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Our staff of freelance writers includes over 120 experts proficient in Development Psychology, therefore you can rest assured that your assignment will be handled by only top rated specialists. Order your Development Psychology paper at affordable prices! Several learning theories and are going to be looked making connections to illustrate some of the points made. The theories looked at are; Classical Conditioning, Behaviourism, Social Learning and Constructivism.
Classical Conditioning
The main theorist who has looked at Classical Conditioning is Ivan Pavlov. Classical Conditioning is all about learning through association.
Most of Pavlovs experiments were carried out using dogs. Pavlov recognised that dogs that were hungry would salivate at the sight of food, but if a bell was rung before it would have no relevance. Pavlov conducted an experiment in which he rang a bell just before he fed the dogs. After several trials the dogs began to associate the sound of the bell with being fed. They then began to salivate just at the sound of the bell because they knew that they were going to be fed straight after.
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The bell is known as the conditioned stimulus because it is conditional when paired with an unconditioned stimulus. The food in the mouth is known as the unconditioned stimulus because salivating is a natural unconditioned reflex to food. This reflex is known as an unconditioned response because it occurs naturally and cant be controlled. Salivating at the sound of a bell is known as a conditioned response because it can be controlled, as the dogs have learnt to associate the bell with the food and, therefore, would be expecting to be fed.
The Process of Classical Conditioning
ProcedureResponse
Before Conditioned
Food (UCS)Salivation (UCR)
Bell (CS)No relevant response
During Conditioning
Food + Bell
(UCS) (CS)Salivation
(UCR)
After Conditioning
Bell (CS)Salivation (CR)
(Source Malim, Birch and Haywood 16)
Ref. Birch 17 Developmental Psychology page 18
This process can also be used to what is known as discriminate. For example using a bell and a buzzer and only feeding the dogs when one of them is sounded. The dogs would soon learn the sound that they associated with feeding and would only salivate to that particular sound.
Theoretically, the process can reversed by starting to sound the bell without presenting the food. Eventually the dogs would no longer salivate at the sound of a bell.
Studies have also been conducted by Watson who took Pavlovs idea of conditioning and did his own studies on infants. Through his studies he was able to condition children to be afraid of white rats and other fury things. He did this by presenting the rats to children followed by a loud noise. Repeating this several times resulted in the children becoming afraid of the rat because they associated it with receiving a loud noise, which they did not like. The children also became afraid of other fury things that resembled the rat.
The process was then reversed by presenting the rat to the children without the loud noise. After repeating this several times, the children no longer became afraid of the rat. Phobias and fears can be the result of conditioning. For example, if a child has been bitten by a dog then they may associate dogs with pain.
Behaviourism
Behaviourism is the theory that children can be trained to behave in certain ways. This theory focuses on positive and negative reinforcement and shaping behaviour.
Marquis (11) concluded that systematic training of the human….can be started at birth. This can be applied to children through positive and negative reinforcement. For example, if a child behaves in a good way and we reward them through a smile or praise then they are more likely to repeat this behaviour hoping to receive the reward again.
This is also true with language development. For example, if a child says mummy or daddy etc, and the parents praise the child and show the child affection, then the child will keep repeating the word to receive similar treatment. Similarly, this can apply to negative language and behaviour. For example, if a child uses incorrect vocabulary, the parents may choose to ignore this and the child is less likely to repeat this language. They may choose to correct the child but in a subtle way that doesnt knock the childs confidence.
Repetition can also work because if the parents/carer repeats (reinforces) good behaviour and language then the child is more likely to continue repeating their actions.
The main theorist who looks at behaviourism is Watson. Watson focuses on the fact that behaviour will change depending on whether children receive punishment or reward. Watson was only concerned with observable activities and believed that thoughts and feelings have little relevance to learning. Behaviourism concentrates on the fact that all babies are born with biological reflexes and all other responses are learned.
Operant Conditioning
Skinner was a major theorist who looked at behaviourism and Operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is behaviour that relies on the environment and is reinforcement of a random response. Skinner invented a box, which contained only a lever and a food tray. He placed a rat into the box and whenever the lever was pressed, food was immediately released into the tray.
At first the rat would only press the lever by accident and food would appear. After a while the rat began to learn that in order to receive food, the lever needed to be pressed, this is known as behaviour shaping.
Skinner believed that behaviour could be shaped to learn that certain actions equal a reward. Skinner was also another theorist who believed in positive and negative reinforcement. He believed that intellectual development is through a long process of shaped behaviour, which occurs through positive and negative reinforcement. If behaviour and learning were not reinforced, then the behaviour would not occur as frequent and would eventually disappear.
