Culture and Human Development

This chapter delves into the profound impact of culture on human development, highlighting the role of caretakers as primary agents of enculturation who shape children’s values, beliefs, and behaviors. The chapter provides insights into how children learn to navigate their social worlds by examining the dynamic interplay between cultural norms and developmental processes. Additionally, it explores foundational psychological theories related to cognitive, psychosocial, and moral development, offering a comprehensive understanding of how culture influences the trajectory of growth and learning during childhood.

Psychological Theories of Development

How have you changed since childhood? How are you the same? What will your life be like 25 years from now? Or 50 years from now? Lifespan development theories examine how you change as well as how you remain the same throughout your life. There are many theories regarding how babies and children grow and develop into happy, healthy adults.  For example, Sigmund Freud suggested that we pass through a series of psychosexual stages in which our energy is focused on certain erogenous zones of the body. Eric Erikson modified Freud’s ideas and suggested a theory of psychosocial development. Erikson said that social interactions and successful completion of social tasks shape our sense of self. Jean Piaget proposed a theory of cognitive development that explains how children think and reason as they move through various stages.

Sigmund Freud – Psychosexual Theory of Development

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst. Among his many theories, he believed that personality develops during early childhood. For Freud, childhood experiences shape our personalities and behavior as adults. Freud viewed development as discontinuous; he thought that each of us must pass through a series of stages during childhood and that if we lack proper nurturance and parenting during a stage, we may become stuck or fixated on that stage. Freud’s stages are called the stages of psychosexual development. According to Freud, children’s pleasure-seeking urges are focused on a different area of the body, called an erogenous zone, at each of the five stages of development: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital.

Freud’s 5 Stages of Psychosexual Development from Sprouts (YouTube)

This course will not cover Freud’s theories, as most of Freud’s ideas have not been supported in modern research. However, we cannot discount the contributions that Freud has made to the field of psychology, as his ideas are the basis of current theories of development that focus on childhood experiences. Psychologists today dispute Freud’s psychosexual stages as a legitimate explanation for how one’s personality develops, but what we can take away from Freud’s theory is that personality is shaped, in some part, by experiences we have in childhood.

Sigmund Freud’s Psychosexual Stages

Erik Erikson – Psychosocial Theory of Development

Erik Erikson (1902–1994), another stage theorist, took Freud’s theory and modified it as psychosocial theory. Erikson’s psychosocial development theory emphasizes the social nature of our development rather than its sexual nature. While Freud believed that personality is shaped only in childhood, Erikson proposed that development occurs throughout the lifespan. Erikson suggested that how we interact with others affects our sense of self, or what he called the ego identity.

Erik Erikson proposed the psychosocial theory of development. In each stage of Erikson’s theory, there is a psychosocial task that we must master to feel a sense of competence. Erikson proposed that we are motivated by a need to achieve competence in certain areas of our lives. According to psychosocial theory, we experience eight stages of development over our lifespan, from infancy through late adulthood. At each stage, there is a conflict or task that we need to resolve. Completing each developmental task results in a sense of competence and a healthy personality. Failure to master these tasks leads to feelings of inadequacy.

By the time you reach adulthood, you have learned a few things about how the world works. You know, for instance, that you can’t walk through walls or leap onto the tops of trees. You know that although you cannot see your car keys, they must be around here somewhere. What’s more, you know that if you want to communicate complex ideas like ordering a triple-shot soy vanilla latte with chocolate sprinkles, it’s better to use words with meanings attached to them rather than simply gesturing and grunting. People accumulate all this practical knowledge through the process of cognitive development, which involves a multitude of inherent and learned factors.

Cognitive development refers to the development of thinking across the lifespan. Defining thinking can be problematic because no clear boundaries separate thinking from other mental activities. Thinking involves the higher mental processes: problem-solving, reasoning, creating, conceptualizing, categorizing, remembering, planning, etc. However, thinking also involves other cognitive processes that seem more basic and at which even toddlers are skilled, such as perceiving objects and events in the environment, acting skillfully on objects to obtain goals, and understanding and producing language. Yet other areas of human development that involve thinking are not usually associated with cognitive development because thinking isn’t a prominent feature of them, such as personality and temperament.

8 Stages of Development by Erik Erikson (YouTube)

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Jean Piaget – Cognitive Theory of Development

In Lesson 2, we covered Jean Piaget’s concept of schemas and his attribution theory, which encompasses assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium. This module will delve into Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development.

Instead of approaching development from a psychoanalytical or psychosocial perspective, Piaget focused on the child’s cognitive development. He believed that thinking is a central aspect of development and that children are naturally inquisitive. His theory of cognitive development holds that a child’s thinking progresses through four stages, and as children advance to a new stage, there is a distinct shift in how they think and reason. Piaget hypothesized the following four stages:

1. sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years)
2. preoperational reasoning stage (2 to 6 or 7 years)
3. concrete operational reasoning stage (6 or 7 to 11 or 12 years)
4. formal operational reasoning stage (11 or 12 years and throughout the rest of life)

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development (YouTube)

Piaget’s Stages of Development

Piaget thought development unfolds in a series of stages associated with age ranges. He proposed a theory of cognitive development that unfolds in four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational (see table).

