Lifespan Development: Chapter One

development is a co-construction of biology, culture, and the individual.

-brain shapes culture, but it is also shaped by culture and the experiences that individuals have or pursue. -in terms of individual factors, we go beyond what our genetic inheritance and environment have given us.

Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory:

-some psychologists agree with the behaviorist notion that development is learned and influenced strongly by environmental interactions. But unlike skinner, they see cognition as important in understanding development.

Erik son's Psychosocial Theory of Development:

-stressed that freud misjudged some important dimensions of human development -he believed we develop in psychosocial stages rather than in psychosexual stages as freud believed -he believed the primary motivation for behavior is social and reflects a desire to affiliate with other people.unlike freud he believed the motivation was sexual. -erikson believes developmental change occurs throughout the life span, whereas freud believed basic personality is developed in the first five years of life. -he emphasized the importance of all life experiences and their influence on development. Whether it's early or later experiences.

Development is Multidirectional:

-throughout life some dimensions or components of a dimension expand and others shrink.

Early Adulthood:

20's and 30's

Early Childhood:

3-5 years

Middle Adulthood:

40's and 50's

Middle and Late Childhood:

6-10/11 years

Age and Happiness:

A US study revealed that happiness increased with age. -however some studies prove that the lowest levels of life satisfaction are from ages 45-54

Cognitive Processes:

Changes in the individual's thought process, intelligence and language. -memorizing, putting together sentences all involve cognitive processes.

Nature and Nurture:

Extent to which development is influenced by nature and by nurture.

Social Cognitive Theory:

Holds that behavior, environment and cognition are the key factors in development.

Environment:

Increasing number of studies showing that positive outcomes can be achieved through intervention in the lives of children living in poverty.

Our focus in this course is on human development-

It's universal features, it's individual variations, it's nature.

Developmental Science is Multidisciplinary:

Psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, neuroscientists and medical researchers all share an interest in unlocking the mysteries of development through the life span.

Continuity and Discontinuity:

The degree to which development involves either gradual, cumulative change or distinct stages.

Development:

The pattern of movement or change that begins at conception and continues through the human life span. -all people follow the general course of their development, we all walk at around age one and as we get older we struggle with hearing and vision.

We learn to communicate with others and are continually molded by our?

We learn to communicate with others and are continually molded by our genetics and the influence of family, friends, and the greater world.

Development involves growth, maintenance and regulation of loss:

achieving mastery of life often involves conflicts and competition among three goals of human development: growth, maintenance and regulation of loss.

In this module, we look at the life span perspective, which runs from the moment of conception all the way through death. Children develop physically as their bodies grow and their motor skills are refined. The aging process continues through?

adolescence, adulthood, and the senior years.

The life-span perspective emphasizes developmental change throughout?

adulthood as well as during childhood. -recent increase in human life expectancy has contributed to the popularity of the life-span approach.

In Baltes' view, it is important to understand that development is constructed through?

biological, sociocultural and individual factors working together.

Infancy:

birth to 18-24 months

Piaget's Cognitive Developmental theory:

children go through four stages of cognitive development as they actively construct their understanding of the world. Two processes underlie this cognitive construction of the world: organization and adaptations. -to make sense of the world, we organize our experiences. -in addition to organizing our observations and experiences, we adapt in response to new environmental demands. -each stage of understanding the world is age related in page's opinion. According to him a child's cognition is qualitatively different in one stage compared with another.

cross cultural studies:

compare aspects of two or more cultures. -provides information about the degree to which development is similar, or universal, across cultures, or instead is culture-specific.

Prenatal Period:

conception to birth

Behavioral and social cognitive theories look at ?

conditioning and observational learning.

Evaluating ecological theory:

contributions include its systematic examination of micro and macro dimensions of environmental systems and its attention to connections between environmental systems. -bronfenbrenner's theory is an emphasis on a range of social contexts beyond the family, such as neighborhood, religious community, school, and workplace as influential in children's development. -has been criticized for giving inadequate attention to the influence of biological and cognitive factors.

