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

Infancy

• Involves predictable developmental stages

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 & AgingMemory

– 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