intro psych overheads, unit 8: development
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Human Development across the Lifespan
Development: the sequence of age-related changes that occur as a
person progresses from conception to death.
3 Stages of Prenatal Development
1) germinal stage: 1st 2 weeks after conception
 placenta begins to form
2) embryonic stage: from 2 weeks to end of second month (8
weeks)
 organism is now called an embryo
3) fetal stage: from 2 months to birth
 organism is now a fetus
Environmental factors in prenatal development
 maternal nutrition
 maternal drug use
o heroin
o cocaine
o prescription drugs
o alcohol and fetal alcohol syndrome
o tobacco
 maternal illness
o immune system doesn’t mature til late in prenatal period.
o rubella, syphilis, cholera, smallpox, mumps, even the flu
o deadly illnesses: genital herpes and AIDs can be
transmitted to babies
 herpes: contact with genital lesions during birthing.
Can cause microcephaly, paralysis, deafness,
blindness, brain damage, and death.
 AIDS: through the placenta, during birth, or through
breast feeding. About 30% of pregnant women with
the AIDs virus pass it on to their babies.
 prenatal health care
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Motor Development: the progression of muscular coordination
required for physical activities.
 cephalocaudal trend: head-to-foot
 proximodistal trend: center-outward
o growth happens in sudden bursts
 maturation: gradual unfolding of one’s genetic blueprint
Developmental norms: median age at which individuals display
various behaviours and abilities.
Temperament: characteristic mood, activity level, emotional
reactivity.
Thomas & Chess (1977; 1989)
 temperament is well established by 2 to 3 months old
 3 styles of temperament in most children
1) easy children (40%)
2) slow-to-warm-up children (15%)
3) difficult children (10%)
--- The remaining 35% are mixes --Jerome Kagan (1991; 1992)
 15-20% of infants display inhibited temperament
 25-30% of infants exhibit uninhibited temperament
 stable into middle childhood, determined by genetic inheritance.
Attachment: close, emotional bonds of affection that develop
between infants and their caregivers.
 Initially babies show little preference for their mothers.
 By 6-8 months babies begin to show a preference for their
mothers, and protest when separated from her.
o Separation anxiety: emotional distress when separated
from people with whom there is an attachment.
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Patterns of attachment
 Secure attachment
 Anxious-ambivalent attachment
 Avoidant attachment
Effects of secure attachment:
 securely attached infants exhibit secure attachments to fathers
 become resilient, competent toddlers with high self-esteem
 persistence, curiosity, self-reliance, leadership, peer relations
 at age 11, better social skills, more close friends
 advanced cognitive development in childhood and adolescence
 sets the tone for romantic relationships in adulthood
 gender roles, religious beliefs, ability to be intimate with others
 warning: all this is correlational data!!!
Variables that might affect attachment
 Bonding at birth: does skin-on-skin contact after birth promote
more effective attachment? There is no convincing evidence.
 Day Care: 2/3 of kids under 5 in the US get some kind of
nonmaternal care
o Belsky (1988; 1992): nonmaternal care for > 20
hours/week leads to insecure attachments
o however the number with insecure attachment in day care
is only slightly higher than the norm
o lots of evidence that day care is not harmful in this way
o day care can have beneficial effects on some youngsters’
social development
 Culture: there are differences in the proportions of kids who
display the different attachment styles depending on what
culture they are in.
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Evolutionary perspectives on attachment:
 Bowlby (1969): Infants are wired to emit behaviour that triggers
an affectionate response from adults and adults are wired to
respond.
 Belsky’s theory (1999):
o If parents have time/energy to be sensitive & responsive,
the environment is stable, safe, rich in resources. This
fosters a reproductive strategy that emphasizes fewer
partners, more stable and enduring bonds, more parental
investment in offspring.
o If parents cannot be sensitive/responsive, the
environment is unsafe, with few resources. This fosters a
reproductive strategy that is opportunistic
The development of personality
Erik Erikson (1963): personality is shaped by how an individual
deals with psychosocial crises in each of eight stages. Each crisis
involves the struggle between 2 opposing tendencies.
1)
2)
3)
4)
Trust vs. mistrust (1st year)
Autonomy vs. shame and doubt (2nd and 3rd years)
Initiative vs. guilt (ages 3 to 6)
Industry vs. inferiority (6 through puberty)
Cognitive Development: transitions in youngsters’ patterns of
thinking, including reasoning, remembering, and problem solving.
intro psych overheads, unit 8: development
Jean Piaget: 4-stage theory of cognitive development
1) Sensorimotor period (birth to age 2)
o gradual appearance of symbolic thought
o object permanence: when a child recognizes that
objects continue to exist even when they are no longer
visible.
 not mastered til about 18 months old
2) Preoperational period (age 2 to 7)
o unable to perform conservation tasks: awareness that
physical quantities remain constant in spit of changes in
their shape or appearance.
o flaws in thinking
 centration
 irreversibility
 egocentrism
 animism:
3) Concrete Operational Period (age 7 to 11)
o master reversibility and decentration, decline in
egocentrism, gradual mastery of conservation
o new problem-solving abilities
4) Formal operational period (age 11 and beyond): apply their
operations to abstract concepts in addition to concrete objects
o thinking is abstract, systematic, logical, and reflective.
Evaluating Piaget
 saw children as active agents constructing their own worlds
 guided enormous quantities of research
 however, he underestimated young childrens’ cognitive
development
o object permanence develops earlier than he thought
o preoperational kids are less egocentric and less prone to
animism
 what about individual differences in development?
 people can display features of more than one stage
 the timetable varies across cultures
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Information Processing theory and development
 Attention:
- Preschool kids have short attention spans and are easily
distracted.
- As kids get older their ability to attend for longer periods
improves
- Also get better at selectively focusing attention
 Memory: adults display infantile amnesia: an inability to
remember experiences form their early years (usually no earlier
than 3).
o early memories are not very enduring
o durable memories require language skills
o older children acquire strategies for enhancing storage
and retrieval
 Rehearsal (start using this around age 5)
 Organization (around age 9)
 Elaboration (after age 11)
 Speed of information processing: gets better as kids get
older, and contributes to more effective use of memory.
Moral development: development of the ability to discern right from
wrong and to behave accordingly.
 Lawrence Kohlberg (1976): developed a 3-level theory of
moral reasoning
1) Preconventional level
2) Conventional level
3) Postconventional level
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Adolescence
- peculiar to industrialized nations where lengthy education is
necessary and therefore, prolonged economic dependency
is the norm
 adolescent growth spurt: phase of rapid growth in height and
weight, starting about age 11 for girls and age 13 for boys.
 pubescence: the 2-year span preceding puberty during which
the changes leading to physical and sexual maturity take place
o grow taller and heavier
o develop secondary sex characteristics: features that
distinguish one sex from another but that are not essential
for reproduction
 puberty: the stage during which sexual functions reach
maturity, marking the beginning of adolescence
o full development of the primary sex characteristics: the
structures necessary for reproduction
o onset for females signaled by menarche: the first
occurrence of menstruation (average onset at age 12 ½ )
o onset for males signaled by production of sperm (average
onset at age 14)
o puberty has been occurring at younger and younger ages
than in earlier generations.
o timing ranges about 5 years (age 10-15 for girls; age 1116 for boys)
 Adolescents who mature unusually early or late tend to feel
uneasy about it.