Sensorimotor Stage

The first stage is the sensorimotor stage, which lasts from birth to about 2 years old. Children learn about the world through their senses and motor behavior during this stage. Young children put objects in their mouths to see if they are edible, and once they can grasp objects, they may shake or bang them to know if they make sounds. Between 5 and 8 months old, the child develops object permanence, which is the understanding that even if something is out of sight, it still exists (Bogartz et al., 2000). According to Piaget, young infants do not remember an object after it has been removed from sight. Piaget studied infants’ reactions when a toy was first shown to an infant and then hidden under a blanket. Infants who had already developed object permanence would reach for the hidden toy, indicating that they knew it still existed. In contrast, infants who had not developed object permanence would appear confused.

In Piaget’s view, around the same time as children develop object permanence, they also begin to exhibit stranger anxiety, which is a fear of unfamiliar people. Babies may demonstrate this by crying and turning away from a stranger, clinging to a caregiver, or attempting to reach their arms toward familiar faces such as parents. Stranger anxiety results when a child is unable to assimilate the stranger into an existing schema; therefore, she can’t predict what her experience with that stranger will be like, which results in a fear response.

Preoperational Stage

Piaget’s second stage is the preoperational stage, which is approximately 2 to 7 years old. In this stage, children can use symbols to represent words, images, and ideas, which is why children in this stage engage in pretend play. A child’s arms might become airplane wings as he zooms around the room, or a child with a stick might become a brave knight with a sword. Children also begin to use language in the preoperational stage. Still, they cannot understand adult logic or mentally manipulate information (the term operational refers to logical manipulation of information, so children at this stage are considered pre-operational). Children’s logic is based on their personal knowledge of the world so far, rather than on conventional knowledge. For example, Dad gave a slice of pizza to 10-year-old Keiko and another slice to her 3-year-old brother, Kenny. Kenny’s pizza slice was cut into five pieces, so Kenny told his sister he got more pizza than she did. Children in this stage cannot perform mental operations because they have not developed an understanding of conservation, which is the idea that even if you change the appearance of something, it is still equal in size as long as nothing has been removed or added.

During this stage, we also expect children to display egocentrism, which means that the child cannot take the perspective of others. A child at this stage thinks that everyone sees, thinks, and feels just as they do. Let’s look at Kenny and Keiko again. Keiko’s birthday is coming, so their mom takes Kenny to the toy store to choose a present for his sister. He selects an Iron Man action figure for her, thinking that if he likes the toy, his sister will, too. An egocentric child cannot infer other people’s perspectives and instead attributes his viewpoint.

Concrete Operational Stage

Piaget’s third stage is the concrete operational stage, which occurs from about 7 to 11 years old. In this stage, children can think logically about actual (concrete) events; they have a firm grasp on using numbers and start to employ memory strategies. They can perform mathematical operations and understand transformations, such as addition, which is the opposite of subtraction, and multiplication, which is the opposite of division. In this stage, children also master the concept of conservation: Even if something changes shape, its mass, volume, and number stay the same. For example, if you pour water from a tall, thin glass to a short, fat glass, you still have the same amount of water. Remember Keiko and Kenny and the pizza? How did Keiko know Kenny was wrong when saying he had more pizza?

Children in the concrete operational stage also understand the principle of reversibility, meaning that objects can be changed and then returned to their original form or condition. Take, for example, water that you poured into the short, fat glass: You can pour water from the fat glass back to the thin glass and still have the same amount (minus a couple of drops).

Formal Operational Stage

The fourth and last stage in Piaget’s theory is the formal operational stage, from about age 11 to adulthood. Whereas children in the concrete operational stage can think logically only about concrete events, children in the formal operational stage can also deal with abstract ideas and hypothetical situations. Children in this stage can use abstract thinking to problem solve, look at alternative solutions, and test these solutions. In adolescence, a renewed egocentrism occurs. For example, a 15-year-old with a tiny pimple on her face might think it is enormous and obvious, under the mistaken impression that others must share her perceptions.

Piaget’s Stages of Development (YouTube)

Beyond Formal Operational Thought
As with other major contributors to theories of development, several of Piaget’s ideas have come under criticism based on the results of further research. For example, several contemporary studies support a model of development that is more continuous than Piaget’s discrete stages (Courage & Howe, 2002; Siegler, 2005, 2006). Many others suggest that children reach cognitive milestones earlier than Piaget describes (Baillargeon, 2004; de Hevia & Spelke, 2010).

According to Piaget, the highest level of cognitive development is formal operational thought, which develops between 11 and 20 years old. However, many developmental psychologists disagree with Piaget, suggesting a fifth stage of cognitive development known as the postformal stage (Basseches, 1984; Commons & Bresette, 2006; Sinnott, 1998). In postformal thinking, decisions are made based on situations and circumstances, and logic is integrated with emotion as adults develop principles that depend on contexts. One way that we can see the difference between an adult in postformal thought and an adolescent in formal operations is in terms of how they handle emotionally charged issues.

Once we reach adulthood, our problem-solving abilities change; as we attempt to solve problems, we tend to think more deeply about many areas of our lives, such as relationships, work, and politics (Labouvie-Vief & Diehl, 1999). Because of this, postformal thinkers can draw on past experiences to help them solve new problems. Problem-solving strategies using postformal thought vary depending on the situation. What does this mean? Adults can recognize, for example, that what seems to be an ideal solution to a problem at work involving a disagreement with a colleague may not be the best solution to a dispute with a significant other.

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