| Course | PS 105 Developmental Psychology |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 1 |
| Paper type | Developmental theory overview |
| Length | About 980 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Herzing University |
| Program | BS in Psychology |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for PS 105 Unit 1
Built for Childhood, Stretched Across a Life: A Developmental Theory Overview of Six Frameworks and the Years Each One Never Reached
Student Name
Psychology, Herzing University
PS 105: Developmental Psychology
Instructor Name
March 16, 2026
Built for Childhood, Stretched Across a Life: A Developmental Theory Overview of Six Frameworks and the Years Each One Never Reached
The Question Under the Survey
Developmental psychology offers several frameworks that claim to describe how people change. This overview reports six of them, each credited to its proposer and summarized in that person's terms: what the account says changes, what drives the change, and whether change happens in stages or gradually. Running underneath is one question. Some frameworks were built from work with young children and later stretched toward adulthood; others claimed the whole of life from the start. For each, the paper states the span it was built for and the years it never really reached.
Freud's Psychosexual Account
Freud proposed that personality forms through a sequence of stages in which the focus of pleasure shifts across the body, and that conflicts in early stages shape adult personality. His account was built from adult patients' recollections and treated the first five or six years as decisive, with development essentially complete by adolescence. It says almost nothing about change after the teenage years. Its influence on later theory is large, but its specific claims are difficult to test and few are supported in their original form. It is included here mainly because Erikson (1950), who trained in psychoanalysis, built his own stages on Freud's sequence and then departed from it by stressing social demands over bodily drives and by carrying the stages through adulthood.
Erikson's Psychosocial Stages
Erikson (1950) recast development as a series of eight psychosocial stages, each organized around a tension between two outcomes, such as trust versus mistrust in infancy, identity versus role confusion in adolescence, generativity versus stagnation in middle adulthood and integrity versus despair in old age. Change is driven by the meeting of a maturing person with the demands of their society. Of the classical theories, Erikson's is the one that claimed the whole of life from the beginning. Even so, the adult stages were sketched more briefly than the childhood ones, and the age ranges attached to them are rough.
Piaget's Cognitive Stages
Piaget described thinking as developing through four stages, from the sensorimotor period of infancy to formal operations, the capacity for abstract and hypothetical reasoning that typically emerges in adolescence (Piaget & Inhelder, 1969). Children construct understanding through their own activity, assimilating experience to existing ways of thinking and accommodating those ways when experience does not fit. The account was built from close observation of children, and it ends with formal operations. It does not describe whether or how thinking changes across adulthood, which later researchers have had to address with other frameworks.
Vygotsky's Sociocultural Account
Vygotsky (1978) argued that higher mental functions develop first between people and are then internalized, so that language and guided interaction are the drivers of cognitive growth. His best-known idea, the zone of proximal development, describes the gap between what a child can do alone and what the child can do with help from someone more skilled. Change is gradual and depends on culture rather than proceeding through universal stages. Vygotsky died young and his work centered on childhood and schooling; the principle that learning happens through guided participation applies at any age, but he did not develop an account of adult development.
Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems
Bronfenbrenner (1979) shifted attention from the person to the nested environments a person lives in, from the immediate settings of family and school, through the links between them, to wider institutions and culture. Development results from the interaction between a growing person and these systems over time. The framework does not propose stages and in principle covers the whole of life, but most of the research that used it focused on children and families, so its application to adulthood has been more general than detailed.
Baltes and the Life-Span Perspective
Baltes (1987) set out a set of propositions intended to describe development across the entire life from the start. Development is lifelong, multidirectional and always involves both gains and losses; it is shaped by age-graded influences, historical events and nonnormative events unique to a person; and people retain plasticity, the capacity to change, throughout life. The perspective does not offer stages. It is the only framework here that was designed for later life as carefully as for early life.
The Frameworks Side by Side
| Framework | What drives change | Staged or continuous | Span it was built for | Years it never reached |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freud | Resolution of conflicts over pleasure | Staged | Early childhood, read back from adults | All of adulthood |
| Erikson (1950) | Maturing person meeting social demands | Staged | Whole life, adulthood sketched | Detail in later adulthood |
| Piaget | Child's own activity and reorganization | Staged | Infancy to adolescence | Adulthood |
| Vygotsky (1978) | Social interaction and language | Continuous | Childhood and schooling | Adult development as such |
| Bronfenbrenner (1979) | Person interacting with nested systems | Continuous | Whole life in principle | Adulthood in practice |
| Baltes (1987) | Gains and losses across contexts | Continuous | Whole life by design | None by design |
One Framework Applied Briefly
To show what an application looks like, consider a composite 47-year-old who has spent twenty years as a welder and has recently begun training apprentices at a community college. Erikson's account describes this moment well: the shift from building a career to guiding the next generation is close to what he meant by generativity. The same case shows the framework's limits. Erikson's account says little about how the welder's thinking changes, how his work is shaped by the college and the labor market, or what he may be losing physically while gaining as a teacher. Those questions belong to the frameworks that reached adulthood more fully, which is why the course uses several frameworks rather than one.