 Girls who mature early and boys who mature late
seem to be at greater risk for psychological
problems and social problems
 Early maturation associated with ↑use of drugs &
alcohol, trouble with the law
 In females, correlated with poorer school
performance, earlier experience of intercourse,
more unwanted pregnancies, greater risk for eating
disorders
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 is adolescence a time of turmoil?
o Arnett (1999): “Not all adolescents experience storm and
stress, but storm and stress is more likely during
adolescence than at other ages.”
o risky behaviours peak during adolescence (substance
abuse, careless sexual practices, dangerous driving)
o increase in parent-child conflicts
o adolescence can be more stressful than other periods
Erikson: the big challenge in adolescence is the struggle to form a
clear identity
James Marcia (1966): 4 different identity statuses
1) foreclosure
2) moratorium.
3) identity diffusion
4) identity achievement
Is personality stable in our adult years?
 the midlife crisis: a difficult, turbulent period of doubts and
reappraisal of one’s life
o this only happen in a tiny minority of subjects (2 – 5%)
o many women go through a midlife review
Erikson’s view of adulthood:
Intimacy vs. Isolation (early adulthood): whether one can
develop intimacy with others.
Generativity vs. Self-Absorption (middle adulthood): acquire
a genuine concern for the welfare of future generations, versus
self-absorption - a self-indulgent concern with one’s own needs
and desires.
Integrity vs. Despair (retirement years): avoid the tendency to
dwell on past mistakes and imminent death. People need to
look back and see a life well lived.
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Transitions in family life
The family life cycle: a sequence of stages that families tend to
progress through.
 adjusting to marriage:
o even now wives do most of the housework, even when
employed full time (employed wives: 69%; unemployed
wives: 79%)
o Satisfaction tends to be greatest at the start and the end
of the family life cycle, with a noticeable decline in the
middle
 adjusting to parenthood:
o Wives are especially vulnerable to stress
o Satisfaction with parenting is higher when marital quality
is higher
o males who father their first child relatively late undergo a
smoother transition than younger males
o Stress is greatest when parents have overestimated the
benefits and underestimated the costs of their new role
o Conflicts with kids center around everyday things more
than weighty issues
o Mothers are more adversely affected by conflict with their
kids
o Parents rate adolescence of their kids as the most
stressful stage of child rearing
 adjusting to the empty nest:
o Couples often take advantage of their new freedom to
devote attention to each other. Marital satisfaction starts
to rise again.
Transitions in work
 people who are satisfied with their jobs exhibit better mental and
physical health than those who are not
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 patterns of career development:
o Donald Super (1957, 1985, 1988): 5 major stages to the
vocational life cycle
 Exploration stage
 Establishment stage
 Maintenance stage
 Decline stage
o women’s career development: patterns are different
 more likely to have career interruptions
 Less likely to have a mentor
 Sexual discrimination: the glass ceiling, pink ghetto
jobs
 In comparable jobs women make 72 cents for
every $1 man makes
 Less than 5% of senior managers in Fortune
1000 companies are female
Physical changes as we age
 hair gets thinner, grayer
 males: receding hairlines, baldness
 proportion of body fat increases
 number of active neurons in the brain declines during adulthood
 dementia: abnormal condition marked by multiple cognitive
deficits that include memory impairment.
o Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, etc.
o About 15% of people over age 65
o NOT a part of normal aging
 vision and hearing decline - farsightedness, difficulty
adapting to the darkness, poor recovery from glare. Hearing
loss that requires treatment occurs in 75% of people over age
75
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 hormonal changes
o menopause: ending of menstrual periods and loss of
fertility, around age 50
o middle-aged men also experience hormonal changes, but
they are gradual
Aging and Cognition
 small decline in IQ test scores after age 60
o a small minority of people may be dragging down that
score
o 80% of people show no decline at age 60
o 67% show no decline by age 81
o those changes that do occur are small in most people
 some forms of intelligence are more vulnerable than others
o fluid intelligence is more likely to decline with age;
crystallized intelligence tends to be stable
 memory:
o these tend to be moderate changes, and not in everyone
o Salthouse (1994): due to the declining capacity of
working memory; it leads to a reduction in the raw speed
of processing. Problem solving ability is stable, given
adequate time to compensate for reduced speed.