Question

1. Who was Erik Homburger Erikson? What makes Erikson’s theory unque? What are the strengths and limitations of his theory?

2. Who was Piaget? Who played a major influence on Piaget’s theory? Describe his stages and what the child is learning to deal with in each stage. Why are teachers and educators interested in Piaget’s theory?

3. Who were some of the scholars associated with learning theory? What aspect of development does this approach help psychologist understand?

Define the following terms:

         Classical conditioning

         Operant Conditioning

         Stimulus generalization

Answer 1

• ANSWER-Erik Erickson was a German-American ego and developmental psychologist who developed one of the influential theories in psychology related with psychosocial development across the entire lifespan of an individual.His work was influenced by Freud,but he didnt stress upon sexual impulses.His extensions of the Freudian theory were published in Childhood and Society (1950).
• He gave 8 stages of psychosocial development-
• Stage 1: Trust vs. Mistrust
• Stage 2: Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
• Stage 3: Initiative vs. Guilt
• Stage 4: Industry vs. Inferiority
• Stage 5: Identity vs. Confusion
• Stage 6: Intimacy vs. Isolation
• Stage 7: Generativity vs. Stagnation
• Stage 8: Integrity vs. Despair
• What made his theory unique was it covered the entire lifespan starting from infancy till late adulthood,in which each stage had a crisis to be resolved.
• This crisis is the turning point which an individual faces in each stage,and the motivation is to resolve it,to move successfully to the next stage.
• These conflicts that a person faces are focused on either developing a psychological quality or failing to develop that quality.He also believed that each stage stresses upon making the person competent in a specific area of life.
• One weakness of his theory is that the mechanisms to resolve conflicts and move from one stage to another is not clearly explained.The theory fails to explain that what kind of experiencies needed to resolve the conflicts successfully.
• The strength is that it provides a broad framework which covers development throughout the entire lifespan and allows to focus on social nature of human beings and the influence of social relationships on our development.
• Due to time limit,remaining questions can be asked as another question,they will be answered,thankyou for your cooperation