Child Development Theories Assignment Sample

Age group

Erickson Model of development

Freud model of development

0-1 years

The child learns about "Trust vs Mistrust" (Darling-Fisher, 2019)

The child enters the oral stage of the psychosexual model of development, pleasure via sucking, tasting, and eating. (Allen, 2020).

1-3 years

The child gains information about "autonomy, shame and doubt" (Jones & Waite, 2017)

A child enters into an anal stage of development and gains sense to control the bowel movement and bladder (McEnery-West, 2019).

3-6 years

The child develops "initiative versus guilt" instinct with control of the environment. Development of interpersonal skills takes place. (Darling-Fisher, 2019)

A child enters the Phallic stage of psychosexual development. The child is aware of the anatomical sexual differences. Boys experience "Oedipus complex" and girls develop "Electra complex” (Ilias & Esa, 2017).

7-11 years

The child develops knowledge regarding industry and inferiority. Children master new skills and are able to develop reading and writing abilities (Dunkel & Harbke, 2017).

This stage in Freud’s theory of development is known as the latent period. The libido energy is suppressed and diverted towards activities (Allen, 2020).

Erickson’s psychosocial developmental theory

Bowlby’s attachment theory

Freud’s psychosexual developmental theory

Bandura’s social learning theory

Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory

Watson and Skinner’s behavioural theory

Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory

The theory provides a framework to organize human growth through all the stages of life (Çelik, & Ergun, 2016).

The theory divides the growth into a total of eight stages.

The theory asserts that the growth of an individual is attributed to the principles of social interaction and overall experience (Darling-Fisher, 2019).

The theory asserts that child development is based on the innate need of the children to form attachment and leanings towards individuals in their proximity (Desai, 2018).

The theory also asserts that the attachment can be with any number of people, places, things, or any other form of entity (Riley, 2020).

Attachment, according to this theory is the key driver for development and overall growth patterns of an individual.

The theory of psychosexual development by Freud asserts that a child undergoes multiple kinds of experiences during growth that affect his or her behaviour (Lantz & Ray, 2020).

The focus of the theory is based on how through the developmental and growth years the child finds pleasure in activities that drive development (Allen, 2020) 

This theory provides an alternate notion to the popular belief that child growth is popularly determined by experiences. This theory asserts that the development of a child is also beyond experiences and also comes through simple observations and modelling (Edinyang, 2016).

Piaget's theory of cognitive development asserts that the course of thinking of children is different from that of the adults (McLeod, 2018).

This theory divides the children into four primary categories or the stages that determine the vulnerabilities or qualities at each particular stage of growth (Lourenço, 2016). 

According to this theory all human behaviour, inclusive of children can be simply described in the terms of environmental influences that serve as the source of experience, learning, as well as execution (Desai, 2018).

The theory focuses on how environmental action affects behaviour.

Based on the learning two kinds of behavioural development have been deduced, known as the classical conditioning and operant conditioning (Desai, 2018).

The theory suggests that the development of higher-order functions in children is associated with the interactions with parents, peers, and caregivers (Riley, 2020).

The theory asserts that learning is a social process and is encouraged through interaction.

Age group

Growth stage

Description

0-2 years

Sensorimotor stage

The child develops knowledge of the world and surroundings through movement and sensations and is able to learn the basic actions like sucking and grasping (Bolton & Hattie, 2017). Looking and listening skills of the child develop. The concept of object permanence is developed in the child. At this stage, the child is also able to distinguish between people and objects around. The child realizes that there are consequences to actions at this stage (Ghazi et al., 2016).

2-7 years

Preoperational stage

Symbolic thinking begins in the children and the ability to use words and pictures to convey thoughts is developed. A child at this stage is often "egocentric" and demand focus on themselves. Concrete terminology is weak. Think skills and language skills are under developmental stage (Bolton & Hattie, 2017).

7-11 years

Concrete operational stage

Logical thinking is developed in this stage and concept evolution of observations initiates. The concept of conservation and measurements start developing (Bolton & Hattie, 2017). Thinking at this stage is organized and concrete. Inductive logic development begins in this stage (Lourenço, 2016).