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Why Study Life-Span Development?
You can gain insight to your own life as a child, adolescent, and young adult.
You will learn about life through the adult years—middle age, and old age.
You may be a parent or a teacher some day.
Life-span development is linked with many different areas of psychology.
Definition of Development
The pattern of movement or change that begins at conception and continues
through the human life span
The Historical Perspective
Original Sin - children were perceived as being basically bad, born into the
world as evil beings, carrying the sins of Adam of Eve.
Tabula Rasa - children are like a “blank tablet,” and acquire their
characteristics through experience.
Innate Goodness - children are inherently good.
Traditional Approach vs. Life-Span Approach
The traditional approach emphasizes extensive change from birth to
adolescence, little or no change in adulthood, and decline in late old age.
The life-span approach emphasizes developmental change during adulthood as
well as childhood.
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Characteristics of the Life-Span Perspective
•Development is lifelong. No age period dominates development. Researchers increasingly study
the experiences and psychological orientations of adults at different points in their development.
•Development is multidimensional. There are biological, cognitive, and socioemotional
dimensions.
•Development is multidirectional. Some dimensions or components of a dimension increase in
growth and others decrease in growth.
•Development is plastic. Plasticity involves the degree to which characteristics change or remain
stable.
•Development is contextual. It must be considered in terms of normative age-graded influences,
history-graded influences, and non-normative life events.
•Development is studied by a number of disciplines, including psychologists, sociologists,
anthropologists, neuroscientists, and medical researchers.
•Development involves growth, maintenance, and regulation.
Some Contemporary Concerns
Health and Well-Being
Drug and alcohol use during pregnancy
Genetic counseling
Breast- versus bottle-feeding
Early intervention
School health programs
At-risk adolescents
Women’s health issues
Exercise
Addiction and recovery
Loneliness
Adaptive physical skills in aging adults
Coping with death
Parenting and Education
Day care
Working parents and latchkey children
Effects of divorce on children
The best way to parent
Child maltreatment
Support systems for families
Marital relationships
Intergenerational relationships
Aging parents
Variations in early childhood education
Ethnicity, social class, schools
Programs to improve thinking
School/family coordination
Cooperative learning
How to avoid stifling creativity
Bilingual education
The best schools for adolescents
Sociocultural Contexts
Context
Culture
Ethnicity
Gender
Examples of Context
Homes
Schools
Peer groups
Churches
Cities/Countries
Neighborhoods
University laboratories
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Biological Processes. Involve changes in the individual’s physical nature such as:
•Height and weight gains
•The development of the brain
•Changes in motor skills
•Cardiovascular decline
Cognitive Processes. Involve changes in the individual’s thought, intelligence, and language such as:
•Watching a mobile swing above a crib
•Creating a two-word sentence
•Memorizing a poem
•Imagining being a movie star
Socioemotional Processes. Involve changes in the individual’s relationships with other people,
changes in emotions, and changes in personality such as:
•An infant smiling from her mother’s touch
•A young boy hitting a playmate
•A girl’s joy at her senior prom
•The affection of an elderly couple
Periods of Development
The Prenatal Period
•The time from conception to birth
•From a single cell to an organism complete with a brain and behavioral capabilities
•Approximately a 9-month period
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Infancy
•The developmental period from birth to 18 or 24 months
•A time of extreme dependency on adults
•Many psychological activities are just beginning
Early Childhood
•The developmental period extending from the end of infancy to about 5 or 6 years
•Often called the “preschool years”
•Children learn to become more self-sufficient
•Children now develop school readiness skills
•Children spend many hours playing with peers
Middle and Late Childhood
•The developmental period extending from about 6 to 11 years of age
•Approximately corresponds to the elementary school years
•Fundamental skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic are mastered
•Child is formally exposed to larger world and its culture
Adolescence
•The developmental period of transition from childhood to early adulthood—entered at 10-12
years, ending at 18-22 years
•Begins with rapid physical changes.
•Pursuit of independence and identity are prominent
•Thought is now more logical, abstract, and idealistic
Early Adulthood
•The developmental period beginning in the late teens or early twenties and lasting through the
thirties
•A time of establishing personal and economic independence
•Also a time of career development
•Early adults select a mate, start a family, and rear children
Middle Adulthood
•The developmental period beginning around 40 years of age and extending to about 60
•A time of expanding personal and social involvement and responsibility
•Also a time of assisting the next generation in becoming competent
•Middle adults reach and maintain satisfaction in a career
Late Adulthood
•The developmental period beginning in the sixties or seventies and lasting until death
•A time of adjustment to decreasing strength and health
•Also a time of life review, retirement, and new social roles
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Conceptions of Age
No particular age group says they are happier or more satisfied than any other age group!
