Basics of life span development

Class code - PSYC140

Different stressors in middle adulthood

Middle adulthood can be a stressful period for many individuals and can lead to
psychological and physical problems.
MioDLE age is a period of marked diversity. During midlife, individuals juggle many
competing demands, including roles as workers, spouses, parents, and adult
children. They may experience precursors to health problems (e.g, high
cholesterol) or some of the same conditions as their parents (e.g., diabetes). A
range of expected (e.g, retirement, children leaving home) and unexpected (e.g,
loss of spouse, being laid off) events may occur during midlife.

Chronic Stressors

Chronic stressors include enduring problems, conflicts, and threats that people
face in their everyday lives

Role strains include ongoing problems that arise from social roles, particularly
family relationships, whereas ambient strains pertain to problematic facets of
person-environment interactions

Role stressors.

Family, caregiving, romantic relationships, and work. The consequences of

recurring stressors may be particularly severe when they surface within major
social domains, such as work or family

Moreover, events like children's departure, parents' death, and retirement may
exacerbate strains produced by the multiple roles held during midlife

Apart from its conflict with other roles, work itself is a significant source of stress
in midlife, as adults in this period are still likely to be involved in full-time
employment, with many having reached positions involving considerable
management responsibilities and time demands. Chronic stressors related to one's
job or career negatively affect both short-term health indicators and long-term
health outcomes, including heightened cortisol responses
Ambient stressors across life domains.

Loneliness, finances, health, and nejighborhood. Although statistics vary, research

has indicted that 20%-40% of aduts report feeling lonely at any given point in
time and 5%-10% report persistent loneliness

Loneliness has been defined as the difference between desired and actual social
relationships and the stress that accompanies having few (or no) social
relationships or perceiving a lack of meaningful and fulfilling connections with
others. Loneliness produces a deprivation of basic human needs and, as such,
works as a stressor. Thus, human interconnection is a basic condition for
functioning and if this is lacking, health problems result
Chronic stressors in the domains of finance, health, and neighborhood are other
examples of ambient stressors. Because middle-aged adults tend to be
professionally accomplished and financially stable, financial stress is likely to stem
from the many large-scale fiscal responsibilities present at this point in the life
span (e.g., mortgages, college tuition, retirement savings, and medical care

Life Events and Discrimination

Life events, in contrast to chronic stressors, are discrete and observable events
with concrete beginnings and endings . They may be tied to the life cycle and
associated transitions

Events involving losses that impinge on others' lives (e.g, injury to a child, job loss)
are purported to be especially stressful during midlife, because they are both
unwanted and unanticipated. Discrimination experiences are examples of life
events that are often not included in traditional checklists. Discrimination has
comparable associations with mental health as other stressors and, although more
prevalent among people with disadvantaged social status, is common in the
overall population as well

Although middle adulthood can be a stressful stage of life, there are a number of
strategies that adults can implement in their lives to avoid many negative
consequences. Regular exercise and good nutrition are crucial to maintaining
good health through out middle adulthood.
 Basics of life span development

Class code- PSYC140

Theories of cognitive development

Cognition refers to thinking and memory processes, and cognitive
development refers to long-term changes in these processes. One of the
most widely known perspectives about cognitive development is the
cognitive stage theory of a Swiss psychologist named Jean Piaget.

Cognitive development means how children think explore and figure things
out. It is the development of knowledge, skills, problem solving and
dispositions, which help children to think about and understand the world
around them. Brain development is part of cognitive development.
Cognitive development reflects the operation of two intertwined
components, one biological and the other cultural.

Plaget proposed four major stages of cognitive development, and called

them (1) sensorimotor intelligence, (2) preoperational thinking, (3) concrete
operational thinking, and (4) formal operational thinking. Each stage is
correlated with an age period of childhood, but only approximately.