What the Overview Means for the Rest of the Course
The pattern in the table has a practical consequence for the units ahead. For infancy and childhood, students will have more frameworks than they need and will have to choose between them. For adolescence, Erikson and Piaget both still speak, though Piaget's account ends there. For adulthood and old age, most of the classical frameworks have little left to say, and the course will need to bring in research built on adults, such as the life-span propositions of Baltes (1987) and studies designed specifically on older people. Knowing in advance which framework was built for which years is the best protection against applying a theory to a period it was never designed to describe, which is the most common error in developmental writing.
References
Baltes, P. B. (1987). Theoretical propositions of life-span developmental psychology: On the dynamics between growth and decline. Developmental Psychology, 23(5), 611-626. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.23.5.611
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard University Press.
Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and society. Norton.
Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1969). The psychology of the child. Basic Books.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Harvard University Press.
PS 105 Unit 1 instructions, in plain terms
The first PS 105 unit asks students to report several major developmental frameworks and to judge how much of the lifespan each covers. Expect to credit each framework to its proposer, summarize it in that person's terms, state what changes, what drives the change and whether change is described in stages or as continuous, then say what span the framework was built for. Some accounts began with young children and were later stretched toward adulthood; others claimed the whole of life from the start. A brief application of one framework to a case usually follows. Five or six frameworks is a common scope, and stage ages are best treated as rough guides rather than facts to memorize.
Inside the PS 105 Unit 1 example
An opening section states the question running under the survey. Six short sections follow in roughly historical order, each giving the framework's claim, its driver of change, its staged or continuous character and the years it covers, with Freud included mainly as the basis Erikson built on and departed from. A comparison table sets all six side by side on driver, structure, intended span and the years each never reached. A brief application to a composite midlife welder shows Erikson's generativity fitting while leaving cognition, context and physical change unexplained. The close explains which frameworks the course will rely on for each period and why that choice matters.
Where the points sit in the PS 105 Unit 1 rubric
Herzing's rubric for the theory overview usually rewards accurate attribution, faithful summaries, a clear statement of each framework's span, a useful comparison and a short application, along with writing and APA. Attribution earns credit when each framework is credited to its proposer rather than to a textbook. Summaries score when they use the author's own terms instead of shorthand. The span criterion carries particular weight in this course, rewarding students who say which years a framework was built for and which it only reaches by extension. Comparison earns points when the frameworks are set side by side on stated points. The application scores when it shows a framework's limits as well as its fit.
Common PS 105 Unit 1 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Overviews lose points when they list frameworks with stage names and ages but never say what drives change in each. Another frequent weakness is treating every framework as if it covered the whole of life equally. Students often summarize theories in loose textbook shorthand rather than in their authors' terms. Some memorize stage ages and present them as fixed. Others skip the application or choose one where the framework fits perfectly, which shows nothing. Applying a framework to your own child shares family details unnecessarily. If you are unsure how to judge each framework's span, our writers can help you build the comparison for your section's list.
Get a PS 105 Unit 1 example written to your instructions
Start us off with the Unit 1 instructions, the PS 105 rubric and the list of frameworks your section covers. We write a custom example that summarizes each account by its mechanism, states the span it was built for, applies one to a composite person and compares without ranking. First custom sample free, back in 24 to 48 hours.
More PS 105 papers and psychology samples
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PS 105 Unit 1 questions, answered
How many frameworks should the overview include?
Follow your instructions, which usually name them. Where the choice is open, three or four covered properly beats a catalog, and it helps to include at least one account that was proposed across the whole of life alongside one drawn from a narrower span, because the contrast is what the comparison section needs. Say at the start which you selected.
Are the stage ages something I should memorize?
Learn the sequences, treat the ages as approximate, and attribute both. Age bands in these frameworks came from particular samples at particular times, authors described them as typical rather than fixed, and later editions of your textbook may print them differently. Write them as the source gives them, cite the source, and say in the paper that variation is expected.
Can I apply the framework to my own child?
A composite is safer and reads the same. Writing up a real child's progress in a graded paper puts an identifiable young person into a document they cannot consent to, and any nursery report, school record or pediatric note about them belongs to that child and their family. Build a constructed person from ordinary patterns and say so in the opening.
Where can I find a free PS 105 Unit 1 sample paper?
The complete PS 105 Unit 1 developmental theory overview is on this page free, with six frameworks, the span table and margin notes. Assigned a different set of theorists? Send the instructions and an overview built on them is written at no charge in about two days.
Are the stage ages something to memorize for PS 105 Unit 1?
Treat them as rough guides. The sample notes that Erikson's adult stages carry only approximate ages and that Baltes proposed no stages at all, which matters more than the exact numbers.