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Theories of Human Development
In these 24 lectures, probe the field of "human development"; the science that studies how we learn and develop psychologically, from birth to the end of life. This very young science not only enables us to understand children and help them develop optimally, but also gives us profound insights into who we are as adults.
Professor Watson introduces you to the six theories that have had perhaps the greatest influence on this field. Each of them has had a pervasive impact on the way we think about and see ourselves. Among the theories you'll encounter are Sigmund Freud's psychodynamic theory (including such concepts as the Oedipus Complex and the five stages of psycho-sexual development), Erik Erikson's psycho-social theory (which gave rise to the term "identity crisis"), and Albert Bandura's social learning theory (influential in such areas as the effect of media violence on children).
You'll meet the people who formulated each theory, become familiar with their philosophical backgrounds and the historical contexts in which they worked, and study the specific processes of human development that each theory describes. Along the way, you'll evaluate the strength and weaknesses of each theory. How do these six theories complement or contradict one another? What do they tell us, as a whole, about human development?
These lectures aren't simply about learning, behavior, and relationships in youth, but at any age. Taken as a whole, they provide our best answers to the questions of human nature-how we learn, adapt, and become who we are at every stage in life.
Professor Watson introduces you to the six theories that have had perhaps the greatest influence on this field. Each of them has had a pervasive impact on the way we think about and see ourselves. Among the theories you'll encounter are Sigmund Freud's psychodynamic theory (including such concepts as the Oedipus Complex and the five stages of psycho-sexual development), Erik Erikson's psycho-social theory (which gave rise to the term "identity crisis"), and Albert Bandura's social learning theory (influential in such areas as the effect of media violence on children).
You'll meet the people who formulated each theory, become familiar with their philosophical backgrounds and the historical contexts in which they worked, and study the specific processes of human development that each theory describes. Along the way, you'll evaluate the strength and weaknesses of each theory. How do these six theories complement or contradict one another? What do they tell us, as a whole, about human development?
These lectures aren't simply about learning, behavior, and relationships in youth, but at any age. Taken as a whole, they provide our best answers to the questions of human nature-how we learn, adapt, and become who we are at every stage in life.
13 pages, Audible Audio
First published January 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
April 8, 2015
Very solid history on the study of what makes people tick. A short background on the leading minds in this field is given along with their theories.
I love learning about why we do what we do. This sort of study is also good for writers looking for character development ideas. I've done such study prior to this and so I didn't learn a lot I didn't already know. It is an intro after all. However, there were enough knew tidbits to keep it interesting, and if nothing else, if makes for a good refresher.
One issue that brought my rating down a star was that Watson isn't the best lecturer. Every 5 or 10 minutes he mispronounces a word. Halfway through the course I noticed it was a recurring tic and then I began waiting for it, focusing on that, not the subject matter.
I'm going to forego giving any more detail on the subject matter taught in this course, because the Good Reads summary for Theories of Human Development does a bang up job of that.
I love learning about why we do what we do. This sort of study is also good for writers looking for character development ideas. I've done such study prior to this and so I didn't learn a lot I didn't already know. It is an intro after all. However, there were enough knew tidbits to keep it interesting, and if nothing else, if makes for a good refresher.
One issue that brought my rating down a star was that Watson isn't the best lecturer. Every 5 or 10 minutes he mispronounces a word. Halfway through the course I noticed it was a recurring tic and then I began waiting for it, focusing on that, not the subject matter.
I'm going to forego giving any more detail on the subject matter taught in this course, because the Good Reads summary for Theories of Human Development does a bang up job of that.
March 6, 2020
Comprehensive survey of the current primary theories which, when used in combination, are our best tools to understand human psychological development. Lectures are well-organized, focused, and intriguing.
September 27, 2008
A great lesson about what happens during our childhood. i will read this again while my kids are growing up.
November 5, 2020
Great introduction to different theories of human development.
As a history nerd myself, I like the chronological approach used by Professor Watson.
Of course 12 hours can't do justice to this central field of study,
but for what it was construed to be, this course enhanced my understanding of self and the roots of my own cognitive behavior, and as science puts out to do, both in an universal manner.
I especially enjoyed the lectures about Freud, Ainsworth/Bowlby and Piaget and got motivated to do further reading on this topic.
Recommendation for everyone interested in psychology and those liking a bottom-up approach to human understanding.
As a history nerd myself, I like the chronological approach used by Professor Watson.
Of course 12 hours can't do justice to this central field of study,
but for what it was construed to be, this course enhanced my understanding of self and the roots of my own cognitive behavior, and as science puts out to do, both in an universal manner.
I especially enjoyed the lectures about Freud, Ainsworth/Bowlby and Piaget and got motivated to do further reading on this topic.
Recommendation for everyone interested in psychology and those liking a bottom-up approach to human understanding.
December 15, 2016
Finally! I flew through the first half of this lecture series and then slowly ground to a halt. Not on the fault of the lecturer, I just got busy. I picked it up the last few days because I needed to finish.
Great group of lectures and a good review of material.
Great group of lectures and a good review of material.
