Developmental Psychology

This study found that infants/babies did become attached prior to one year of age, and that the parental and child interaction. When the parent took care of the child’s needs either physically or emotionally, the child would become securely attached. The parents that were not responsive to the child’s needs, would become insecurely attached. 4.10 Personality Personalities can vary from person to person and can be pretty unique. There are several factors that will affect a person’s personality. Let’s look at a couple below • Gen tic Factor : Several personality characteristics have been studied since birth. Some of these are levels of activity, attention span, how well someone adapts to situations, a person’s temperament, and many other characteristics. Temperament is known as the consistent disposition that reflects personal response to other people and things. When looking a correlation studies, identical twins end to score higher than fraternal twins or siblings, in relation to temperament. • Three Major Temperaments : There are three different temperaments. The three are extroverted, placid, and shy. Something that these temperaments indicate are levels of sociability as well as extroversion and shyness. These are the three that have been heavily studied. Psychologist, Jerome Kagan is one of the individuals that studied the notion of shyness and how it is applicable to the first few months of life. Kagan believed that during the first months of life, there is a self-conscious attitude towards seeing new people or objects. This contributes to shyness. There are three different theories that have been used to attempt understanding of how shy personality develops. • Learning Theory : This personality is typically shaped by reinforcement, as well as punishment given by parents. If a child is punished when asked not to clean up their mess, then there is a change that the child will look at the repercussions of not doing what they are asked and will start cleaning up their mess. When a parent reacts to a positive action, the child will see that this is a good thing and will act accordingly. Something that this theory does do is blame parents for creating a poorly adjusted child. This personality is where children “learn” from their parents. • Psychoanalytic Theory : Theorists studying this theory believe that personality is developed during the first 4 years of life. It was Jean Freud that created the Four Stages of Psychoanalytic Development. In his four stages, 2 of them are relevant to this particular theory. o Oral Stage: This is the stage where children discover things with their mouths. Weaning is one of the most important tasks during this stage. o Anal Stage: One of the most important tasks in this stage is potty training. It was Freud that believed that if children did not accomplish learning how to use the potty, that they would become fixated and not leave this stage, and that it would cause personality problems in the future. Though is point was seen, the arguments that Freud made were highly scrutinized.

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