Lifespan Development

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• Developmental psychology
– scientific study of ways in which people change, as
well as stay the same, from conception to death
• change across a broad range of topics
– physical and other psychophysiological processes,
cognition, language, and psychosocial development,
– including the impact of family and peers
• the field has expanded to include adolescence
and more recently, aging and the entire life span

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• Whether
– «early childhood experiences dictate our future»
or
– growth and change continues throughout life
experience continues to have an impact on who we
are and how we relate to others

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• whether • whether
– children are qualitatively – children are born with innate
different from adults knowledge
or or
– simply lack the experience – figure things out through
that adults draw upon experience

• whether • whether
– development occurs through – development is driven by the
the gradual accumulation of social context
knowledge
or
or
– through shifts from one stage – something inside each child
of thinking to another

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• The field informs several applied fields in
psychology including
– educational psychology,
– psychopathology,
– forensic psychology,
– social psychology,
– cognitive psychology,
– comparative psychology,
– biology, sociology, health care, nutrition, anthropology

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Lıfe cycle of the ındıvıdual

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• Principles of the lifespan perspective

– Development is lifelong
• change is apparent across the lifespan
• no single age period is more crucial, characterizes, or
dominates human development

– Development is multidirectional
• humans change in many directions

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• Development is multidimensional
– change across three general domains/dimensions;
physical, cognitive, and psychosocial.
• The physical domain includes changes in height and weight,
sensory capabilities, the nervous system, as well as the
propensity for disease and illness
• The cognitive domain encompasses the changes in
intelligence, wisdom, perception, problem solving, memory,
and language
• The psychosocial domain focuses on changes in emotion,
self perception and interpersonal relationships with families,
peers, and friends.
• All three domains influence each other
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– Development is multidisciplinary
• requires the theories, research methods, and
knowledge base of many academic disciplines

– Development is characterized by plasticity

• Plasticity is all about our ability to change and that
many of our characteristics are malleable

– Development is multicontextual
• three specific contextual influences
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• Normative age-graded influences:
– An age-grade is a specific age group, such as toddler, adolescent, or senior
– Humans in a specific age-grade share particular experiences and
developmental changes

• Normative history-graded influences:

– The time period in which you are born shapes your experiences
– A cohort is a group of people who are born at roughly the same period in a
particular society. These people travel through life often experiencing similar
circumstances
– Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z, war, pandemic

• Non-normative life influences:

– Despite sharing an age and history with our peers, each of us also has unique
experiences that may shape our development.
• A child who loses his/her parent at a young age has experienced a life event that is not
typical of the age group

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• Another context that influences individual’s life is
– social standing, socioeconomic status, or social class
– Socioeconomic status (SES) is a way to identify
families and households based on their shared levels
of education, income, and occupation
– members of a social class tend to share similar
• lifestyles,
• patterns of consumption,
• parenting styles,
• stressors,
• religious preferences,
• and other aspects of daily life
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• Poverty level is
– an income amount established by the federal government
– that is based on a set of income thresholds that vary by family size

• Poverty is associated with

– poorer health and a lower life expectancy due to poorer diet,
– less healthcare,
– greater stress,
– working in more dangerous occupations,
– higher infant mortality rates,
– poorer prenatal care,
– greater iron deficiencies,
– greater difficulty in school,
– and many other problems.

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• The impact of culture and the environment
• Culture is
– the totality of our shared language, knowledge,
material objects, and behavior
• Culture teaches us how to live in a society
• Culture is learned from
– parents, schools, houses of worship (religion),
media, friends and others throughout a lifetime

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• Lifespan vs. Life expectancy:
– Lifespan, or longevity
• the length of time a species can exist under the most
optimal conditions

– Life expectancy
• the predicted number of years a person born in a
particular time period can reasonably expect to live

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• Conceptions of Age
– Chronological age
• based on the number of years since birth

– Biological age
• how quickly the body is aging
• nutrition, level of physical activity, sleeping habits,
smoking, alcohol consumption, how we mentally
handle stress, and the genetic history of our ancestors

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• Psychological age
– psychologically adaptive capacity compared to others of
chronological age
– includes cognitive capacity along with emotional beliefs about
how old we are

• Social age
– based on the social norms of culture and the expectations
culture has for people of individual’s age group
– reaching certain social milestones,
• such as completing education, moving away from home, having
children, or retiring from work

• Age profile
– much more complex
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• Periods of Development
– Prenatal
• Starts at conception, continues through implantation in the uterine wall by the embryo,
and ends at birth
– Infancy and Toddlerhood
• Starts at birth and continues to two years of age
– Early Childhood
• Starts at two years of age until six years of age
– Middle and Late Childhood
• Starts at six years of age and continues until the onset of puberty
– Adolescence
• Starts at the onset of puberty until 18
– Emerging Adulthood
• Starts at 18 until 25
– Early Adulthood
• Starts at 25 until 40-45
– Middle Adulthood
• Starts at 40-45 until 65
– Late Adulthood
• Starts at 65 onward 29
• Prenatal Development
– Conception occurs and development begins
– All of the major structures of the body are
forming
– The health of the mother is of primary concern
– Understanding nutrition, teratogens, or
environmental factors that can lead to birth
defects, and labor and delivery are primary
concerns

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• Infancy and Toddlerhood
– The first two years of life are ones of dramatic
growth and change
– Caregivers are also transformed from someone
who manages feeding and sleep schedules to a
constantly moving guide and safety inspector for a
mobile, energetic child

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• Early Childhood
– preschool,
– two to six-year-old,
– the child is busy learning language,
– is gaining a sense of self and greater
independence,
– is beginning to learn the workings of the physical
world

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• Middle and Late Childhood
– six to the onset of puberty,
– early grades of school,
– learning and testing new academic skills
– by assessing one’s abilities and accomplishments
and by making comparisons between self and
others

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• Adolescence
– dramatic physical change marked by an overall growth
spurt and sexual maturation, known as puberty
– cognitive change, abstract concepts, sense of
invincibility (risky behaviors)

• Emerging Adulthood
– a transitional time between the end of adolescence
and before individuals acquire all the benchmarks of
adulthood
– Continued identity exploration and preparation for full
independence from parents
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• Early Adulthood
– The twenties and thirties
– Intimate relationships, establishing families, and work
• Middle Adulthood
– The forties through the mid-sixties
– Aging becomes more noticeable, peak of productivity
in love and work
• Late Adulthood
– young-old who are from 65-84 years
– oldest-old who are 85 years and older
– relatively healthy, productive, active, and the majority
continue to live independently, risks of diseases
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• Issues in Lifespan Development
– Nature and Nurture
• features are a result of heredity or environmental factors, or
both
• For decades, scholars have carried on the "nature/nurture"
debate
– For any particular feature, those on the side of nature would
argue that heredity plays the most important role in bringing
about that feature
– Those on the side of nurture would argue that one's
environment is most significant in shaping the way we are
• It is difficult to isolate the root of any single behavior as a
result solely of nature or nurture

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– Continuity versus Discontinuity
• Is human development best characterized as a slow, gradual
process, or is it best viewed as one of more abrupt change?
• Stage theories or discontinuous development
– Freud, Erikson, Piaget, and Kohlberg
– assume that developmental change often occurs in
» distinct stages that are qualitatively different from each
other
» in a set, universal sequence
» at each stage of development, children and adults have
different qualities and characteristics
» development is more discontinuous
• Continuous development
– behaviorists, Vygotsky, and information processing theorists
– assume development is a more slow and gradual process
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– Active versus Passive
• How much do you play a role in your own
developmental path?

– Some theorists see humans as playing a much more active

role in their own development
– Behaviorists view humans as being more passive in the
developmental process

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– Stability versus Change

– How similar are you to how you were as a child?

