Psychology- a Complete Introduction

by Sandi Mann

  THE FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE

  The final stage of Piaget’s theory begins at adolescence (roughly from age 11) and continues into early adulthood (around 15–20 years old). It involves an increase in logic, the ability to use deductive reasoning, and an understanding of abstract ideas such as freedom or religiosity.

  Vygotsky’s Development Theory

  While Piaget’s ideas and observations about the cognitive development of children have stood up very well to research scrutiny, there are aspects that have been criticized strongly by the psychological community. Piaget’s view was that children develop almost entirely on their own, without the need for much adult input at all. Newer research suggests that this is not the whole picture and it takes more than a child’s private experiments for them to develop so completely. More recent research suggests that aspects of the social world that the child lives in are just as important for their cognitive development. Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934), a Soviet psychologist born in Belarus, emphasized the important contribution of social, interpersonal and other dimensions in facilitating children’s cognitive development.

  At the core of Vygotsky’s approach, then, is that learning takes place as a result of a child’s interactions with his environment – with peers, siblings, parents, caregivers, school and so on. These interactions also involve objects such as toys or books, or even junk. Vygotsky noted how useful older children and adults are to a child’s development and coined the term Zones of Proximal Development (ZPD) to describe the gap between what a child can do alone and what they need assistance with to accomplish.

  ‘[The Zone of Proximal Development is] the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers.’

  L. S. Vygotsky, Mind in Society: Development of Higher Psychological Processes, p. 86

  There are two levels of attainment for the ZPD:

  • Level 1 – the ‘current level of development’: this describes what the child is capable of doing now, without the input of anyone else.

  • Level 2 – the ‘potential level of development’: this means what the child could potentially achieve with help from other people, such as older children or adults.

  The ‘zone’ is the gap between levels 1 and 2. To help a child cross the gap between what they can accomplish on their own, adults or older children use ‘scaffolding’, whereby their instruction and help lessen as the child becomes more capable.

  Stages of moral development

  Morality is our understanding of what is right and wrong and is subject to the morality of the culture and society we live in. Morality does not develop in a vacuum but is greatly influenced by parents and others that a child interacts with. Between the ages of two and five, many children start to show some basic morally based behaviours and beliefs; they might tell the teacher if someone is being ‘mean’ to another child, for example. They become aware of moral codes and show guilt if they break them.

  Piaget’s view of moral development was that children between the ages of five and ten see the world through a heteronomous morality. This means that they think that rules are simply what teachers and adults tell children to follow. They see these rules as absolutes and not open to negotiation or to being changed. As they grow older and develop more abstract thinking, they begin to see that rules can be more flexible and open to discussion.

  The American developmental psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–87) built on Piaget’s work to develop his theory of the stages of moral development. His theory proposed that morality is developed across three stages, each of which is further subdivided into two more stages. This process occurs across a lifetime and is not restricted to childhood development.

  Kohlberg gave people moral dilemmas like the Heinz story (see the ‘Spotlight’ below) and was interested in the reasoning behind whatever response they gave.

  Spotlight: The Heinz dilemma

  Kohlberg used a series of moral dilemmas to test how people would make and justify moral decisions. An example of such a dilemma is the ‘Heinz’ dilemma:

  ‘A woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: “No, I discovered the drug and I’m going to make money from it.” So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man’s store to steal the drug for his wife. Should Heinz have broken into the laboratory to steal the drug for his wife? Why or why not?’

  Lawrence Kohlberg, Essays on Moral Development, Vol. I: The Philosophy of Moral Development (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981)

  He then classified the responses according to the six stages of moral development that he identified:

  LEVEL 1: PRE-CONVENTIONAL

  • Stage 1: Obedience and punishment

  This earliest stage of moral development is most common in young children, but adults are not immune from expressing this type of reasoning. This is where rules are seen as fixed and absolute and rules are obeyed simply to avoid punishment. The worse the punishment, the more ‘bad’ an act is judged to be.

  • Stage 2: Individualism and exchange

  Children in this stage are able to account for individual points of view but take a ‘What’s in it for me?’ approach. In the Heinz dilemma, children at this stage of moral development argued that the best course of action was the choice that best served Heinz’s needs. They are not interested in the greater good of society or other complex issues that come at later stages.