•Chronological Age. The number of years that have elapsed since a person’s birth…your age on your
driver’s license.
•Biological Age. A person’s age in terms of biological health…you have the blood pressure of someone
half your age.
•Psychological Age. An individual’s adaptive capacities compared to those of other individuals of the
same chronological age…also called “mental age”…Forrest Gump had a mental age of a 10-year-old.
•Social Age. Refers to social roles and expectations related to a person’s age…Oh, act your age!
Developmental Issues
The Nature-Nurture Issue involves the debate about whether development is primarily influenced by
nature or nurture
Nature: An organism’s biological inheritance
Nurture: An organism’s environmental experiences
The Continuity-Discontinuity Issue focuses on the extent to which development involves gradual,
cumulative change or distinct stages.
Continuity: Development results from a gradual process occurring over several weeks, months,
and possibly years.
Discontinuity: Development occurs through a sequence of stages in which change is
qualitatively rather than quantitatively different.
The Stability-Change Issue involves the degree to which we become older renditions of our early
experience or whether we develop into someone different from who we were at an earlier point in
development. It considers the extent to which early experiences (especially in infancy) or later
experiences are the key determinants of a person’s development.
The Early-Later Experience Issue has a long history of being hotly debated among developmental
psychologists. People in Western cultures tend to support the idea that early experiences are more
important than later experiences. By contrast, the majority of people in the world do not share this belief.
The Early-Experience View: Some believe that unless infants experience warm, nurturant
caregiving in the first year or so of life, their development will never be optimal.
The Later-Experience View: Others believe that children are malleable throughout development
and that later sensitive caregiving is just as important as earlier sensitive caregiving.
The Early-Later Experience: A number of life-span developmentalists stress that too little
attention has been given to later experiences in development.
Evaluating the Developmental Issues
Most life-span developmentalists recognize that extreme positions are unwise. The key to development is
the interaction of nature and nurture rather than either factor alone. There still exists strong debate
regarding how strongly development is influenced by each of the factors.
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As researchers formulate a problem to study, they often draw on theories and
develop hypotheses.
The various theories are described on the next slides, but most people follow
an eclectic approach:
•Does not follow any one theoretical approach
•Selects and uses whatever is considered best from each theory
•Acknowledges that no one theory provides a complete description and
explanation of development, and that each has made important contributions to
understanding development
•Presented and maintained throughout the book
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Psychoanalytic Theories
Behavior is primarily unconscious— beyond awareness.
Behavior is heavily colored by emotion.
Behavior is merely a surface characteristic with symbolic meaning.
Early experiences with parents extensively shape behavior.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Freud was a medical doctor specializing in neurology who developed ideas about
psychoanalytic theory from work with mental patients. He considered problems to be
the result of experiences early in life.
Freud’s Three Structures of Personality
•The Id
Totally unconscious: has no contact with reality
Consists of instincts: our reservoir of psychic energy
Has no morality
•The Ego
Deals with the demands of reality
Called the “executive branch” of personality: uses reasoning to make
decisions
Has no morality
•The Superego
The moral branch of personality
Takes into account whether something is right or wrong
Our “conscience”
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Psychosexual Development
•Definition of Erogenous Zone
Erogenous zones are parts of the body that have especially strong pleasuregiving qualities at particular stages of development.
•The Five Stages of Psychosexual Development
The Oral Stage (Birth to 18 months): Pleasure centers around the
mouth; Chewing, sucking, biting are sources of pleasure.
The Anal Stage (18 months to 3 years): Pleasure centers around the
anus; Eliminative functions are sources of pleasure.
The Phallic Stage (3 to 6 years): Pleasure focuses on the genitals;
Self-manipulation is a source of pleasure.
Oedipus Complex appears. The Oedipus Complex is Freud’s term for
the young child’s development of an intense desire to replace the
same-sex parent and enjoy the affections of the opposite-sex parent.
Children recognize that their same-sex parent might punish them for
their incestuous wishes. To reduce this conflict, the child identifies
with the same-sex parent, striving to be like him or her.
The Latent Stage (6 years to puberty): The child represses all interest
in sexuality. The child develops social and intellectual skills. Energy
is channeled into emotionally safe areas. The child forgets the highly
stressful conflicts of the phallic stage.
The Genital Stage (Puberty on): This is a time of sexual reawakening.
The source of sexual pleasure comes from someone outside the
family.
When conflict is not resolved individuals may develop a fixation. A fixation occurs
when the individual remains locked in an earlier developmental stage because needs
are under- or over-gratified.
•Examples of Fixations
Oral - Due to a parent weaning too early, as an adult the individual seeks out oral
gratification through smoking, drinking, gum chewing.
Anal - Due to a parent being too strict with potty training, as an adult the individual is
excessively neat and orderly (known as “Anal Retentive”).
Phallic - Due to a parent punishing the child for masturbating, as an adult the
individual seeks out pornography.
Genital - Due to a parent smothering a child with too much attention, as an adult the
individual has difficulty in romantic relationships due to being extremely “needy.”
Contemporary View of Freud’s Theory
•Unconscious thought remains central theme
•Conscious thought plays larger role
•Less emphasis on sexual instincts
•Greater emphasis on cultural experiences
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Erik Erikson (1902-1994)
Recognized Freud’s contributions but believed Freud misjudged some important
dimensions of human development. He developed the Psychosocial Theory of
Development. The primary motivation for human behavior is social and reflects a
desire to affiliate with other people. He proposed the eight stages of development
which unfold throughout the entire life span. Each stage consists of a unique
developmental task that confronts individuals with a crisis that must be faced.
The Psychosocial Theory of Development
Crises are not catastrophes but rather turning points of increased vulnerability and
enhanced potential. The more an individual resolves the crises successfully, the
healthier development will be.
Stages of Psychosocial Development
•Trust vs. Mistrust (First Year). A sense of trust requires a feeling of physical comfort
and a minimal amount of fear and apprehension about the future. Trust in infancy sets
the stage for a lifelong expectation that the world will be a good and pleasant place.
•Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt (Second Year). After gaining trust in their
caregivers, infants begin to discover that their behavior is their own. They start to
assert their sense of independence or autonomy. They realize their will. If infants are
restrained too much or punished too harshly, they are likely to develop a sense of
shame and doubt.
•Initiative vs. Guilt (Preschool Years). As preschool children encounter a widening
social world, they are challenged more than when they were infants, and active,
purposeful behavior is needed to cope with these challenges. Children are asked to
assume responsibility for their bodies, behavior, toys, and pets. Guilt may arise if the
child is irresponsible and made to feel anxious.
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•Industry vs. Inferiority (Elementary School Years). As children move into middle and
late childhood, they direct their energy toward mastering knowledge and intellectual
skills. The danger during this time is the development of a sense of inferiority—
feeling incompetent and unproductive. Erikson believes that teachers have a special
responsibility for children’s development of industry.
•Identity vs. Identity Confusion (Adolescence). Individuals are faced with finding out
who they are, what they are all about, and where they are going in life.Adolescents are
confronted with many new roles and adult statuses. If the adolescent explores roles in
a healthy manner and arrives at a positive path in life, then positive identity will be
achieved. If an identity is pushed on the adolescent by parents, if the adolescent does
not adequately explore many roles, then identity confusion reigns.
•Intimacy vs. Isolation (Early Adulthood). Individuals face the developmental task of
forming intimate relationships with others. Intimacy is defined as finding oneself yet
losing oneself in another. Intimacy is achieved through the formation of healthy
friendships and an intimate relationship with another individual. Isolation results from
failure to achieve the above.
•Generativity vs. Stagnation (Middle Adulthood). A chief concern is to assist the
younger generation in developing and leading useful lives (generativity). The feeling
of having done nothing to help the next generation is stagnation.
•Integrity vs. Despair (Late Adulthood). This involves reflecting on the past and
either piecing together a positive review or concluding that one’s life has not been
well spent. Integrity is achieved through reflecting on a past deemed worthwhile. If
the older adult resolved many of the earlier stages negatively, looking back will lead to
doubt or gloom (despair).
Contributions of Psychoanalytic Theories
•Early experiences play an important part in development.
•Family relationships are a central aspect of development.
•Personality can be better understood if it is examined developmentally.
•The mind is not all conscious; unconscious aspects of the mind need to be considered.
•Changes take place in the adulthood as well as the childhood years (Erikson).
Criticisms of Psychoanalytic Theories
•The main concepts have been difficult to test scientifically.
•Much of the data used to support these theories come from individuals’
reconstruction of the past, often the distant past, and are of unknown accuracy.
•The sexual underpinnings of development are given too much importance (especially
by Freud).
•The unconscious mind is given too much credit for influencing development.
•Psychoanalytic theories present an image of humans that is too negative (especially
Freud).
•Psychoanalytic theories are culture- and gender-biased.
