TO WHAT EXTENT DO THE GRAND THEORIES TAKE ACCOUNT OF THE ROLE OF SOCIAL EXPERIENCES IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT?
TO WHAT EXTENT DO THE 'GRAND THEORIES' TAKE ACCOUNT OF THE ROLE OF SOCIAL EXPERIENCES IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT? Nowadays it is widely accepted that social context greatly influences a person's development in many aspects and throughout their lives. Developmental psychology aims to describe how children develop and its grand theories emerged to "offer general explanations of child development as a whole, rather than just certain areas" (Oates et al., 2005, p. 49). In this essay, the main elements of the four 'grand theories' of child development are discussed, exploring in more detail which aspects within the social experiences are explored by each grand theory. For the purpose of this essay, when discussing social experiences we will refer to any social aspect of human experience, including socio-cultural contexts and social relations and their products. Some of these experiences have been taken into account by the field of developmental psychology in order to study and investigate how children's minds and behaviour change throughout their lifespan. This field of study has produced many theories that propose hypothesis to explain different aspects of child development. Among these, four theories stand out and are sometimes referred to as 'grand theories': behaviourism, social learning theory, constructivism and social constructivism. The reasons why they are referred to as
What is punishment, and does it really work?
What is punishment, and does it really work? Abstract Punishment has generated as one of the most effective technique for suppressing social behavior, and also one of the most controversial. Punishment is a reduction in the likelihood of a response due to the presentation of an aversive stimulus. Does it really work? Research has shown that the use of punishment on children with developmental disabilities has helped to eliminate self-injuries and self-stimulating behaviors as well as in suppressing an undesirable behavior temporarily. A punishment that immediately follows the behavior that you want to suppress is effective as well. If a punishment is perceived as fair or reasonable, it may be considerably more effective as explanation helps to clarify which response was punished. It is blatant that when punishment is delivered in a variety of setting, accompanied by a clear explanation, it can be a very powerful tool for elimating undesirable behaviour. On the contrary, punishments elicit emotional reaction such as fear and anger and aversive stimuli directly elicit aggression. So, effectiveness of punishment remains intensely controversial. Punishment is one of society's oldest techniques for controlling behaviour (Lieberman, 1993) and it is also being used to modify undesired behaviours. Punishment can be carried out in many different ways which not necessarily