What is Development?

1. What is Development? • Systematic changes and continuities • In the individual • Between conception and death • “Womb to Tomb” • Three broad domains • Physical, Cognitive, Psychosocial

2. Periods of Development • Prenatal period: conception to birth • Infancy: birth to 18 to 24 months • Early childhood: end of infancy to 5 or 6 years of age • Middle and late childhood: 6 to 12 years of age • Adolescence: transition from childhood to early adulthood,12 years of age to 20 years • Early adulthood: 20 to 40 years of age • Middle adulthood: 40-65 years of age • Late adulthood: begins in the 60s and lasts until death

3. Age Grades, Age Norms, and the Social Clock • Age Grade: Socially defined age groups • Statuses, roles, privileges, responsibilities • Adults can vote, children can’t • Age Norms: Behavioral expectations by age • Children attend school • Social Clock: When things should be done • Early adulthood – time for 1st marriages • “Off time” experiences are more difficult

4. BASIC QUESTIONS ABOUT DEVELOPMENT • How do nature and nurture together shape development? • To what degree do early traits and characteristics persist through life or change? • Are people active or passive in their own development? • In what ways is development continuous and in what ways is it discontinuous? • Is development universal or context specific?

5. Framing the Nature/Nurture Issue • Nature: heredity • Maturational processes guided by genes • Biologically based predispositions • Biological unfolding of genes • Nurture: environment • Learning: experiences cause changes is thoughts, feelings, and behaviors • Interactionist view: nature & nurture interact

6. Figure 1.1

7. GOALS OF STUDY OF LIFE SPAN DEVELOPMENT • Description • Explanation • Optimization

8. The Importance of Studying Life-Span Development • Parents or teachers • Insight about your own history • What will adult years be like?

9. Characteristics of the Life-Span Approach • Development is Lifelong • Development is Multidimensional • Development is Multidirectional • Development is Plastic • Development is Multidisciplinary • Development is Contextual • Development is a process that involves growth, maintenance and the regulation of loss • Development is a co-construction of biology, culture and the individual

10. Conceptions of Age • