It is well known that hormones and behavior have some kind of connection. Hormones are chemicals secreted from specialized cells into the bloodstream, from where they are transported to various parts of the body to act on target tissues, thereby producing physical and mental effects in an individual. Children’s behavior significantly influence by hormone especially during puberty, such as the height and weight growth spurts and sex characters like growth of body hair, pimples, breast enlargement in girls, change voice in boys, etc. Moreover, hormones cause mood swings and mood in stability during puberty being more assertive and aggressive. A study conducted on hormones and behavior in children stated that early puberty attributed to abnormal eating behavior and anxiety in teenage girls and boys. Teenagers enter the phase of crushes and romance and feel giddy with love due to the action of hormone.
Biology contributes significant influence on development while environment do provide important contribution to human development too. The ecological perspective draws on Urie Bronfenbrenner’s (1993) model of ecology of human development emphasizes the role of environmental contexts on children’s development. Bronfenbrenner suggested that children come across four inter-related contexts of development from the inner layer to the outer layer namely microsystems, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem respectively. (Duffy, K. G. 2010) Microsystem incorporating the immediate environment surrounds the individual and those people with whom the individual interacts; it is closest to the child and contains the structures with which the child has direct contact. Structures in the microsystem include family, school, neighborhood, or childcare environments. According to Bronfenbrenner’s bi-directional influences, relationships have impact in two directions, both away from the child and toward the child. For example, parents may affect the belief and behavior of their child while the child may also affect the behavior and belief of parents. (Berk, 2000) The second layer mesosystem incorporates the interactions that occur within the child’s microsystem. For example, the connection and relationship between child’s teacher and parents do contribute a healthy developmental environment. The third layer exosystem, refers to a larger social system in which the child do influenced by the social setting indirectly. The structures in this layer impact the child’s development by interacting with some structure in microsystem. For example, when parents are being stressed in the workplace, child may not be directly involved but does feel the positive or negative force involved with the interaction within his own system, thus it influence the child’s life.(Berk, 2000) The outermost layer in child’s environment macrosystem, it refers to a socio-cultural context in which comprised of cultural values, goals, practices, and attitudes that characterizes a group of people. It does have a cascading influence throughout the interactions of all other layers. For example, if there is belief of the culture that parents merely have the responsibility to raise and nurture their children, the culture won’t provide adequate resources to support parents in raising children. Thus it would affect the structure downward and affect parents function which finally affect children’s life. (Berk, 2000)
Psychodynamic theory composes of a group of related theories that view personality and behavior in terms of the dynamics, or interactions, of driving forces of personality and development such as desires, anxieties, conflicts, and defenses. (Duffy, K. G, 2010) It mainly focuses on Sigmund Freud’s psychosexual development stage and Erickson’s psychosocial stages of development. According to Sigmund Freud, he focus on the libido that child seeks to gratify the drive for pleasure from sexuality, stages could be divided in to Oral stage, anal stage, and phallic stage. In Oral stage, the source of libido for child would be the mouth enjoys feeding, sucking, swallowing, putting things in mouth etc. fixation may result in smoking, addictive eating, drinking and sarcasm. In anal stage, the source of libido and pleasure would be the anus; the child derives pleasure from expelling or withholding feces. Fixation may result in sloppiness, disorganization, untidiness, stubborn etc. In phallic stage, the source of libido and pleasure would be the penis or clitoris, they derives pleasure from masturbation. Fixation would result in anxiety and guilt about sex. Children develop an Oedipus or Electra complex, in which they are sexually attracted to the opposite-sex parent and envy the same sex parent. (Duffy, K. G. 2010)
According to Erickson’s stages of psychosocial development, human life span could be divided into eight stages namely Infant, Toddler (ages 1-3), Preschool child (ages 3-6), Preadolescent (ages 6-12), Adolescent (ages early teens), Young adult (late teens and early 20s), Middle adult (late 20s to retirement), Older adult (after retirement). Each stage creates its specific social and emotional conflicts and people have to handle different task in various stages. However, stages are inter-related that failure to handle task on particular stage would progressively affecting the development of later stages.
