Introduction to Developmental Psychology  First age: Childhood and adolescence

 Second age: Prime adulthood, ages 20 through 59

Life Expectancy
The average number of years that a person born in a
particular year can expect to live.
Jeanne Calment
French supercentenarian: born on February 21, 1875, at
Arles, France and died on August 4, 1997 (aged 122
years, 164 days.); oldest human whose age is well-
documented
 Third age: Approximately 60 to 79 years of age
 Fourth age: Approximately 80 years and older
3 Developmental Patterns of Aging
Normal aging
Most individuals, for whom psychological functioning
often peaks in early middle age, remains relatively
stable until the late fifties to early sixties, and then
shows a modest decline through the early eighties

Characteristics of Life-span Perspective Pathological aging

 Development is lifelong
 Development is multidimensional and
multidirectional
 Development is plastic
 Development is multidisciplinary
 Development involves growth, maintenance, and
regulation of loss
 Development is a co-construction of biology, culture,
and the individual
DEVELOPMENT IS CONTEXTUAL
 Normative age-graded influences
 Normative history-graded influences
 Non-normative life-events
Normative age-graded influences - similar for
individuals in a particular age group
ex. individuals born this generation are more "tech
inclined" compared to individuals born 50 years ago
Normative history-graded influences - common to
people of a particular generation because of historical
circumstances
ex. individuals who have experienced the war
Nonnormative life events - unusual occurrences that
have a major impact on the lives of individual people
ex. life-changing experiences
Characterizes individuals who show greater than
average decline as they age through the adult years.
Successful aging
Characterizes individuals whose positive physical,
cognitive, and socio-emotional development is
maintained longer, declining later in old age than is the
case for most people
Developmental Issues
NATURE-NURTURE ISSUE
debate about whether development is primarily
influenced by nature or nurture. Nature refers to an
organism’s biological inheritance, nurture to its
environmental experiences.
STABILITY & CHANGE ISSUE
debate about whether we become older renditions of our
early experience (stability) or whether we develop into
someone different from who we were at an earlier point
in development (change).
CONTINUITY-DISCONTINUITY ISSUE
debate about the extent to which development involves
gradual, cumulative change (continuity) or distinct
stages (discontinuity)

Some Contemporary Concerns

 Health and wellbeing
 Social Policy
 Parenting and education
 Technology
 Socio-cultural Contexts and Diversity

Biological Processes
produces changes in an individual's physical nature

Cognitive Processes
changes in the individual intelligence and language

Socio-emotional Processes
involves changes in the individual's relationships with
other people, changes in emotions and changes in
personality

Periods of Developments
Four Ages
Life-span developmentalists who focus on adult
development and aging increasingly describe life-span
development in terms of four “ages” (Baltes, 2006; Willis
& Schaie, 2006)

Theories of Development
Theory
Theories provide the WHY’s of Development
In Human Development
A theory is an organized set of ideas that are designed
to explain development
Theories of Development
Psychodynamic Theory
 Development is largely determined by how well
people resolve conflicts they face at different ages.
 Traces its roots to Sigmund Freud’s theory that
personality emerges from conflicts that children
experience between what they want to do and what
society wants them to do
 Skinner studied operant conditioning, in which the
consequences of a behavior determine whether a
behavior is repeated in the future.
 Skinner showed that two kinds of consequences
were especially influential.
 Reinforcement – increases likelihood of the
behavior
 Punishment – decreases the likelihood of the
behavior
Reinforcement
POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT
Consists of giving a reward such as chocolate, gold
stars, or paychecks to increase the likelihood of previous
behavior.

Psychosocial Theory
 Erik Erikson (1902–1994) proposed the first
comprehensive life-span view, his psychosocial
theory, which remains an important theoretical
framework today.
 Life cycle is composed of eight stages and that the
order of the stages is biologically fixed

The sequence of stages in Erikson’s theory is based on

the epigenetic principle, which means that each
psychosocial strength has its own special period of
particular importance.

