Development refers to the process of growth and progression, for this essay specifically the advances a child makes, and the issues that arise causing specific fears in certain individuals, such as Anna’s fear of snakes. When studying childhood fears it’s necessary to discuss the theories of development in order to consider all possible causes of the child’s phobia and the reasons for individual differences regarding fears. A range of different developmental theories will be discussed in order to analyse the differences in fear between Anna and Bjorn, including Bandura’s Social Cognitive theory, Freud’s Psychoanalytic theory and Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental theory.
Bandura’s Social Cognitive theory “is by far the most influential among …show more content…
“Although wild-reared rhesus monkeys are fearful of snakes, lab-reared monkeys are not, indicating that the fear is not innate. However, lab-reared monkeys vicariously learn to fear snakes by observing the fearful behaviours of a fellow monkey” (LoBue, 2013). Any innate behaviour would be the same across every rhesus monkey, but there was a divide which matched up with the split between wild and laboratory suggesting a causal link between fear and environment. This relates directly to Anna’s fear of snakes as it studied the same fear in monkeys; however it’s not representative of Anna’s case because it’s based on monkeys meaning it cannot be generalised to humans as there are several differences between the two species. Monkeys use primitive thinking whereas humans use higher order thinking, therefore the monkeys may have simply been responding instinctively in the wild, which is a very different environment compared to the laboratory. Also, humans have a much more developed language in order to communicate unlike the monkeys, so the learning process would be very different between both …show more content…
The fear attitudes changed according to the facial expressions alongside, lasting for up to 3 months. Children presented with scared faces alongside the animals then showed higher levels of fear and avoidance towards that animal compared to those that were presented with a happy face, showing the process of observing the model’s reaction (the face’s expression) and imitating this behaviour themselves. There have been several repeats of this experiment (e.g. Reynolds et al, 2014; Askew et al, 2014) and the findings all agree with the theory that scared faces cause a fear response to the associated animal, supporting the large impact that vicarious learning has on the development of childhood fear. This experiment involved 7-9 year olds, the same age as Anna and Bjorn, making it relatable due to being at the same developmental stage, but pictures of novel animals were used rather than a real snake, meaning those animals may have had an alternative effect on the children compared to the effect a snake has on someone, so the findings cannot be generalised to Anna’s
Bandura’s Social Cognitive theory “is by far the most influential among …show more content…
“Although wild-reared rhesus monkeys are fearful of snakes, lab-reared monkeys are not, indicating that the fear is not innate. However, lab-reared monkeys vicariously learn to fear snakes by observing the fearful behaviours of a fellow monkey” (LoBue, 2013). Any innate behaviour would be the same across every rhesus monkey, but there was a divide which matched up with the split between wild and laboratory suggesting a causal link between fear and environment. This relates directly to Anna’s fear of snakes as it studied the same fear in monkeys; however it’s not representative of Anna’s case because it’s based on monkeys meaning it cannot be generalised to humans as there are several differences between the two species. Monkeys use primitive thinking whereas humans use higher order thinking, therefore the monkeys may have simply been responding instinctively in the wild, which is a very different environment compared to the laboratory. Also, humans have a much more developed language in order to communicate unlike the monkeys, so the learning process would be very different between both …show more content…
The fear attitudes changed according to the facial expressions alongside, lasting for up to 3 months. Children presented with scared faces alongside the animals then showed higher levels of fear and avoidance towards that animal compared to those that were presented with a happy face, showing the process of observing the model’s reaction (the face’s expression) and imitating this behaviour themselves. There have been several repeats of this experiment (e.g. Reynolds et al, 2014; Askew et al, 2014) and the findings all agree with the theory that scared faces cause a fear response to the associated animal, supporting the large impact that vicarious learning has on the development of childhood fear. This experiment involved 7-9 year olds, the same age as Anna and Bjorn, making it relatable due to being at the same developmental stage, but pictures of novel animals were used rather than a real snake, meaning those animals may have had an alternative effect on the children compared to the effect a snake has on someone, so the findings cannot be generalised to Anna’s