CHAPTER OUTLINE
I.
II.
EXPLORING HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Developmental psychology is concerned with the course and causes of developmental
changes over a person’s entire lifetime.
What does “genetic influence” mean?
A. Historical Perspective
1. British empiricist philosopher John Locke in the 1690s argued that childhood
experiences (nurture) permanently affect people. Empiricists saw the newborn as
a blank slate or tabula rasa on which experience writes.
2. French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 1760s argued the opposite, that
nature alone gives children all they need to grow and learn, without adult
guidance.
3. American psychologist Arnold Gesell in the early 1900s said that motor skills
develop in a fixed sequence of stages in all children due to maturation, natural
growth or change, which unfolds in a fixed sequence relatively independent of
the environment. The term development encompasses not only maturation but
also the behavioral and mental processes that are influenced by learning.
4. Behaviorist John B. Watson in the 1910s claimed that all development is due to
learning.
5. Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget saw nature and nurture as inseparable and
interactive in cognitive development.
B. Understanding Genetic Influence
1. Behavioral genetics is the study of how genes affect behavior. This research
demonstrated that nature and nurture jointly contribute to development in two
ways.
a) Nature and nurture operate together to make all people similar in some
respects.
Example: Motor skill milestones occur at similar times for most children
due to common genes for the nervous system’s motor control and common
basic care and nutrition patterns.
b) Nature and nurture also operate together to make each person unique.
Different inherited genes and environments underlie variations in
personality, intelligence, speech patterns, and so on.
2. Behavioral geneticists are concerned with the differences between individuals or
groups of individuals, not with characteristics of a single individual.
a) A finding that a certain trait is 50 percent heritable would mean that
approximately half of the differences between people on that trait could be
explained by genetic factors. No claims could be made about any particular
person.
b) Many traits are influenced by the interactions of a number of genes, as well
as by many environmental factors.
C. Genes and The Environment
The relative contributions of nature and nurture differ for specific aspects of
development, but their influences on all human characteristics are forever intertwined
and are mutually influential.
BEGINNINGS
Why should pregnant women stay away from tobacco and alcohol?
A. Prenatal Development
Prenatal development begins when a sperm fertilizes an egg and forms a brand-new
cell. Most human cells contain 46 chromosomes, each made up of thousands of
genes, which are made of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).
New cells are constantly being produced through the process of mitosis; the cell’s
chromosomes duplicate themselves so that each new cell contains copies of the 23
pairs of chromosomes in the original.
But for male sperm cells and female ova (egg cells), meiosis occurs when the
chromosome pairs are randomly split and rearranged, leaving each new sperm and egg
cell with unique arrangements of 23 single different chromosomes. Conception results
in a fertilized cell, the zygote, which carries the usual 23 pairs of chromosomes, but
half of each pair comes from the mother and half from the father. The zygote divides
first into copies of itself; then it divides and redivides into the billions of specialized
cells that form a complete new human being.
1. Stages of prenatal development.
a) The first two weeks after conception are called the germinal stage. By the
end of this stage the cells of the dividing zygote have formed an embryo.
b) The embryonic stage begins next, during which time the basic body plan
and organs are created.
c) The fetal stage begins after two months. The embryo becomes a fetus, and
its various organ systems grow and begin to function.
2. Prenatal risks
a) During prenatal development, a placenta forms and attaches itself to the
uterus through an umbilical cord. The placenta acts as a filter through
which the embryo or fetus can take in nutrients from the mother and send
away waste. The placenta is an imperfect filter, allowing many substances
to reach the embryo.
b) Teratogens are harmful substances that invade the womb and cause birth
defects. Teratogens are of concern in the embryonic stage because it is a
critical period, a time during which certain kinds of growth must occur if
development is to proceed normally.
c) Damage can occur if the baby’s mother takes certain drugs, is exposed to
certain toxins or stress, or has certain illnesses during pregnancy.
(1) Cocaine use can result in premature, underweight, tense, and fussy
babies who may suffer delayed physical growth and motor
development.
(2) Nearly half of babies born to women who abuse alcohol develop fetal
alcohol syndrome, a pattern of defects that includes mental
retardation and malformation of the face. Consumption of as little as a
glass or two of wine a day by the mother can affect infants’
intellectual functioning.
(3) Smokers’ babies may be born prematurely and underweight; they
often suffer from respiratory problems, irritability, and attention
problems; and they are at greater risk for nicotine addiction later in
life.
(4) Pregnant cocaine users may give birth to babies prematurely, and the
babies are more often of low birth weight, tense, and fussy. They may
suffer delayed physical growth and motor development, and
malformed kidneys, genitals, or other organs. They are also more
likely to develop cognitive, behavioral, and learning problems, though
these may be reversible if the environments are supportive.
(5)
B.
Less than 10 percent of all babies born in the United States will have
mental or physical problems resulting from harmful prenatal factors.
The Newborn
To study newborns’ abilities, researchers show stimuli and note where infants look
and for how long. Researchers also note changes in heart rates, sucking rates, brain
waves, movement, and skin conductance (a measure of perspiration that accompanies
emotion).
1.
Vision and Other Senses
a) Vision is very poor; newborns can see only large objects close up. Brain
areas that process visual information are not fully developed. Researchers
estimate that newborns’ vision is 20/300.
(1) Infants younger than 2 months focus on edges. Later they are able to
scan whole objects. Newborns enjoy looking at faces.
b) A few days after birth, newborns can hear soft voices, locate sounds, and
discriminate tones. They prefer rising tones spoken by women and
children, and high-pitched, exaggerated, expressive speech—baby talk.
(1) Hearing is not developed completely until later in childhood.
c) Newborns have smell and taste preferences. They prefer sweet tastes, and
breast-fed babies prefer the odor of their own mother to that of another
mother.
2. Reflexes and Motor Skills
a) Movements during the first few months are dominated by involuntary,
unlearned reactions, called reflexes.
b) Over twenty reflexes have been observed in newborns, including the
grasping, rooting (turn mouth toward a finger or nipple that touches the
cheek), and sucking (suck on anything that touches the mouth) reflexes.
c) An absence of reflexes in a newborn signals problems in brain
development, as does failure of reflexes to disappear after a few months.
3. Voluntarily controlled movement develops in time, partly from a genetic
unfolding of increased muscle strength and coordination, and also partly due to
trial-and-error experiences with moving about the world. Motor development
results from a combination of maturation and experience.
III. INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD: COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
How do babies think?
A. The Development of Knowledge: Piaget’s Theory
Piaget saw the ability to think as growing in a fixed sequence of stages. Children are
not miniature adults, with smaller quantity of adult cognitive skills; children’s thinking
is qualitatively different.
1. Building Blocks of Development
Schemas, the basic units of knowledge that are the basis of intellectual
development, are mental images or generalizations that form as people
experience the world. They organize past experiences and provide a framework
for understanding future experiences.
a) In assimilation, the individual fits a new experience into an existing
schema.
Example: A toddler may call a butterfly a bird the first time he sees one.
b) In accommodation, the individual modifies an existing schema to better fit
a new experience.
Example: After seeing more butterflies, a toddler may realize that they are
not the same as birds, though both have some of the same features. She
2.
3.
4.
may then broaden her “things that fly” schema to include a new category
called “butterflies.”
Sensorimotor Development
The sensorimotor period covers the first two years of life, with mental activity
limited to schemas about sensory and motor functions.
a) Sensorimotor infants cannot form schemas about objects and actions that
are not present—they can only think about objects in the “here and now,”
directly sensing or acting on them.
b) This period ends as a child begins to form mental representations—
thinking about objects in their absence. Knowing that objects exist even if
you cannot directly sense them is object permanence.
Example: If a toy rolls behind the curtains, a child without object
permanence can no longer think about the toy, as if the toy no longer exists.
A child with object permanence pursues the toy, looking behind the
curtains.
New Views of Infants’ Cognitive Development
Modern researchers have shown that infants know more, and sooner, than Piaget
hypothesized. Infants are not just sensing and moving—they are thinking, too.
Developmental psychologists generally agree that infants develop some mental
representations and a sense of object permanence earlier than Piaget suggested.
They disagree about whether the knowledge is programmed in infants, develops
quickly through interactions with the outside world, or is constructed through the
combination of old schemas and new ones.
Preoperational Development
The preoperational period (about ages two to seven) begins as children
understand, create, and use symbols (e.g., language) to represent absent things;
they can pretend, draw, and talk. During the second half of the preoperational
stage children begin to make intuitive guesses about the world, but they cannot
tell the difference between imagination and reality.
a)
B.
Preoperational thought is dominated by what a child sees and touches
Preoperational children are egocentric in that they assume that everyone
sees what they see.
b) Children lack conservation, knowing that certain properties of substances
(e.g., volume) stay the same even as appearances change. Children also do
not understand reversibility or complementarity. They focus on only one
dimension at a time.
5. Concrete and Formal Operational Thought
a) By the concrete operational period (usually age seven to adolescence),
children develop conservation and the ability to use simple logic and
mental operations, including counting, measuring, adding, subtracting,
ordering, and sorting. They apply logic only to concrete objects (e.g., trees,
books), but not to abstract concepts (e.g., liberty).
b) Piaget’s formal operational period of cognitive development, which
typically occurs in adolescence, marks the ability to think hypothetically
and to think logically and systematically about abstract ideas, symbols, and
propositions.
(1) People who have not gone to school are less likely to exhibit formal
operations. Even people with formal operations tend to use such
reasoning only in their own domains and not in others.
Modifying Piaget’s Theory
1.
C.
D.
E.
Developmental psychologists believe that cognitive abilities develop at different
ages in different areas, and in “pockets” rather than in large all-or-none steps or
stages. In addition to their general level of development, children’s reasoning
depends on:
a) how easy the task is,
b) how familiar they are with the objects involved,
c) how well they understand the language being used, and
d) what experiences they have had in similar situations.
Information Processing During Childhood
The information-processing approach examines how information is taken in, used,
and remembered. This approach focuses on gradual, quantitative changes in children’s
mental capacities.
1. As children get older, their information-processing skills gradually get better.
They have longer attention spans, their memory’s storage capacity improves, and
they get better at choosing problem-solving strategies that fit the task they are
facing.
2. Both nature (maturation) and nurture (experience) are important. Children do
better with familiar material. Children learn memorization strategies in school.
Linkages: Development and Memory
Few adults remember anything from before the age of three. This is called “infantile
amnesia.” Several explanations are offered for this phenomenon.
1. Children could lack adult-like memory encoding and storage capacity. Yet twoand three-year-old children can remember events from several months ago.
2. Infantile amnesia may occur because infants do not have a strong self-identity
and thus cannot organize memories around what happens to them. This would
not explain losing memory from ages two to three, when children do have selfidentity.
3. Memories may be there but may be accessible only implicitly or unconsciously.
But both implicit and explicit memories of early years are quite limited.
4. Early memories may be lost because children do not have the language skills to
talk about, and thus solidify, those memories. However, studies have shown that
children can have memories of events that could be recalled nonverbally.
5. Early memories could have been fused into generalized event representations,
such as “going to Grandma’s.” So, the capacity to retrieve specific memories
may not be possible.
Culture and Cognitive Development
1. Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky focused on the social world of people and
viewed cognitive abilities as the product of cultural history. A child’s mind
grows through interaction with other minds in the culture.
2. Researchers have studied how social routines (e.g., family dinners, religious
services, birthday parties) affect a child’s growing knowledge of how the world
works.
a) Quite early, children form scripts, mental representations of the sequences
in which routine activities of their culture should proceed.
Example: A child’s mental representation for mail may include the fact that
first someone writes a birthday card, then the card goes in a mailbox, then
the card is delivered to the family’s mailbox, then Mommy or Daddy gets
the card and hands it to the child, then the child opens the birthday card,
and so on.
3.
Cognitive abilities are also shaped by language. It is harder to understand
concepts if the culture’s language has few terms or abstract terms to describe
them.
F. Individual Variations in Cognitive Development
1. Although heredity is an important factor, experience (the environment) also
plays a role in cognitive development.
a) Cognitive development can be slowed by conditions of deprivation, such as
those resulting from abuse, neglect, poverty, and poor nutrition.
b) Parents can aid a child’s cognitive development by exposing him or her to a
variety of interesting materials and experiences, supportive conversation,
and loving interactions with family members or others, as well as by
encouraging the child to take on challenges actively.
c) Project Head Start and other programs for poor preschool children can
enhance children’s cognitive abilities. Music lessons and electronic games
can also promote children’s cognitive development.
IV. INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD: SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
How do infants become attached to their caregivers?
Mutual attraction begins immediately after birth between parents and infants. Infants are
sensitive to the people around them. Year-old children use their mothers’ emotional
expressions to guide their own behavior when they are uncertain. (Recall social referencing
from Chapter 8.)
A. Individual Temperament
1. Temperament refers to an infant’s style and frequency of expressing needs and
emotions; it is constitutional, biological, and genetically based. It is a prelude to
personality. Temperament can be affected by the prenatal environment. The
stress experienced by the mother after her baby’s birth also affects the baby’s
temperament.
a) Easy babies, the most common, are predictable, react to new situations
cheerfully, and seldom fuss.
b) Difficult babies are irregular and irritable.
c) Slow-to-warm-up babies react warily to new situations but slowly come to
enjoy them.
2. Early temperamental characteristics have lasting effects.
a) Temperament patterns persist later in life. But since nature interacts with
nurture, experiences can shift the individual’s development in one direction
or the other.
(1) The match between an infant’s temperament and parental
expectations or personal style affects the stability of a child’s
temperamental qualities.
(2) There is an adaptive interplay of innate and cultural factors in the
development of temperament operating in all cultures.
B. The Infant Grows Attached
As they interact with parents and other important figures, infants form deep,
affectionate, close, and enduring relationships—attachments.
1. Attachment theory was first developed by John Bowlby, a British
psychoanalyst, who drew attention to the importance of attachment after he
observed children who had been orphaned in World War II.
2. Motherless Monkeys—and Children
Harry Harlow’s experiments studied the nature and importance of attachments.
Newborn monkeys removed from their mothers formed “attachments” with
a soft, cloth-covered artificial mother, but not with a similarly shaped wiremesh artificial mother, even if the wire mother held a milk bottle.
(1) Attachments seem to follow from needs for softness and cuddling,
rather than from meeting basic physical needs.
b) Infant monkeys were very impaired socially, emotionally, and physically
when attachments were prevented. They did not engage in normal sexual
behavior, and when females became mothers through artificial
insemination, they did not have adequate maternal behaviors.
(1) Similar serious problems are seen in children abandoned by their
mothers and neglected by orphanage workers. Neurologists suggest
that there is developmental brain dysfunction and damage brought on
by a lack of touch and body movement in infancy.
3. Forming an Attachment
In most cultures, infants first grow attached to their mothers. By six or seven
months, infants prefer their mother to anyone else. In most cultures, attachment
to the father occurs later than that to the mother and may be different in nature.
2. Variations in Attachment
The amount of closeness and contact the infant seeks with a caregiver depends to
some extent on the infant as well as the caregiver. Attachments are studied by
observing the child’s attachment behavior during the Strange Situation Test,
where the natural coming and going of the attached person is simulated.
a) Most infants in the United States form a secure attachment to loving
mothers. These children tolerate brief separations from mother but are
happy to see her return.
b) Some infants form an insecure attachment:
(1) If the relationship is avoidant, the infant avoids or ignores the mother
when she approaches or when she returns from a brief separation.
(2) If the relationship is ambivalent, the infant is upset when the mother
leaves but acts angry and rejects her when she approaches.
(3) If the relationship is disorganized, the infant is inconsistent,
disturbed, and disturbing.
c) The type of attachment formed has lasting effects. Compared to children
with insecure attachments, securely attached children tend to be more
competent socially.
d) Patterns of attachment vary widely in different parts of the world. In all
countries, the likelihood that children will develop a secure attachment
depends on the mother’s attentiveness.
Thinking Critically: Does Day Care Harm the Emotional Development of Infants?
1. What am I being asked to believe or accept?
Daily separations due to day care damage attachment between the mother and
infant and harm the child’s emotional development.
2. Is there evidence available to support the claim?
Infants placed in day care do form attachments to their mothers and prefer their
mothers to their daytime caregivers. However, these infants are more often
classified as insecurely attached in the Strange Situation than infants who were
not in full-time daycare.
3. Can that evidence be interpreted another way?
The Strange Situation method may not be a valid measure of secure attachments
in these situations. Infants who experience routine separations may feel more
comfortable being left alone, so they seek less closeness with their mothers
a)
C.
D.
because they are more independent, not insecure. Also, parents who value
independence in themselves and their children may be more likely to work and
place children in day care.
4. What evidence would help to evaluate the alternatives?
Other measures of emotional adjustment are needed to know if children are
actually harmed by day-care separations. A large study of infant day care found
that infants in day care were no more likely to have emotional problems or to be
insecurely attached to their mothers than infants not in day care. However,
infants placed in poor-quality day care and whose mothers were insensitive to
their needs were less likely to develop a secure attachment to their mothers.
5. What conclusions are most reasonable?
Day care by itself does not lead to insecure attachment. But if the day care is of
poor quality, it can worsen a situation at home and increase the likelihood that
infants will have problems forming a secure attachment to their mothers.
Relationships with Parents and Peers
Erik Erikson described lifelong psychosocial development as following a series of
eight stages, each of which focuses on an issue or “crisis” that is especially important
at that time in life. The ways in which people resolve these crises shape personalities
and personal relationships. The first crisis in infancy of basic trust or mistrust about
caregivers forms the basis for all future social and emotional development. The second
stage involves the development of independence from parents. Whether parents
encourage or discourage independence is related to their parenting styles.
1. Parenting styles
Socialization is the process whereby authority figures channel a child’s energy
into socially acceptable outlets and teach a child the skills and rules needed to
function in their culture.
a) Cultural forces powerfully shape socialization. In the United States,
Hispanic parents are often influenced by the more collectivist cultural
traditions of Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Central America, in which family
community is emphasized over individual goals. Compared to European
American parents, Hispanic parents in the United States more often expect
children to respect and obey elders and to do less questioning, negotiating,
or arguing.
b) There are distinct patterns of socialization or parenting styles among
European American parents.
(1) Authoritarian parents are strict, punishing, and unsympathetic.
They value obedience from their children, do not encourage
independence, and seldom praise their children.
(a) Children raised in this way tend to be unfriendly, distrustful, and
withdrawn.
(2) Permissive parents give their children complete freedom with little
discipline.
(a) Children raised in this way tend to be immature, dependent, and
unhappy.
(3) Authoritative parents reason with their children, giving greater
responsibilities with age. They set firm limits but also remain
understanding and encourage independence. Their demands are
reasonable, rational, and consistent.
(a) Children raised in this way tend to be friendly, cooperative, selfreliant, and socially responsible. They are also more successful
in school and better tolerate divorce of their parents, if it should
occur.
(4) Uninvolved parents invest as little time, money, and effort in their
children as possible, focusing on their own needs before their
children’s.
c) Links between particular parenting styles and children’s personalities are
correlations (and not particularly strong ones), so it is unclear what the
cause-and-effect relationships are. Children may also shape their parents’
behavior.
d) Also, it may not be the parents’ socialization practices that influence their
children but rather how the children perceive the discipline they receive.
e) There is no universally “best” style of parenting. It is probably the fit
between the particular style and the particular child that affects the child
the most. Parenting styles must be evaluated in terms of their cultural
context.
2. Relationships with Peers
Social development is also strongly influenced by children’s peer relationships.
a) It takes time to learn how to interact with other children. Relationships with
others change with age. Two-year-olds play together only by exchanging or
fighting over toys. Three-year-olds use toys to get a response from peers.
Four-year-olds converse about the toys they play with, and by the end of
preschool, children begin to share toys and tasks cooperatively. During the
school years, peer interaction becomes more complex and structured.
Friends become important, but psychological intimacy does not appear
until adolescence.
E. Social Skills
Social skills, like cognitive skills, must be learned. Very young children lack the social
skills for sustained, responsive interactions with others. Parents can help children
develop such skills, and they can help children detect and correctly interpret other
people’s emotional signals. Another set of social skills involves feeling what another
feels (empathy) and responding with comfort or help if the person is in distress.
1. Children who have developed social skills like empathy tend to be more popular.
Children without them tend to be rejected or neglected.
F. Focus on Research: Exploring Developing Minds
1. What was the researcher’s question?
Renee Baillargeon (pronounced “by-ar-ZHAN”) wanted to know whether the
inability of young children to recognize what others are thinking reflects a true
lack of a “theory of mind,” or was the result of using research methods that were
not sensitive enough to detect its existence.
2. How did the researcher answer the question?
Baillargeon’s basic method was to show infants various events and then carefully
measured the amount of time they spent looking at them. She reasoned that
infants’ tendency to look longer at certain events indicates that those events
violate their expectations about the world. For instance, she used this method to
measure the ability of fifteen-month-old infants to predict where a woman would
look for a toy, depending on whether she had a true or a false belief about a toy's
location.
3.
What did the researcher find?
V.
The results of this study showed that, contrary to what would be expected from
previous research, the infants looked reliably longer when the woman looked for
the toy in the yellow box.
4.
What do the results mean?
These results support the view that, despite lots of earlier research evidence to the
contrary, infants under the age of four do have a “theory of mind.”
5.
What do we still need to know?
What mental states besides beliefs and perceptions can infants understand? Do
they also realize that other people’s behavior can be influenced by goals,
intentions, emotions, and even by the fairness or unfairness of a situation? How
soon after birth does a “theory of mind” develop?
G. Gender Roles
1. Many social roles that children learn are linked to gender. All societies have sex
roles (also known as gender roles), patterns of work, appearance, and behavior
associated with being male or female, but they may differ in how traditional or
extreme the roles are.
2. Gender roles persist because they are deeply rooted in both nature and nurture.
Small physical and behavioral differences between the sexes appear early and
tend to increase over time.
3. Biological Factors
Research in behavioral genetics shows that genes exert a moderate influence on
the appearance of gender-typed behaviors. The biological nature of sex
differences is suggested by their appearance at an early age, differences in
anatomy, hormones, and brain organization, and cross-cultural demonstration of
consistent gender patterns, despite different socialization.
4. Social Factors
a) Gender roles are nurtured by social interactions and environmental cues.
From birth, boys and girls are treated differently.
(1) Parents, teachers, and television role models pass on ideas about
“appropriate” behaviors for boys and girls. Boys tend to receive
encouragement to achieve, compete, and act independently, while
girls are more often encouraged to be expressive, nurturant,
dependent, and unselfish.
(2) Children also pick up gender-appropriate behavior from peers.
(3) Social and cultural training tends to support and amplify any
biological predispositions that distinguish boys and girls.
5. Some parents have attempted to de-emphasize gender-role socialization. Such
efforts may reduce some gender differences, such as those in verbal and
mathematics skills, but other gender differences persist, such as males’ greater
ability to visualize and manipulate objects in space and females’ greater ability
to read facial expressions. Whatever the cause of gender differences, it is
important to remember that most of them are quite small.
ADOLESCENCE
What threatens adolescents' self-esteem?
A. The Challenges of Change
1. Adolescence begins with a sudden growth spurt. Puberty, the beginning of
reproductive capability, causes dramatic bodily changes.
2. In early adolescence (age eleven to fourteen), self-esteem, the sense of being
worthy, capable, and deserving of respect, is challenged.
3.
B.
C.
Adolescent changes and pressures often cause family conflicts. In most homes,
however, the level of conflict is moderate. More than half of teens in Western
cultures find early adolescence relatively trouble-free.
4. Love and Sex in Adolescence
a) About half of adolescents between ages fifteen and nineteen say they have
had sexual intercourse, about 55 percent have engaged in oral sex, and
roughly 10 percent have tried anal sex.
b) Sexually active teens tend to hold less conventional attitudes and values,
and are more likely to smoke, drink alcohol, and use other drugs.
c) Sexual activity is often followed by lower school achievement, sexually
transmitted diseases, and unwanted pregnancies.
d) One-fifth of all AIDS cases start in adolescence, and although teenage
pregnancy rates have been declining of late, nearly 750,000 teenage girls in
the U.S. get pregnant before they reach age nineteen. Teenage parents tend
to be less positive and stimulating and more likely to abuse their children
than older parents. A number of support programs have reported some
success in alleviating symptoms of depression, increasing the young
mothers’ parenting capabilities, and helping them to achieve their
educational goals.
Identity and Development of the Self
Adolescents’ extended time as students and trainees makes it hard to find and form
identities.
1. Forming a Personal and Ethnic Identity
a) Preschool children describe themselves in terms of a favorite activity. At 8
or 9, children give facts about themselves. At about age eleven, children
begin to describe themselves in terms of social relationships, personality
traits, and other general stable psychological characteristics, suggesting
changes in the ways they think of themselves and the beginning of
development of a unique personal identity.
b) Personal identity may be affected by ethnic identity, which reflects one’s
racial, religious, or cultural group. A positive ethnic identity adds to selfesteem.
2. Facing the Identity Crisis
According to Erikson, events of late adolescence trigger an identity crisis, a
struggle to create an integrated and unique self-image. In Western cultures
during late adolescence, young people do consider alternative identities. They
“try out” various behaviors to help resolve questions about sexuality, self-worth,
industriousness, and independence. By age twenty-one about half of the
adolescents studied have resolved the identity crisis in a way consistent with
their self-image and the historical era in which they are living. For those who
fail to resolve identity issues, there are often problems ahead.
Moral Reasoning
1. Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Reasoning
Kohlberg found that the reasons given for moral choices change systematically
and consistently with age. However, his six stages are not tightly linked to age.
There is a range of ages for reaching each stage, and not everyone reaches the
highest level.
a) The preconventional level includes Stages 1 and 2. Moral judgments are
selfish, trying to avoid punishment or following rules when it is
advantageous.
b)
At the conventional level, Stages 3 and 4, moral judgments consider other
people. Morality consists of following rules and conventions, such as duties
to family, to marriage vows, and to country.
c) At the postconventional level, Stages 5 and 6, moral judgments are based
on personal standards or universal principles of justice, equality, and
respect for human life—not just the demands of authority figures or
society.
2. Limitations of Kohlberg's Stages
a) In forty-five studies in twenty-seven cultures, as subjects grew older, they
ascended through Kohlberg’s Stages 1 through 4 without reversing;
however, Stages 5 and 6 did not always appear. Also moral judgments
made in some cultures did not always fit neatly into Kohlberg’s stages.
(1) People in different cultures define moral ideals differently. For
example, those in collectivist cultures argue that supporting the
community is more important than supporting personal standards.
b) Carol Gilligan argues that the moral ideal for women is not Kohlberg’s
abstract concept of justice, but one of caring and relationships.
3. Moral development is an adaptation to the moral world and to specific situations.
VI. ADULTHOOD
What developmental changes occur in adulthood?
Early adulthood is ages 20 to 39; middle adulthood is ages 40 to 65; and late adulthood is
after age 65.
A. Physical Changes
1. In early adulthood physical growth continues, and these years are often the
“prime of life.”
2. By middle adulthood the senses lose sharpness. Women generally experience
menopause, the shutdown of reproductive capability in their late forties or early
fifties.
3. In late adulthood physical changes include the dwindling of bone mass and a
higher risk of heart disease. There are more digestive disorders and weakened
reflexes. The brain shrinks.
B. Cognitive Changes
1. Early and Middle Adulthood
Cognitive changes through age sixty are usually improvements: learning new
information and skills, retaining old information, and honing skills.
a) Adult thought is more complex and adaptive than adolescent thought.
People’s thinking becomes dialectical; they understand that knowledge is
relative, not absolute.
