Erik Erikson’s Stages of
Psychosocial Development
Stage
Infancy (birth to 18 months)
Toddler (2 to 3 years)
Preschool (3 to 5 years)
School Age (6 to 11 years)
Adolescence (12 to 18 years)
Young Adulthood (19 to 40 years)
Middle Adulthood (40 to 65 years)
Maturity(65 to death)
Developmental Tasks
Trust vs. Mistrust
Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
Initiative vs. Guilt
Industry vs. Inferiority
Identity vs. Role Confusion
Intimacy vs. Isolation
Generativity vs. Stagnation
Ego Integrity vs. Despair
Infancy
Trust vs. Mistrust

 Child develop a sense of trust when

caregivers provide reliabilty, care, love
and affection

 A lack of this will lead to mistrust.

Nursing implications:

 provide a primary caregiver

 Provide experiences that add to security

such as soft sounds and touch

 Provide visual stimulation for active

child involvement
Toddler (1 to 3 years)
Autonomy vs. Shame and
Doubt
 Child need to develop a sense of personal
control over physical skills and a sense of
independence and make decisions for self

 Success leads to feelings of autonomy,

failure results in feelings of shame and
doubt.
Nursing implications:

 Provide opportunities for decision

making

 Praise for ability to make decisions

rather than judging or correcting the
child’s decision
 
Preschool (3 to 5 years)
Initiative vs. Guilt
 Child needs to begin asserting control and
power over the environment.

 Success in this stage leads to a sense of

purpose.

 Child who try to exert too much power

experience disapproval, resulting in a sense
of guilt.
Implications:

 Provide opportunities for exploring

new places or activities

 Allow play to include activities

involving water, clay(for modeling or
finger paints)
School Age (6 to 12 years)
Industry vs. Inferiority
 Child needs to cope with new social and
academic demands.

 Success leads to a sense of competence,

while failure results in feelings of
inferiority.
Implications:

 allow child to assemble and complete a

short project so that the child feels
rewarded for accomplishment
Adolescence (13 to 20 years)
Identity vs. Role Confusion
 need to develop a sense of self and
personal identity.

 Success leads to an ability to stay true to

yourself, while failure leads to role
confusion and a weak sense of self.
Implications:

 Provide opportunities for the adolescent

to discuss feelings about events
important to him or her

 Offer support and praise for decision

making
Young Adulthood (20 to 40 years)
Intimacy vs. Isolation
 need to form intimate, loving relationships
with other people.

 Success leads to strong relationships, while

failure results in loneliness and isolation.
 Middle Adulthood (40 to 65
years)
Generativity vs. Stagnation
 Focus on supporting future generations

 having children or creating a positive change

that benefits other people.

 Success leads to feelings of usefulness and

accomplishment, while failure results in shallow
involvement in the world.
Late Adulthood (65 to death)
Ego Integrity vs. Despair
 If elderly achieved integrity, he views life with
sense of wholeness and derives satisfaction from
past accomplishments, views death

 Despair is experienced when views himself as a

failure, believes that he made poor choices and
senses that he has been worthless
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
 Jean Piaget’s Theory of
Cognitive Development
1. Sensorimotor (0-2 years)
2. Preoperational Thought (2-7 years)
3. Concrete Operational Thought (7-12 years)
4. Formal Operational Thought (12 and up
Sensorimotor (0-2 years)

 infant's knowledge of the world is

limited to his sensory perceptions and
motor activities. 

 Behaviors are limited to simple motor

responses caused by sensory stimuli.
Object Permanence
 important accomplishments at the
sensorimotor stage of development

 A child's
understanding that objects
continue to exist even though they
cannot be seen or heard.
Preoperational Thought (2-7 years)
 Children learn to think with the use of
symbols and mental images

 increase in playing and pretending

 Difficulty viewing one object as being

different from the other
 Displays static thinking (inability to
remember what he or she started to talk
about so that at the end of a sentence the
child is talking about another topic

 Egocentrism=unable to take the point of

view of other people
CONSERVATION.

Figure 11.13 Piaget’s conservation task

Concrete Operational Thought (7-12 years)

 Includes systematic reasoning

 child gain a better understanding of

mental operations

 begin thinking logically about concrete

events
 being able to reverse the order of
relationships between mental categories.

 Accomplished conservation or the ability to

see objects or quantities as remaining the
same despite a change in their physical
appearance
Formal Operational Thought (12 and up

 develop the ability to think about

abstract concepts

 Can organize thoughts in mind

 Has the capacity to reason with respect

to possibilities
MORAL DEVELOPMENT
Lawrence Kohlberg's
Theory on Moral
Development

1. Pre –conventional
2. Conventional
3. Post-conventional
Level 1. Preconventional
Morality
Stage 1 - Obedience and Punishment

 2-3 y/o

 children see rules as fixed and absolute

 Obeying the rules is important because it is

a means to avoid punishment.
Stage 2 - Individualism and Exchange

 4-7 y/o

 children account for individual points of view

and judge actions based on how they serve
individual needs

 Reciprocity is possible at this point in moral

development, but only if it serves one's own
interests.
Level 2. Conventional Morality
Stage 3 – Interpersonal Relationships
 7-10 y/o

 the "good boy-good girl" orientation

 focused on living up to social expectations and

roles.

 emphasis on conformity, being "nice," and

consideration of how choices influence
relationships.
Stage 4 - Maintaining Social Order

 10-12 y/o

 begin to consider society as a whole when

making judgments.

 focus is on maintaining law and order by

following the rules, doing one’s duty and
respecting authority.
 Level 3. Postconventional
Morality
Stage 5 - Social Contract and Individual Rights

 Older than 12 y/o

 begin to account for the differing values, opinions,

and beliefs of other people.

 Rules of law are important for maintaining a society,

but members of the society should agree upon these
standards.
Stage 6 - Universal Principles

 moral reasoning is based upon universal

ethical principles and abstract
reasoning.

 people follow these internalized

principles of justice, even if they
conflict with laws and rules.
END!!!
Substages of the
Sensorimotor Stage
Reflexes (0-1 month):
 the child understands the environment
purely through inborn reflexes such as
sucking and looking.
Primary Circular Reactions (1-4 months)
involves coordinating sensation
Hand-mouth and ear-eye coordination
develop
Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8 months)
the child becomes more focused on the world
and begins to intentionally repeat an action
in order to trigger a response in the
environment.
Coordination of Reactions (8-12 months)

 the child starts to show clearly intentional actions.

 begin to recognize certain objects as having specific
qualities.
 begin exploring the environment around them and will
often imitate the observed behavior of others.
Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18 months)

Child begin a period of trial-and-error

experimentation to discover new properties
of objects and events
Early Representational Thought (18-24
months)
begin to develop symbols to represent events
or objects in the world.
 Definitions of
Growth and Development
 Growth
 Increase in physical size of a whole or any of
its parts
 increase in number and size of cells
 can be measured
 Growthrefers to structural
and physiological changes
 Development
 specify maturation of functions
 A continuous, orderly series of conditions that
leads to activities, new motives for activities,
and patterns of behavior
 A progressive series of changes that occur in an
orderly predictable pattern as a result of
maturation and experience.