Development Across the
Life Span
Developmental Psychology
Human Development
 Development is best understood in terms of a continuous
interplay of biology and experience.
 Human development is the scientific study of the changes that
occur in people as they age, from conception until death. It is
examining the physical, emotional, cognitive, and social aspects
of development.
Three Developmental Research Designs:
 1) Longitudinal design – observes the same people repeatedly
over time. Longitudinal studies are done to see, e.g., how
personality and behavior change over time. Do shy children
become shy adults. The major strength of longitudinal research
is that it allows investigators to examine developmental
processes by observing changes in the same individuals over
time. A drawback is that the study sample may not be
representative of the larger population, which limits the ability to
generalize the results beyond the study group.
Cross-Sectional Design
 2) The cross-sectional design observes people of
different ages at the same point in time. A
problem with this method is the possibility of a
cohort effect – the differences between age
groups as a function of historical or social
influences affecting those groups rather than age
per se.
 3) The cross-sequential design is a combination
of the longitudinal and cross-sectional designs in
which participants are first studied by means of a
cross-sectional design but are also followed and
assessed for a period of no more than six years.
What is the relationship between heredity and
environmental factors in determining development?
 Nature (heredity-that which comes from
within the person) refers to the influence of
inherited characteristics on personality,
physical growth, intellectual growth, and
social interactions. Nurture (refers to things
that occur outside of the person)refers to the
influence of the environment on personality,
physical growth, intellectual growth, and
social interactions, along with parenting
styles, physical surroundings, economic
factors etc.
Prenatal Development
 __________________ is the science of heredity,
dealing with resemblances and differences of
related organisms resulting from the interaction
of their genes and the environment.
 _______________ is a special molecule that
contains the genetic material of the organism.
 ___________ is the basic physical unit of
heredity; a linear sequence of nucleotides along
a segment of DNA that provides the coded
instructions for synthesis of RNA (ribonucleic
acid), which, when translated into protein leads to
the expression of hereditary character.
Prenatal Development
 _______________ is a threadlike body consisting of
chromatin (a substance of a cell nucleus, consisting
of DNA, RNA, and various proteins, that forms
chromosomes during cell division), that carry the
genes in a linear order; the human species has 23
pairs, designated 1 to 22 in order of decreasing size
and X and Y for the female and male sex
chromosomes respectively.
 _______________ refers to a gene that actively
controls the expression of a trait.
 _______________ refers to a gene that only
influences the expression of a trait when paired with
an identical gene.
Genetic and Chromosome
Problems
 There are several genetic disorders that are
carried by recessive genes. Diseases carried by
recessive genes are inherited when a child
inherits two recessive genes, one from each
parent, e.g., cystic fibrosis – a disease of the
respiratory and digestive tracts, causing
progressive disability and death. It’s an inherited
disease that causes the body to produce mucus
that is extremely thick and sticky. This thick,
sticky mucus clogs passages in many of the
body’s organs and infection sets in.
Genetic and Chromosome
Problems
 Tay-Sachs disorder – Is a rare genetic disorder that
causes waste to build up in the cells of the brain due to a
lack of Hex-A enzyme attacking the neurological functions.
There is no cure for infantile Tay-Sachs.
An example of a chromosome disorder is Down syndrome, a
disorder in which there is an extra chromosome in what
would normally be the twenty-first pair.
Klinefelter’s syndrome – the twenty-third pair has an extra
sex chromosomes, XXY. Having the extra X produces a
male with reduced masculine characteristics.
Turner’s syndrome – the twenty-third pair is missing an X, so
that the result is a lone X chromosome, making the female
sexually underdeveloped.
From Conception to Birth
 Conception – Is the process of becoming
pregnant involving fertilization or implantation
or both. Can also refer to the originating of
something in the mind.
 The female sex cell is called____________.
 The union of the ovum and sperm is
_______________.
 The cell resulting from the uniting of the ovum
and sperm is called _________________ and
it has 46 chromosomes.
Prenatal Development
 The male of the species carries both an X and a Y chromosome,
whereas the female carries two X chromosomes. Each
reproductive cell, the sperm (germ cell) in males and the ovum
(egg cell) in females – contains only one sex chromosome. All
other body cells have two sex chromosomes. Thus, a sperm
cell carries either one X or one Y sex chromosome, and an
ovum carries only one X. During ovulation, an ovum is released
from an ovary and then begins a slow journey through a
fallopian tube. If fertilization occurs, the resulting combination
(XX for females or XY for males) of the sex chromosomes in the
fertilized ovum determines the baby’s sex. The fertilized ovum
is a single cell, called a ____________________, that soon
undergoes cell division.
 A pregnancy typically lasts _________ days, or about nine
months, which are commonly divided into three trimesters.
Three major prenatal stages can be identified: the
germinal stage, embryonic stage, and fetal stage. The
germinal period corresponds to roughly the first two weeks
after conception. The placenta also begins to form during
this period. It is a specialized organ that provides
______________ and _______________ away waste
products from the developing baby. Also, the umbilical
cord begins to develop at this time, connecting the
organism to the __________________. It is during the
germinal stage that cells develop into specialized cells in
preparation for becoming all the various kinds of cells that
make up the human body.
intrauterus growth
 The embryonic stage covers the period from
____________________ to about the eighth week of
pregnancy. The major organ systems begin to take shape
in the developing organism, which we call the embryo.
About three weeks into pregnancy, two ridges fold
together to form the neural tube, from which the nervous
system will develop. The head and blood vessels also
begin to form at this time. By the fourth week, a primitive
heart takes shape and begins to beat. The embryo is
suspended in a protective environment within the mother’s
uterus called the amniotic sac. By the end of eight weeks
following conception, although no organ is fully developed
or completely functional, nearly all are “there.”
The Embryonic Period
 Critical Periods – The embryo becomes
vulnerable to hazards such as diseases of the
mother as soon as the embryo begins to
receive nourishment from the mother through
the placenta.
 Nutrients and waste materials are exchanged
between the mother and embryo through the
______________________, which is connected to
the embryo by the umbilical cord. The placenta
allows nutrients and oxygen to pass from mother to
fetus. Their blood streams do not mix. The fetal
stage, or stage of the fetus, begins around the ninth
week of pregnancy and continues until the birth of the
child. All of the major organ systems, as well as the
fingers and toes, are formed by about the twelfth
week of prenatal development, which roughly
corresponds to the end of the first trimester.
 By the end of the ____________________________
, the fetus approaches the age of viability, the point
at which it becomes capable of sustaining life on its
own.
 THREATS TO PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT :
Maternal malnutrition is associated with a greater risk
of premature birth (birth prior to thirty-seven weeks of
gestation) and low birth weight (less than 5 pounds).
Folic acid greatly reduces the risk of neural tube
defects such as spina bifida (the child is born with a
hole in the tube surrounding the spinal cord), but only
if it is taken early in pregnancy.
 ________________ refers to an environmental
influence or agent that may harm the developing
embryo or fetus, causing a birth defect.
Teratogenic Agents
 Rubella or German measles is a common childhood
disease that can lead to serious birth defects,
including heart disease, deafness, and mental
retardation, if contracted during pregnancy.
 SMOKING: Maternal smoking can lead to
miscarriage, premature birth, low birth weight, and
increased risk of infant mortality, increased risks of
SIDS, childhood asthma, as well as developmental
problems such as reduced attention span, lower IQ,
and hyperactivity.
 ALCOHOL AND DRUGS: FAS is the leading
preventable cause of mental retardation, affecting as
many as 40,000 babies in the United States.
The Fetal Period
 The fetal period begins around the ninth week of
pregnancy and continues until the birth of the
child. The most likely time for a miscarriage, or
spontaneous abortion, is in the first
__________________, as the organs are
forming and first becoming functional. Typically
the mother will feel the first fetal movements
around the middle of the fourth month.
 By the end of the second trimester, the fetus
approaches the age of viability, the point at which
it becomes capable of sustaining life on its own.
Infancy and childhood
Development
 Fig. 8.4 - A reflex is an unlearned, automatic response to a
particular stimulus. Rooting reflex is the reflexive turning of the
newborn’s head in the direction of a touch on its cheek. Moro
reflex is when the infant extends its arms, arches its back, and
brings its arms toward each other as though attempting to grab
hold of someone. Palmar grasp reflex is the reflexive curling of
the infant’s fingers around an object that touches its palm.
Maturation refers to the biological unfolding of the organism
according to the underlying genetic code. SENSORY AND
PERCEPTUAL ABILITY: Shortly after birth infants begin making
meaningful sensory and perceptual discriminations among
various stimuli. Birth to 1 month the child has blurry vision, but
sees more clearly at short distances and shows preferences for
facelike stimuli and responds to certain facial features. Their
sense of touch is the most well developed; whereas their sense
of vision, is least developed at birth.
Six Motor Milestones
 1) Raising head and chest – 2 to 4 months.
 2) Rolling over – 2 to 5 months.
 3) Sitting up with support – 4 to 6 months.
 4) Sitting up without support – 6 to 7 months.
 5) Crawling – 7 to 8 months.
 6) Walking – 8 to 18 months.
Cognitive Development
 Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development:
A schema is a mental framework for understanding or
acting on the environment.
According to Piaget, adaptation is a process by which
people adapt or change to meet challenges in the
environment more effectively. Adaptation consists of
two complementary processes: assimilation and
accommodation. Assimilation is the process of
incorporation new objects or situations into existing
schemas. Accommodation is the process of altering
existing schemas or creating new ones to deal with
objects or experiences that don’t fit readily into
existing schemas.