Most development involves growth,but it also includes?

decline and dying -in exploring development, we examine the life span from the point of conception until the time when life ends.

Human development is a topic we all can relate to in a very personal way. Each of us starts out as a combination of two cells into one. We all grow and develop in our mother's womb, influenced by both physical and environmental factors. The process does not stop at birth. Rather, it kicks into high gear as we?

develop physically and mentally.

Two concepts that help provide a framework for describing and understanding an individual's development:

developmental processes and periods of development.

We can approach the human life span from a particular perspective or take an?

eclectic approach.

Erikson's theory of development:

eight stages of development unfold as we grow throughout life. -At each stage, a unique developmental task confronts us with a crisis that needs to be resolved. -the more successful the individual is at resolving these crises, the healthier they will develop throughout life. -stages are: integrity versus despair, generatively versus stagnation, intimacy versus isolation, identity versus identity confusion, industry versus inferiority, initiative versus guilt, autonomy versus shame and doubt and trust versus mistrust.

Cognitive Theories:

emphasize conscious thoughts within one's development.

All developments occurs within a context, or setting. Contexts include:

families, neighborhoods, schools, peer groups, work settings, churches, university laboratories, cities, countries, and so on.

Human development does not always go smoothly. Developmental issues can arise in any area as a result of?

genetics, environment, or a combination of those two factors.

Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory

holds that development reflects the influence of several environmental systems. -he added biological influences to his theory describing it as a bioecological theory. -identifies five environmental systems: microsystem, mesosystem, ecosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem.

The interplay of biological,cognitive and socioemotional processes produces the periods of the ?

human life span

Several theories dominate the field. For example, the psychoanalytic viewpoint takes the approach that?

inner conflicts show themselves in our outward behavior.

Ethological theories focus on?

instinct, while ecological theories consider the reciprocal relationships of people and the surrounding environment.

Stability and change:

involves the degree to which early traits and characteristics persist or change as a person matures.

The belief that development occurs throughout life is central to the?

life-span perspective on human development, but this perspective has other characteristics as well.

Development is lifelong:

no age period dominated development.

An eclectic theoretical orientation:

no single theory described in this chapter can explain entirely the rich complexity of life span development. but each has contributed to our understanding of development. Although theories can be helpful, relying on a single theory to explain development probably would be a mistake. the solution to this dilemma is to take an eclectic theoretical orientation

Conducting a valid study requires attention to factors like the?

overall design, method of data collection, bias minimization, ethics, and length of study. -For example, a study might cover a relatively short time in a certain phase of development, like infancy or adolescence, or follow participants for many years through different stages of life. -An example of a short-term study is the work done by University of Amsterdam researchers who compared youths' attention to television at various ages by using subjects between the ages of six months to five years old (Valkenburg & Vroone, 2004). -An example of a long-term study is one done by researchers at the University of Pittsburg Medical Center on young men who were followed from age 14 to 36 to examine potential health effects of smoking marijuana (Bechtold, Simpson, White, & Pardini, 2015).

Cognitive theories focus on the ways we?

perceive and mentally represent the world.

emerging adulthood:

period of transition from adolescence to adulthood. 18-25 -characteristics of this developmental period: identity exploration, instability, self-focused, feeling in-between and the age of possibilities.

Biological Processes:

produce changes in an individual's physical nature. -genes inherited from parents, development of brain, height and weight gain, hormonal changes from puberty are all examples of biological processes that affect development.

eclectic theoretical orientation:

rather than following a single theoretical approach, this approach selects from each theory whatever is considered its best features.

Piaget's four stages of cognitive development:

sensorimotor stage, pre operational stage, concrete operational stage, formal operational stage.

Normative Age-graded influences:

similar for individuals in a particular age group -puberty,menopause, beginning school and retiring.

