Developing Through the Life Span: Ch. 5

Developmental psychology

Studies physical, cognitive and social development throughout the lifespan.

Cross sectional study

Uses range of people from different age ranges.

• Can lead to cohort effects

Longitudinal study

Follow one group of similarly aged people for a long time.

• When time/money permits

Questions studied by developmental psychologists.

1. Nature v. nurture - genes v. environment

2. Continuity v. stages - gradual cumulative growth or distinct stages

3. Stability v. change - what aspects of people are fairly stable, which change

Nature

Genetic inheritance 

Nurture

Our environment and experiences

Behavioral genetics

Power and limits of genetics v. environment.

Epigenetics

Environment and experiences shape our genetics.

Twin studies

Similarities in identical v. fraternal twins.

Continuity

Slow and continuous shaping process, experience and learning. 

Stages

Genetically predisposed series of steps/stages, biological maturation. 

Stage theorists

1. Kohlberg - moral

2. Piaget - cognitive 

3. Erikson - psychosocial

Stability and change

Allows adaptation, need a combination of both and both are used throughout the lifespan. 

• Temperament is fairly stable. 

• Social attitudes are not stable. 

End of history illusion

Look back and see changes but cannot look forward and predict changes.

Zygote

Conception - 2 weeks

Embryo

2 - 8 weeks

Fetus

9 weeks - birth

Teratogens

Agents that can damage developing babies

• ex: toxins or viruses

Brain cells are sculpted by hereditary and experience.

• Neural networks grow increasingly complex

• Synapses are formed, organized and pruned

• Thinking/memory and language are the last cortical areas to develop

Infantile amnesia

Little memory before the age of 4

• rapid neural growth disrupts memory

• hippocampus and frontal lobes are not fully developed

Jean Piaget

4 stage theory of cognitive development

• Children are active thinkers, struggling to make sense of their experiences

• Mind develops through series of universal, irreversible stages

• Adjusted through assimilation and accommodation. 

Piaget Sensorimotor Stage

• Birth to 2 years

• Take in world through senses and actions

• Assimilation: use existing schemas to interpret new experiences

• Accommodation: adapt existing schemas to accommodate new info 

• Key milestone: object permanence - awareness things continue to exist when not perceived (stranger anxiety)

Piaget Preoperational Stage

• 2-7 years of age

• Key milestone: pretend play - children learn language and can represent things with words and images. 

• Egocentrism: preschoolers cannot perceive things from another’s perspective. 

Piaget Concrete Operational Stage

• 7-11 years of age

• Children can think logically about concrete events

• Key milestone: Conservation - mathematical transformations.

Piaget Formal Operational Stage

• 12-Adulthood

• Key milestone: Abstract thinking - formal operational thinking, if… then…

• Today’s basic formal operational stage begins earlier than realized. 

Takeaways from Piaget

• Identified significant cognitive milestones

• Stimulated global interest in cognitive development. 

• Sequence of cognitive milestones basically as proposed but it is more continuous, and children are more competent that theorized.

Vygotsky and the Social Child

• Minds grow through interaction with social environment, “young apprentices”

• Words/language provide building blocks for thinking.

• Adults are like a scaffold for children’s higher level of thinking. 

• Children learn best when new skills are not too easy or too hard. 

Theory of Mind

Ability to understand our own and others mental state, develops between 3 and 5, children with ASD or deaf with hearing parents may have difficulty inferring others states of mind. 

When does stranger anxiety develop

8 months

Two types of attachment

Secure and insecure (anxious/avoidant)

Most children growing up in adversity or experiencing abuse are __.

Resilient

Parenting style: Authoritarian

Coercive with rules and obedience, children may have fewer social skills and lower self-esteem. 

Parenting style: Permissive

Unrestraining, few demands, few limits, little punishment, children may be more aggressive and immature. 

Parenting style: Neglectful

Uninvolved, careless, inattentive, don’t seek close relationship with children, children may have poor academic and social outcomes. 

Parenting style: Authoritative

Confrontive, demanding/responsive, set rules but allow for discussion and exceptions, children generally have high self-esteem, self-reliance, self-regulation and helpfulness. 

Kohlberg 3 basic levels of moral thinking.

1. Preconventional

2. Conventional

3. Postconventional

Haidt

Moral judgments are quick, automatic, emotional responses, reasoning is done only after to rationalize our decisions.

Kohlberg Preconventional

Self-interest only; obey rules to gain rewards or avoid punishment.

Kohlberg Conventional

Uphold laws and rules to gain social approval. 

Kohlberg Postconventional

Actions reflect belief in basic rights of self-defined ethical principles. 

Delay of gratification

Children who delay gratification are more successful, happier…

Infancy

Trust v. mistrust

Toddlerhood

Autonomy v. shame and doubt

Preschool

Initiative v. guilt

Elementary school

Competency v. inferiority

Adolescence

Identity v. role confusion

Young adulthood

Intimacy v. isolation

Middle adulthood

Generativity v. stagnation

Late adulthood

Integrity v. despair

Freudian psychosexual stages

1. Oral

2. Anal

3. Phallic

4. Latency

5. Genital

Adolescence - Teenage Brain

• Until puberty brain cells increase their connections. 

• During adolescence elective pruning removes unused neurons and connections. 

• Frontal lobe continues to develop but lags behind limbic system

Egocentrism

Imaginary audience: everyone looking at you.

Personal fable: that would never happen to me. 

Disorders with an age onset of adolescence

•  Anxiety disorders

• Mood disorders

• Substance Use disorders

• Eating disorders

• Schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders

Early adulthood

Muscular strength, reaction time, sensory keenness and cardiac output peak in the mid-twenties. 

Work can provide…

• A sense of identity

• Opportunities for accomplishment

• Self-definition