Erikson 's Theory, Vygotzy, And Piaget 's Model

How does an infant develop into an adult? The answer is not as obvious as it seems. There are a variety of factors that contribute to human development. A person not only grows physically but also cognitively and socio-emotionally. This paper will explain two theories; one cognitive and one socio-emotional; about human development. The two theories will be described, compared, contrasted and individually evaluated based on the strong points and limitations.

This essay will demonstrate my understanding of developments which occur at each stage of an individual's life cycle. I will relate these developments to two relevant psychological theories and discuss how an individual's needs must be met to enable them to develop.

During our lives, everyone goes through a change and evolves in different ways. However, in the field of psychology as far as development, the process of growing and maturing has been previously linked only with childhood. One of the first theorists Erik Erickson felt that development continues throughout life. Erickson believes that each stage in life resembles to specific opportunities that the society might have. Erickson’s theory defines the impact of social involvement across the entire lifespan. Each stage of Erikson’s stages is unique in their own way. Erikson decided to present eight different stages of the psychosocial crisis for almost each age group.

People are constantly changing and developing ever since conception to the day they pass away. Some changes can be more for people depending on the choices and incidents that occurs in a person’s life. The majority of changes that people go through are passed by common biological and psychological heritage by all people. One of the obvious elements is change when a development is being defined (Infed, 1998).This is when development which involves a movement from a certain state to another. The human development occurs through a process of

Psychology is the study of the behavior and mental processes of all living organisms. In psychology, different perspectives are made in order for us to have a better understanding of the different changes and behavior humans will undertake throughout their life. These “theories” help contribute to the study of human growth and development and provide us with a better understanding. They can be sorted into continuous or discontinuous, one course or many courses of development, and nature or nurture. In developmental psychology continuity and discontinuity are two theories that compete to try and explain how individuals change throughout their lives. The continuity theory says that someone changes for the duration of their life along a smooth course whereas the discontinuity theory instead claims that people change abruptly. A development theory is one course when it is believed that there is one universal common path for all people across all places and cultures. On the other hand, a development theory with many courses is stated to have specific stages for specific individuals across specific contexts. Lastly, the nature theory argues that we are born the way we are and genetics determine who we are and who we will become. The nurture theory argues that outside influences such as society determines

For ease of review in discussing the developmental theorists and their theories of human development I have subdivided each theorist into their respective schools of psychology. These schools include the psychoanalytic school, behavioral school, humanistic school, cognitive school, and the individual schools of psychology. Each developmental theorist holds their own unique ideas and theories about various components of human development. I will be discussing the contributions of each of these theorists.

Erik Erikson, in seeking to understand and describe human development, developed a theory in the early 1900s. His theory progressed to assume that humans must deal with or cope with the conflicts of a certain stage of life before they can move on to a higher level of development (Ashford et al, 2013). He organized eight different stages of psychosocial development from infancy to old age. Each of the eight stages represents an internal conflict that will greatly define who and individual becomes and the choices they will make later in life based on their experiences within each stage.

The psychosocial theory of human growth and development was presented by Erik Erikson in the 1960s and quickly gained recognition from psychologists around the world. According to Newman and Newman (2015), the psychosocial theory “offers an organizational framework for considering individual development” (2015, p.63). Simply stated, this theory helps explain how personality and behavior change over the life span in an organized way. Using six basic concepts, the psychosocial theory explores the stages of development, developmental tasks, psychosocial crises, central processes for resolving the crises at each stage, arrangement of significant relationships, and coping. In the following text, the developmental tasks, psychosocial crisis, central process, prime adaptive ego quality, and core pathology will be defined and examples from my life will be given regarding the three stages of development. The past, present, and future will be explored to understand a past stage I have already grasped, a current state I am experiencing now, and an introspective look at a developmental stage that has yet to occur.

The theories of development are often all on various aspects of the person’s life, Piaget focuses on human intelligence and Erikson works with social and emotional questions. Piaget measures how much humans know at each stage in life. His theory brakes down how much a human can understand

His psychosocial theory of development takes in consideration of the impact of external factors, the parents, and society on a personality development from childhood to adulthood. Erikson’s theory says, that every person must pass through a series of eight interrelated stages over their entire life cycle. With this theory, it is more significant to defining a child’s or an adolescent’s development since it breaks down what is going on in the different stages of their life. Depending on factors that can occur at any different time in life, not everyone will experience those same events at the same time in their life. This can affect the way a child develops.

Development of oneself is a continuous process throughout the life span, in four different domains of life i.e. biological, social, psychological and emotional. As human is the complex specie in the universe because of his ability to think, communicate, express and interact in the society and environment. A person goes through various phases of development and succession in one phase leads him to the next phase. From birth a child start interpreting and responding to different stimuli whether they are biological, environmental or psychological i.e. he starts the ability of understanding. According to Haim Ginott, child psychologist;

The development of a child is viewed from a number of different perspectives by several developmental theorists. While some say that development continues throughout the life, others would hold an opinion that children stop to develop as soon as they mature. Therefore, lifespan developmental theorists have focused on a number of areas while studying the development of an individual. Some of these areas include cognitions, social development, sexual development, moral development and more. Each of these theories is important in order to completely analyze the process whereby which a child matures and transitions into an adult.

The concept of stage development and theories are applied to all human activities including those involved in emotional cognitive, personality, and social development. An American sociologist, Wright Mills, first coined the term ‘grand theory’. Over the years, grand theories guarded psychodynamic therapist and child development experts. Grand theorists were all men from Western Europe and America centuries ago. Theorists accentuate the concept of maturation and moving through stages of life. Mental problems were also discussed and associated with failure to achieve milestones and objectives in the developmental schemes. Each of the theories had a point of emphasis when approaching psychological questions of reasoning behind one’s actions. All

Erikson’s theory of human development breaks down the development of a person from birth to death into eight stages; the stages are further broken down into an individual’s crisis over a lifespan. In the infancy stage, children undergo the crisis of trust versus mistrust, where they learn to perceive the world as a safe place by the affection they receive from the people around them. Stage two, known as the Toddler stage, is where children gain a sense of autonomy versus shame and doubt and when they can complete basic tasks on their own. The next crisis, initiative versus guilt, is in the preschool stage. From the ages of three to six children develop a sense of purpose due to new responsibilities and the capacity to feel guilt. Industry versus inferiority is a crisis that begins during the childhood stage. Children learn to work with others as well as determine how others view them. The adolescence stage is between the ages twelve through eighteen where teens start to form a sense of identity and or become confused about their role in life. After is the young adulthood stage, which characterized by the forming of intimate relationships or isolation. The crisis in the middle adulthood is generativity versus

There are many theories on how a human develops. Most babies follow a certain pattern of development but the controversy is which person 's developmental pattern of development is correct? Erik Erickson, Sigmund Freud and Jean Piaget 's developmental theories are similar. Each of the theories goes through a human 's development chronologically, giving a guideline of when certain developments happen. For example when a child is supposed to walk or when a child is going to speak. It is only a guideline and these theories are not supposed to be held too strictly.