Topic: Autobiographical Psychosocial History

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Life Span Development

Introduction

How many bald, six-foot-six, 250-pound volunteer firefighters in New Jersey wear droopy mustaches, aviator-style eyeglasses, and a key ring on the right side of the belt?

The answer is two: Gerald Levey and Mark Newman. They are twins who were separated at birth. Each twin did not even know the other existed until they were reunited—in a fire station—by a fellow firefighter.

The lives of the twins, although separate, took remarkably similar paths. Levey went to college, studying forestry; Newman planned to study forestry in college but instead took a job trimming trees. Both men are unmarried and find the same kind of woman attractive: “tall, slender, long hair.”

They share similar hobbies, enjoying hunting, fishing, going to the beach, and watching old John Wayne movies and professional wrestling. Both like Chinese food and drink the same brand of beer. The remarkable range of similarities we see in many pairs of identical twins raises one of the fundamental questions posed by developmental psychology, the study of the patterns of growth and change that occur throughout life. The question is this: How can we distinguish between the environmental causes of behavior (the influence of parents, siblings, family, friends, schooling, nutrition, and all the other experiences to which a child is exposed) and hereditary causes (those based on the genetic makeup of an individual that influence growth and development throughout life)? This question embodies the nature–nurture issue.

What Is Life-Span Development?

A pattern of change involving growth and decline, beginning at conception and lasting until death

Life phases: infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle adulthood, and late adulthood

Life-span development is linked with neuroscience and the following areas of psychology:

Cognitive
Abnormal
Social

The Historical Perspective

Childhood has been of interest for a long time

Adulthood became of interest in the late 1900s

Three philosophical views of child development:
* Original Sin (Middle Ages) - children are inherently evil and societal constraints and salvation are necessary for children to become mature adults
* Tabula rasa (17th Century/John Locke) - child is a blank tablet upon which experience writes
* Innate Goodness (18th Century/Jean Rousseau) - children are basically good and should be allowed to grow naturally, without constraints from parents or society

Childhood seen as special time of growth and change, influenced by child-rearing practices, childhood experiences, and environmental influences

Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters.

This is the well-known "tabula rasa" passage. It is probably the most famous statement of the empiricist position. By calling the mind a blank sheet of paper, Locke means to claim that the mind at birth contains no ideas. Experience must then "write" on the mind by furnishing it with ideas.

The Historical Perspective

Since 1900, the older adult population has increased dramatically

Greatest increases up to 2040 will be in the 85-and-over and 100-and-over age groups
A girl born today in the U.S. has a 1-in-3 chance of living to be 100 years old

Changes in adulthood are just as important as the changes in childhood
There are great changes in body, personality, and abilities during adulthood

Characteristics of the Life-Span Perspective

Development is lifelong

Development is multidirectional: some aspects of dimensions shrink and some expand

Development is plastic: it has the capacity for change

Development is multidisciplinary: it is of interest to
psychologists
sociologists
anthropologists
neuroscientists
medical researchers

Characteristics of the Life-Span Perspective

Development is contextual: a person acts on and responds to contexts such as:

Biological processes
Sociocultural and environmental experiences
Historical circumstances
Life events or unusual circumstances impacting on the specific individual

Development involves growth, maintenance, and regulation

Developmental Processes and Periods

Humans begin the process of development and change starting at the moment of conception and ending at the moment of death. This development includes a variety of biological, cognitive and socioemotional processes. These processes, although they can be evaluated separately, are intertwined with one another and directly relate to each other.

For example, the comfort an upset child receives from her mother's loving embrace, utilizes the biological component of touch, while providing the child with emotional reassurance (cognitive) that all will be okay, and lastly, helps the socioemotional process by creating a stronger emotional bond with the mother

Biological Processes

Biological processes are exhibited through the physical changes an individual undergoes through the course of their life. The biological changes include both normal and abnormal growth and development in the body.

Going through puberty, for example, is a normal biological process that occurs during the development of an individual.

Cognitive Processes

Cognitive processes are exhibited through the changes in an individual's language, thoughts and intelligence. Human naturally grow and develop in their cognitive functioning, learning to rationalize and communicate more effectively as they grow and develop. The ability to make decisions, as well as more accurate judgments, usually increases as an the individual ages.

For example, a baby develops their ability to speak around a year or so of age. This ability continues to develop over a span of many years.

Socioemotional Processes

Socioemotional processes are exhibited through the changes to an individual's relationships with others. As an individual grows and changes, the relationships they form with others change.

For example, the relationship a child has with their grandmother at age six is much different than the relationship they may have with the same grandmother at the age of twenty-five.

Developmental Changes Are a Result of Biological, Cognitive, and Socioemotional Processes

Socioemotional processes focus on

– Changes in individual relationships with others

– Emotional changes

– Personality changes

Developmental Focus

Periods of development focus on time frames:

Prenatal period
Infancy
Early childhood
Middle and late childhood
Adolescence
Early adulthood
Middle adulthood
Late adulthood

Prenatal Development

Period of time from conception to birth
Embryo
From about two weeks after conception to three months after conception
Fetus
Three months after conception to birth
Placenta
Connects fetus to mother
Brings oxygen and nutrients
Takes away wastes

The Earliest Development

When an egg becomes fertilized by the sperm, the resulting one-celled entity,

called a zygote, immediately begins to develop. The zygote starts out as a microscopic speck. Three days after fertilization, though, the zygote increases to

around 32 cells, and within a week it has grown to 100–150 cells. These first

two weeks are known as the germinal period.

Two weeks after conception, the developing individual enters the embryonic

period, which lasts from week 2 through week 8, and he or she is now called an embryo. As an embryo develops through an intricate, preprogrammed process of cell division, it grows 10,000 times larger by 4 weeks of age, attaining a length of about one-fifth of an inch. At this point it has developed a rudimentary beating heart, a brain, an intestinal tract, and a number of other organs. Although all these organs are at a primitive stage of development, they are clearly recognizable. Moreover, by week 8, the embryo is about an inch long, and has discernible arms and legs and a face.

From week 8 and continuing until birth, the developing individual enters

the fetal period and is called a fetus. At the start of this period, it begins to be

responsive to touch; it bends its fingers when touched on the hand. At 16 to 18

weeks, its movements become strong enough for the mother to sense them. At

the same time, hair may begin to grow on the fetus’s head, and the facial features become similar to those the child will display at birth. The major organs

begin functioning, although the fetus could not be kept alive outside the mother.

In addition, a lifetime’s worth of brain neurons are produced—although it is

unclear whether the brain is capable of thinking at this early stage.

By week 24, a fetus has many of the characteristics it will display as a newborn.

In fact, when an infant is born prematurely at this age, it can open and close its eyes; suck; cry; look up, down, and around; and even grasp objects placed in its hands, although it is still unable to survive for long outside the mother.

The fetus continues to develop before birth. It begins to grow fatty deposits

under the skin, and it gains weight. The fetus reaches the age of viability,

the point at which it can survive if born prematurely, at about prenatal age

22 weeks, although through advances in medical technology this crucial age

is getting earlier. At prenatal age 28 weeks, the fetus weighs less than 3 pounds

and is about 16 inches long.

Before birth, a fetus passes through several sensitive periods (also referred to

as critical periods ). A sensitive period is the time when organisms are particular

susceptible to certain kinds of stimuli. For example, fetuses are especially

affected by their mothers’ use of drugs during certain sensitive periods before

birth. If they are exposed to a particular drug before or after the sensitive period,

it may have relatively little impact, but if exposure comes during a critical period,

the impact will be significant.

Prenatal Development

Critical period
Time when influences have major effect
Terotogens
Substances that can damage an embryo or fetus
Fetal alcohol syndrome
Occurs in children of women who consume large amounts of alcohol during pregnancy
Symptoms include facial deformities, heart defects, stunted growth, and cognitive impairments

The Newborn Baby

His head was molded into a long melon shape and came to a point at the back . . . He was covered with a thick greasy white material known as “vernix,” which made him slippery to hold, and also allowed him to slip easily through the birth canal. In addition to a shock of black hair on his head, his body was covered with dark, fine hair known as “lanugo.” His ears, his back, his shoulders, and even his cheeks were furry . . . His skin was wrinkled and quite loose, ready to scale in creased places such as his feet and hands . . . His ears were pressed to his head in unusual positions—one ear was matted firmly forward on his cheek. His nose was flattened and pushed to one side by them, squeeze as he came through the pelvis. (Brazelton, 1969, p. 3)

What kind of creature is this? Although the description hardly fits that of the adorable babies seen in advertisements for baby food, we are in fact talking about a normal, completely developed child just after the moment of birth. Called a neonate, a newborn arrives in the world in a form that hardly meets the standards of beauty against which we typically measure babies. Yet ask any parents: nothing is more beautiful or exciting than the first glimpse of their newborn.

The Extraordinary Newborn

Several factors cause a neonate’s strange appearance. The trip through the mother’s birth canal may have squeezed the incompletely formed bones of the skull together and squashed the nose into the head. The skin secretes vernix, a white, greasy covering, for protection before birth, and the baby may have lanugo, a soft fuzz, over the entire body for a similar purpose. The infant’s eyelids may be puffy with an accumulation of fluids because of the upside-down position during birth.

All these features change during the first two weeks of life as the neonate takes on a more familiar appearance. Even more impressive are the capabilities a neonate begins to display from the moment of birth—capabilities that grow at an astounding rate over the ensuing months.

Reflexes

Rooting
Baby turns its head toward something that brushes its cheek and gropes around with mouth
Sucking
Newborn’s tendency to suck on objects placed in the mouth
Swallowing
Enables newborn babies to swallow liquids without choking
Grasping
Close fist around anything placed in their hand
Stepping
Stepping motions made by an infant when held upright

Reflexes

A neonate is born with a number of reflexes —unlearned, involuntary responses that occurautomatically in the presence of certain stimuli.

Critical for survival, many of those reflexes unfold naturally as part of an infant’s ongoing maturation. The rooting reflex, for instance, causes neonates to turn their heads toward things that touch their cheeks—such as the mother’s nipple or a bottle. Similarly, a sucking reflex prompts infants to suck at things that touch their lips. Among other reflexes are a gag reflex (to clear the throat), the startle reflex (a series of movements in which an infant flings out the arms, fans the fingers, and arches the back in response to a sudden noise), and the

Babinski reflex (a baby’s toes fan out when the outer edge of the sole of the foot is stroked).

Infants lose these primitive reflexes after the first few months of life, replacing them with more complex and organized behaviors. Although at birth a neonate is capable of only jerky, limited voluntary movements, during the first year of life the ability to move independently grows enormously. The typical baby rolls over by the age of about 3 months, sits without support at about 6 months, stands alone at about 11 months, and walks at just over a year old. Not only does the ability to make large-scale movements improve during this time, fine-muscle movements become increasingly sophisticated.

Temperament

Temperament refers to characteristic patterns of emotional reactions and emotional self-regulation
Thomas and Chess identified three basic types of babies
Easy
Good-natured, easy to care for, adaptable
Difficult
Moody and intense, react to new situations and people negatively and strongly
Slow-to-warm-up
Inactive and slow to respond to new things, and when they do react, it is mild

Temperament

Kagan has added a fourth type
Shy child
Timid and inhibited, fearful of anything new or strange
Temperament may predict later disposition

Perceptual Abilities

Vision
Clear for 8-10 inches
Good vision by 6 months
Other senses
Ears are functional prior to birth
Infants particularly tune in to human voices
Taste and smell are fully functional

Development of the Senses: Taking in the World

When proud parents peer into the eyes of their neonate, is the child able to return their gaze? Although it was thought for some time that newborns can see only a hazy blur, most current findings indicate that the capabilities of neonates are far more impressive. Although their eyes have a limited capacity to focus on objects that are not within a seven- to eight-inch distance from the face, neonates can follow objects moving within their field of vision.

They also show the rudiments of depth perception, as they react by raising their hands when an object appears to be moving rapidly toward the face.

Neonates can also discriminate facial expressions—and even imitate them.

Newborns who see an adult with a happy, sad, or surprised facial expression can produce a good imitation of the adult’s expression. Even very young infants, then, can respond to the emotions and moods that their caregivers’ facial expressions reveal. This capability provides the foundation for social interaction skills in children.

In addition to vision, infants display other impressive sensory capabilities. Newborns can distinguish different sounds to the point of being able to recognize their own mothers’ voices at the age of 3 days. They can also make the subtle perceptual distinctions that underlie language abilities.

For example, at 2 days of age, infants can distinguish between their native tongue and foreign languages, and they can discriminate between such closely related sounds as ba and pa when they are 4 days old. By 6 months of age, they can discriminate virtually any difference in sound that is relevant to the production of language. Moreover, they can recognize different tastes and smells at a very early age. There even seems to be something of a built-in sweet tooth: neonates prefer liquids that have been sweetened with sugar over their unsweetened counterparts.

Infancy and Childhood

Throughout the remainder of childhood, moving from infancy into middle childhood and the start of adolescence around age 11 or 12, children develop physically, socially, and cognitively in extraordinary ways.

Physical Development

Children grow about 10 inches and gain about 15 pounds in first year
Growth occurs in spurts, as much as 1 inch overnight
Growth slows during second year

Physical Development

Children’s physical growth provides the most obvious sign of development. During the first year of life, children typically triple their birth weight, and their height increases by about half. This rapid growth slows down as the child gets older—think how gigantic adults would be if that rate of growth were constant—and from age 3 to the beginning of adolescence at around age 13, growth averages a gain of about 5 pounds and 3 inches a year.

The physical changes that occur as children develop are not just a matter of increasing growth; the relationship of the size of the various body parts to one another changes dramatically as children age. For example, the head of a fetus (and a newborn) is disproportionately large. However, the head soon becomes more proportional in size to the rest of the body as growth occurs mainly in the trunk and legs.

Motor Development

Developmental norms
Ages by which an average child achieves various developmental milestones
Maturation
Automatic biological unfolding of development in an organism as a function of passage of time

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Sensory-Motor Stage (birth to 2 years)
Object permanence
Preoperational Stage (2-7 years)
Egocentric
Concrete Operations (7-11 years)
Principles of conservation
Formal Operations (11-15 years)
Understand abstract ideas

PIAGET AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Introduction

Jean Piaget was born in Switzerland in 1896. After receiving his doctoral degree at age 22, he started work in psychology and education, especially on children intellectual development. According to him children are not less intelligent than adults, children think differently.

Piaget's stage theory describes the cognitive development of children. Cognitive development involves changes in cognitive process and abilities. In Piaget's view, early cognitive development involves processes based upon actions and later progresses into changes in mental operations.

Stages of Cognitive Development

Sensorimotor Stage (1-2 years)

Sensorimotor stage of cognitive development is from birth to almost 2 years, and is concerned on the infant trying to make sense of the world. In this stage of congnitive development an infant’s

knowledge of the world in limited to their sensory perceptions and motor activities. Children use the abilities and skills born with, like grasping, looking, listening and sucking to learn more about the environment.

Pre-Operational stage of cognitive Development (2-6 years)

The main characteristics of Pre-operational stage of cognitive development are:

• Language development is the most important in this period.

• Children can’t take the point of view of other people. They can’t manipulate the information etc.

• They pretend the things like use broom as a horse etc.

• Role playing also become evident like they play the role of mommy, daddy, doctor, dolls and many others.

• Children at this stage can’t give another person perspective.

• Less understanding of conservation develops at this stage.

Concrete Operation stage of Cognitive Development (7-11 years)

The chief characteristics of Concrete operation stage of cognitive development are:

• Logical thinking starts development but can’t understand abstract concepts.

• Children at this stage are good in deductive logic than inductive one.

• Important things which develops here is the understanding of reversibility. For example a child might be able to recognize that his / her good is Labrador, that Labrador is a dog and that a dog is an animal.

Formal Operational Stage of Cognitive Development (12 to Adulthood)

The chief characteristics of formal operational stage of cognitive development are:

• Abstract thinking and concepts ability start development.

• Skills like logical thoughts, systematic planning emerge during this stage.

• Deductive logic starts progress, which enable a child to understand sciences and mathematics subjects.

• Here the children relying on previous experiences, they begin to consider possible outcomes of the actions.

• Problems – solving Here they use the ability to solve the problems systematically through logical and methodical way.

We will conclude our discussion on stages of cognitive development by Piaget words. “The principle of education in the school should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.”

Criticisms of Piaget's Theory

Many question assumption that there are distinct stages in cognitive development
Criticism of notion that infants do not understand world
Piaget may have underestimated influence of social interaction in cognitive development

Information Processing Approaches: Charting Children's Mental Processes

If cognitive development does not proceed as a series of stages as Piaget suggested, what does underlie the enormous growth in children’s cognitive abilities that even the most untutored eye can observe? To many developmental psychologists, changes in information processing, the way in which people take in, use, and store information, account for cognitive development.

According to this approach, quantitative changes occur in children’s ability to organize and manipulate information. From this perspective, children become increasingly adept at information processing, much as a computer program may become more sophisticated as a programmer modifies it on the basis of experience. Information-processing approaches consider the kinds of “mental programs” that children invoke when approaching problems.

Several significant changes occur in children’s information-processing capabilities.

For one thing, speed of processing increases with age, as some abilities become more automatic. The speed at which children can scan, recognize, and compare stimuli increases with age. As they grow older, children can pay attention to stimuli longer and discriminate between different stimuli more readily, and they are less easily distracted.

Memory also improves dramatically with age. Preschoolers can hold only two or three chunks of information in short-term memory, 5-year-olds can hold four, and 7-year-olds can hold five. (Adults are able to keep seven, plus or minus two, chunks in short-term memory.) The size of chunks also grows with age, as does the sophistication and organization of knowledge stored in memory. Still, memory capabilities are impressive at a very early age: even before they can speak, infants can remember for months events in which they actively participated.

Finally, improvement in information processing relates to advances in metacognition, an awareness and understanding of one’s own cognitive processes. Metacognition involves the planning, monitoring, and revising of cognitive strategies. Younger children, who lack an awareness of their own cognitive processes, often do not realize their incapabilities. Thus, when they misunderstand others, they may fail to recognize their own errors. It is only later, when metacognitive abilities become more sophisticated, that children are able to know when they don’t understand. Such increasing sophistication reflects a change in children’s theory of mind, their knowledge and beliefs about the way the mind operates.

Social Development

Parent-Child Relationships in Infancy

As anyone who has seen an infant smiling at the sight of his or her mother can guess, at the same time that infants grow physically and hone their perceptual abilities, they also develop socially. The nature of a child’s early social development provides the foundation for social relationships that will last a lifetime.

Attachment, the positive emotional bond that develops between a child and a particular individual, is the most important form of social development that occurs during infancy. Our understanding of attachment progressed when psychologist Harry Harlow, in a classic study, gave infant monkeys the choice of cuddling a wire “monkey” that provided milk or a soft, terry-cloth “monkey” that was warm but did not provide milk. Their choice was clear:

They spent most of their time clinging to the warm cloth “monkey,” although they made occasional forays to the wire monkey to nurse. Obviously, the cloth monkey provided greater comfort to the infants; milk alone was insufficient to create attachment.

Building on this pioneering work with nonhumans, developmental psychologists have suggested that human attachment grows through the responsiveness of infants’ caregivers to the signals the babies provide, such as crying, smiling, reaching, and clinging. The greater the responsiveness of the caregiver to the child’s signals, the more likely it is that the child will become securely attached. Full attachment eventually develops as a result of the complex series of interactions between caregiver and child. In the course of these interactions, the infant plays as critical and active a role as the caregiver in the formation of the bond. Infants who respond positively to a caregiver produce more positive behavior on the part of the caregiver, which in turn produces an even stronger degree of attachment in the child.

Development of Attachment

Imprinting
Tendency to follow the first moving thing seen
Occurs in many species of animals
Attachment
Humans form a bond with those who care for them in infancy
Based upon interaction with caregiver
Autonomy
Sense of independence
Socialization
Process by which children learn appropriate attitudes and behaviors

Assessing Attachment

Developmental psychologists have devised a quick and direct way to measure attachment. Developed by Mary Ainsworth, the Ainsworth strange situation consists of a sequence of events involving a child and (typically) his or her mother. Initially, the mother and baby enter an unfamiliar room, and the mother permits the baby to explore while she sits down. An adult stranger then enters the room, after which the mother leaves. The mother returns, and the stranger leaves. The mother once again leaves the baby alone, and the stranger returns. Finally, the stranger leaves, and the mother returns.

Babies’ reactions to the experimental situation vary drastically, depending, according to Ainsworth, on their degree of attachment to the mother. One-year-old children who are securely attached employ the mother as a kind of home base, exploring independently but returning to her occasionally. When she leaves, they exhibit distress, and they go to her when she returns. Avoidant children do not cry when the mother leaves, and they seem to avoid her when she returns, as if they were indifferent to her.

Ambivalent children display anxiety before they are separated and are upset when the mother leaves, but they may show ambivalent reactions to her return, such as seeking close contact but simultaneously hitting and kicking her. A fourth reaction is disorganized-disoriented; these children show inconsistent, often contradictory behavior.

The Father's Role

Although early developmental research focused largely on the mother-child relationship, more recent research has highlighted the father’s role in parenting, and with good reason: the number of fathers who are primary caregivers for their children has grown significantly, and fathers play an increasingly important role in their children’s lives. For example, in almost 13 percent of families with children, the father is the parent who stays at home to care for preschoolers (Day & Lamb, 2004; Parke, 2004; Halford, 2006).

When fathers interact with their children, their play often differs from that of mothers. Fathers engage in more physical, rough-and-tumble sorts of activities, whereas mothers play more verbal and traditional games, such as peekaboo. Despite such behavioral differences, the nature of attachment between fathers and children compared with that between mothers and children can be similar. In fact, children can form multiple attachments simultaneously.

Social Development

Parent-Child Relationships in Childhood

Baumrind’s Parenting Styles

Authoritarian
Tightly control children’s behavior and insist on obedience
Can produce children who have poor communication skills, who are moody, withdrawn, and distrustful
Indifferent
Parents have too little control and often are indifferent and neglectful
Children tend to become overly dependent and lack social skills and self-control

Parenting Styles and Social Development

Parents’ child-rearing practices are critical in shaping their children’s social competence, and—according to classic research by developmental psychologist Diana Baumrind—four main categories describe different parenting styles.

Rigid and punitive, authoritarian parents value unquestioning obedience from their children. They have strict standards and discourage expressions of disagreement.

Permissive parents give their children relaxed or inconsistent direction and, although warm, require little of them.

In contrast, authoritative parents are firm, setting limits for their children. As the children get older, these parents try to reason and explain things to them. They also set clear goals and encourage their children’s independence.

Finally, uninvolved parents show little interest in their children. Emotionally detached, they view parenting as nothing more than providing food, clothing, and shelter for children. At their most extreme, uninvolved parents are guilty of neglect, a form of child abuse.

Baumrind’s Parenting Styles

Permissive
Parents are very attentive and supportive, but do not set limits on behavior
Children tend to be immature, disrespectful, impulsive, and out of control
Authoritative
Parents provide firm structure, but are not overly controlling
Parents listen to their children’s opinions and explain their decisions, bur are still clearly in charge
Children tend to become self-reliant and socially responsible

Conclusion on Parenting Styles

As you might expect, the four kinds of child-rearing styles seem to produce very different kinds of behavior in children (with many exceptions, of course). Children of authoritarian parents tend to be unsociable, unfriendly, and relatively withdrawn. In contrast, permissive parents’ children show immaturity, moodiness, dependence, and low self-control. The children of authoritative parents fare best: with high social skills, they are likable, self-reliant, independent, and cooperative. Worst off are the children of uninvolved parents; they feel unloved and emotionally detached, and their physical and cognitive development is impeded. Children with low social skills face peer rejection that can have lasting results.

Before we congratulate authoritative parents and condemn authoritarian, permissive, and uninvolved ones, it is important to note that in many cases non-authoritative parents also produce perfectly well-adjusted children. Moreover, children are born with a particular t emperament — a basic, innate disposition. Some children are naturally easygoing and cheerful, whereas others are irritable and fussy, or pensive and quiet. The kind of temperament a baby is born with may in part bring about specific kinds of parental childrearing styles.

In sum, a child’s upbringing results from the child-rearing philosophy parents hold, the specific practices they use, and the nature of their own and their child’s personalities. As is the case with other aspects of development, then, behavior is a function of a complex interaction of environmental and genetic factors.

Relationships With Other Children

Solitary play
Children first play by themselves
Parallel play
As they get older, children play side-by-side with other children, but not interacting
Cooperative play
By about 3 or 3½, children begin playing with others

By the time they are 2 years old, children become less dependent on their parents and more self-reliant, increasingly preferring to play with friends. Initially, play is relatively independent: even though they may be sitting side by side, 2-year-olds pay more attention to toys than to one another when playing. Later, however, children actively interact, modifying one another’s behavior and later exchanging roles during play.

As children reach school age, their social interactions begin to follow set patterns, as well as becoming more frequent. They may engage in elaborate games involving teams and rigid rules. This play serves purposes other than mere enjoyment. It allows children to become increasingly competent in their social interactions with others. Through play they learn to take the perspective of other people and to infer others’ thoughts and feelings, even when those thoughts and feelings are not directly expressed.

Relationships With Other Children

Peer group
A network of same-aged friends and acquaintances who give one another emotional and social support
When children start school, peers begin to have greater influence
Nonshared environment
Unique aspects of the environment that are experienced differently by siblings

Adolescence

Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development emphasizes the search for identity during the adolescent years. As was noted earlier, psychosocial development encompasses the way people’s understanding of themselves, one another, and the world around them changes during the course of development (Erikson, 1963).

The fifth stage of Erikson’s theory, the identity-versus-role-confusion stage, encompasses adolescence. During this stage, a time of major testing, people try to determine what is unique about themselves. They attempt to discover who they are, what their strengths are, and what kinds of roles they are best suited to play for the rest of their lives—in short, their identity. A person confused about the most appropriate role to play in life may lack a stable identity, adopt an unacceptable role such as that of a social deviant, or have difficulty maintaining close personal relationships later in life.

During the identity-versus-role-confusion period, an adolescent feels pressure to identify what to do with his or her life. Because these pressures come at a time of major physical changes as well as important changes in what society expects of them, adolescents can find the period an especially difficult one. The identity-versus-role-confusion stage has another important characteristic: declining reliance on adults for information, with a shift toward using the peer group as a source of social judgments. The peer group becomes increasingly important, enabling adolescents to form close, adult-like relationships and helping them clarify their personal identities. According to Erikson, the identity versus- role-confusion stage marks a pivotal point in psychosocial development, paving the way for continued growth and the future development of personal relationships.

Physical Changes

Growth spurt
Begins about age 10½ in girls and about 12½ in boys
Sexual development
Puberty
Onset of sexual maturation
Menarche
First menstrual period for girls

Cognitive Changes

Imaginary audience
Adolescent delusion that everyone else is always focused on them
Personal fable
Delusion that they are unique and very important
Invulnerability
Nothing can harm them

Personality and Social Development

Major occurrence in adolescence is identity formation
Forming an identity
Achievement
Successfully find identity
Foreclosure
Settle for identity others wish for them
Moratorium
Explore various identities
Diffusion
Unable to “find themselves”

Personality and Social Development

Relationships with peers
Adolescents often form cliques, or groups with similar interests and strong mutual attachment
Relationships with parents
Adolescents test and question every rule and guideline from parents

Some Problems of Adolescence

Declines in self-esteem
Related to appearance
Satisfaction in appearance is related to higher self-esteem
Depression and suicide
Rate of suicide among adolescents has increased 600% since 1950, but has leveled off in ’90s
Suicide often related to depression, drug abuse, and disruptive behaviors

Stormy Adolescence: Myth or Reality?

Does puberty invariably foreshadow a stormy, rebellious period of adolescence? At one time, psychologists thought that most children entering adolescence were beginning a period fraught with stress and unhappiness.

However, research now shows that this characterization is largely a myth, that most young people pass through adolescence without appreciable turmoil in their lives, and that parents speak easily—and fairly often—with their children about a variety of topics.

Not that adolescence is completely calm! In most families with adolescents, the amount of arguing and bickering clearly rises. Most young teenagers, as part of their search for identity, experience tension between their attempts to become independent from their parents and their actual dependence on them. They may experiment with a range of behaviors, flirting with a variety of activities that their parents, and even society as a whole, find objectionable. Happily, though, for most families such tensions stabilize during middle adolescence—around age 15 or 16—and eventually decline around age 18.

Adulthood

Love, Partnerships, and Parenting

Forming partnerships
First major event of adulthood is forming and maintaining close relationships
Parenthood
Having children alters dynamics of relationships
Marital satisfaction often declines after birth of child

Other Issues

The World of Work
Balancing career and family obligations is a challenge
Cognitive Changes
Thinking is more flexible and practical
Personality Changes
Less self-centered, better coping skills
Some men and women have a midlife crisis (or midlife transition)
The "Change of Life"
Menopause

Late Adulthood

Physical Changes

In late adulthood, physical deterioration is inevitable
A person’s response to these changes are important

Social Development

Independent and satisfying lifestyles
Retirement
Most people will stop working and face challenges with that sudden change
Sexual behavior
Research shows that many older couples continue to be sexually active

Cognitive Changes

Research has demonstrated that those who continue to “exercise” their mental abilities can delay mental decline
Alzheimer’s disease afflicts approximately 10% of people over 65 and perhaps as many as 50% of those over 85

Facing the End of Life

Kubler-Ross’s stages of dying
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

Developmental Enduring Issues

Nature versus nurture

Continuity and discontinuity

Stability and change:

The nature versus nurture debate is one of the oldest issues in psychology. The debate centers on the relative contributions of genetic inheritance and environmental factors to human development. Some philosophers such as Plato and Descartes suggested that certain things are inborn, or that they simply occur naturally regardless of environmental influences. Other well-known thinkers such as John Locke believed in what is known as tabula rasa, which suggests that the mind begins as a blank slate. According to this notion, everything that we are and all of our knowledge is determined by our experience.

For example, when a person achieves tremendous academic success, did they do so because they are genetically predisposed to be successful or is it a result of an enriched environment? Today, the majority of experts believe that behavior and development are influenced by both nature and nurture.

Research Methods in Developmental Psychology

Ethics are very important when carrying out any type of psychological research. Before we can begin any research method it is vital that we stick to an ethical code of practice, as we will be dealing with people. Ethics refers to the correct rules of conduct necessary when carrying out research. We have a moral responsibility to protect research participants from harm.

The American Psychological Association (APA) has issued a code of ethics in psychology that provides guidelines for the conduct of research. Some of the more important ethical issues are as follows:

Informed Consent

Before the study begins the researcher must outline to the participants what the research is about, and then ask their consent (i.e. permission) to take part. However, it is not always possible to gain informed consent. This is acceptable as long as what happens to the participants is something that could easily happen to them in everyday life. For example, if the research involves observing people in a bus queue, those people may be observed by anyone when they are in the queue.

Participants must be given information relating to:

• Purpose of the research.

• Procedures involved in the research.

• All foreseeable risks and discomforts to the subject. These include not only physical injury but also possible psychological.

• Benefits of the research to society and possibly to the individual human subject.

• Length of time the subject is expected to participate.

• Person to contact for answers to questions or in the event of injury or emergency.

Cross-Sectional Study

Study people of different ages at the same point in time
Advantages
Inexpensive
Can be completed quickly
Low attrition
Disadvantages
Different age groups are not necessarily much alike
Differences may be due to cohort differences rather than age

Because of the demands of measuring behavioral change across different ages,

developmental researchers use several unique methods. The most frequently

used, cross-sectional research, compares people of different ages at the same

point in time. Cross-sectional studies provide information about differences

in development between different age groups.

Suppose, for instance, we were interested in the development of intellectual

ability in adulthood. To carry out a cross-sectional study, we might compare a

sample of 25-, 45-, and 65-year-olds who all take the same IQ test. We then can

determine whether average IQ test scores differ in each age group.

Cross-sectional research has limitations, however. For instance, we cannot

be sure that the differences in IQ scores we might find in our example are due to age differences alone. Instead, the scores may reflect differences in the educational attainment of the cohorts represented. A cohort is a group of people who grow up at similar times, in similar places, and in similar conditions. In the case of IQ differences, any age differences we find in a cross-sectional study may reflect educational differences among the cohorts studied: people in the older age group may belong to a cohort that was less likely to attend college than were the people in the younger groups.

Longitudinal Study

Study the same group of people over time
Advantages
Detailed information about subjects
Developmental changes can be studied in detail
Eliminates cohort differences
Disadvantages
Expensive and time consuming
Potential for high attrition
Differences over time may be due to assessment tools and not age

A longitudinal study, the second major research strategy used by developmental psychologists, provides one way around this problem. Longitudinal research traces the behavior of one or more participants as the participants age.

Longitudinal studies assess change in behavior over time, whereas cross sectional studies assess differences among groups of people. For instance, consider how we might investigate intellectual development during adulthood by using a longitudinal research strategy. First, we might give an IQ test to a group of 25-year-olds. We’d then come back to the same people 20 years later and retest them at age 45. Finally, we’d return to them once more when they were 65 years old and test them again.

By examining changes at several points in time, we can clearly see how

individuals develop. Unfortunately, longitudinal research requires an enormous

expenditure of time (as the researcher waits for the participants to get older), and participants who begin a study at an early age may drop out, move away, or even die as the research continues. Moreover, participants who take the same test at several points in time may become “test-wise” and perform better each time they take it, having become more familiar with the test.

Longitudinal vs.

Cross-Sectional

Biographical or Retrospective Study

Participant’s past is reconstructed through interviews and other research about their life
Advantages
Great detail about life of individual
In-depth study of one person
Disadvantages
Recall of individual may not be accurate
Can be expensive and time consuming

To make up for the limitations in both cross-sectional and longitudinal research, investigators have devised an alternative strategy. Known as sequential

research, it combines cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches by taking

a number of different age groups and examining them at several points in

time. For example, investigators might use a group of 3-, 5-, and 7-year-olds,

examining them every six months for a period of several years. This technique

allows a developmental psychologist to tease out the specific effects of age

changes from other possibly influential factors.