Childhood Experiences in Relation to Various Theories
Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory depicts a life model of individual development from childhood to adulthood whereby the standard human being takes up to eight distinct stages in order to reach maximum maturity (“Erik Erikson” n.p.). In addition, Jean Piaget also came up with a theory that explained the cognitive development in children whose main aim was to describe the processes of human development from infants to reasoning beings (“Jean Piaget” n.p.). Moreover, Lev Vygotsky also invented theories that focused on social interaction as a key factor in boosting the cognitive development in human beings (“Lev Vygotsky” n.p.). Another scholar, Bandura, also created theories that explained how children use observational learning to imitate various behavioral traits (Bandura n.p.). Finally, Lawrence Kohlberg concurred with Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and as a result, he adopted his storytelling techniques in a bid to show various aspects of moral dilemma (“Kohlberg” n.p.). As such, this paper shows hypothetical situations that social competence, status, levels of interaction and popularity in early childhood development, in relation to the theories from the various scholars listed above.
As a young child, Shawn Wright, from New York, had a huge social network in terms of his friends in school and good relations with his family members. He was able to communicate freely with his fellow mates both in school and at home. Furthermore, Shawn was able to maintain solid ties with his elders including his teachers, parents and older people at large. As the firstborn in his family, Shawn portrayed high levels of social competence through his ability to get along with other people and maintain good social ties with them. As such, an explanation of Shawn’s high level of social competence in a psychological perspective through different theories is viable.
To begin with, according to Erik’s stages of psychosocial development, Shawn during his early childhood development naturally faced various stages of crisis. These stages include, industry vs. inferiority, trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs. shame, and initiative vs. guilt, (“Erik Erikson” n.p.). However, due to his positive results in his social competence, it is evident that Shawn successfully completed all the crisis stages. As a result, he gained several virtues from the stages which include hope, will, purpose and competence respectively and this led to his high levels of social competence during his childhood. Besides, as per Vygotsky’s theory of social development, Shawn’s social and cultural environment was definitely positive (“Lev Vygotsky” n.p.). This is so because for a child to have high social competence then the social environment should be friendly in order to allow the child to adopt and merge easily with the people in the said society.
In addition, Shawn was a high status child at that time and he played with children from both low and high status backgrounds. Moreover, Shawn was popular since he was the class prefect and the lead singer in the children’s choir. Essentially, this supported his ability to have high levels of social competence in his early childhood since he related freely with other children regardless of their status. However, in his middle childhood, Shawn’s social competence begun deteriorating. This was because he distanced himself from girls in class as well as his parents at home especially his father. Essentially, this new behavioral trait resulted from his growing awareness of social reality and differentiating the males from the females. As such, Erik’s theory also explains Shawn’s sudden change of behavior through the crisis on ego identity vs. role confusion and intimacy vs. isolation (“Erik Erikson” n.p.). Therefore, Shawn did not complete these stages successfully and that explained his deteriorated social competence.
However, there were other popular and unpopular children in Shawn’s school named Jean and Jones respectively. Thus, Jean was a famous child whose popularity resulted from her family’s background whereby her father was New York’s mayor. In addition, Jean was also popular because she was always topped the class in both random and main tests. Thus, according to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, Jean had a high IQ and that contributed to her popularity (“Jean Piaget” n.p.). In addition, Vygotsky’s theory is also applicable since Jean’s environment also led to her popularity since her father’s political position influenced her popularity.
On the other hand, Jones was one of the unpopular children in Shawn’s school. Jones used to tell on the other children to the teachers almost all the time. As a result, the rest of the children avoided contact with him mostly during class and play time. In addition, he had various weird behavioral traits like stealing other children’s possessions, eating insects and he generally enjoyed playing with garbage. Thus, he was always dirty most of the time and that increased his unpopularity. According to Bandura’s social learning theory, Jones probably acquired his stealing habits from observing various people in his social and cultural environment (“Bandura” n.p.). Besides, Jones could also be portraying Kohlberg’s theory of dilemma in that he was stealing other children’s possessions because he felt compelled by necessity.
Moreover, following Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development Jones like all other children in his age bracket, including Shawn, faced various stages of life crisis. Hence, his weird behaviors could have resulted from unsuccessful completion of the different stages. As a result, Jones ended up losing hope, will, purpose and social competence and thus he covered it up by being dirty, stealing and generally weird.
Furthermore, using Vygotsky’s theory, Jones’ social factors could have considerably affected his cognitive development and thus led to his weird behaviors. This is so because the general cognitive development in children comes from the various interactions they have from their social surroundings. According to Vygotsky, the children’s surrounding finally influences their cognitive processes including their modes and means of thinking as well as the things they think (“Lev Vygotsky” n.p.). In addition, Vygotsky also argues that adults transfer their various ways of adaptation intellectually to their children (“Lev Vygotsky” n.p.). As a result, children tend to internalize their parent’s modes of adaptation in their cognitive development processes. As a result, Jones could have acquired his absurd behavioral traits from his surrounding including his parents and community at large. In turn, he developed cognitions that led to his weird behaviors from acquiring his parent’s adaptations intellectually.
From the above discussion, various situations such as environmental, social, economic, psychological and finally cultural factors play a huge role in the personality development in children from their early childhood up to maturity. The various theories from the different scholars discussed in the essay bring out this perspective of behavioral development during early childhood development. In addition, the different hypothetical situations including Shawn, Jean and finally Jones’ stories aid the readers in explaining and understanding how children develop, acquire and maintain various behavioral traits from their childhood up to maturity.
Works Cited
McLeod, Saul. Erik Erikson. SimplyPsychology, 2013, http://www.simplypsychology.org/Erik-Erikson.html, Accessed 5 November 2016
McLeod, Saul. Kohlberg. SimplyPsychology, 2013, http://www.simplypsychology.org/Erik-Erikson.html, Accessed 5 November 2016
McLeod, Saul. Jean Piaget. SimplyPsychology, 2015, http://www.simplypsychology.org/Erik-Erikson.html, Accessed 5 November 2016
McLeod, Saul. Lev Vygotsky. SimplyPsychology, 2014, http://www.simplypsychology.org/Erik-Erikson.html, Accessed 5 November 2016
McLeod, Saul. Bandura-Social Learning Theory. SimplyPsychology, 2016, http://www.simplypsychology.org/Erik-Erikson.html, Accessed 5 November 2016