Skinner believed that when any sounds that resembled speech are reinforced, they would eventually go on to become words and any that were not reinforced would become extinct. By reinforcing a childs first word, such as mummy and showing a child attention, they are been encouraged to repeat the word again. As soon as this word is stopped being reinforced, then the child would move onto something else as they are eager to impress. Behaviour can also be reinforced through rewarding any good behaviour, through a smile or occasional treat and punishing or ignoring any bad.
A child learns their first few words through imitation and the parents help them. For example, if a parent says look at that pussycat, lovely pussycat, stroke the pussycat, then the child may pick up the words pussycat.
From his observations, Skinner came up with two different kinds of response to learning. The first is respondents to a stimulus and the second is operants, which are random responses to a situation. Operants are responses that occur without thinking.
Social Learning
The Social Learning theory is based on the work of Bandura who believed that learning occurs through observation and modelling. Banduras main idea was that children learn ideas through what they see. For example, if a child sees another child throwing food, then they may repeat their actions.
He carried out an investigation on nursery school children. Firstly he showed the children a real life situation or a film, which involved a model knocking down and beating a bobo doll. When the children had seen the video they were led into a room with lots of nice toys but were not allowed to touch them. The children became frustrated because they wanted to play with the toys. The children were then moved into a room containing the same toys that were seen in the bobo doll film. He found that most of the children repeated the same aggressive behaviour shown in the video and some specific actions were repeated.
Bandura also gave the doll to children who had not seen the model and found that they were not as aggressive as the ones who had seen the model. He also found that in the first group of children, some of the models specific actions were repeated.
He then did another study on three groups. He showed one group the model receiving punishment for the behaviour, one a reward and the other neither reward or punishment.
From this he found that the children who saw the model get punished, were less likely to repeat the actions. The children who saw the model get rewarded repeated the actions and showed much more aggression.
One of the most common examples of social learning is through television and media. If a certain brand is advertised by someone famous then more people will by that particular brand because they believe that they will be admired and popular.
Aggression can be understood through the Social Learning Theory. Bandura believed that aggression is learnt through behaviour. He believed that children are not born with an aggressive, violent nature but they learn aggressive responses through observation of others, usually someone important to them such as a parent or carer. Bandura believed that some people behave aggressively because they thought it would result in a reward off others. Bandura believed that if aggression is identified early in children, then it is possible to stop them from becoming violent criminals.
According to Bandura, children use the same aggressive behaviour with others that they have seen their parents use. For example if a child sees his father behave aggressively towards his mother, then they may become a violent husband or father because they would see this behaviour to be acceptable.
Social Constructivism
One of the major theorists concerned with social constructivism was Jean Piaget. Piaget placed emphasis on the environment and his main idea was that children learn through discovery learning and should be left to discover things for themselves.
Central to Piagets thinking was that all childrens thinking passes through 4 stages. These are
 The sensorimotor stage (0-)
 The preoperational stage (-7)
 The concrete operations stage (7-11)
 The formal operations stage (1+)
Piaget came up with these stages through observation of his own children.
Each of the stages derives from the previous and none of the stages can be skipped. They are the same for everyone.
The sensorimotor stage
The sensorimotor stage lasts from birth to aboutyears. In this stage the infant uses senses and motor abilities to understand the world. They begin with reflexes and end with complex combinations of sensorimotor skills.
Between one and four months the child works on primary circular reactions. This is just an action of their own that serves as a stimulus to which it responds with the same action again and again. This could involve the child constantly sucking their thumb because it brings them pleasure and comfort or they could keep blowing bubbles because they find it fascinating to watch.
Between four and 1 months the infant turns to secondary circular reactions, which involves an act that extends out to the environment. They learn the procedures that make interesting things last. This could involve squeezing a rubber duck at bath time and finding it makes a noise, so repeating the action.
Other things also begin to show at this point. For example babies become ticklish but they must be aware that someone is tickling them or else it wont work. They also begin to develop object permanence, which means that they have the ability to realise that just because you cant see something doesnt mean that it has gone. The younger infants seem to function by an out of sight, out of mind schema. Older infants may remember and even attempt to find things.
Between 1 and 4 months, the child works on tertiary circular reactions. They consist of the same making interesting things last cycle, except with a constant variation. For example, they may hit a table with a stick, then a block with the stick and them something else etc, making a different sound every so often. Children could display this sort of behaviour by making a mess at the dinner table and throwing their cutlery about.
At around one and a half, the child is clearly developing mental representation, that is, the ability to hold an image in their mind for a period beyond the immediate experience. For example they can throw a tantrum after seeing one an hour ago. They can use mental combinations to solve simple problems, such as putting down a toy in order to open a door. This could involve a change in the way a child uses their toys. For example, instead of throwing their teddies around a child could start to sing to them and tuck them in bed at night.
