Chapter 1
Where Observation are made
-laboratory (paricipant must know they are being studied, unnatural, not represent diverse cultural background, and intimidated) -Naturalistic
Observation
-systemic -whom -when -where -how
Physiological Measures
... -FMRI -EEG
Biological Age
A person's age in terms of biological health: Vital capacities compared to others comparable age
Developmental period
A time frame in a person's life that is characterized by certain features
Identity vs. identity confusion
Adolescence 10 to 20 years old: Explores roles in a healthy manner and arrive at a positive path to follow in life. If they do not, identity confusion reigns
Case Study
An in-depth look at a single individual: -judgement of unknow reliability -rarely check if other professionals agree
John Bowlby
Attachment to a caregiver over the first years of life has important consequences -positive and secure: positive childhood and adulthood -Negative and insecure: Life span will not be optimal
Euvaltion of Ecological
Contribution: Systematic examination of macro and mirco dimensions of environmental sytems and attention to connections between environemt systems Critcism: inadequate attention to biological factors and cognitive factors
Ethncity
Cultural heritage, nationality, race, religion, and language Diversity exists within each ethnic group.
Intimacy vs. isolation
Early Adulthood (20s or 30s): Forming intimate relationship and healthy friendships or not
Ecological Theory
Emphasizes environmental factors.
Life-span perspective: development is co-construction of biology culture and the individual
Example: the brain shapes culture, but it also shaped by culture and the experiences that individuals have or pursue. Actively choose things in the environment to better our lives.
Continuity and Discontinuity
Focuses on the degree to which development involves either gradual, cumulative change (continuity-seed to graint oak) or distinct stages (discontinuity-not thinking abstractly to being able to).
Psychoanalytic theories
Freud and Erikson: Describes development as primarily unconscious and heavily colored by emotion. Behavior is merely a surface characteristic and the symbolic workings of the mind have to be analyzed to understand behavior. Early experiences with parents are emphasized.
Age and Happiness
Individual are happier as they age: Psychological well-being increased after the age of 50
Socioemotrional Processes
Involve changes in the individuals relationships with other people, changes in emotions, and changes in personality.
Life-span perspective: development involves growth maintenance, and regulation of loss
Life often involves conflicts and competition amount three goals of human development: a 75 year old might not want to improve his golf swing, but keep his ability to play golf at all.
Connections Across Periods of Development
Like biological, cognitive, and socioemotional processes are connected so are the periods to each other
Mircosystem
Mircosystem the innermost level of the environment, consists of activities and interaction patterns in the child's immediate surroundings (family, peers, school. neighborhood)
Evaluating the Developmental Issues
Most know it is not all nature or all nurture, not all stability or all change, and not all continuity or all discontinuity, but how much development is influenced by these factors
Robert Siegler
People perceive, encode, represent, store, and retrieve information are thinking. Good strategies are need to process information
Adolescence
Period from 10-12 to 18-21 years of age: Physical changes, independence, identity, logical, abstract, idealistic, and more time spent outside family
Early adulthood
Period from 20s to 30s: Personal and economic independence, career advancement, mate selecting, intimate, starting family, and rearing children
Survery and Interview
Positive -quick -questions clear and unbiase -in person, phone, or internet Negative -answer in socially acceptable ways
Lifespan perspective: development is multidisciplinary
Psychologists, sociologist, anthropologist, neuroscientists, and medical researchers all share an interest in unlocking the mysteries of development through the life span
How are theories modified
Reasearch on life-span development is designed to test hypotheses that (sometimes) derived from theories and are modified through the new data in the research
Vygotsky's sociocultural cognitive theory
Sociocultural cognitive theory: Children activiely construct their knowledge through social interactions and culture Learning to use the inventions of society, such as language , math system, or memory strategies. -computers or beads to count
Hypotheses
Specific assumptions and predictions that can be tested to determine their accuracy
Ethology
Stresses that behavior is strongly influenced by biology, is tied to evolution, and is characterized by critical or sensitive periods. There are speicifc times frams which the presense or absense of certain experiences has a long-lasting influence on individuals
Eclectic Theoretical Orientation (pg: 26)
Take from each approach whatever is considered the best feature
Standardized Test
Test with uniform procedures for administration and scoring. Many standardized tests allows a person's performance of other individual -assume a person behavior is consistent and stable
Chronological Age
The number of years that have elapsed since birth: Time
Piaget's Theory
Theory stating that children actively construct their understanding of the world and go through four stages of cognitive development: Two processes are organize and adaptation and four stages of understanding
Minnesota Family Investment Program
They moved people off the welfare roll into paying jobs which end up improving children school work, decrease their behavior problem
Erikson's Psychosocial Theory
We develop in psychosocial stages not psychosexual stages. Primary motivation for human behavior is social and desire to affiliate with others not sexual in nature. Development occurs throughout our lives not just the first five years
Lifespan perspective: development is multidimensional
Whatever your age, your body, your mind, your emotions, and your relationships are changing and affecting each other: Has biological, cognitive, and socioemotional dimensional like social intelligent, attention, or memory.
Stability-change Issue
Which involved the degree to which early traits and characterisitics persist through life or change. Stability-characterisitics are heredity and possibly early experiences in life. Change- later experience can produce change (plasticity)
Sensorimotor Stage
birth to 2 years: construct understanding of the world through senses with physical (motor) actions. Reflexes
Exosystem
consists of social settings that do not contain children but nevertheless affect children's experiences in immediate surroundings. -A child or husband experience at home is determined by a mother experience at work
Middle and Late Childhood
period from 6 - 10/ 11 years of age (elementary school years): Reading, writing, arithmetic, self control increases and achievement
Biological process
produce changes in an individual's physical nature. genes inherited from parents, the development of the brain, height and weight gains, changes in motor skills
Macrosystem
the outermost level of Bronfenbrenner's model. consists of cultural values, laws, customs, and resources.
Mesosystem
the second level of Bronfenbrenner's model, encompasses connections between microsystems -family experiences to school experiences -school experiences to religious experience -family experiences to peer experiences
Chronosystem
the temporal dimension of his model. Life changes can be imposed on the child. Alternatively, they can arise from within the child, since as children get older they select, modify, and create many of their own settings and experiences. - For example divorce
Theory
An interrelated, coherent set of ideas that helps to explain phenomena and facilitate predictions
Culture
Behavior patterns, beliefs, other products of a particular group that is passed on from generation to generation.
The three processes are
Bidirectional. They can each influence each other.
Social Age
Connectedness with others and the social roles individuals adopt.
Congitive Theories
Conscious thoughts: Jean Piaget's congitive developemental theory, Lev Vygotsky's sociocultural cognitive theory, and the information processing theory
Evualtion of Ethological Theory
Contribution: Focus on biological and evolutionary basis of development and careful observation in naturalisitic settings Criticisms: too much on biological foundation and criticial period concept might be too rigid
Evaluating Behavioral and social cognitive Theoris
Contributions: scientific research, environmental determinant of behavior Criticisms: Too little emphasis on cognition and inaqequate attention paid to developmental changes
Nature Vs. Nurture
Debate about whether development is primarily influenced by nature or nurture. Nature refers to an organism's biological inheritance (basic growth tendencies are genetically programmed), nurture to its environmental experiences (family, peers, medical care, drugs, accidents)
Erikson's theory
Includes eight stages of human development. Each stage consists of a unique development task that confronts individuals with a crisis that must be faced. Increased vulnerability and enchanced potential
Why are older people happier?
33 percent were happy at 88 years of age vs. 24 percent in the late teen or 20s. Because they were content with life, had better relationships with people who mattered to them, not pressured to achieve, have more leisure pursuits.
Early Childhood
Period after infancy until 5 or 6 years of age (preschool years): More self-sufficient, develop reading skills, and playing with friends.
