Chapter 2

DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Getu Tadele (Assistant Professor)
Definition of terms and concepts
• Growth- it refers to physical or quantitative change.
• It indicates changes like legs and arms became longer, the
head gets larger, the body increases in weight, and the
vocabulary increase in number.
• Maturation- it is a concept used to explain physical and
behavioral changes that are relatively free from influence
of environment.

 Example- All healthy girls see their first ministration

(menarche) at puberty regardless of what happens in the
environment.
 Poor diet may delay the onset but can not prevent it.
 Growing of hair on some body parts during puberty in
both sexes.
 Growing of teeth at 2nd years of age.
 Falling out of teeth at 7th years of age in infants.
 Starting to walk at 2nd years of age in infants.

• Learning- describes actual change in behavior that result

from environmental experiences such as teaching.
• Changes that come as a result of learning are primarily
under the control of environment or external event.
• Examples:
 study behavior
 listening behavior
 talking behavior
 bag- carrying behavior
• Development – refers to the overall changes in humans.
• Growth changes, maturation changes, learning changes all
denote development.

• Therefore, it represents the total process by which a

person adapts to the environment; cognitive, personality,
social, moral etc. changes.
 Theories of Human Development
2.1 Psychoanalytic Theories
2.1.1 Freud’s Psychosexual Development Theory
• The Freudian view of human nature is basically
deterministic.
• According to Freud, our behavior is determined by
irrational forces, unconscious motivations, and
biological and instinctual drives as these evolve
through key psychosexual stages in the first 5 years
of life
• Accordingly, human being is driven by life instinct
and death instinct.
 Life instincts serve the purpose of survival of the
individual and include all pleasurable acts.
 They are oriented to growth, development and
creativity.
However, death instincts account for aggressive
drive that reflects human need for destruction of
self and others.
In other words, Freud believed that humans are
filled with mental or psychic energy.
This energy comes from two essential sources:
Eros (energy associated with life and sex instinct)
and Thanatos (energy associated with death and
aggression instinct).
• Eros and Thanatos are the two basic drives that
energize behavior.
• Freud referred to Eros-related energy as libido,
whereas Thanatos- or destructive-related energy
was unnamed.
• Based on Freudian drive (dynamic) theory, every
impulse has an origin, aim, object, and intensity.
 Freud was the first to outline a developmental
theory explaining how early childhood
experiences influence later adult functioning.
 As he outlined, each stage is defined in terms of
the part of the body around which drives are
centered.
 The eye of the storm shifts from the oral to the
anal to the phallic area during the first five years.
 Then, a period of latency in middle childhood is
followed by the genital stage of adolescence.
 Each stage presents new needs that must be
handled by the mental structures.
 The way in which these needs are met (or not met)
determines not only how sexual satisfaction is achieved,
but also how the child relates to other people and how
she/he feels about her/himself.
 He develops characteristic attitudes, defenses, and
fantasies.
 Unresolved conflicts in any stage may haunt the person
throughout his lifetime.
 At each stage, if parents are overly indulgent or
withholding, the child can end up with fixations or
complexes associated with the stage.
 A fixation or complex is an unresolved unconscious
conflict.
 Freud’s traditional developmental five stages are the
following:
Oral stage: birth to 1 year old; where satisfaction
is predominantly derived by the infant via the
mouth, for example, from sucking the nipple or
the thumb.
• Freud theorized fixation at the oral stage could
lead to obsessive eating, smoking, talking or
drinking to try to obtain oral satisfaction.
 Anal stage: 1 to 3 years old, where gratification is
derived from gaining control over withholding or
eliminating feces.
• A crucial event to Freud was toilet training that represents society's
systematic efforts to control the child's biological urges.
• If toilet training and other areas of discipline are too
punitive and severe, the child may become anal-retentive,
holding back not only feces but becoming constricted,
stubborn, rigid, meticulous and precise, an "over-
controlled" personality.
• The rebellious child may become anal-expulsive, letting
go of feelings, defiantly strong-willed.
• Although self-confident and creative, the anal-expulsive
becomes fixated on expulsive (letting go) activities,
actively insisting on pursuing one's own path while
fighting external rules, regulations and requests that
might threaten one's autonomy
 Phallic stage: 3 to 5 years old, sees the child beginning
to be more aware of her genitals with consequent
curiosity and anxiety about sexual differences.

• Oedipus complex is observed in phallic stage.

