LESSON 3 READINGS:
occurrences that have major impact
The Life-span Perspective:
Development: pattern of change that begins at
conception through the life span
Life-span Perspective: the perspective that
development is lifelong, multidimensional,
multidirectional, plastic, multidisciplinary, and
contextual
- Involves growth, maintenance, and
regulation
- Constructed through biological,
sociocultural, and individual factors
working together
Characteristics of the life-span perspective:
1.) Development is Lifelong – early adulthood
isn’t the endpoint of development, no age
period dominates development
2.) Development is Multidimensional – no
matter what your age might be, your body,
mind, emotions, and relationships are
changing and affecting each other
3.) Development is Multidirectional – some
dimensions or components of a dimension
expand, and others shrink
4.) Development is Plastic – you can still
improve in some areas through practice
and training
5.) Developmental Science is Multidisciplinary
– psychologists, sociologists,
anthropologists, neuroscientists, and
medical researchers are involved
6.) Development is Contextual – all
development occurs within a context, or
setting
➢ Normative age-graded influences:
influences that are similar for
individuals in a particular age group
➢ Normative history-graded influence
– influences common to people of a
particular generation because of
historical circumstances
➢ Nonnormative life events – unusual
on an individual’s life
7.) Development involves Growth,
Maintenance, and Regulation of Loss – the
mastery of life often involves conflicts and
competition among 3 goals of human
development: growth, maintenance,
regulation of loss
8.) Development is a Co-construction of
Biology, Culture, and the Individual –
example, the brain shapes culture, but it is
also shaped by culture
Culture: behavior patterns, beliefs, and all other
products of a group that are passed on from
generation to generation
Cross-cultural studies: comparison of one culture
with one or more other cultures
Ethnicity: characteristic based on cultural heritage,
nationality characteristics, race, religion, and
language
Socioeconomic Status: grouping of people with
similar occupational, educational, and economic
characteristics
Gender: characteristics of people as males or
females
Social Policy: government’s course of action
designed to promote the welfare of its citizens
The Nature of Development:
Biological Processes: changes the individual’s
physical nature
Cognitive Processes: changes an individual’s
thought, intelligence, and language
Socioemotional Processes: changes an
individual’s relationships with other people,
emotions, and personality
Periods of Development:
1.) Prenatal Period – time from conception to
birth; 9 months
 2.) Infancy – from birth to 18 or 24 months;
time of extreme dependency upon adults
3.) Early Childhood – from 3 through 5 years
of age; preschool years
- Children learn to become more self-
sufficient and to care for themselves,
develop school readiness skills, and spend
many hours playing with peers
4.) Middle and Late Childhood – 6-10 or 11
years; elementary school years
- Children master the fundamental skills of
reading, writing, and arithmetic, and they
are formally exposed to the larger world
and its culture
- Self-control increases
5.) Adolescence – transition from childhood to
early adulthood; from 10-12 to 18-21
years of age
- Rapid physical changes, dramatic gains in
height and weight, changes in body
contour, and development of sexual
characteristics
- More time is spent outside the family
6.) Early Adulthood – early 20s through the
30s; time of establishing personal and
economic independence, advancing in
their career, and for many, selecting a
mate
7.) Middle Adulthood – 40-60; time of
expanding social involvement and
responsibility
- Assisting the next generation in becoming
competent, mature individuals; and of
reaching and maintaining satisfaction in a
career
8.) Late Adulthood – 60-70 until death; time
of review, retirement, and adjustment to
new social roles and diminishing strength
and health
- Longest span of any period of development
Significance of Age:
➢ Happiness increases as one ages
Conceptions of Age:
➢ Chronological Age - The number of years
that have elapsed after birth
➢ Biological Age – a person’s age in terms of
biological health
➢ Psychological Age – an individual’s
adaptive capacities compared with those
of other individuals of the same
chronological age
➢ Social Age – connectedness with others
and the social roles adopt
Developmental Issues:
Nature-Nurture Issue – a debate about whether
development is primarily influenced by biological
inheritance or environmental experiences
Stability-Change Issue – debate on whether we
become older renditions of our early experience
or whether we develop into someone different
from who we were at an early point in
development
Continuity and Discontinuity Issue – debate about
the extent to which development involves gradual,
cumulative change or distinct stages
Theories of Development:
Scientific Method – an approach that can be used
to obtain accurate information
Theory – interrelated, coherent set of ideas that
helps to explain phenomena and facilitate
predictions
Hypothesis – specific assumptions and predictions
that can be tested to determine their accuracy
Psychoanalytic Theories: describe development as
primarily unconscious and heavily colored by emotion
- Behavior is merely a surface characteristic, and
the symbolic workings of the mind have to be
analyzed to understand behavior
- Early experiences with parents are emphasized
1.) Freud’s Theory: as children grow up, their
focus of pleasure and sexual impulses shifts
from the mouth to the anus and eventually to
the genitals
a.) Oral Stage: infant’s pleasure centers are
on the mouth
 b.) Anal Stage: child’s pleasure focuses on the
anus
c.) Phallic Stage: child’s pleasure focuses on
the genitals
d.) Latency Stage: child represses sexual
interest and develops social and intellectual
skills
e.) Genital Stage: a time of sexual
reawakening; source of sexual pleasure
becomes someone outside the family
2.) Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory: contrary to
Freud’s theory, rather than sexual motivations,
humans also reflect a desire to socialize and
affiliate themselves with others
Cognitive Theories: emphasizes conscious thoughts
1.) Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental Theory –
theory stating that children actively construct
their understanding of the world and go
through 4 stages of cognitive development
a.) Sensorimotor Stage: birth to 2 yrs.; infants
construct an understanding of the world by
coordinating sensory experiences with
physical actions
- Progresses from reflexive, instinctual action at
birth to the beginning of symbolic thought
toward the end of the stage
b.) Preoperational Stage: 2-7; child begins to
represent the world with words and images
- Increased symbolic thinking and go beyond the
connection of sensory information and physical
action
c.) Concrete Operational Stage: 7-11; child
can now reason logically about concrete
events and classify objects into different
sets
d.) Formal Operational Stage: adolescent
reasons in more abstract, idealistic, and
logical ways
2.) Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Cognitive Theory:
emphasizes how culture and social interaction
guide cognitive development
3.) Information-processing Theory emphasizes that
individuals manipulate information, monitor it,
and strategize about it. Central to this theory
are the processes of memory and thinking

