Life Span Development

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Life Span Development

• Chapter 5
• Development

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Defining Terms

• Developmental Psychology
• Branch of psychology that specifically examines
  the physiological, cognitive, and emotional
  changes in an organism from conception to death.
• Developmental Psychologists utilize a number of
  different methods of inquiry to gather this
  information.

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Cross-Sectional Study

• Study people of different ages at the same point
  in time
• Advantages
• Inexpensive
• Can be completed quickly
• Low attrition
• Disadvantages
• Different age groups are not necessarily much
  alike
• Differences may be due to cohort differences
  rather than age

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Longitudinal Study

• Study the same group of people over time
• Advantages
• Detailed information about subjects
• Developmental changes can be studied in detail
• Eliminates cohort differences
• Disadvantages
• Expensive and time consuming
• Potential for high attrition
• Differences over time may be due to assessment
  tools and not age

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Biographical or Retrospective Study

• Participants past is reconstructed through
  interviews and other research about their life
• Advantages
• Great detail about life of individual
• In-depth study of one person
• Disadvantages
• Recall of individual may not be accurate
• Can be expensive and time consuming

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Prenatal Development

• Prenatal - period of time from conception to
  birth
• Zygote a fertilized egg with full set of genes
• Embryo
• From about two weeks after conception to three
  months after conception (most of first trimester)
• Organs begin to form heartbeat
• Fetus
• Three months after conception to birth (second
  and third trimesters)
• Organs continue to form response to sounds
• Placenta
• Connects fetus to mother
• Brings oxygen and nutrients and takes away wastes

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Prenatal Development

• Teratogens
• Any agent that causes a structural abnormality
  following fetal exposure during pregnancy
• Cocaine, alcohol, tetracycline, x-rays, lithium,
  diazepam (Valium)
• Fetal alcohol syndrome
• Occurs in children of women who consume large
  amounts of alcohol during pregnancy
• Symptoms include facial deformities, heart
  defects, stunted growth, and cognitive impairments

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Prenatal Development

• Critical period
• Specific time during which an organism has to
  experience stimuli in order to progress through
  developmental stages properly.
• If period passes without proper
  stimulation/development, development is hindered
  permanently

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The Newborn Babyaka NEONATE
I WANT BACK IN!
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The Competent Newborn Reflexes

• Rooting
• Baby turns its head toward something that brushes
  its cheek and gropes around with mouth
• Sucking
• Newborns tendency to suck on objects placed in
  the mouth
• Swallowing
• Enables newborn babies to swallow liquids without
  choking
• Grasping
• Close fist around anything placed in their hand

• Stepping
• Stepping motions made by an infant when held
  upright
• Babinski
• Stroke bottom of foot toes fan and curl
• Moro
• Drop baby unexpectedly (?!) or make loud noise
  and it will throw arms out, arch back and then
  grasp for something
• Crawling
• Place neonate on stomach and press down on soles
  of feet arms and legs move rhythmically

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The Competent Newborn Temperament

• Temperament refers to characteristic patterns of
  emotional reactions and emotional self-regulation
• Thomas and Chess identified three basic types of
  babies (1977) Kagan (1988) added a fourth
• Easy
• Good-natured, easy to care for, adaptable
• Difficult
• Moody and intense, react to new situations and
  people negatively and strongly
• Slow-to-warm-up
• Inactive and slow to respond to new things, and
  when they do react, it is mild
• Shy Child
• Timid and inhibited, fearful of anything new or
  strange
• Temperament may predict later disposition

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The Competent Newborn Sensory Learning

• In addition to reflexes present at birth,
  neonates also have the ability to learn
• Habituation - basic type of learning involving
  decreased response to a stimulus judged to be of
  no importance/novelty
• Visual learning focus on FACES
• Olfactory learning fully functioning smell of
  mother
• Auditory learning response to mothers voice
• Taste Fully functioning preference for sweets!

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The Competent NewbornVisual Perception
Dude. Im not going that way!

• Clear for 8-10 inches
• Good vision by 6 months
• Depth perception
• Visual cliff research
• Despite his mothers beckoning, an infant
  hesitates to cross the visual cliffan
  apparently steep drop that is actually covered by
  transparent glass.
• Most infants 6 to 14 months of age were reluctant
  to crawl over the cliff, suggesting they had the
  ability to perceive depth.
• The ability to perceive depth is partly innate
  and partly a product of early visual experience.

The Visual Cliff
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Perception of Scale
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Perception of Scale
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Infancy and Childhood
Stop touching me.
Ooh. How did you get your hair so silky soft?
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Physical Development Body and
Brain

• Children grow about 10 inches and gain about 15
  pounds in first year
• Growth occurs in spurts, as much as 1 inch
  overnight!
• Growth slows during second year
• Neural pruning and paving

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Motor and Memory Development

• Developmental norms
• Ages by which an average child achieves various
  developmental milestones
• Occurs in a proximodistal and cephalocaudal
  manner
• Back to Sleep movement to reduce SIDS may delay
  crawling
• Maturation
• Automatic biological unfolding of development in
  an organism as a function of passage of time
• Relatively uninfluenced by experience
• Memory not solidified until after 3rd birthday
• Known as infantile amnesia
• Development of hippocampus?

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Cognitive Development

• Cognition all mental activities associated with
  thinking, knowing, remembering and communicating
• Jean Piaget
• Cognitive developmental psychologist who studied
  intellectual development in children
• Stage-based theory of cognitive development
• Intellectual growth as a process of adaptation
  (adjustment) to the world. This happens through
• Formation of schemas mental frameworks
• Assimilation using an existing schema to
  understand a new situation
• Accommodation modifying schemas to incorporate
  new information
• Adjusting schemas (equilibration) when new
  information doesnt fit existing ones
  (disequilibrium)

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Piagets Stages of Development

• Sensorimotor Stage (birth to 2 years)
• Take in world through senses
• Object permanence and the A not B error
• Preoperational Stage (2-7 years)
• Egocentrism intuitive over logical reasoning
• Development of a theory of mind, ideas about
  their own and others cognitions and their
  resulting behaviors
• The Mountain problem
• Concrete Operations (7-11 years)
• Logical reasoning about concrete events
• Principles of conservation
• Formal Operations (12 through adulthood)
• Hypothetical problems solving
• Understand abstract ideas

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Piagets Stages - Summary
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Criticisms of Piaget's Theory

• Many developmental theorists such as Vygotsky
  questioned the assumption that there are distinct
  stages in cognitive development
• Criticism of notion that infants do not
  understand world
• Piaget may have underestimated influence of
  social interaction in cognitive development

Lev Vygotsky believed development was a function
of social interaction
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Social Development Attachment

• Stranger Anxiety
• Appears around 8 months coincides with mobility
• Protective mechanism
• Attachment through Contact
• Humans form a bond with those who care for them
  in infancy
• Based upon interaction with caregiver
• Harry Harlows work role of physical contact in
  attachment
• Attachment through Familiarity
• Imprinting (Lorenz) tendency to follow the first
  moving thing seen as the basis of attachment
• Occurs in many species of animals in a critical
  period

Top Harlows experiment Bottom Lorenz and
imprinting
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Social Development Attachment

• Attachment Differences
• Mary Ainsworths Strange Situation
• Secure attachment Explores freely while the
  mother is present, will engage with strangers,
  will be visibly upset when the mother departs,
  and happy to see the mother return.
• Anxious-ambivalent insecure attachment Anxious
  of exploration and of strangers, even when mother
  is present. When mother departs, the child is
  extremely distressed. The child will be
  ambivalent when she returns, seeking to remain
  close to the mother but resentful, and also
  resistant when the mother initiates attention.
• Anxious-avoidant insecure attachment Avoids or
  ignores mother - showing little emotion when the
  mother departs or returns. Will not explore much
  regardless of who is there. Strangers not treated
  much differently from mother. Not much emotional
  range displayed.
• Eriksons Basic Trust
• Deprivation of Attachment
• Impact of denying infant monkeys physical comfort
  from their mother
• Cases of Genie and Victor
• Daycare?

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Self Concept and Parenting Styles

• Self Concept understanding of who we are
• If infants can achieve attachment, children must
  achieve a positive self concept
• Develops gradually in first year (Mirror Test)
• By 18 months, children know THEY are the image in
  the mirror, and that it is not another person
• Children with a positive self concept are more
  confident, assertive, optimistic, and sociable,
  but how is this achieved?
• Diana Baumrinds 4 Parenting Styles may help
  explain
• Authoritarian demanding not responsive
• Permissive not demanding but responsive
• Neglectful not demanding, not responsive
• Authoritative demanding and responsive
• Impact of parenting styles on children?
• Authoritative appears to be best, but
• Correlational NOT causational research!

Mirror Test
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Baumrinds Parenting Styles Comparison
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Relationships With Other Children

• Solitary play
• Children first play by themselves
• Parallel play
• As they get older, children play side-by-side
  with other children, but not interacting
• Cooperative play
• By about 3 or 3½, children begin playing with
  others
• Peer group
• A network of same-aged friends and acquaintances
  who give one another emotional and social support
• When children start school, peers begin to have
  greater influence

Parallel Play vs. Cooperative Play
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Sex-Role Development

• Gender identity
• Knowledge of being a boy or girl
• Occurs by age 3
• Gender constancy
• Child realizes that gender cannot change
• Occurs by age 4 or 5
• Gender-role awareness
• Knowing appropriate behavior for each gender
• Gender stereotypes
• Beliefs about presumed characteristics of each
  gender
• Sex-typed behavior
• Socially defined ways to behave different for
  boys and girls
• May be at least partly biological in origin

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Adolescence
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The Nature of Adolescence

• A Carefree Time vs. G. Stanley Halls Storm
  and Stress
• The American experience?
• Trends today?
• Cultural differences?

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Physical Changes

• Growth spurt
• Begins about age 10½ in girls and about 12½ in
  boys
• Sexual development
• Primary (reproductive) vs. Secondary
  (non-reproductive) sexual characteristics
• Puberty
• Onset of sexual maturation
• Menarche
• First menstrual period for girls
• Neurological changes frontal lobe maturation

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Physical Changes Sexual Activity

• Early and late developers Implications?
• Adolescent sexual activity
• Approximately ¾ of males and ½ of females between
  15 and 19 have had intercourse
• Average age for first intercourse is 16 for boys
  and 17 for girls
• Teenage pregnancy
• Rate of teen pregnancy has fallen in the last 50
  years
• Highest in U.S. of all industrialized nations

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Cognitive Changes

• David Elkinds Theories
• Imaginary audience delusion that everyone else
  is always focused on them
• Personal fable delusion that they are unique and
  very important
• Invulnerability
• Nothing can harm them
• Reckless behavior

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Kohlbergs Stages of Moral Development

• Preconventional (preadolescence)
• Good behavior is mostly to avoid punishment or
  seek reward
• Conventional (adolescence)
• Behavior is about pleasing others and, in later
  adolescence, becoming a good citizen
• Postconventional (adulthood...maybe)
• Emphasis is on abstract principles such as
  justice, equality, and liberty

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Kohlbergs Stages of Moral Development

