanie Klein, Karen Horney, and Sabina
Spielrein were also key contributors to the evolution of psychoanalytic theory.

d. Lev Vygotsky’s Theory of Development- Roselle Menia

Vygotsky's Theory of Sociocultural Cognitive Development

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) was a Russian psychologist and teacher who developed a
theory about how our social interactions influence our cognitive development. This is
known as Lev Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory of Cognitive Development.
Vygotsky developed his theories around the same time as Swiss psychologist Jean
Piaget was developing theories about cognitive development, but they differ on almost
every point. Some of Vygotsky's work is still being translated from Russian.

What is Vygotsky's Theory?

Vygotsky's social development theory asserts that a child's cognitive development and
learning ability can be guided and mediated by their social interactions. His theory (also
called Vygotsky's Sociocultural theory) states that learning is a crucially social process
as opposed to an independent journey of discovery. He expands on this by stating that
a child's learning benefitted greatly from being guided by a more knowledgeable
member of the community - such as a parent or teacher.

Vygotsky's sociocultural theory also suggested that children internalise and learn from
the beliefs and attitudes that they witness around them. He believed that culture played
an important role in shaping cognitive development and therefore that this development
varied across cultures. Vygotsky also stressed the importance of language as the root
of all learning.

Vygotsky's Concept of More Knowledgable Other (MKO)

Vygotsky's theory places importance on guiding children's learning through their

interaction with a more knowledgeable other (MKO). The more knowledgeable other
could be anyone with a greater understanding of the task or concept that the child is
trying to complete or learn. Most often, this would be a parent, caregiver or teacher, but
it could also be a peer or mentor.

This theory is not limited to academic or educational learning, it can also be applied to
recreational learning such as playing games or using technology. In these
circumstances, a peer or older child is more likely to be the more knowledgeable other.

The MKO could also be an electronic tutor, in cases where a program is set up to guide
learning using voice prompts or videos.Vygotsky's theory places importance on guiding
children's learning through their interaction with a more knowledgeable other (MKO).
The more knowledgeable other could be anyone with a greater understanding of the
task or concept that the child is trying to complete or learn. Most often, this would be a
parent, caregiver or teacher, but it could also be a peer or mentor.

Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

The concept of the zone of proximal development, also known as the zone of potential
development, is used to explain a child's potential for cognitive development and ability
when they are guided through a task, rather than asked to do it in isolation.

If a child is presented with a task that is slightly above their ability level, the zone of
proximal development (ZPD) refers to their ability to do it with the assistance of a more
knowledgeable person. This theory explains why some skills present themselves in a
more social context when the child is unable to display them by themselves.

The zone of proximal development can be described as the distance between the actual
developmental level when assessed independently and the level of potential
development when assessed in collaboration with peers or mentors or under the
guidance of a teacher.

Zone of Proximal Development Stages

The ZPD can be broken down into three distinct stages in terms of a learner's skillset. In
order to improve the ability of the learner the more knowledgeable person must
understand what stage they are in.

Tasks a learner can accomplish without assistance

This refers to tasks that the learner can perform independently. If the learner has
reached this stage, the teacher or mentor will need to increase the level of difficulty of
the task in order to facilitate further learning.

Tasks a learner can accomplish with assistance

This is referred to as their zone of proximal development. In this stage, the learner
needs the guidance of a more knowledgeable other to help them complete the task.

Tasks a learner cannot accomplish with assistance

This refers to tasks that the learner cannot do, even with the guidance of a more
knowledgeable person. If the learner's ability falls within this range, the level of difficulty
may need to be decreased to accommodate their skillset.

Instructional scaffolding is a method of guided learning that helps a student learn by

pairing them with an educator. The educator should have greater experience with the
task or process than the student, but they should also have an understanding of the
level that the student is at and how they can address this level.

Techniques for instructional scaffolding might include using visual aids (such as
diagrams), providing examples, working one-on-one with the student and providing
feedback. The aim of scaffolding is to create an environment in which the student feels
comfortable asking questions until they can perform the skill without any help.

The benefits of scaffolding include:

 Motivating the learner by helping them through aspects of a task that they have
trouble with

 Minimising frustration for the learner

 Providing a faster learning experience

Elementary Mental Functions

Vygotsky's child development theory refers to four 'elementary mental functions' as the
innate abilities that we are born with. These are:

 Attention

 Sensation

 Perception

 Memory

These abilities are then developed into 'higher mental functions' through social
interaction with our community.

Vygotsky also coined the term 'tools of intellectual adaptation', which refers to problem-
solving strategies and ways of thinking that children internalise by observing and
interacting with more knowledgeable members of society. Different cultures exemplify
different tools of intellectual adaptation because they are affected by the beliefs and
values of the individual culture.

Social Influences and Cognitive Development

Vygotsky believed that learning was an active process rather than a natural or passive
one. He

 said that children were engaged in their own learning and discovery but that their
development happened in the context of social interaction, as opposed to independently
or in isolation.

Vygotsky also highlighted the importance of learning that was guided by an educator or
teacher. Techniques used by the teacher to engage the child, such as performing the
task themselves as an example or providing verbal instruction was referred to as
cooperative or collaborative dialogue by Vygotsky theory.

The process of learning would occur when the child understood the information,
absorbed it and then used it to guide their own performance.

An example of this guided learning could be if a child is given a sudoku puzzle to

complete. A teacher or mentor might recommend certain strategies to the child, such as
ruling out places where each number could go based on the horizontal and vertical
positions of that number, or writing possible options in the corner of the box in pencil to
cull the possibilities. The teacher might also encourage the child to ask questions and
provide prompts when they are close to the right answer. As the child develops a higher
level of competency, the teacher reduces their influence.
This technique is also very common in sport, in which a coach or more capable peer will
often demonstrate the skill before asking the student to do it themselves. For example, if
a soccer teacher was teaching students how to dribble a ball through a set of cones,
they may perform this skill first themselves in order to set an example for the students.

Vygotsky's Theory and Language

Vygotsky viewed language as an essential tool for communication and that culture and
behaviour was understood through language. Vygotsky also highlighted the critical role
that language plays in cognitive development.

Vygotsky's theory says that social interactions help children develop their ability to use
language. According to Vygotsky, there are three stages/forms of language in the
development process:

 Social speech - communication between children and others (usually from the
age of 2)

 Private speech - private speech that is directed to the self but has not yet been
internalised (usually from the age of 3)

 Silent inner speech - a child's internal monologue (usually from the age of 7)

Vygotsky and Private Speech in Young Children

Vygotsky was the first philosopher to describe the stage of private speech and explain it
as the transition between initial external speech and silent inner speech. He also stated
that thought and language were initially separate functions before they merge at around
the age of 7. Vygotsky believed that this process of internalising speech and language
was essential to cognitive development.

Vygotsky viewed private speech as a method of self-regulating behaviour. He also

viewed language as a tool for accelerating understanding. For these reasons, he
suggested that children who engaged in private speech regularly would be more socially
competent than those who did not. Private speech could be useful in helping a child
exercise their imagination, practise problem-solving skills and organise their thoughts.

Private speech was observed to appear at times when a child was having difficulty with
a task and was then used to guide their thoughts and actions by first organising and
regulating them.

Jean Piaget theorised that private speech diminished with age as the child became
more socialised and adjusted more to external speech, which is in contrast with
Vygotsky's theory that private speech disappeared as it became silent and internalised.

Application of Vygotsky's Theory in the Classroom

Vygotsky's sociocultural theory about child development says that cognitive
development occurs as a result of social interactions. In this way, learning is innately
collaborative. He believed social negotiation was essential for building knowledge and
understanding concepts.

Vygotsky proposed that it was not possible to separate learning in the formative years
from its social context. Initial learning occurred through social interaction and then the
individual processed it internally.

Contemporary modes of applying this theory to the classroom mark a movement away
from traditional memory-oriented models of teaching. 'Reciprocal teaching' refers to a
method in which teachers and students work together to clarify and understand a
concept before students are asked to repeat it or apply it in another context.

For example, if a teacher is reading a paragraph of text on a certain topic, they will go
through a process together with the students of:

 Summarising

 Questioning

 Clarifying; and

 Predicting

This collaborative process allows the students to learn the concept in a social context
before internalising it to apply on their own.

Zone of Proximal Development Examples and Applications in the Classroom

Techniques such as 'scaffolding' and/or 'apprenticeship' are often used in the classroom
to describe ways of teaching students according to their level of ability. In these
techniques, the learning is structured by a teacher and then their role is gradually
reduced over time. This allows the student to learn the topic within their zone of
proximal development and then adjust to doing it by themselves or tackling something
of a higher difficulty.

Vygotsky's theories also inform some contemporary ideas about collaborative learning,
such as pairing students of lesser capability with more advanced peers to help them
learn. Discussion groups, small group learning and collaborative exercises in schools
and universities have also been incorporated in response to theories about social
learning.

Understanding what tasks, processes and concepts might lie in a student's zone of
proximal development is also essential. For example, if a student has just mastered
their times tables, basic division might be in their ZPD, but they're probably not ready for
exponents yet. The teacher might provide an example of a division problem and the
method to solve it before asking the student to try it themselves. This linear structure of
learning is applied in most schools and institutions.

Challenges to Application of Vygotsky's Theory in the Classroom

Although applications of the zone of proximal development can be beneficial to helping
students learn in the classroom, there can be some challenges for teachers. These
challenges include:

 Not having enough time or resources to address the needs of each student or
help them individually

 The possibility of misjudging a student's ZPD and causing frustration for both the
student and teacher

 There might be too many students in the class, with rapidly changing ability
levels, to employ this method successfully

 If the lesson plan is not arranged to accommodate scaffolding beforehand, it

might be difficult to be flexible enough to follow through with it

 If the teacher is unaware of the student's ZPD, the techniques might not be
effective

Critical Evaluation of Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory of Cognitive Development

Some of Vygotsky's work is still being translated from Russian, so there is some
speculation about whether or not his theories had further elaboration or development. It
is a time-consuming process to translate it from Russian, so his theories have not
suffered as much criticism yet. His theories also lack specificity so can be difficult to
directly refute.

A large amount of criticism is directed towards Vygotsky's assumption that his theory of
cognitive development and social interaction is culturally universal. Additionally, he
provides no specific hypothesises to be tested in order to prove or disprove his theories.

Vygotsky's ideas also do not address the impact of biology or genetics on cognitive
development, nor do they address a child's emotional development.

However, there is plenty of evidence to support the suggestion that collaborative

learning can be more effective than isolated learning. Additionally, mentoring and
teaching children by pairing them with more knowledgeable peers or more adults is also
known to have positive results.
Criticisms of Vygotsky
Lack of experimental tests
Vygotsky mostly used observation methods to support his theories, which has invited
criticism about the validity of his findings. He also only vaguely defined social interaction
and never stated the best method for engagement.

Active participation in learning

Vygotsky's theory about active participation in learning does not account for some
circumstances in which children experience slower cognitive growth. Other philosophers
have suggested that genetics should be factored in and that the results of passive
learning should not be negated.

Social interaction
Some psychologists and philosophers are critical of Vygotsky's determination that
socialisation was key to learning language and culture. This theory does not explain
why some children learn and develop slowly, despite having strong social support. The
vagueness of his theories has been criticised, with some suggesting that they were
underdeveloped.

Language as the foundation of learning

Vygotsky's theory that language was a crucial tool of social interaction and therefore a
crucial tool for learning has also been questioned. Some activities can be taught or
learned using physical actions, hands-on processes, observational techniques or more
creative methods, suggesting that language is not always the foundation of learning.

The zone of proximal development

The concept of the zone of proximal development is criticised for being unspecific and is
sometimes viewed as a general term that encapsulates various models of cognitive
development. It is also not a foolproof theory, because it doesn't explain why some
students cannot perform certain tasks, even with help.

What are the Differences Between Vygotsky's Theory and Piaget's Theory?

Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who developed a theory about cognitive
development around the same time as Lev Vygotsky. Piaget's theory had a large
influence on the study of developmental psychology. Piaget's theories are largely both
more well-known and more heavily criticised than Vygotsky's, mostly because they are
better understood.

There are a number of key differences between Vygotsky's human development

theories and Piaget's.

The way that culture affects cognitive development

Vygotsky placed importance on the way culture affected cognitive growth and did not
refer to specific stages of cognitive development. In contrast, Piaget described universal
stages of cognitive development that did not vary across cultures.
Piaget's theory declared that children would have to reach each stage before being
capable of certain tasks and that each stage would have to be reached in the same
order. The stages he described were as follows:

 Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years) - The infant explores their environment mostly
through sensory and motor perception. They begin to develop a sense of object
permanence.

 Preoperational stage (2-7 years) - The child begins to use language to represent
and understand the world. They begin to think about things symbolically but have
not yet developed problem-solving abilities.

 Concrete operational stage (7-11 years) - The child begins to develop the ability
to think logically. They also develop empathy. The child begins to understand
how things work and can reverse certain processes in their mind.

 Formal operational stage (12 and over) - The child's thought process can move
on from things to ideas. They can handle abstract ideas because their thoughts
have been freed from most constraints. They can also speculate answers to
hypothetical problems.

Learning as a social process

Vygotsky's theory on children's cognitive development centres around learning being an
inherently social process. He places emphasis on social interaction as a defining
element of learning and says it cannot be removed from its social context.

Vygotsky expands on this by highlighting the benefits of pairing a student with a more
knowledgeable other for the purpose of guided learning. Vygotsky stated that a child's
immediate environment would have a significant impact on their development.

However, Piaget theorises that learning is mostly an independent process in which the
individual undertakes their own journey of exploration. He didn't do as much research or
observation on the role that social interaction played in cognitive development.

The role of language

When it comes to the role of language in development, Vygotsky and Piaget have very
different theories. Vygotsky states that thought and language both begin early on in
development but that they are initially separate functions that merge when the child
begins to use inner speech. This usually happens around 3 years of age. He goes on to
say that the internalisation of language is a necessary step for cognitive development.

In contrast, Piaget says that thought comes first and language develops as a result of
this.
Vygotsky also highlighted the significance of the stage in between external speech and
inner speech - private speech. Piaget's theory did not place much importance on this
stage and instead suggested that it was a sign of immaturity.

Adult guidance
Vygotsky highlights the importance of adults playing a role in a child's cognitive
development. He emphasises this through his model of the zone of proximal
development, which can be used by parents, teachers, caregivers and tutors to
structure and accelerate a child's learning.

On the other hand, Piaget's theory of cognitive development highlights the role of peers
in providing perspective and improving a child's social awareness and negotiation skills.

e. Miller’s Information Processing Theory - Carl Kenneth B. Esteban

information Processing Theory (G. Miller)

George A. Miller has provided two theoretical ideas that are fundamental to cognitive
psychology and the information processing framework.

The first concept is “chunking” and the capacity of short term memory. Miller (1956)
presented the idea that short-term memory could only hold 5-9 chunks of information
(seven plus or minus two) where a chunk is any meaningful unit. A chunk could refer to
digits, words, chess positions, or people’s faces. The concept of chunking and the
limited capacity of short term memory became a basic element of all subsequent
theories of memory.

The second concept is TOTE (Test-Operate-Test-Exit) proposed by Miller, Galanter &

Pribram (1960). Miller et al. suggested that TOTE should replace the stimulus-response
as the basic unit of behavior. In a TOTE unit, a goal is tested to see if it has been
achieved and if not an operation is performed to achieve the goal; this cycle of test-
operate is repeated until the goal is eventually achieved or abandoned. The TOTE
concept provided the basis of many subsequent theories of problem solving (e.g., GPS)
and production systems.
Application
Information processing theory has become a general theory of human cognition; the
phenomenon of chunking has been verified at all levels of cognitive processing.

Example
The classic example of chunks is the ability to remember long sequences of binary
numbers because they can be coded into decimal form. For example, the sequence
0010 1000 1001 1100 1101 1010 could easily be remembered as 2 8 9 C D A. Of
course, this would only work for someone who can convert binary to hexadecimal
numbers (i.e., the chunks are “meaningful”).

The classic example of a TOTE is a plan for hammering a nail. The Exit Test is whether
the nail is flush with the surface. If the nail sticks up, then the hammer is tested to see if
it is up (otherwise it is raised) and the hammer is allowed to hit the nail.

Principles
1. Short term memory (or attention span) is limited to seven chunks of information.
2. Planning (in the form of TOTE units) is a fundamental cognitive process.
3. Behavior is hierarchically organized (e.g., chunks, TOTE units).

f. Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory - glenne diaz

he concept of multiple intelligences is a theory proposed by Harvard
psychologist Howard Gardner. When you hear the word intelligence, the concept of IQ
testing may immediately come to mind. Intelligence is often defined as our intellectual
potential; something we are born with, something that can be measured, and a capacity
that is difficult to change.

In recent years, however, other views of intelligence have emerged, including Gardner's
suggestion that multiple different types of intelligence may exist.

Illustration by JR Bee, Verywell

 What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?
Theory of Multiple Intelligences
This theory suggests that traditional psychometric views of intelligence are too limited.
Gardner first outlined his theory in his 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of
Multiple Intelligences, where he suggested that all people have different kinds of
"intelligences."
Gardner proposed that there are eight intelligences, and has suggested the possible
addition of a ninth known as "existentialist intelligence." 1
In order to capture the full range of abilities and talents that people possess, Gardner
theorizes that people do not have just an intellectual capacity, but have many kinds of
intelligence, including musical, interpersonal, spatial-visual, and linguistic intelligences.

While a person might be particularly strong in a specific area, such as musical

intelligence, he or she most likely possesses a range of abilities. For example, an
individual might be strong in verbal, musical, and naturalistic intelligence.

Criticism

Gardner’s theory has come under criticism from both psychologists and educators.
These critics argue that Gardner’s definition of intelligence is too broad and that his
eight different "intelligences" simply represent talents, personality traits, and abilities.
Gardner’s theory also suffers from a lack of supporting empirical research.

Despite this, the theory of multiple intelligences enjoys considerable popularity with
educators. Many teachers utilize multiple intelligences in their teaching philosophies and
work to integrate Gardner’s theory into the classroom. 2
Gardner has cautioned that multiple intelligences should not be conflated with learning
styles.3 (It is also important to stress that evidence has found that matching instruction
to a learner's perceived style has no benefits in terms of learning outcomes or
educational attainment.)4

There is a lack of evidence to demonstrate that learning according to your "intelligence"

produces better educational outcomes. However, you may find that learning more about
multiple intelligences can give you a better understanding of your strengths and
preferences.

1
Visual-Spatial Intelligence
People who are strong in visual-spatial intelligence are good at visualizing things. These
individuals are often good with directions as well as maps, charts, videos, and pictures. 5
Strengths

Visual and spatial judgment

Characteristics

People with visual-spatial intelligence:

 Read and write for enjoyment

 Are good at putting puzzles together
 Interpret pictures, graphs, and charts well
 Enjoy drawing, painting, and the visual arts
 Recognize patterns easily
Potential Career Choices

If you're strong in visual-spatial intelligence, good career choices for you are: 

 Architect
 Artist
 Engineer

2
Linguistic-Verbal Intelligence
People who are strong in linguistic-verbal intelligence are able to use words well, both
when writing and speaking. These individuals are typically very good at writing stories,
memorizing information, and reading. 1
Strengths

Words, language, and writing

Characteristics

People with linguistic-verbal intelligence:

 Remember written and spoken information

 Enjoy reading and writing
 Debate or give persuasive speeches
 Are able to explain things well
 Use humor when telling stories

Potential Career Choices

If you're strong in linguistic-verbal intelligence, good career choices for you are:

 Writer/journalist
 Lawyer
 Teacher

3
Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
People who are strong in logical-mathematical intelligence are good at reasoning,
recognizing patterns, and logically analyzing problems. These individuals tend to think
conceptually about numbers, relationships, and patterns. 6
Strengths

Analyzing problems and mathematical operations

Characteristics 

People with logical-mathematical intelligence:

 Have excellent problem-solving skills

 Enjoy thinking about abstract ideas
 Like conducting scientific experiments
 Can solve complex computations

Potential Career Choices

If you're strong in logical-mathematical intelligence, good career choices for you are:

 Scientist
 Mathematician
 Computer programmer
 Engineer
 Accountant

4
Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence
Those who have high bodily-kinesthetic intelligence are said to be good at body
movement, performing actions, and physical control. People who are strong in this area
tend to have excellent hand-eye coordination and dexterity. 6
Strengths

Physical movement, motor control

Characteristics

People with bodily-kinesthetic intelligence:

 Are skilled at dancing and sports

 Enjoy creating things with his or her hands
 Have excellent physical coordination
 Remember by doing, rather than hearing or seeing

Potential Career Choices

If you're strong in bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, good career choices for you are:

 Craftsperson
 Dancer
 Builder
 Surgeon
 Sculptor
  Actor

5
Musical Intelligence
People who have strong musical intelligence are good at thinking in patterns, rhythms,
and sounds. They have a strong appreciation for music and are often good at musical
composition and performance.7
Strengths

Rhythm and music

Characteristics

People with musical intelligence:

 Enjoy singing and playing musical instruments

 Recognize musical patterns and tones easily
 Remember songs and melodies
 Have a rich understanding of musical structure, rhythm, and notes

Potential Career Choices

If you're strong in musical intelligence, good career choices for you are:

 Musician
 Composer
 Singer
 Music teacher
 Conductor

6
Interpersonal Intelligence
Those who have strong interpersonal intelligence are good at understanding and
interacting with other people. These individuals are skilled at assessing the emotions,
motivations, desires, and intentions of those around them. 7
Strengths

Understanding and relating to other people

Characteristics

People with interpersonal intelligence:

 Communicate well verbally

 Are skilled at nonverbal communication
 See situations from different perspectives
  Create positive relationships with others
 Resolve conflicts in group settings

Potential Career Choices

If you're strong in interpersonal intelligence, good career choices for you are:

 Psychologist
 Philosopher
 Counselor
 Salesperson
 Politician

7
Intrapersonal Intelligence
Individuals who are strong in intrapersonal intelligence are good at being aware of their
own emotional states, feelings, and motivations. They tend to enjoy self-reflection and
analysis, including daydreaming, exploring relationships with others, and assessing their
personal strengths.7
Strengths

Introspection and self-reflection

Characteristics

People with intrapersonal intelligence:

 Analyze their strengths and weaknesses well

 Enjoy analyzing theories and ideas
 Have excellent self-awareness
 Understand the basis for his or her own motivations and feelings

Potential Career Choices

If you're strong in intrapersonal intelligence, good career choices for you are:

 Philosopher
 Writer
 Theorist
 Scientist

8
Naturalistic Intelligence
Naturalistic is the most recent addition to Gardner’s theory and has been met with more
resistance than his original seven intelligences. According to Gardner, individuals who
are high in this type of intelligence are more in tune with nature and are often interested
in nurturing, exploring the environment, and learning about other species. These
individuals are said to be highly aware of even subtle changes to their environments. 1
Strengths

Finding patterns and relationships to nature

Characteristics

People with naturalistic intelligence:

 Are interested in subjects such as botany, biology, and zoology

 Categorize and catalog information easily
 Enjoy camping, gardening, hiking, and exploring the outdoors
 Dislikes learning unfamiliar topics that have no connection to nature

Potential Career Choices

If you're strong in naturalistic intelligence, good career choices for you are:

 Biologist
 Conservationist
 Gardener
 Farmer

 Theories of Intelligence in Psychology

9
Existential Intelligence

Existential intelligence is the ninth type of intelligence suggested as an addition to

Gardner's original theory. He described existential intelligence as an ability to delve into
deeper questions about life and existence. People with this type of intelligence
contemplate the "big" questions about topics such as the meaning of life and how
actions can serve larger goals.

Strengths

An ability to see the big picture

Characteristics

People with existential intelligence:

 Have a long-term outlook

 Consider how current actions influence future outcomes
 Interest in questions about the meaning of life and death
 Strong interest and concern for others
  The ability to see situations from an outside perspective

Potential Career Choices

If you have a strong sense of existential intelligence, you might enjoy a career as a:

 Philosopher
 Theologian
 Pastoral counselor
 Pastor

A Word From Verywell

The theory of multiple intelligences is important because it allows us to think about

different types of mental strengths and abilities. Learning more about which types of
intelligence you lean towards may help you learn to recognize your own preferences.
However, it shouldn't be used as a tool to label and should not be confused with
learning styles.

Instead of trying to match what you learn to your perceived type of intelligence, focus on
learning new things via various modalities and formats to strengthen encoding and
reinforce learning.

 How do you tell if your child is a kinesthetic learner?

Your child may have high bodily kinesthetic intelligence if they prefer hands on
experiences, struggle sitting still and listening for long periods of time, and/or remember
information best when they're able to participate in an activity. They may also prefer
working alone instead of working in a group.8
 How can I increase my bodily kinesthetic intelligence?
To tap into your bodily kinesthetic intelligence, try performing activities that require using
both your body and mind, such as taking a dance class, learning an instrument, or
drawing.9

g. Watson’s Behaviorist Theory Mark Vita

John Watson (1878-1958)

John B. Watson was an early 20th century psychologist who established the
psychological field of behaviorism.
PROFESSIONAL LIFE
John B. Watson was born on January 9, 1878 in South Carolina. His mother, Emma,
was devoutly religious and named him after a Baptist minister in the hope that he
would join the clergy. She disavowed smoking, drinking, and other vices, but
Watson grew into an adult who openly opposed religion. He had a troubled
adolescence, getting arrested for fighting and disorderly behavior twice, and
performed poorly academically.
With the assistance of his mother's professional connections, Watson was accepted
to Furman University in South Carolina. His academic life turned around
dramatically, and he graduated with a master’s degree by the time he was 21. Next,
he enrolled in a graduate program at the University of Chicago, where he studied
psychology and began to develop his behaviorist theories. Watson was heavily
influenced by Vladimir Bekhterev and Ivan Pavlov , and he used principles of
experimental physiology to examine all aspects of behavior. In 1903, Watson
presented his dissertation at the University of Chicago and remained there as a
research professor, focusing on learning and sensory input in animals.
In 1908, Watson accepted a faculty position at Johns Hopkins University. During
this time, Watson entered into an affair with one of his graduate students, Rosalie
Rayner, while married to his first wife, Mary Ickes Watson. Watson was asked to
leave his position at John Hopkins University in 1920, and Watson and Rayner were
married in 1921. The couple remained together for 15 years until Rayner's death at
the age of 36. After leaving the teaching profession, Watson entered the field of
advertising, rising to an executive position in only two years. He spearheaded many
enormously successful advertising campaigns, including ads for Ponds Cold Cream
and Maxwell House Coffee.
Watson was the grandfather of actress Mariette Hartley, who argued that she
developed psychological problems as a result of being raised according to
behaviorist principles. Prior to his death, Watson burned most of his letters and
personal papers. Watson served as president of the American Psychological
Association (APA) in 1915, and he received a Gold Medal for his contributions to his
field by the APA shortly before his death in 1958.
CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY
Watson published his groundbreaking article on behaviorism in 1913, “Psychology
as the Behaviorist Views It,” often referred to as “The Behaviorist Manifesto.”
Because there was little evidence of a specific behavior mechanism in his theory,
many of Watson’s colleagues did not accept his beliefs as scientifically valid. His
1919 text,  Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist, was more readily
accepted, though Watson’s behaviorist theories were not fully adopted into
academia and mainstream psychology for another decade.
Watson’s behaviorist theory focused not on the internal emotional and psychological
conditions of people, but rather on their external and outward behaviors. He
believed that a person’s physical responses provided the only insight into internal
actions. He spent much of his career applying his theories to the study of child
development and early learning.
Watson conducted several experiments exploring emotional learning in children.
One of his most famous experiments was the Little Albert experiment, which
explored classical conditioning using a nine month-old baby boy. In the experiment,
Watson demonstrated that Little Albert could be conditioned to fear something, like
a white rat, when no such fear existed initially. Watson combined a loud noise with
the appearance of the rat, in order to create fear in the baby. The experiment was
highly controversial and would likely be considered unethical by today's research
standards.
In 1928, Watson published Psychological Care of Infant and Child, in which he
cautioned against providing children with too much affection, and instead endorsed
the practice of treating children like miniature adults. He believed that excessive
early attachments could contribute to a dependent, needy personality  in adulthood,
emphasizing that people do not receive excessive comfort in adulthood and
therefore should not receive it in childhood. He specifically argued against thumb-
sucking, coddling, and excessive sentimentality, and he emphasized that parents
should be open and honest with children about sexuality. While the book sold well in
its first year, some found Watson’s unsentimental advice chilling. Two years after
the books publication, Watson's wife published an article entitled "I am a Mother of
Behaviorist Sons" in Parents magazine that encouraged the displays of affection
that her husband admonished.
Watson's behaviorism has had a long-lasting impact on the nature-versus-nurture
debate, and his work illuminated the strong role early experiences play in shaping
personality. Watson paved the way for subsequent behaviorists, such as  B.F.
Skinner , and behaviorism remains a popular approach for animal training. Some
mental health professionals use behaviorist principles to condition away phobias
and fears. In addition, advertisers frequently use behaviorist conditioning to
encourage consumers to purchase products.

h. Chomsky’s Nativist Theory- Gelyn Castillo

Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky is perhaps the best known and the most influential linguist of the
second half of the Twentieth Century. He has made a number of strong claims about
language : in particular, he suggests that language is an innate faculty - that is to say
that we are born with a set of rules about language in our heads which he refers to as
the 'Universal Grammar'. The universal grammar is the basis upon which all human
languages build. If a Martian linguist were to visit Earth, he would deduce from the
evidence that there was only one language, with a number of local variants. Chomsky
gives a number of reasons why this should be so. Among the most important of these
reasons is the ease with which children acquire their mother tongue. He claims that it
would be little short of a miracle if children learnt their language in the same way that
they learn mathematics or how to ride a bicycle. This, he says, is because :

1. Children are exposed to very little correctly formed language. When people
speak, they constantly interrupt themselves, change their minds, make slips of
the tongue and so on. Yet children manage to learn their language all the same.
2. Children do not simply copy the language that they hear around them. They
deduce rules from it, which they can then use to produce sentences that they
have never heard before. They do not learn a repertoire of phrases and sayings,
 as the behaviourists believe, but a grammar that generates an infinity of new
sentences.