• personality traits of adults are rooted in the behavioral

and emotional tendencies of the infant and young child

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• Historical Theories on Development
– Preformationist View
• predominant early theory
• little adults
• a tiny, fully formed human is implanted in the sperm or
egg at conception and then grows in size until birth
• children were believed to possess all their sensory
capabilities, emotions, and mental aptitude at birth,
and as they developed these abilities unfolded on a
predetermined schedule
• The environment was thought to play no role in
determining development
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– John Locke
• refuted the idea of innate knowledge
• proposed that children are largely shaped by their social
environments, especially their education as adults teach
them important knowledge
• through education a child learns socialization
• child’s mind as a tabula rasa or blank slate, and whatever
comes into the child’s mind comes from the environment
• the environment is especially powerful in the child’s early
life
• environment exerts its effects through associations between
thoughts and feelings, behavioral repetition, imitation, and
rewards and punishments

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• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
– not just little adults
– not blank slates
– development according to a natural plan which
unfolded in different stages
– children should be allowed to think by themselves
according to their own ways and an inner,
biological timetable
– focus on biological maturation
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• Arnold Gesell
– studied the neuromotor development of children
– child’s development was activated by genes and
he called this process maturation
– development unfolded in fixed sequences, they
will engage in behaviors when their nervous
systems had sufficiently matured

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• Sigmund Freud
– emphasized the importance of early childhood
experiences in shaping our personality and behavior,
– biological beings and are driven primarily by instincts
– become social beings as we learn how to manage our
instincts and transform them into socially acceptable
behaviors
– The ways in which parents or other caregivers
interacted with children were assumed to have a long-
lasting impact on children’s emotional states

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• Contemporary Theories on Development
– Erikson- Psychosocial Theory
– eight developmental stages that encompass the entire
lifespan
– social relationships fostered development

– each period of life has a unique challenge or crisis that the

person who reaches it must face, referred to as
psychosocial crises
• successful development involves dealing with and resolving the
goals and demands of each of these psychosocial crises in a
positive way
• If a person does not resolve a stage successfully, it may hinder
their ability to deal with later stages.

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• Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages
– Birth to 12 to 18 months
• Trust versus Mistrust
• The child develops a feeling of trust in caregivers

– 18 months to 3 years
• Autonomy versus Shame/Doubt
• The child learns what can and cannot be controlled and develops a sense of free will

– 3 to 6 years
• Initiative versus Guilt
• The child learns to become independent by exploring, manipulating, and taking action

– 6 to 12 years
• Industry versus Inferiority
• The child learns to do things well or correctly according to standards set by others,
particularly in school

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– 12 to 18 years
• Identity versus Role Confusion
• The adolescent develops a well-defined and positive sense of self in
relationship to others

– 19 to 40 years
• Intimacy versus Isolation
• The person develops the ability to give and receive love and to make long-
term commitments

– 40 to 65 years
• Generativity versus Stagnation
• The person develops an interest in guiding the development of the next
generation, often by becoming a parent

– 65 to death
• Ego Integrity versus Despair
• The person develops acceptance of how one has lived
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• Learning Theory
– Behaviorism
– Skinner used the ideas of stimulus and response, along with the
application of reinforcements and punishment

• Social Learning Theory

– Albert Bandura
– many of our actions are not learned through conditioning
– young children frequently learn behaviors through learning by
watching others, imitation, modeling or copying the behavior of
others
– there is interplay between the environment and the individual,we
are not just the product of our surroundings, rather we influence our
surroundings
– there is interplay between our personality and the way we interpret
events and how they influence us. This concept is called reciprocal
determinism
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• Cognitive Theory
– The cognitive theories focus on how our mental processes
or cognitions change over time
– Three important theories are Jean Piaget’s, Lev
Vygotsky’s, and Information-processing

• Jean Piaget
– explore children’s ability to think and reason by watching
his own children’s development
– children's intelligence differs from that of adults
– children's intellectual skills change over time
– maturation, rather than training, brings about that change
– children progressed through four stages of cognitive
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• Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
– Sensorimotor
• Birth to about 2 years
• Children experience the world through their fundamental
senses of seeing, hearing, touching, and tasting
• Object permanence
– Preoperational
• 2 to 7 years
• Children acquire the ability to internally represent the world
through language and mental imagery
• They also start to see the world from other people’s
perspectives
• Rapid increase in language ability
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– Concrete operational
• 7 to 11 years
• Children become able to think logically
• They can increasingly perform operations on objects that
are real
• Conservation
– Formal operational
• 11 years to adulthood
• Adolescents can think systematically
• can reason about abstract concepts
• can understand ethics and scientific reasoning
• Abstract logic

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• Lev Vygotsky
– sociocultural theory
– emphasizes the importance of culture and
interaction in the development of cognitive
abilities
– a person not only has a set of abilities, but also a
set of potential abilities that can be realized if
given the proper guidance from others

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• Information Processing
– humans gradually improve in their processing skills
– cognitive development is continuous rather than
stage-like
– The more complex mental skills of adults are built
from the primitive abilities of children
– We are born with the ability to notice stimuli, store,
and retrieve information
– Brain maturation enables advancements in our
information processing system
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• Urie Bronfenbrenner
– Ecological Systems Theory
– provides a framework for understanding and studying the
many influences on human development
– human interaction is influenced by larger social forces
• Microsystem
– the individual’s setting and those who have direct, significant contact
with the person, such as parents or siblings
• Mesosystem
– the larger organizational structures, such as school, the family, or religion
• Exosystem
– the larger contexts of community
• Macrosystem
– the cultural elements
• Chronosystem
– the historical context in which these experiences occur
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• Scientific method • Descriptive research
– the set of assumptions, rules, – research that describes what is
occurring at a particular point
and procedures scientists use in time
to conduct research
• A research design • Correlational research
– the specific method a – research designed to discover
researcher uses to collect, relationships among variables
and to allow the prediction of
analyze, and interpret data. future events from present
knowledge

• Experimental research
• Each of the three research
– research in which a researcher
designs varies according to its manipulates one or more
strengths and limitations variables to see their effects

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• Descriptive Research
– Case Study
• based on only a small set of individuals, often only one
person or a single small group
• descriptive records of one or a small group of individuals’
experiences and behavior
• The assumption is that by carefully studying these
individuals, we can learn something about human nature
• They are not always transferable to other individuals in
similar situations
• They are also time consuming and expensive as many
professionals are involved in gathering the information
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– Observations
• Naturalistic observation
– psychologists observe and record behavior that occurs in
everyday settings
– do not allow the researcher to have any control over the
environment
• Laboratory observation
– conducted in a setting created by the researcher
– this permits the researcher to control more aspects of the
situation
– participants are aware that they are being watched, and there
is no guarantee that the behavior demonstrated in the
laboratory will generalize to the real world

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– Survey
• a measure administered through either a verbal or written
questionnaire to get a picture of the beliefs or behaviors of a
sample of people of interest
• The people chosen to participate in the research, known as the
sample, are selected to be representative of all the people that
the researcher wishes to know about called the population
• A representative sample would include the same percentages of
males, females, age groups, ethnic groups, and socio-economic
groups as the larger population
• Surveys gather information from many individuals in a short
period of time
• Surface information, not allow for in-depth understanding of
human behavior
• Respondents may lie because they want to present themselves in
the most favorable light, known as social desirability
• Questions can be perceived differently than intended.
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• Interviews
– they are directly questioned by a researcher
– take longer and are more expensive
– social desirability

• Psychophysiological Assessment
– Researchers may also record psychophysiological data,
such as measures of heart rate, hormone levels, or brain
activity to help explain development

• Secondary/Content Analysis
– involves analyzing information that has already been
collected or examining documents or media to uncover
attitudes, practices or preferences 59
• Correlational Research
– involves the measurement of two or more relevant
variables and an assessment of the relationship
between or among those variables
– Pearson Correlation Coefficient, symbolized by the
letter r, is the most common statistical measure of the
strength of linear relationships among variables. The
value of the correlation coefficient ranges from r= –
1.00 to r = +1.00
• Positive values of r (such as r = .54 or r = .67) indicate that
the relationship is positive
• Negative values of r (such as r = –.30 or r = –.72) indicate
negative relationships

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• Positive correlation
– when the straight line indicates that individuals who have
high values for one variable also tend to have high values
for the other variable
• Negative correlations
– when high values for one variable tend to be associated
with low values for the other variable
• they cannot be used to draw conclusions
about the causal relationships among
the measured variables
• A third variable
– a variable that is not part of the research hypothesis but
produces the observed correlation between them
• use correlational designs to make predictions 61
• Experimental Research
– provide more definitive conclusions about the causal
relationships among the variables in a research hypothesis
• Experiments are designed to test hypotheses, or specific
statements about the relationship between variables
• Experiments are conducted in a controlled setting in an
effort to explain how certain factors or events produce
outcomes

• A variable is anything that changes in value

– Independent variable in an experiment is the causing variable
that is created or manipulated by the experimenter
– Dependent variable in an experiment is a measured variable
that is expected to be influenced by the experimental
manipulation.
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• A good experiment randomly assigns participants to at
least two groups that are compared
• The experimental group receives the treatment under
investigation, while the control group does not receive the
treatment the experimenter is studying as a comparison

• Experimental designs control for extraneous variables, or

variables that are not part of the experiment that could
inadvertently effect either the experimental or control
group, thus distorting the results

• conducted in laboratory situations rather than in the

everyday lives of people

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• Characteristics of the Three Research Designs
– Descriptive
• To create a snapshot of the current state of affairs
• Provides a relatively complete picture of what is
occurring at a given time
• Allows the development of questions for further study
• Does not assess relationships among variables
• May be unethical if participants do not know they are
being observed

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– Correlational
• To assess the relationships between and among two or
more variables
• Allows testing of expected relationships between and
among variables and the making of predictions
• Can assess these relationships in everyday life events
• Cannot be used to draw inferences about the causal
relationships between and among the variables

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– Experimental
• To assess the causal impact of one or more
experimental manipulations on a dependent variable
• Allows drawing of conclusions about the causal
relationships among variables
• Cannot experimentally manipulate many important
variables
• May be expensive and time consuming

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• Research Involving Time-Spans
• Cross-sectional research
– compares samples that represent a cross-section
of the population who vary in age
– In cross-sectional research, respondents are
measured only once, and consequently this
method is not expensive or time consuming
– does not allow the researcher to look at the
impact of having been born in a certain time-
period, which is known as the cohort effect

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• Longitudinal research • Very time consuming and
– involves studying a group of people expensive.
who are the same age, and
measuring them repeatedly over a
period-of-time • Researchers must maintain
continued contact with
participants over time
– This type of design allows
researchers to study individual
differences in development • Attrition occurs when participants
fail to complete all portions of a
– Longitudinal studies may be study
conducted over the short term,
such as a span of months, or over
much longer durations including • Practice effects occur when
years or decades participants become better at a
task over time because they have
– For these reasons, longitudinal
done it again and again; not due
research designs are optimal for to natural psychological
studying stability and change over development
time
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• Sequential research
– includes elements of both longitudinal and cross-
sectional research designs
– similar to longitudinal designs,
• sequential research features participants who are
followed over time
– similar to cross-sectional designs,
• sequential work includes participants of different ages

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• Conducting Ethical Research
• No Harm
• Informed Consent
– Researchers must obtain informed consent, which
explains as much as possible about the true nature of
the study, particularly everything that might be
expected to influence willingness to participate.
– Infants and young children cannot verbally indicate
their willingness to participate, obtain written
informed consent from the parent or legal guardian
of the child participant
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• Confidentiality
– Researchers must also protect the privacy of the research
participants’ responses by not using names or other
information that could identify the participants
• Deception
– Deception occurs whenever research participants are not
completely and fully informed about the nature of the
research project before participating in it
• Debriefing
– At the end of a study debriefing, which is a procedure
designed to fully explain the purposes and procedures of
the research and remove any harmful aftereffects of
participation, must occur
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