Psychology: Carl Rogers and Jean Piaget

• Psychology is the scientific study of the mind and behavior.

Carl Rogers

• Rogers developed Person-Centered theory.
• Helping people was his primary concern.
• Self subsystems were postulated in 1959, including "the ideal self" and "the real self".
• The ideal self is one's view of self as one wishes to be.
• The real self is a person’s total internal view of self in relation to the experiences of being and functioning within the environment.
• Congruence is when the ideal and real self are aligned.
• Incongruence is when the ideal and real self are not aligned.

Jean Piaget

• Piaget developed the Theory of Cognitive Development.
• Cognitive development involves a progressive reorganization of mental processes resulting from biological maturation and environmental experience.
• The three components of Piaget's cognitive development are: schema/schemes, adaption, and stages of cognitive development.
• Schema/schemes are the building blocks of knowledge.
• Adaption involves the child's learning processes to meet situational demands.
• Assimilation is the cognitive process of altering new information to fit an existing scheme.
• Accommodation is the cognitive process of changing a scheme to adapt to new information.
• Stages of cognitive development reflects the increasing sophistication of the child's thought process.
• The stages of cognitive development are sensorimotor (0-2 years), preoperational (2-7 years), concrete operational (7-11 years), and formal operational (12+ years).
• In the sensorimotor stage (0-2 years), children learn by doing and develop a primitive understanding of cause-and-effect relationships and object permanence around 9 months.
• In the preoperational stage (2-7 years), children use language and symbols and exhibit egocentrism. Conservation marks the end of this stage and the beginning of concrete operations.
• In the concrete operations stage (7-11 years), the child demonstrates conversation, reversibility, serial ordering, and understands cause-and-effect relationships. Thinking at this stage is still concrete.
• In the formal operations stage (12+ years), the individual demonstrates abstract thinking.

Dr. Susan Harter

• Harter broadened childhood and adolescent development study.
• In early childhood, children describe themselves in terms of concrete, observable characteristics like physical attributes, material possessions, behaviors, and preferences.
• In middle to later childhood, self is described in terms of trait-like constructs using the type of hierarchical organizational skills characteristic of logical thought development.
• In early adolescence, more abstract self-definitions emerge, such as inner thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and motives.
• Emerging adults have a vision of a possible self and experience a time of grand dreams.