Developmental Psychology

Developmental
Psychology

Scientific study that

examines changes in
psychological
characteristics occurring
over a lifetime (as well as
physical changes associated
with them.)
LIFE-SPAN
PERSPECTIVE
 LIFE-SPAN
PERSPECTIVE

Human Development is
multiply determined and
cannot be understood within a
scope of single framework.
Human Development must be
viewed from the
biopsychosocial framework
(Riley,1979).
 Aging, is a lifelong process of growing
Basic up and growing old.

Premises of
Life-Span How one’s life is played out is affected
by social, environmental, and
Perspective historical change.

(Riley,
1979): New patterns of development can
cause social change.
 Key Features (Baltes, 1987):

o Plasticity- Skills can be learned or improved with practice, even in late life.
o Interdisciplinary research- Research from different kinds of disciplinary
perspectives (anthropology, economics, psychology) is needed to fully
understand lifespan development.
o Multicontextual nature of development- Individual development occurs
within several interrelated context (family, neighborhood, culture, historical
time).
o Multidirectionality- development involves both growth and decline.
o Multiple Causation- how we develop results from biological, psychological,
sociocultural, and life-cycle forces.
DOMAINS OF DEVELOPMENT
 DOMAINS OF DEVELOPMENT
a. Physical Domain- changes in
the size, shape, and
characteristics of the body.
b. Cognitive Domain- changes
in thinking, memory,
problem solving, and other
intellectual skills.
c. Social Domain- change in
variables that are associated
with the relationship of an
individual to others.
Key Issues in the Study
of Human Development
 Nature-Nurture Debate

The debate about the

relative contributions of
biological processes and
experential factors to
devlopment.
Continuity versus
Discontinuity
The question is whether
age-related change is
primarily a matter of
amount or degree (the
contuity side of the
debate) or of changes in
type or kind (the
discontinuity side).
• Quantitative change
• Qualitative change
THREE KINDS OF CHANGE
 Normative
• changes that are common to every
age-graded member of a species.
changes

Normative • Changes that occur in most members of

a cohort as a result of factors at work
history-graded during a specific, well-defined historical
changes period.

Nonnormative • Changes that result from unique,

changes unshared events
 Psychoanalyctic Theories
• Freud’s Psychosexual
– Personality develops in five stages from birth to
adolescence; in each stage, the need for physical
pleasure is focused on a different part of the body.
Strengths
- Emphasizes the importance of experiences in
infancy and early childhood; provide psychological
explanations for mental illness.
• Weaknesses
- Sexual feelings are not as important in
personality development as Freud claimed.
• Erikson’s psychosocial theory
- Personality develops through eight life crises
across he entire lifespan; a person finishes
each crisis with either good or poor
resolution.
Strengths
- Helps explain the role of culture in personality
development; important in lifespan psychology;
useful description of major themes of
personality development at different ages.
• Weaknesses
• - Describing each period in terms of a single
crisis is probably an oversimplification
 LEARNING THEORIES
• Pavlov’s classical conditioning
• learning happens when neutral stimuli
becomes so strongly associated with natural
stimuli that they elicit the same response.
• Strength- Useful in explaining how emotional
response such as phobias are learned.
Weakness- explanation of behavior change too
limited to serve a comprehensive theory.

Skinner’s Operant conditioning

- Development involves behavior changes
that are shaped by reinforment and punishment.
Strength- Basis of many useful strategies for
managing and changing human behavior.
Weaknesses- Humans are not as passive as
Skinner claimed; the theory ignores hereditary,
cognitive, emotional, and social factors in
development.
Bandura’s Social learning theory
• People learn from models; what they learn
from model depends on how they interpret
the situation cognitively and emotionally.
• Strength
- Helps explain how models influence behavior;
explains more about development than other
learning theories do because of addition of cognitive
and emotional factors.
Weaknesses

• Does not provide an overall picture of

development.
 COGNITIVE THEORIES
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development-
-Reasoning develops in four universal stages
from birth through adolescence; in each stage,
the child builds a different kind of scheme.
Strengths- Helps explain how children of
different ages think about and act on the world.
• Weaknesses
- Stage concept may cause adults to underestimate
the children’s reasoning abilities; there may be
additional stages in adulthood.

Information processing theory-

The computer is used as a model for human
cognitive functioning; encoding, storage, and
retrieval processes change with age, causing
changes in memory function; these changes happen
because of both brain maturation and practice.
• Strengths
- helps explain how much information people
of different ages can manage at one time and
how they process it; provides a useful
framework for studying individual differences in
people of the same age.
Weaknesses
- Human information processing is much
more complex than that of a computer; the
theory does not provide a overall picture of
development
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural theory
- Emphasizes linguistic and social factors in
cognitive development.

