Chapter One: Life Span Perspective

What must happen at each developmental stage in Erikson's pyschosocial theory?

1) There is a crisis that must be resolved 2) There is a turning point marked by increased vulnerability and enhanced potential.

What are three sources of contextual influences?

1) normative age graded influences 2) normative history graded influences 3) nonnormative life events

What are the three types of influences according to Baltes?

1) normative age-graded influences 2)normative history graded influences 3) nonormative or highly individualized life events.

Baltes and his colleagues assert that the mastery of life often involves conflicts and competition among what three goals of Human development:

1)Growth 2) maintenance 3)regulation.

What is the life expectancy in the U.S?

78 years

What is todays maximum life span?

78 years of age

Social policy

A national governments course of action designed to promote the welfare of its citizens.

correlation coefficient

A number based on statistical analysis that is used to describe the degree of association between two variables

cross sectional approach

A research strategy in which individuals of different ages are compared at one time.

longitudinal approach

A research strategy in which the same individuals are studied over a period of time, usually several years or more.

Vygotsky's Theory

A sociocultural cognitive theory that emphasizes how culture and social interaction guide cognitive development.

Life-span perspective: development is contextual

All development occurs within a context or setting influenced by historical, economic, social, and cultural factors.

Life-span perspective: development is multidimensional

Body, mind, emotions, and relationships are changing and affecting each other

Biological processes

Changes in an individuals physical nature.

Socioemotional Process

Changes in an individuals relationships with other people, emotions, and personality.

Cognitive Processes

Changes in an individuals thought, intelligence, and language.

Ethnicity

Characteristic based on cultural heritage, nationality, characteristics, race, religion and language.

Cross-Cultural Studies

Comparison of one culture with one or more cultures. Provides information about the degree to which development is similar, or universal, across cultures and the degree to which it is culture specific.

Continuity-discontinuity issue

Debate about the extent to which development involves gradual, cumulative change (continuity) or distinct stages (discontinuous).

Stability-change issue

Debate about we become older renditions of our early experience (stability) or whether we develop into someone different from who we were at an earlier point in development (change).

Nature-Nurture issue

Debate about whether development is primarily influenced by nature or nuture. Nature refers to an organisms biological inheritance, nurture to its environmental experiences.

Life-span perspective: development is plastic

Development has the ability to change

Life-span perspective: development is co-construction of biology, culture, and the individual

Development path can be unique by choosing from the environment the things that optimize our lives.

Life-span perspective: development is multidirectional

Dimensions or components of a dimension expand and others shrink.

Cohort effects

Effects due to a persons time of birth or generation rather than the persons actual age.

Freudian Stages

Emphasized sexual motivation, his stages of development are known as pyschosexual stages. Believed if the need for pleasure at any stage is either undergratified or overgratified, an individual may become fixated at that stage of development.

Information-processing theory

Emphasizes that individuals manipulate information, monitor it, and strategize about it. Central to this theory are the processes of memory or thinking.

True or False: Life-Span development focuses mostly on the rapid growth and development that occurs during childhood.

False. Focus of life-span development is from conception to death.

Bronfenbrenners ecological theory

Focuses on five environmental systems: microsystem, mesosystme, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem.

What are some contemporary concerns in life span development?

Health and well being Parenting and education Sociocultural contexts and diversity Social policy

Erikson's Theory

Includes eight stages of human development. Each stage consists of a unique developmental task that confronts individuals with a crisis that must be resolved.

Normative age-graded influences

Influences that are similar for individuals in a particular age group. Example:first day of school

Who is Paul Baltes?

Life-span development expert. Believed development is constructed through biological, sociocultural, and individual factors working together.

Life-span perspective: development involves growth, maintenance, and regulation of loss

Master of life involves conflicts and competition among three goals of human development:growth, maintenance, and regulation.

Life-span perspective: development is lifelong

No age period dominates development.

Development

Pattern of change that begins at conception and continues through the life span. Involves Growth as well as decline and death from aging.

Life Span Perspective

Perspective development is lifelong, multidisciplinary, multidimensional, plastic, multidirectional and contextual. Involves growth maintenance and regulation. Constructed through biological, sociocultural, and individual factors working together.

Life-span perspective: development science is multidisciplinary

Psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, neuroscientists, and medical researchers

Paul Baltes

Stressed importance to understand that development is constructed through biological, sociocultural, and individual factors working together.

Culture

The behavior patterns, beliefs, and all other produts of a group that are passed on from generation to generation.

Gender

The characteristics of people as males or females.

Social-Cognitive theory

The view of psychologists who emphasize behavior, environment, and cognition as the key factors in development.

Psychoanalytic Theories

Theories that describe 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.

Piagets Theory

Theory stating that children actively construct their understanding of the world and go through four stages of cognitive development.

Non-normative life events

Unusual occurrences that have a major impact on an individuals life. Example: Death of a parent.

Normative history graded influence

influences that are common to people of a particular generation because of historical influences. Example: World War 2

Socioeconomic Status (SES)

refers to the grouping of people with similar occupational, educational and economic characteristics.

correlational research

research that attempts to determine the strength of the relationship between two or more events or characteristics.

ethology

stresses that behavior is strongly influenced by biology, is tied to evolution, and is characterized by critical or sensitve periods.

descriptive research

studies designed to observe and record behavior