The sensorimotor stage: birth to age 2

In Piaget's theory, the sensorimotor stage is first, and is defined as the

period when infants "think" by means of their senses and motor actions. As
every new parent will attest, infants continually touch, manipulate, look,
listen to, and even bite and chew objects. According to Piaget, these
actions allow them to lean about the world and are crucial to their early
cognitive development.
Piaget called this sense of stability object permanence, a belief that objects
exist whether or not they are actually present. It is a major achievement of
sensorimotor development, and marks a qualitative transformation in how
older infants (24 months) think about experience compared to younger
infants
The preoperational stage: age 2 to7

In the preoperational stage, children use their new ability to represent

objects in a wide variety of activities, but they do not yet do it in ways that
are organized or fully logical. One of the most obvious examples of this
kind of cognition is dramatic play, the improvised make-believe of
preschool children.

The concrete operational stage: age 7 to 11

As children continue into elementary school, they become able to represent

ideas and events more flexibly and logically. Their rules of thinking still
seem very basic by adult standards and usually operate unconsciously, but
they allow children to solve problems more systematically than before, and
therefore to be successful with many academic tasks.

certain classroom science experiments, such as ones involving judgments

of the amounts of liquids when mixed. Piaget called this period the concrete
operational stage because children mentally "operate" on concrete objects
and events. They are not yet able, however, to operate (or think)
systematically about representations of objects or events. Manipulating
representations is a more abstract skill that develops later, during
adolescence.

The formal operational stage: age 11 and beyond

In the last of the Piagetian stages, the child becomes able to reason not
only about tangible objects and events, but also about hypothetical or
abstract ones. Hence it has the name formal operational stage-the period
when the individual can "operate" on "forms" or representations. With
students at this level, the teacher can pose hypothetical (or contrary-to-fact)
problems.
Psychologist Lev Vygotsky argued that cognitive development is greatly
impacted by culture and social interactions.

His Cognitive Development Theory argues that cognitive abilities are

soclally guided and constructed. As such, culture senves as a mediator for
the formation and development of specific abilities, such as learning,
memory, attention, and problem solving.

As such, Vygotsky outined three main concepts related to cognitive

culture is significant in learning, (i) language is the root of
development. ()
culture, and (i) individuals learn and develop within their role in the
community.
Culture can be defined as the morals, values, and beliefs of its community
members, which are held in place with systems and establishments.
Acceptable attitudes and conduct are communicated by the use of
language. Culture is shaped over time as the result of specific events,
whose messages are then conveyed to its members. Vygotsky explained
that culture consistently affects cognitive development by affecting human
behavior.
Vygotsky believed that adults in a society foster children's cognitive
development
The first assumption of Vygotsky's theory is that through both informal
and formal conversations and education adults
convey to children the
way their culture interprets and responds to the world. Specifically, as
adults interact with children, they show the meanings they attach to
objects, events and experiences.

The second assumption of Vygotsky's theory is that thought and

language become increasingly independent in the first few years of life
The third assumption explains that complex mental processes begin as
social activities. As children develop, they
gradually internalize processes
they use in social contexts and begin to use them independently. This
internalization process allows children to transform ideas and
processes to make them uniquely their own.

Vygotsky also introduced the idea that children can perform more
challenging tasks when assisted by more advanced and competent
individuals. Vygotsky identified two levels of
development: actual
development, which is the upper limit of tasks a child can perform

individually, and level of potential development, which is the upper limit

of tasks a child can perform with the assistance of a more competent
individual. According to Vygotsky, in order to get a true assessment of a
child's actual and potential development, we should assess capabilities
both when the child is performing the activity alone and with a more

competent individual.

next assumption is that challenging tasks promote maximum cognitive

growth. Vygotsky described this as the zone of proximal development,
or commonly referred to as ZPD. ZPD is the range of tasks that a child
can perform with the help and guidance of others but cannot yet

perform independently. assumption is that challenging tasks

next

promote maximum cognitive growth. Vygotsky described this as the zone

of proximal development, or commonly referred to as ZPD. ZPD is the
the help and guidance of
range of tasks that a child can perform with
others but cannot yet perform independently.
The final assumption is that play allows children to stretch themselves

cognitively. Play allows children to take on roles they would normally not

be able to perform in real life.