Strengths
- Incorporates group learning processes into
explanations of individual cognitive
development.
• Weaknesses
- Insufficient evidence to support most ideas.
LIFE COURSE
PERSPECTIVE
LIFE COURSE
PERSPECTIVE This perspective describes the ways in which various
generations experience the biological,
psychological, and sociocultural forces of
development in their respective historical context.
The key feature of this perspective is the dynamic
interplay between the individual and society.

The emphasis of this perspective on the

interrelations between the individual and society
through the emphasis on historical time has made it
a dominant view in the social sciences.
 3 Major Dimensions of Life Course
Perspective

The individual timing of life

events in relation to
external historical events

The synchronization of
individual transitions with
collective familial ones.

The impact of earlier life

events as shaped by
historical events, on
subsequent ones.
Researches from Life
Course Perspective:
∙ Has shown that major life transitions
occur at many different ages across
people and generations. These differences
begin appearing after adolescence when
people begin to have much more control
over the course of their lives.
∙ Has shown that life transitions are
continuous and multidirectional.
∙ Show that the various domains of people’s
lives are highly interdependent.
THE
ECOLOGICAL
SYSTEMS
APPROACH
 Ecological Theory

From branch of Biology

Dealing with the relation of living things to

their environment and to one another

human development is inseparable from

the environmental contexts in which a
person develops
 Urie Bronfenbrenner

Best-known proponent of this approach

Assumed that natural environments are the major

source of influence on developing persons

Proposed that the developing person is embedded

in a series of complex and interactive system
 Microsystem
Consists of the people
and objects in an
individual’s immediate
environment

Innermost of the
Bronfenbrenner’s
environmental layers
• Children’s own biologically
and socially influenced
characteristics- their
habits, temperaments,
physical characteristics,
and capabilities- influence
the behavior of
companions (their
microsystem) as well
 • Provides connections across microsystems,
Mesosystem because what happens in one microsystem is
likely to influence others
• Development is likely to be optimized by
strong, supportive links between
microsystems
• The second of Brofenbrenner’s
environmental layers
 Exosystem
• Refers to social settings
that a person may not
experience firsthand but
that still influence
development
• Social systems that
children and adolescents
do not directly experience
but that may nonetheless
influence their
development
• Third of Bronfenbrenner’s
environmental layers
 Macrosystem
• The larger cultural or
subcultural context in
which development
occurs
• Values differ across
cultures and can greatly
influence the kinds of
experiences children
have in their homes,
neighborhoods, schools,
and all other contexts
that affect them, directly
or indirectly
 Chronosystem

A temporal dimension

Emphasizes that changes in the child or in any of the

ecological contexts of development can affect the direction
that is likely to take

This include changes in family structure, place of residence,

or employment
• According to
Bronfenbrenner, a
person is not merely an
outcome of development
but is also a shaper of it.
“Two or more persons
related by birth, marriage,
adoption, or choice” who
have emotional ties and
responsibilities to each
other (Allen, Fine, &
Demo, 2000)

Family
• Children influence the behavior and childrearing practices of their
parents
• Families are complex social systems- that is, networks of reciprocal
relationships and alliances (microsystem) that are constantly evolving
(chronosystem) and are greatly affected by community (exosystem)
and cultural influences (macrosystem.
 • Holistic structure
• Reciprocal influence
Family as Social • One implication of viewing the family as a system in that
interactions between any two family members are likely to be
System influenced by attitudes and behaviors of a third family member.
• Fathers influence the
mother-infant
relationship
• Mothers influence the
father-infant
relationship
• Child-to-mother
effect,
mother-to-child effect
• Effect of the child’s
impulsivity on the
husband-wife
relationship
SELECTIVE OPTIMIZATION WITH
COMPENSATION
Selective Optimization
with Compensation

• The three processes form a system of

behavioral action that generates and
regulates development and aging.
 Selection
Can involve the continuation
of previous goals on a lesser
scale, or the substitution of
new goals, and be proactive
or reactive
– Elective selection-
Chooses to reduce
one’s involvement to
fewer domains as a
result of new task
– Loss-based selection-
Result of anticipated
losses in personal &
environmental
resources
 Compensation
• When a person can no
longer function well in
a particular domain
because the necessary
skills have been lost or
have fallen below the
level necessary for
adequate functioning.
• The person will look
for an alternative way
to accomplish the goal
• It differs from
selection in that the
task or goal is
maintained but other
means are used to
achieve it
 Optimization
• The minimization of losses and
maximization of gains
• Best matching one’s resources and one’s
desired goals
• Balancing process between selecting the
right goals and compensating, when
possible, to help them maximize the
odds of achieving them.