Life Span Development

1. Life Span Development Chapter10

2. Methods in Developmental Psychology

3. 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

4. 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

5. Biographical or Retrospective Study • Participant’s 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

6. Prenatal Development • Period of time from conception to birth • Embryo • From about two weeks after conception to three months after conception • Fetus • Three months after conception to birth • Placenta • Connects fetus to mother • Brings oxygen and nutrients • Takes away wastes

7. Prenatal Development • Critical Period • Time when influences have major effect • Terotogens • Substances that can damage an embryo or fetus • 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

8. The Newborn Baby

9. Reflexes • Rooting • Baby turns its head toward something that brushes its cheek and gropes around with mouth • Sucking • Newborn’s 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

10. Temperament • Temperament refers to characteristic patterns of emotional reactions and emotional self-regulation • Thomas and Chess identified three basic types of babies • 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

11. Temperament • Kagan has added a fourth type • Shy Child • Timid and inhibited, fearful of anything new or strange • Temperament may predict later disposition

12. Perceptual Abilities • Vision • Clear for 8-10 inches • Good vision by 6 months • Depth Perception • Visual cliff research • Other Senses • Ears are functional prior to birth • Infants particularly tune in to human voices • Taste and smell are fully functional

13. Infancy and Childhood

14. Physical Development • 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

15. Motor Development • Developmental Norms • Ages by which an average child achieves various developmental milestones • Maturation • Automatic biological unfolding of development in an organism as a function of passage of time

16. Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development • Sensory-Motor Stage (birth to 2 years) • Object permanence • Preoperational Stage (2-7 years) • Egocentric • Concrete Operations (7-11 years) • Principles of conservation • Formal Operations (11-15 years) • Understand abstract ideas

17. Criticisms of Piaget's Theory • Many question 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

18. Kohlberg’s 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 • Emphasis is on abstract principles such as justice, equality, and liberty

19. Criticisms of Kohlberg’s Theory • Research shows that many people never progress past the conventional level • 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

20. Language Development • Babbling • Make the sounds of all languages • Holophrases • One word is used to mean a whole sentence

21. Theories of Language Development • Skinner theorized that language develops as parents reward children for language usage • Chomsky proposed the language acquisition device • A neural mechanism for acquiring language presumed to be “wired into” all humans • Bilingualism and the development of a second language

22. Social Development Parent-Child Relationships in Infancy

23. Development of Attachment • Imprinting • Tendency to follow the first moving thing seen • Occurs in many species of animals • Attachment • Humans form a bond with those who care for them in infancy • Based upon interaction with caregiver • Autonomy • Sense of independence • Socialization • Process by which children learn appropriate attitudes and behaviors

24. Social Development Parent-Child Relationships in Childhood

25. Baumrind’s Parenting Styles • Authoritarian • Tightly control children’s behavior and insist on obedience • Can produce children who have poor communication skills, who are moody, withdrawn, and distrustful • Permissive-indifferent • Parents have too little control and often are indifferent and neglectful • Children tend to become overly dependent and lack social skills and self-control

26. Baumrind’s Parenting Styles • Permissive-Indulgent • Parents are very attentive and supportive, but do not set limits on behavior • Children tend to be immature, disrespectful, impulsive, and out of control • Authoritative • Parents provide firm structure, but are not overly controlling • Parents listen to their children’s opinions and explain their decisions, bur are still clearly in charge • Children tend to become self-reliant and socially responsible

27. Relationships With Other Children • Solitaryplay • Children first play by themselves • Parallelplay • As they get older, children play side-by-side with other children, but not interacting • Cooperativeplay • By about 3 or 3½, children begin playing with others

28. Relationships With Other Children • 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 • Nonshared environment • Unique aspects of the environment that are experienced differently by siblings

29. 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

30. Sex-Role Development • 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

31. Adolescence

32. Physical Changes • Growth spurt • Begins about age 10½ in girls and about 12½ in boys • Sexual development • Puberty • Onset of sexual maturation • Menarche • First menstrual period for girls

33. Physical Changes • Early and late developers • 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

34. Cognitive Changes • Imaginary audience • Adolescent delusion that everyone else is always focused on them • Personal fable • Delusion that they are unique and very important • Invulnerability • Nothing can harm them

35. Personality and Social Development • Major occurrence in adolescence is identity formation • Forming an identity • Achievement • Successfully find identity • Foreclosure • Settle for identity others wish for them • Moratorium • Explore various identities • Diffusion • Unable to “find themselves”

36. 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

37. Some Problems 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 in ’90s • Suicide often related to depression, drug abuse, and disruptive behaviors

38. Adulthood

39. Love, Partnerships, and Parenting • Forming partnerships • First major event of adulthood is forming and maintaining close relationships • Parenthood • Having children alters dynamics of relationships • Marital satisfaction often declines after birth of child

40. Marital Satisfaction

41. Other Issues • The World of Work • Balancing career and family obligations is a challenge • Cognitive Changes • Thinking is more flexible and practical • Personality Changes • Less self-centered, better coping skills • Some men and women have a midlife crisis (or midlife transition) • The "Change of Life" • Menopause

42. Late Adulthood

43. Physical Changes • In late adulthood, physical deterioration is inevitable • A person’s response to these changes are important

44. Social Development • Independent and satisfying lifestyles • Retirement • Most people will stop working and face challenges with that sudden change • Sexual behavior • Research shows that many older couples continue to be sexually active

45. Cognitive Changes • Research has demonstrated that those who continue to “exercise” their mental abilities can delay mental decline • Alzheimer’s disease afflicts approximately 10% of people over 65 and perhaps as many as 50% of those over 85

46. Facing the End-of-Life • Kubler-Ross’sStages of Dying • Denial • Anger • Bargaining • Depression • Acceptance