Voyage Through the Lifespan

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Chapter 3

• Voyage Through the Lifespan

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Prenatal Development

• Germinal stage
• the period from conception to implantation. Also
  known as the period of the ovum.
• Embryonic stage
• the prenatal period of development from
  implantation until about the eighth week of
  development.
• XY or XX
• the genetic code that begins to assert itself
  about the seventh week of development.
• Amniotic sac
• The embryo is suspended within this protective
  sac.
• Umbilical cord
• connects the embryo to the placenta.

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Prenatal Development

• Fetal stage
• the period of development beginning in the third
  month until birth.
• Growth and development continue, features and
  functions develop.
• Age 25 weeks threshold of viability

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Figure 3.1 Embryos and Fetuses at Various
Intervals of Prenatal Development . Development
of the head (and brain) precedes that of other
parts of the body. The development of the
organs--heart, lungs and so on--also precedes the
development of limbs. The relatively early
maturation of the brain and organ systems allows
them to participate in the nourishment and
further development of the embryo.
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The Newborn

• Newborn reflexes
• Simple unlearned, stereotypical responses
  elicited by specific stimuli.
• Essential to survival
• Examples include
• Rooting
• Infant turning head toward stimuli that prod or
  stroke the cheek, chin, or corner of the mouth.
• Moro
• startle reflex.
• Babinski
• Infants fan their toes when the soles of their
  feet are stimulated.

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Perceptual Development in Infancy

• Fixation time
• the amount of time spent looking at something.
• 2-month old infants prefer human faces.
• Visual Cliff experiments
• 6-8 month old infants develop depth perception
  and avoid crawling off the cliff.
• 3-day old infants prefer to hear their mothers
  voice to those of other women.
• Shortly after birth infants can discriminate
  tastes.

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Figure 3.3 The Classic Visual Cliff Experiment .
This young explorer has the good sense not to
crawl out onto an apparently unsupported surface,
even when mother beckons from the other side.
Rats pups, kittens, and chicks also will not try
to walk across to the other side.
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Physical Development Childhood

• Growth is slow and steady.
• Gross motor skills improve faster than fine motor
  skills.
• Girls mature more rapidly than boys.

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Adolescence A time of transition

• Physical Development
• Growth spurts last for 2-3 years. Grow 8-12
  inches.
• Puberty
• a period during which the body becomes sexually
  mature.
• Menarche (menstruation) in women usually occurs
  between 11 and 14 years.

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Adolescence (cont)

• Adolescents strive for independence which often
  leads to
• Fighting with parents and withdrawal from family
  life
• Most adolescents continue to feel love, respect
  and loyalty toward their parents.
• Adolescents who feel close to their parents show
• Greater self reliance
• Independence
• Fare better in school
• Have fewer adjustment problems

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Adolescent Sexuality

• Statistics.
• According to the CDC (2000) about half of U.S.
  high school students have engaged in sexual
  intercourse.
• Fewer than half of those use contraception
  reliably.
• Nearly 800,000 teenage girls get pregnant each
  year.
• Nearly 3 million teenage boys and girls contract
  a sexually transmitted infection (STI) each year.

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Adolescent Sexuality (cont)

• Problems
• Adolescents often misunderstand reproduction and
  contraception.
• Top reason for engaging in sex is peer pressure.
• Teen mothers are less likely to graduate from
  high school, have a lower standard of living, and
  have a greater need for public assistance.

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Adulthood Physical Development

• Young adulthood characteristics
• Height of physical fitness.
• Middle adulthood characteristics
• Minor changes in strength, coordination, and
  stamina.
• Can still maintain excellent cardiorespiratory
  condition.
• Menopause final phase of the climacteric.
• Decline in female sex hormone secretion.
• Loss of fertility.
• Loss of bone density.
• Hot flashes, loss of sleep, some anxiety and
  depression.

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Adulthood Physical Dev. (cont)

• Late adulthood characteristics
• Increased brittleness in the bones.
• See and hear less acutely.
• Reaction time diminishes.
• Immune system functions less efficiently.

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Theories of Aging

• Programmed Senescence
• aging is determined by a biological clock that is
  governed by our genes.
• Evidence to support this is the longevity runs in
  families.
• Wear and Tear Theory
• environmental factors such as pollution, disease
  and ultra violet light contribute to the wear and
  tear on the body.
• The body is a machine that is going to wear out.

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Successful Aging

• Successful Aging.
• Most people in their 70s report general
  satisfaction with lives.
• Three factors are connected with subjective
  well-being (Pinquart Sorensen, 2000)
• Socioeconomic status.
• Social network.
• Competence.

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Successful Aging

• Volz (2000) proposes three components for
  successful aging
• Reshaping ones life to concentrate on what one
  finds to be important and meaningful.
• A positive outlook.
• Self challenge.

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Jean Piagets Cognitive-Developmental Theory

• Piaget hypothesized that childrens cognitive
  processes develop in an orderly sequence of
  stages.
• Scheme
• a pattern of action or a mental structure
  involved in acquiring or organizing knowledge.
• Assimilation
• responding to new stimuli through a reflex or
  existing habit.
• Accommodation
• the creation of new ways of responding to objects
  or looking at the world.

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Piaget (cont)

• Sensorimotor Stage
• The newborn is capable of assimilation.
• By about 8-12 months of age the infant realizes
  that objects that are removed from sight still
  exist.
• This is called object permanence

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Piaget (cont)

• The Preoperational Stage
• Characterized by the use of words and symbols to
  represent objects and relationships among them.
• Egocentrism
• Cannot take anothers perspective.
• Everyone knows and feels what I do.
• Animism
• attribute life and consciousness to physical
  objects like the sun, toys, etc.

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Piaget (cont)

• Conservation
• Basic properties of substances remain the same
  (conserve) when you change superficial properties
  such as shape.
• Children in the preoperational stage are
  developing this ability but do not yet have it
  mastered.

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Figure 3.5 Conservation. The boy in drawing A
agreed that the amount of water in two identical
containers is equal. As shown in drawing B, he
then watched as water from one container was
poured into a tall, thin container. In drawing C,
he is examining one of the original containers
and the new container. When asked whether he
thinks the amounts of water in the two containers
are now the same, he says no. Apparently he is
impressed by the height of the new container, and
prior to the development of conservation, he
focusing on only one dimension of the situation
at a time--in this case height of the new
container.
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Piaget (cont)

• The Concrete Operational Stage
• Children ages 7-12 show the beginnings of logic.
• Children typically do better with tangible
  (concrete) rather than abstract ideas.
• Children can perform operations such as
• conservervation.
• reversibility.

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Piaget (cont)

• Piagets stage of Formal Operations (about 11 or
  12).
• Abstract thought
• Adolescent Egocentrism
• Imaginary Audience
• The belief that other people are as concerned
  with our thoughts, appearance and behavior as we
  are.
• Personal Fable
• The belief that our feelings and ideas are
  special.
• We are unique and invulnerable.
• Showing off and taking risks typical beliefs.

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Cognitive Development in Adulthood

• Creativity, memory functioning and intelligence
  are at their height in adulthood.
• People tend to retain their verbal skills and
  general knowledge into advanced age.
• Crystallized versus Fluid Intelligence.
• Crystallized intelligence
• represents a lifetime of attainment including
  vocabulary and accumulated facts.
• Typically increases over the decades.
• Fluid intelligence
• represents mental flexibility.
• This is the ability to process information
  rapidly learning and solving new problems.

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Cognitive Development in Adulthood

• The Seattle Longitudinal Study (Schaie, 1994).
• Studied the cognitive development of adults for
  four decades and found factors that contribute to
  intellectual functioning
• General health.
• Socioeconomic status (SES).
• Stimulating activities.
• Marriage to a spouse with a high level of
  intellectual functioning.
• Openness to new experience.

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Cognitive Disease Dementia

• Alzheimers Disease.
• It is a disease, not a normal part of aging.
• Characterized by
• Deterioration in memory, language, and problem
  solving.
• Becoming helpless.
• Inability to communicate or walk.
• More isolated memory losses.
• Serious impairment of vocational and social
  functioning.
• Seems to be a result of reduced levels of
  acetylcholine (ACh) and the build up of sticky
  plaque on the brain.

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Kohlbergs Moral Development

• Kohlbergs Theory of Moral Development
• Kohlberg presented subjects with moral dilemmas.
• Interested in how the subject arrived at decision
  rather than the decision alone.
• Proposed that moral reasoning follows a specific
  sequence.
• Preconventional
• Conventional
• Postconventional

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Kohlberg (cont)

• The Preconventional Level
• Applies to most children through the age of 9.
• Stage 1 -Obedience and punishment
• Stage 2 -Good behavior allows people to satisfy
  needs of self and others.

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Kohlberg (cont)

• The Conventional Level
• Moral reasoning is judged by conformity to
  conventional standards of right and wrong.
• Stage 3 moral behavior meets the expectations of
  others.
• Stage 4 moral judgments based on rules that
  maintain social order.

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Kohlberg (cont)

• Kohlbergs Postconventional Level of Moral
  Reasoning
• Highest level is based on persons own moral
  standards.
• Stage 5 legalistic orientation law is good for
  society.
• Stage 6 moral reasoning demands adherence to
  supposed universal universal ethics.
• Conscience is the highest moral authority.

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Eriksons Theory of Psychosocial Development

• Erik Eriksons Stages of Psychosocial Development
  
• Infancy Trust versus Mistrust.
• Based on interactions with primary caregivers.
• Come to expect that our environment will (or will
  not) meet our needs.
• Early/Middle Childhood
• Autonomy vs. shame
• Initiative vs. doubt
• Industry vs. inferiority

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Erikson (cont)

• Adolescence Ego Identity Versus Role Diffusion
• Ego Identity
• a firm sense of who one is and what one stands
  for.
• If this isnt accomplished then role diffusion is
  experienced.
• Young adulthood intimacy versus isolation.
• This is marked by the establishment of intimate
  relationships.

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Erikson (cont)

• Middle Adulthood
• Generativity versus stagnation.
• Generativity is doing things that we believe are
  worthwhile which enhances self-esteem and helps
  shape a new generation.
• Stagnation is treading water and has powerful
  destructive effects on self esteem.
• Late Adulthood
• Erikson proposed a stage of ego integrity versus
  despair.
• Ego integrity derives from wisdom expert
  knowledge, balance, and excellence.

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Social and Emotional Development Attachment

• Attachment
• is an emotional tie that is formed between one
  person and another specific individual.
• Behaviors include
• Attempts to maintain contact or nearness
• Show anxiety when separated.
• Measured using the Strange Situation

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Attachment (cont)

• Patterns of Attachment
• Secure attachment
• Infants seek interaction with and are readily
  comforted by caregiver.
• Children with secure attachment are better off on
  almost every measure of socioemotional
  development.
• Avoidant attachment
• Play by themselves and ignore mothers when they
  return.
• Ambivalent/resistant attachment
• infants show severe distress when their mothers
  leave
• show ambivalence upon reunion by alternately
  clinging to and pushing their mother away.

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Attachment (cont)

• Theories of Attachment
• Behaviorists believe that attachment is learned
  through experience.
• Harry Harlow suggests that skin contact may be
  more important than learning experiences.
• Harlow Wire v Cloth
• Rhesus monkey research with the wire mesh and
  terrycloth mothers demonstrated that monkeys in
  danger prefer the terrycloth mother.
• Harlow secure base
• Concluded that there may be an inborn need for
  contact comfort.

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Figure 3.6 Attachment in Infant Monkeys
Although this rhesus monkey infant is fed by the
wire mother, it spends most of its time
clinging to the soft, cuddly terry-cloth
mother. It knows where to get a meal, but
contact comfort is apparently more important than
food in the development of attachment in infant
monkeys (and infant humans?).
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Social and Emotional Development Parenting

• Parenting styles
• Parental behavior researched by Baumrind focused
  on four aspects of parental behavior
• 1) strictness,
• 2) demands for a child to achieve intellectual,
  emotional and social maturity,
• 3) communication ability, and
• 4) warmth and involvement.
• Based on research in this area four parenting
  styles have been proposed

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Parenting Styles (cont)

• Authoritative
• Strict but are willing to reason with their
  children.
• Most competent children come from this type.
• Authoritarian
• Strict and rely on force.
• Poor communication.
• Permissive
• Easygoing, warm and supportive.
• Poor at communicating.
• Make few demands.
• Uninvolved
• Leave children on their own.
• Make few demands.
• Show little warmth or encouragement.

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Table 3.6 Parenting Styles
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Death and Dying

• Kubler-Ross proposed five stages of dying
• Denial.
• Anger.
• Bargaining.
• Depression.
• Final acceptance.