Theories of Child Development

Question: Compare and Contrast two theories of child development. Answer Jean Piaget and Jerome Bruner According to Bruners theory, representation is the way we manage to keep hold of our past experiences. He meant that the inactive mode of learning and understanding occurs when the objects or things are manipulated. The objects are generally visualized as images and symobolic language is used to denote the objects (Bruner, J and Austin, G., 1986). According to the theory by Piaget, the cognitive development is based upon four major factors: biological maturation, experience with the physical environment, equilibration and the experience with the social environment. Equilibration is the factor that brings together and connects all the other three wfactors with each other. It is defined as the biological drive that produces a standard state of balance between the cognitive development and the environment. Piaget further gave four stages of cognitive development as well (Ginsberg, H. and Opper, S., 1988). The difference between Piagets theory and Bruners theory was that Piagets fourth s tage ends at the end of childhood while Bruners theory says that whilst the children pass through the three of his stages during their childhood, the adult continue to use the three modes throughout their life. Secondly, Piaget ignores the importance of social relationships while Bruner stresses on the fact that interaction with the social environment plays a very important role in the development of cognitive senses. John B Watson and Albert Bandura John Watson is known for his work of ,The behaviourist manifesto. According to his theory, the behavior can be observed and then can be correlated with the other events that are observable. Therefore, he concluded that there are events that conclude as well as follow behavior. According to him, behaviourism is a theory that aims in explaining the relationships between stimulus and the response and also the consequence which can be in form of punishment, reward or neutral effect. His theory was more focused on the stimulus and its effects. He opposed the concepts that involved mind, and used cognition to explain the process of learning (Watson, J., 1913). On the contrary, Bandura believed that the behavior is learnt from the environment through the process of observation. According to his theory, it was important for the cognitive senses to be functional, in order to successfully carry out observational learning.Banduras theory suggested that the children observe the people around the m in various ways and this, he illustrated with the help of bobo doll experiment. The individuals those who were observed were termed by him as the models and since children are surrounded by many such influential models (parents, TV characters, friends, teachers, etc), these models set examples for the children and the children imitate their behavior after careful observation. But in order to be able to observe these models carefully, it was important for their cognitive senses to be fully functional and active (Bandura, A and Walters, R.., 1963). Thus, the major difference between these two theories was that Watson developed a psychological framework that involved only behavior and was based on classical conditioning while Bandura developed a psychological model that combined both the cognitive as well as behavioural frameworks. References Bandura, A and Walters, R. (1963). Social learning and personality development. Holt. Rinehart and Winston: Newyork. Bruner, J and Austin, G. (1986). A study of thinking. Transaction Publishers. Ginsberg, H. and Opper, S. (1988). Piagets theory of intellectual development (3rd Edition). Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US: Prentice Hall, Inc. Watson, J. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological review, 20(2): 158-177.