• In Greek mythology, Oedipus unknowingly kills his

father and marries his mother.

• The Oedipus wish of the boy is erotically attracted to his

mother, but he develops castration anxiety from fear of
his father as rival.
• The girl develops penis envy that impels her
towards her father.

• With time, both the boy’s and the girl’s Oedipal

desires recede; rather than remaining at war with
the same-sex parent who is experienced as a rival,
both settle for identification with the same-sex
parent, incorporating their values, standards and
sexual orientation.
 Latency Stage

– From around age 5 to 12 years old the child's sexuality

is largely repressed, Freud called this the latency
period.

 Genital stage

– With the advent of puberty sexual urges reappear and

the sexual energy is normally channeled toward peers
of the opposite sex.
– This genital stage lasts throughout life.
 2. 4.3 Erik Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial
Development
• Like Freud, Erik Erikson believed in the importance of
early childhood.
• However, Erikson believed that personality development
happens over the entire course of a person’s life.
• In the early 1960s, Erikson proposed a theory that
describes eight distinct stages of development.
• According to Erikson, in each stage people face new
challenges, and the stage’s outcome depends on how
people handle these challenges.

• Erikson named the stages according to these possible

outcomes:
Stage 1: Trust vs. Mistrust
• In the first year after birth, babies depend
completely on adults for basic needs such as food,
comfort, and warmth.
• If the caretakers meet these needs reliably, the
babies become attached and develop a sense of
security.
• Otherwise, they may develop a mistrustful,
insecure attitude.
• The virtue in this stage is hope.
Stage 2: Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
• Between the ages of one and three, toddlers start
to gain independence and learn skills such as
toilet training, feeding themselves, and dressing
themselves.

• Depending on how they face these challenges,

toddlers can develop a sense of autonomy or a
sense of doubt and shame about themselves.
• The virtue here is will.
Stage 3: Initiative vs. Guilt
• Between the ages of three and six, children must learn to
control their impulses and act in a socially responsible
way.
• If they can do this effectively, children become more
self- confident.
• If not, they may develop a strong sense of guilt.
• the virtue here is purpose.
Stage 4: Industry vs. Inferiority
• Between the ages of six and twelve, children compete
with peers in school and prepare to take on adult roles.
• They end this stage with either a sense of competence or a
sense of inferiority. The virtue here is competency.
Stage 5: Identity vs. Role Confusion
• During adolescence, which is the period between puberty
and adulthood, children try to determine their identity and
their direction in life.
• Depending on their success, they either acquire a sense of
identity or remain uncertain about their roles in life.
• The virtue here is fidelity.
Stage 6: Intimacy vs. Isolation
• In young adulthood, people face the challenge of
developing intimate relationships with others.
• If they do not succeed, they may become isolated and
lonely.
• The virtue here is love.
Stage 7: Generativity vs. Self-Absorption
• As people reach middle adulthood, they work to
become productive members of society, either
through parenting or through their jobs.
• If they fail, they become overly self-absorbed.
• The virtue here is care.
Stage 8: Integrity vs. Despair
• In old age, people examine their lives.
• They may either have a sense of satisfaction or be
disappointed about their lives and fearful of the
future.
• The virtue here is wisdom.
• Erikson’s theory is useful because it addresses
both personality stability and personality change.

• To some degree, personality is stable, because

childhood experiences influence people even as
adults.

• However, personality also changes and develops

over the life span as people face new challenges.
2. 2 Cognitive Theories of Human Development

2. 2.1 Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

• Cognitive development investigates how patterns
of thinking, reasoning, remembering and problem-
solving change during a child’s development.

• Jean Piaget is an important theorist who attempted

to explain how human intelligence develops
through the child’s adaptation to the environment.
• Cognitive adaptation is promoted by
Assimilation: Making sense of new
information using existing schemes

Accommodation: Changing the existing

schemes to fit with new information

• Piaget felt all children go through clear stages of

intellectual development in the same order and
defined the major characteristics of his stages of
cognitive development.
SENSORIMOTOR PERIOD
• During the sensorimotor period, from Birth to Two Years,
the infant perceives the world through his/her senses.
• By seeing, touching, hearing, sucking and feeling the
environment, they learn and begin to act on the
environment through their motor activities.
• The major development is the gradual movement from
reflexes that are inborn to a use of mental symbols to
represent objects such as mother.

• The achievement of this great leap to symbolic thought is

object permanence, when the child recognizes that objects
continue to exist even when they are not visible.