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Jean Piaget (1896-1980)
Swiss psychologist who observed his own children to develop theory of cognitive
development. Changed how we think about the development of children’s minds.
Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory
Children actively construct their understanding of the world. Children progress
through four stages of cognitive development. Two processes underlie development:
assimilation and accommodation.
•Assimilation: Incorporating new information into their existing knowledge
•Accommodation: Adapting one’s existing knowledge to new information
Piaget’s Four Stages of Cognitive Development
•Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 yrs.). Infants construct an understanding of the world by
coordinating sensory experiences with physical, motor actions. At the beginning,
newborns are limited to reflexive patterns. By the end, 2-year-olds are beginning to
operate with primitive symbols.
•Preoperational Stage (2-7 yrs.). Children begin to represent the world with words,
images, and drawings. Operations are internalized mental actions that allow children
to do mentally what they previously did physically.
•Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 yrs.). Children can perform mental operations.
Logical reasoning replaces intuitive thought, as long as reasoning can be applied to
concrete examples. Algebra is too abstract for this stage.
•Formal Operational Stage (11 and up). Individuals move beyond concrete
experiences and think in abstract, more logical terms. Problem solving is more
systematic and involves hypotheses. Adolescents develop images of ideal
circumstances.
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Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Cognitive Theory
Shares Piaget’s view that children actively construct their knowledge. Emphasizes
developmental analysis, the role of language, and social relations. Like Piaget,
Vygotsky’s ideas were not introduced in America until the 1960s.
Vygotsky’s 3 Basic Claims about Children’s Development
•The child’s cognitive skills can be understood only when they are developmentally
analyzed and interpreted.
•Cognitive skills are mediated by words, language, and forms of discourse.
•Cognitive skills have their origins in social relations and are embedded in a
sociocultural backdrop.
The Information-Processing Approach
Emphasizes that individuals manipulate, monitor, and strategize about information.
Central are the processes of memory and thinking. Individuals develop a gradually
increasing capacity for processing information. This enables the acquisition of
increasingly complex knowledge and skills.
Contributions of the Cognitive Theories
•They present a positive view of development, emphasizing individuals’ conscious
thinking.
•They emphasize the individual’s active construction of understanding.
•Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories underscore the importance of examining
developmental changes in children’s thinking.
•The information-processing approach offers detailed descriptions of cognitive
processes.
Criticisms of the Cognitive Theories
•There is skepticism about the pureness of Piaget’s stages.
•They do not give adequate attention to individual variations in cognitive
development.
•Information processing doesn’t provide adequate description of developmental
changes in cognition.
•Psychoanalytic theorists argue that the cognitive theories do not give enough credit to
unconscious thought.
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Classical Conditioning
In the early 1900s, Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov discovered the phenomenon in which a
neutral stimulus acquires the ability to produce a behavioral response originally produced by
another stimulus.
Operant Conditioning
B.F. Skinner demonstrated that the consequences of a behavior produce changes in the
probability of the behavior occurring again. Consequences can be either rewards (increasing the
likelihood of behavior recurrence), or punishment (decreasing this chance).
Social Cognitive Theory
Albert Bandura and Walter Mischel believe that cognitive processes are important mediators of
environment-behavior connections. Learning occurs through observing what others do, as
individuals cognitively represent what they see and adopt the behavior themselves.
Contributions of Behavioral and Social Cognitive Theories
•They emphasize the importance of scientific research.
•They focus on the environmental determinants of behavior.
•They underscore the importance of observational learning (Bandura).
Criticisms of Behavioral and Social Cognitive Theories
•Pavlov and Skinner put too little emphasis on cognition.
•They put too much emphasis on environmental determinants.
•They give inadequate attention to developmental changes.
•They are too mechanical and give inadequate consideration to the spontaneity and creativity of
humans.
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Definition of Critical Period
A fixed time period very early in development during which certain behaviors optimally emerge
Definition of Imprinting
The rapid, innate learning within a limited critical period of time that involves attachment to the
first moving object seen
Attachment
Attachment is a concept based on principles of ethological theory. Attachment to a caregiver
over the first year of life has important consequences:
•Positive and secure attachment results in positive development.
•Negative and insecure attachment results in problematic development.
Contributions of Ethological Theory
•It has an increased focus on the biological and evolutionary basis of development.
•It uses careful observations in naturalistic settings.
•It emphasizes critical periods of development.
Criticisms of Ethological Theory
•The critical period concept may be too rigid.
•It places too strong an emphasis on biological foundations.
•It gives inadequate attention to cognition.
•It has been better at generating research with animals than with humans.
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Ecological theory describes how we are influenced by five systems, from the closeranging to the far-ranging.
The Microsystem
The setting in which the individual lives. Includes the person’s family, peers, school,
and neighborhood. In the microsystem, the most direct interactions with social agents
take place. The individual is not passive, but rather helps construct the settings.
The Mesosystem
Involves relations between microsystems or connections between contexts. Examples:
•The relation of family experiences to school experiences.
•The relation of family experiences to peer experiences.
The Exosystem
Involved when experiences in another social setting—in which the individual does not
have an active role—influence what the individual experiences in an immediate
context. Example:
•Work experiences may affect a woman’s relationship with her husband and
child, due to travel and increased job responsibilities.
The Macrosystem
Involves the culture in which individuals live.
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The Macrosystem
Involves the culture in which individuals live.
The Chronosystem
Involves the patterning of environmental events and transitions over the life course, as
well as sociohistorical circumstances. Example:
•The effects of divorce on children vary based on the time since the divorce
and the gender of the children.
Contributions of Ecological Theory
•It provides a systematic examination of macro and micro dimensions of
environmental systems.
•It gives attention to connections between environmental settings.
•It gives consideration to sociohistorical influences on development.
Criticisms of Ecological Theory
•Even with the added discussion of biological influences in recent years, there is still
too little attention to biological foundations of development.
•It gives inadequate attention to cognitive processes.
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Observation Requires:
•Knowing what you’re looking for
•Conducting observations in unbiased manner
•Accurately recording and categorizing what you see
•Effectively communicating your observations
•Can be made in laboratories or naturalistic settings
Laboratories vs. Naturalistic Settings
Laboratories are controlled settings from which many of the complex factors of the
real world have been removed. Criticized for being artificial. Naturalistic observation
occurs outside a laboratory in the “real world”; places such as schools, home,
museums, and offices.
Interviews and Questionnaires
Used to learn about experiences, beliefs, and feelings. Involve concrete, specific,
unambiguous questions. Problems may arise with the social desirability effect: when
individuals respond in a way they think is most socially desirable, rather than how
they truly feel.
Case Studies
An in-depth look at an individual. Used when unique aspects of a person’s life cannot
be duplicated. Provides information about a person’s fears, hopes, fantasies, traumatic
experiences, etc. Findings are not readily generalizable. Concern over reliability of
judgments made by single psychologist.
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Standardized Tests
Commercially prepared tests that assess individuals’ performance in different
domains. Allow an individual’s performance to be compared to the performance of
others. Used for:
•Outcome measures for research studies
•Helping psychologists and educators make decisions and comparisons
Life-History Records
Records of information about a lifetime chronology of events and activities. Involve a
combination of data records on education, work, family, and residence. Using multiple
materials enables comparison of information from varied sources, resulting in a more
accurate record.
Physiological Research and Research with Animals
These focus on the biological basis of behavior. Much physiological research cannot
be carried out with humans, thus animals are studied. Animal studies enable
researchers to control subjects’ genetic background, diet, experiences, etc.
Correlational Research
The goal is to describe the strength of the relation between two or more events or
characteristics. The more strongly two events are correlated, the more effectively we
can predict one from the other. It needs to be used with caution as correlation does not
equal causation.
Experimental Research
This allows researchers to determine the causes of behavior. It uses experimentation:
carefully regulated procedures in which one or more significant factors is manipulated,
and all others held constant. Experimental research involves independent and
dependent variables, experimental groups, control groups, and random assignment.
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Independent variables are the manipulated, influential, experimental factors.
Dependent variables are the factors that are measured in an experiment. They can
change as the IV is manipulated.
Experimental groups are groups whose experiences in a study are manipulated.
Control groups are groups who are treated in every way like the experimental groups
except for the manipulated factors. They serve as the baseline against which the
effects of the manipulated condition can be compared.
Random assignment is the process of assigning participants to experimental and
control groups by chance, reducing the likelihood that the experiment’s results will be
due to any preexisting differences between the groups.
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Here’s an example of how experimental and control groups are compared.
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Ethics
Ethics of research are concerned with the well-being of subjects with regard to
physical and mental harm. Participants or their parents must give informed
consent.
Gender
A focus on gender in research is concerned with gender bias in all aspects of
research (theory, questions, hypotheses, participants, design), primarily against
women.
Ethnicity and Culture
Ethnicity and culture must be considered in research to ensure the inclusion of
individuals from minority backgrounds in research. There must also be an
awareness of ethnic gloss—using an ethnic label, such as African American or
Latino, in a superficial way that makes an ethnic group look more
homogeneous than it really is.
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