May 5, 2017
This is a great read and useful guide to understanding how the understanding of child's development has changed over the last 100 years.
May 28, 2017
Needed a refresher course. It has been too many years since I learned the theories. I did like this speaker and enjoyed his stories that gave real life examples of the theories.
June 20, 2017
Very interesting, kinda dry!
November 15, 2020
A good series of lectures.
It's probably best to listen to them before, during and after a course on developmental psychology to get the most out of them.
It's probably best to listen to them before, during and after a course on developmental psychology to get the most out of them.
April 9, 2023
It was a great review of knowledge
July 1, 2024
Not a bad series of lectures, but the presenter was pretty dull. It took me forever to finish. Still, good information.
May 11, 2021
FREUD CORNER
When Freud talks about sexual urges, he doesn't literally mean sexual, but something more like sensual or pleasure-seeking.
Freud called the Id, Ego and Superego the Es, Ich, and Über-Ich, so a more literal, and probably more descriptive, translation is the It, the I, and the Super-I. That is, the personification of internal drives, the practical self, and moralising monologue.
Drive reduction model: using hunger or thirst as a model for behaviour.
Freud described two main drives: Eros - the sexual, life-affirming, reproductive drive - and Thanatos - the drive for equilibrium, death, and self-desctruction.
END OF FREUD CORNER
How adolescents talk to each other: "But enough about me, what about you? What do you think about me?"
"Niche-picking" and reciprocal determinism: your environment determines you but you also determine your environment
Bandura's Theory of Self-Efficacy Theory: you have a model of how efficacious you are. Learned helplessness is a subset of this.
Robert White: When a lizard meets its basic needs it goes to sleep. When a human's basic needs are met, it's ready to get started. This is when we're most motivated to act on our world and seek challenges.
Erik Erikson's Stages of Development:
- Trust (0-18 months)
- Autonomy (1-3 years)
- Initiative (3-5 years)
- Competence (6-11 years)
- Identity (12-18 years)
- Intimacy (19-39 years)
- Generativity (40-65 years)
- Wisdom (65+ years)
Bandura extended Behaviouralist thinking to include "social learning" in which reinforcement can be transmitted between people. He also studied people's sense of "self-efficacy", of which learned helplessness seems to be a special case. Self-efficacy itself seems to be a special case of expected-value learning.
The pioneers of attachment theory were Bowlby and Ainsworth.
Piaget's stages:
- Sensorimotor (0-2 years)
- Preoperational (2-7 years): capable of symbol use and pretending, but all thinking happens in the world rather than in the head
- Concrete operations (7-11 years)
- Formal operations (etc)
Children initially can only pretend that something a prop is something else if the prop is similar. Eg, a kids can use play telephone with an actual telephone before they can with a toy telephone, which itself precedes a banana, then a block of wood, then a toy car, then nothing at all. As you develop, you can distance the symbol from the referent.
Piaget liked to talk to children as Socratic dialogue. "Why are there clouds?" "Why do you think there are clouds?"
John Bransford's toy example of how we can't understand anything without schemas:
Children will often shift from correctly conjugating irregular verbs to incorrectly conjugating them regularly. Eg, "regressing" from saying "feet" to "foots".
3-4 year olds can shift between different representations of the world, but they can't conceive of there being two representations at the same time. This makes them lousy liars. It also makes them confused about divorce: how if my parents aren't married, how can they still be my parents?
Children don't suddenly invent a better strategy for dealing with the world and roll with it. Instead they add the new strategy to their repertoire from which they randomly sample strategies, and the better strategy will eventually win out.
Vygotsky zone of proximal development: the level of competency isn't a piont, it's a distribution. At the top of the zone attempts are almost always failures. At the bottom of the zone attempts are almost always successful.
When Freud talks about sexual urges, he doesn't literally mean sexual, but something more like sensual or pleasure-seeking.
Freud called the Id, Ego and Superego the Es, Ich, and Über-Ich, so a more literal, and probably more descriptive, translation is the It, the I, and the Super-I. That is, the personification of internal drives, the practical self, and moralising monologue.
Drive reduction model: using hunger or thirst as a model for behaviour.
Freud described two main drives: Eros - the sexual, life-affirming, reproductive drive - and Thanatos - the drive for equilibrium, death, and self-desctruction.
END OF FREUD CORNER
How adolescents talk to each other: "But enough about me, what about you? What do you think about me?"
"Niche-picking" and reciprocal determinism: your environment determines you but you also determine your environment
Bandura's Theory of Self-Efficacy Theory: you have a model of how efficacious you are. Learned helplessness is a subset of this.
Robert White: When a lizard meets its basic needs it goes to sleep. When a human's basic needs are met, it's ready to get started. This is when we're most motivated to act on our world and seek challenges.
Erik Erikson's Stages of Development:
- Trust (0-18 months)
- Autonomy (1-3 years)
- Initiative (3-5 years)
- Competence (6-11 years)
- Identity (12-18 years)
- Intimacy (19-39 years)
- Generativity (40-65 years)
- Wisdom (65+ years)
Bandura extended Behaviouralist thinking to include "social learning" in which reinforcement can be transmitted between people. He also studied people's sense of "self-efficacy", of which learned helplessness seems to be a special case. Self-efficacy itself seems to be a special case of expected-value learning.