• The Heinz Dilemma
• A woman was near death from a special kind of
  cancer. There was one drug that the doctors
  thought might save her. The drug was expensive to
  make, but the druggist was charging ten times
  what the drug cost him to produce. The sick
  woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew
  to borrow the money, but he could only get
  together about 1,000 which is half of what it
  cost. He told the druggist that his wife was
  dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him
  pay later. But the druggist said "No, I
  discovered the drug and I'm going to make money
  from it." So Heinz got desperate and broke into
  the man's store to steal the drug for his wife.
• Should Heinz have broken into the store to steal
  the drug for his wife? Why or why not?
• The response is not as important as the reasoning
  WHY in determining which stage of moral reasoning
  a person is in

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Criticisms of Kohlbergs Theory

• Research shows that many people never progress
  past the conventional level
• Theory maintains that our rationale remains
  consistent does it?
• Theory does not take cultural differences into
  account
• Theory is considered by some to be sexist in that
  girls often scored lower on tests of morality

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Personality and Social Development

• Major task in adolescence is identity formation
• Forming an identity (James Marcia, 1980)
• Achievement
• Successfully find identity
• Foreclosure
• Settle for identity others wish for them
• Moratorium
• Explore various identities, but unable to commit
• Diffusion
• Unable to find themselves refusal to deal
  with the task escapist techniques
• Eriksons 8 Psychosocial Stages
• Identity vs. Role Confusion (teens to early 20s)
• Intimacy vs. Isolation (early 20s to early 40s)

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Personality and Social Development

• Relationships with peers
• Adolescents often form cliques, or groups with
  similar interests and strong mutual attachment
• Relationships with parents
• Adolescents test and question every rule and
  guideline from parents
• Can be a difficult time for parents AND children

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Some Issues of Adolescence

• Declines in self-esteem
• Related to appearance
• Satisfaction in appearance is related to higher
  self-esteem
• Depression and suicide
• Rate of suicide among adolescents has increased
  600 since 1950, but has leveled off since 90s
• Suicide often related to depression, drug abuse,
  disruptive behaviors, or child abuse
• Youth Violence
• Emerging Adulthood trends in lengthening this
  period

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Adulthood
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Love, Partnerships, and Parenting

• Forming partnerships
• First major event of adulthood is forming and
  maintaining close relationships
• Eriksons Intimacy vs. Isolation
• Parenthood
• Having children alters dynamics of relationships
• Marital satisfaction often declines after birth
  of child

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Marital Satisfaction
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Other Issues

• The World of Work
• Balancing career and family obligations is a
  challenge
• Many adults define who they are by what they do
• Cognitive Changes
• Fluid intelligence declines with old age
• Crystallized intelligence does NOT decline, and
  even can increase as learning continues
  throughout life
• Personality Changes
• Less self-centered, better coping skills
• Some men and women have a midlife crisis (or
  midlife transition)
• Empty Nest Myth

Many parents report feeling a sense of relief
when their children move out!
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Late Adulthood
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Physical Changes

• In late adulthood, physical deterioration is
  inevitable
• As early as the twenties, strength, reaction
  times, sensory abilities and cardiac capacity
  decline, though in late adulthood we may finally
  notice
• Menopause and the end of fertility

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Social Development
I cant wait to swill my whiskey from this vessel!
Im too cool for ceramics

• Independent and satisfying lifestyles Eriksons
  Generativity vs. Stagnation
• Retirement
• Most people will stop working and face challenges
  with that sudden change
• Redefining of self
• Marital satisfaction
• Sexual behavior
• Research shows that many older couples continue
  to be sexually active
• It is not until age 75 that half of men and most
  women report a complete loss of interest in sex

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Cognitive Changes
Checkmate, Sucka!

• Research has demonstrated that those who continue
  to exercise their mental abilities can delay
  mental decline
• Even PHYSICAL exercise seems to have a positive
  impact on cognitive maintenance
• However, Alzheimers disease afflicts
  approximately 10 of people over 65 and perhaps
  as many as 50 of those over 90

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Facing the End of Life

• Elizabeth Kubler-Rosss stages of grief/death
• Denial
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Depression
• Acceptance
• Giraffe Stages of Dying
• Eriksons Integrity vs. Despair