Theories of development

1
Theories of development

• Questions to ask for any theory of development
• What changes?
• What do the changes look like?
• How is the change brought about? (what are the
  conditions of change, what are the mechanisms)?
• Source
• Trautner, H-M. (1978)Lehrbuch der
  Entwicklungspsychologie. Band 1. Göttingen
  Hogrefe.

2
Pre-theoretic conceptions of children and
childhood

• Childhood was not a qualitively different stage
  but only quantitatively different the child was
  conceived of as small adult
• Examples from Velasquez (17th century, Spain)?

http//quizzart.free.fr/velasquez_files/Meninas4_d
etail.jpg
http//gemaelde-archiv.gemaelde-webshop.de/gemaeld
e/std2/diego-velazquez-portraet-der-infantin-marga
rit-09998.jpg
http//home.comcast.net/eric.durbrow/images/_nb_m
ediaFrames/garcia0ffffff.jpg
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Beginning interest in child development

• Early diary studies on infants and children shed
  light on child-rearing practices of those times
• 17th century King Louis XIII of France on
  whipping children (France)?
• 18th century Dietrich Tiedemann on swaddling
  babies (Germany)?
• 19th century Charles Darwin on the limitations
  of observation (England)?
• Q Why was Darwin interested in development?

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ExcursionEvolution and Development
There is no sharp terminological boundary between
both notions Evolution is the development of a
species (phylogeny) development means
development of individuals (ontogeny)?
Darwin and William Erasmus, his eldest son

• They can both be viewed retro- and prospectively
• Difference Evolution is open-ended whereas in
  development often a final state, a state of
  maturity, or steady state, is implied. But this
  is not mandatory.

http//www.sciencecrawler.net/images/description/C
harles_and_William_Darwin.jpg
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Pre-theoretic views on infancy

• Babies and infants were not held capable of
• True perceptual experiences (vision, hearing).
  William James (1890) called the infants' world
  one great blooming, buzzing confusion
• Learning, Memory, Discrimination capabilities,
  language
• Infants were merely passive reflex bundles.
• In 1957, Fantz conducted the first simple visual
  discrimination task with infants, showing that
  they preferred a complex visual pattern over a
  simple gray picture. From that time on, serious
  research in many sensory areas started.

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Theories of development
We will have a historical look at 4 classical
(classes of) theories of development, with an
emphasis on the fourth -biogenetic -psychoanalyti
c -learning -cognitive
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Biogenetic developmental theories

• These are the oldest developmental theories
• The developmental process is primarily
  genetically driven
• Development is tantamount to a biologically
  pre-programmed unfolding (metaphor of 'paper
  unfolding'). Development is an endogenous
  process.
• Bodily development is a paradigmatic domain,
  e.g., bodily organs grow and differentiate in
  their structures and functions according to a
  maturational plan, a genetic blueprint

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Biogenetic developmental theories of unfolding

• Development can be discontinuous
• Development occurs in phases or stages
• Development is irreversible
• Biogenetic approaches are interested in typical
  development, not inter-individual differences
• Karl Bühler Hetzer Gesell, Kroh

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The biogenetic law (Ernst Haeckel, 1866)?

• Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny

Gill slits
tail
http//de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Haeckel
http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recapitulation_theory
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Rejection of Haeckel's law

• Modern biology rejects the literal form of
  Haeckel's theory. While for instance the
  phylogeny of humans as having evolved from fish
  through reptiles to mammals is accepted (though
  'reptiles' are now known to be a composite group
  and the ancestors of mammals split off before
  today's reptiles evolved), no cleanly defined
  "fish", "reptile" and "mammal" stages of human
  embryonal development can be discerned. There is
  no linearity in the development.

http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recapitulation_theory
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SummaryBiogenetic developmental theories of
growth

• Development is determined endogenously
• Development is a continuous process
• Looking a growth curves of development

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Psycho-analytic developmental theories

• Interaction between endogenous and exogenous
  determinants
• Focus on the development of personality (the
  'Ego')?
• Stress, drives and affects as basis of human
  action
• In this process, parts of the 'Id' develop into
  the 'Ego' and later the 'Super-Ego'.
• The development of the personality is an
  adaptation process towards socialization and
  control over the drive

http//www.leksikon.org/images/freud.jpg
13
Psycho-analytic developmental theories

• Development is change in drives the
  psycho-sexual organization of the individual
  develops from
• Oral (0-1yr)?
• Anal (1-3 yrs)?
• Phallic (3-6 yrs)?
• Latency (6-11yrs)?
• Genital (11-20 yrs)?
• The unfolding of the libido is determined by
  physiological maturational processes but
  interacts with the environment, e.g., in
  determining the objects at which the libido is
  directed in each phase

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Learning theory

• Primarily exogenous determination of development
• Goes back to empiricism (learning through
  experience) and associationism (relating stimuli
  S and reactions R)?
• Development is a social learning process
• Learning principles (forming associations,
  classical and operant conditioning) shapes
  behaviour
• Interest in externally observable behaviour (R)
  (motor movements, verbal utterances) in relation
  to stimuli (S) in the environment.
• Dollard, Bijou, Bear, Miller, Sears