1. 2. Children are born, then, with the Universal Grammar wired into their brains. This
grammar offers a certain limited number of possibilities - for example, over the word
order of a typical sentence.
Some languages have a basic SVO structure
 
The teacher gave a lecture
S V O

75% of the world's languages use either this (English, French,

Vietnamese) or SOV (Japanese, Tibetan, Korean) - others prefer VSO (10
- 15% - Welsh) or VOS (Malagasy)

 * Some languages, such as Latin, appear to have free word order, but even here, SOV
is very common. OSV is very rare - but you will find an example in the speech of Yoda,
in Star Wars.
 
When the child begins to listen to his parents, he will unconsciously recognise which
kind of a language he is dealing with - and he will set his grammar to the correct one -
this is known as 'setting the parameters'.
It is as if the child were offered at birth a certain number of hypotheses, which he or she
then matches with what is happening around him. He knows intuitively that there are
some words that behave like verbs, and others like nouns, and that there is a limited set
of possibilities as to their ordering within the phrase. This is not information that he is
taught directly by the adults that surround him, but information that is given. It is as if the
traveller were provided at the beginning of his journey with a compass and an astrolabe.
This set of language learning tools, provided at birth, is referred to by Chomsky as
the Language Acquisition Device . (Notice that he uses the term "acquisition" rather
than learning).
   
How did you learn to speak your native language? Notice, this shouldn't be such a
puzzling question. We often ask questions such as, do you remember when did you
learned to tie your shoes, ride a bike, and eat with a fork. Sometimes we can remember
because a parent helped us learn how to do these things. Now, since we always speak
the language of our parents, they must have helped us learn to speak our first
language. But do you remember when your mother taught you the past tense? When
your father laid down the rules for passive sentences? We don't remember these
important moments of our childhood because they never occurred.
Our parents didn't teach us how to walk and they didn't teach us how to talk. Yet we
learned from them. How can this be? Certainly there must have been a subtle, perhaps
intuitive teaching process that neither our parents nor we were aware of. We begin by
imitating what we hear our parents say as best we can, repeating random phrases. Our
parents in subtle ways punish us for the childish speech errors we make (by not
responding, correcting the error, etc.) and reward correct phrases (by responding
positively). As our speech improves, our parents respond more positively and less
negatively. No?
First, let's examine the assumption that children begin speaking by trying
to repeat what they have heard their parents say. Have you ever heard a
child say things like this:
1a Daddy go
He hitted
1b
me
No eat
1c
cake
Who did they hear utter such phrases? Daddy go is an attempt to express 'Daddy is
going'. But if the child were merely trying to repeat this common phrase, choosing
random two-word combinations, he or she would also occasionally say Daddy is or
simply is going? Yet these two phrases do not occur as normal speech errors of
children while Daddy go is a common one.
Second, research shows that while mothers often respond to the semantic content of
what their children say ('No, that's not a doggie, it's a cow'), they very rarely respond to
the grammatical status of their children's phrases. Indeed, when parents do respond to
speech errors, they most often respond positively. Here are a few advanced errors from
the history of my family. What do you think our response was—correction or laughter
(which I take to be a positive response)?
 
Mama, mama, there's a tree-knocker in the back
2a.
yard!
2b. It's raining, where is the underbrella?
2c. Give me the beach-lookers! (binoculars)
 
In fact, parents themselves make grammatical errors when they speak. Despite the fact
that children don't know when their parents are speaking grammatically and when they
are making errors, all children grow up knowing (if not always speaking) the language
perfectly.
So how do we learn to speak? Take a look at example No. 1b above for a clue.
Although hitted is not a word children hear adults utter, it is wrong for an interesting
reason: the verb, in a sense, has the 'right' ending on it for the past tense. In other
words, the only way a child learning language could make such an error is that he or
she is learning a rule that derives past tense verbs from verb stems. What the child
hasn't mastered at this stage is the exceptions to the rule. Notice also that the words in
the erroneous phrases are all in the correct order. No child would say go Daddy for
'Daddy is going' cookie mommy for 'Mommy's cookie'. By the time a child begins
putting two words together, he or she has already mastered the basic rules of syntax
and applies them correctly even in their erroneous speech. It takes the child a little
longer to master the rules of morphology.
The evidence then indicates that children do, in fact, absorb a massive number of
sentences and phrases but rather than parrot them back, they abstract rules from them
and create their own grammar which they then apply to create new utterances they
have never heard before. Over the years from 2-7, when language is mastered,
children constantly adjust their grammar until it matches that of the adult speaker
population.
This critical period between the ages of 2-7 suggests that (first) language learning, like
walking, is an innate capacity of human beings triggered by a level of development
more than feedback from the environment. That is, so long as a child hears a
language-any language-when they reach this critical period they will learn it perfectly. If
this is true, any child not hearing language during this period not only should not learn
to speak but also should not be able to learn to speak. The ethical implications of
research on this question are obvious. However, there have been a few tragic non-
scientific bits of evidence that supports the innateness + critical period hypothesis.
 
If I wanted to start the course off with a silly pun, I could say 'Learning a language is a
child's game'. But perhaps it is more accurate to say 'Creating a language is a child's
game'. Let us look at an example of how a language may be created :
Pidgin

 - reduced syntax and vocabulary

 - often no fixed order of words, with considerable variation from one speaker to
another
 - used purely as a language of communication
o - not lived in
o - no-one speaks a pidgin as a mother tongue

But a pidgin can become a language - Creole. How does this happen?
According to Derek Bickerton, who has reconstructed the process of creolisation in
Hawaii, it takes one generation.

When children begin to use a pidgin, they automatically enrich the

vocabulary and the syntax - it becomes a full language. The community of
young children in Hawaii took the pidgin used by their parents - workers
from China, Japan, Korea, Portugal, the Philippines and Puerto Rico - and
created a language.

According to the followers of the American linguist, Noam Chomsky, this can stand as
an emblem for what the process of acquiring a language consists in - at least for a
mother tongue. The child does not learn the language, but creates it anew.
Does this have anything to tell us about learning a foreign language?
 
Chomsky's critics
Those linguists who do not agree with Chomsky point to several problems, of which I
shall mention just four.
 1. Chomsky differentiates between competence and performance. Performance is
what people actually say, which is often ungrammatical, whereas competence is
what they instinctively know about the syntax of their language - and this is more
or less equated with the Universal Grammar. Chomsky concentrates upon this
aspect of language - he thus ignores the things that people actually say. The
problem here is that he relies upon people's intuitions as to what is right or wrong
- but it is not at all clear that people will all make the same judgements, or that
their judgements actually reflect the way people really do use the language.
2. Chomsky distinguishes between the 'core' or central grammar of a language,
which is essentially founded on the UG, and peripheral grammar. Thus, in
English, the fact that 'We were' is considered correct, and 'We was ' incorrect is a
historical accident, rather than an integral part of the core grammar - as late as
the 18th Century, recognised writers, such as Dean Swift, could write 'We was ...'
without feeling that they had committed a terrible error. Similarly, the outlawing of
the double negation in English is peripheral, due to social and historical
circumstances rather than anything specific to the language itself. To Chomsky,
the real object of linguistic science is the core grammar. But how do we
determine what belongs to the core, and what belongs to the periphery? To some
observers, all grammar is conventional, and there is no particular reason to make
the Chomskian distinction.
3. Chomsky also appears to reduce language to its grammar. He seems to regard
meaning as secondary - a sentence such as 'Colourless green ideas sleep
furiously' may be considered as part of the English language, for it is
grammatically correct, and therefore worthy of study by Transformational
Grammarians. A sentence such as 'My mother, he no like bananas', on the other
hand, is of no interest to the Chomskian linguist. Nor would he be particularly
interested in most of the utterances heard in the course of a normal lecture.
4. Because he disregards meaning, and the social situation in which language is
normally produced, he disregards in particular the situation in which the child
learns his first language.

That some kinds of migratory birds navigate thousands of miles toward their destination
by calibrating the positions of stars against time of day and year, poses no serious
problem for many scientists, who can easily attribute this amazing success to the birds'
instinctive behaviour is apparent, after all, that these animals cannot learn such
complicated astronomical facts through a trial and error fashion; they neither have
enough time nor necessary cognitive capacity.

The same scientists, however, including some professional linguists, are quite reluctant
to attribute any form of instinct to human infant, who arrives at complex linguistic
knowledge within a remarkably short period of time. The infant's is no less a
complicated task than that of the bird's as the linguists themselves have spent decades
(or even centuries) to discover the intricacies of the very same system and with no final
theory. Infants, on the other hand, not only arrives at an almost complete knowledge of
grammar in their brinds (brain+mind) but also accomplish this task within less than a
decade.

Although a human infant and a migratory bird are essentially alike in terms of the
complexity of the task to be accomplished and their inability to handle the task with their
current cognitive capacity, only the latter is believed to rely on its instincts.

There are, of course, some differences between an animal and a human baby; it would
be unwise to equate the cognitive capacities of the two. And it is also impossible to
underscore the importance of environmental factors in child language acquisition. After
all, thousands of hours of exposure is required in order for a child to acquire his mother
tongue, whereas animals like sonar-using bats or web-building spiders seem to be
ready to use their instinctive knowledge with minimum, if any, learning experience. It is
equally unwise, however, to suggest that a cognitively immature child can accomplish a
task which has yet to be accomplished by professional linguists.

A child may well not have grasped the property of conservation of volume nor be able to
perform but the most rudimentary arithmetic calculations, yet will have the knowledge
linguists formulate as the binding principles, none of which has been explicitly taught.

The amazing success of children in picking up their mother tongue is no recent

discovery. Slobin (1979) quotes Rene Descartes commenting on human beings'
distinctive ability to formulate a linguistic system:

Even those who were born deaf and dumb, lacking the organs which others make use
of in speaking, and at least as badly off as the animals in this respect, usually invent for
themselves some signs by which they make themselves understood by those who are
with them enough to learn their language

In the literature of child language acquisition there are cases in which infants, deprived
of linguistic input, invent a rudimentary grammar not attributable only to the external
factors. Children are also known to build a natural language when exposed to
unsystematic pidgin data. The resulting creole is almost as systematic and sophisticated
as any natural human language and more interestingly contain rules that are not
attributable to the languages forming the pidgin, out of which the creole is driven.

The Universal Grammar Theory

Among theories of language acquisition, Universal Grammar (UG) has recently gained
wider acceptance and popularity. Though noted among L2 acquisition theories, the
defenders of UG are not originally motivated to account for L2 acquisition, nor for first
language (L1) acquisition. However, UG is more of an L1 acquisition theory rather than
L2. It attempts to clarify the relatively quick acquisition of L1s on the basis of 'minimum
exposure' to external input. The 'logical problem' of language acquisition, according to
UG proponents, is that language learning would be impossible without 'universal
language-specific knowledge' (Cook, 1991:153; Bloor & Bloor: 244). The main reason
behind this argument is the input data:

"…Language input is the evidence out of which the learner constructs knowledge of
language – what goes into the brain. Such evidence can be either positive or negative.
… The positive evidence of the position of words in a few sentences the learner hears
is sufficient to show him the rules of a language." (Cook, 1991: 154)

The views supports the idea that the external input per se may not account for language
acquisition. Similarly, the Chomskyan view holds that the input is poor and deficient in
two ways. First, the input is claimed to be 'degenerate' because it is damaged by
performance features such as slips, hesitations or false starts. Accordingly, it is
suggested that the input is not an adequate base for language learning. Second, the
input is devoid of grammar corrections. This means that the input does not normally
contain 'negative evidence', the knowledge from which the learner could exercise what
is 'not' possible in a given language.

As for L2 acquisition, however, the above question is not usually asked largely because
of the frequent failure of L2 learners, who happen to be generally cognitively mature
adults, in attaining native-like proficiency. But why can't adults who have already
acquired an L1, acquire an L2 thoroughly? Don't they have any help from UG? Or if they
do, then how much of UG is accessible in SLA? These and similar questions have
divided researchers into three basic camps with respect to their approach to the
problem:

Direct access -L2 acquisition is just like L1 acquisition. Language acquisition device

(LAD) is involved.

No access - L2 learners use their general learning capacity.

Indirect access - Only that part of UG which has been used in L1 acquisition is used in
L2 acquisition.

Proponents of UG, for example, believe that both children and adults utilize similar
universal principles when acquiring a language; and LAD is still involved in the
acquisition process. This view can be better understood in the following quote.

Advocates of UG approach working on second-language learning... argue that there is

no reason to assume that language faculty atrophies with age. Most second-language
researchers who adopt the UG perspective assume that the principles and parameters
of UG are still accessible to the adult learner.

