Final Exam Review: Lifespan Development

Core Concepts in Developmental Psychology

• Intra-individual changes: Focuses on the changes that occur within a single person over the course of time.
• Inter-individual changes: Focuses on the fundamental differences that exist between different people.
• Nature and Nurture: This concept explores the relative influence of genetics (nature) versus environmental factors (nurture) on human development.

Patterns and Influences on Development

• Continuous vs. Discontinuous Development:
  • Continuous: Characterized by gradual, incremental change.
  • Discontinuous: Characterized by distinct, separate stages of development.
• Sensitive Periods: Specific windows of time during which an individual is more susceptible to environmental influences. However, changes or acquisitions can still occur in later development if the window is missed.
• Critical Periods: Specific windows where certain developmental changes must occur, or they cannot be reversed or achieved later.
  • Example: Infant speech perception and discrimination is a critical period.
• History-graded Influences: Developmental influences tied to a specific historical era or global event affecting a cohort. Examples include a pandemic or a war.
• Age-graded Influences: Developmental influences tied to reaching a specific age. Examples include puberty or retirement.
• Socio-cultural graded Influences: Influences originating from an individual's specific cultural and social context.
• Non-normative Influences: Unique, unexpected events that affect only specific individuals rather than a whole population. Example: Being involved in a car accident.

Research Methodologies for Measuring Change

• Longitudinal Studies:
  • Procedure: Researchers measure behavior or mental states of the same group of individuals repeatedly as they age.
  • Application: Ideal for studying intra-individual changes over time.
  • Drawbacks: Requires a massive time investment; subject to participant attrition (loss of subjects); participants may become "test-wise" via repeated testing.
• Cross-Sectional Studies:
  • Procedure: People of different ages are compared at the same point in time.
  • Variables: The independent variable is $\text{Age}$.
  • Application: A convenient way to study inter-individual changes.
  • Drawback: Observed differences may be caused by cohort effects (shared historical experiences) rather than actual age-related development.
• Sequential Studies:
  • Procedure: Researchers examine several age groups over multiple points in time, merging longitudinal and cross-sectional designs.
  • Application: Captures both age changes and age differences.
  • Advantage: The only research method capable of controlling for or examining cohort effects.

Cultural Influences on Development

• Definition of Culture: Referred to by Arnett & Jensen (2016, p.2) as "The total pattern of a group's customs, beliefs, art, and technology. In other words, a culture is a group's common way of life, passed on from one generation to the next."
• Dimensions of Culture (Hofstede): Focused on the degree to which "people are integrated into groups" and how closely people connect with extended families (Hofstede, p.10).
  • Individualistic Cultures: Emphasize self-reliance, self-direction, self-expression, and hedonism.
  • Collectivistic Cultures: Emphasize conformity, security, and interdependence.
• Horizontal vs. Vertical Dimensions:
  • Horizontal Individualism: An intolerance of inequality. Example: Sweden, where higher taxes are utilized to redistribute wealth.
  • Vertical Individualism: Competition for distinctness and a tolerance for inequality. Example: The United States.
  • Horizontal Collectivism: Viewing oneself as part of the collective and equal to others.
  • Vertical Collectivism: Characterized by traditional societies and clear hierarchy. Example: India.
• Cultural Attribution Research:
  • Komarraju & Cokley (2008): African Americans scored higher on horizontal individualism. European Americans scored higher on vertical individualism and horizontal collectivism.
  • Miller (1984): Found Americans attributes deviant behavior to disposition (internal traits) in $45\,\%$ of cases (average for all behavior was $40\,\%$). Children showed no cross-cultural differences in explanations.
  • Religion (Li et al., 2012): US Protestants show more dispositional bias than Catholics.
• Voluntary Settlement Hypothesis: Predicts cultural differences based on geographic history, such as the differences between old frontiers (Boston) and new frontiers (San Francisco).

