Psychodynamic Theory

1
Theories of Development

• Psychodynamic Theory
• Epigenetic Theory
• Genetic Epistemology
• Cognitive-Mediation Theory
• Individual Psychology
• Social-Cognitive Learning Theory

2
Genetic Epistemology

• Piaget proposed that
• Physical bodies can adapt to the world
• Humans build mental structures to aid adaptation
• Humans interactive with their environment
• Children think differently at various points in
  their development

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Genetic Epistemology

• Creator Jean Piaget
• Genetic Epistemology
• The study of the development of knowledge
• Action Knowledge
• Piagets theory is based on a stage approach to
  development.
• All children pass through a series of four
  universal stages in a fixed order from birth
  through adolescence
• Sensorimotor
• Substage 1
• Substage 2
• Substage 3
• Substage 4
• Substage 5
• Substage 6
• Preoperational
• Concrete operational
• Formal operational

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Genetic Epistemology

• Movement from one stage to the next occurs
• When a child reaches an appropriate level of
  physical maturation
• Is exposed to relevant experiences.
• If the child fails to receive such experiences
  then they are assumed to be incapable of reaching
  their cognitive potential.
• The quality of these experiences is crucial.
• Coined the term Schemes/schemas to describe the
  basic building blocks of the way we understand
  the world.
• Class room scheme or restaurant schema in
  adulthood.

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Genetic Epistemology

• Assimilation the process in which people
  understand an experience in terms of their
  current stage of cognitive development and way of
  thinking. You incorporate and understand the
  world around you by accepting it using existing
  ways of thinking.
• Accommodation changes in existing ways of
  thinking that occur in response to encounters
  with new stimuli or events. Basically you modify
  your current existing schemes with new
  contradictory knowledge.
• Assimilation and accommodation are the two sides
  of adaptation
• Piagets term for what most of us would call
  learning.

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Genetic Epistemology

• Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years)
• Infant uses senses and motor abilities to
  understand the world
• Beginning with reflexes and ending with complex
  combinations of skills.
• Learning Process
• Primary Circular Reactions (1-4 months) A
  behavior/reactions is novel or feels good so they
  do it again, and again, and again.
• Personal behavior such as sucking, making bubbles
  with mouth.
• Secondary Circular Reactions Involves an act
  that extends out towards the environment.
• She may squeeze a rubber ducky and it goes
  quack so she does it again and again and again.
• Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-24 months) Same
  cycle as secondary circular reactions except with
  variation.
• Characteristic Behaviors
• Object Permanence Develops the ability to
  recognize that just because an object is not
  visible it does not mean it is not there.
• Mental Representation (18 months) The ability to
  hold an image in their mind for a period beyond
  the immediate experience develops.
• Goal Directed behavior Behavior in which several
  schemes are combined and coordinated to generate
  a single act to solve a problem.

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Sensorimotor Substage One

• Basic Reflexes (Birth-1 month)
• Children enter the world equipped with a set of
  inherited action patterns and reflexes through
  which they experience their environment.
• The intellectual development of the child begins
  through these actions.
• This is how the child acquires knowledge about
  its surroundings.
• Infants are restricted in what they can know.
• Behaviors and schemata are limited.
• Adaptation to their surroundings through
  assimilation and accommodation begins in this
  stage.

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Sensorimotor Substage Two

• Primary Circular Reactions (1-4 months)
• The knowledge and intelligence of the infant now
  extends beyond the innate behaviors they were
  born with.
• New acquisitions have only come about through the
  accommodation of schemata.
• Show the first signs of learning.
• Modifying their reflexes as a result of their
  environment.
• Come about by a circular means
• Actions that are at first random and activate a
  reflex are attempted again to try and induce the
  experience again.
• The signs of intentionality have appeared.
• Object permanence begins to develop and the
  active search for a hidden object begins.