To support the view above, the acquisition of the third person “-s” can be given as an
example. According to research  both child L1 and adult L2 learners (e.g. Turkish
learners of English) acquire the third person “-s” morpheme at a later stage of their
overall acquisition process and have a great difficulty in acquiring it when compared to
other morphemes such as the plural morpheme “-s” or the progressive morpheme “-
ing”. This shows that such learners are somewhat affected by UG-based knowledge.
However, in the case of foreign/second language teaching it is very well known that the
third person “-s” is taught at the very beginning of a second language learning program
and presented in a great majority of textbooks as the first grammatical item.

Accordingly, Fodor’s views have some parallels with the UG Theory. Jerry Fodor
studied the relationship between language and mind and his view that language is a
modular process has important implications for a theory of language acquisition. The
term modular is used to indicate that the brain is seen, unlike older views such as
behaviouristic view of learning and language learning, to be organized with many
modules of cells for a particular ability (for instance, the visual module). These modules,
according to Fodor (1983:47), operate in isolation from other modules that they are not
directly connected. The language module, if we are to follow Fodor’s ideas, is one of
such modules. This modular separateness has been termed as “informational
encapsulation” by Fodor. To put it simply, each module is open to specific type of data.
In other words, modules are domain specific. This is another way of saying that
conscious knowledge cannot penetrate your visual module or language module or any
other subconscious module.

Basically, Fodor’s arguments are somewhat similar to that of Chomsky or the

proponents of UG Theory in that the external input per se may not account for language
acquisition and that language acquisition is genetically predetermined. Add to this, such
a modular approach to language acquisition is totally different from the views of Piaget
and Vygotsky who have laid the primary emphasis on the role of social or environmental
factors in language development.

In the case of foreign/second language teaching, the common view is that inductive
learning (teaching a language through hidden grammar or) leads to acquisition.
However, dwelling on Fodor’s views as discussed above, it is obvious that inductive
learning is confused with acquisition and that by learning something via discovery
learning, students just improve their problem-solving skills, but not acquire a language.

As for the problems with Universal Grammar, it can be said that UG’s particular aim is to
account for how language works. Yet UG proponents had to deal with acquisition to
account for the language itself. “Acquisition part” is thus of secondary importance. A
second drawback is that Chomsky studied only the core grammar of the English
language (syntax) and investigated a number of linguistic universals seems to be the
major problem. And he neglected the peripheral grammar, that is, language specific
rules (i.e., rules of specific languages which cannot be generalized). Thirdly, the primary
function of language is communication, but it is discarded. The final and the most
significant problem is a methodological one. Due to the fact that Chomsky is concerned
only with describing and explaining 'competence', there can be little likelihood of SLA
researchers carrying out empirical research.

In summary, UG has generated valuable predictions about the course of interlanguage

and the influence of the first language. Also, it has provided invaluable information
regarding L2 teaching as to how L2 teachers (or educational linguists) should present
vocabulary items and how they should view grammar. As Cook (1991:158) puts it, UG
shows us that language teaching should deal with how vocabulary should be taught, not
as tokens with isolated meanings but as items that play a part in the sentence saying
what structures and words they may go with in the sentence. The evidence in support of
UG, on the other hand, is not conclusive. If the language module that determines the
success in L1 acquisition is proved to be accessible in L2 acquisition, L2 teaching
methodologists and methods should study and account for how to trigger this language
module and redesign their methodologies. The UG theory should, therefore, be studied
in detail so as to endow us with a more educational and pedagogical basis for mother
tongue and foreign language teaching.

  Chomsky - the Evidence

1) Acquisition under extreme conditions

a) Neurological evidence
Language functions do appear to be localised in the brain, much as we would
expect were Chomsky to be correct in his surmise that language is innate.
However, language functions appear to be distributed throughout the brain, and
in normal use, the whole brain is brought into play. It is also important to
recognise that although neurobiologists now know a lot about the brain, there is
also a lot that is not known. The brain is an extremely complex organism.

1)           Normal development of L1 in young children

We saw that Chomsky is certainly mistaken in believing that children hear only partial
and ungrammatical sentences. Studies of the ways in which parents, and particularly
mothers, interact with their babies and infants show that they use a special kind of
language, and take great care to speak in full correct sentences to their children.
Nevertheless, the rapidity with which children do learn their mother tongue does
suggest that there may be some underlying mechanism that fits them for this task.

It is necessary to note that children in some cultures are not spoken to by their parents
directly, and yet they learn their mother tongue all the same. Pinker suggests that the
neurotic behaviour of Western middle-class mothers is a parallel to that observed in
some African societies, where mothers are very anxious to teach their children to sit up.

2) Language learning under extreme conditions

2.1. Wild Children
From time to time, there appear in our midst beings who challenge our conception of
what it means to be human. These beings are often referred to as wild children or wolf
children. They are often tragic figures, offering glimpses of what might have been, of
fully human intelligence that somehow does not enable them to live a social life. This is
particularly true if they are already through puberty when they are found. They
suggest to us that there may be a 'critical age', an age beyond which any child who has
somehow missed out on learning a language will never completely master one.

 For example, Victor, the wild boy of Aveyron, found when he was about 11 years
old, never learnt to speak, although he could understand, and could read a little.
 Kamala, of Midnapore, found at the age of 8, was able to speak a little, and to
communicate through sounds.

The most striking recent case, however, is rather more ambiguous in its results:
In 1970, two women, one of them suffering from cataracts, and partially blind, stumbled
into the social services bureau of Temple City, in California, bringing with them a child.
At first, the staff thought that the child was about 6 or seven years old, and that she was
autistic - she weighed four stone, and stood 4' 6" high. She did not appear to talk.
On further investigation, she turned out to be 13 years old. She could understand some
words - about 20, including the colours, red, blue, green and brown, the word 'Mother'
and some other names, the verbs 'walk' and 'go' and a few other nouns, such as 'door'
or 'bunny'. She could say only two things - 'Stopit', and 'Nomore'.
Why was she in this condition? When she had been about 20 months old, her father,
who was suffering from a severe depression, sparked off by the accidental and brutal
death of his mother, decided that she was severely retarded, and that she needed
protection from the world. This protection he provided by shutting her up in a small
bedroom, and leaving her there for the next eleven years.

Genie was attached to a potty by a special harness for most of the day, and then, at
night, she would be fastened into a sleeping bag, unable to move her arms, and put into
a cot. There was very little sound in the house, for the father forced the rest of the family
to speak in whispers. If Genie herself attempted to make any noise, her father would
beat her with a stick. On those occasions upon which he felt the need to communicate
with his daughter, her father would bark or growl like a dog.

Genie had very little visual or physical stimulation. Hung up in the room were a couple
of plastic raincoats, and she was sometimes allowed to play with them. Other small toys
- plastic containers, or the TV journal - were sometimes given her. Her feeding was swift
and silent, and she had eaten nothing but baby foods and cereals - she did not know
how to chew.
Genie was immediately surrounded by a team of scientists. These people were
particularly interested in her progress in language. Would she ever learn to speak?
According to the neuropsychologist, Eric Lenneberg, in his book Biological Foundations
of Language, 1967, the capacity to learn a language is indeed innate, and, like many
such inborn mechanisms, it is circumscribed in time. If a child does not learn a language
before the onset of puberty, the child will never master language at all. This is known as
the critical period hypothesis. If Lenneberg was right, then Genie, at over 12 years
old, would never be able to speak properly. If, on the other hand, she did learn to
produce grammatically correct sentences, then Lenneberg was wrong.
At first, a number of the people working with her were convinced that she was going to
demonstrate the falsity of the critical period hypothesis. One year after her escape, her
language resembled that of a normal 18-20 month old child.

 - she could distinguish between plural and singular nouns, and between positive
and negative sentences. She was producing two-word sentences, and
sometimes sentences of three words.

It is at this point that the language of the normal child begins to take off - there is a
sudden qualitative change, and the infant learns not only more and more vocabulary,
but also more and more complex grammar. But with Genie, this did not happen.

 Four years later, she still had not mastered negation, and was stuck at the 'No' +
V + Object stage. And although she appeared to understand WH- questions, she
was incapable of producing them correctly. Instead, she would say things like -

 "Where is may I have a penny?"

 "I where is graham cracker on top shelf?"

 In Chomsky's terms, she appeared to be unable to use 'movement' - that is, the
capacity to reorganise the underlying declarative sentence.
 Genie also continued to confuse her pronouns, using 'you' and 'me'
interchangeably. She was unable to learn that she should say 'Hello' in response
to 'Hello', and was unable to understand 'Thank you'. The words 'Stopit', and
'Nomore', which she had already known, were addressed to herself, and never to
anyone else. Although she craved social contact, she was unable to achieve it
through language.

So had Genie's case proven that Chomsky and Lenneberg were right? No, she had not.
Lenneberg himself observed that Genie's personal history was so disastrous, that it
would not be at all clear why she had been unable to make more progress. It could
be that she had been so emotionally damaged by her father's treatment that all learning
processes would be interfered with.
Others suggested that perhaps her father had been right in judging that she was
mentally abnormal. Brain scans had shown some unusual features - in particular that
Genie's brain was dominated by her right hemisphere. Language is mainly situated in
the left hemisphere. Was it her brain that was interfering with her language, or was it the
lack of linguistic stimulation, and resulting under utilisation of the left hemisphere that
had resulted in right brain dominance?
Genie's lack of progress with language is, as so often with the evidence that I have
quoted, capable of interpretation either in a Chomskian framework, or in line with
Bruner's ideas. Her experience does suggest that, over a certain age, any child who has
not learnt a language will have great difficulty in acquiring one. Lenneberg's hypothesis
is not proven, but it is strongly supported. Is there further evidence?
2.2. The blind and the deaf
Blind children, particularly when born to sighted mothers, do not receive the same
degree of stimulation, and that they therefore fall behind in their linguistic development.
In most cases, they catch up pretty quickly - thus comforting the Chomskian line ;
parents may hasten the speed of progress a little, or they may hold it back a little, but in
the long run, all children brought up in normal circumstances achieve fluency.
What about deaf children? Here there is some evidence that being unable to hear can
have long-term effects upon language acquisition. This is true not simply of spoken
language, but also of sign language.

ASL (American Sign Language) is a fully articulated language. It has its own grammar,
which is not the same as that of English - nor the same as that of French sign language.
Often, it is learnt late in life, and when this is the case, the learner 'speaks' it with a
foreign accent - and makes the same kind of grammatical errors that a foreigner makes.
If the deaf person learns the language as a child, however, they learn it fluently, and can
use all the resources that it offers.

A particularly interesting case is that of 'Chelsea'; her behaviour gave her parents cause
for concern. They took her to see a series of doctors, who diagnosed her as being
retarded. Her family refused to believe this - she was brought up in a very sheltered and
loving environment, but never learnt how to speak. Then, at the age of 31, she was
taken to see a neurologist, who recognised that she was, in fact, deaf. She was given
hearing aids, which brought her auditive capacity up to about normal levels. After
therapy, she now scores on IQ tests at levels for a normal ten year old, she works at a
vet’s, reads, writes and communicates. But when she speaks, she produces strings of
words, with no apparent underlying syntactic structure. Her utterances may be
comprehensible in context, but they look nothing like normal sentences.
Other evidence from deaf people is also interesting. Recently, linguists have been
showing more and more interest in the language of the hard-of-hearing - Sign language.
We now know that Sign Language is a full language - it has a full lexical range, it has a
complex syntax, and a complex system of signs, whose relationship to referents is as
arbitrary as is that of other languages - even when they seem most iconic. There is not
simply one sign language - people who use British Sign Language cannot understand
people who use ASL - neither language is directly related to English.
People who learn to sign in adolescence or adulthood are very similar to people who
learn a foreign language - they have an accent, and they never master the more arcane
syntactic rules. Children who learn do master the language - and, according to Steven
Pinker, they master it even when they learn from parents who do not speak it properly.
Once again, this is suggestive - children are specially programmed to learn a language,
and they lose this skill at puberty - once again, both Chomsky's and Lenneberg's
positions appear to be vindicated.
Evidence from neurology is also suggestive - many children who have suffered damage
to the left hemisphere are able to acquire a language by transferring language to the
right hemisphere. Adults are not able to perform the same feat as easily. Once again, it
would seem that Lenneberg may be right - there is a critical period for first language
learning.
This obviously interests us as teachers of a second language. Many observers have
noted that a second language appears to be more difficult to learn after puberty. Later
on, we shall see that this observation has not gone unchallenged, and that for certain
kinds of linguistic knowledge, adults and adolescents apparently learn more quickly than
children - but it may be that the way that they learn is totally different - whereas children
may still call upon the LAD to learn a second language, adults and teenagers have to
use other strategies, and in particular, they have to lean heavily upon their first
language.
 
1. For a readable and touching account of Genie's history, see Russ Rymer, 'Genie : A
Scientific Tragedy', Penguin, 1994. There are numerous accounts of 'wild' or 'feral'
children : I have found Douglas Keith Candland, 'Feral Children & Clever Animals ;
Reflections on Human Nature' particularly useful.
2. In this section, I have mainly relied on Pinker. David Crystal, 'The Cambridge
Encyclopaedia of Language' is also very informative, as it is on other aspects of
language disability, such as aphasia.
 
3)  Evidence from mother-tongue acquisition
Now let us look at how children actually do learn language.
They may begin to learn in the womb. We know that they react to their mothers' voices
from birth - they have been listening to her over the last three months of pregnancy.
However, the first noticeable active vocal activity begins at about 8 weeks - the baby
begins to coo - at first producing individual sounds, but later stringing them together in a
rhythmical pattern. Then, at around 20 weeks, the baby diversifies the sounds she is
producing, and gradually starts babbling. Babbling involves a selection process.
- in the first stage, the child appears to produce the whole gamut of sounds used by
human beings in the production of speech - it is the tower of Babel indeed.
Bit by bit, however, the range of sounds used narrows down, and the child concentrates
more and more upon the sounds used by the mother tongue. She is listening to you. So
what is being said to her?
We remember that Chomsky claims that children only hear very partial and
ungrammatical input. It is now known that this claim is almost certainly false - adults in
our culture, when speaking to children, take great care to phrase their utterances
correctly. This is probably not because they are thinking primarily about offering the
correct syntactic model, but because they are aiming for clarity of expression. It has
been noticed that mothers and other caretakers, when speaking to children, adopt a
certain number of specific verbal strategies. The style of speech that they use is
sometimes referred to as 'Motherese', although non-sexist linguists prefer to call it
'caretaker talk'. What are the characteristics of this kind of language?