Physical and Brain Development

• Genetic Transmission:
  • Multifactorial Transmission: Traits emerge from various combinations of multiple genetic and environmental factors.
  • Scarr & McCartney Theory: People are not passive; they actively shape their own environments based on their genetic makeup.
  • Epigenetics: Investigates how environment changes gene expression without altering the DNA sequence.
  • Early Stress: Early experiences (nurturing vs. abusive) affect neural systems underlying expression of behavioral and endocrine stress responses (Anacker, O'Donnell, & Meaney, 2019).
• Brain Milestones (Bethlehem et al., 2022):
  • Early Childhood: Gray matter volume peaks.
  • Late Childhood / Adolescence: Subcortical volume peaks.
  • Young Adulthood: White matter volume peaks.
• Experience and the Brain:
  • Activities like juggling practice increase gray matter.
  • Socioeconomic Status (SES) and education affect cortical size, language areas, the amygdala (emotions), the hippocampus (memory), and the activation of reward areas (Tottenham & Sheridan, 2010).

Adolescence and the Social Brain

• Brain Restructuring:
  • Synaptogenesis: Formation of new synapses.
  • Pruning: Elimination of unused synapses.
  • Prefrontal Cortex: area controlling reasoning and impulse control; still maturing.
  • Amygdala: Emotional center; highly active during this stage.
• The Dual Network Model:
  • Socioemotional Network: Becomes more forceful and oversensitive during puberty.
  • Cognitive-Control Network: Underdeveloped; lacks sufficient cross-talk among regions.
• Social Pain (Cascio et al., 2017): Using the Cyberball game to measure exclusion sensitivity, researchers found SES moderates the neural pathways to peer pressure and risky behaviors like driving.

Theories of Cognitive and Intellectual Development

• Piaget's Stage Theory: Core claim is that children progress through four distinct stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.
• Vygotsky's Theory: Core claim is that cognitive development is sociocultural, facilitated by the zone of proximal development and scaffolding from more knowledgeable others.
• Information Processing: Core claim is that the mind functions like a computer through attention, memory, and processing speed.
• Language and Thought:
  • Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis: Language influences how we perceive and think about the world (e.g., Boroditsky & Gaby (2010) on Pormpuraawan concepts of time).
  • Communication: High-context (meaning from context) vs. low-context (meaning from explicit words).
  • Mediated Cognition (Zlatev & Blomberg, 2015): "Higher cognitive processes of conscious awareness including mental imagery, episodic memories, or explicit anticipations to focus on intentional objects that are not perceptually present."

Intelligence and Academic Achievement

• Heritability of Intelligence:
  • Correlation for identical twins: $0.86$.
  • Correlation for fraternal twins: $0.60$.
  • $50\,\% - 70\,\%$ of intelligence variance is attributed to genetics.
  • Genetic influence increases with age, while shared environmental influence decreases.
• Family Influences (de Zeeuw et al., 2015):
  • The heritability of educational achievement is higher in the Netherlands than in the US.
  • In the US and UK, the environment plays a larger role due to income inequality, different school systems, and stronger environmental effects on outcomes.

Social-Emotional and Moral Development

• Self-Development:
  • Explicit social self-awareness emerges at $18\,\text{months}$ (Lenkei, 2021).
  • Self-concept components: Individual self, Relational self, and Collective self (Gaertner et al., 2012).
• Moral Reasoning Theories:
  • Kohlberg: Core claim is that moral reasoning follows three stages: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional.
  • Gilligan: Core claim is an "ethics of care" that contrasts with justice-oriented models.
  • Social Learning Theory: Moral behavior is learned through observation, modeling, and reinforcement.
  • Moral Foundations Theory: Proposes multiple innate moral foundations exist cross-culturally.
• Antisocial Punishment: Studied by Herrmann, Thöni, & Gächter (2008) across different societies.

Perspectives on Gender

• Biological: Gender differences stem from sex-related biology.
• Social Learning: Environment-based development through observation and reinforcement.
• Evolutionary: Focuses on parental investment and biological survival strategies.
• Social Constructionist: Explains gender as a product of environmental and social structures.
• Biosocial: Combines both biological and environmental influences.