The University of Hong Kong
PSYC2009 Life-Span Developmental Psychology
2nd Semester 2015/16
Lecture Time & Venue: Tuesday 1:30-3:20 pm, at CYPP2
Instructor:
Prof. Connie Ho
Office: Rm 661, Jockey Club Tower
Phone: 3917 5652
Email: shhoc@hku.hk
Consultation hour: Thursday 2:00-3:00 pm
Tutor Coordinator:
Tutor:
Mr. Terry Tse
Ms. Cedar Chan
Office: Rm 619, Jockey Club Tower
Office: Rm 613, Jockey Club Tower
Phone: 3917 8231
Phone: 3917 8226
Email: yltsec@hku.hk
Email: cedarhku@gmail.com
Consultation hour: Monday 1:30-2:30pm
Consultation hour: Wednesday 2:30-3:30pm
Course Objectives:
This course provides an introduction to developmental psychology from a life-span perspective. Different
aspects of development, including physical, cognitive, social, and personality development, will be introduced.
Basic concepts, issues, research methods, and theories of development will also be discussed.
Learning Outcomes:
1) Acquire a better understanding of different aspects of human development from a life-span perspective.
2) Gain hands-on experience in applying psychological concepts and research methods by conducting
developmental psychology projects.
3) Reflect productively on one’s own development from a psychological perspective.
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Lecture Details
Lectures
Dates
Topics (Instructor)
Readings in
textbook
FOUNDATIONS OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
1
Jan 19
Basic Concepts and Methods
Ch. 1
2
Jan 26
Theories of Development
Ch. 2
FROM CONCEPTION TO BIRTH
3
Feb 2
Prenatal Development and Birth
Ch. 3
INFANCY (age 0-2)
4
Feb 16
Physical and Cognitive Development
Chs. 4-5
5
Feb 23
Social and Personality Development
Ch. 6
EARLY CHILDHOOD (age 2-6)
6
Mar 1
Physical and Cognitive Development
Ch. 7
7
Mar 15
Social and Personality Development
Ch. 8
MIDDLE CHILDHOOD (age 6-12)
8
Mar 22
Physical and Cognitive Development
Ch. 9
9
Mar 29
Social and Personality Development
Ch. 10
ADOLESCENCE (age 12-20)
10
Apr 5
Physical and Cognitive Development
Ch. 11
11
Apr 12
Social and Personality Development
Ch. 12
ADULTHOOD (age over 20)
12
Apr 19
Overview
13
Apr 26
Final Quiz (Venue: TBC)
Chs. 13-19
-
Textbook:
Boyd, D., & Bee, H. (2015). Lifespan Development (7th Ed.). Boston: Pearson.
Lecture materials:
A short version of the lecture slides and supplementary materials, if any, for each lecture will be posted onto
Moodle before each lecture. Please download the lecture materials before attending the lecture.
Lecture optional readings:
Please refer to p. 8 for a list of lecture optional readings. These readings are for your personal interest at a
multi-perspective view of the topic and will not be tested in the examination. Other additional reference
materials will be given in each lecture.
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Moodle System
1. All course related materials are placed on Moodle.
2. To access Moodle (if you have enrolled for this course),
a. Login HKU portal first (http://www.hku.hk/portal)
b. Select “My eLearning” tab
c. Select “1. Click to access your Moodle courses, if any”
d. Select our course PSYC2009_2B_2015 Life-span Developmental Psychology [Section 2B, 2015]
3. Please contact the course coordinator Mr Terry Tse (yltsec@hku.hk) if you have problems concerning the
use of Moodle.
Course Assessment & Requirements
Tutorial participation
10%
4 Tutorial admission tickets
10%
Group project presentation
10%
Group project report
20%
Personal portfolio
20%
Final Quiz (MCQs constitute 13.5% of course total)
30%
Tutorial participation (10%)
a.
Both attendance and participation during the tutorials will be counted.
b.
Students are expected to be punctual to the tutorials. There will be a mark deduction of 0.5% for arriving
20 minutes or above late in a tutorial.
Admission tickets (4 tickets @2.5%, Total 10%)
a. There will be an assigned reading for each of the four tutorials, available on e-reserve. (please refer to the
tutorial reading list on p. 9)
b. You need to submit a softcopy of the admission ticket to the course moodle after reading each assigned
article, 24 hours before the start of your tutorial slot.
c. Each admission ticket should not exceed 300 words (excluding references)
d. There will be a penalty of 0.25 marks out of 2.5 for each hour late.
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Group projects
Tutorial
Group
Topic
Participants
Project
1
Orientation & discussion on Nature vs. Nurture (no group project presentation)
2
1
Conservation
5 children between 5 and 8 years of age
3
2
Parenting
6 parents with children at pre-school or primary
Style
grade, 3 Chinese and 3 non-Chinese
Moral
12 participants, 3 in each group:
Reasoning
1. under age six (in his/her early childhood)
4
3
2. above age six but under age twelve (in his/her
middle childhood)
3. around twenty (in his/her adolescence)
4. above thirty (in his/her adulthood)
Group project presentation (10%)
a.
Your tutor will assign you into three groups in the first tutorial, each group working on one group
project topic only.
b.
You are required to do a 20-minute group presentation at the tutorial, summarizing the data you
have collected.
c.
There is no need to include any analysis of your data at your presentation, but some knowledge of
the relevant psychological theories and concepts will help your summary and organization.
d.
There is no need to submit any paper work at this point.
Group project report (20%)
a.
Your collected data will be thoroughly discussed in the tutorial, with inputs from your classmates
and tutor. This should equip you with better confidence on how to analyze your data.
b.
Each group needs to submit one group project report only.
c.
Your group project report should include the followings:
i.
Signed consent form of each participant
ii.
Your group project recording sheets
iii.
Analysis and interpretation (word limit: 1500 words excluding references).
d.
Deadline: two weeks after the end of your tutorial presentation session.
e.
There will be a penalty of 2 marks out of 20 for each hour late.
A peer rating form to evaluate the contribution of each group member is available in the Course Moodle.
Please read the instructions on the form before filling in it. Marks may be adjusted based on peer ratings.
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Personal portfolio (20%)
Portfolio is a type of performance assessment that helps students personalize their learning. Self-reflection is
the core of this portfolio assessment.
In this assignment, you are to prepare a portfolio about yourself. We want you to relate what you have learned
in this course to your own experience. There is no fixed format for the portfolio. You may include photos,
cliparts, cartoons or charts.
In the portfolio:
Part A:
Your history of development (Up to ten Powerpoint slides, with brief text in font size 20 or larger
and optional visual aids such as photos, cartoons, charts)
1.
Give a brief account of your own history of development in one or two selected aspects (about your
physical, language, cognitive, social, or personality development).
2.
Find incidents or experiences that are worth exploring by:



glancing through your photo albums;

observing the parent-child interactions around you; ……
talking to your parents, caretakers, elder siblings, or cousins;
thinking thoroughly about yourself after lectures and tutorials;
Identify several incidents or experiences that are about selected aspects of development relevant to what
you have learned in this course and that you would like to share.
These incidents or experiences can be selected from your infancy onwards up to adolescence.
3.
Collect the information needed to describe the incidents or experiences in details.
Part B: Reflection (Up to 1500 words, double spacing, font size 12)
4.
Reflect on those experiences and discuss how certain developmental theories and research findings can
be used to account for your experiences.



For example:
Do the theories account for your behavior?
Is your cognitive or motor development stage-like?
How is your case special or deviant from the norm? ....
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Here are some suggested topics:
INFANCY
Motor development
Babbling or talking
Preterm baby
Vocabulary spurt
Conditioning
Attachment to parents (mother vs. father)
Discriminating caretakers from other people
Stranger anxiety
Object permanence
Sense of self (subjective/ objective)
Imitation
Effects of day care
EARLY CHILDHOOD
Language development
Gender concept
Theory of mind
Self-control
Egocentrism
Emotions
Relationships with siblings or peers
MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
Logical thinking (Inductive/ Deductive)
Self-esteem
Schooling
Media effects
Relationships with parents, siblings or peers
ADOLESCENCE
Puberty
Relationships with parents, siblings or peers
Moral reasoning
Romance relationships
Identity vs. role confusion
Delinquency
Page limits:
Ten Powerpoint slides (font size at least 20) for Part A
1500 words (double spacing, font size 12) for Part B
Evaluation of the assignment:

Organization and expression (40%) – clarity and cohesion in presenting the relevant experience
and information

Application of psychological theories and research (50%) – how relevant theories and research
findings in human development are applied in interpreting personal experience and development

Creativity (10%) – materials based on multiple sources of information and use of interesting and
effective formats
Deadline for submission: 6th May, 2016 (Friday) on or before 5:30 pm
Hardcopy of the whole portfolio (both Part A and Part B) has to be submitted to your tutor’s mailbox at Rm
627, Jockey Club Tower, Centennial Building. Students are also required to submit the softcopy of Part B to
the Course Moodle.
Penalty for late submission: 2 marks out of 20 for each 12 hours late.
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Ethical Considerations
1. Consent for collecting data
a.
You need to get written consent from your participant or their parent/guardian before conducting
your data collection.
b.
Sample consent forms are placed in Moodle under the section Tutorial>Consent forms.
c.
Ask your participant or parent/guardian to sign the form, and hand it at the beginning of your group
project presentation tutorial.
d.
If you cannot submit the consent forms, we will not allow you to present and you will receive zero
mark for your group project presentation, for we consider such data might be collected unethically.
2. Using, storing and destroying your data
a.
The data you have collected should only be used for your own analysis and group project
presentation.
b.
c.
Make sure the data contains no personal identifier, by:
i.
Not mentioning the participants’ information during your presentation
ii.
Labeling your audio record by numbers, not names of your participants
Never upload any audio records onto facebook, or share it with anyone apart from your groupmates
or your tutorial classmates during the presentation.
d.
Destroy the audio record after you have submitted your group project report. Do not keep any
copies with you.
3. Data fabrication
a.
Select excerpts of your audio recording and play it during your group project presentation as a
proof of authentic data. Be sure the excerpt does not contain any personal identifier of the
participants, such as their names.
b.
If you do not include such excerpts in your presentation, you will receive zero mark for your group
project presentation.
4. Academic honesty
a.
We cherish academic honesty. Things other people wrote (whether published or unpublished) may
be used in your assignments only with proper acknowledgement and referencing. Plagiarism will
not be tolerated.
b.
A softcopy is required for all written assignments.
c.
The softcopy will be checked for plagiarism against a database of articles, books, webpages, and
essays submitted by students at HKU and other universities.
d.
No credit will be given for any individual or group assignment that contains plagiarized materials.
Further penalties would also be applied at the discretion of the lecturer, including a zero mark for
the course. Plagiarism will also be reported to your Faculty for consideration of possible
disciplinary action.
e.
For group projects, any plagiarized work will result in penalty for the whole group. If you suspect
your groupmates might have contributed plagiarized work, inform your lecturer or tutor BEFORE
submission of the project.
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Lecture Optional Readings
All the articles are placed on the library e-reserve. Follow the instructions below to retrieve them:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
Go to library page “http://lib.hku.hk”
There is an option “Course Reserves by Instructor or Course”. Click on “Course”
Type in “PSYC2009” and click “submit search’
Click on link “View full articles - Online Course Pack/e-Reserve”
If you are accessing from with HKU, you will be directly brought to the articles. If you are accessing
from outside campus, you will need to enter your HKU portal UID and pin.
File
Lecture
Article
PSYC0009L_01
PSYC0009L_02
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PSYC0009L_03
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PSYC0009L_04
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PSYC0009L_05
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PSYC0009L_06
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PSYC0009L_08
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PSYC0009L_09
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PSYC0009L_10
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PSYC0009L_11
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PSYC0009L_12
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PSYC0009L_13
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PSYC0009L_14
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PSYC0009L_15
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PSYC0009L_16
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Cloud, J. (2010). Why genes aren’t destiny. Time, 175, 48-53.
Newton-Small J. (2012). Frozen Assets. Time, 48-52.
Hepper, P. (2005) Unravelling our beginnings. The Psychologist, Vol
18(8), 474-477
Bryant, P.E. (1992). Arithmetic in the cradle. Nature, 358, 712-713.
Wynn, K. (1992). Addition and subtraction by human infants.
Nature, 358, 749-750.
Rosenstein, D., & Harriet, O. (1988). Differential facial responses to
four basic tastes in newborns. Child Development, 59, 1555-1568.
Raine, A., Reynolds, C., Venables, P. H., & Mednick, S. A. (2002).
Stimulation seeking and intelligence: A prospective longitudinal study.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 663-674.
Diamond, A. (2000). Close interrelation of motor development and
cognitive development and of the cerebellum and prefrontal cortex.
Child Development, 71, 44-56.
Brown, L., & Iyengar, S. (2008). Parenting Styles: The Impact on
Student Achievement. Marriage & Family Review, 43, 14 – 38.
Lobel, T. E., Bar-David, E., Gruber, R., Lau, S., Bar-Tal, Y. (2000).
Gender schema and social judgments: A developmental study of
children from Hong Kong. Sex Roles, 43, 19-42.
Winer, G.A. and McGlone, C. (1993). On the Uncertainty of
Conservation: Responses to Misleading Conservation Questions.
Developmental Psychology, 29 (4), 760-769.
Appel, L. F., Cooper, R. G., McCarrell, N., Sims-Knight, J., Yussen,
S.R., Flavell, J.H. (1972). The development of the distinction between
perceiving and memorizing. Child Development, 43, 1365-1381.
Harter, S. (1982). Perceived Competence Scale for Children. Child
Development, 53, 87-97.
Alberts, A., Elkind, D., Ginsberg, S. (2007). The personal fable and
risk-taking in early adolescence. Journal of Youth Adolescence, 36,
71-76.
Yancey, A.K., Siegel, J.M., McDaniel, K.L. (2002). Role models, ethnic
identity, and health-risk behaviors in urban adolescents. Archives of
Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 156, 55-61.
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Tutorial Reading List
You are required to study the articles/book chapter before attending your tutorial.
File
PSYC0009T_01
Tutorial
1
PSYC0009T_05
2
PSYC0009T_09
3
PSYC0009T_02
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Article
Diamond, M., & Sigmundson, H.K. (1997). Sex Reassignment at
Birth: long-term review and clinical implications. Archives of
Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 151, 298-304.
Light, P. (1986). Context, Conservation and Conversation. In M.
Richards & P. Light (Eds.), Children of social worlds (pp. 219-237).
Cambridge: Polity.
Wu, P., Robinson, C.C., Yang, C., Hart, C. H., Olsen, S. F., Porter,
C. L., Jin, S., Wo, J., & Wu, X (2002). Similarities and differences
in mothers’ parenting of preschoolers in China and the United
States. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 26,
481-491.
Kohlberg, L. (2008). The development of children’s orientations
toward a moral order: I. Sequence in the development of moral
thought. Human development, 51, 8-20.
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