Developing Through the Life Span

1. Developing Through the Life Span

2. Enduring Issues Diversity – Universality Stability – Change Nature – Nurture

3. Research Methodologies • Cross-sectional • Examining groups of subjects who are of different ages • Longitudinal • Examining the same group of subjects two or more times as they age

4. Research Methodologies 2000 1998 Sequential Design

5. The Newborn • Reflexes • Rooting reflex • Sucking reflex • Swallowing reflex • Grasping reflex • Stepping reflex • Are responsive to human faces, voices, and touch

6. Newborn – Temperament • Babies are born with individual differences in personality called temperament differences • Types • Easy • Difficult • Slow-to-warm-up

7. Newborn – Temperament • Babies are born with individual differences in personality called temperament differences • Types • Easy • “Spirited” • Slow-to-warm-up • Shy

8. Developmental Principles Cephalocaudal Proximodistal

9. Give your best estimate of the age at which about 50% of children begin to: Laugh Pedal a tricycle Sit without support Feel ashamed Walk unassisted Stand on one foot for 10 seconds

10. Recognize and smile at mother/father Kick ball forward Think about things that cannot be seen Make two-word utterances

11. Brain Development • Neurons present at birth • Neural networks form after birth • Stimulation is key • Preschool-age • Growth most rapid in frontal lobes • Last areas to develop include those linked to thinking, memory, and language

12. Maturation • The biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior • Sets the basic course of development • Experience adjusts course • Critical period

13. Physical Development

14. Physical Development in Adolescence • Growth spurt occurs at different ages for each sex • Sexual development • Females • Menarche • Males • Spermarche

15. Physical Development in Adulthood • Rate increases with time • Climacteric • Women  menopause • Men  changes in prostate • “Use it or lose it”

16. Physical Development in Adulthood Primary aging Secondary aging

17. Cognitive Development • Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget • Children undergo qualitative changes in thinking as they grow older • Stage theory • Invariant • universal

18. Cognitive Development – Piaget • Sensorimotor stage • Move from reflexive to voluntary, goal-directed actions • Object permanence • Two major accomplishments • Goal-directed actions • Mental representation

19. Cognitive Development – Piaget • Preoperational Stage • Child becomes able to use mental representations and language to describe, remember, and reason about the world • Egocentrism • Inability to see things from another person’s point of view • Animism

21. Cognitive Development – Piaget • Preoperational Stage (con’t) • Conservation • knowledge that certain physical attributes of an object remain unchanged even though the outward appearance of the object is altered

23. Cognitive Development – Piaget • Preoperational Stage (con’t) • Centered • Irreversibility

24. Cognitive Development – Piaget • Concrete Operational Stage • A child can attend to more than one thing at a time and understand someone else’s point of view. (decentration) • Thinking is limited to concrete matters. • A child can understand conservation.

25. Cognitive Development – Piaget • Formal Operational Stage • Acquire the ability to think abstractly • Can formulate hypotheses • Can think in terms of cause-and-effect • Develop general rules, principles

26. Formal Operational Stage • Adolescent egocentrism • Imaginary audience • Personal fable

27. Criticisms of Piaget Underestimated abilities Not enough focus on social influences Still contributed!!

28. Cognitive Changes • An adult's thinking is more flexible and practical than an adolescent's • Adults realize that there may be several right solutions or none at all • Some skills increase through the sixties • Vocabulary, verbal memory • Others fall off slightly after age 40 • Reasoning, spatial memory

29. Cognitive Changes • Fluid intelligence ↓ • reasoning, memory, information processing • Crystallized intelligence = or ↑ • information, skills, problem-solving strategies

30. A man’s wife is ill with a rare kind of cancer. There is a drug that may save her, but it is very expensive. The pharmacist who discovered this medicine will sell it for $2,000, but the man has only $1,000. He asks the pharmacist to let him pay part of the cost now and the rest later, but the pharmacist refuses. Being desperate, the man steals the drug. Should he have done so? Why or why not?

32. preconventional level • judge morality largely in terms of consequences • conventional level • whether behavior supports and preserves the laws and rules of society • postconventional level • judge morality in terms of abstract principles and values • a single rule system is only one of many possibilities • some laws are inconsistent with the rights on individuals

33. Criticisms of Kohlberg’s Theory • Gilligan  studied only males • Feminine morality emphasizes an ethic of care • Kohlberg’s system focuses on rights and justice; male ideals • May be culturally biased

34. Attachment Strong emotional bond to a specific person Other species imprinting Humans  attachment Seen in desire to obtain and maintain contact

35. Theories of Attachment • Freud • Psychoanalytic/secondary drive theory • Bowlby • Ethological theory • Harry Harlow • Research with rhesus monkeys

36. Individual Differences in Attachment Secure Insecure May have long term consequences

37. Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory

38. Attachment Fathers Daycare Parenting

39. Parenting Styles – Baumrind • Authoritarian • Rigid control; insist on unquestioning obedience • Permissive • Very supportive; few if any limits • Authoritative • Firm structure and guidance; not overly controlling; engage in give-and-take • Neglectful • Little control; no limits; neglectful and inattentive; little emotional support

40. Parenting + Temperament Easy “Spirited” Slow-to-warm-up

42. Return to Attachment… • Adolescence • Storm and strife? • Identity • Identity diffusion • Identity foreclosure • Moratorium • Identity achievement

43. Parental Influences in Adolescence Better relationships with parents  better relationships with peers Closeness with parents  healthy, happy, do well in school Teens in trouble  tense relationships with parents Correlation ≠ causation!

44. Peer Influences in Adolescence Preschoolers will eat food peers eat even if refused prior Teens talk, dress, and act more like peers than parents

45. Choose which of the following best describes your relationship with your mother when you were a child growing up. Do the same for your father. Warm/Responsive: S/he was generally warm and responsive; s/he was good at knowing when to be supportive and when to let me operate on my own: our relationship was almost always comfortable, and I have no major reservations or complaints about it. Cold/Rejecting: S/he was fairly cold and distant, or rejecting, not very responsive: I wasn’t her/his highest priority, her/his concerns were often elsewhere; it’s possible that s/he would just as soon not have had me. Ambivalence/Inconsistent: S/he was noticeably inconsistent in her/his reactions to me, sometimes warm and sometimes not; s/he had her/his own agendas which sometimes got in the way of her/his receptiveness and responsiveness to my needs; s/he definitely loved me but didn’t always show it in the best way.

46. Which of the following best describes your current feelings? (Read the descriptions below and choose the one that best summarizes your feelings an behavior in romantic love relationships.) Secure: I find it relatively easy to get close to others and am comfortable depending on them. I don’t often worry about being abandoned or about someone getting too close to me. Avoidant: I am somewhat uncomfortable being close to others; I find it difficult to trust them completely, difficult to allow myself to depend on them. I am nervous when anyone gets too close, and often, love partners want me to be more intimate than I feel comfortable being. Anxious/Ambivalent: I find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I often worry that my partner doesn’t really love me or won’t want to stay with me. I want to get very close to my partner, and this sometimes scares people away.

47. Attachment in Adulthood Model of Self Positive Negative Positive Model of Other Negative

48. Passing thoughts… Life is not predictable Love and work dominate adulthood Most people retain a sense of well-being Huge range of reactions to death

49. Grief…letting go of myths… Immediately expressed strong grief ≠ earlier recovery Grief therapy/self-help groups < time + social support Terminally ill do not go through stages of grief

50. Williams & Best (2004) Males • Active, adventurous, aggressive, arrogant, autocratic, bossy, coarse, conceited, enterprising, hardheaded, loud, obnoxious, opinionated, opportunistic, pleasure-seeking, precise, quick, reckless, show-off, and tough Females • Affected, affectionate, appreciative, cautious, changeable, charming, dependent, emotional, fearful, forgiving, modest, nervous, patient, pleasant, prudish, sensitive, sentimental, softhearted, timid, and warm