Understanding Lifespan and Human Development Notes

Understanding Lifespan and Human Development

What is Development?

• Development in lifespan psychology refers to systematic changes and continuities in an individual from conception to death.
• It includes both changes and elements of continuity throughout life.
• Example: An introverted teenager is likely to become an introverted adult.
• Changes can be:
  • Specific: e.g., a toddler learning to walk.
  • General: e.g., an older adult gaining wisdom.
• Continuity can be:
  • Short-term
  • Long-term
• Development includes:
  • Growth: Physical changes from conception.
  • Biological aging: Physical declines that lead to death; underpinned by biological elements.

Domains of Development

• Physical:
  • Biological changes and genetics.
  • Overt changes: Physical growth, wrinkles.
  • Non-obvious changes: Decline in hearing.
• Cognitive:
  • Thinking, language ability, and memory.
  • Attributes assigned to individuals irrespective of their context.
  • Contextual elements: Feedback and prompts affect abilities like memory.
• Psychosocial:
  • Environment, interpersonal relationships, connections with others.
  • Includes connections with family, work colleagues, friends, and personality development.
  • Domains are interconnected, and changes in one domain can influence others.

Periods of the Lifespan

• Lifespan categorized into timeframes: prenatal period, infancy, early childhood, early adulthood, late adulthood, middle adulthood.
• Categorizations are influenced by culture, time, and environment.
• Categories are fuzzy and not specific.
• Late adulthood beginning at 65 is a changing concept as people remain active.

Influence of Culture

• Culture influences society's way of life, including customs, traditions, beliefs, values, and language.
• Individuals learn to behave based on their culture.
• Different cultures have different concepts of lifespan categories and transitions between categories.

Age Norms and Expectations

• Age norms are social norms that define rules for behavior based on age.
• Characteristics:
  • When something should be done by a specific age.
  • Backed by positive or negative sanctions.
  • Social rules for age-appropriate behavior.
• Age norms are shared within groups and are obligatory.
• Stereotypes are influenced by age norms and expectations.
• Schemas and stereotypes can be useful in some situations for cognitive processing, but usually have negative consequences.
• Ageism: Stereotyping and discrimination based on age can target any age group.
• Social clock: Timing expectations for employment, education, etc., fluctuate based on time and culture.

Sociohistoric View of Development

• Stages in development aren't consistent across cultures or time.
• In medieval times, childhood wasn't recognized as it is today.
• Adolescence wasn't recognized until the industrial revolution.
• Children were quickly integrated into adult roles; childhood became a protected phase later.

Nature vs. Nurture

• Acknowledged as a mixed contribution, but debates continue.
• Nature: Genetically inherent traits, abilities, emphasis on maturation, biological processes.
• Nurture: Environmental influences that affect individual development.
• Lifespan questions:
  • How much language acquisition is due to genetics vs. environment?
  • Is our personality genetic or evolved through interactions?
• Questions focus on the degree of contribution from each factor.

Bonfom Brenner's Bioecological Model

• Environment is an ever-changing system.
• Individuals are both creators and byproducts of their environment.
• Systems:
  • Microsystem: Immediate environment (family, friends, school).
  • Mesosystem: Connects the microsystem to the ecosystem; relationships between individuals.
  • Exosystem: Settings that indirectly influence the person and affect the child's development by association (mass media workplace, friends, neighbors).
  • Macrosystem: Ideologies, cultural beliefs, policies of society that provide the framework for the other systems.
  • Chronosystem: Time on two levels: individual's lifespan and the specific time period and events they experience (war, famine, cultural shifts).

Goals of Studying Development

• Description:
  • Understanding typical behavior and development across the lifespan.
  • Patterns of walking, talking, thinking, and changes over time.
• Explanation:
  • Observation of typical versus different developmental paths.
  • Appropriate responses and support systems.
  • Understanding patterns of human thought, feelings, behavior, and growth.
• Prediction:
  • Identifying different trajectories and future expectations.
• Understanding Ourselves:
  • Making sense of our own experiences.
• Optimization:
  • Advocating for the needs and rights of people of all ages.

Modern-Day Perspective of Lifespan

• A lifelong process.
• Multi-directional: growth and change.
• Involves both gains and losses, characterized by loofahl and plasticity.
• Influenced by historical and cultural context.
• Studied by multiple disciplines.

The Scientific Method

• Helps generate and test ideas.
• Observation, theory, and research generate a hypothesis.
• Hypothesis: A testable question that refers to previous studies, wider societal issues makes a prediction based on a theory using specific terminology, assertion to be tested rather than a specific question.
• Conduct specific research.
• The theory and question should be internally consistent, falsifiable, and supported by data.

Research Categories

• Quantitative: Objectively measurable data, numbers, and statistics.
• Qualitative: Non-numerical data, responses from individuals, statements, and words.
• Both methods are valuable; depends on the question.

Data Collection Methods

• Reporting (Interviews, questionnaires, surveys):
  • Advantages: Good for gathering information from many individuals on a variety of topics.
  • Limitations: Not good for collecting data from infants, or individuals without necessary the language skills required for the assessment tool, social desirability bias.
• Behavioral Observations:
  • Watching and observing people in their natural surroundings.
  • Understanding behavior in context; generalizations.
  • Limitations: Difficulties in infrequent behaviors.
• Physiological Measurements (EKG, EEG, skin conductivity):
  • Measuring biological responses.
  • Hard to fake.
  • Useful for nonverbal individuals.
  • Limitations: Not always clear what's being assessed.
• Case Studies:
  • Looking at specific individual under a specific context and then extrapolate a lot of information from that.
  • Limitations: Problems with generalizability.
• Experimental Method:
  • Manipulating variables to see the outcome to a particular variable.
  • For experiment: Needs to be randomized or quasi experimental.
  • True Needs manipulation control, true control where nothing happens of control of engaging with something that is standard.
  • Provides complex and rare aspects of development.
  • Limitations: Ethics.

Research Methods and Correlation

• Looks at how are concepts are related.
• Looks at the strength of the relationship with a range form +1 to -1 with extremes being more likely for change engaging and zero indicating little to no relationship.
• Cannot establish cause and effect; correlation is not causation.
• Limitations: directionality problem and the third variable problem.

Research Designs

• Cross-Sectional Designs:
  • Looks at one-time point and different categories.
  • Great for information at one time point but doesn't show things the influence of changes with age.
• Longitudinal Designs:
  • Follows one cohort across a time point.
  • Provides a lot of information.
  • Limitations: Doesn't show how age and context can influence and costly.
• Longitudinal Design with Multiple Cohorts:
  • Follows one cohortacross a timepoint.
  • Provides information of both age, cohort, and time effects.
  • Limitations: measurements become obsolete, get improved, get changed so the information that we gain are not necessary able to compare those certain measurements with individuals born in 1998 and the current cohort and costly.

Ethics

• Guided by three principles: benefits, respect, and justice.
• Benefits: Maximize potential benefits and minimize harm to participants.
• Respect: Respect autonomy and protect those who can't exercise their own judgment.
• Justice: Inclusion of diverse groups together with sensitivity to any special impact the research may have on them; should be sensitive to developmental needs, cultural issues, and values.