Each theory has its?

strengths and weaknesses, which is why many professionals choose to draw from several different theories to create their own perspectives.

Ecological Theory:

stresses biological factors, emphasizes environmental factors.

Ethological Theory:

stresses that behavior is strongly influenced by biology is tied to evolution and is characterized by critical or sensitive periods. These are specific time frames during which the presence or absence of certain experiences has a long lasting influence on individuals. -konrad lorenz helped bring fame to this approach. he studied geese. studied imprinting. -john bowl by stressed that attachment to a caregiver over the first year of life has important consequences throughout the life span. If the attachment is positive and secure, the individual will develop positively. If the attachment is negative and insecure, life-span development will not be optimal

What are the three issues about the nature of development?

the roles played by nature and nurture, by stability and change and by continuity and discontinuity.

A developmental period refers to a?

time frame in a person's life that is characterized by certain features. -for the purposes of organization and understanding, we commonly describe development in terms of these periods.

Non normative life events:

unusual occurrences that have a major impact on an individuals life. -hurricans, death of parent during childhood, early pregnancy.

We gain information about human development through?

well-designed research.

While we already have a great deal of knowledge about human development, the field still has many questions that are?

yet to be answered. That is why it is vitally important to be familiar with what we do know and to have a desire to add to that knowledge pool through new research that adds more pieces to the human life span puzzle. -In this module, you will learn about major theories in human development. -In addition to historical theories, you will learn about good research design so you can evaluate current research in the field.

Evaluating Behavioral and Social Cognitive Theories:

Contributions of the behavioral and social cognitive theories include an emphasis on scientific research and environmental determinants of behavior. -these theories have been criticized for deemphasizing the role of cognition and giving inadequate attention attention to developmental changes.

Psychoanalytic theories:

Describe development as primarily unconscious and heavily colored by emotion. -emphasize that behavior is merely a surface characteristic and that a true understanding of development requires analyzing the symbolic meanings of behavior and the deep inner workings of the mind. -theorists also stress that early experiences with parents extensively shape development.

The traditional approach to the study of of development emphasizes extensive change from?

birth to adolescence, little or no change during adulthood, and decline in old age. But a great deal of change does occur in the five or six decades after adolescence.

Albert Bandura is the leading architect of social cognitive theory. And he emphasized that?

cognitive processes have important links with the environment and behavior. -his early research program focused heavily on observational learning (imitation or modeling) which is learning that occurs through observing what others do. -social cognitive theorists stress that people acquire a wide range of behaviors, thoughts and feelings through observing others behaviors and that these observations form an important part of life-span development. -bandura proposes that people cognitively represent the behavior of others and then sometimes adopt this behavior themselves. -banduras model of learning and development includes three elements: behavior, the person/cognition, and the environment.

Normative history-graded influences:

common to people of a particular generation because of historical circumstances. -baby boomers shared experiences like cuban missile crisis, assassination of JFK, and the beatles. -long term changes in the genetic and cultural makeup of a population are also part of normative historical change.

Vygotsky's Sociocultural cognitive theory:

-believes children actively construct their knowledge. but he gave social interaction and culture far more important roles in cognitive development than piaget. -his theory is a sociocultural cognitive theory that emphasizes how culture and social interaction guide cognitive development. -child's development inseparable from social and cultural activities. -argued that cognitive development involves learning to use the inventions of society, such as language, mathematical systems, and memory strategies. -he believed that children's social interaction with more skilled adults and peers is indispensable to their cognitive development. They learn to use tools that will help them adapt and be successful in their culture.

evaluating the ecological theory of development:

-contributions include its focus on the biological and evolutionary basis of development and its use of careful observations in naturalistic settings. -has been criticized for its over emphasis on biological foundations and lack of flexibility regarding the concepts of critical and sensitive periods.