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Sensorimotor Substage Three

• Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8 months)
• Secondary circular reactions are the first
  acquired adaptations of behaviors that are not
  reflexive.
• An infant in this stage may accidentally cause
  something interesting to happen and then seek to
  re-create the happy event.
• The interesting events in this case are located
  in the external world.
• In primary circular reactions the interesting
  events are occurring within the body.
• Does not understand the aspects of cause and
  effect.
• Will shift through many behaviors for each
  activity.

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Sensorimotor Substage Four

• Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactions
  (8-12 months)
• Actions from previous stage continue to develop.
• Difference is that the need now precedes the
  act.
• Intentionality occurs in interactions with the
  environment.
• Infant is moving towards goal directed behavior.
• Understanding of cause and effect relationships
  has come into being in the childs world.

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Sensorimotor Substage Five

• Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18 months)
• Still characterized by a means/ends
  differentiation.
• The infants are no longer restricted to the
  application of previously established schemata to
  obtain a goal.
• Can make the necessary alterations to their
  schemata to solve problems
• Reflects a process of active experimentation.
• Differences in cognition coincide with improved
  locomotive abilities.
• Causal inferences are still unavailable to the
  infant
• Must see an action occur before it has any
  understanding of the causal relationship.

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Sensorimotor Substage Six

• Invention of new means through mental
  combinations
• (18-24 months)
• Symbolic function and mental representation first
  appear during this stage.
• This runs parallel with the development of
  language.
• Children begin to string words together in pairs.
• The origins of sentences.

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Piagets 6 Substages of Sensorimotor Development
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Genetic Epistemology

• At the end of sensorimotor stage
• Object permanence is understood
• Infant understands a differentiation between self
  and world
• At around 5.5 and 6.5 months of age, an infant
  can understand simple causal factors.
• Piagets work is criticized as
• Being too vague
• Underestimating infant ability
• Being based mostly on his childrens infancy

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Genetic Epistemology

• Preoperational Stage (2-7 years)
• Because the child can now use mental
  representations they are now capable of
  pretending
• Develops to the use of symbols.
• Symbols Thing that represents something else.
• Drawings
• Written language
• Spoken word can represent a dog
• Characteristic Behaviors
• Creative Play Checkers are cookies, papers are
  dishes, a box is a table and so on.
• It is at this time that there develops a clear
  definition of the past and future.
• Egocentric play The child sees things pretty
  much from one point of view His/Her Own!
• Because of this they tend to center on one aspect
  of any problem or communication at a time.
• They are unable to see that there are multiple
  solutions to a problem and that mommie can be
  both
• Mom
• Dads wife

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Genetic Epistemology

• Concrete Operations Stage (7-11 years)
• Operations refers to logical operations or
  principles we use when
• solving problems.
• Child can now not only use symbols to represent
• Can also manipulate those symbols logically.
• Characteristic Behaviors
• Law of Conservation (age 7) Most children
  develop the ability to conserve number, length,
  and liquid volume.
• Quantity remains the same despite changes in
  appearance.
• Reversibility If you mash up a ball of clay and
  cut it up into pieces it will still form back
  into the same ball if the pieces are mashed back
  together.

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Piagets Conservation Task
Child is asked if (A) and (C) have the
same amount of liquid. The preoperational child
says no and will point to (C) as having more
liquid than (A).
Two identical beakers shown to child, and
then experimenter pours liquid from (B) into (C)
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Some Dimensions of Conservation Number, Matter,
and Length
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Genetic Epistemology

• Formal Operations Stage (12 years)
• The concrete operations child has a hard time
  applying his new-found logical abilities to
  non-concrete (abstract) events.
• Characteristic Behaviors
• Hypothetical Thinking The ability to think
  abstractly which characterizes adult thinking.

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Genetic Epistemology

• Information-Processing approaches Seeks to
  identify the way that individuals take in, use,
  and store information.
• Encoding Information is initially recorded in a
  form usable to memory.
• Storage Placement of material into memory.
• Retrieval Material in memory storage is located,
  brought into awareness, and used.
• __________________________________________________
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• Infantile Amnesia Lack of memory for experiences
  that occurred prior to 3 years of age.