Learning Theory
 In contrast to psychodynamic theory, learning theory
concentrates on how learning influences a person’s NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT
behavior. Reinforcement consists of rewarding people by taking
 Emphasizes the role of experience, examining away unpleasant things.
whether a person’s behavior is rewarded or Punishment
punished. suppresses a behavior either by adding something
 BEHAVIOURISM
 SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY

Behaviorism
 John Watson (1878–1958) believed that infants’
minds were essentially “blank slates” and argued
that learning determines what people will become

 In Watson’s view, then, the experience was just

about all that mattered in determining the course of
development

Classical VS Operant
Social Learning Theory
 Researchers discovered that people sometimes
learn without reinforcement or punishment.
 People learn much by simply watching those around
them, which is known as imitation or observational
learning.
 Research quickly showed that this was not always
the case; people do not always imitate what they
see around them
Social Cognitive Theory
 Albert Bandura based his social cognitive theory
on this more complex view of reward, punishment,
and imitation.
 is “cognitive” because Bandura believes that people
actively try to understand what goes on in their
world.
 the theory is “social” because, along with
reinforcement and punishment, what other people
do is an important source of information about the
world.
 Bandura also argues that experience gives people
a sense of self-efficacy, which refers to people’s
beliefs about their own abilities and talents.
 Self-efficacy beliefs help to determine when people
will imitate others
aversive or by withholding a pleasant event.
Terms to Remember
 Theory - an organized set of ideas that is designed
to explain development.
 Psychodynamic theories -theories proposing that
development is largely determined by how well
people resolve conflicts they face at different ages
 Psychosocial theory - Erikson’s proposal that
personality development is determined by the
interaction of an internal maturational plan and
external societal demands
 The epigenetic principle in Erikson’s theory, the
idea that each psychosocial strength has its own
special period of particular importance
 Operant conditioning - learning paradigm in which
the consequences of a behavior determine whether
a behavior is repeated in the future
 Reinforcement - a consequence that increases the
future likelihood of the behavior that it follows
 Punishment - a consequence that decreases the
future likelihood of the behavior that it follows
 Imitation or observational learning - learning that
occurs by simply watching how others behave.
  Self-efficacy - people’s beliefs about their own
abilities and talents
Cognitive Developmental Theory
 In cognitive-developmental theory, the key is how
people think and how thinking changes over time.
 Two distinct approaches have developed.
 One approach postulate that thinking develops in a
universal sequence of stages:
 The cognitive-developmental perspective focuses
on how children construct knowledge and how their
constructions change over time.
Jean Piaget (1896–1980), who was the most influential
developmental psychologist of the 20th century,
proposed the best-known of these theories. Piaget
believed that children naturally try to make sense of their
world.
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development (and its recent
extensions) is the best-known example. The second
approach proposes that people process information as
computers do, becoming more efficient over much of the
life span.
Formal operational (12 years-adult)
The adolescent can reason abstractly and think in
hypothetical terms
Concrete operational (7-12 years)
The child can think logically about concrete objects and
can thus add and subtract. The child also understands
conversation.
Preoperational (2-6 years)
The child uses symbols (words and images) to represent
objects but does not reason logically. The child also has
the ability to pretend. During this stage, the child is
egocentric.
Sensorimotor (0-2 years)
The infant explores the world through direct sensory and
motor contact. Object permanence and separation
anxiety develop during this stage.
Information-Processing Theory
 Information-processing theorists draw heavily on
how computers work to explain the thinking and how
it develops through childhood and adolescence.
 Just as computers consist of both hardware (disk
drives, random-access memory, and central
processing unit) and software (the programs it runs),
the information-processing theory proposes that
human cognition consists of mental hardware and
mental software.
 Mental hardware refers to cognitive structures,
including different memories where information is
stored.
 Mental software includes organized sets of cognitive
processes that enable people to complete specific
tasks, such as reading a sentence, playing a video
game, or hitting a baseball.
Vygotsky’s Theory
 Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) was one of the first
theorists to emphasize that children’s thinking does
not develop in a vacuum but rather is influenced by
the sociocultural context in which children grow up.
 A Russian psychologist, Vygotsky focused on ways
that adults convey to children the beliefs, customs,
and skills of their culture
