CH.1 - PSYC25

Development

Development

the pattern of movement of change that begins at conception and continues through the human life span.

Life Expectancy

the average number of years that a person born in a particular year can expect to live.

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.

Development Is Lifelong

a life-span perspective; early adulthood is not the endpoint of development; rather no age dominates development

Development Is Multidimensional

a life-span perspective; No matter what your age might be, your body, mind, emotions, and relationships are changing and affecting each other.

Development Is Multidirectional

a life-span perspective; Throughout life, some dimensions or components of a dimension expand and others shrink. Example: learning languages

Plasticity

capacity for change

Development is Plastic

lifespan perspective; it is changing

Development is Contextual

lifespan perspective; occurs within a context, or setting

Normative age-graded influences

similar for individuals in a particular age group

Ex: biological processes such as puberty and menopause

Normative history-graded influences

common to people of a particular generation because of historical circumstances

Nonnormative life events

unusual occurrences that have a major impact on the lives of individual people. These events do not happen to everyone, and when they do occur, they can influence people in different ways.

Culture

• encompasses the behavior patterns, beliefs, and all other products of a particular group of people that are passed on from generation to generation

• results form interaction of people over many years

Cross-cultural studies

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

ethnicity

A characteristic based on cultural heritage, nationality characteristics, race, religion, and language

Socioeconomic status (SES)

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

gender

The characteristics of people as males or females.

social policy

A national government’s course of action designed to promote the welfare of its citizens.

transgender

a broad term that refers to individuals who adopt a gender identity that differs from the one assigned to them at birth

Biological processes

• Produce changes in an individual’s physical nature.

• Genes inherited from parents, brain development, height and weight gains, changes in motor skills, nutrition, exercise, the hormonal changes of puberty, and cardiovascular decline are all biological processes that affect development.

Cognitive processes

refer to changes in the individual’s thought, intelligence, and language

Socioemotional Processes

involve changes in the individual’s relationships with other people, changes in emotions, and changes in personality

prenatal period

is the time from conception to birth.

developmental period

• refers to a time frame in a person’s life that is characterized by certain features

• It involves tremendous growth— from a single cell to an organism complete with brain and behavioral capabilities—and takes place in approximately a 9-month period.

Infancy

• is the developmental period from birth to 18 or 24 months.

• a time of extreme dependence upon adults.

• During this period, many psychological activities— language, symbolic thought, sensorimotor coordination, and social learning, for example— are just beginning

toddler

often used to describe a child from about 1 ½ to 3 years of age

Early childhood

• the developmental period from 3 through 5 years of age.

• This period is sometimes called the “preschool years.”

• During this time, young children learn to become more self-sufficient and to care for themselves, develop school readiness skills (following instructions, identifying letters), and spend many hours playing with peers

Middle and late childhood

• developmental period from about 6 to 10 or 11 years of age, approximately corresponding to the elementary school years.

• During this period, children master the fundamental skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and they are formally exposed to the larger world and its culture.

Adolescence

is the developmental period of transition from childhood to early adulthood, entered at approximately 10 to 12 years of age and ending at 18 to 21 years of age.

emerging adulthood

• the transition from adolescence to adulthood

• experimentation and exploration

Early adulthood

• developmental period that begins in the early twenties and lasts through the thirties.

• It is a time of establishing personal and economic independence, advancing in a career, and for many, selecting a mate, learning to live with that person in an intimate way, starting a family, and rearing children

Middle Adulthood

• developmental period from approximately 40 to about 60 years of age.

• It is a time of expanding personal and social involvement and responsibility; of assisting the next generation in becoming competent, mature individuals; and of reaching and maintaining satisfaction in a career

Late adulthood

begins during the sixties or seventies and lasts until death. It is a time of life review, retirement, and adjustment to new social roles and diminishing strength and health.

Normal Aging

psychological functioning often peaks in early middle age, remains relatively stable until the late fifties to early sixties, and then shows a modest decline through the early eighties.

Pathological Aging

show greater than average decline as they age through the adult years.

Successful Aging

whose positive physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development is maintained longer, declining later in old age than is the case for most people.

Alzheimer disease

a chronic disease that impairs individuals daily functioning in their early old stage that has mild cognitive impairment

Chronological age

the number of years that have elapsed since birth.

Biological age

• is a person’s age in terms of biological health.

• involves knowing the functional capacities of a person’s vital organs. One person’s vital capacities may be better or worse than those of other people of comparable age

Psychological age

an individual’s adaptive capacities compared with those of other individuals of the same chronological age

Social Age

• refers to connectedness with others and the social roles individuals adopt.

• Individuals who have better social relationships with others are happier and more likely to live longer than lonely individuals

Nature

refers to an organism’s biological inheritance

Nurture

refers to its environmental experiences.

epigenetic view

states that development reflects an ongoing, bidirectional interchange between genes and the environment.

stability-change issue

• involves the degree to which early traits and characteristics persists through life or change

• Debate about whether 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).

continuity-discontinuity issue

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

scientific method

essentially a four-step process: (1) conceptualize a process or problem to be studied, (2) collect research information (data), (3) analyze the data, and (4) draw conclusions

theory

an interrelated, coherent set of ideas that helps to explain phenomena and facilitate predictions.

hypotheses

specific assertions and predictions that can be tested.

Psychoanalytic theories

describe development as primarily unconscious (beyond awareness) and heavily colored by emotion.

Freud’s Theory

• problems were the result of experiences early in life

• if the need for pleasure at any stage is either undergratified or overgratified, an individual may become fixated, or locked in, at that stage of development.

Freudian Stage

Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory

• developmental change occurs throughout the life span.

• emphasized the importance of both early and later experiences.

Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental Theory

• states that children go through four stages of cognitive development as they actively construct their understanding of the world

• the child’s cognition is qualitatively different from one stage to another. W

Sensorimotor Stage

• first Piagetian stage (birth-2yrs)

• infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences (such as seeing and hearing) with physical, motoric actions—hence the term sensorimotor

Preoperational Stage

• 2-7 yrs of age

• The child begins to represent the world with words and images. These words and images reflect increased symbolic thinking and go beyond the connection of sensory information and physical action.

Concrete Operational Stage

• 7-11 years of age

• The child can now reason logically about concrete events and classify objects into different sets.

Formal Operational Stage

• 11- through adulthood

• The adolescent reasons in more abstract, idealistic, and logical ways.

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Cognitive Theory

• argued that children actively construct their knowledge

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

Information-processing theory

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

• individuals develop a gradually increasing capacity for processing information, which allows them to acquire increasingly complex knowledge and skills

• often uses the computer as an analogy to help explain the connection between cognition and the brain

Skinner’s Operant Conditioning

• through operant conditioning the consequences of a behavior produce changes in the probability of the behavior’s occurrence

• development consists of the pattern of behavioral changes that are brought about by rewards and punishments

Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory

• people cognitively represent the behavior of others and then sometimes adopt this behavior themselves.

social cognitive theory

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

Ethology

Stresses that behavior is strongly influenced by biology, is tied to evolution, and is characterized by critical or sensitive periods

Bowlby

He stressed that attachment to a caregiver over the first year of life has important consequences throughout the life span.

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory

holds that development reflects the influence of several environmental systems. The theory identifies five environmental systems: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem.

microsystem

• the setting in which the individual lives.

• These contexts include the person’s family, peers, school, and neighborhood. It is in the microsystem that the most direct interactions with social agents take place—with parents, peers, and teachers

mesosystem

• involves relations between microsystems or connections between contexts.

• Examples are the relation of family experiences to school experiences, school experiences to religious experiences, and family experiences to peer experiences

exosystem

• Consists of links between a social setting in which the individual does not have an active role and the individual’s immediate context.

• For example, a husband’s or child’s experiences at home may be influenced by a mother’s experiences at work

macrosystem

involves the culture in which individuals live.

chronosystem

consists of the patterning of environmental events and transitions over the life course, as well as sociohistorical circumstances

eclectic theoretical orientation

An orientation that does not follow any one theoretical approach but rather selects from each theory whatever is considered the best in it.

Observation

Survey and Interview

Standardized Test

Case Study

Physiological Measures

Methods for collecting data.

descriptive research

Studies designed to observe and record behavior

correlational research

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

correlation coefficient

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

experiment

a carefully regulated procedure in which one or more factors believed to influence the behavior being studied are manipulated while all other factors are held constant.

cross-sectional approach

is a research strategy that simultaneously compares individuals of different ages.

longitudinal approach

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

cohort

is a group of people who are born at a similar point in history and share similar experiences as a result, such as living through the Vietnam War or growing up in the same city around the same time

cohort effects

Characteristics determined by a person’s time of birth, era, or generation rather than the person’s actual age.

ethnic gloss

Using an ethnic label such as African American or Latino in a superficial way that portrays an ethnic group as being more homogeneous than it really is.

Gender Bias

a preconceived notion about the abilities of women and men that prevented individuals from pursuing their own interests and achieving their potential