Ed209 Tma03 Essay

2235 Words9 Pages
Which development models best account for the cause of developmental difficulties? The above question requires us to look at three different models; these models will help examine how we as psychologists can explain the cause and effect of childhood developmental problems. One of the downfalls in this area is that it is difficult to give an exact definition of what a developmental difficulty is, certain medical conditions can be tested for and given a definite answer as to what has caused the problem, this will be highlighted in the work that examines chromosome abnormalities, however this is not enough to explain the developmental difficulty as certain children have difficulties because of social factors. This gives us a good indication of what is affecting them in their external world, but in order to find out what goes on mentally we will use Bowlbys’ theory of the Internal Working Model (IWM) and Mary Ainsworth’s Attachment theory, which observes how the child reacts towards there caregiver. Lastly I will be looking at the transactional model which helps us link the child’s behavior and its interaction with the environment, or vice versa. This part will also show how children’s temperaments may protect them against social risk. Defining a development difficulty is controversial, as clinicians have to rely on the observations of parents, teachers and other agencies, these observations do not always give an accurate representation, as seen by the work of Achenbach et al (1987) who conducted meta-analysis on the judgments of this group and found that there was a low level of reliability between them; this may be because of the different expectations of the adults. To help professionals who have to assess these children, certain organisations have carried out studies and broke down developmental difficulties into 8 parts; withdrawn, somatic complaint,
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