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Dev Psych Chapter 1
Dev Psych Chapter 1
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.
• 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)
Karylle Mae Macorol | DO NOT DISTRIBUTE WITHOUT CONSENT
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
• 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.
• 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
INDUSTRY VS INFERIORITY
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.
• 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.
• 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
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.
MINIMIZING BIAS
GENDER BIAS