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• For example, attention, memory, abstract thinking,

Developmental Psychology | APY_4201 | Chapter 1


speed of processing information, and social
intelligence are just a few of the components of the
INTRODUCTION
cognitive dimension.

1.1 THE LIFE-SPAN PERSPECTIVE DEVELOPMENT IS MULTIDIRECTIONAL

DEVELOPMENT • Throughout life, some dimensions or components of


a dimension expand, and others shrink.
• The pattern of movement or change that begins at
conception and continues through the human life DEVELOPMENT IS PLASTIC
span.
• Plasticity – the capacity for change.
• Most development involves growth, but it also
includes decline (as in dying). • Skills can be improved through training and
acquisition of effective strategies.
• The life-span approach emphasizes developmental
change throughout adulthood as well as childhood.
DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE IS MULTIDISCIPLINARY

LIFE EXPECTANCY
• Psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists,
neuroscientists, and medical researchers all share an
• The average number of years that a person born in a
interest in unlocking the mysteries of development
particular year can expect to live.
through the life span.
THE LIFE-SPAN PERSPECTIVE
DEVELOPMENT IS CONTEXTUAL
• Views development as lifelong, multidimensional,
• All development occurs within a context or setting.
multidirectional, plastic, multidisciplinary, and
Context includes families, schools, peer groups,
contextual, and as a process that involves growth,
churches, cities, neighborhoods, university
maintenance, and regulation of loss.
laboratories, countries, and so on. Each of these
• It is important that development is constructed
settings is influenced by historical, economic, social,
through biological, sociocultural, and individual
and cultural factors.
factors working together.
• Contexts, like individual, change. Thus, individuals
DEVELOPMENT IS LIFELONG are changing beings in a changing world.

• In the life-span perspective, early adulthood is not the 3 TYPES OF INFLUENCES:


endpoint of development; rather, no age period 1. Normative age-graded influences
dominates development. - Similar for individuals in a particular age group
- Physical development (puberty, menopause)
DEVELOPMENT IS MULTIDIMENSIONAL - Sociocultural factors and environmental processes

• No matter what your age might be, your body, mind, 2. Normative history-graded influences
emotions, and relationships are changing and - Common to people of a particular generation
affecting each other. because of historical circumstances
• Development has biological, cognitive, and - Economic, political, and social upheavals
socioemotional dimensions. Even within a - Long-term changes in the genetic and cultural
dimension, there are many components. makeup of a population (due to immigration or
changes in fertility rates)
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people that are passed on from generation to
3. Nonnormative life events generation; influences the behavior of its members.
- Unusual occurrences that have a major impact on the • Cross-cultural studies – compare aspects of two or
lives of individual people; can influence people in more cultures.
different ways. • Ethnicity – rooted in cultural heritage, nationality,
- Death of a parent, early adolescence pregnancy, etc. race, religion, and language; diversity exists within
each ethnic group; discrimination; pride in one’s
DEVELOPMENT INVOLVES GROWTH, MAINTENANCE, ethnic group has positive outcomes.
AND REGULATION OF LOSS • Socioeconomic status (SES) – a person’s position
within society based on occupational, educational,
• The mastery of life often involves conflicts and
and economic characteristics; implies certain
competition among the three goals of human
inequalities; differences in the ability to control
development: growth, maintenance, and regulation
resources.
of loss (Baltes, et al., 2006).
• Gender – characteristics of people as males and
DEVELOPMENT IS A CO-CONSTRUCTION OF BIOLOGY, females.
CULTURE, AND THE INDIVIDUAL
SOCIAL POLICY

• For example, the brain shapes culture, but it is also


• A government’s course of action designed to promote
shaped by culture and the experiences that the
the welfare of its citizens.
individuals have or pursue.
• Values, economics, and politics all shape a nation’s
• In terms of individual factors, we can go beyond what
social policy.
our genetic inheritance and our environment give us.
• One study revealed that the more years children
spent living in poverty, the higher were their
SOME CONTEMPORARY CONCERNS
physiological indices of stress (Evans & Kim, 2007).
HEALTH AND WELL-BEING • Families and extrafamilial contexts of resilient
individuals tend to share certain features. For
• Health professionals today recognize the powerful example, resilient children are likely to have a close
influences of lifestyles and psychological states on relationship with a caring parent figure and bonds to
health and well-being. caring adults outside the family.