Stages of Cognitive Development
 Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 years): During this stage, the
infant explores its world by using its senses and applying its
developing motor skills. The infant’s intelligence is expressed
through action and purposeful manipulation of objects.
Object permanence – Refers to the recognition that objects
continue to exist even if they have disappeared from sight.
Preoperational Stage (2 to 7 years): This stage describe the
cognitive abilities of children who lack the ability to perform
basic logical operations-to apply basic principles of logic to their
experiences. During this period, the child has the ability to form
mental or symbolic representations (symbols that stand for
names and experiences; specifically, the words in a language)
of the world. The preoperational child demonstrates
egocentrism, the tendency to view the world only from one’s
own perspective.
 Egocentrism leads to animistic thinking which is the child’s belief
that inanimate objects have living qualities. Irreversibility is the
inability to reverse the direction of a sequence of events to their
starting point. Centration is the tendency to focus on only one
aspect of a situation at a time to the exclusion of all other
aspects. Conservation is the ability to recognize that the quantity
or amount of an object remains constant despite superficial
changes in its outward appearance.
 Concrete Operational Stage (7 to 11 years): The stage of
concrete operations is marked by the development of
conservation.
 Formal Operational Stage (begins around age 11). The stage of
formal operations is the final one in Piaget’s theory- the stage of
full cognitive maturity. This stage is characterized by the ability
to think logically about abstract ideas, generate hypotheses, and
think deductively.
 Egocentrism – The tendency to see the world
only from one’s own perspective.
 Centration – The tendency to focus on only one
aspect of a situation at a time.
 Conservation – The ability to recognize that the
quantity or amount of an object remains constant
despite superficial changes in its outward
appearance.
 Irreversibility – Is the inability to reverse the
direction of a sequence of events to their starting
point.
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory of
Cognitive Development
 Vygotsky was concerned primarily with how children
come to understand their social world. He believed
that learning is acquired through a gradual process of
social interactions between children and parents,
teachers, and other members of the culture.
Vygotsky emphasized that social learning occurs
within a zone of proximal development which refers
to the range between the skills children can currently
perform and those they could perform if they received
proper guidance and instruction from people with
greater expertise. Scaffolding is tailoring the degree
and type of instruction to the child’s current level of
ability or knowledge.
Language Development
 Early views of language development were
based o Skinnerian principles of reinforcement.
Noam Chomsky, however, proposed a LAD
(language acquisition device), an innate program
that contained a schema for human language.
 Newer theories of language development are
focusing on environmental influences on
language such as “child-directed speech” – the
way adults and older children talk to infants with
higher pitched, repetitious patterns. Also, infants
seem to understand far more than they can
produce, a phenomenon known as the
“receptive-productive lag”.
Stages of Language Development
 1. Cooing: vowel like sounds at around 2 months.
 2. Babbling: infants adding consonant sounds to
the vowels at about 6 months.
 3. One-word speech: The saying of actual words
just before or around age 1.
 4. Telegraphic speech: Is the stringing of words
together to form short simple sentences using
nouns, verbs, and adjectives at around a year
and a half.
 5. Whole sentences: Is the use of grammatical
terms as the child moves through the preschool
years.
Psychosocial Development
 Temperament is a characteristic style of behavior or disposition.
Three general types of temperament that could be used to
classify about two out of three of the children in the study group:
1. Easy children – These children are playful and respond
positively to new stimuli. 2. Difficult children – Are children that
react negatively to new situations or people; 3. Slow-to-warm-up
children – These children have low activity levels; avoid novel
stimuli; require more time to adjust to new situations than most
children; and typically react to unfamiliar situations by becoming
withdrawn.
 Children with more adaptable or flexible temperaments
interacted more effectively and cooperatively with their peers
than did children with less adaptable temperaments.
Temperament is also link to early language acquistion.
Attachment
 Attachment is the enduring emotional bond that
infants and older children form with their caregivers.
Bonding is the process by which parents develop
strong ties to their newborn.
 ATTACHMENT IN HUMAN INFANTS: Ainsworth and
colleagues noted three basic attachment styles plus
one more discovered by researchers:
1) Secure type;
2) Avoidant type (Type A);
3) Ambivalent type (Type C); and
4) Disorganized/disoriented.
 Secure type attachment, infants use their mothers as
a secure base for exploring the environment,
periodically checking on her whereabouts and limiting
exploration when she was absent.
 Avoidant type, these infants paid little attention to the
mother when she was in the room and separated
easily from her to explore the environment.
 Ambivalent type, were infants who clung to the
mother and were reluctant to explore the environment
despite the presence of desirable toys.
 Disorganized/disoriented attachment, these infants
appeared to lack a consistent or organized strategy
for responding to separations and reunions.
Attachment and Later Development
 Attachment behaviors affect development throughout life. A lack of
solid attachments in adult life is linked to poorer physical and emotional
health. Internal working models refers to the generalized expectations,
developed in early childhood, about how others are likely to respond in
close relationships. The more securely attached infant is likely to have
higher self-esteem, to show greater co-operativeness and
independence, to have fewer problem behaviors and to exhibit better
overall emotional health.
 CHILD-REARING INFLUENCES: Many factors influence a child’s
intellectual, emotional, and social development, including genetics,
peer group influences, and the quality of parenting. The Father’s
Influence: 1) Children whose fathers share meals with them, spend
leisure time with them, and assist them with schoolwork tend to perform
better academically than those with less engaged fathers; 2) Fathers
are more likely than mothers to encourage children to be independent
and assertive and to take risks, and 3) Fathers tend to engage in more
physically active play with their children.
Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial
Development
 Erikson believed that our personalities are shaped by how we
deal with a series of psychosocial crises or challenges during
the each of the stages.
Trust vs. Mistrust – Is the first psychosocial challenge the infant
faces in its social environment. Birth to 1 year old.
Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt – In this stage, the central
psychosocial challenge faced during the second and third years
of life concerns autonomy.
Initiative vs. Guilt - This stage, corresponding to the preschool
years of 3 to 5, is a time of climbing gyms and play dates, a time
at which the child is challenged to initiate actions and carry them
out.
Industry vs. Inferiority - At this stage, which corresponds to the
elementary school period of 5 to 12 years, the child faces the
central challenge of developing industriousness and selfconfidence.
Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages of
Development
 Identity vs. Role Confusion – Adolescents are faced
with deciding who or what they want to be in terms of
occupation, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior patterns.
Age 13 – early 20’s.
 Intimacy vs. Isolation – The task is trying to share
who they are with another person in a close,
committed relationship. Age 20’s- 30’s.
 Generativity vs. Stagnation - The challenge to be
creative, productive, and nurturant of the next
generation. Age 40’s – 50’s.
 Ego Integrity vs. Despair – The focus is on whether a
person will reach wisdom, spiritual tranquility, a
sense of wholeness, and acceptance of his or her
life. Age 60 and higher.
Gender Role Development
 ___________ - Is the behavior associated with
being male or female.
 ____________ - Is the perception of one’s
gender and the behavior that is associated with
that gender.
 __________________ - The period of life
beginning at puberty and ending with early
adulthood.
 ____________ - The stage of development at
which individuals become physiologically capable
of reproducing.
Adolescence
 Personal fable – The common belief among
adolescents that their feelings and
experiences cannot possibly be understood
by others and that they are personally
invulnerable to harm. *Not in crime ridden
neighborhoods- kids feel that they may not
live to see 25 y.o.
 Imaginary audience – Young people believe
that other people are just as concerned about
the adolescent’s thoughts and characteristics
as they themselves are.
Development of Morality –
Lawrence Kohlberg
 Preconventional morality – the consequences
determine morality; behavior that is rewarded is right;
that which is punished is wrong.
 Conventional morality – Conformity to social norms is
the right thing to do.
 Postconventional morality – Moral principles
determined by the person are used to determined
right and wrong and may disagree with societal
norms.
 Carol Gilligan – proposed that men and women have
different perspectives on morality. Men tend to judge
as moral the actions that lead to a fair or just end,
whereas women tend to judge as moral the actions
that are nonviolent and hurt the fewest people.
Parenting Styles
 Diana Baumrind identified three basic parenting styles:
Authoritative, Authoritarian, and Permissive.
1) Authoritative parents set reasonable limits for their children but
are not overcontrolling. The parent is the authority figure, firm
but understanding, willing to give advice, but also willing to listen
to children’s concerns.
2) Authoritarian parents are rigid and overcontrolling. They expect
and demand unquestioned obedience from their children.
3) Permissive parents have an anything goes attitude toward
raising their children. They may respond affectionately to
children but are extremely lax in setting limits and imposing
discipline (permissive indulgent). Permissive neglectful is when
the parents are uninvolved with their child.
Theories of Physical and
Psychological Aging
 Cellular clock theory – States that cells are limited in
the number of times they can reproduce to repair
damage.
 Wear-and-tear theory of aging – States that the
body’s organs and cell tissues simply wear out with
repeated use and abuse.
 Free Radical Theory – Free radicals are oxygen
molecules that have an unstable electron that steal
electrons from other molecules thereby increasing
the damage to structures inside the cell.
 Activity Theory - People live longer and seemingly
are happier that are actively involved with other
people; helping people.
Stages of Death and Dying –
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
 1) Denial
 2) Anger
 3) Bargaining
 4) Depression
 5) Acceptance
 THE END
 Study
Study
Study