Human Development
Why the first 7 years matter
The field of developmental psychology offers a vast range of theories and concepts that facilitate our understanding of human growth and learning. By studying these theories, we gain a deep insight into the core motivations of human thought and behaviour. This understanding is essential to gain a higher perspective on the individual and the surrounding society. Besides, the psychological theories of development provide a framework that makes it easier to make sense of this constantly changing world.
When it comes to parenting, it’s often said that there’s no manual, but fortunately, that’s not entirely true. Parenting books, when chosen carefully, can become valuable companions on the parenting journey, helping parents navigate the complexities of parenting with greater ease. A good parenting book, not only helps in understanding the child’s mind but also emphasizes the importance of parent’s self-care and well-being. The parenting books that we’ve compiled in this section are some of the most practical and inspiring works ever written on the subject, offering a wealth of insights and strategies into the joys and difficulties of parenting.
Understanding Bowlby’s Theory of Attachment: A Comprehensive Guide
The psychological theory of attachment was first described by John Bowlby, a psychoanalyst who researched the effects of separation between infants and their parents. Bowlby hypothesized that the extreme behaviours infants engage in to avoid separation from a parent or when reconnecting after a physical separation —like crying, screaming, and clinging—were evolutionary mechanisms. These behaviours make up what Bowlby termed an “attachment behavioural system”, the system that guides us in our patterns and habits of forming and maintaining relationships.
The Six Stages of Moral Development According to Kohlberg
Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development is an expansion of Jean Piaget’s interest in identifying the particularities of ethical evolution. The book The Moral Judgement of the Child summarizes Piaget’s research in rule understanding and social norms revealed through the collective game governed by rules and the analysis of stories made by children regarding “bad deeds”, such as stealing or lying. According to Kohlberg, the ontogenesis of morality has a hierarchical structure with two dimensions: levels and stages.
How Erik Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development Applies to Your Life
Erikson was a stage theorist who took Freud’s controversial theory of psychosexual development and modified it as a psychosocial theory, as he rejected the central importance of the sexual drive in favour of the progressive emergence of identity. Like Freud and many others, Erik Erikson maintained that personality develops in a predetermined order, and builds upon each previous stage. This is called the epigenetic principle.
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When a child is forced to prove himself as capable, results are often disastrous. A child needs love, acceptance, and understanding. He is devastated when confronted with rejection, doubts, and never ending testing.
The Key Principles of Jerome Bruner’s Constructivist Theory
The American psychologist Jerome S. Bruner, strongly influenced by the work of Russian psychologist Lev Vygostky, further developed and applied his ideas in the field of education. Bruner declared that Vygotsky has convinced him about the impossibility of understanding the concept of human development in any other way than as a process of assistance, of collaboration between child and adult, where the adult is taking up the role of a sociocultural mediator. Due to its distinct features, we consider the theory to be a sociocultural constructivist one.
Exploring The Social Genetic Model of Cognitive Development
During the 1970′, at Geneva, a new perspective on cognitive development has begun to emerge. The self-defined school of socio-genetical psychology advanced theories that represented a challenge addressed to the spirit of genetical epistemology.
Willem Doise, Gabriel Mugny and Jean Claude Deschamp, to name but a few of the representatives, declare that social interactions constitute the privileged setting which gives birth to the intellectual acquisitions of the child. There is a direct cause and effect link between social interaction and individual cognitive development.
Understanding Sigmund Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development
Sigmund Freud is regarded as the father of psychodynamic theories, the founder of psychoanalysis and the creator of psychosexual stages theory of human development.
Regardless of the acceptance or disapproval of his ideas about human development, his influence over psychology was enormous. During a puritan era he managed to construct a theory of unconscious motivation, of human sexuality and instinctual aggression.
Passion, like discriminating taste, grows on its use. You more likely act yourself into feeling than feel yourself into action.
Understanding Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development (1935) explains how a child constructs a mental model of the world. He disagreed with the idea that intelligence was a fixed trait, and regarded cognitive development as a process which occurs due to biological maturation and interaction with the environment.
Jean Piaget’s take on learning, viewed as a modification in the state of knowledge, coherently integrates itself in the group of piagetian research on the subject of intelligence development.
Applying Lev Vygotsky’s Theory of Social Development in Education
The work of Lev Vygotsky (1934) has become the foundation of much research and theory in cognitive development over the past several decades, particularly of what has become known as Social Development Theory.
Vygotsky’s theories stress the fundamental role of social interaction in the development of cognition (Vygotsky, 1978), as he believed strongly that community plays a central role in the process of “making meaning.”