PARENTING AND EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY

• Childcare, effects of divorce, parenting styles, child • Our way of live has been change permanently by
maltreatment, intergenerational relationships, early technological advances.
childhood education, links between childhood
poverty & education, bilingual education, recent 1.2 THE NATURE OF DEVELOPMENT
effort to improve lifelong learning.
BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES
SOCIOCULTURAL CONTEXTS AND DIVERSITY
• Produce changes in an individual's physical nature.
• Health, parenting, and education – like development • Genes inherited from parents, brain development,
itself – are all shaped by their sociocultural context. height and weight gains, changes in motor skills,
• Culture – encompasses the behavior patterns, nutrition, exercise, the hormonal changes of puberty,
beliefs, and all other products of a particular group of and cardiovascular decline.

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• The brain influences many aspects of development - More self-sufficient and to care
at different points in the life span. for themselves.
- Develop school readiness skills.
COGNITIVE PROCESSES - Spend many hours playing with
peers.
• Changes in the individual’s thought, intelligence, and Middle and - 6 to 10 or 11 years
language. late childhood - Elementary school years
- Master the fundamental skills of
SOCIOEMOTIONAL PROCESSES
reading, writing, arithmetic.
- Formally exposed to the larger
• Involve changes in the individuals’ relationships with
world and its culture
other people, changes in emotions, and changes in
Adolescence - 10 or 12 to 18 or 21 years
personality.
- Rapid physical changes (puberty)
CONNECTING BIOLOGICAL, COGNITIVE, AND - Development of sexual
SOCIOEMOTIONAL PROCESSESS characteristics
- Pursuit of independence and an
• These processes are inextricably intertwined, and in identity
many instances, bidirectional. For example, Early - Early 20s through the 30s
biological processes can influence cognitive adulthood - Establishing personal and
processes and vice versa. economic independence,
• Developmental cognitive neuroscience – explores advancing in a career, and for
links between development, cognitive processes, and many, selecting a mate, learning
the brain. to live with that person in an
• Developmental social neuroscience – examines intimate way, starting a family,
connections between development, socioemotional and rearing children.
processes, and the brain. Middle - 40 to 60 years
adulthood - Expanding personal and social
PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT involvement and responsibility
- Assisting the next generation
• Developmental period – a time frame in a person’s - Reaching and maintaining
life that is characterized by certain features; involves satisfaction in a career
an eight-period sequence. Late adulthood - 60s or 70s until death
- Life review, retirement, and
Prenatal - Conception to birth adjustment to new social roles
- Approx. takes a 9-month period - Diminishing health and strength
Infancy - Birth to 18 or 24 months - Longest span of any period of
- Extreme dependence upon development
adults • “Young-old” – 65 through 84
- Many psychological activities are • “Oldest-old” – 85 and older
just beginning
Toddler* - 1 ½ to 3 years of age FOUR AGES
- Transitional period between
infancy and early childhood First age Childhood and adolescence
Early - 3 to 5 years Second age Prime adulthood, 20 through 59
childhood - “Preschool years” Third age 60 to 79 years
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Fourth age 80 years and older personality traits, control their emotions, and think
clearly are engaging in more adaptive behaviors.
• The individuals in the third age are healthier and can • Social age – connectedness with others and social
lead more active, productive lives than their roles individuals adopt. Individuals who have better
predecessors in earlier generations. social relationships are happier.
• In the fourth age, especially 85 and older, health and
well-being decline for many individuals. DEVELOPMENTAL ISSUES

THREE DEVELOPMENTAL PATTERNS OF AGING NATURE AND NURTURE


(K. WARNER SCHAIE)
• Involves the extent to which development is
NORMAL AGING influenced by nature and by nurture.
• Nature – organism’s biological inheritance.
- Individuals whose psychological functioning often • Nurture – environmental experiences.
peaks in early middle age, remains relatively stable • Epigenetic view – states that development reflects an
until the late fifties to early sixties and then shows a outgoing, bidirectional interchange between genes
modest decline through the early eighties. and the environment. Involve the actual molecular
modification of the DNA strand because of
PATHOLOGICAL AGING environmental inputs in ways that alter gene
functioning.
- Individuals who show greater than average decline
as they age through adult years. STABILITY AND CHANGE

SUCCESSFUL AGING • Stability-change issue – involves the degree to which


early traits and characteristics persist through life or
- Individuals whose positive physical, cognitive, and change.
socioemotional development is maintained longer, • Many developmentalists who emphasize stability in
declining later in old age. development argue that stability is the result of
heredity and possibly early experiences in life.
• A key element in the study of life-span development • Developmentalists who emphasize change take the
is how development in one period is connected to more optimistic view that later experiences can
development in another period. produce change.

CONCEPTIONS OF AGE CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY

• Chronological age – the number of years that have • Continuity-discontinuity issue – focuses on the
elapsed since birth. degree to which development involves either
• Biological age – person’s age in terms of physical gradual, cumulative change (continuity) or distinct
health; functional capacities of a person’s vital stages (discontinuity).
organs. The younger the person’s biological age, the
longer the person is expected to live, regardless of EVALUATING THE DEVELOPMENTAL ISSUES
chronological age.
• Scientific method – a four-step process: (1)
• Psychological age – individual’s adaptive capacities
conceptualize a process or problem to be studied, (2)
compared with those of other individuals of the same
collect research information data, (3) analyze the
chronological age. Older adults who continue to
data, and (4) draw conclusions.
learn, are flexible, are motivated, have positive

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• Theory – an interrelated, coherent set of ideas that • At each stage of development, a unique
helps to explain phenomena and facilitate developmental task confronts individuals with a crisis
predictions. It may suggest hypotheses. that must be resolved. This crisis is not a catastrophe,
• Hypotheses – specific assertions and predictions that but a turning point marked by both increased
can be tested. vulnerability and enhanced potential.

1.3 THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT TRUST VS MISTRUST

THEORETICAL ORIENTATIONS TO DEVELOPMENT • 1ST year of life


• Development of trust during infancy sets the stage for
PSCYHOANALYTIC THEORIES a lifelong expectation that the world will be a good
and pleasant place to live.
• Describe development as primarily unconscious
(beyond awareness) and heavily colored by AUTONOMY VS SHAME AND DOUBT
emotion.
• Emphasize that behavior is merely a surface • Late infancy to toddlerhood
characteristic and that a true understanding of • They start to assert their sense of independence or
development requires analyzing the symbolic autonomy.
meaning of behavior and deep inner workings of the • If infants and toddlers are restrained too much or
mind. punished too harshly, they are likely to develop a
• Stress that early experiences with parents extensively sense of shame and doubt.
shape development.
INITIATIVE VS GUILT
SIGMUND FREUD’S PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT
• Preschool years
THEORY
• Children face new challenges that require active,
purposeful, responsive behavior.
• Feelings of guilt may arise if the child is irresponsible
and is made to feel too anxious.’

INDUSTRY VS INFERIORITY

• Elementary school years


• Mastering knowledge and intellectual skills
• Negative outcome: the child may develop a sense of
inferiority – feeling incompetent and unproductive.

IDENTITY VS INDENTITY CONFUSION

• During the adolescent years, individuals need to find


out who they are, what they are all about, and where
ERIK ERIKSON’S PSYCHOSOCIAL THEORY they are going in life.

