LESSON 3: THEORIES OF LIFESPAN DEVELOPMENT

• PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT THEORY

  Erikson’s Eight Psychosocial Stages

  KEY CONCEPTS

  • Epigenetic Principle
  • Psychosocial Stages
  • Crisis and Ego Development
  • Ego Syntonic and Ego Dystonic
  • Life Themes and Adaptation
  • Continuity and Change
• Life span approach - Began in the 1950s with the work of Erik Erikson
• Life span approach - Influenced by Freudian ideas.
• Life span approach - Gained popularity due to increased life expectancy, which sparked interest in the psychosocial changes occurring from adolescence to old age.
• Life span approach - Contributed significantly to the exploration of psychological development across the entire lifespan.
• The Eight (8) stages of a man: 

  Stage 1: Basic Trust versus Basic Mistrust

  Stage 2: Autonomy versus Shame and Doubt

  Stage 3: Initiative versus Guilt

  Stage 4: Industry versus Inferiority

  Stage 5: Identity versus Role Confusion

  Stage 6: Intimacy versus Isolation

  Stage 7: Generativity versus Stagnation

  Stage 8: Integrity versus Despair
• Strengths of Psychosocial Development

  • Broad Application Across Lifespan and Environments: "The expanded radius of environment proposed by Erikson... fit well with a renewed interest in person-in-environment."
• Strengths of psychosocial development "Subsequent focus on adaptation of the conflict-free ego led to a more positive view that mastery could be achieved despite a struggle against tremendous odds." 

  Emphasis on Ego Strength and Positive Outcomes:
• Weakness of psychosocial development

  • Cultural and Demographic Limitations: "Erikson's early writings suffer from a restricted and culturally biased view of the environment... portrayed minorities as deficient by European American standards." 
• weakness of psychosocial development

  Overemphasis on Fixed Developmental Stages: Erikson's assumption that the individuated, autonomous self represented the norm for healthy psychosocial development has since been found to contain cultural biases.
• KEY CONCEPTS OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT THEORY

  • Schema
  • Adaptation
  • Assimilation
  • Accommodation:
  • Equilibration
• Cognitive development - not solely related to acquiring knowledge, but instead includes their need to build or develop a mental model of their surrounding world
• Sensorimotor Intelligence - Infants and toddlers in this stage garner knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating objects, as seen in their basic reflexes, senses, and motor responses.
• Preoperational Thinking - Emergence of language development, and children begin engaging in dramatic play
• Preoperational thinking - Characterized by symbolic ability, lack of animism, and egocentrism
• Concrete operational thinking - Children begin to have more grasp of logic, and can better represent their ideas. They can also do academic tasks easier.
• Concrete operational thinking - Characterized by  the ability to understand concert things, solving complex problems, and classification
•  Formal operational thinking - The child starts to understand reason beyond tangible events, and finally includes abstract or hypothetical concepts.
• Formal operational thinking - Characterized by ability to deal with abstracts such as Math.
• Strengths of cognitive development

  • Active Role of Children in their Learning
  • Identification of Developmental Milestones
• Weaknesses of cognitive development

  • Lack of consideration for the effect of social setting and culture
  • Age Generalizations
• Ecological - Individual collective interaction with the surrounding environment. 
• Ecological - Developments reflect the influence of five environmental systems on the life of the person.
• Microsystem - Immediate environment of an individual
• Microsystem - Family, peers, teachers
• Microsystem - Family dynamics contribute to shaping an individual's behavior, beliefs, and values
• Mesosystem - Interaction between different microsystems
• Mesosystem - Family and religious institutions
• Exosystem - Indirect influences on individual development, encapsulating broader social and environmental contexts.
• Exosystem - Community resources, government policies, availability of social services
• Macrosystem - Relates the child’s development to cultural elements
• Macrosystem - Interaction between an individual and the environment. Ideologies, attitudes, social conditions.
• Chronosystem - Role of time in shaping an individual's development.
• Chronosystem - Historical events, personal experience, major life transitions
• Chronosystem - Societal and cultural changes over time can influence an individual's development