Middle childhood brings a respite to the child, a
time Freud called the latency stage. According to
Freud, from age five to thirteen children’s efforts are
directed at establishing same-sex friendships,
strengthening ties with parents, and meeting the so-
cial and intellectual demands imposed by school and
society.
The adolescent years witness the emergence of
the genital stage. Again the focus is on the genitalia
but it has shifted from parent-child issues to issues of
establishing intimacy with a same-age peer. How suc-
cessful the adolescent and young adult is in establish-
ing adult sexual relationships is, to Freud, largely a
function of how successfully earlier stages were re-
solved.
Erikson’s Psychoanalytic Model
Erikson’s revision of Freud’s theory reflected his
belief in the interpersonal nature of human develop-
ment. Erikson offered a sequence of eight develop-
mental stages—or as he called them, psychosocial
tasks—that must be successfully accomplished for a
person to become fully developed. Erikson’s first psy-
chosocial task involves developing a basic sense of
trust and is seen as the major developmental mile-
stone for the infant. Developing a basic sense of trust
comes about through the interactions with the infant’s
primary caregivers. The more predictable and appro-
priate the interactions, the more easily a sense of trust
is established.
Erikson’s remaining seven psychosocial tasks
then follow in sequence, each associated with a partic-
ular period of the lifespan. Toddlers are expected to
use their sense of trust to venture forth and establish
a basic sense of autonomy. The preschooler, in turn
is asked to develop a sense of initiative. By middle
childhood, this sense of initiative is now expected to
more fully develop into a sense of industry. One char-
acteristic of Erikson’s work that is well illustrated in
these first four stages is their nested nature. For suc-
cessful completion, each requires resolution at all
previous levels. No resolution halts development;
partial resolution restricts further development.
By adolescence, individuals are asked to form a
sense of identity, which is seen as forming the founda-
tion for the establishment of a sense of intimacy, the
defining event of the early years of adulthood. Inti-
macy typically leads to some form of permanent
bond, which in turn often leads to parenthood and
the opportunity to develop a sense of generativity, or
concern for the next generation. Finally, toward the
end of life, one is asked to form a sense of ego integri-
ty, to accept the life you have led as the life you have
led.
Piaget’s Cognitive Development Model
Unlike Erikson who focused on interpersonal re-
lationships, Piaget focused on children’s cognitive de-
velopment, in particular on the cognitive structures
or mechanisms that are available to individuals of dif-
ferent ages to help them make meaning out of their
everyday experiences. Piaget saw this effort to make
meaning as reflecting a desire to maintain an equilib-
rium or balance between the individual and his con-
text. New experiences create a degree of
disequilibrium, which the individual tries to adapt to
either by drawing on previous experiences to make
sense of the new one (a process Piaget referred to as
assimilation) or by making the necessary cognitive
changes to adapt to the new situation (a process of ac-
commodation). This continual process of assimilation
and accommodation leads to the changes in the indi-
vidual’s cognitive organization that were of interest to
Piaget.
Piaget saw this developmental process as occur-
ring in a sequence of four periods or stages. The first,
the sensory-motor period, typically occurs during the
first two years or so of life. It is marked by Piaget’s ob-
servation that infants are initially unable to act or be-
have on the basis of their mental representations
(literally, re-presentations) of their experiences but
rather act on the basis of their sensory and motor im-
pressions of these experiences. To Piaget’s infant,
what something means is based on whatever sensory
or motor interactions the infant is able to have with
the object, person, or experience.
Gradually over the second and third years of life,
young children begin to acquire the ability to act, in
a very elementary fashion, on their mental represen-
tations of objects, people, and events. This preopera-
tional period, which typically lasts until ages five to
seven, is characterized by the child’s growing use of
language, the increasing ability to engage in pretend
play and imitation, and a growing ability to under-
stand simple functional relationships. These young
children, however, still have difficulty in appreciating
the fact that others do not see things from the same
perspective as they do (what Piaget referred to as ego-
centric thought), and they are still relatively easily
fooled by how things appear to be rather than how
they must be.
As children enter middle childhood around age
five to age seven, they move into the period of con-
crete operational thought. They are now no longer
easily fooled by their perceptions because they have
the cognitive skills necessary to have their logic ‘‘cor-
rect’’ their perception. Concrete operational children
demonstrate the cognitive skills necessary to arrange,
organize, and classify information; use the types of
logical operations necessary for the understanding ofTHEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT 415