The pre-operational stage
The pre-operational stage lasts from aboutto about 7 years old. Now that the child has mental representations and is able to pretend, it is a short step to the use of symbols.
Children begin to have symbols for things, such as calling everything white and fluffy a rabbit. Along with symbolisation there is an understanding of past and future. For example when if a child is upset and you tell them that their mother will be home soon they may tend to calm down because they realise that mummy is the person who cares for and comforts them. A child may also refer to every male as daddy.
But still the child is quite egocentric at this stage. They still see everything from their own point of view. They may hold up a picture so that only they can see it and expect you to see it too. Piaget did a study to investigate this. He called it the mountains study. He would put children in front of a simple plaster mountain range and seat himself to the side, then ask them to pick from four pictures that he, Piaget would see. Younger children would pick the view that they could see themselves; older children picked correctly.
Similarly, younger children centre on one aspect of any problem or communication at a time. They may not understand when you tell them things, such as your father is my husband. Or if you showed them 5 black marbles andwhite marbles and ask them Are there more marbles or more black marbles? they would respond More black ones.
The most famous example of the pre-operational childs centrism is what Piaget refers to as their inability to conserve liquid volume. If you give a three- year old some milk in a tall skinny glass and give yourself a whole lot more in a short fat one, the child would be likely to assume that there is more milk in the tall skinny glass. This is because they will tend to focus on only one of the dimensions of the glass - the highest. It is the development of the childs ability to decenter that marks them having moved on to the next stage.
The concrete operations stage
The concrete operations stage lasts from about 7 to 11 years. The word operations refer to the logical operations or principles we use when solving problems. In this stage the child not only uses symbols representationally, but they can manipulate those symbols logically. At this point they must still perform these operations within the context of concrete situations.
The stage begins with decentering. By 6 or 7, most children develop the ability to conserve number, length and liquid volume. Conservation refers to the idea that quantity remains the same despite changes in appearance. If you show a child 4 marbles in a row, then spread them out, the pre-operational child will focus on the spread and tend to believe that there are more marbles than before.
Or if you havefive-inch sticks laid parallel to each other, then move one of them a little, they may believe that the moved stick is now longer than the other is.
The concrete operations on the other hand, will know that there are still 4 marbles and that the stick doesnt change length even though in now extends beyond the other. They would know that you have to look beyond the height of the milk in the glass. If you pour the milk from the short, fat glass into the tall, skinny glass, they will tell you that there is the same amount of milk as before.
By 7 or 8 years children develop conservation of substance. For example, if you take a piece of clay and roll it along a thin rod, or split it into 10 little pieces, the child knows that there is still the same amount of clay. They will also know that if you rolled it back it would look the same as it did - a feature known as reversibility.
By nine or ten, the last of the conservation tests is mastered - conservation of area. If you take 4 one-inch square pieces of felt and lay them on a six-by-six cloth together in the centre, the child who conserves will know that they take up just as much room wherever they are put.
In addition, a child learns classification and seriation during this stage. The child is now able to put things is order of size and will understand the question of the marbles. The child is now ready for some formal education.
The formal operations stage
When a child reaches this stage they are able to reason in more logical and abstract ways. They are able to think about the future and will have their own values and beliefs. Conservation of liquid volume will have been mastered and they will be able to use more complex mathematical and linguistic ideas.
Piaget designed a pendulum task, whereby a child is given some weights and a piece of string held up from a hook. The child is told that if they change the weight or the length of the string or push the pendulum harder, then one of these will cause the pendulum to swing faster. If a child has reached the formal operations stage, they will test everyone to see which it is. At this stage a child should be able to work out problems in their head by trying out several solutions.
Piaget believed that children learn through the processes of adaptation known as
 Assimilation-taking in new information through the childs existing patterns of actions (schemas)
 Accommodation - modifying existing patterns of actions to accommodate new information and knowledge.
 Equilibration - balancing what they already know with new experience to make sense of the world.
One of the main definitions from the work of Piaget is the idea of schemas. These are early ideas or concepts based on linked patterns of behaviour and are parts of the childs powerful drive to understand its experiences. Children need to learn for themselves about how objects relate together and about shapes and where things are positioned. Schemas include the idea or concept in mind of the child and the actions that the child takes as a result of the idea. Often schemas occur in clusters and children will develop them for hours on end and in many ways.
Ref. Nolan 00 BTECH National Early Years Page 1
Bibliography
Bibliography
Birch 17 Developmental Psychology
Meggitt 14 Health and Social Care
Nolan 00 BTEC National Early Years
Walsh et al 000 Advanced Health and Social Care
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