Freud Theory: Oral Stage
Infant's pleasure centers on the mouth. Birth to 1 1/2 years.
Generativity vs. stagnation
Middle adulthood (40s or 50s): Having help the next generation or not
Industry vs. Inferiority
Middle and late Childhood (elementary school years 6 to puberty): To direct their energy toward mastering knowledge and intellectual skills. The negative outcome is inferiority-incompetent and unproductive.
Lifespan Perspective
Paul Baltes views development as lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic multidisciplinary, and contextual, and as a process that involves growth, maintenance and regulation of loss; through biological, sociocultural, and individual factors working together.
Cognitive process
Refer to changes in the individual's thought intelligence, and language.
Behaviorism (Continuity)
Study scientifically only what can be directly observed and measured: Development is obserable behaviors that can be learned through experience with the environment
Lifespan perspective: development is plastic
The capacity to change, we possibly we possess less capacity for change when we become old
Albert Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory
-holds that behavior, environment, and cognition are the key factors in development -Obeservational learning
The study of lifespan development provides information
-About who we are -How we came to be this way -Where our future will take us
Two fields that combine the three processes
-Developmental cognitive neuroscience which explores links between development, cognitive processes, and the brain Developmental social neuroscience, which examines connections between socioemotional processes, developnebtment, and the brain
Freud Theory: Anal Stage
1 1/2 to 3 years of age. Child's pleasure focuses on the anus
Scientific Method
1. Conceptualize a process or problem to be studied (theory and hypotheses) 2. Collect research information (data) 3. Analyze the data 4. Draw conclusion
Three Contextual Influences:
1. Normative Age-Graded Influences (puberty/menopause) 2. Normative History-Graded Influences (JFK murder) 3. Nonnormative Life Event (Baton Rouge Flood)
Cross cultural concerns for women
-education opportunities -violence -mental health
Formal Operational Stage
11 - adulthood: think abstract and logically, hypothetical
Four Ages
1: Childhood and adolescence 2. Prime adulthood (20-59) 3. App. 60 to 79 years of age (health and active) 4. App. 80 years and older (decline in heath)
Preoperational Stage
2 to 7 years: represent the world with words, images and drawings. can symbolically represent the world, but unable to perform operations
Freud Theory: Phallic Stage
3 to 6 years of age. Child's pleasure focuses on the genitals
Freud Theory: Latency Stage
6 years to puberty: Child represses sexual interest and develops social and intellectual skills.
Concrete Operational Stage
7 to 11 years: can perform operations (do mentally what previously did physically), logical reasoning
Luis Vargas
A clinical child psychologist who treats young latino youth for deliniquency and subtance abuse
Social Policy
A national government's course of action designed to promote: Represent values, economics, and politics. Paternal leave or universal health care value both parents involvement in a child life or health citizens.
Marian Wright Edelman
Advocate for children's rights that pointed out the USA was near the lowest in the treatment of children and that parenting and nurturing the next generation of children should be most important
Life-span perspective: development is contextual
All development occurs within a context setting. contexts include families, schools, peer groups, churches, cities neighborhoods, university laboratories, countries and so on.each of these settings is influenced by historical, econmical, and cultural factors.
Six stressors and poverty
America has 21.8 percent of children living below the poverty line and 30 percent with AA and Lantinos; they are also exposed to family turmoil, separation from parents, violence, crowding, excessive noise, and poor housing.
Difference between the Young-old and Oldest-old
Baltes and Smith says that the young-old plasticity and adaptability help maintain cognitive and physical fitness, but the oldest-old reach the limites
Gender
Characterisitics of people as males or females
Evaluating Psychoanalytic Theories
Contributions: Developmental framework, family relationships. and unconscious aspects of the mind Criticism: lack of Scientific support, too much emphasis on sexual underpinnings, and people too negative
Evaluating Cognitive Theories
Contributions: Positive view of development and active construction of understanding Criticisms: Skepticism about the pureness of Piaget stages and too little attention to individual Variations
Lifespan perspective: development is lifelong
Early adulthood is not the endpoint of development; rather, no age period dominates development
Toddler
Period from about 1 1/2 to 3 years. A transitional period
Conceptions of Age
Chronological Age is not very relevant to understanding to a person's psychological development
Cross-cultural studies
Compare two aspects of two or more cultures
Psychological Age
Individual's adaptive capacities compared with those of other individuals of the same chronological age.
Information - Processing Theory
Individuals manipulate information, monitor it, and strategize about it. (Robert Siegler) They develop gradually increasing capacity for processing information which leads to complex knowledge and skills (not stages, but gradually)
Integrity vs. despair
Late adulthood (60s onward): Reflects on the past and life well spent or not
Middle adulthood
Period from 40s to 50s/60s: Expanding personal and social involvement and responsibility, helping next generation become competent, mature individuals, and satisfaction of a career.
Late adulthood
Period from 60s/70s to death: Review, retirement, and adjustment to new social roles, lose of strength and health (longest period)
Infancy
Period from birth to 18 - 24 months: Psychological activities are beginning (sensorimotor coordination)
Prenatal period
Period from conception to birth (9months). From a single cell to an organism with a brain and behavioral capabilities
Initiative vs. Guilt
Preschool years. Facing challenges that requires responsible behavior, but guilt may arise if the child is irresponsible and too anxious.
Freud's Theory
Problems results from experiences early in life and our adult personality is determined by the we resolve conflict between sources of pleasure at each stage and the demands of reality
Freud Theory: Genital Stage
Puberty Onward: A time of sexual reawakening; source of sexual pleasure becomes someone outside the family
Socioeconomic status
Refers to a person's position within society based on occupational, educational, and economic characteristics. Certain inequalities.
Older Adults police issues
They receive the recommended treatment for heart disease 52 percent of the time and 31 percent for undernutrition or Alzheimer. There is more older people and they are more likely to need help since adults are not getting married or having children.
Skinner's Operant Conditioning
Through operant conditioning the consequences of a behavior produce changes in the probability of the behavior's occurrence. -Rewarding stimulus: recur -Punishing Stimulus: Less recur -key aspect of develop is behavior and that is a result of experiences
Lifespan perspective:development is multidirectional
Throughout life, some dimensions or components of a dimension expand and others shrink. For example one is language or friends/romantic relationships.
Mircogentic Method
To obtain detailed information about processing mechanism as they are occuring from moment to moment. Seeks to discover not just what children know but the cognitive processes involved in how they acquired the knowledge. -How you learned whole number arithmetic
Resilience
Triumph over poverty or other adversities. Ann Masten included that individual factors such as intellectual functioning influence resiliency while other research shows families (athoritative) and extra familial context of resilient share features. (They are close to a caring family member or outside member)
Development Issues
-Nature vs. Nurture Issues -Stability and change -Continuity and discontinuity
Modern Concerns
-Well Being -Parenting and education -sociocultural context and diversity (culture, gender, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity)
The Four Ways of measuring age
-psychological -Biological -social -Chronological
Urie Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory
Holds that development reflects the influence of several environmental systems. The theory identifies five environmental systems: 1. Mircosystem 2. Mesosystem 3. Exosystem 4. Macrosystem 5. Chronosystem
Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
Late infancy and toddlerhood (1 to 3) : Discover a sense of independence or autonomy. That they have will, but if punished too harashly will develop a sense of shame.
Trust Vs. Mistrust
The development of trust during infancy set the stage for a lifelong expectation that the world will be a good and pleasant place to live
Konrad Lorenz (imprinting)
The innate learning that involves attachment to the first moving object seen. However, it must take place in a critical or sensitive period.
Development
The pattern of movement or change that begins at conception and continues through the human life span: Growth and decline.
