B. F. Skinner's Theory Of Development And Nurture To Childhood

Many psychologists have had theories on how people develop from infancy to childhood and into adulthood. Most believe the way you will act when you’re an adult is set when you’re a child. If nurtured as a child, you will nurture as an adult. On the contrary, if abused as a child, in adulthood there can be psychological problems. The three psychologists that studied this all had a different but similar view point on how development works. B.F. Skinner believed that development is centered on operant conditioning. Erikson focused more on the conflicts that arouse within the studied subjects life. Freud theorized that development was based on the psychosexuality conflict of the person. All of the theories are true but all have missing holes in their theories.

B.F. Skinner was an early psychologist that invented the operant conditioning chamber, also known as the Skinner Box . The information gathered from the experiment conducted with Skinner’s Box, “Functional analysis of behavior-environment interchange has facilitated the analysis of infants learning and development” (B.F. Skinner, Toward a Unified Theory of Development: Connectionism and Dynamic Systems Theory Re-Consider. ). This means that the action that is taking will be reproduced over and over again because of the reward. This strategy is used in teaching children how to read, write and speak. This is applied later in life when a person gets a job. The harder a person works, the more they are usually paid. The next psychologists work was set up into distinctive sections of development.

Erik Erikson was an American Psychologist that specialized in the development in children, but later moved onto adult development. He taught that the development of ...

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...ough adulthood and will end with death.

The three psychologist had some similarities in their theories, yet they studied psychology years apart. All of these theories are like Swiss cheese. They all have holes in them, but if one looks at all three together the holes are smaller or nonexistent. The theory that is most relevant in this argument is Erikson’s. His theory is used in schools and at home to teach children how to act and learn. Within the usage of Erikson’s theory, Skinner’s conditioning is used to reinforce the good behaviors of the children. The two theories coincide throughout a person’s life. The only theory that has an odd outlook on human development is Freud’s. The thing that is disagreed in his theory would be the jealous that a child gets for the opposite sex parent. The other two theories fall in line with the other theories.