Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development Quiz

Psychoanalytic Theory

• Children develop through a series of stages, confronting conflicts between biological drives and social expectations.
• Healthy personality development is determined by how parents manage a child's early sexual and aggressive drives.
• Fixation occurs when a child's sexual desires are either overly satisfied or undersatisfied.
• There are 7 psychosexual stages, each with a specific focus:
  • Oral (birth to 1): Mouth, weaning, and oral gratification.
  • Anal (1 to 3): Anus, toilet training, and gratification from expelling or withholding feces.
  • Phallic (3 to 6): Genitals, Oedipus complex, and Electra complex.
  • Latency (6 to puberty): Period of sexual calmness, interest in school, and hobbies.
  • Genital (Puberty onwards): Re-awakening of sexual drives, building intimate relationships.

Psychosocial Development

• Erik Erikson's stages of psychosocial development:
  • 0-18 months old: Trust vs. Mistrust
  • 18 months – 3 years old: Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
  • 3 – 5 years old: Initiative vs. Guilt
  • 5 – 13 years old: Industry vs. Inferiority
  • 13-21 years old: Identity vs. Role Confusion
  • 21-39 years old: Intimacy vs. Isolation
  • 40-65 years old: Generativity vs. Stagnation
  • 65 years older: Integrity vs. Despair
• Havighurst's concept of developmental tasks: process by which humans learn tasks required by society.
• Age-graded expectations: tasks change with age.
• Sensitive periods: periods of development when an individual is most ready to acquire a new ability.

Learning Theories

• Operant/Instrumental Conditioning (B.F. Skinner):
  • Processes: reinforcement, punishment, and schedule of reinforcement.
  • Positive Reinforcement: increase behavior, e.g., bonus for working hard.
  • Negative Reinforcement: decrease behavior, e.g., aspirin relieving headache.
  • Positive Punishment: increase behavior, e.g., getting a speeding ticket.
  • Negative Punishment: decrease behavior, e.g., losing the privilege to hang out late.
• Schedules of Reinforcement:
  • Fixed Ratio (FR): reward after a fixed number of responses.
  • Variable Ratio (VR): reward after an unpredictably varying number of responses.
  • Fixed Interval (FI): reward after a fixed amount of time.
  • Variable Interval (VI): reward after an unpredictably varying amount of time.

Cognitive Development

• Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory:
  • Assimilation: using existing schemes to interpret new experiences.
  • Accommodation: modifying familiar schemes to interpret new experiences.
  • Stages of Development:
    • Sensorimotor (0-18 months): lack of object permanence.

Systems Theory

• Urie Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory:
  • Microsystem: immediate context/setting.
  • Mesosystem: interactions between two microsystems.
  • Exosystem: settings that do not involve the person directly but affect the person.
  • Macrosystem: culture or society.
  • Chronosystem: environmental events and transitions over one's life.

Psychosocial Theory

• Emphasis on the interplay among biological, psychological, and societal systems.
• Stages of development:
  • Developmental tasks.
  • Psychosocial crisis.
  • Resolving psychosocial crises: central process to resolve the crises.

Test your knowledge on the central process for resolving psychosocial crises at each stage according to Erik Erikson's theory. Explore the developmental tasks, age-graded expectations, and sensitive periods associated with each stage from infancy to old age.