• “The primary motivation for human behavior is social INTIMACY VS ISOLATION


and reflects a desire to affiliate with other people.”
• Developmental change occurs throughout the life • Early adulthood
span. • Task of forming intimate relationship
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• If young adults form healthy friendships and an COGNITIVE THEORIES
intimate relationship with another, intimacy will be
achieved; if not, isolation will result. • Emphasize conscious thoughts.

GENERATIVITY VS STAGNATION JEAN PIAGET’S COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY

• Middle adulthood • States that children go through four (4) stages of


• Generativity – a concern for helping the younger cognitive development as they actively construct
generation to develop and lead useful lives. their understanding of the world.
• Stagnation – feeling of having done nothing to help • Organization and adaptation. To make sense of our
the next generation. world, we organize experiences. And we adapt,
adjusting to new environmental demands.
INTEGRITY VS DESPAIR • According to Piaget (1896-1980), the child’s
cognition is qualitatively different from one stage to
• Late adulthood another.
• During this stage, a person reflects on the past.
SENSORIMOTOR STAGE

• Birth to 2 years of age


• Infants construct an understanding of the world by
coordination sensory experiences (such as seeing and
hearing) with physical, motoric actions.

PREOPERATIONAL STAGE

• 2 to 7 years
• Children begin to go beyond simply connecting
sensory information with physical action and
represent the world with words, images, and
drawings.
• However, according to Piaget, preschool children still
lack the ability to perform what he calls operations –
which are internalized mental actions that allow
children to do mentally what they previously could
only do physically.

CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE

• 7 to 11 years of age
• Children can perform operations that involve objects.
• They can reason logically when the reasoning can be
applied to specific or concrete examples.

FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE

• Between 11 and 15 and continues through


adulthood.
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• Individuals move beyond concrete experiences and processing information, which allows them to acquire
begin to think in abstract and more logical terms. increasingly complex knowledge and skills.
• As part of thinking more abstractly, adolescents • Robert Siegler states that thinking is information
develop images of deal circumstances. processing. When individuals perceive, encode,
represent, store, and retrieve information, they are
thinking.
• An important aspect of development is learning good
strategies for processing information.
• The best way to understand how children learn is to
observe them while they are learning.
• Microgenetic method – to obtain detailed
information about processing mechanisms as they
are occurring from moment to moment.
- Seeks to discover not just what children know but the
cognitive processes involved in how they acquired the
knowledge.
• Often uses the computed as an analogy to help
explain the connection between cognition and the
brain. They describe the physical brain as the
computer’s hardware, and cognition as its software.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) – focuses on creating
machines capable of performing activities that
require intelligence when they are done by people.
• Developmental robotics – examines various
VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL COGNITIVE THEORY developmental topics and issues using robots, such as
motor development, perceptual development,
• Russian developmentalist Lev Vygotsky argued that information processing, and language development.
children actively construct their knowledge.
• Gave social interaction and culture far more BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORIES
important roles in cognitive development.
• Emphasizes how culture and social interaction guide • Behaviorism – essentially holds that we can study
cognitive development. scientifically only what be directly observed and
• Cognitive development involves learning to use the measured.
inventions of society, such as language, mathematical • The behavioral and social cognitive theories
systems, and memory strategies. emphasize continuity in development and argue that
• Children’s social interaction with more-skilled adults development does not occur in stage-like fashion
and peers is indispensable to their cognitive
SKINNER’S OPERANT CONDITIONING
development.

THE INFORMATION-PROCESSING THEORY • B. F. Skinner


• The consequences of a behavior produce changes in
• Emphasized that individuals manipulate information, the probability of the behavior’s occurrence.
monitor it, and strategize about it. • A behavior followed by a rewarding stimulus is more
• Does not describe development as stage-like, rather likely to recur, whereas a behavior followed by a
individuals develop a gradually increasing capacity for punishing stimulus is less likely to recur.

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• For Skinner, the key aspect of development is has important consequences
behavior, not thoughts and feelings. throughout the life span.
• He emphasized that development consists of the • Positive and secure attachment
pattern of behavioral changes that are brought about = individual will likely develop
by rewards and punishments. positively in childhood and
adulthood.
BANDURA’S SOCIAL COGNITIVE THEORY • Negative and insecure
attachment = life-span
• Albert Bandura development will likely not be
• Holds that behavior, environment, and optimal.
cognition/the individual are the key factors in
development and operate interactively. ECOLOGICAL THEORY
• Emphasizes that cognitive processes have important
links with the environment and behavior. • Emphasizes environmental factors.
• Observational learning (imitation or modeling) –
BRONFENBRENNER’S ECOLOGICAL THOERY
learning that occurs though observing what others
do.
• Urie Bronfenbrenner
• People acquire a wide range of behaviors, thoughts,
• Holds that development reflects the influence of
and feelings through observing others’ behavior and
several environmental systems.
that these observations play a central role in life-span
• Subsequently added biological influences on his
development.
theory, describing it as a bioecological theory.
• People cognitively represent the behavior of others
• Emphasis on a range of social contexts beyond the
and then sometimes adopt this behavior themselves.
family, such as neighborhood, religion, school, and
ETHOLOGICAL THEORY workplace, as influential in children's development.

• Ethology stresses that behavior is strongly influenced Microsystem • Setting in which individual lives.
by biology, is tied to evolution, and is characterized • Where most direct interactions
by critical or sensitive periods. with social agents take place.
• Focus on the biological and evolutionary basis of • Helps to construct the settings.
development and the use of careful observations in Mesosystem • Relations between
naturalistic settings. microsystems or connections
between contexts.
Konrad Lorenz • Studied the behavior of graylag • Eg. Relation of family
geese. experiences to school
• Imprinting – rapid, innate experiences, etc.
learning that involves Exosystem • Links between a social setting in
attachment to the first moving which the individual does not
object seen. have an active role and the
• Imprinting needs to take place at individual’s immediate context.
a certain, very early time (critical • Eg. A husband’s or child’s
period) in the life of the animal, experiences at home may be
or else it will not take place influenced by a mother’s
John Bowlby • Stressed that attachment to a experiences at work.
caregiver over the first year of life

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Macrosystem • The culture in which individuals
live.
Chronosystem • Patterning of environmental
events and transitions over the
life course, as well as
sociohistorical circumstances.
• Eg. Divorce

ECLECTIC THEORETICAL ORIENTATION

• Does not follow any one theoretical approach but


rather selects from each theory whatever is
considered its best features.
• In this way, you can view the study of development as
it actually exists—with different theorists making
different assumptions, stressing different empirical
problems, and using different strategies to discover
information.

1.4 RESEARCH ON LIFE-SPAN DEVELOPMENT • Whom, when & where we will observe, how the
observations will be made and be recorded.
METHODS FOR COLLECTING DATA
• Laboratory – a controlled setting where many of the
complex factors of the “real world” are absent.
OBSERVATION
• Laboratory research does have some drawbacks,
• Must be systematic. We must have some idea of what including the following:
we are looking for.

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1. It is almost impossible to conduct research • Involve judgments of unknown reliability.
without the participants knowing they are being
studied; PHYSIOLOGICAL MEASURES
2. The laboratory setting is unnatural and therefore
can cause the participants to behave unnaturally; • Hormone levels
3. People who are willing to come to a university • Neuroimaging
laboratory may not accurately represent groups ▪ Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
from diverse cultural backgrounds; – electromagnetic waves are used to construct
4. People who are unfamiliar with university images of a person’s brain tissue and
settings and with the idea of “helping science” ma biochemical activity.
be intimidated by this setting. ▪ Electroencephalography (EEG) – physiological
• Natural observation – observing behavior in real- measure that has been used for many decades
world settings, making no effort to manipulate or to monitor overall electrical activity in the brain.
control the situation. • Heart rate
• Eye movement
SURVEY AND INTERVIEW • Hereditary information (genes)

• Interview participants directly. RESEARCH DESIGNS


• Survey / questionnaire – standard set of questions;
especially useful when information from many DESCRIPTIVE RESEARCH
people is needed. Questions must be clear and
unbiased, allowing respondents to answer • Aims to observe and record behavior.
unambiguously. • Cannot prove what causes some phenomenon, but it
• Disadvantage: tendency of participants to answer can reveal important information about people’s
questions in a way that they think is socially behavior.
acceptable or desirable rather than to say what they
CORRELATIONAL RESEARCH
truly think or feel.

• The goal is to describe the strength of the


STANDARDIZED TEST
relationship between two or more events or
• Uniform procedures for administration and scoring. characteristics.
• Allow a person’s performance to be compared with • The more strongly the two events are correlated (or
that of other individuals. related or associated), the more accurately we can
predict one event from the other.
• Disadvantage: they assume a person’s behavior is
consistent and stable, yet personality and • Correlation coefficient – a number based on a
intelligence—two primary targets of standardized statistical analysis that describes the degree of
testing—can vary with the situation. association between two variables. Ranges from -
1.00 to +1.00.
CASE STUDY • A negative number means an inverse relation.
• The higher the correlation coefficient (whether
• An in-depth look at a single individual. positive or negative), the stronger the association
• Provides information about one person’s between the two variables.
experiences. • A correlation of 0 means that there is no association
• Interviews and medical records. between the variables.
• The subject of a case study is unique, with a genetic • Correlation does not equal causation.
makeup and personal history that no one else shares.
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EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH Longitudinal • Same individuals are studied
Approach over a period of time, usually
• Study causality several years or more.
• A carefully regulated procedure in which one or more • Provides a wealth of
factors believed to influence the behavior being information about vital issues
studied are manipulated while all other factors are such as stability and change in
held constant. development and the influence
of early experience on later
Independent • A manipulated, influential, development.
variable experimental factor. • Expensive and time-consuming.
• A potential cause. Cohort Effects • Cohort – a group of people who
Dependent • A factor that can change in an are born at a similar point in
variable experiment, in response to history and share similar
changes in the independent experiences as a result.
variable. • Due to a person’s time of birth,
Experimental • A group whose experience is era, or generation but not to
group manipulated. actual age.
Control group • A comparison group that is as • Important because they can
similar to the experimental powerfully affect the
group as possible and that is dependent measures in a study
treated in every way like the ostensibly concerned with age.
experimental group except
for the manipulated factor CONDUCTING ETHICAL RESEARCH
(independent variable).
• American Psychological Association (APA) has
• Serves as a baseline against
developed ethics guidelines for its members.
which the effects of the
• The code of ethics instructs psychologists to protect
manipulated condition can be
their participants from mental and physical harm.
compared.
1. Informed consent
• Random assignment – mean that the researchers - All participants must know what their research
assign participants to experimental and control participation will involve and what risks might
groups by chance. develop. Even after informed consent is given,
participants must retain the right to withdraw from
TIME SPAN OF RESEARCH the study at any time for any reason.
2. Confidentiality
- Researchers are responsible for keeping all of the
Cross-sectional • A research strategy that data they gather on individuals complete confidential
Approach simultaneously compares and, when possible, anonymous.
individuals of different ages. 3. Debriefing
• The researcher does not have - After the study has been completed, participants
to wait for the individuals to should be informed of its purpose and the methods
grow up / age. that were used.
• Although, it can obscure the 4. Deception
increases and decreases of - In all cases of deception, however, the psychologist
development. must ensure that the deception will not harm the

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participants and that they will be debriefed as soon
as possible after the study is completed.

MINIMIZING BIAS

GENDER BIAS

CULTURAL AND ETHNIC BIAS

• Ethnic gloss – using an ethnic label such as African


American or Latino in a superficial way that portrays
an ethnic group as being more homogenous than it
really is.
- Can cause researchers to obtain samples of ethnic
groups that are not representative of the group’s
diversity, which can lead to overgeneralization and
stereotyping.

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