Chapter 1Chapter 1Development Across the Development Across the

LifespanLifespan

Chapter 1Chapter 1Development Across the Development Across the

LifespanLifespan

An Introduction to An Introduction to Lifespan DevelopmentLifespan Development

What is lifespan development??

• Development: – The pattern of movement or change

that begins at conception and continues throughout the life-span

• Includes:– Growth– Decline and dying

Four Topical Areas Studied

1. Physical

2. Cognitive

3. Personality

4. Emotional

Topical Areas of Focus• Physical Development

– The body’s physical makeup• including the brain, nervous system,

muscles, and senses, and the need for food, drink, and sleep

– Malnutrition, reaction time

– “Does the amount of sleep a college student gets each night affect stress?”

– “How does dealing with a chronic illness affect a mothers behavior?”

Topical Areas of Focus• Cognitive Development

– Growth and change in intellectual capabilities influence a person’s behavior•Examples:

– Learning, memory, problem solving skills, and intelligence across the lifespan

– “Does excessive television viewing effect intelligence?

– “Can teenagers remember things that happened when they were toddlers?”

Topical Areas of Focus

• Personality Development– Involves the ways that the enduring

characteristics that differentiate one person from another change over the life span• Examples

– Interactions with others, social relationships, individual qualities

– “When does a sense of gender develop and does it change across the lifespan?”

Topical Areas of Focus• Social Development

– Involves the way in which an individual’s interactions and social relationships grow, change, and remain stable over the course of life

• Example– “Do people become more isolated in late

adulthood?”

The lifespan is usually divided into broad (albeit arbitrary) age ranges…

Individual Differences Exist• Different rates of maturation • Reach developmental milestones

at different points• Environmental factors, including

culture, play a role in determining when events occur– Age ranges are only averages, and

some people will be above or below

The context of development takes a broad perspective…

• The ecological approach (Bronfenbrenner)

– Different environmental levels influence individuals at the same time

– Example (Isolated event)• What do you do when your child is

sick? You are a full-time employee and so is your significant other.

• Which systems are influencing your decision at this point?

Four Major Levels: Bronfenbrenner

1) Microsystem: everyday immediate environment• home, caregiver/parent, friends,

teachers

2) Mesosystem: connects parts of the microsystem• parents linked to kids, students to

teachers, friends to friends, bosses to employees

(Bronfenbrenner’s ecological approach continued)

3) Exosystem:represents broad influences– local government, the

community, schools, places of worship, local media

4) Macrosystem: represents larger cultural influences– society in general, federal

government, religious systems, political thought

Advantages to taking an ecological approach…

• Influences on development are interconnected

• Influences are multidimensional

• Broad cultural factors affect development

Particular Periods vs. Lifespan Approach

*Early developmentalists focused on “infancy” & “adolescence.”

– Today the entire lifespan is seen as important for several reasons:• growth and change are continuous

throughout life• each age has reciprocal influences on

other ages

Nature vs. Nurture

Nature • refers to inherited traits, abilities, and

capacities– Includes maturation

• Nurture • refers to the environmental influences

that shape behavior

What do developmentalists believe today?• That behavior is the result of nature and

nurture combined

Theoretical Perspectives• Theories

– explanations and predictions that provide a framework for understanding relationships

5 major theoretical perspectives used in lifespan development:– psychodynamic – behavioral – cognitive – humanistic– evolutionary

Psychoanalytic: Freud• Neurologist—based theory on the study of

mentally ill patients • Emphasized:

• Unconscious• Early childhood experiences

• Personality– Id – Ego– Superego

Personality Structures– Id

• consists of instincts/drives• unconscious component• no contact with reality

– Ego• Deals with the demands of reality• Uses reasoning to make decisions (balance id/superego)• No morality

• Superego – Moral component of personality– Conscience

Psychoanalytic: Freud• Psychosexual Stages

– Each stage individuals focuses on a different erogenous zone• Oral• Anal• Phallic• Latency• Genital

– Resolution or Fixation

Psychoanalytic: Erikson

• Psychosocial: Crisis based– Each stage of life has a crisis that needs to

be resolved– Positive or negative resolution possible

Cognitive Theories: Piaget

• Organization involves the rearrangement of schemes– is used to make sense of our world – based on experience

• Adaptation involves the changing of cognitive schemes – our thinking to further understanding through assimilation and

accommodation

– Assimilation: • Incorporation of new information into existing knowledge.