• Now they can begin to use mental symbols to think and

represent absent objects.
PREOPERATIONAL STAGE
• The preoperational stage occurs from 2 to 6 years.

• As they improve their ability to think in terms of

symbolic thought, the foundation of thinking,
remembering and language, they encounter
shortcomings that distinctly define their thinking.

• They are egocentric and self-centered in their

thinking, unable to understand life from any
perspective other than their own.

• Egocentrism leads to animism, the belief that all

things are living, just like oneself.
• In the pre-operational stage,
• the child begins to use language as symbols but is
still unable to think in a truly logical fashion.
• Cannot perform "mental operations“ =
– internal manipulations,
– transformations & reorganizations of mental structures
• centration - a tendency to focus on one feature of a
group, neglecting all other aspects
• irreversibility - an inability to envision a reverse
action.
• not mastered conservation - the awareness that
physical qualities (height, weight, number &
volume) remain constant despite changes in their
shape or appearance.
CONCRETE OPERATIONS
• The concrete operational stage, from 7 to 12 years is
characterized by the development of conservation, mastery
of reversibility and decentration, a gradual loss of
egocentric thinking.
• This allows the child to begin to reason logically & to
organize thoughts coherently.

• However they can only think about actual concrete, physical

objects and cannot handle abstract reasoning.

• can perform concrete operations, or mental transformations

and reorganizations on concrete objects and events.

• They can begin to coordinate several aspects of a problem

and recognize there are several ways to look at things.
FORMAL OPERATIONS
• The formal operational stage begins
approximately at 11 or 12 and continues through
adulthood, although Piaget emphasized that some
may never attain this ability to think abstractly.

• The formal operational stage is characterized by

thought processes that are abstract, systematic,
reflective and logical.
• Adolescents develop the ability to formulate
hypotheses and systematically test them to arrive
at an answer to a problem (hypothetical-deductive
reasoning).

• The adolescent can apply mental operations to

abstract concepts such as love, free will, "good
parenting" and others ideas and ideals and spend
hours "thinking" about and debating topics of
interest.

• With practice the adolescent begins to develop

clear, logical and systematic thinking although
they do suffer often from the egocentric and
idealistic biases of early adolescent years.
 2.2.2 Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development
• Lawrence Kohlberg agreed with Piaget that a
child’s moral development depended on their level
of cognitive development and investigated the
development of moral reasoning.

• He posed hypothetical situations or moral

dilemmas wherein people had to make a difficult
decision and justify their choices.

• He proposed people have three levels of moral

development incorporating six stages.
LEVEL ONE: PRECONVENTIONAL MORALITY

• Young children judge situations solely on their

own needs and perceptions.
• Stage one: Punishment-Obedience Orientation

• Their primary goal in stage one is to avoid

punishment & a good or bad action is determined
by its physical consequences.

• Children comply with rules to avoid punishment.

• Stage two: Personal (Naïve) Reward Orientation

• includes a compliance with rules to gain rewards.

• Children may "share" if it leads to positive

rewards.

• Acts are "right" because they lead to positive

consequences.

• Both reasoning is in terms of "external authority."

• LEVEL TWO: CONVENTIONAL MORALITY

• Older children take into account the expectations

of society and rules when they make a decision
about a moral dilemma.

• In stage three: Good-boy/Good-girl Orientation

they conform to rules and their behavior is
determined by what will lead to approval or
disapproval.
• At stage four: Authority Orientation, the child
rigidly conforms to society’s rules and respects
authority.

• Often called the Law and Order Orientation,

children obey rules and punish wrong doing.

• Their tendency to think concretely makes them

prefer concrete specific rules and regulations.
• LEVEL THREE: POSTCONVENTIONAL MORALITY

• During adolescence, many begin to think abstractly

and reflectively.

• They are flexible in their reasoning and base their

judgments on abstract, personal principles that may
or may not agree with society’s laws.

• They challenge conventional rules and thinking,

personalizing morality.
• Stage five: Social Contract Orientation recognizes
that good is determined by socially agreed upon
standards of individual rights.

• Rules are necessary for social order, but rules can

be changed if the social contract is not mutually
beneficial.
• Stage six: Morality of Individual Principles and
Conscience includes abstract thinking about
higher internal moral principles such as equality,
justice and human dignity.

• Laws become somewhat arbitrary and what is

right is what is right to the individual in the
specific instance according to personal ethics and
conscience.