Edward Thorndike first introduced operant conditioning although B.F Skinner developed and refined the idea. The idea is mainly concerned with shaping and modifying behaviour. Skinner also worked with animals and rewarded them with food if they did as required. The food reward acted as a positive reinforcement. When animals did not do as Skinner required he subjected them to unpleasant stimuli such as electric shocks. The learning theory influenced how adults shape or modify a child’s behaviour. Be selectively reinforcing behaviour that is wanted, adults can change the way children behave. Operant conditioning is very powerful. It means that if you have a pleasant experience, you are more likely to repeat your behaviour. Piaget (1896-1980)
Jean Piaget was a Swiss zoologist who is widely recognised as having influenced the way young children are taught. He became interested in the way children’s thought processes developed while working on intelligence tests. He noticed that children were routinely giving the same ‘wrong’ answers and became interested in why this happened. Over a period of years he studied children, including keeping a diary of his own children. He discovered that children’s answers were not random but followed by a logical pattern based on conclusions drawn from their own experiences. Piaget called their conclusions schemas. An example of a schema that is common among children, is to believe that everyone lives with a parent figure. For example, a young child might watch an adult break something and comment ‘his mummy will be cross with him!’
Piaget also felt that children as well as learning about their world by developing and adapting schemas, children also seemed to pass through four stages of conceptual development, which linked, to their biological development. He used several tests to show the different stages in the cognitive process. Object permanence at first babies do not have a mental picture of the world. They learn through their senses. This means that if they cannot see an object, they believe that it no longer exists. At around the age of eight months, babies seem to develop the concept of object permanence.
Egocentrism Children under the age of six or seven tend to be ‘self-centred’ in the way they view the world. This does not mean that they are selfish, but that they do not have the concept to understand that – for example, what you can see depends on where you are sitting. Piaget showed this in a test where children were shown three model mountains. A doll was placed different positions and children were asked what they thought the doll could see. Their answers reflected what they were able to see.
Animism Children under they age of six or seven tend to imagine that objects and animals have the same thoughts and feelings as they have. For, example, if a child bumped himself on a table he may say ‘naughty table.’ Conservation Piaget had several test to see if children could understand that even if a material changed shape or form, its other properties would remain the same. Piaget suggested hat most children under six would not be able to conserve but many psychologists have found that younger children are able to conserve.
In his work Piaget identified the child’s four stages of mental growth. In the sensori-motor stage, occurring from birth to two years, the child is concerned with gaining motor control and learning about physical objects. In the preoperational stage, from ages 2 to 7, the child is preoccupied with verbal skills. At this point the child can name objects and reason intuitively. In the concrete operational stage, from ages 7 to 12, the child begins to deal with abstract concepts such as numbers and relationships. Finally, in the formal operational stage, ages 12 to 15, the child begins to reason logically and systematically.
Erikson was a student of Freud and there are a lot of similarities between their theories. Erikson accepted Freud’s stages of psychosexual development and built on them, but also considered that the social environment e.g. parenting and friendships, also affect personality. One of the main differences is that Erikson felt that the stages of development were linked to cognitive and social development rather than led by physical needs. It is interesting to see that Erikson also believed that our personality kept on developing into adulthood.
Erikson considered that there were twelve stages in the development of our personalities. He saw each child as a dilemma and believed that how we coped with the dilemma would affect our personality. His stages of personality development are life stages and are linked to social stages. He considered that at each stage, we face a dilemma or conflict and that, like Freud, the outcome of each stage would determine our personality.
Erikson emphasized developmental change throughout the human life span. In Erikson’s theory, eight stages of development unfold as we go through the life span. Each stage consists of a crisis that must be faced. According to Erikson, this crisis is not a catastrophe but a turning point of increased vulnerability and enhanced potential. The more an individual resolves the crises successfully, the healthier development will be.
If someone who was 15 years old the stage they would be approaching or progressing through the development stage of adolescence. Adolescence is the stage of maturation between childhood and adulthood. The term denotes the period from the beginning of puberty to maturity; it usually starts at about age 14 in males and age 12 in females. The transition to adulthood varies among cultures, but it is generally defined as the time when individuals begin to function independently of their parents.