 1. Simplified in grammar and meaning

 2. Shorter sentences - from about 8 words per sentence to four, when speaking
to two year olds
 3. More restricted range of sentence patterns
 4. Expansion and repetition of sentences
 5. Slower speech
  6. Use of special words and sounds
 7. High pitch
 8. Large number of questions and utterances with high rising intonation - looking
for feedback.
 9. Embedded in the here and now.

So the language that children hear is by no means necessarily partial and

ungrammatical. It has been suggested that these characteristics offer the child such
clear samples of language, that there is no need to posit a Chomskian black box, or UG.
However, supporters of the UG approach point out that -

 Grammatical forms in caretaker language are not as simple as they may

appear.

·        - large number of Wh- forms.

 Moreover, no-one has yet found a close correlation between language used by
caretakers, and language produced by children.

 Not all social groups adapt their speech to young children

In Samoa, for example, adults very rarely speak directly to their children,
and among some black communities in the US, it is considered a waste of
time to speak to children who are too young to give sensible replies - why
talk to them, they don't know anything yet? And yet, these children also
learn language.

 Children do not simply repeat the language they hear from their caretakers

Not only do they fail to copy the utterances their mothers give them, they also produce
utterances that they have never heard, and use structures that they have never
heard.

 When mothers interact with their young children, they appear to pay very little
attention to the grammatical correctness of their youngsters' utterances. They
correct wrong information, and not wrong grammar. So, Roger Brown reports the
following dialogue :

Child : Mamma isn't boy, he a girl.

Mother : That's right.

Child : And Walt Disney comes on Tuesday.

Mother : No he does not.

Indeed - and this is of direct interest to language teachers - correction of grammatical
form appears to be a waste of time.
The mistakes that the child makes do not appear to be simply random errors.
Linguists argue that they are not, in fact , ungrammatical, but that they are based upon
the child's own grammar. Interestingly enough, all children tend to make the same
kinds of mistakes at roughly the same period in their linguistic development. For
example, English-speaking children working on negation go through a predictable
sequence :

1. First the negative words 'No' and 'Not' appear as single word sentences.
2. These combine with other words to form two-word sentences - 'No car', 'Not
gone' etc.
3. During third year - negative words used within constructions

You no do that, Mummy

You not got it

while negative auxiliaries also appear. - Won't, can't

 Greater accuracy - not replaces no. Double negatives are used for emphasis
 Use of any, hardly, scarcely acquired during early years of school.

As we shall see, there are interesting similarities between this sequence, and the
sequence of acquisition of the negation in English by second-language learners.
Followers of Chomsky claim that the regularity of these errors, and the fact that they are
not based upon what the child hears, demonstrate that they are derived from the
Universal Grammar. The child works through from the simplest possibilities offered by
the UG to the more complex, until his own grammar is the same as the grammar of the
mother-tongue. The claim is almost that the child does not make mistakes, but
simply has a different grammar to the grammar of the adult.

Conclusion

The evidence from neuroscience and from first-language learning is suggestive. We find
a number of observations that do fit in with what we would expect if Chomsky were
right. However, the evidence needs to be treated with caution.
We have also seen that Chomsky is certainly incorrect in his claim that children do not
hear well-formed language. On the other hand, children do seem to understand almost
instinctively that language is a rule-bound system, and are capable of discovering the
rules underlying their mother tongue with remarkable rapidity. But it needs to be borne
in mind that the fact that children seek out the rules underlying language does not mean
that they necessarily have a specific approach to language itself. It may simply be a
product of the peculiar nature of human intelligence, which makes us look out for
and be sensitive to the underlying rules which govern phenomena in the world -
this is one of the main characteristics of all human cultural activities, and not just of
language-learning. 
 

i.Cooley and Mead’s Interactionism Theory Atienza, Racquel

Symbolic interactionism is a micro-level theory that focuses on meanings attached to
human interaction, both verbal and non-verbal, and to symbols.

Communication—the exchange of meaning through language and symbols—is

believed to be the way in which people make sense of their social worlds. Charles
Horton Cooley introduced the looking-glass self (1902) to describe how a person’s
sense of self grows out of interactions with others, and he proposed a threefold process
for this development: 1) we see how others react to us, 2) we interpret that reaction
(typically as positive or negative) and 3) we develop a sense of self based on those
interpretations. “Looking-glass” is an archaic term for a mirror, so Cooley theorized that
we “see” ourselves when we interact with others.

George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) is considered a founder of symbolic interactionism,

though he never published his work on this subject (LaRossa and Reitzes 1993).
Mead’s student, Herbert Blumer, actually coined the term “symbolic interactionism” and
outlined these basic premises: humans interact with things based on meanings ascribed
to those things; the ascribed meaning of things comes from our interactions with others
and society; the meanings of things are interpreted by a person when dealing with
things in specific circumstances (Blumer 1969).

---- This sounds close to Cooley’s looking-glass self, but Mead’s contribution was really
to the development of self, especially in childhood, which we’ll discuss in more detail
when we address theories of socialization.

----If you love books, for example, a symbolic interactionist might propose that you
learned that books are good or important in the interactions you had with family, friends,
school, or church; maybe your family had a special reading time each week, getting
your library card was treated as a special event, or bedtime stories were associated with
warmth and comfort.
symbolic interactionism is a sociological theory that develops from practical
considerations and alludes to particular effects of communication and interaction in
people to make images and normal implications, for deduction and correspondence with
others.[1] According to Macionis, symbolic interactionism is "a framework for building
theory that sees society as the product of everyday interactions of individuals". In other
words, it is a frame of reference to better understand how individuals interact with one
another to create symbolic worlds, and in return, how these worlds shape individual
behaviors.[2]
----
 It is a framework that helps understand how society is preserved and created through
repeated interactions between individuals. The interpretation process that occurs
between interactions helps create and recreate meaning. It is the shared understanding
and interpretations of meaning that affect the interaction between individuals.
Individuals act on the premise of a shared understanding of meaning within their social
context. Thus, interaction and behavior is framed through the shared meaning that
objects and concepts have attached to them. From this view, people live in both natural
and symbolic environments.
Symbolic interactionism comes from a sociological perspective which developed around
the middle of the twentieth century and that continues to be influential in some areas of
the discipline. It is particularly important in microsociology and social psychology. It is
derived from the American philosophy of pragmatism and particularly from the work
of George Herbert Mead, as a pragmatic method to interpret social interactions. [3][4]

Mead's influence was said to be so powerful that sociologists regard him as the one
"true founder" of the symbolic interactionism tradition.
Although Mead taught in a philosophy department, he is best known by sociologists as
the teacher who trained a generation of the best minds in their field. Strangely, he never
set forth his wide-ranging ideas in a book or systematic treatise. After his death in 1931,
his students pulled together class notes and conversations with their mentor and
published Mind, Self and Society in his name.[6] It is a common misconception that John
Dewey was the leader of this sociological theory; according to The Handbook of
Symbolic Interactionism, Mead was undoubtedly the individual who "transformed the
inner structure of the theory, moving it to a higher level of theoretical complexity." [7]

George Herbert Mead

Mind, Self and Society is the book published by Mead's students based on his lectures
and teaching, and the title of the book highlights the core concept of social
interactionism. Mind refers to an individual's ability to use symbols to create meanings
for the world around the individual – individuals use language and thought to
accomplish this goal. Self refers to an individual's ability to reflect on the way that the
individual is perceived by others. Finally, society, according to Mead, is where all of
these interactions are taking place. A general description of Mead's compositions
portray how outside social structures, classes, and power and abuse affect the
advancement of self, personality
for gatherings

Symbolic interactionism is often related and connected with social structure. This
concept suggests that symbolic interactionism is a construction of people's social reality.
[32]
 It also implies that from a realistic point of view, the interpretations that are being
made will not make much difference. When the reality of a situation is defined, the
situation becomes a meaningful reality. This includes methodological criticisms, and
critical sociological issues. A number of symbolic interactionists have addressed these
topics, the best known being Stryker's structural symbolic interactionism [32][36] and the
formulations of interactionism heavily influenced by this approach (sometimes referred
to as the "Indiana School" of symbolic interactionism), including the works of key
scholars in sociology and psychology using different methods and theories applying
a structural version of interactionism that are represented in a 2003 collection edited by
Burke et al.[37] Another well-known structural variation of symbolic interactionism that
applies quantitative methods is Manford H. Kuhn's formulation which is often referred to
in sociological literature as the "Iowa School." Negotiated order theory also applies a
structural approach.[38]

Symbolic interactionism is a micro-level theory that focuses on meanings attached to

human interaction, both verbal and non-verbal, and to symbols.

Communication—the exchange of meaning through language and symbols—is

believed to be the way in which people make sense of their social worlds. Charles
Horton Cooley introduced the looking-glass self (1902) to describe how a person’s
sense of self grows out of interactions with others, and he proposed a threefold process
for this development: 1) we see how others react to us, 2) we interpret that reaction
(typically as positive or negative) and 3) we develop a sense of self based on those
interpretations. “Looking-glass” is an archaic term for a mirror, so Cooley theorized that
we “see” ourselves when we interact with others. George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) is
considered a founder of symbolic interactionism, though he never published his work on
this subject (LaRossa and Reitzes 1993). Mead’s student, Herbert Blumer, actually
coined the term “symbolic interactionism” and outlined these basic premises: humans
interact with things based on meanings ascribed to those things; the ascribed meaning
of things comes from our interactions with others and society; the meanings of things
are interpreted by a person when dealing with things in specific circumstances (Blumer
1969). This sounds close to Cooley’s looking-glass self, but Mead’s contribution was
really to the development of self, especially in childhood, which we’ll discuss in more
detail when we address theories of socialization. If you love books, for example, a
symbolic interactionist might propose that you learned that books are good or important
in the interactions you had with family, friends, school, or church; maybe your family had
a special reading time each week, getting your library card was treated as a special
event, or bedtime stories were

associated with warmth and comfort.

INTERACTIONISM THEORY REPORT

Symbolic interactionism is a micro-level theory that focuses on meanings attached to

human interaction, both verbal and non-verbal, and to symbols.

Communication—the exchange of meaning through language and symbols—is

believed to be the way in which people make sense of their social worlds.

symbolic interactionism is a sociological theory that develops from practical

considerations and alludes to particular effects of communication and interaction in
people to make images and normal implications, for deduction and correspondence with
others.[1] According to Macionis, symbolic interactionism is "a framework for building
theory that sees society as the product of everyday interactions of individuals".

**In other words, it is a frame of reference to better understand how individuals interact
with one another to create symbolic worlds, and in return, how these worlds shape
individual behaviors.[2]
Symbolic interactionism comes from a sociological perspective which developed around
the middle of the twentieth century and that continues to be influential in some areas of
the discipline. It is particularly important in microsociology and social psychology. It is
derived from the American philosophy of pragmatism and particularly from the work
of George Herbert Mead, as a pragmatic method to interpret social interactions. [3][4]

 Symbolic interactionism is a social theoretical framework associated with George

Herbert Mead (1863–1931) and Max Weber (1864-1920).
 It is a perspective that sees society as the product of shared symbols, such as
language. The social world is therefore constructed by the meanings that
individuals attach to events and social interactions, and these symbols are
transmitted across the generations through language.
 A central concept of symbolic interactionists is the Self, which allows us to
calculate the effects of our actions.
 Symbolic interactionism theory has been criticized because it ignores the
emotional side of the Self as a basis for social interaction.

Symbolic interactionist studies of education examine social interaction in the classroom,

on the playground, and in other school venues. These studies help us understand what
happens in the schools themselves, but they also help us understand how what occurs
in school is relevant for the larger society. Some studies, for example, show how
children’s playground activities reinforce gender-role socialization. Girls tend to play
more cooperative games, while boys play more competitive sports (Thorne, 1993)

Another body of research shows that teachers’ views about students can affect how
much the students learn. When teachers think students are smart, they tend to spend
more time with these students, to call on them, and to praise them when they give the
right answer. Not surprisingly, these students learn more because of their teachers’
behavior. But when teachers think students are less bright, they tend to spend less time
with these students and to act in a way that leads them to learn less. Robert Rosenthal
and Lenore Jacobson (1968) conducted a classic study of this phenomenon. They
tested a group of students at the beginning of the school year and told their teachers
which students were bright and which were not. They then tested the students again at
the end of the school year. Not surprisingly, the bright students had learned more during
the year than the less bright ones. But it turned out that the researchers had randomly
decided which students would be designated bright and less bright. Because the “bright”
students learned more during the school year without actually being brighter at the
beginning, their teachers’ behavior must have been the reason. In fact, their teachers
did spend more time with them and praised them more often than was true for the “less
bright” students. This process helps us understand why tracking is bad for the students
tracked down.

Other research in the symbolic interactionist tradition focuses on how teachers treat
girls and boys. Many studies find that teachers call on and praise boys more often
(Jones & Dindia, 2004). Teachers do not do this consciously, but their behavior
nonetheless sends an implicit message to girls that math and science are not for them
and that they are not suited to do well in these subjects. This body of research has
stimulated efforts to educate teachers about the ways in which they may unwittingly
send these messages and about strategies they could use to promote greater interest
and achievement by girls in math and science (Battey, Kafai, Nixon, & Kao, 2007).

j. Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems-Angel Esguerra

American psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner was critical of previous theories of child
development. He argued that studies of children in unfamiliar laboratory environments
with one other person, usually a stranger, were ecologically invalid (See Mary
Ainsworth’s 1970 experiment of the ‘Strange Situation’).
Bronfenbrenner (1974) claimed most earlier studies were ‘unidirectional’, meaning that
the laboratory studies observed the influence of A on B (e.g. a stranger/mother with a
child), rather than looking at the possible influence of the child on the stranger/mother,
or any other third party’s influence.
Bronfenbrenner maintained that these laboratory features of research are not
characteristic of environments that children actually live and develop in.
Bronfenbrenner recognized there are multiple aspects of a developing child’s life that
interacts with and affects the child. His work looked beyond individual development,
taking into account wider influencing factors and the context (or ecology) of
development. He proposed the ‘Ecological Systems Theory’ based on these dynamic
interactions that the environments have on the developing child.
Bronfenbrenner’s (1974) perspective has some resemblance to the works of Albert
Bandua’s social learning theory and Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory in which the
environment is explicitly or implicitly considered as a crucial mechanism in
development.