15
Learning theory

• Bijou and Baer development is the progressive
  change in the way a biologically changing
  organism interacts with a constantly changing
  environment

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Cognitive Developmental Theories

• Assume an interaction between genetically driven
  maturational processes and experience.
• Focus on the ordered stages of cognitive
  processing and structure-building.
• Development is the progressive construction of
  knowledge, captured in cognitive representations

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Jean Piaget (1896-1980)?
Piaget's approach is called épistémologie
génétique (genetic epistemology) where
genetic is ambiguous in French
between hereditary and developmental. A
modern translation would be developmental
theory of knowledge (Campbell 2006)? More
recently, Piaget has been related to
constructivism. Constructivism holds that the
child actively constructs knowledge through the
interaction with the environment.
genetic (i) hereditary (ii) developmental Epist
emology Theory of knowledge
http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget
http//hubcap.clemson.edu/campber/piaget.html
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Genetic epistemology

• Jean Piaget has tried to discover how children's
  knowledge grows in a manner consistent with three
  evolutionary processes
• individual cognitive functioning growth
• (last phase of ontogeny)?
• biological evolution of the species
• (the evolution of the first human in
  particular) (phylogeny)?
• scientific evolution (in human history)

http//www.ensc.sfu.ca/people/grad/brassard/person
al/THESIS/node35.html
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Staged development

• Each stage is characterized by a general
• cognitive structure that affects the entire
  thinking of the child
• 1. Sensorimotor stage from birth to age 2
  years
• 2. Preoperational stage from ages 2 to 7
• 3. Concrete operational stage from ages 7 to
• 4. Formal Operational stage after age 11
• Stages are a result of individual equilibratory
  construction, not due to an innate teleology of
  development (Meadows, 1993 204)?
• Stages are universal and invariant

http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget
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Piaget's stage concept of development

• Micro-cycles
• 1. simple reflexes
• 2. simple habits (primary circular reaction)?
• 3.active repetitions (secondary circ react)?
• 4.coordination of (3) and application to novel
  situations
• 5. Active experimentation (tertiary circ react)?
• 6.Making up novel action patterns through
  internalized actions

• 1. Sensori-motor intelligence (0-2 yrs)
• Learning occurs mainly at the perceptual and
  motor level.
• The infant develops separate representations of
  self and object. Cognitive representations emerge
  at the end of this stage
• Typical tasks A-not-B-task, object permancence

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Piaget's stage concept of development

• 2. Pre-operational (2-7 yrs)?
• Logical reasoning processes are still bound to
  concrete processes
• Child entertains concepts of animism,
  egocentrism, and irreversibility of processes
• Typical task failing on conservation
  (invariance)?

• 3. concrete operational (7-11 yrs)?
• Logical reasoning becomes independent from
  concrete processes
• Representations become symbolic and flexible
  (reversibility)?
• Typical tasks mastering of conservation tasks

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Piaget's stage concept of development

• 3. Formal operation (11- 15 yrs and further)?
• Abstract thought, operation on operations
• Hypothetic-deductive thought
• Understanding of coincidence and probablity
• Adolescent as scientist
• Typical task scientific experimentation and
  reasoning

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Mechanisms of development

• Cognitive development is a process of
  Equilibration, i.e., the endogenous
  self-regulatory tendency of the organism to
  maintain or retain a dynamical cognitive
  equilibrium.
• Equilibrium balances structure preservation
  (assimilation) and environmental adaptation
  (accomodation).
• Assimilation adapting external structure, e.g.,
  of a task, to my own internal structural R ah,
  here's another X (Meadow, 1993 198)?
• Accomodation changing my internal structural
  representation according to the perceived
  structure of the environment
• Assimilation and accomodation are twin
  functional invariants (Meadow, 1993 199)?

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Critiques of Piaget

• Today, Piaget's theory is mostly of historical
  importance
• For all of his seminal experiments is has been
  shown that infants and children can solve them
  earlier than Piaget thought (object permanence,
  A-not-B-task, etc.)?
• Piaget's main research method (the clinical
  method of inquiring the child on a certain
  problem) has been shown to be ecologically
  invalid and to drastically underestimate
  children's actual understanding
• Piaget's conception of language development
  (being dependent on the sensori-motor phase) has
  been vehemently rebutted by Chomsky
• Piattelli-Palmarini, M. (1980) (Ed.), Language
  and learning The debate between Jean Piaget and
  Noam Chomsky. Cambridge, MA Harvard University
  Press.

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Critiques of Piaget

• Dynamical and connectionist researchers have
  shown that Piaget's stage concept of development
  does not imply any logical nor innate ordering
  rather, stages emerge spontaneously in the course
  of development, due to the overall dynamics of
  the cognitive system.
• van Geert, P. (1993) A dynamic systems model of
  cognitive growth competition and support under
  limited resource conditions. In L.B. Smith E.
  Thelen (Eds.), A dynamic systems approach to
  development. Applications, 265-331. Cambridge,
  MA MIT Press.
• Elman, J., Bates, E., Johnson, M.H.,
  Karmiloff-Smith, A., Parisi, D., and Plunkett, K.
  (1996) Rethinking innateness. A connectionist
  perspective on development. Cambridge, MA MIT
  Press.