Freud's Theory:

-convinced that people's problems were the result of experiences early in life. -individuals go through five stages of psychosexual development:oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital. -our adult personality is determined by the way we resolve conflicts between sources of pleasure at each stage and the demands of reality. -people think that freud placed to much emphasis on sexual instincts, and other psychologists place more emphasis on cultural experiences as determinants of an individuals development.

Evaluating Psychoanalytic theories of development:

-criticized for lack of scientific support, too much emphasis on sexual underpinnings and an image of people that is viewed as too negative.

Information processing theory:

-emphasizes that individuals manipulate information, monitor it, and strategize about it. Not stage like development. Develop a gradually increasing capacity for processing info, which allows them to acquire increasingly complex knowledge and skills. -siegler states that thinking is information processing. When people perceive, encode, represent, store and retrieve info, they are thinking. he believes an important aspect of development is learning good strategies for processing info.

Each of us develops?

-partly like ALL other individuals -partly like SOME other individuals -partly like NO other individuals -most of the time, our attention is directed to an individual's uniqueness.

Development has plasticity:

-plasticity means capacity for change. -posssible we become less able to change as we get older. -the search for plasticity and its constraints is a key element on the contemporary agenda for developmental research.

Contexts, like individual, change and they are changing beings in a changing world. As a result of these changes, contexts exert three types of influences:

1. Normative age-graded influences 2.Normative history-graded influences. 3. Non-normative or highly individualized life events. -each type of influence can have a biological or an environmental impact on development.

Adolescence:

10-12 to 18-21 years

Late Adulthood:

60s-70s to death

Skinner's Operant Conditioning:

According to B.F. Skinner through operant conditioning the consequences of a behavior produce changes in the probability of the behavior's occurrence. -a behavior followed by a rewarding stimulus is more likely to recur, whereas a behavior followed by a punishing stimulus is less likely to recur. -such rewards and punishments shape development. -skinner believed the key aspect of development is behavior not thoughts and feelings. He emphasized that development consist of the pattern of behavioral changes that are brought about by rewards and punishments. -Skinner for example believed that shy people learned to be shy as a result of experiences they had while growing up. And that modifications in an environment can help a shy person become more socially oriented.

Development is multidimensional:

at every age your body,mind,emotions and relationships change and affect each other. -development has biological,cognitive and socioemotional dimensions. -within each of these dimensions there are many components.

Behavioral and Social Cognitive Theories:

behaviorism essentially hods that we can study scientifically only what we can directly observe and measure. Grew the belief that development is observable behavior that we can learn through experience with the environment. -the behavioral and social cognitive theories emphasize continuity in development and argue that development does not occur in stage-like fashion. Let's explore two versions of behaviorism: Skinner's operant conditioning and bandar

From a life-span perspective, an overall age profile of an individual involves not just chronological age but also?

biological age, psychological age and social age.

imprinting needs to take place at a certain, very early time in life or it will not take place. this point in time is known as?

critical period -related concept is sensitive period.

Socioemotional Processes:

involve changes in the individual's relationships with other people, changes in emotions, and changes in personality. -infants smile in response to parent's touch or affection of an elderly couple all reflect the influence of socioemotional processes on development.

According to life-span development expert Paul Baltes, the life span perspective views development as?

lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic, multidisciplinary and contextual, and as a process that involves growth, maintenance, and regulation of loss.

Meanwhile, cognitive development encompasses the ways we think and perceive the world around us. It includes such areas as?

memory, language skills, and learning to apply problem-solving skills. -Social development concerns the way we interact with others, and emotional development focuses on our feelings.

Evaluating cognitive theories:

positive view of development and an emphasis on the active construction of understanding. -criticisms include skepticism about the pureness of piagets stages and insuffieicnet attention given to individual variations.

About 13% of children in the United States have developmental or intellectual disabilities like?

mental retardation, autism, or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2016). -With proper medical care, such issues can be caught and addressed early. -Children should be screened at 9 months, 18 months, and either 20 or 34 months of age for proper development (CDC, 2016).