Theory & Research

Chapter 2

© 2009 by the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc 1

Guideposts for Study

1. What purposes do theories serve, and what are

the two theoretical issues on which developmental
scientists differ?
2. What are five theoretical perspectives on human
development and their representative theories?
3. How do developmental scientists study people,
and what are the advantages and disadvantages
of each research method?
4. What ethical problems may arise in research on
humans?
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 Basic Theoretical Terms

• Theory
• A set of logically related concepts that seek to
describe and explain behavior and to predict what
kinds of behavior might occur under specific
conditions
• Provides groundwork for hypotheses
• Hypotheses
• Tentative explanations that can be tested by
further research
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 Theories of Development:
Is Development Active or Reactive?

● Mechanistic Model: Passive

 Locke: tabula rasa
 Children are ‘blank slates on
which society writes’
 People are machines reacting to
environment

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 Theories of Development:
Is Development Active or Reactive?

● Organismic Model: Active

 Rousseau: ‘noble savages’
 Children set their own
development in motion
 People initiate events,
don’t just react

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Nature vs Nurture (Heredity vs
environment) –

• Some scientists think that

people behave as they do
according to genetic
predispositions." This is known
as the "nature" theory of human
behavior. Other scientists
believe that people think and
behave in certain ways because
they are taught to do so. This is
known as the "nurture" theory of
human behavior.
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Is development active or
passive

• Mechanistic model –
(passive)- that people
passively react to
environmental influences-
if we understand the
influences we will
understand the behaviour

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Is development active or
passive

• Organismic Model –
(active) We cannot
necessarily predict
individual’s responses to
their environment.
• People make choices and
that are not always
predictable
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Five Major Perspectives

• Psychoanalytic
• Learning
• Cognitive
• Contextual
• Evolutionary/sociobiological

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Freud’s Psychosexual Theory

• Psychoanalytic
• Unconscious forces motivate
human behavior
• Psychoanalysis: Therapy that
gives insight into unconscious
emotional conflicts

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 Freudian Parts of Personality

• Id
• Pleasure Principle
• Ego
• Reality Principle
• Superego
• Follows rules of society

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Psychoanalytic Perspective

• Freud's Id
• The id is the only
component of
personality that is
present from birth. This
aspect of personality is
entirely unconscious and
includes of the
instinctive and primitive
behaviors.

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Psychoanalytic Perspective

• Freud's Id
• The id is driven by the
pleasure principle, which
strives for immediate
gratification of all desires,
wants, and needs. If these
needs are not satisfied
immediately, the result is a
state anxiety or tension.

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Psychoanalytic Perspective

• Freud's EGO
• The ego is the component of
personality that is responsible
for dealing with reality.
According to Freud, the ego
develops from the id and
ensures that the impulses of the
id can be expressed in a
manner acceptable in the real
world. The ego functions in both
the conscious, preconscious,
and unconscious mind.

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Psychoanalytic Perspective

• Freud's SUPER EGO

• he superego is the aspect of
personality that holds all of our
internalized moral standards
and ideals that we acquire
from both parents and
society--our sense of right and
wrong. The superego provides
guidelines for making
judgments. According to
Freud, the superego begins to
emerge at around age five.

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The Id the Ego and the
SuperEgo

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Freudian Psychosexual Stages
Refer to Handout as well

Stage Age Unconscious Conflict

Birth to about15
Oral Sucking & feeding
months
12-18 months to
Anal Potty training
3 years
Phallic 3 to 6 years Attachment to parents

Latency 6 years to puberty Socialization

Genital Puberty to adult Mature adult sexuality

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Erickson’s Psychosocial Theory

• ‘Neo-Freudian’
• Emphasized influence of society
• Development is lifelong, not just during
childhood
• Each of eight stages of
development involves a ‘crisis’
• Crisis resolution gains a ‘virtue’
•  Infancy: trust vs. mistrust

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 ERIK ERIKSON – Psychosocial
Development
• See handout also stages are described on page 32

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Learning Theory

• Learning
• Long-lasting change in
behavior, based on
experience

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 Learning Theory:
Behaviorism

• We respond based on whether the

situation is:
•Painful or Threatening

•Pleasurable

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 Behaviorism:
Classical Conditioning

• John Watson: Conditioning of Fear

• Orphan boy ‘Little Albert’
• 1. Albert liked the furry rat
• 2. Rat presented with loud CRASH!
• 3. Albert cried because of noise
• 4. Eventually, site of rat made
Albert cry

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 Learning- Classical Conditioning

• Classical conditioning:
• is the process of reflex learning—investigated by
Pavlov—through which an unconditioned stimulus
(e.g. food) which produces an unconditioned
response (salivation) is presented together with a
conditioned stimulus (a bell), such that the
salivation is eventually produced on the presentation
of the conditioned stimulus alone, thus becoming a
conditioned response.   

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Learning- Classical Conditioning

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 Behaviorism:
Operant Conditioning

• Individual learns the consequences of

‘operating’ on the environment
• Learned relationship between behavior
and its consequences
• B.F. Skinner formulated original ideas by
working with animals, then applied them
to humans

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Operant Conditioning:
Reinforcement

• Increases likelihood of behavior

reoccurring
• Positive: Giving a reward
• Candy for finishing a task
• Negative: Removing something aversive
• No chores for getting an A+ on homework

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Operant Conditioning:
Punishment

• Decreases likelihood of behavior

reoccurring
• Positive: Adding something aversive
• Getting scolded
• Negative: Removing something pleasant
• Taking away car keys
• Getting a ‘time out’

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Social Learning Theory

• Albert Bandura: Development is

“bidirectional”
• Reciprocal determinism—person acts on
world as the world acts on the person

• Observational Learning or
Modeling
• Children choose models to imitate

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 Social Cognitive Theory:
An Update to Modeling

• Emphasizes cognitive processes as central

to development
• Beginning of ‘self-efficacy’
• People observe models and learn ‘chunks’ of
behavior
 Imitating dance steps of teacher
 ….AND other students

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Jean Piaget
Cognitive Stage Theory

• The Sensorimotor Period (birth to 2 years)

• During this time, Piaget said that a child's
cognitive system is limited to motor reflexes at
birth, but the child builds on these reflexes to
develop more sophisticated procedures. They
learn to generalize their activities to a wider
range of situations and coordinate them into
increasingly lengthy chains of behaviour.

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Jean Piaget
Cognitive Stage Theory

• PreOperational Thought (2 to 6 or 7 years)

• At this age, according to Piaget, children
acquire representational skills in the areas
mental imagery, and especially language. They
are very self-oriented, and have an egocentric
view; that is, preoperational children can use
these representational skills only to view the
world from their own perspective.

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 Jean Piaget
Cognitive Stage Theory
• Concrete Operations (6/7 to 11/12)
• As opposed to Preoperational children, children in the
concrete operations stage are able to take another's
point of view and take into account more than one
perspective simultaneously. They can also represent
transformations as well as static situations. Although
they can understand concrete problems, Piaget would
argue that they cannot yet perform on abstract
problems, and that they do not consider all of the
logically possible outcomes.

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Jean Piaget
Cognitive Stage Theory
• Formal Operations (11/12 to adult)
• Children who attain the formal operation stage
are capable of thinking logically and abstractly.
They can also reason theoretically. Piaget
considered this the ultimate stage of development,
and stated that although the children would still
have to revise their knowledge base, their way of
thinking was as powerful as it would get
• The end.

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 Piagetian Cognitive Growth:
Organization

A tendency to create complex cognitive

structures, or ‘schemes’
Schemes
Organized patterns of behavior used to think
and act in a situation
Infants suck bottles AND thumbs

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 Piagetian Cognitive Growth:
Adaptation

• How children handle familiar information

• 2 processes:
• Assimilation: Incorporating new information
into existing schemes
• Accommodation: Changing structures to
include new information
• These steps are balanced through
Equilibration
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Sociocultural Theory

• Lev Vygotsky
• Stresses children’s active
interaction with social environments
• Zone of proximal
development (ZPD)
• Scaffolding

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 Information Processing
Approach

• Analyzes processes involved in

perceiving information
• Helps children be aware of their own
mental strategies
…..and strategies for
improvement!

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Information-Processing Approach:

Computer-Based Models

• Infers what happens between

stimulus and response
• Often uses flow charts to define
steps of processing that people use
• Unlike Piaget, views
development as continuous

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Information Processing Approach:
Neo-Piagetian Theories

• Focus on specific concepts,

strategies, and skills
• Number concepts
• Comparisons of ‘more’
and ‘less’

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Contextual approach

• Development can be understood only in its

social contexts
• Urie Bronfenbrenner
• Describes range of interacting influences that
affect development
• Identifies contexts that stifle or promote growth
• Home, classroom, neighborhood

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Bronfenbrenner-pg 43
(Contextual)

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Evolutionary/Sociobiological
Theory

• Uses Darwin’s evolutionary theory

• Survival of the fittest
• Animals with traits suited to environment survive
• These adaptive traits are passed on to offspring
• Natural selection
• As environments change, traits change in
adaptiveness

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Evolutionary Theory:
Ethology

• Study of distinctive behaviors that have

adaptive value
• Innate behaviors evolved to increase
survival odds
• Think of imprinting
• Squirrels’ burying of nuts

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 Evolutionary Psychology

• How biology and environment interact to

produce behavior and development
● Humans unconsciously strive for personal
survival and genetic legacy
 Result: A development of mechanisms that
evolved to solve problems
 Morning sickness actually protects fetuses

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 Research Methods

Quantitative Qualitative
• Objectively Non-numerical data
measurable data  Feelings
 Standardized tests  Beliefs
 Physiological
changes

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• Quantitative change is
a change in quantity or
amount. This can be as
simple as a change in
measuring a change in
height or weight or as
complex as counting
social interactions or
counting words in a
child’svocabulary

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• Quantitative change
The major types of
qualitative methods
include observation,
self-reports, and the
case study. Researchers
often choose to view
behavior directly through
some kind of systematic
observation.

47
 Scientific Method:
Quantitative Research

1. Identify problem
2. Formulate hypotheses
3. Collect data
4. Analyze data
5. Form conclusions
6. Share findings
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Sampling

• Sample
• A smaller group within the population
• Studying the entire population is
inefficient
• Random Selection
• Each person in population has an equal
chance of being in sample
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Random Sampling

• Random sampling is the

purest form of probability
sampling. Each member of
the population has an
equal and known chance of
being selected.

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Random Sampling

• Simple random sampling is

the basic sampling technique
where we select a group of
subjects (a sample) for study
from a larger group (a
population). Each individual is
chosen entirely by chance and
each member of the population
has an equal chance of being
included in the sample. Every
possible sample of a given
size has the same chance of
selection.

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Random Sampling

• Published information
from Mars Inc States
that plain m&m s are
• 30% brown
• 20% red 20% yellow
• 10% orange
• 10% blue
• 10% green

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Random Sampling

• Therefore any
random sample you
test should
conceivably have
the same results

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Data Collection:
Self-Reports

• Diaries
• Recording daily activities
• Interviews
• Research ask questions about attitudes,
opinions, or behavior
• Can be open-ended or a questionnaire

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Data Collection:
Naturalistic Observation

• ‘People watching’
• Behavior is observed in natural
settings, without interfering
• Limitations
• Can not inform causes of behavior
• Researcher cannot know all possible
influences on behavior

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 Data Collection:
Laboratory Observation

• Behavior observed and recorded in

controlled environment
• More likely to identify and control causal
influences
• Limitation:
• Observer Bias: A researcher’s tendency to
interpret data to fit expectations

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 Behavioral and
Performance Measures

• Objective measures
• Mechanical and electronic devices
• Assessing skills, knowledge, and
abilities
• Heart rate
• Brain activity
• Intelligence tests

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 Meaningful Measures

• Reliable
• Results are consistent from time to time

• Valid
• The test actually measures what it claims
to measure

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 Measures:
Operational Definitions

• Defining abstract ideas in objective

terms
• What is intelligence?
• A score on a test
• Are there different kinds of intelligence?
• Emotional intelligence
• Academic intelligence

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 Social Cognitive
Neuroscience

• Emerging field
• Bridges mind, brain and behavior
• Uses data from:
• Cognitive neuroscience
• Social psychology
• Info-processing approaches

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Research Designs

Type Characteristics Pros Cons

Study of Reduced
Case Study Flexibility
individuals generalizability
Ethnographi Universality of
Study of cultures Observer bias
c phenomena
Positive or Cannot
Enables
Correlational negative
prediction
establish cause
relationships & effect

Controlled Establishes Reduced

Experiment procedures cause & effect generalizability

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Case Studies

• Study of an individual (such as Genie)

• Offer useful in depth information
• Shortcomings
• Not generalizable
• No way to test conclusions

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Ethnographic studies

• Describe patterns that make up a society’s

way of life
• Relationships, customs, beliefs, arts, traditions
• Participant observation
• Subject to observer bias
• Useful in cross-cultural research

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 Correlational Studies

• Stats are recorded to find similarities

between variables for example are children
who watch a certain amount of violent
programming on TV more prone to
aggressive behaviour. The number of
incidents of aggressive behaviour can be
quantified and so can the violent acts on TV.

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 Experiments: Groups

• Experimental
• People who are exposed to the
treatment

• Control
• Similar to the experimental group but
do NOT receive the treatment

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 Experiments: Variables

• Independent
• Experimenter has direct control over

• Dependent
• Something that may or may not
change as result of changes in
independent variable

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 Experiments:
Random Assignment

• Participants have an equal chance of

placement in experimental or control
group(s)
• Helps avoid unintentional differences
between groups

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 Experiments: Location

• Control over cause and effect varies,

depending on location:
• Laboratory – most control
• Field – controlled
• Everyday settings
• Home or school

• Natural – least control

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Research Designs

Cross
People assessed at one point in time
sectional

Longitudinal Same people studied more than once

• Complex combination of cross

sectional and longitudinal
Sequential
• Adds more data than either design
alone
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Designs

• Longitudinal Designs
• Longitudinal designs collect data (usually only one or a few
characteristics) on the same people over an extended
period of time.
• For example, let's say your class in grade 1 was given an
IQ test. If you and all your classmates were again tested
for IQ in grade 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and so on, this would be
considered a longitudinal design.
• The data gathered from longitudinal studies are invaluable
as they assess developmental changes that occur over
time as a result of aging. They also avoid some of the
confounding cohort effects observed in other
developmental designs.

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Ethics

• Balancing benefits or research against

mental and physical risks to participants
• Considerations
• Right to informed consent
• Avoidance of deception
• Right to privacy
• Confidentiality
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Ethics

• Researchers are guided by

• Beneficence
• Respect
• Justice
• Researchers should be sensitive to
participants’ developmental needs and
cultural issues and values

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