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Merits of Piaget

• Still, Piaget counts as the founder of modern
  developmental cognitive psychology by conducting
  first empirical studies on infants and children
• Piaget's concept of cognitive self-regulation has
  been developed further in Dynamic Systems Theory
  (DST), van Geert (1998)?
• The dependence of formal thought and language on
  concrete and bodily processes has been revived in
  recent concepts of embodied and embedded
  cognition
• van Geert, P. (1998) A dynamic systems model of
  basic developmental mechanisms Piaget, Vygotsky,
  and beyond. Psychological Review, 105, 634-677.

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Who is this?
Who is this?
And who is that?
Piaget's fate was thateach and every of
hisexperiments was overthrown byhis
successors object permanence egocentrism cons
ervation stage model...

• Was he therefore a fool?
• NO, he was and will
• remain one of the
• greatest develop-
• mental psychologists

We are dwarfs standing on the shoulders of a
giant
http//www.meiringen-hasliberg.ch/cmsfiles/muggesh
op/zwerg.jpg
http//mysite.verizon.net/donrae19/images/Piaget2
0walking.jpg
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Reflected praise of Piaget

• Piagetian theory was a tremendous intellectual
  achievement, and for all its faults, and despite
  all the idiocies committed on data by people who
  misunderstood what was important about it, has
  shaped the field in quite remarkable ways. (p
  198)?
• Meadow, S. (1993) The child as thinker. The
  development and acquisition of cognition in
  childhood. Florence, KY Routledge.

29
Video clip on Jean Piaget and on a conservation
task
http//video.google.com/videoplay?docid-901486559
2046332725
http//learningspaces.org/n/papers/piaget2.mov
30
Lev S. Vygotsky (1896 - 1934)?

• Social development theory of learning
• Social interaction profoundly influences and
  leads cognitive development. Biological and
  cultural development do not occur in isolation
• Every function in the childs cultural
  development appears twice first, between people
  (interpsychological) and then inside the child
  (intrapsychological). This applies equally to
  voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to
  the formation of ideas. All the higher functions
  originate as actual relationships between
  individuals (Vygotsky, 1978, p.57).
  http//starfsfolk.khi.is/solrunb/vygotsky.htm
• Basically, the child is a social being
• Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind and society The
  development of higher mental processes.
  Cambridge, MA Harvard University Press.

http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vygotsky
http//chd.gmu.edu/immersion/knowledgebase/theoris
ts/constructivism/vygotsky.htm
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The nature of development

• Development as an open-ended process, not a
  product
• Lifelong learning, hence no stages
• Development is promoted by play

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Zone of proximal development

• An individual can attain a higher level of
  performance than his actual level would permit,
  under the social guidance of another, more adept,
  person
• The ZPD is "the distance between the actual
  development level as determined by independent
  problem solving and the level of potential
  development as determined through problem solving
  under adult guidance or in collaboration with
  more capable peers" (Vygotsky, 1978)?
• Related to this concept is the notion of
  'scaffolding', i.e., making avaible a behavioral
  or cognitive frame within which the developing
  individual can complete an action otherwise not
  attainable.

http//chd.gmu.edu/immersion/knowledgebase/theoris
ts/constructivism/vygotsky.htm
33
Thought and language

• Thought and language are interrelated.
• Thoughts, mental constructs, and metacognitive
  awareness arise from speech (overt and internal)?
• Language is primary and cognition is secondary
  (as opposed to Piaget, for whom cognition was
  primary and language secondary)?
• Language can be used to solve cognitive problems
  (e.g., through talking to oneself during problem
  solving), for planning tasks and controlling ones
  own behavior
• Language guides action
• Above all, language has a social function

http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vygotsky
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Video clip on Lev Vygotsky
http//video.google.com/videoplay?docid6343767525
89779456
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Conclusion

• The theories of development reviewed so far have
  mainly historical relevance. While they are
  cherished for having set the stage for
  contemporary theorizing, they have been almost
  completely abandoned, on methodological and
  empirical grounds
• Noone, seriously, conducts developmental research
  in a Piagetian or Vygotskian perspective anymore
• However, the classical controversies, which they
  tried to tackle already, have stayed with us ...

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The main Controversies in cognitive development

• Nature-nurture
• Stability vs. change state vs. process
• Mechanisms of change
• Representational vs. non-representational
  approaches

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Novel theories of development

• Connectionist theories of development
• Karmiloff-Smith, redescription, beyond modularity
• Dynamic systems theory (Thelen, Smith)?
• New exponents of old paradigms Spelke ?
  nativism
• Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (Mark H.
  Johnson)
• Neuroconstructivism (Mareschal et al.)?