Ask any parent about their child’s development, and they’ll often talk about speech and language development, gross motor skills or even physical growth. But a child’s social development—her ability to interact with other children and adults—is a critical piece of the development puzzle.
Children’s Development is a social and cultural as well as a biological process. This is important because as societies become not only culturally diverse but also interconnected, psychological theories are required that fully acknowledge the influence of social context, both within & across cultures.
Social experience refers to the process by which a child learns to interact with others around them. As they develop and perceive their own individuality within their community, they also gain skills to communicate with other people and process their actions. For instance, learning new words as a nda was cleartoddler, to being able to resist peer pressure as a high school student, how a child develops friendships and other relationships to successfully navigating the challenges of adulthood.
The four ‘Grand theories’ about child development are built on the fundamental idea about children’s nature & role of the environment they are in.
In this essay I will explain the context of each of the four grand theories citing examples & experiments and eventually discuss to what extent social experience plays a role in child development .
Behaviourism
Behavioural psychology, also known as behaviourism, is a theory of learning based upon the idea that all behaviours are acquired through conditioning. Pavlov with his dog-meat-bell experiment[1 ] showed that behaviour can be conditioned through interaction with the environment. According to behaviourism, behaviour can be studied in a systematic and observable manner with no consideration of