The pioneers of attachment theory were Bowlby and Ainsworth.
Piaget's stages:
- Sensorimotor (0-2 years)
- Preoperational (2-7 years): capable of symbol use and pretending, but all thinking happens in the world rather than in the head
- Concrete operations (7-11 years)
- Formal operations (etc)
Children initially can only pretend that something a prop is something else if the prop is similar. Eg, a kids can use play telephone with an actual telephone before they can with a toy telephone, which itself precedes a banana, then a block of wood, then a toy car, then nothing at all. As you develop, you can distance the symbol from the referent.
Piaget liked to talk to children as Socratic dialogue. "Why are there clouds?" "Why do you think there are clouds?"
John Bransford's toy example of how we can't understand anything without schemas:
The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups. Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities that is the next step, otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important bu complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first the whole procedure will seem complicated.
Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult to foresee any end to the
necessity for this task in the immediate future, but then one never can tell, After the procedure is completed one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, that is part of life.
Children will often shift from correctly conjugating irregular verbs to incorrectly conjugating them regularly. Eg, "regressing" from saying "feet" to "foots".
3-4 year olds can shift between different representations of the world, but they can't conceive of there being two representations at the same time. This makes them lousy liars. It also makes them confused about divorce: how if my parents aren't married, how can they still be my parents?
Children don't suddenly invent a better strategy for dealing with the world and roll with it. Instead they add the new strategy to their repertoire from which they randomly sample strategies, and the better strategy will eventually win out.
Vygotsky zone of proximal development: the level of competency isn't a piont, it's a distribution. At the top of the zone attempts are almost always failures. At the bottom of the zone attempts are almost always successful.
September 12, 2023
a fairly standard overview of this subject. Watson does a good job covering the greatest hits of the subject, from Freud to Erikson to Piaget and all other 20th century figures of note. If you, like me, are raising a kiddo, you'll find something of interest here (I've found myself listening to more of my late uncle's TC lectures on account of a need to commute back and forth to my mom's house).
April 4, 2020
2019.06.25–2019.06.26
Contents
Watson MW (2002) (12:21) Theories of Human Development
01. Introduction—The Value of Theories
02. The Early History of Child Study
03. Two Worldviews—Locke vs. Rousseau
04. Later History—Becoming Scientific
05. Freud’s Psychodynamic Theory
06. How We Gain Contact with Reality—The Ego
07. Freud’s Psycho-Sexual Stages
08. Erikson’s Psycho-Social Theory
09. Erikson’s Early Stages
10. Identity and Intimacy
11. Erikson’s Later Stages—Adult Development
12. Bowlby and Ainsworth’s Attachment Theory
13. How Nature Ensures That Attachment Will Occur
14. Development of Secure and Insecure Attachments
15. Early Attachments and Adult Relationships
16. Bandura’s Social Learning Theory
17. Bandura’s Self-Efficacy Theory
18. Piaget’s Cognitive-Developmental Theory
19. Piaget’s Early Stages
20. Concrete Operations
21. Piaget’s Last Stage
22. Vygotsky’s Cognitive-Mediation Theory
23. Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development
24. Conclusions—Our Nature and Development
Contents
Watson MW (2002) (12:21) Theories of Human Development
01. Introduction—The Value of Theories
02. The Early History of Child Study
03. Two Worldviews—Locke vs. Rousseau
04. Later History—Becoming Scientific
05. Freud’s Psychodynamic Theory
06. How We Gain Contact with Reality—The Ego
07. Freud’s Psycho-Sexual Stages
08. Erikson’s Psycho-Social Theory
09. Erikson’s Early Stages
10. Identity and Intimacy
11. Erikson’s Later Stages—Adult Development
12. Bowlby and Ainsworth’s Attachment Theory
13. How Nature Ensures That Attachment Will Occur
14. Development of Secure and Insecure Attachments
15. Early Attachments and Adult Relationships
16. Bandura’s Social Learning Theory
17. Bandura’s Self-Efficacy Theory
18. Piaget’s Cognitive-Developmental Theory
19. Piaget’s Early Stages
20. Concrete Operations
21. Piaget’s Last Stage
22. Vygotsky’s Cognitive-Mediation Theory
23. Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development
24. Conclusions—Our Nature and Development
September 4, 2015
Strongly recommend this to anyone approaching the topic of Developmental Psychology from a novice position, as I did myself. It covers a lot of ground and gives you a solid grounding. I will be revisiting this in the future, as there is a lot of great stuff to absorb. Highly recommended.
April 16, 2015
This helped me pass my CLEP test.
February 11, 2016
Very good review of theories of child development.
July 27, 2020
Very good. However, I wish I had first gone over a survey course in psychology. My psych courses from college were pretty well rusted.
September 2, 2015
Spectacular and insightful!
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews