Developing Through the Life Span

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Developing Through the Life Span
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Enduring Issues

• Diversity Universality
• Stability Change
• Nature Nurture

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Research Methodologies

• Cross-sectional
• Examining groups of subjects who are of different
  ages
• Longitudinal
• Examining the same group of subjects two or more
  times as they age

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Research Methodologies

• Sequential Design

2000
1998
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The Newborn

• Reflexes
• Rooting reflex
• Sucking reflex
• Swallowing reflex
• Grasping reflex
• Stepping reflex
• Are responsive to human faces, voices, and touch

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Newborn Temperament

• Babies are born with individual differences in
  personality called temperament differences
• Types
• Easy
• Difficult
• Slow-to-warm-up

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Newborn Temperament

• Babies are born with individual differences in
  personality called temperament differences
• Types
• Easy
• Spirited
• Slow-to-warm-up
• Shy

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Developmental Principles

• Cephalocaudal
• Proximodistal

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Give your best estimate of the age at which about
50 of children begin to

1. Laugh
2. Pedal a tricycle
3. Sit without support
4. Feel ashamed
5. Walk unassisted
6. Stand on one foot for 10 seconds

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1. Recognize and smile at mother/father
2. Kick ball forward
3. Think about things that cannot be seen
4. Make two-word utterances

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Brain Development

• Neurons present at birth
• Neural networks form after birth
• Stimulation is key
• Preschool-age
• Growth most rapid in frontal lobes
• Last areas to develop include those linked to
  thinking, memory, and language

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• Maturation
• The biological growth processes that enable
  orderly changes in behavior
• Sets the basic course of development
• Experience adjusts course
• Critical period

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Physical Development
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Physical Development in Adolescence

• Growth spurt occurs at different ages for each
  sex
• Sexual development
• Females
• Menarche
• Males
• Spermarche

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Physical Development in Adulthood

• Rate increases with time
• Climacteric
• Women ? menopause
• Men ? changes in prostate
• Use it or lose it

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Physical Development in Adulthood

• Primary aging
• Secondary aging

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Cognitive Development

• Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget
• Children undergo qualitative changes in thinking
  as they grow older
• Stage theory
• Invariant
• universal

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Cognitive Development Piaget

• Sensorimotor stage
• Move from reflexive to voluntary, goal-directed
  actions
• Object permanence
• Two major accomplishments
• Goal-directed actions
• Mental representation

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Cognitive Development Piaget

• Preoperational Stage
• Child becomes able to use mental representations
  and language to describe, remember, and reason
  about the world
• Egocentrism
• Inability to see things from another persons
  point of view
• Animism

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Cognitive Development Piaget

• Preoperational Stage (cont)
• Conservation
• knowledge that certain physical attributes of an
  object remain unchanged even though the outward
  appearance of the object is altered

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Cognitive Development Piaget

• Preoperational Stage (cont)
• Centered
• Irreversibility

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Cognitive Development Piaget

• Concrete Operational Stage
• A child can attend to more than one thing at a
  time and understand someone elses point of view.
  (decentration)
• Thinking is limited to concrete matters.
• A child can understand conservation.

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Cognitive Development Piaget

• Formal Operational Stage
• Acquire the ability to think abstractly
• Can formulate hypotheses
• Can think in terms of cause-and-effect
• Develop general rules, principles

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• Formal Operational Stage
• Adolescent egocentrism
• Imaginary audience
• Personal fable

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Criticisms of Piaget

• Underestimated abilities
• Not enough focus on social influences
• Still contributed!!

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Cognitive Changes

• An adult's thinking is more flexible and
  practical than an adolescent's
• Adults realize that there may be several right
  solutions or none at all
• Some skills increase through the sixties
• Vocabulary, verbal memory
• Others fall off slightly after age 40
• Reasoning, spatial memory

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Cognitive Changes

• Fluid intelligence ?
• reasoning, memory, information processing
• Crystallized intelligence or ?
• information, skills, problem-solving strategies

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• A mans wife is ill with a rare kind of cancer.
  There is a drug that may save her, but it is very
  expensive. The pharmacist who discovered this
  medicine will sell it for 2,000, but the man has
  only 1,000. He asks the pharmacist to let him
  pay part of the cost now and the rest later, but
  the pharmacist refuses. Being desperate, the man
  steals the drug. Should he have done so? Why or
  why not?

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• preconventional level
• judge morality largely in terms of consequences
• conventional level
• whether behavior supports and preserves the laws
  and rules of society
• postconventional level
• judge morality in terms of abstract principles
  and values
• a single rule system is only one of many
  possibilities
• some laws are inconsistent with the rights on
  individuals

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Criticisms of Kohlbergs Theory

• Gilligan ? studied only males
• Feminine morality emphasizes an ethic of care
• Kohlbergs system focuses on rights and justice
  male ideals
• May be culturally biased

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Attachment

• Strong emotional bond to a specific person
• Other species ?imprinting
• Humans ? attachment
• Seen in desire to obtain and maintain contact

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Theories of Attachment

• Freud
• Psychoanalytic/secondary drive theory
• Bowlby
• Ethological theory
• Harry Harlow
• Research with rhesus monkeys

