Lifespan Development

Developmental Psychology

• Explores the way humans develop and change over time • Maturation – Biological based changes that follow an orderly sequence, each step setting the stage for the next step according to an age related timetable

Nature & Nurture

• Nature – Genetically programmed maturation • Nurture – Maturation through learning and experience • Interaction between nature and nurture – Tiger Woods

Critical Periods & Stages

• Critical periods – Periods in time that are critical to specific types of learning that then modify future development • Sensitive periods – Particularly important time frames for given forms of development • Stages – Relatively discrete steps through which everyone progresses in the same sequence • Key issue is whether development involves stages or is continuous in nature

Social Development

• Social development refers to changes throughout the lifespan in: – Interpersonal thought – Feeling – Behavior • Attachment – A desire for proximity to an attachment figure (parent) – Includes a sense of security from the person’s presence – Feelings of distress when person is absent

Imprinting

• Imprinting involves the tendency of young animals to follow another animal to which they were exposed during a sensitive period

Attachment Patterns

(Response patterns when a mother returns) • Secure – Welcomes mother’s return and seeks closeness • Avoidant – Ignores mother when she returns • Ambivalent – Infant angry and rejecting while simultaneously indicating a clear desire to be close to the mother • Disorganized – Contradictory behavior involving helpless efforts to elicit soothing responses from the mother – Behavior difficult to predict

Adult Attachment Patterns

• Parents tend to produce children with attachment patterns similar to their own • Approximately 60% of us appear to have a secure attachment style • Attachment patterns can change over time

Erikson’s Psychosocial Model

• Culturally Sensitive – Derived from research in numerous cultures • Integrates biology, psychological experience, and culture – Combines nature and nurture • Many aspects of the model have received empirical research support – cross-cultural, – longitudinal – sequential studies

Erikson’s Psychosocial Model

Erikson’s Developmental Crises

• Birth -18 months – Trust versus mistrust • Are my parents there for me when I need them?

• 1-2 years – Autonomy versus shame and doubt • Am I secure in my newfound independence • 3-6 years – Initiative versus guilt • Ability to generate and carry out plans

Erikson’s Developmental Crises

• 7-11 years – Industry versus inferiority • Sense of competence & feelings of inadequacy • Teenage years (adolescence) – Identify versus identity confusion • Sense of who we are and what we value • 20s-30s (young adulthood) – Intimacy versus isolation • Ability to establish enduring committed relationships

Erikson’s Developmental Crises

• 40s-60s ( midlife) – Generativity versus stagnation • Desire to pass something on to the next generation • Midlife crisis – Engineer to artist – Executive to teacher • 60s on – Integrity versus despair • Did I live a good life?

– Sense of satisfaction or sadness and regret

Adolescent Development

• Conflict Model – Suggests that we need to go through a period of identify crisis to separate ourselves from our parents – We need to establish our own personalities • Continuity Model – Suggests adolescence is not a turbulent period but rather a continuous process from childhood through adulthood

Early Adulthood & Middle Age

• Finding the right someone – Key developmental goal is establishing a life long relationship with another individual • Over 50% of all relationships end in separation or divorce • Midlife crisis – We begin to question the basic structure of our lives – Is that all there is?

– Need to have adequate economic resources to be able to plunge into such abstract questions

Old(er) age

• Advances in health care in advanced countries has extended the life span by almost 30 years • What was considered “old” has changed in recent years • Older people tend to have a more positive perception of life than younger people

Physical Development

• Prenatal (Gestation) period: – Germinal period • Conception- 2 weeks – Embryonic period • 3-8 weeks – Fetal period • 9 weeks-birth

Environmental Influences

• Teratogens – Environmental agents that harm the embryo or fetus • Drugs, radiation, tobacco, viruses • Alcohol – The most widespread teratogens • Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) – Numerous physical and mental abnormalities – Even moderate drinking can cause harm

• Involves predictable developmental stages

Infancy

Childhood and Adolescence

Puberty – The stage at which we become capable of reproduction

Adulthood and Aging

• Physical deterioration noticeable by the 30s • Slower metabolic rate • Greater percentage of body fat • Aging varies widely • Key is “use it or lose it” – Those who exercise are in far better shape than those who do not exercise