The Five Ecological Systems

Bronfenbrenner (1977) suggested that the environment of the child is a nested
arrangement of structures, each contained within the next. He organized them in order
of how much of an impact they have on a child.
He named these structures the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem
and the chronosystem.
Because the five systems are interrelated, the influence of one system on a child’s
development depends on its relationship with the others.

The Microsystem
The microsystem is the first level of Bronfenbrenner's theory, and are the things that
have direct contact with the child in their immediate environment, such as parents,
siblings, teachers and school peers.
Relationships in a microsystem are bi-directional, meaning the child can be influenced
by other people in their environment and is also capable of changing the beliefs and
actions of other people too.
Furthermore, the reactions of the child to individuals in their microsystem can influence
how they treat them in return.
The interactions within microsystems are often very personal and are crucial for
fostering and supporting the child’s development.
If a child has a strong nurturing relationship with their parents, this is said to have a
positive effect on the child. Whereas, distant and unaffectionate parents will have a
negative effect on the child.
The Mesosystem
The mesosystem encompasses the interactions between the child’s microsystems, such
as the interactions between the child’s parents and teachers, or between school peers
and siblings.
The mesosystem is where a person's individual microsystems do not function
independently, but are interconnected and assert influence upon one another.
For instance, if a child’s parents communicate with the child’s teachers, this interaction
may influence the child’s development. Essentially, a mesosystem is a system of
microsystems.
According to the ecological systems theory, if the child’s parents and teachers get along
and have a good relationship, this should have positive effects on the child’s
development, compared to negative effects on development if the teachers and parents
do not get along.
The Exosystem
The exosystem is a component of the ecological systems theory developed by Urie
Bronfenbrenner in the 1970s. It incorporates other formal and informal social structures,
which do not themselves contain the child, but indirectly influence them as they affect
one of the microsystems.
Examples of exosystems include the neighborhood, parent’s workplaces, parent’s
friends and the mass media. These are environments in which the child is not involved,
and are external to their experience, but nonetheless affects them anyway.
An instance of exosystems affecting the child’s development could be if one of the
parents had a dispute with their boss at work.
The parent may come home and have a short temper with the child as a result of
something which happened in the workplace, resulting in a negative effect on
development.
The Macrosystem
The macrosystem is a component of Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory that
focuses on how cultural elements affect a child's development, such as socioeconomic
status, wealth, poverty, and ethnicity.
Thus, culture that individuals are immersed within may influence their beliefs and
perceptions about events that transpire in life.
The macrosystem differs from the previous ecosystems as is does not refer to the
specific environments of one developing child, but the already established society and
culture which the child is developing in.
This can also include the socioeconomic status, ethnicity, geographic location and
ideologies of the culture.
For example, a child living in a third world country would experience a different
development than a child living in a wealthier country.
The Chronosystem
The fifth and final level of Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory is known as the
chronosystem.
This system consists of all of the environmental changes that occur over the lifetime
which influence development, including major life transitions, and historical events.
These can include normal life transitions such as starting school but can also include
non-normative life transitions such as parents getting a divorce or having to move to a
new house.

The Bioecological Model

It is important to note that Bronfenbrenner (1994) later revised his theory and instead
named it the ‘Bioecological model’.
Bronfenbrenner became more concerned with the proximal processes of development,
meaning the enduring and persistent forms of interaction in the immediate environment.
His focus shifted from focusing on environmental influences to developmental
processes individuals experience over time.
‘…development takes place through the process of progressively more complex
reciprocal interactions between an active, evolving biopsychological human organism
and the persons, objects, and symbols in its immediate external environment.’
(Bronfenbrenner, 1995).
Bronfenbrenner also suggested that in order to understand the effect of these proximal
processes on development, we have to focus on the person, context and developmental
outcome as these processes vary and affect people differently (Bronfenbrenner &
Evans, 2000).

Critical Evaluation
Bronfenbrenner’s model quickly became very appealing and became accepted as a
useful framework for psychologists, sociologists and teachers to study child
development.
The Ecological Systems Theory provides a holistic approach which is inclusive of all the
systems children and their family are involved in, accurately reflecting the dynamic
nature of actual family relationships (Hayes & O’Toole, 2017).
Paat (2013) considers how Bronfenbrenner’s theory is useful when it comes to the
development of immigrant children. They suggest that immigrant children’s experiences
in the various ecological systems are likely to be shaped by their cultural differences. An
understanding of these children’s ecology can aid in strengthening social work service
delivery for these children.
A limitation of the Ecological Systems Theory is that there is limited research examining
the mesosystems; mainly the interactions between neighborhoods and the family of the
child (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000). Therefore, it is unclear the extent to which
these systems can shape child development.
Another limitation with Bronfenbrenner’s theory is that it is difficult to empirically test the
theory. The studies investigating the ecological systems may establish an effect, but
they cannot establish whether the systems are the direct cause of such effects.
Furthermore, this theory can lead to assumptions that those who do not have strong
and positive ecological systems lack in development. Whilst this may be true in some
cases, many people can still develop into well-rounded individuals without positive
influences from their ecological systems.
For instance, it is not true to say that all people who grow up in poverty-striken areas of
the world will develop negatively. Similarly, if a child’s teachers and parents do not get
along, some children may not experience any kind of negative effect from this if it does
not concern them.
As a result, people need to take care not to make broad assumptions about individuals
using this theory.
Bronfenbrenner’s theory in the 21st century
The world has changed a lot since this theory was introduced in terms of technological
developments. However, it could still be said that the exosystem of a child could be
expanded to include social media, video gaming and other modern-day interactions
within the ecological system.
This could suggest that the ecological systems are still valid but will expand over time to
include new modern developments.
Kelly and Coughlan (2019) used constructivist grounded theory analysis to develop a
theoretical framework for youth mental health recovery and found that there were many
links to Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory in their own more recent theory.
Their theory suggested that the components of mental health recovery are embedded in
the ‘ecological context of influential relationships’ which fits in with Bronfenbrenner’s
theory that the ecological systems of the young person such as peers, family and school
all help mental health development.

Classroom Application
The Ecological Systems Theory has been used to link psychological and educational
theory to early educational curriculums and practice. At the center of the theory is the
developing child, and all that occurs within and between the five ecological systems are
done so to benefit the child in the classroom.

 To strengthen the development between the ecological systems in educational

practice according to the theory, teachers and parents should keep good
communication with each other and work together to benefit the child.
 Teachers should also be understanding of the situations their student’s families
may be experiencing, including social and economic factors that are part of the
various systems.
 According to the theory, if parents and teachers have a good relationship, this
should shape the child’s development in a positive way.
 Likewise, the child must also be active in their learning, engaged both
academically and socially. They must work as a team with their peers and get
involved in meaningful learning experiences to enable positive development
(Evans, 2012).

Empirical Evidence
There are lots of studies that have investigated the effects of the school environment on
students.
Lippard, LA Paro, Rouse and Crosby (2017) conducted a study to test Bronfenbrenner’s
theory. They investigated the teacher-child relationships through teacher reports and
classroom observations.
They found that these relationships significantly related to children’s academic
achievement and classroom behavior, suggesting that these relationships are important
for children’s development and supports the Ecological Systems Theory.

k. Holdaway’s Literacy Development Theory - Ortega Bea Jane C.

Biography:  Donald Holdaway was born on 1930 and died in 2004.  He is the father of
the big book and the founder of “Shared Reading” and the developer of the Natural
Learning Model. He worked in New Zealand and Australia with students who lacked
reading abilities developed the best way to teach Malread students. His work really
helped a lot of malread children in the world but there’s not a lot about him on the
internet that is accessable.  Please help out on the biography of this important person.
His theory is the Natural Learning Model.  He believes that all children can learn how to
read by experiencing the text over and over.  By following the four steps process in his
Learning Model children can then become better readers. In his theory, he believes that
his model is not only siblical but also recursive. Meaning, the child and educator can go
back and forth between the rst three processes in the Natural Learning Model before
actually performing the skill learned from the experience. Major Strategy: Holdaway
rejects old pedagogical assumptions and reinforcement theory and traces a new line of
investigation that began over 25 years ago in New Zealand focusing on children's
"natural, developmental learning" (from within). Holdaway's rationale for a new
approach to teaching reading exemplies the same conceptual revolution that Piaget had
undergone in Europe.  He too believes that as childrens learn to read they go through
the four processes of the learning model he refers to as the “Natural Learning Model”.  
The four processes include the following; 1.      2.      Demonstration- Child watching or
listening to a more knowledgable other while s/he reads a book or a story to him or her.
Participation-Child is watching and listening to a more knowledgable other while
interacting with his or her reader making sure not to skip or omit their favorite parts of
the story being read to them. 3.      Role Play/Practice-At this phase the child is
practicing what s/he had experienced from the more knowledgable other on their own
imitating them. 4.      Performance- After practicing the skill for quite some time the child
then shows o their skill to an audience. Contributions      Don Holdaway introduced
shared reading in 1979, praising its instructional density, the inuence of corporate
learning, and its engagement of students. He explains that shared reading connects
students through shared feelings and shared experiences. Thus shared reading is more
than a lesson; it becomes a shared event. In 1972 he elaborates on the learning
opportunities innate in shared learning involving common language that is meaningful to
the students. In the 1970’s he was charged with guring out how to best educate a
population of Malread children who were entering schools in New Zealand and Australia
for the rst time.  Their culture was quite dierent from that at school and many of the
children were having diculties learning how to read in traditional ways. He understood
that malread children came to school having already mastered a highly complex
language system and they had learn theirlanguage the same way other children do in
other cultures in all the other way around the world in a social setting. So Holdaway
studies the social context that supported learning and found these four types of
common experiences.   1. Demonstration, 2. Participation, 3. Role Play/ Practice, and 4.
Performance. Belief about literacy instruction (Shared Reading):  Holdaway's believes
that literacy instruction should be done by shared reading.  He believes that children
should learn how to read by following the following Acquisition Learning Sequence. Don
Holdaway’s Natural Learning Model Acquisition Learning Sequence Demonstration
Learners Teachers Audience/Spectator Roles Observing demonstrations Displaying
reading and writing in genuine ways Participation Participating, Questioning Role Play/
Practice Role Playing Practicing Performance Sharing, performing, displaying
competence Inducing active involvement within the class community Learner is
audience, Teacher is performer in authentic activity Learner is participant, Teacher is
participant, No true audience Enabling, supporting, arranging environment, instructing
Learner is selfregulator, Teacher is invissible, No audience except self Accepting,
enjoying, monitoring, recording, rewarding Learner is Performer, Teacher is audience
Holdaway generates a remarkable congruency and balance between theory and
practice, with insight, wit and admirable respect for the language learning potential of
young children. Anyone who has been following language learning theory and research
for the past decade will not be surprised by his theoretical stance on literacy as a
developmental, natural process rather than as a skills- item-oriented product, nor by his
strong emphasis on a language environment which is invitational and emulative rather
than prescriptive and instructional. Seminal Publications:  Here is a list of some of the
books written by Donald Holdaway that have helped changed the way reading has been
taught. 1.      2.      3.      4.      Independence in Reading The Foundations of Literacy
Stability and change in Literacy learning Models of Natural Learning in Literacy
Development Bottom of Form

l. Erikson’s Psycho-Social Development-Jenica Malicdem

Erik Erikson was an ego psychologist who developed one of the most popular and
influential theories of development. While his theory was impacted by
psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud's work, Erikson's theory centered on psychosocial
development rather than psychosexual development.
The stages that make up his theory are as follows:1

 Stage 1: Trust vs. Mistrust (Infancy from birth to 18 months)

 Stage 2: Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt (Toddler years from 18 months to
three years)
 Stage 3: Initiative vs. Guilt (Preschool years from three to five)
 Stage 4: Industry vs. Inferiority (Middle school years from six to 11)
 Stage 5: Identity vs. Confusion (Teen years from 12 to 18)
 Stage 6: Intimacy vs. Isolation (Young adult years from 18 to 40)
  Stage 7: Generativity vs. Stagnation (Middle age from 40 to 65)
 Stage 8: Integrity vs. Despair (Older adulthood from 65 to death)

Let's take a closer look at the background and different stages that make up Erikson's
psychosocial theory.

Verywell / Joshua Seong

Overview of Erikson's Stages of Development
So what exactly did Erikson's theory of psychosocial development entail? Much like
Sigmund Freud, Erikson believed that personality developed in a series of stages.

Unlike Freud's theory of psychosexual stages, however, Erikson's theory described the
impact of social experience across the whole lifespan. Erikson was interested in how
social interaction and relationships played a role in the development and growth of
human beings.

Erikson's theory was based on what is known as the epigenetic principle. This

principle suggests that people grow in a sequence that occurs over time and in the
context of a larger community.
0 seconds of 1 minute, 50 seconds, Volume 90%
 
1:50
Click Play to Learn More About Erik Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial
Development
This video has been medically reviewed by Steven Gans, MD.
Conflict During Each Stage
Each stage in Erikson's theory builds on the preceding stages and paves the way for
following periods of development. In each stage, Erikson believed people experience
a conflict that serves as a turning point in development. 2
In Erikson's view, these conflicts are centered on either developing a psychological
quality or failing to develop that quality. During these times, the potential for personal
growth is high but so is the potential for failure.
If people successfully deal with the conflict, they emerge from the stage with
psychological strengths that will serve them well for the rest of their lives. 3 If they fail to
deal effectively with these conflicts, they may not develop the essential skills needed for
a strong sense of self.
Mastery Leads to Ego Strength

Erikson also believed that a sense of competence motivates behaviors and actions.
Each stage in Erikson's theory is concerned with becoming competent in an area of life.
If the stage is handled well, the person will feel a sense of mastery, which is sometimes
referred to as ego strength or ego quality. If the stage is managed poorly, the person will
emerge with a sense of inadequacy in that aspect of development.