  LEVEL 2: CONVENTIONAL

  • Stage 3: Interpersonal relationships

  This stage of moral development (together with Stage 4) is typical of adolescents as well as some adults. It is focused on doing things in order to live up to social expectations and roles. Conformity is very important at this stage and moral decisions will reflect this. They will be ‘good’ because they think that is what society expects and thus it will make them gain more approval.

  • Stage 4: Maintaining social order

  Here, people begin to consider society more generally when making judgements. The focus is on maintaining law and order by following the rules.

  LEVEL 3: POST-CONVENTIONAL

  • Stage 5: Social contract and individual rights

  At this stage, people begin to account for the differing values, opinions and beliefs of other people. Decisions will be based on what is best for society as a whole rather than individuals.

  • Stage 6: Universal principles

  Kohlberg’s final level of moral reasoning is based upon universal ethical principles and abstract reasoning (e.g. imagining being in someone else’s shoes). At this stage, people follow these internalized principles of justice, even if they conflict with laws and rules. Not all adults reach this level.

  Stages of play

  Play is an important part of how a child develops. Stages of play is a theory and classification of children’s participation in play developed by Mildred Parten (1902–after 1932) in 1932. Parten observed American preschool age children (ages two to five) at free play and identified six stages of play:

  LEVEL 1: NON-SOCIAL PLAY

  1 Unoccupied (play): here the child is not actually playing, just observing. She may be standing in one spot or performing random movements. She is not observing anything or anyone in particular. Technically, this is not play, but just some attempt at amusing the self.

  2 Onlooker play: here the child
watches others at play but does not engage in it. The child may engage in forms of social interaction, such as conversation about the play, without actually joining in the activity.

  3 Solitary (independent) play: at this stage the child is alone and maintains focus on his activity. Such a child is uninterested in or unaware of what others are doing.

  4 Parallel play: at this stage the child plays separately from others but close to them and mimicking their actions The toys might be the same as those the other children have but they are not playing with them together. There might be limited communication or none at all. This type of play is seen as a transitory stage from a socially immature solitary and onlooker type of play to a more socially mature associative and cooperative type of play.

  LEVEL 2: SOCIAL PLAY

  5 Associative play: the child here is interested in the people playing but not in coordinating his activities with those people. There is a substantial amount of interaction involved, but the activities are not in sync. He may talk and share toys but is still essentially playing alone.

  6 Cooperative play: at this stage the child is interested both in the people playing and in the activity they are engaged in. In cooperative play, the activity is organized and participants have assigned roles (e.g. in role play where they might act out adult situations or in a game where each person has a role).

  According to Parten, as children became older, improving their communication skills, and as opportunities for peer interaction become more frequent, the non-social (solitary and parallel) types of play become less common and the social (associative and cooperative) types of play more common.

  Dig deeper

  Harlow’s monkey experiments:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrNBEhzjg8I

  Strange Situation:

  http://www.simplypsychology.org/mary-ainsworth.html

  Piaget’s stages of development:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRF27F2bn-A

  Fact-check

  1 Attachment Theory was originally developed by:

  a Jean Piaget

  b John Bowlby

  c Mary Ainsworth

  d Lawrence Kohlberg

  2 Which of the following is not a characteristic of Bowlby’s Attachment Theory?

  a Proximity maintenance

  b Safe haven

  c Separation distress

  d Resistant insecure attachment

  3 Which of the following is not one of Ainsworth’s Strange Situations classifications?

  a Secure attachment

  b Avoidant insecure attachment

  c Proximity maintenance

  d Disorganized/disoriented attachment

  4 Assimilation is where:

  a Children adapt new information into pre-existing cognitive schemas

  b Children alter pre-existing schemas in order to fit in the new information

  c Infants and toddlers acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating objects

  d Children learn through pretend and symbolic play

  5 Which of the following is not one of Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development?

  a Pre-operational

  b Concrete

  c Operational

  d Object permanence

  6 Piaget used the term ‘egocentric’ to describe:

  a When a child does not have the maturity to see other people’s viewpoints

  b People who are selfish and think only of their own needs

  c Narcissistic personality types

  d The stage when children do not understand that an object is still there even if it is covered up

