A. Charles Darwin

1. Evolutionary Theory and the possibility that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”

2. “A biological sketch of an infant” (published in 1877)

James Baldwin (1861 – 1934) – The first to suggest that children’s abilities progress through stages; that children’s

minds are not the same as adults

Alfred Binet (1857 – 1911) – You probably know of him from the Stanford-Binet IQ test. He was interested in

intelligence and how it can be measured.

The extent of plasticity (changeability, malleability of features, qualities, thinking and other aspects of development)

1. adaptive abilities 2. critical periods 3. sensitive periods

A. Features of discontinuity or discontinuous development (after John Flavell, b 1928)

1. qualitative differences 2. simultaneous changes across many domains or areas of development

3. rapid & sudden changes 4. changes in patterns across different areas (domains) seem to form a pattern

B. Features of continuous development

Here development is seen as gradual changes where new abilities are built on old capacities.

I. Psychoanalytic Theories (Freud, Jung) Early 20th C

A. Biological drive underlies 5 stages associated with goal of sexual reproduction

B. Personality concepts of Id, Ego and Superego

II. Erik Erikson: Psycho-Social Theory

A. Ego identity B. Development as a life-long process C. Genetically inevitable

D. Transitions between stage are overlapping

III. Behavior and Social Learning Theories: Development comes from learning; focus is on behavior

A. John Watson (1978-1958) and B. F. Skinner (1904-1990)

1. Behavior changes in response to consequences of actions 2. Rewards and punishments: shaping behavior

3. Skinner’s concept of conditioning (operant conditioning) 4. An e.g. of what it can explain in development

B. Albert Bandura (b. 1925):

Social Learning Theory (people learn from each other via observation, imitation and modeling)

1. Bridge between behaviorist and cognitivist learning theories 2. Examples in children’s development

(3. Bobo doll experiment in VTK for early childhood)

schema, these are basically mental representations and a framework for understanding things.

Assimilation and accommodation – use similar things to explain new things vs adapt new info

B. Lev Vygotsky (1896 – 1934): Socio-cultural Theory of Development

Culture provides tools of intellectual adaptation

Zone of Proximal Development (what child can do on own and what capable of when a more competent person is in

proximity who can facilitate)

Ethology and Evolutionary Theories: come from looking at development in other species; behavior is explained as

contributing to survival of the species.

Behavioral Genetics: A highly interdisciplinary field

1. highly interdisciplinary 2. epigenetic phenomenon 3. heritability studies

Dynamic Systems Theories 1. elements in many, perhaps all, of the theories outlined above influence development

2. there is clearly interaction and interdependency among the various aspects of human development (cognition,

social skills, emotions, culture, personality, etc. 3. beyond a dichotomy of nature & nurture