Psychosocial Stages: A Summary Chart

Age Conflict Important Events Outcome
Infancy (birth to 18 months) Trust vs. Mistrust  Feeding Hope
Early Childhood (2 to 3Autonomy vs. Shame andToilet Training Will
years) Doubt
Preschool (3 to 5 years) Initiative vs. Guilt Exploration Purpose
School Age (6 to 11 years) Industry vs. Inferiority School Confidence
Adolescence (12 to 18Identity vs. RoleSocial Fidelity
years) Confusion Relationships
Young Adulthood (19 to 40Intimacy vs. Isolation Relationships Love
years)
Middle Adulthood (40 to 65Generativity vs.Work andCare
years) Stagnation Parenthood
Maturity (65 to death) Ego Integrity vs. Despair Reflection on Life Wisdom
A brief summary of the eight stages
Stage 1: Trust vs. Mistrust

The first stage of Erikson's theory of psychosocial development occurs between birth
and 1 year of age and is the most fundamental stage in life. Because an infant is utterly
dependent, developing trust is based on the dependability and quality of the child's
caregivers.

At this point in development, the child is utterly dependent upon adult caregivers for
everything they need to survive including food, love, warmth, safety, and nurturing. If a
caregiver fails to provide adequate care and love, the child will come to feel that they
cannot trust or depend upon the adults in their life.

Outcomes
If a child successfully develops trust, the child will feel safe and secure in the world. 2
Caregivers who are inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, or rejecting contribute to
feelings of mistrust in the children under their care. Failure to develop trust will result in
fear and a belief that the world is inconsistent and unpredictable.
During the first stage of psychosocial development, children develop a sense of trust
when caregivers provide reliability, care, and affection. A lack of this will lead to
mistrust.
No child is going to develop a sense of 100% trust or 100% doubt. Erikson believed that
successful development was all about striking a balance between the two opposing
sides. When this happens, children acquire hope, which Erikson described as an
openness to experience tempered by some wariness that danger may be present.

Subsequent work by researchers including John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth

demonstrated the importance of trust in forming healthy attachments during childhood
and adulthood.
Stage 2: Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt

The second stage of Erikson's theory of psychosocial development takes place during
early childhood and is focused on children developing a greater sense of personal
control.

The Role of Independence

At this point in development, children are just starting to gain a little independence. They
are starting to perform basic actions on their own and making simple decisions about
what they prefer. By allowing kids to make choices and gain control, parents and
caregivers can help children develop a sense of autonomy. 2
Potty Training

The essential theme of this stage is that children need to develop a sense of personal
control over physical skills and a sense of independence. Potty training plays an
important role in helping children develop this sense of autonomy.

Like Freud, Erikson believed that toilet training was a vital part of this process. However,
Erikson's reasoning was quite different than that of Freud's. Erikson believed that
learning to control one's bodily functions leads to a feeling of control and a sense of
independence. Other important events include gaining more control over food choices,
toy preferences, and clothing selection.

Outcomes

Children who struggle and who are shamed for their accidents may be left without a
sense of personal control. Success during this stage of psychosocial development leads
to feelings of autonomy; failure results in feelings of shame and doubt.

Finding Balance

Children who successfully complete this stage feel secure and confident, while those
who do not are left with a sense of inadequacy and self-doubt. Erikson believed that
achieving a balance between autonomy and shame and doubt would lead to will, which
is the belief that children can act with intention, within reason and limits.

Stage 3: Initiative vs. Guilt

The third stage of psychosocial development takes place during the preschool years. At
this point in psychosocial development, children begin to assert their power and control
over the world through directing play and other social interactions.

Children who are successful at this stage feel capable and able to lead others. Those
who fail to acquire these skills are left with a sense of guilt, self-doubt, and lack of
initiative.

Outcomes

The major theme of the third stage of psychosocial development is that children need to
begin asserting control and power over the environment. Success in this stage leads to
a sense of purpose. Children who try to exert too much power experience disapproval,
resulting in a sense of guilt.

When an ideal balance of individual initiative and a willingness to work with others is
achieved, the ego quality known as purpose emerges.
Stage 4: Industry vs. Inferiority

The fourth psychosocial stage takes place during the early school years from
approximately ages 5 to 11. Through social interactions, children begin to develop a
sense of pride in their accomplishments and abilities.

Children need to cope with new social and academic demands. Success leads to a
sense of competence, while failure results in feelings of inferiority.

Outcomes

Children who are encouraged and commended by parents and teachers develop a
feeling of competence and belief in their skills. Those who receive little or no
encouragement from parents, teachers, or peers will doubt their abilities to be
successful.

Successfully finding a balance at this stage of psychosocial development leads to the

strength known as competence, in which children develop a belief in their abilities to
handle the tasks set before them.
Stage 5: Identity vs. Confusion

The fifth psychosocial stage takes place during the often turbulent teenage years. This
stage plays an essential role in developing a sense of personal identity which will
continue to influence behavior and development for the rest of a person's life. Teens
need to develop a sense of self and personal identity. Success leads to an ability to stay
true to yourself, while failure leads to role confusion and a weak sense of self.

During adolescence, children explore their independence and develop a sense of self. 2
Those who receive proper encouragement and reinforcement through personal
exploration will emerge from this stage with a strong sense of self and feelings of
independence and control. Those who remain unsure of their beliefs and desires will
feel insecure and confused about themselves and the future.
What Is Identity?

When psychologists talk about identity, they are referring to all of the beliefs, ideals, and
values that help shape and guide a person's behavior. Completing this stage
successfully leads to fidelity, which Erikson described as an ability to live by society's
standards and expectations.

While Erikson believed that each stage of psychosocial development was important, he
placed a particular emphasis on the development of ego identity. Ego identity is
the conscious sense of self that we develop through social interaction and becomes a
central focus during the identity versus confusion stage of psychosocial development.

According to Erikson, our ego identity constantly changes due to new experiences and
information we acquire in our daily interactions with others. As we have new
experiences, we also take on challenges that can help or hinder the development of
identity.

Why Identity Is Important

Our personal identity gives each of us an integrated and cohesive sense of self that
endures through our lives. Our sense of personal identity is shaped by our experiences
and interactions with others, and it is this identity that helps guide our actions, beliefs,
and behaviors as we age.

Stage 6: Intimacy vs. Isolation

Young adults need to form intimate, loving relationships with other people. Success
leads to strong relationships, while failure results in loneliness and isolation. This stage
covers the period of early adulthood when people are exploring personal relationships. 2

Erikson believed it was vital that people develop close, committed relationships with
other people. Those who are successful at this step will form relationships that are
enduring and secure.

Building On Earlier Stages

Remember that each step builds on skills learned in previous steps. Erikson believed
that a strong sense of personal identity was important for developing intimate
relationships. Studies have demonstrated that those with a poor sense of self tend to
have less committed relationships and are more likely to struggler with emotional
isolation, loneliness, and depression.
Successful resolution of this stage results in the virtue known as love. It is marked by
the ability to form lasting, meaningful relationships with other people.
Stage 7: Generativity vs. Stagnation
Adults need to create or nurture things that will outlast them, often by having children or
creating a positive change that benefits other people. Success leads to feelings of
usefulness and accomplishment, while failure results in shallow involvement in the
world.

During adulthood, we continue to build our lives, focusing on our career and family.
Those who are successful during this phase will feel that they are contributing to the
world by being active in their home and community. 2 Those who fail to attain this skill
will feel unproductive and uninvolved in the world.
Care is the virtue achieved when this stage is handled successfully. Being proud of your
accomplishments, watching your children grow into adults, and developing a sense of
unity with your life partner are important accomplishments of this stage.
Stage 8: Integrity vs. Despair
The final psychosocial stage occurs during old age and is focused on reflecting back on
life.2 At this point in development, people look back on the events of their lives and
determine if they are happy with the life that they lived or if they regret the things they
did or didn't do.

Erikson's theory differed from many others because it addressed development

throughout the entire lifespan, including old age. Older adults need to look back on life
and feel a sense of fulfillment. Success at this stage leads to feelings of wisdom, while
failure results in regret, bitterness, and despair.

At this stage, people reflect back on the events of their lives and take stock. Those who
look back on a life they feel was well-lived will feel satisfied and ready to face the end of
their lives with a sense of peace. Those who look back and only feel regret will instead
feel fearful that their lives will end without accomplishing the things they feel they should
have.

Outcomes

Those who are unsuccessful during this stage will feel that their life has been wasted
and may experience many regrets. The person will be left with feelings of bitterness and
despair.

Those who feel proud of their accomplishments will feel a sense of integrity.
Successfully completing this phase means looking back with few regrets and a general
feeling of satisfaction. These individuals will attain wisdom, even when confronting
death.
Strengths and Weaknesses of Erikson's Theory

Erikson's theory also has its limitations and attracts valid criticisms. What kinds of
experiences are necessary to successfully complete each stage? How does a person
move from one stage to the next?
Criticism

One major weakness of psychosocial theory is that the exact mechanisms for resolving
conflicts and moving from one stage to the next are not well described or developed.
The theory fails to detail exactly what type of experiences are necessary at each stage
in order to successfully resolve the conflicts and move to the next stage.

Support

One of the strengths of psychosocial theory is that it provides a broad framework from
which to view development throughout the entire lifespan. It also allows us to
emphasize the social nature of human beings and the important influence that social
relationships have on development.

Researchers have found evidence supporting Erikson's ideas about identity and have
further identified different sub-stages of identity formation. 4 Some research also
suggests that people who form strong personal identities during adolescence are better
capable of forming intimate relationships during early adulthood. Other research
suggests, however, that identity formation and development continues well into
adulthood.5
Why Was Erikson's Theory Important?

The theory was significant because it addressed development throughout a person's

life, not just during childhood. It also stressed the importance of social relationships in
shaping personality and growth at each point in development.

A Word From Verywell

It is important to remember that the psychosocial stages are just one theory
of personality development. Some research may support certain aspects of this
theoretical framework, but that does not mean that every aspect of the theory is
supported by evidence. The theory can, however, be a helpful way to think about some
of the different conflicts and challenges that people may face as they go through life.

It is also easy to look at each stage of Erikson's theory and consider how it can apply to
your life. Learning about each stage can provide insight into what you might face as you
age. It can also help you reflect on things that may have happened in the past and help
you see ways you might be able to improve your coping skills to better deal with today's
challenges.

 What Is Personality and Why Does It Matter?

m. Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory -Gemma Rose P. Bernardo

Social cognitive theory
One of the most widely used and robust health behavior change theories, SCT emerged
from social learning theory, which identified that people learn from their own
experiences and by observing the experiences of others. 37 There are three major
constructs in SCT that interact to influence behavior: personal factors (age, cognitions,
previous experience with the behavior, etc.), environmental factors (access to
resources, safety, support from family/friends, etc.), and aspects of the behavior itself
(vigor of the behavior, outcomes achieved as a result of practicing the behavior,
competence with the behavior, etc.). Successful efforts to change behavior depend on
identification of the positive supports and the detractors in each of the three constructs.
For example, if a therapist is managing the physical or occupational therapy services of
a patient who has multiple sclerosis and this patient is motivated to be physically active
yet does not have a safe place to walk or be physically active near home, the patient will
likely not be able to consistently perform physical activity. If the same patient works for
an employer who provides an onsite gym, the patient could negotiate with her
supervisor to utilize the gym to be physically active a few days a week.
Of the multiple additional constructs in SCT, several are worth mentioning. Albert
Bandura, the author of SCT, identified self-efficacy, the confidence a person has in his
or her ability to perform a behavior, as having a significant influence on behavior
change.39–41 Self-efficacy has been shown to predict the amount of effort an individual
will expend to learn and practice a behavior, the persistence demonstrated in the
process, and the effort expended to overcome barriers. 42,43 Self-efficacy is behavior
specific. Therapists are familiar with the importance of self-efficacy in neurological
rehabilitation as patients learn and relearn movement strategies after neurological
insults and the way in which repetition, small steps, verbal persuasion, and
observational learning build confidence and thus competence in the movement. These
same strategies enhance self-efficacy for behavior change related to enhancing
wellness, and self-efficacy is key to the development of sustainable health habits.
Goal setting and social support are two additional useful constructs in SCT that fall into
the broad category of self-regulation, an important skill to develop when adopting new
health behaviors.41 The setting and achievement of goals can have a profound positive
impact on learning new health behaviors, like the positive role goals play in physical and
occupational therapy plans of care, with the additive effect of enhancing self-efficacy
when goals are both challenging and achievable. When goals are not adequately
challenging, they can decrease self-efficacy. Social support involves identifying others
who will provide encouragement in the form of moral support, participation in the
behavior, and accountability. For certain populations, social support has been shown to
be significantly related to physical and mental health, pain, coping, adjustment, and life
satisfaction.44

Health Behavior: Psychosocial Theories

S. Sutton, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2001
1.3 Self-efficacy Theory
Self-efficacy theory (SET) is a subset of Bandura's (1986) social cognitive theory.
According to this approach, the two key determinants of behavior are perceived self-
efficacy and outcome expectancies. The latter construct refers to the perceived positive
and negative consequences of performing the behavior. See Schwarzer and Fuchs
(1996) for a version of this model that incorporates risk perceptions and behavioral
intention, as well as components of the action phase of behavior change. No meta-
analysis of SET has been published, though there is substantial evidence for the
predictive validity of self-efficacy (Schwarzer and Fuchs 1996).
View chapterPurchase book
Intimate Partner Violence
Lee Goldman MD, in Goldman-Cecil Medicine, 2020
Causation
Several theories about the causes of intimate partner violence have been proposed
over the years. Social learning theory suggests that intimate partner violence is a
learned behavior. The fact that male perpetrators and female victims are more likely to
report histories of exposure to violence in childhood supports this theory. However,
most individuals exposed to violence in childhood do not go on to commit violence as
adults, and not all abusers have violent upbringings. Furthermore, the link between poor
parenting generally, including neglect, and subsequent intimate partner violence in
adulthood suggests that the effect is not simply one of modeling abusive behavior.
Exposure to rejecting or neglectful parenting is associated with adverse effects on
intrapersonal (e.g., poor self-worth) and interpersonal development, which are
associated with intimate partner violence.
A feminist perspective understands intimate partner violence against women as a form
of coercive control rooted in society’s patriarchal structure, reflecting the persistent
inequality in economic and social relationships between men and women. Lending
support to this perspective is the finding that intimate partner violence appears to be
less common in more democratic and less economically polarized societies. Although
intimate partner violence occurs more often in contexts in which there is support for
male authority in the family and women have less access to economic security, it is not
clear why some individuals are more likely to be violent under such conditions than
others.
With regard to psychological theory, there are conflicting views about the association
between intimate partner violence and psychopathology. Some researchers argue that
abusive males have deficits in one or more coping mechanisms, anger control, and
communication skills, whereas others suggest that intimate partner violence results from
dysfunctional interactional patterns between partners. Because types of intimate partner
violence are not the same for all couples, there are likely multiple causes for its
occurrence. Most of the research has focused on factors associated with increased risk
of men abusing women (Table 228-1); however, we do not know to what extent these
factors are causal from cross-sectional studies.
An explanatory framework that can guide etiologic and intervention research on intimate
partner violence (and other public health problems) is the ecologic model. It attempts to
integrate evidence on individual (genetic and life course), family, community, and
socioeconomic structural factors. The ecologic model has recently been further
developed to incorporate the impact of globalization on violence against women. 6

n. Lawrence Kohlberg’s Moral Development

Kohlberg's theory of moral development is a theory that focuses on how children

develop morality and moral reasoning. Kohlberg's theory suggests that moral
development occurs in a series of six stages and that moral logic is primarily focused on
seeking and maintaining justice.