  7 What is meant by Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development?

  a It is the gap between what a child can do alone and what they need assistance with to accomplish

  b It is the ideal distance that an adult should have when working alongside a child

  c It is a description of the stages of a child’s moral development

  d It describes the relationship between a child and its siblings

  8 Heteronomous morality is:

  a The age at which children develop morals

  b Morality that people develop when they become adults

  c A description of the way morality develops

  d The way children view rules

  9 Which of the following is not one of Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development?

  a Obedience and punishment

  b Heteronomous morality

  c Interpersonal relationships

  d Maintaining social order

  10 Which of the following expresses Parten’s Stages of Play in the correct order?

  a Solitary, associative, cooperative, parallel

  b Solitary, parallel, cooperative, associative

  c Solitary, cooperative, parallel, associative

  d Solitary, parallel, associative, cooperative

  11

  Gender and sexuality

  Arguably, the first thing we notice when we first encounter someone is their gender. Knowing whether they are male or female influences how we interact with them and the expectations we have of them. Gender is one of the key pieces of information gathered in application forms and there is not a culture in the world that does not distinguish people in some way based on their gender. Our gender also plays an important part in our own self-identity and we generally expect others to correctly identify our own gender (and we may be deeply offended if they get it wrong). Much of this distinction is tied in with the expectation that the two genders are different in varying ways. But how different are they really? And what accounts for these differences? This chapter will explore these issues.

  Sexual identity

  It would seem that gender and sexual identity might be one and the same; after all, if you are male, surely you can assume you will have a male sexual identity? However, researchers nowadays distinguish between biological gender (made up of genetic and reproductive anatomy) and gender identity – which do not always coincide. Even biological gender is not as simple to determine as you might expect. There are in fact four factors that can determine one’s gender, and while in most cases these correspond (i.e. all four will point to male or female characteristics), in some cases they do not.

  The four biological gender-determining categories are:

  • Chromosomes: normal females will have XX chromosomes (one inherited from each parent) while a normal male will be XY (X from the mother and Y from the father).

  • Reproductive organs: for example, ovaries in females and testes in males.

  • Hormones: testosterone is secreted by the testes in men and oestrogen and progesterone are secreted by the ovaries in women. In fact, we all secrete all three hormones, but men usually have far more testosterone and women far more of the ‘female’ hormones. Testosterone, when released in the womb, causes the development of male sex organs (at seven weeks) and acts upon the hypothalamus, which results in the masculinization of the brain. For example, the language centre in the male brain is usually in the dominant (usually left) hemisphere, whereas females use both hemispheres of the brain to process language. This may explain why females seem to have stronger communication skills and relish interpersonal communication more than males and why, on average, girls learn to speak and read earlier than boys.

  • Genitalia: the external organs (penis, vagina, etc.).

  Spotlight: Hormones and gender roles

  Researchers have shown how important hormones are in the developing gender roles of animals; for example, Quadagno et al. (1977) found that female monkeys who were deliberately exposed to testosterone during prenatal development later engaged in more rough-and-tumble play than other females.

  Young (1966) changed the sexual behaviour of both male and female rats by manipulating the amount of male and female hormones that the rats received during their early development.

  Sometimes some of these biological factors are atypical, which can result in disparities between sex and gender identit
y. Studying people who have such abnormalities, for example those found in Turner’s syndrome and Klinefelter’s syndrome, and comparing their development with those of typical people, helps us understand which elements of gender are determined by which biological factors (and, indeed, the role of other factors such as nurture and upbringing).

  • Turner syndrome: this condition, affecting 1 in every 2,000 baby girls, occurs when females develop with only one X chromosome instead of two. Turner syndrome is named after Dr Henry Turner who first described it in 1938 and refers to the absence (or partial absence) of the second X chromosome, which results in a child with a female external appearance but whose ovaries have failed to develop. This means that the hormones normally secreted by the ovaries fail to appear at puberty so the child does not develop mature female characteristics. They also have differences in behaviour and abilities compared to most XX females.

  • Klinefelter’s syndrome: This is a condition affecting between 1 in 500–1,000 males, who are born with an extra X chromosome, making them XXY instead of XY. Dr Harry F. Klinefelter first described this syndrome in the USA in 1942. Physically affected boys appear male, although the effect of the additional X chromosome causes a relative lack of body hair and underdeveloped genitals. Because they have small testes, they do not produce enough of the male hormone testosterone before birth and during puberty. This lack of testosterone means that during puberty the normal male sexual characteristics do not develop fully. There is reduced facial and pubic hair, and some breast tissue often develops. The lack of testosterone is also responsible for other symptoms, including infertility. However, the main difference between them and XY males is in their behaviour: as well as poor language skills, they are generally shy and passive, suggesting that male aggression may have biological (rather than environmental) roots.