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Individual Differences in Attachment

• Secure
• Insecure
• May have long term consequences

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Eriksons Psychosocial Theory
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Attachment

• Fathers
• Daycare
• Parenting

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Parenting Styles Baumrind

• Authoritarian
• Rigid control insist on unquestioning obedience
• Permissive
• Very supportive few if any limits
• Authoritative
• Firm structure and guidance not overly
  controlling engage in give-and-take
• Neglectful
• Little control no limits neglectful and
  inattentive little emotional support

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Parenting Temperament

• Easy
• Spirited
• Slow-to-warm-up

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Return to Attachment

• Adolescence
• Storm and strife?
• Identity
• Identity diffusion
• Identity foreclosure
• Moratorium
• Identity achievement

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Parental Influences in Adolescence

• Better relationships with parents ? better
  relationships with peers
• Closeness with parents ? healthy, happy, do well
  in school
• Teens in trouble ? tense relationships with
  parents
• Correlation ? causation!

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Peer Influences in Adolescence

• Preschoolers will eat food peers eat even if
  refused prior
• Teens talk, dress, and act more like peers than
  parents

45
Choose which of the following best describes your
relationship with your mother when you were a
child growing up. Do the same for your father.

1. Warm/Responsive S/he was generally warm and
   responsive s/he was good at knowing when to be
   supportive and when to let me operate on my own
   our relationship was almost always comfortable,
   and I have no major reservations or complaints
   about it.
2. Cold/Rejecting S/he was fairly cold and distant,
   or rejecting, not very responsive I wasnt
   her/his highest priority, her/his concerns were
   often elsewhere its possible that s/he would
   just as soon not have had me.
3. Ambivalence/Inconsistent S/he was noticeably
   inconsistent in her/his reactions to me,
   sometimes warm and sometimes not s/he had
   her/his own agendas which sometimes got in the
   way of her/his receptiveness and responsiveness
   to my needs s/he definitely loved me but didnt
   always show it in the best way.

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Which of the following best describes your
current feelings? (Read the descriptions below
and choose the one that best summarizes your
feelings an behavior in romantic love
relationships.)

1. Secure I find it relatively easy to get close to
   others and am comfortable depending on them. I
   dont often worry about being abandoned or about
   someone getting too close to me.
2. Avoidant I am somewhat uncomfortable being close
   to others I find it difficult to trust them
   completely, difficult to allow myself to depend
   on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too
   close, and often, love partners want me to be
   more intimate than I feel comfortable being.
3. Anxious/Ambivalent I find that others are
   reluctant to get as close as I would like. I
   often worry that my partner doesnt really love
   me or wont want to stay with me. I want to get
   very close to my partner, and this sometimes
   scares people away.

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Attachment in Adulthood
Model of Self
Positive
Negative
Secure Secure attachment history Preoccupied Resistant attachment history
Dismissing Avoidant attachment history Fearful/Unresolved/Disorganized Disorganized/ disoriented attachment history
Positive
Model of Other
Negative
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Passing thoughts

• Life is not predictable
• Love and work dominate adulthood
• Most people retain a sense of well-being
• Huge range of reactions to death

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Griefletting go of myths

• Immediately expressed strong grief ? earlier
  recovery
• Grief therapy/self-help groups lt time social
  support
• Terminally ill do not go through stages of grief

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Williams Best (2004)

• Males
• Active, adventurous, aggressive, arrogant,
  autocratic, bossy, coarse, conceited,
  enterprising, hardheaded, loud, obnoxious,
  opinionated, opportunistic, pleasure-seeking,
  precise, quick, reckless, show-off, and tough

• Females
• Affected, affectionate, appreciative, cautious,
  changeable, charming, dependent, emotional,
  fearful, forgiving, modest, nervous, patient,
  pleasant, prudish, sensitive, sentimental,
  softhearted, timid, and warm

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Gender Differences

• Men ? more aggressive, dominant, forceful,
  independent
• Physical vs. relational aggression
• More likely to hold positions of power/leadership
• Women ? social connections
• Differences in interactional styles

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• Gender Roles
• The behaviors a culture expects of its men and
  women
• Gender Identity
• Ones sense of being male or female

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How do we learn to be male/female?

• Social Learning Theory
• Gender typing
• Taking on a traditional masculine or feminine role

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Sexual Orientation

• An enduring sexual attraction toward members of
  either our own sex (homosexual orientation) or
  the other sex (heterosexual orientation)

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• about 3-4 of men and 1-2 of women are
  exclusively homosexual, much smaller number (lt
  1) are bisexual
• 1973 change in DSM (APA)
• 1993 change from World Health Organization
• 1995/2001 change in Japans/Chinas psychiatric
  associations

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Biology and Sexual Orientation

• Same-Sex Attraction in Other Species
• Gay-Straight Brain Differences
• Hypothalamus emotions and sexual arousal
• Genetic Influences
• Gay men have more homosexual relatives on their
  mothers side than on their fathers
• Identical twins more likely than fraternal
• Fruit flies

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Prenatal Influences

• Exposure to hormones during critical period
  prenatally
• Maternal immune system
• More older brothers increased likelihood

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