 Vygotsky viewed development as an apprenticeship
in which children develop as they work with skilled
adults, including teachers and parents.
 For Piaget, information-processing theorists, and
Vygotsky, children’s thinking becomes more
sophisticated as they develop.
The Ecological and Systems Approach
 In ecological theory, human development is
inseparable from the environmental contexts in
which a person develops.
 The ecological approach proposes that all aspects
of development are interconnected, much like the
threads of a spider’s web are intertwined so that no
aspect of development can be isolated from others
and understood independently.
 An ecological theorist would emphasize that, to
understand why adolescents behave as they do, we
need to consider the many different systems that
influence them, including parents, peers, teachers,
television, the neighborhood, and social policy
Bronfenbrenner’s Theory
 The best-known proponent of the ecological
approach was Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917–2005),
who proposed that the developing person is
embedded in a series of complex and interactive
systems.
 Bronfenbrenner divided the environment into the
four levels shown in the microsystem, the
mesosystem, the exosystem, and the macrosystem.
Competence-Environmental Press Theory
 People adapt most effectively when there is a good
match between their competence or abilities and the
environmental―pressure, or the demands put on
them by the environment.
 For example, the match between a child’s social
skills and her peer group’s demands can determine
whether she is accepted by the peer group.
 To understand people’s functioning, it is essential to
understand the systems in which they live.
Bronfenbrenner’s Theory
Biological Foundations: Hereditary, Pre-natal, Birth  During the first several months of life, the
development of babies with Down syndrome seems
Theories of Development to be normal. Thereafter, their mental and
 Psychodynamic Theory behavioral development begins to lag behind the
 Learning Theory average child’s.
 Cognitive Theory
 Ecological and Systems Theory Klinefelter’s Syndrome XXY
 1 in 500 male births
Mechanisms of Heredity  Tall, small testicles, sterile, below normal
 Each egg and sperm cell has 23 chromosomes, intelligence, passive
threadlike structures in the nucleus that contains
genetic material. When a sperm penetrates an egg, Additional X Chromosome leading to male
its chromosomes combine to produce 23 pairs of hypogonadism
chromosomes.  Reduced muscle mass
 The first 22pairs of chromosomes are called  Less facial and body hair
autosomes.  Broad hips
 The 23rd pair determines the sex of the child, so  Enlarged breasts
these are known as the sex chromosomes.  Increased belly fat
 When the 23rd pair consists of an X and a Y
chromosome, the result is a boy; two X
XYY complement
chromosomes produce a girl.
 XYY; 1 in 1000 male births
 Each chromosome consists of one molecule of
 Tall, some cases apparently have below-normal
deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).
intelligence
Genes
Turner’s syndrome
 Through biochemical instructions that are coded in
 1 in 2,500–5,000 female.
DNA, genes regulate the development of all human
 Short, limited development of births secondary sex
characteristics and abilities.
characteristics, problems perceiving spatial relations
 The complete set of genes makes up a person’s
heredity and is known as the person’s genotype.
XXX syndrome
Genetic instructions, in conjunction with
 1 in 500–1,200 females
environmental influences, produce a phenotype, an
 Normal stature but the delayed motor births and
individual’s physical, behavioral, and psychological
language development
features
Hereditary, Environment, and Development
Genetic Disorders
 Many people mistakenly view heredity as a set of
phenotypes unfolding automatically from the
Inherited Disorders
genotypes that are set at conception.
Sickle-cell disease - is a disorder that affects people
 Although genotypes are fixed when the sperm
who inherit two recessive alleles.
fertilizes the egg, phenotypes are not. Instead,
phenotypes depend both on genotypes and on the
Phenylketonuria (PKU) - a disorder in which babies are environment in which individuals develop.
born lacking an important liver enzyme.
 This enzyme converts phenylalanine—a protein
Behavioral Genetics
found in dairy products, bread, diet soda, and fish—
 The branch of genetics that deals with the
into amino acids that are required for normal body
inheritance of behavioral and psychological traits.
functioning.
 Complex
 Without this enzyme, phenylalanine accumulates
 Traits controlled by single genes are usually either-
and produces poisons that harm the nervous
or
system, resulting in mental retardation.
 phenotypes.
 In contrast, most important behavioral and
Huntington’s disease - a fatal disease characterized by psychological characteristics are not of an ―either-
progressive degeneration of the nervous system. or nature; rather, a range of different outcomes is
 During middle age, nerve cells begin to deteriorate, possible.
which produces symptoms such as muscle spasms,
depression, and significant changes in personality.

Abnormal Chromosomes
Some individuals don’t receive the normal complement
of 46 chromosomes.

Down Syndrome
 Almond-shaped eyes and a fold-over the eyelid.
 their head, neck, and nose are usually smaller than
normal