Infancy is a stage of trust and mistrust development. It makes emphasis on mother’s love care, visual contact and touch for the child. The child fails to experience trust in infancy, he may have a deep feeling of worthlessness and mistrust of the world and has trouble developing later. (ADMIN, 2011)
Autonomy versus shame and doubt is the main development outcome in Toddler stage. It is the stage children learn to master different skills. Sef-esteem and autonomy could be built or suffer low self-esteem if children are built with great shame and doubt to their ability. This stage significantly shows relationships with parents. (ADMIN, 2011)
Initiative versus guilt is the main conflict in this preschool child stage. During this stage children experience a desire to imitate the adults around them and take initiative in creating play situations. Parents and family members take an important role to get balance between giving children enough encouragement so as to nurture confidence while at the same time protect them against danger. (ADMIN, 2011)
The development outcome of the preadolescent stage is industry versus inferiority. It is important for school and neighborhood in handling the relationship in between. The development outcome of the adolescent stage would be identity versus role confusion. People on this stage develop strong devotion to peers and matters. Thus peer group relationship is of great significance. Young adulthood stage develops intimacy versus isolation. Thus feelings of loneliness, alienation, social withdrawal and non-participation are the main features of isolation. As a result relationships with marital partners and friends are significant. Middle adulthood stage develops generativity versus stagnation, thus it greatly related to the workplace, the community and family. Late adulthood stage is to review the previous stage which integrity or despair would be the major feeling in this stage. (ADMIN, 2011)
The social-cognitive perspective is a broad term that includes behavioral and social learning theories as wall as cognitive psychology. The assumption of this perspective would be apart from the learning and behavior; it consists of a higher-level cognitive function and thinking. (Duffy, K. G. 2010) Albert Bandura have demonstrated that people especially children’s behavior is acquired through the process of observational learning. Children learn by observing others, with the environment, behavior, and cognition all as the major factors in influencing development. These three factors are not static or independent; rather, they are all reciprocal. For example, a behavior is being witnessed by a child could significantly change child’s thinking in cognition. Environmental condition would change one’s behavior likewise, just like the high unemployment rate condition in a society could significantly change parents’ behavior in a workplace and it is witnessed by children and significantly changes children’s mindset and behavior.
Moreover, cognition and behavior do have significant impact in between. Cognition comprises of the processing of information such as selective attention, information gathering, memory, and motivation. It acts as mediation between environment and the individual’s behavior. In addition, Bandura added an important concept self-efficacy to his theoretical notions which is the belief in one’s capacity to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments. (Duffy, K. G. 2010) It is of great significance for people to have self-efficacy to take on a task. People generally avoid tasks where their self-efficacy is low, but will engage in tasks where their self-efficacy is high. However, if people with self-efficacy greatly beyond one’s actual ability, it would result in overestimate to complete a task, while it would unlikely to grow and expand their skills in vice versa. Thus it is of paramount important for one to have optimum self-efficacy that is little above the ability in order to encourage people in tackling challenges and avoid overestimation which may lead to difficulties.
Biologically, genetic influences me a lot in my academic approach, lack of memorization is the major barrier which affects my behavior against arts subjects, however, genetically I do have sufficient logical thinking, thus I do interested in mathematical and science subject. I am now a part time mathematic tutor in various tutorial centers which provides me an atmosphere to transmit knowledge. Be that as it may, environmental factor do contribute a lot for me to get interested in it. For example, with regard to the ecological perspective microsystem my parents did always teach me to calculate various prices in supermarket as my father being an accountant who is very sensitive towards numbers; my primary school did focus a lot on nurturing students to be outstanding performer in Olympic mathematics while secondary school did make emphasis on science subject. These factors interact push me to be nurtured in a logical manner which provided me a well structure mesosystem. The exosystem would be that of father’s career provide me a specific feeling towards calculation and mathematics. While the macrosystem would be that of the society, school, and Chinese culture do consider mathematic and logical thinking as an important subject that various party in the society render me an atmosphere to get involve in it.
With regard to the psychodynamic perspective, in preadolescent stage I was being encouraged to participate in various activities such as running, Olympic mathematic competition, drawing and basketball matches, these experiences help me to create and accomplish numerous skill and knowledge for the development of industry in school year. I did experience satisfaction of achievement in some activity such as mathematic competition and basketball match, which help me to move towards successful negotiation. While in the drawing activity, the failure experience makes me inferior as I did doubt my strength and potential towards it. In addition, thanks to parents’ encouragement that provides me an atmosphere to participate on various challenging activities, which nurture me to reach an optimum self-efficacy. In social-cognitive perspective, it is of great significance for me to have self-efficacy slightly beyond my ability to tackle various challenging problems.
Reference:
ADMIN, Erickson’s Psychosocial Development Theory, retrieved from 16/5/2011 http://thesocialworkexam.com/erickson%E2%80%99s-psychosocial-development-theory-continuation
Aidan Samsons , The biological perspective aggression and free will, retrieved from http://www.psychlotron.org.uk/
Berk, L.E. (2000). Child Development (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. 23-38
Duffy, K. G., Kirsh, S. J., & Atwater, E. (2010) Psychology for living: Adjustment, growth, and behavior. (10th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.
Joseph McInerney, Behavioral Genetics, retrieved from http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/behavior.shtml
Storm, Robert D. (1987) Human development and learning: Human Sciences Press, INC.