Here we discuss how Kohlberg developed his theory of moral development and the six
stages he identified as part of this process. We also share some critiques of Kohlberg's
theory, many of which suggest that it may be biased based on the limited demographics
of the subjects studied.

What Is Moral Development?

Moral development is the process by which people develop the distinction between right
and wrong (morality) and engage in reasoning between the two (moral reasoning).
How do people develop morality? This question has fascinated parents, religious
leaders, and philosophers for ages, but moral development has also become a hot-
button issue in psychology and education. 1 Do parental or societal influences play a
greater role in moral development? Do all kids develop morality in similar ways?
American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg developed one of the best-known theories
exploring some of these basic questions.2 His work modified and expanded upon Jean
Piaget's previous work but was more centered on explaining how children develop
moral reasoning.

Kohlberg extended Piaget's theory, proposing that moral development is a continual

process that occurs throughout the lifespan. Kohlberg's theory outlines six stages of
moral development within three different levels.

In recent years, Kohlberg's theory has been criticized as being Western-centric with a
bias toward men (he primarily used male research subjects) and for having a narrow
worldview based on upper-middle-class value systems and perspectives. 3
How Kohlberg Developed His Theory
Kohlberg based his theory on a series of moral dilemmas presented to his study
subjects. Participants were also interviewed to determine the reasoning behind their
judgments in each scenario.4

One example was "Heinz Steals the Drug." In this scenario, a woman has cancer and
her doctors believe only one drug might save her. This drug had been discovered by a
local pharmacist and he was able to make it for $200 per dose and sell it for $2,000 per
dose. The woman's husband, Heinz, could only raise $1,000 to buy the drug.

He tried to negotiate with the pharmacist for a lower price or to be extended credit to
pay for it over time. But the pharmacist refused to sell it for any less or to accept partial
payments. Rebuffed, Heinz instead broke into the pharmacy and stole the drug to save
his wife. Kohlberg asked, "Should the husband have done that?"

Kohlberg was not interested so much in the answer to whether Heinz was wrong or
right but in the reasoning for each participant's decision. He then classified their
reasoning into the stages of his theory of moral development. 5
Stages of Moral Development

Kohlberg's theory is broken down into three primary levels. At each level of moral
development, there are two stages. Similar to how Piaget believed that not all people
reach the highest levels of cognitive development, Kohlberg believed not everyone
progresses to the highest stages of moral development.

Levels of Moral Age Stages Included in This Level 

Development
Preconventional 0 to 9 Stage 1: Obedience and punishment Stage
Morality 2: Individualism and exchange
Conventional Morality Early adolescence Stage 3: Developing good interpersonal
to adulthood relationships Stage 4: Maintaining social
order
Postconventional Some adults; rare Stage 5: Social contract and individual rights
Morality  stage 6: Universal principles
Level 1. Preconventional Morality

Preconventional morality is the earliest period of moral development. It lasts until

around the age of 9. At this age, children's decisions are primarily shaped by the
expectations of adults and the consequences of breaking the rules. There are two
stages within this level:

 Stage 1 (Obedience and Punishment): The earliest stages of moral

development, obedience and punishment are especially common in young
children, but adults are also capable of expressing this type of reasoning.
According to Kohlberg, people at this stage see rules as fixed and
absolute.6 Obeying the rules is important because it is a way to avoid
punishment.
 Stage 2 (Individualism and Exchange): At the individualism and
exchange stage of moral development, children account for individual points of
view and judge actions based on how they serve individual needs. In the Heinz
dilemma, children argued that the best course of action was the choice that best
 served Heinz’s needs. Reciprocity is possible at this point in moral development,
but only if it serves one's own interests.

Level 2. Conventional Morality

The next period of moral development is marked by the acceptance of social rules
regarding what is good and moral. During this time, adolescents and adults internalize
the moral standards they have learned from their role models and from society.

This period also focuses on the acceptance of authority and conforming to the norms of
the group. There are two stages at this level of morality:

 Stage 3 (Developing Good Interpersonal Relationships): Often referred to as

the "good boy-good girl" orientation, this stage of the interpersonal relationship of
moral development is focused on living up to social expectations and
roles.6 There is an emphasis on conformity, being "nice," and consideration of
how choices influence relationships.
 Stage 4 (Maintaining Social Order): This stage is focused on ensuring that
social order is maintained. At this stage of moral development, people begin to
consider society as a whole when making judgments. The focus is on
maintaining law and order by following the rules, doing one’s duty, and
respecting authority.

Level 3. Postconventional Morality

At this level of moral development, people develop an understanding of abstract

principles of morality. The two stages at this level are:

 Stage 5 (Social Contract and Individual Rights): The ideas of a social contract
and individual rights cause people in the next stage to begin to account for the
differing values, opinions, and beliefs of other people. 6 Rules of law are important
for maintaining a society, but members of the society should agree upon these
standards.
 Stage 6 (Universal Principles): Kohlberg’s final level of moral reasoning is
based on universal ethical principles and abstract reasoning. At this stage,
people follow these internalized principles of justice, even if they conflict with
laws and rules.

Kohlberg believed that only a relatively small percentage of people ever reach the post-
conventional stages (around 10 to 15%).6 One analysis found that while stages one to
four could be seen as universal in populations throughout the world, the fifth and sixth
stages were extremely rare in all populations. 7
Applications for Kohlberg's Theory
Understanding Kohlberg's theory of moral development is important in that it can help
parents guide their children as they develop their moral character. Parents with younger
children might work on rule obeyance, for instance, whereas they might teach older
children about social expectations.

Teachers and other educators can also apply Kohlberg's theory in the classroom,
providing additional moral guidance. A kindergarten teacher could help enhance moral
development by setting clear rules for the classroom, and the consequences for
violating them. This helps kids at stage one of moral development.

A teacher in high school might focus more on the development that occurs in stage
three (developing good interpersonal relationships) and stage four (maintaining social
order). This could be accomplished by having the students take part in setting the rules
to be followed in the classroom, giving them a better idea of the reasoning behind these
rules.

Criticisms for Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development

Kohlberg's theory played an important role in the development of moral psychology.

While the theory has been highly influential, aspects of the theory have been critiqued
for a number of reasons:

 Moral reasoning does not equal moral behavior: Kohlberg's theory is

concerned with moral thinking, but there is a big difference between knowing
what we ought to do versus our actual actions. Moral reasoning, therefore, may
not lead to moral behavior.
 Overemphasizes justice: Critics have pointed out that Kohlberg's theory of
moral development overemphasizes the concept of justice when making moral
choices. Factors such as compassion, caring, and other interpersonal feelings
may play an important part in moral reasoning.8
 Cultural bias: Individualist cultures emphasize personal rights, while collectivist
cultures stress the importance of society and community. Eastern, collectivist
cultures may have different moral outlooks that Kohlberg's theory does not take
into account.
 Age bias: Most of his subjects were children under the age of 16 who obviously
had no experience with marriage. The Heinz dilemma may have been too
abstract for these children to understand, and a scenario more applicable to their
everyday concerns might have led to different results.
 Gender bias: Kohlberg's critics, including Carol Gilligan, have suggested that
Kohlberg's theory was gender-biased since all of the subjects in his sample were
male.9 Kohlberg believed that women tended to remain at the third level of moral
development because they place a stronger emphasis on things such as social
relationships and the welfare of others.

Gilligan instead suggested that Kohlberg's theory overemphasizes concepts such as

justice and does not adequately address moral reasoning founded on the principles and
ethics of caring and concern for others.
Other Theories of Moral Development
Kohlberg isn't the only psychologist to theorize how we develop morally. There are
several other theories of moral development.

Piaget's Theory of Moral Development

Kohlberg's theory is an expansion of Piaget's theory of moral development. Piaget
described a three-stage process of moral development: 10

 Stage 1: The child is more concerned with developing and mastering their motor
and social skills, with no general concern about morality.
 Stage 2: The child develops unconditional respect both for authority figures and
the rules in existence.
 Stage 3: The child starts to see rules as being arbitrary, also considering an
actor's intentions when judging whether an act or behavior is moral or immoral.

Kohlberg expanded on this theory to include more stages in the process. Additionally,
Kohlberg believed that the final stage is rarely achieved by individuals whereas Piaget's
stages of moral development are common to all.

Moral Foundations Theory

Proposed by Jonathan Haidt, Craig Joseph, and Jesse Graham, the moral foundations
theory is based on three morality principles:11

1. Intuition develops before strategic reasoning. Put another way, our reaction
comes first, which is then followed by rationalization.
2. Morality involves more than harm and fairness. Contained within this second
principle are a variety of considerations related to morality. It includes: care vs.
harm, liberty vs. oppression, fairness vs. cheating, loyalty vs. betrayal, authority
vs. subversion, and sanctity vs. degradation.
3. Morality can both bind groups and blind individuals. When people are part of
a group, they will tend to adopt that group's same value systems. They may also
sacrifice their own morals for the group's benefit.

While Kohlberg's theory is primarily focused on help vs. harm, moral foundations theory
encompasses several more dimensions of morality. However, this theory also fails to
explain the "rules" people use when determining what is best for society.

Normative Theories of Moral Behavior

Several other theories exist that attempt to explain the development of morality,
specifically in relation to social justice. 11 Some fall into the category of transcendental
institutionalist, which involves trying to create "perfect justice." Others are realization-
focused, concentrating more on removing injustices.

One theory falling into the second category is social choice theory. Social choice theory
is a collection of models that seek to explain how individuals can use their input (their
preferences) to impact society as a whole. An example of this is voting, which allows the
majority to decide what is "right" and "wrong."
A Word From Verywell

While Kohlberg's theory of moral development has been criticized, the theory played an
important role in the emergence of the field of moral psychology. Researchers continue
to explore how moral reasoning develops and changes through life as well as the
universality of these stages. Understanding these stages offers helpful insights into the
ways that both children and adults make moral choices and how moral thinking may
influence decisions and behaviors.

o. Carol Gilligan’s Moral Development-Emilyn Bronce

Carol Gilligan was born in New York City on November 28, 1936. She studied
literature at Swarthmore College as an undergrad, and she graduated from Radcliffe
in 1960 with a master's in psychology. She continued to Harvard, where she
received her PhD in psychology in 1964. Three years later, Gilligan took a teaching
position at Harvard where she worked alongside Erik Erikson  and Lawrence
Kohlberg . While Gilligan worked as a research assistant under Kohlberg, known for
his theory of moral development , she began focusing on the moral dilemmas and
development of young girls. 
In 1997, Gilligan became the Chair of Gender Studies at Harvard, and she
codirected the Harvard Project on Women’s Psychology, Boy’s Development, and
the Culture of Manhood. Gilligan has lectured at Princeton University and Michigan
State University, she was Pitt Professor at the University of Cambridge in 1992 and
1993, and she has taught at New York University since 2002. Gilligan’s work has
been recognized for women’s advancement by activists, such as Jane Fonda, who
donated $2.5 million to create an endowed faculty chair in Gilligan’s name at
Harvard.
Gilligan has been recognized by many institutions and organizations for her efforts
in the area of women’s advancement and moral psychology. In addition to
the Grawemeyer Award for Education, Gilligan has also received the Heinz Award
for Human Condition and was named one of the most influential people of the year
by TIME magazine in 1996. She has also published works of fiction and developed
a full-length play based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter.
CONTRIBUTION TO PSYCHOLOGY
Gilligan is a pioneer in the field of gender difference psychology, which argues that
the sexes tend to think differently, particularly when it comes to moral problems.
Gilligan argues that these differences are likely a product of social influences and
gender conditioning and emphasizes that women's ways of thinking are often
undervalued compared to men. Gilligan's emphasis on gender difference, however,
has been criticized by some feminists, who argue that focusing on differences
between men and women can serve as a justification for ongoing inequality.
Her best-known contribution to psychology is her adaptation  of Lawrence
Kohlberg's theory of moral development. Kohlberg’s theory demonstrates that
children progress through several stages of moral reasoning, though not everyone
reaches the highest levels of moral reasoning, where justice and individual rights
are guiding principles in a person’s life. Kohlberg found that more men reached this
stage of moral reasoning than women and that men tended to be heavily focused on
justice. Gilligan criticized this theory, arguing that it was biased in favor of men. In
her own research, Gilligan found that women placed a stronger emphasis on caring
in moral decision making. Kohlberg's theory emphasizing justice does not allow for
the role of caring in moral decision making, and this is why women often fail to
reach Kohlberg's “higher” stages of moral reasoning.
Gilligan’s work on moral development outlines how a woman’s morality  is influenced
by relationships and how women form their moral and ethical foundation based on
how their decisions will affect others. She believes that women tend to develop
morality in stages. These stages follow Kohlberg's moral stages of preconventional,
conventional, and postconventional, but are based upon research with women. The
stages are:
 Preconventional morality – During this stage, there is a strong focus on
survival and self-interest.
 Conventional – During this stage, women prioritize selflessness and caring
about others. 
 Postconventional – In the final stage of moral development, women
emphasize taking responsibility for the consequences of their choices and
gaining control of their own lives. Caring for others is a strong component of
this high stage of moral development. 
In 1982, Gilligan published In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s
Development. The book detailed her criticism of Kohlberg’s theory and her views on
female morality. Gilligan’s theories propelled her to the forefront of the feminist
movement, and her followers joined her in encouraging society to view women and
men equally in terms of influence and justice.
References: