Chapter 1 Introductions 2021-1

Essentials of Life-Span Development

Author: John W. SantrockEdition: Seventh EditionFocus: Understanding development across the lifespan.

Chapter 1: Introductions

Chapter Outline

  • The Life-Span Perspective (slides 3-6)

  • The Nature of Development (slides 7-14)

  • Theories of Development (slides 15-32)

  • Research in Life-Span Development (slides 33-37)

The Lifespan Perspective

Why Study Life-Span Development?

  • To gain personal insight into various life stages (e.g., understanding the challenges faced in adolescence versus adulthood).

  • To aid in careers in medical fields, education, or clinical settings (e.g., a nurse using developmental milestones to assess patient health).

Living Longer

  • Advances in nutrition and healthcare have increased life expectancy (e.g., improved prenatal care leading to healthier births).

  • Note: COVID-19 has decreased life expectancy by about one year.

Influences on Development

  • Culture: A set of beliefs, traditions, and actions passed generationally (e.g., cultural practices during holidays).

  • Ethnicity: Based on race, religion, nationality, and cultural heritage (e.g., varying practices in family life across different ethnic groups).

  • Socio-Economic Status (SES): Combines parents' education, occupation, and income, affecting access to resources (e.g., children from higher SES backgrounds often have more educational opportunities).

Life Expectancy and Education

  • Statistics show life expectancy variance based on ethnicity and education (e.g., higher education levels generally correlate with longer life expectancy).

Nature of Development

  • Organized by life periods, from prenatal to end of life.

Types of Ages

  • Chronological Age: Years of age.

  • Biological Age: Health of the body (e.g., a 70-year-old with the health of a 60-year-old).

  • Psychological Age: Wellness and motivation (e.g., an active 80-year-old who participates in various activities).

  • Social Age: Relationships with others (e.g., a grandparent actively involved in their grandchildren's lives).

Aging Types

  • Normal Aging: Harmonious development across all age types (e.g., physical health and emotional stability).

  • Pathological Aging: Discrepancies in biological, psychological, or social age versus chronological age (e.g., dementia in an otherwise healthy elder).

  • Successful Aging: Slower decline across age types (e.g., maintaining physical fitness and mental activity into late life).

Areas of Human Development

  • Physical Development: Growth of body and brain (e.g., motor skills development in early childhood).

  • Cognitive Development: Mental growth (e.g., problem-solving skills enhancing during adolescence).

  • Social Development: Relationship growth (e.g., forming friendships during school years).

Normative vs. Non-Normative Changes

  • Normative Changes: Universal changes (e.g., puberty), occurring in a predictable order.

  • Non-normative Changes: Individual-specific (e.g., personal experiences like divorce that shape development uniquely).

Key Issues in Development

  • Nature vs. Nurture: Does success stem from genetics or upbringing? (e.g., talent in sports may be influenced by both innate ability and practice).

  • Continuity vs. Discontinuity: Development can be gradual or in leaps/stages (e.g., gradual change in language acquisition vs. sudden change during critical periods).

  • Change vs. Stability: Does development continue throughout life or cease at a certain point? (e.g., emotional regulation can improve with age).

Theories of Development

Types of Theories

  • Psychoanalytic Theories

  • Behavioral Theories

  • Cognitive Theories

  • Ethological/Ecological TheoryNote: Earlier theories lacked diversity.

Exploring Theories

  • Different theories emphasize varying degrees of nature (genetics) and nurture (environment).

Psychoanalytic Theory

  • Focus on personality parts, childhood importance, and unconscious experiences (e.g., childhood trauma affecting adult relationships).

Freud

  • Developed psychosexual stages impacting personality development (e.g., fixation at oral stage leading to dependency).

The Unconscious Mind

  • Conscious Mind: Recallable memories.

  • Unconscious Mind: Painful memories blocked from awareness (e.g., repressed memories from traumatic experiences).

Development Stages

  • Freud proposed five sexually influenced developmental stages (e.g., latency stage where sexual feelings are repressed).

Psychosocial Theory

  • Erikson focused on lifelong development with eight stages differing from Freud (e.g., Trust vs. Mistrust in infancy).

Stage Theories

  • Each stage tackles a primary social issue (e.g., Identity vs. Role Confusion during adolescence).

Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental Theory

  • Children undergo four distinctive stages of cognitive development (e.g., concrete operational stage enabling logical thought).

  • Children are active participants in their learning through exploration.

Vygotsky’s Socio-cultural Theory

  • Emphasized learning through interactions and social contexts (e.g., collaborative group projects enhancing learning).

  • Focus on social scaffolding to support development.

Information Processing Theory

  • Learning occurs through systematically processing information (e.g., using mnemonics to aid memory).

Operant Conditioning (Skinner)

  • Behavior influenced by reinforcement and punishment (e.g., getting a gold star for good behavior encourages repetition).

Social Cognitive Theory

  • Bandura highlighted learning through observation (e.g., children learning aggression through observing violent behavior in media, demonstrated in the Bobo doll study).

Ethological Theory

  • Studies behavior in natural habitats influenced by biology and evolution (e.g., attachment behaviors in children developed as a survival mechanism).

Ecological Systems Theory

  • Bronfenbrenner proposed that development is influenced by interrelated systems of relationships (e.g., family, school, and community each play roles in a child's development).

Summary of Theories

  • Psychoanalytic: Discontinuity with early experiences shaping personality.

  • Cognitive: Differences in continuity versus discontinuity between Piaget and Vygotsky.

  • Behavioral/Social Cognitive: Emphasis on environmental influences.

  • Ecological: Focus on environmental context.

Eclectic Theoretical Orientation

  • Utilizing multiple theories for a comprehensive understanding (e.g., blending cognitive and behavioral approaches).

Research Designs

Types of Research

  • Descriptive Research: Observes and records behaviors (e.g., noting how children play alone versus in groups).

  • Correlational Research: Examines relationships between variables (e.g., studying the correlation between screen time and attention span).

    • Correlation Coefficient: Ranges from -1.00 to +1.00.

  • Experiments: Manipulating factors under controlled conditions (e.g., testing new teaching methods across different classrooms).

Longitudinal Research

  • Examines the same group over time (e.g., following a cohort of children into adulthood to study development).

    • Advantage: Accurate data collection.

    • Disadvantage: Time-consuming.

Cross-Sectional Research

  • Studies different age groups at one time (e.g., comparing cognitive abilities of children, adolescents, and adults in a single study).

    • Advantage: Faster data collection.

    • Disadvantage: Comparisons may be confounded by individual differences.

Present Day Ethical Standards

  • Approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) before data collection.

Ethics in Human Development Research

Ethical Guidelines

  • Protection from harm.

  • Informed consent is critical (e.g., participants should understand the research process and any potential risks).

  • Confidentiality to safeguard data (e.g., storing data securely to prevent unauthorized access).

  • Deception must be justified, and debriefing is essential after the study (e.g., explaining the study's true nature after completion)