•Accommodation: – Creation of new knowledge/modification of existing

knowledge– Adjustment to new information

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Cognitive Theory

• Emphasizes how culture and social interaction guide:– cognitive development– development analysis– the role of language– social relations

• Cognitive skills originate in social relations and require sociocultural interaction

• Zone of proximal development

Information Processing• Focuses on how the mind processes

information– Emphasizes that individuals manipulate

information, monitor it, and strategize about it– Store, retrieve, input, output, memory– Thinking and memory is a continuous process

– Mind is analogous to a computer• The physical brain is described as the computer’s

hardware, cognition as its software.

Classical Conditioning: Pavlov

• Stimulus pairing– Neutral stimulus– Unconditioned response– Conditioned stimulus– Conditioned response– Remember Pavlov

Operant Conditioning: Skinner

• Consequences produce changes in rate of responding– Reinforcement– Punishment

Social Cognitive Theory• Reciprocal relationship between

behavior, environment, and cognition

• Imitation and modeling

Eclectic Theoretical Orientation

• Does not follow any one theoretical approach

• Instead, selects and uses from each theory whatever is considered the best in it’s best features.

Types of Research: Descriptive

• Record and observation of behavior

• Observation– Systematic– Laboratory– Naturalistic

Types of Research: Descriptive

• Surveys/Interviews– Gathers information quickly – Find out about attitudes, experiences, beliefs, and feelings– Good interviews and surveys involve:

• specific and unambiguous questions • means for checking the authenticity of the responses

• One limitation is socially acceptable answers

• Case Studies– In-depth look at an individual to examine unique aspects

of a person’s life that cannot be duplicated. – Lack of generalizability

Types of Research: Correlational

• Describe the strength of the relationship between two (or more) variables

– Useful because the stronger the two events are correlated, the more effectively we can predict one from the other

– Correlation does not equal causation

Experimental research

• Allows researchers to determine the causes of behavior

• Procedures are carefully regulated (controlled by experimenter)

• “Cause” is the manipulated factor being studied

• “Effect” is the behavior that changes due to the manipulation.

Types of Research: Experimental

• Independent Variable (IV) – is the manipulated, influential, experimental factor.

• Dependent Variable (DV) – the factor that is measured in an experiment. It can

change as the independent variable is manipulated

• Experimental Group– group whose experience is manipulated.

• Control Group– is a group that is treated in every way like the

experimental group except for the manipulated factor

Cross-Sectional Approach

• Individuals of different ages are compared at one time – Benefits:

• Time-efficient approach – does not require time for the individuals to age

• Limitations:– Provides no information change or stability

Time Span Research: longitudinal approach

• The same individuals are studied over a period of time in – Provides information regarding stability and

change over time

• Limitations– Expensive and time-consuming. – Attrition (Drop out potential) – The subjects remaining could bias the results

• dissimilar from the ones that dropped out

Sequential Approach• Combination of the cross-sectional and

longitudinal approaches

• Individuals of different ages (cross-sectional) are tested over a period of time (longitudinal).

• This approach is complex, expensive, and time-consuming

• Helps eliminate issues with both other methods

Types of Correlational Studies

• Naturalistic Observation• Case Studies• Survey Research(Make sure you understand what

each of these are!)

Theoretical and Applied Research

a. THEORETICAL RESEARCH is research designed specifically to test some developmental explanation and expand scientific knowledge.

b. APPLIED RESEARCH is research meant to provide practical solutions to immediate problems.

Ethics and Research

Society for Research in Child Development and the American Psychological Association have developed ethical guidelines for researchers.

-Freedom from harm

-Informed consent

-Use of deception

-Maintenance of privacy

Don’t forget to keep up with your reading and

studying!

• Review & Rethink section of book• Key terms• Practice tests in study guide, on

disk that came with book, on companion website!