2. Late Adulthood
After age sixty-five, some people see a decline in certain intellectual abilities—
memory, flexibility, speed and efficiency of processing new information, and the
ability to concentrate. But, given more time, older adults can perform as well as
younger adults. Mental and physical exercise helps maintain high levels of
cognitive ability.
a) Cognitive declines are less likely and occur less often in people who are
healthy and psychologically flexible; who have a high level of education,
income, and occupation; and who live in an intellectually stimulating
environment with mentally able companions.
b) The greatest threat to cognitive abilities in late adulthood is Alzheimer’s
disease.
C. Social Changes
1.
D.
Early Adulthood
Many people in their twenties focus on careers and love. Erikson named this an
“intimacy versus isolation” crisis.
a) Adult perceptions of intimacy parallel their earlier patterns of infant
attachment.
b) Parenting is another development phase accompanied by change. For
many couples, marital satisfaction declines. When the father does not do
his share of caring for the baby, both mothers and fathers are dissatisfied.
The ability of young parents to provide adequate care for their babies is
related to their own attachment histories.
2. Middle Adulthood
By their forties, adults may focus on producing something to outlast them.
Erikson called this the crisis of generativity.
a) Around age forty, people go through a midlife transition, reappraising and
modifying their lives and relationships. For some, but not all, the transition
is a “midlife crisis.” The degree of happiness and healthiness people
experience during middle adulthood may depend on how much control they
feel they have over their work, finances, marriage, children, and sex life, as
well as the level of education they have attained and the type of work they
are doing.
3. Late Adulthood
Most people between sixty-five and seventy-five view themselves as middleaged, not old. They are usually still active politically and socially, are physically
vigorous, and are just as satisfied with life as people at other periods of
adulthood. People in late adulthood tend to become more introspective,
cautious, and conforming. They interact with others less frequently but enjoy
these interactions more. As long as they have a network of at least three close
relatives or friends, they are content.
Death and Dying
A few years or months before death, people often show a sharp decline in mental
functioning known as terminal drop. The awareness of impending death is the last
psychological crisis according to Erikson—integrity versus despair—as people review,
evaluate, and try to put their lives into perspective.
1. Longevity
Longevity is related to personality characteristics like conscientiousness and
curiosity. People with higher IQs, faster reaction times, and more positive selfperceptions while in their fifties tend to live longer, as do people who stay active
mentally and physically and who have a sense of control over important aspects
of life.
KEY TERMS
An activity based on the key terms could be used to introduce students to search engines like
PsycINFO or PsycARTICLES. This could be done as an in-class demonstration or as an
assignment.
accommodation (p. 352)
assimilation (p. 352)
attachment (pp. 364-368 and 384)
attachment behavior (p. 366)
attachment theory (p. 364)
authoritarian parents (p. 369)
authoritative parents (p. 369)
behavioral genetics (pp. 346-347 and 373)
chromosomes (p. 347)
concrete operations (pp. 355 and 358)
conservation (pp. 354-355, 357-358, and 360)
conventional (p. 379 )
critical period (pp. 348-349)
deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) (p. 347)
developmental psychology (p. 344)
embryo (p. 348)
ethnic identity (pp. 377-378)
fetal alcohol syndrome (p. 349)
fetus (pp. 348-349)
formal operational period (pp. 355, 378, and 381)
gender roles (pp. 372-374)
generativity (pp. 368 and 385)
genes (pp. 346-347)
identity crisis (pp. 377-378 and 387)
information processing (pp. 357-358 and 381-382)
moral development (pp. 378-380)
maturation (pp. 346, 350-351, and 357-358)
object permanence (pp. 353-354 and 358)
parenting style (pp. 368-370)
permissive parents (p. 369)
personality (p. 363)
postconventional (p. 379)
preconventional (p. 379)
preoperational period (pp. 354-355)
puberty (pp. 374 and 387)
reflexes (pp. 350-351)
schemas (pp. 352-353)
sensorimotor period (pp. 352-354)
sex roles (p. 372)
socialization (pp. 368-369 and 372-373)
temperament (pp. 363-364, 369, and 384)
teratogens (p. 348-349)
terminal drop (p. 386)