Menopause

• Menopause – The cessation of the menstrual cycle – Usually begins in the late 40s and 50s – Can last several years • Often involves: – Hot flashes, night sweats. aching joints • Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) – Can alleviate many of the negative symptoms

Midlife Changes in Men

• Loss of testosterone levels – Testosterone replacement therapy – Male enhancement drugs • Men can reproduce throughout their life span – Quality of sperm declines with age • Masturbation – Lifelong exercise for many women and men

Later Life

• Physical signs of aging become more visible – Gray hair, wrinkled skin, hearing loss • Reduced sensitivity to light and darkness – Hard time seeing at night • Energy levels decrease – Varies widely by individual

Cognitive Development

• Infancy – Short attention spans – Able to identify mother just after birth • Intermodal processing – Ability to form relationship between sights and sound

Piaget on Cognitive Development

Piaget suggested children develop knowledge by construction reality out of their own experience – We mix what we observe with our ideas about how the world works

Piaget

• Schemas – An organized, repeatedly exercised pattern of thought or behavior • Police officer in uniform • Assimilation – Interpreting actions or events in terms of one’s present schema • Police officer controls the scene • Accommodation – Modification of schemas to fit reality • This police officer doesn’t have control of this scene

Piaget’s Stages of Development

Piaget Key Terms

• Sensorimotor stage – Infants think with their eyes and hands • Object Permanence – Infants recognize that objects exist in time and space • Preoperational stage • Emergence of symbolic thought and thus imagine solutions to problems

Piaget Key Terms

• Concrete operational stage – Ability to manipulate representations of concrete objects in ways that are reversible • Conservation – Realize properties of an object or situation remain stable even though superficial properties change • Formal operational stage – Ability to manipulate abstract and concrete representations & able to reason about formal propositions

Cognition

• Processing speed – Decreases with age • Knowledge base – Increases with age • Automatization – Processing in an relatively effortless manner based on experience • Metacognition – Knowledge about how one’s mind works

Cognition & Aging

Memory – Working memory • Older people do well on simple short term storage tasks but have problems with complex problems – Long term memory • Problems with explicit memories or recent origin but do fine with explicit memories from earlier in live

Cognition & Aging

Everyday memory – Fluid intelligence • Intellectual capacities used in information processing – Decreases with age – Crystallized intelligence • Store of knowledge – Increases with age

Age & Senility

• Senility – Significant decrease in memory and the ability to think and reason • Dementia – Disorder marked by global disturbance of higher mental functions. The best known form of dementia is

Alzheimer’s

disease and memory loss

Language Development

• Best period to learn a language is birth to 3 years old • After age 12 learning a language appears to be processed using different neural circuits than those used by younger people

First Words

• Babbling – First recognized speech sounds – “dada” • Telegraphic Speech – Utterances composed of only the most essential words for meaning

Piaget on Moral Development

• Morality of Constraint – Moral rules are absolute – Focus on severity of immoral behavior – No consideration of intent behind an act • Morality of Cooperation – Moral rules can be altered to fit a situation – Those involved must agree to change rules

Kohlberg’s Model

• Preconventional – Avoid punishment – Obtain reward • Get a sticker from a dentist • Conventional – Focus on fitting in & avoiding disapproval • Clothing selections • Postconventional – Behavior grounded in abstract principles • The right thing to do

Prosocial Model of Morality

• We learn what is moral through a trial and error process of what others consider acceptable and what is not acceptable • Informational processing approaches to morality examine changes in the component processes in moral thinking

Morality and Emotion

• Psychodynamic Theories – Narcissistic beginnings • Young children want immediate gratification – Development of a conscience • Shows up between 2-5 years old • Internalization – The process by which children adapt the moral code of their parents and other important care givers

Empathy

• Empathy involves the ability to feel emotion towards someone who is in pain without having to personally experience the source of the pain. Empathy includes: – Cognitive component • Understand what a person is experiencing – Emotional component • Experience a similar feeling as the other person