Wednesday 24 December 2014

Attachment

First of all, I´m going to define the word; a feeling that binds one to a cause.
We have learning about the types of attachment and everything that connects, and now is time to write about it,
I´ve found a page in which say that John Bowlby was the first psicology that use the theory of attachment 
                                          
I post this photo beacuse, babys need the attachment of their parents. For infants and children, the "objet" of the attachment behavioral system is achieving or maintaining proximity to attachment figures, usually parents.
I´m going to talk about the funtion, features, behaviors and types of attachment.

Funtion:
According to Bowlby's attachment behavior has two basic functions: a biological function, which is to obtain protection to ensure survival, and the other more psychological character, acquiring security. The additional functions are: to provide and regulate the stimulation in quantity and quality, enabling the exploration and learning, promote physical and mental health, promote social development and provide pleasure.

Features:
You strive to maintain proximity to the person being linked
Resisting feeling separation anxiety, desolation and abandonment to the loss
Keep a privileged sensory contact with the attachment figure
Use the attachment figure as a secure base from which to explore the physical and social world
Shelter in the attachment figure in times of sadness, fear or discomfort, looking at her support and emotional wellbeing.

Behaviors:
Signaling behaviors: are what make children so that the attachment figure realizes he wants to start an interaction. Ex .: smile, vocalizations, babbling ...
Aversive behaviors: are signals that are intended to lead to the mother to the child, to finish crying or aggressive behavior of this.
Active behaviors: those that take the child to the mother. Ex .: approximation to the mother up.

Types:
Secure attachment: Occurs in 65% of infants. Babies with this type of attachment explore actively while they are alone with the attachment figure, and can visibly uneasy when separated from her. Often the baby greets the attachment figure with affection when you return, and if you are very restless, try to come into physical contact with her. These babies are sociable with strangers while the mother is present.
Resistant attachment: Occurs in 10% of infants. Babies with this type of attachment try to stay close to the attachment figure and explore little while she is present. Much disturbed when it is running, but when he returns his reaction is ambivalent: it remains in your area, but can resist physical contact with her showing upset by abandonment. Showing extremely cautious with strangers, even in the presence of the attachment figure.
Avoidant attachment: Occurs in 20% of infants. Babies with this type of attachment show little upset when separated from the attachment figure and generally shy away from it when it comes back even try to gain their attention. They tend to be sociable with strangers but can ignore the same way they avoid their attachment figure when he returns.
Disorganized / disoriented attachment: Occurs between 5 and 10% of babies. It is a combination of resistant attachment patterns and avoidant attachment. The baby may appear confusing standing still or approach then abruptly away as the attachment figure is approaching.


This is for me, the key to understand very good the attachment. I´ve found a lot of information, and now i can know the importance of attachment, also many parents should know about this.
Hope you like this small blog that is more theority than others, but is comming a new blog that you will like more!


Sunday 14 December 2014

Are you a full time constructivist? Hell.... no!!!!



I owed Rocio this post, as an elaboration of our discussion in a previous class (we were discussing about epistemology if you remember as an introduction to Piaget theoretical model).

She asked me if I was 100% constructivist and I answered that yes. At least in that moment, I was sincere. However that question continued with me the following days because it was not so clear the answer I had given.

I consider I am constructivist when I see myself as the creator of my own interpretations to the world. Then I am not so much reacting to the world than actively making sense of it.  And this is not happening all the time, only when I am aware of me being aware of me and the situation I am into. If I am not aware then I am not acting from a constructivist point of view, but just acting as a realist or empicist one. This may sound strange so I will give an example.

A couple of years ago I was driving in Madrid and got into to a small traffic circle. As I know the general rule that says that you have preference when you are in a traffic circle I took for granted that was the case at that moment. So I didn't stop although a taxi was approaching the traffic circle. I assumed he had to let me pass. The next thing is that the taxi driver began to shout to me, insulting me in a very angry way. He placed the taxi on my right side while he was shouting. My reaction, much more being "right", was to shout him back also in a furious way. We spent ten seconds  screaming and insulting each other. Then suddenly I realized the nonsense of the situation.  It was as if I could see the whole situation from outsided. And frankly it didn't worth the risk. Fortunately nothing serious had really happen so what reason we had of being so angry? So I just calmed down and watched the taxi driver shouting to me even more desperate than before. I probably had a smile in my face while I watched at him, smiling because of the stupid situation. Of course I still thought I was right, so what reason I had to discuss? Anyway I was aware of  my assumption at that point and decided I had to verify if I was right or wrong. But at that moment the main point was to finish the situation, much more because the taxi driver still was shouting and insulting me angrier than ever. So as he expected I was going to go on straight on through a main street I changed fast my direction taking another street on my right (he was already in front of me at that moment) so I could miss him. After four hours when I was again driving in the part of Madrid close to my home I went to the traffic circle to verify that the taxi driver was right. I had a give way sign I had ignored completely. However neither him nor me were right of loosing our own's control.

This brief story exemplifies my point. Only when I realized about the situation and my understanding of it I became a constructivist, but not before. I was subjected to my unconscious interpretation of the situation (I was right and he had to give me the way) and reacting to that in a violent way, because not only I was right, even more I had  to bear his insults and screams. No this is funny (or not) but it could have had worse consequences.

So in conclusion I am constructivist depending on the extent I am aware of myself in relation to others and the whole situation I live. And this does not happen all the time.

Thanks Rocío for giving me this time to reflect on this.

Bye

Alejandro

About Robert Kegan's model of development



As we are going to be dealing with Kegan's model, and I am afraid that we are running out of time, I've been working these days on this video. It summarizes and simplifies his theory stated in his 1994 book "In over our heads".

I hope we will have time to discuss some of his ideas during our last session next wednesday.

Anyway, I want to warn a couple of things regarding this video. I disagree with the connection the author does between every order of consciousness and age. That connection is not so simple and evident at all. Most of adults never get beyond a third order of consciousness according to Kegan's studies. So it doesn't matter if you become old. You are not going to get a higher order of consciousness just because of that. It will depend on how do you manage and make meaning from your life experiences.

In addition to this most adolescents are probably in between second and third order of consciousness as most adults are in between third and fourth order of consciousness,although some of them could stay at second one. Besides the context will influence our behavious in the sense that in good conditions we can work in a higher level and in weak conditions we will probably will act below our real possibilities.

After watching the video if you want to know more about Kegan's theory you can review these slides.

I will try to pose an example in order to explain this in a following post.

Now this is the video.


Saturday 6 December 2014

Creating attachment



      Since last year, I teach two little children. Nico was five years all and his sister, Laura, was nine. At first, they looked at me with uncertainties, do not sure if they can trust me or not. I used to take them home from school and teaching them English, I was trying to be close to them too.

      Nico, the young brother, started creating attachment quickly than his sister. He started by holding my hand, or showing me little things, his “treasures”, when leaving school. He used to trust me little by little, until he took me more confidence and he asked me lots of questions about everything, my life, what I was doing, what I was studying... And I answered all his questions.

      What did happen and I didn't realize until it was too late? Laura, his sister, began to be jealous. She thought I prefer her brother rather than her. She didn’t see all my efforts to be close to her, she only saw that Nico had created some kind of attachment with me and she wanted it too. But Laura is a very locked and proud girl. She always challenged my authority and rarely let me get close to her. I was really worried, Laura was a very tough little person to deal with.

      Who would have thought that the solution would be so simple? Well, not so simple, but very effective in these moment and the months after. It was Christmas, my mother told me “Beatriz, you should give something to the children, thus Laura may like it and she could see you from another point of view. And perhaps, even if it sounds silly, it can make you closest”.

      I followed my mother advice and it worked. After this experiment, I could say that both mothers and chocolate are the solution to everything. At least the huge majority of things. 

      I give some chocolate to them, and surprisingly it worked. Nico increased attachment he felt for me. So did Laura, but she felt another type of attachment. She was closest, but she didn’t trust me at all. And I didn’t realize about it until this year.
 
      It has been over a year since that day we met each other. And Nico has created a very strong attachment for me, he needs my approval when he does things right, he tell me all the things he consider important to him, and so on. One thing very interesting is that he needs to be in touch, always close to me, holding my hand, sitting right next to me or sharing some confidential words or little secrets. He is only six years old, but I’m sure he has a secure attachment.

      Instead, I think Laura has an insecure attachment. This year, when I started to teach them again, it was like we were two perfect strangers. The attachment we created last year had been lost; I couldn't found it. Laura was once more distant, defiant, so far away from me…

      One again I need to start from zero and create again attachment between us. It isn’t easy; Laura doesn’t make it easy at all. I think she needs more tests and demonstrations to trust someone. In my opinion, her defensive character is an indicator of an elusive or insecure character. I’m still working with her, creating again attachment, and hoping that, when the school course finish, this time the attachment between us will last till next year.

Summary of the first unit of Developmental Psychology

DRAWING DEVELOPMENT

   First of all, we started drawing what development means to us.
Here we have some examples: 






   Each of us made the draw in a different way. Studying them, we conclude that they could be divided in many diverse types. But we saw later that there were two types that were more important: draws without end and draws with ends, which are cyclical. We saw that these types of draws had interest all cultures all around the world.
   
   Apart from that, we can divide the draws in these categories: 
          -For the content: abstract, industrial evolution, life cycle, intellectual, stages, physical development…
-Lineal or cyclical, dynamic or static, continuous or discontinuous, individual or contextual…
           -For the representation of development: Dynamic process (phases, different stages), image more or less "static" (product).
          -By the focus of development: individual, individual and their context…
The predominant category is development represented linearly. We can divide the linear model in:
          -How temporarily covers the development? From birth to maturity or from birth to death.
          -Where is development going? Up, ascending; down, descending; first up, then down, rise and decline; forward and unidirectional; forward or backward, bidirectional; forward but with multiple alternatives.
          - How does development happen? Continuous or discontinuous.
There also exists the circular model: The individual is part of a circle of consecutive generations and is nested in a system (family ecosystem), in which it interacts.


            WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE AGE?

   Other topic that we studied is the broad concept of the age.
We can find a lot of definitions of that because of its complexity and its applications. The age is the duration of some things, for example, the period in the time that a person, animal or vegetable has lived.
   The years are the instrument of measure that are provided by the months, weeks, days, hours and seconds. But it is more complex than this, in some situations the age is given depending on the grade of development, independently of the time. 
It is here, with this point of view, where appear different kinds of age, based on all the factors that surround the object of the studio. These types are:
          -Biological: the age of our bodies and the objective age.
          -Subjective:  the age that we feel we had.
          -Functional: the age that seems we had.
          -Social: the age related to the individual in the society and how is our behaviour.
   In class: The teacher explain us this with a simple but direct example. We had to complete the spaces of some sentences with a number; this number was the age that we think we had in each context. 
   With this activity, we realised that we can have more than one age, because all of them are different.
   Then, the teacher suggested completing some sentences about our perception of the age and things related to that.
   In our opinion it was a great idea for understanding and reflects about the age and ourselves.
   
   Example:




 ORTHOGENETIC PRINCIPLE AND EPIFENESIS

   Epigenesis consists that the structure shape is built by building process itself, instead of coming due.
   With the orthogenic principle we've learned that development is originated form its precedent, this means, that we create new content completely different from itself. Every process step creates the conditions for the next one and it is irreversible.
   Thanks to this principle we've learned how we can achieve to more complex systems from a simpler unit and though a development. One example could be the schemes systems, they started from a simple structure, and it turned little by little in a a much more elaborated one.


CHANGE

   When we talk about change in development we are talking about the changes in development through time.
   There are different tipes of change: variational change and transformational change. In variational change, the change is gradual and irreversible, it gets better from the average. In transformational change, the change is in the structure of the system and it leads to a complex structure.
   Change can also be continuous or discontinuous depending on this we can be talking about stages if it is discontinuous or lineal if it’s continuous.
   This change depends on the influences that we received and the interest that we have in each moment of our lives. For example when we are talking about interests the most interest of a kid can be playing but when he grows up and becomes a teenager his interest change, so interest change through time and so does development because development is linked to your interest and influences.
   Also, we talked about changes. First, we have variational change, which is a quantitative and qualitative change, individual and group differences that define a particularity, a change movement from one side to the other. It gives us stability and continuity. We can represent variational changes by “time cycles”.
   
   Example os Variational Change:



   Secondly, we have transformational change, which has the following characteristics; it’s a pattern or organization change, a morphologic change, emergency of novelty, increasing complexity, sequence of universal patterns that define a way or trajectory. We can represent transformational changes by “time arrows”. An example to explain this change could be embryological changes or the change from the symbolic thought to reflexive symbolic one. 

   Example os Transformational Change:




   Apart from that, we talked about what is more important for us in our lives. The teacher explained that as time goes by, we give more importance to things that maybe in the past weren’t. He gave us the following factors: love, family, school, friends, reflection and health. We can see, for example, that when we’re young, we give more importance to school than to reflection, which increase as we get older. Moreover, I want to remark the important role that love lays in our lives. It’s the most constant factor.


TRANSIT, TRANSFER AND TRANSFORMATION

   We also have learnt the different stages of developing that could be applied for many cases in life. 
   The exercise consisted in drawing a line of life with our most important moments, both good and bad, and then, we had to compare these moments with the tree process, transit, transfer and transformation. For making this exercise easier and in a deeply way, we went out of class and with two or the classmates, we had to tell the moments aloud and at the same time we had to walk in every step we made, so at this way we could appreciate the tree process better:
          -Transit is the whole movement, without stops, it is represented by the walk.
          -Transfer is every step we make while we are walking along. It is a change but not a qualitative one.
          -Transformation is a big and important change which tell us that there is a before and after, it is represented by a jump. It is a qualitative change.
   We made another exercise to see the three steps again but by our own experience. We went out of class and experimented the changes by passing through doors, crossing the gateway, going into the café, etc. And then we realized that the whole movement has these three stages that could be applied in many situations.





DEDUCTION, INDUCTION AND ABDUCTION

   Inference is essential to, and part of, being human. Inferences are not random. There are three kinds of reasoning: Deduction, induction, and abduction, are three basic forms of inference in everybody.
   Deduction is the reasoning that parts of the general towards the specific conclusions. However, this definition is incomplete because, from the logical point of view, a valid deductive reasoning is that which guarantees that the conclusion is apparent from the premises or conclusively that these imply the conclusion.
   Induction is the type of inference from particular premises claiming that two or more members of a group have a property to conclude, with probability, that all members of this group also have it.
   While the conclusion of a deductive argument is supposed to be certain, the truth of the conclusion of an inductive argument is supposed to be probable, based upon the evidence given.
   The term “abduction” was coined by Charles Sanders Peirce in his work on the logic of science. He introduced it to denote a type of non-deductive inference that was different from the already familiar inductive type. Abductive reasoning is a form of logical inference that goes from an observation to a hypothesis that accounts for the observation, ideally seeking to find the simplest and most likely explanation. In abductive reasoning, unlike in deductive reasoning, the premises do not guarantee the conclusion. One can understand abductive reasoning as "inference to the best explanation". 

Three Kind of Inference:


Example:




SCAFFOLDING

  In education, scaffolding refers the support given during the learning process.
   The term itself offers the relevant descriptive metaphor: teachers provide successive levels of temporary support that help students reach higher levels of comprehension and skill acquisition that they would not be able to achieve without assistance.
   These supports are gradually removed as students develop autonomous learning strategies, thus promoting their own cognitive, affective and psychomotor learning skills and knowledge.
Scaffolding is like when you build a building and you need scaffolding in construction or when someone breaks his leg and you need crutches. Are things that help you in the process but when the product is finished, the scaffolding disappears. 


Beatriz Alonso, Lucía Cavero, Lucía Moreno, María Matilla, María Cordero, Rocío González, Miriam Sánchez and Sara García.

Tuesday 2 December 2014

Secondary topics about the session of 2nd of December

Hello

If you want to read more about some of the topics we were discussing today I recommend the following links:



Here you can read about the Kegan's quote I mentioned (about the cake). I will look for the original quote. I had to translate it from his book "The evolving self" (1982).

And here I recommend you read this post written by John McWhirter as an example of intervening in order to promote the transition from a preoperational stage to a operational one. I addition to it I also wrote a post seven years ago reflecting on this same matter. I think it would be appropriate for you reading it too.

If you read all this you should have many new ideas about this transition on becoming a logical concrete thinker.

But if you want to reconnect again with what meant to be more preoperational then I suggest you review the following video.

Comments are welcome ;)