Behavioral and Social Cognitive Theories: emphasize

continuity in development and argue that development
does not occur in stage-like fashion

1.) Skinner’s Operant Conditioning: operant

conditioning the consequences of a behavior
produce changes in the probability of the
behavior’s occurrence
2.) Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory: behavior,
environment, and cognition are the key factors
in development
- Modelling – learning that occurs through
observing what others do

Ethological Theory

Ethology – behavior is strongly influenced by biology,

is tied to evolution, and is characterized by critical or
sensitive periods
Ecological Theory: emphasizes environmental factors
1.) Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory:
development reflects the influence of several
environmental systems
a.) Microsystem – setting where the individual
lives
- Most direct interactions with social agents
- The individual is not a passive recipient of
experiences in these settings, but someone who
helps construct the settings
b.) Mesosystem – relations between
microsystems or connections between
contexts
c.) Exosystem – links between a social setting
which the individual doesn’t have an active
role in
d.) Macrosystem – the culture in which the
individuals live
e.) Chronosystem – the patterning of
environmental events and transitions over
the life course, as well as sociohistorical
circumstances
Eclectic Theoretical Orientation: doesn’t follow any one
theoretical approach but rather selects from each
theory whatever is considered its best features
Research in Life-Span Development:
Methods for Collecting Data:
1.) Observation: observation needs to be
systematic in order for it to be effective
- Naturalistic Observation – studies that involve
observing behavior in real-world settings
2.) Survey and Interview: best and quickest way to
get information
- Useful when information from many people is
needed
3.) Standardized Test: test with uniform procedures
for administration and scoring; allow a
person’s performance to be compared with the
performance of other individuals
4.) Case Study: in-depth look at a single
individual
Research Designs
1.) Descriptive: designed to observe and record
behavior
2.) Correlational: goal is to describe the strength
of the relationship between two or more events
or characteristics
- Correlational coefficient: a number based on
statistical analysis that is used to describe the
degree of association between 2 variables
3.) Experimental: carefully regulated procedure in
which one or more of the factors believed to
influence the behavior being studied are
manipulated while all other factors are held
constant
Time Span of Research:
1.) Cross-Sectional Approach: individuals of
different ages are compared at one time
2.) Longitudinal Approach: the same individuals
are studied over a period of time, usually
several years or more
3.) Cohort Effects: effects due to a person’s time
of birth, era, or generation rather than a
person’s actual age
Conducting Ethical Research
1.) Informed Consent
2.) Confidentiality
3.) Debriefing
4.) Deception
Minimizing Bias
1.) Gender Bias
2.) Cultural and Ethnic Bias
ADOLESCENCE:
Menarche: a girl’s first period
Puberty: a period of rapid physical maturation,
occurring primarily in early adolescence, that involves
hormonal and bodily changes
Hormones: powerful chemical substances secreted by
the endocrine glands and carried through the body by
the bloodstream
Testosterone: hormone associated in boys with genital
development, increased height, and deepening of the
voice
Estradiol: type of estrogen that in girls is associated
with breast, uterine, and skeletal development
➢ The corpus callosum thickens in
adolescence
 ➢ The amygdala matures earlier than the
prefrontal cortex
Sexually Transmitted Infections: infections
contracted primarily through sexual contact,
including oral-genital and anal-genital contact
Anorexia Nervosa: eating disorder that involves
the relentless pursuit of thinness through starvation
- Weigh less than 85% of what is considered
normal for their age and height
- Intense fear of gaining weight that does
not decrease with weight loss
- Distorted image of their body shape
- Amenorrhea (lack of menstruation) in girls
who have reached puberty
Bulimia Nervosa: individual consistently follows a
binge-and-purge pattern
Hypothetical-deductive reasoning: Piaget’s formal
operational concept that adolescents have the
cognitive ability to develop hypotheses, or best
guesses, about ways to solve a problem
Adolescent Egocentrism: heightened self-
consciousness of adolescents
- David Elkind points out that adolescent
egocentrism has 2 key components
1.) Imaginary Audience: adolescents believe
that others are as interested in them as
they themselves are, as well as attention-
getting behavior motivated by a desire to
be noticed, visible, and on stage
2.) Personal Fable: part of adolescent
egocentrism that involves an adolescent’s
sense of uniqueness and invincibility (or
invulnerability)
Cognitive Control: effective control in a number of
areas, including controlling attention, reducing
interfering thoughts, and being cognitively flexible
Cognitive Flexibility: being aware that options and
alternatives are available and adapting to the
situation
Dual-Process Model: a view of thinking in which
decision making is influenced by 2 systems, one
analytical and one experimental, that compete
with each other
Top-dog Phenomenon: moving from the top
position in elementary school to the lowest
position in middle or junior high school
Service Learning: form of education that promotes
social responsibility and service to the community
SOCIOEMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN
ADOLESCENTS:
Narcissism – self-centered and self-concerned
approach toward others
Crisis – period of identity development during
which the individual is exploring alternatives
Commitment – personal investment in identity
4 Statuses of Identity:
➢ James Marcia
1.) Identity Diffusion: status of individuals who
have not yet made any commitments
- Undecided on occupational and
ideological choices
- Likely to show little interest in such matters
2.) Identity Foreclosure: status of individuals
who have made a commitment but not
experienced a crisis
- Often when parents hand down
commitments to their adolescents
3.) Identity Moratorium: status of individuals
who are in the midst of a crisis but whose
commitments are either absent or are only
vaguely defined
4.) Identity Achievement: status of individuals
who have undergone a crisis and made a
commitment
Ethnic Identity: an enduring basic aspect of the
self that includes a sense of membership in an
ethnic group and the attitudes and feelings related
to that membership
Cliques: small group of about 5-6 individuals that
may form among adolescents who engage in
similar activity
Crowds: larger than cliques and less personal - Females are more likely to attempt suicide,
but males are more likely to succeed in
3 Developmental Stages in Dating and Romantic
committing suicide
Relationships:
Successful Programs in Preventing and Reducing
1.) Entry into romantic attractions and
Adolescent Problems:
affiliations at about 11-13 years of age:
initially triggered by puberty, adolescents 1.) Intensive Individualized Attention: high-risk
become intensely interested in romance adolescents are attached to a responsible
2.) Exploring romantic relationships at adult who gives the adolescent attention
approximately 14-16 years of age: 2 types and deals with the adolescent’s specific
of romantic involvement occur: needs
- Causal dating emerges and only last for a 2.) Community-wide Multiagency
few months or weeks Collaborative Approaches: a number of
- Dating in groups is common and reflects programs and services have to be in place
embeddedness in the peer facilitators of a 3.) Early Identification and Intervention:
potential dating relationship by reaching younger children and their
communicating their friend’s romantic families before children develop problems
interest and confirming whether this or at the onset of their problems is a
attraction is reciprocated successful strategy
3.) Consolidating dyadic romantic bonds at -
about 17-19 years of age: more serious
romantic relationships develop
Early Bloomers: 11-13 years old adolescents in
romantic relationships
Late Bloomers: 17-19 years old adolescents who
have not been into romantic relationships and
others have not have any last more than 4 months
Rite of Passage: ceremony or ritual that marks an
individual’s transition from one status to another
ADOLESCENT PROBLEMS:
1.) Juvenile Delinquency
- Juvenile Delinquent – an adolescent who
breaks the law or engages in behavior that
is considered illegal
- Causes of Delinquency – low-income
neighborhoods, inadequate parental
monitoring, delinquent peers, delinquent
siblings
2.) Depression and Suicide
- Suicide is the third leading cause of death
among adolescents