Developmental stage theories

One of the major controversies in developmental psychology centres around whether development is continuous or discontinuous. Stage theories of development rest on the assumption that development is a discontinuous process involving distinct stages which are characterised by qualitative differences in behaviour. They also assume that the structure of the stages is not variable according to each individual, however the time of each stage may vary individually ^[1]. Stage theories can be contrasted with continuous theories, which posit that development is an incremental process.^[2]

There are many stage (discontinuous) theories in developmental psychology including:

• Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development described how children represent and reason about the world.^[2]
• Neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development
• Michael Commons' Model of Hierarchical Complexity.
• Erik Erikson's stages of psychosocial development expanded on Freud's psychosexual stages, he defined eight stages that describe how individuals relate to their social world.^[2]
• James W. Fowler's stages of faith development theory.
• Sigmund Freud's Psychosexual stages described the progression of an individual's unconscious desires.
• Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development described how individuals developed moral reasoning.^[3]
• Jane Loevinger, Stages of ego development.
• Margaret Mahler's separation-individuation theory of child development contained three phases regarding the child's object relations.
• James Marcia's theory of identity achievement and identity status.
• Rudolf Steiner's seven-year phases, similar to Piaget's stage theory but extending into adulthood.^[4]
• Maria Montessori's sensitive periods of development.
• Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.^[5]
• Clare W. Graves' Emergent Cyclic Levels of Existence Theory.
• Judith Rich Harris' Modular theory of social development.
• Don Beck and Chris Cowan, Spiral Dynamics.

While some of these theories focus primarily on the healthy development of children, others propose stages that are characterized by a maturity rarely reached before old age.

HOW DEVELOPMENT PROCEEDS^[6] There are a number of different views about the way in which psychological and physical development proceed throughout the life span. In addition to individual differences in development, developmental psychologists generally agree that development occurs in an orderly way and in different areas simultaneously. There remain, however, differing views on whether development is continuous or discontinuous.

CONTINUOUS VERSUS DISCONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENT^[6] Those psychologists who support the continuous view of development suggest that development involves gradual and ongoing changes throughout the life span, with behaviour in the earlier stages of development providing the basis of skills and abilities required for the next stages.

Not all psychologists, however, agree that development is a continuous process. Some view development as a discontinuous process. They believe development involves distinct and separate stages with different kinds of behaviour occurring in each stage. This suggests that the development of certain abilities in each stage, such as specific emotions or ways of thinking, have a definite starting and ending point. However, there is no exact time at which an ability suddenly appears or disappears. Although some types of thinking, feeling or behaving may seem to appear suddenly, it is more than likely that this has been developing gradually for some time.

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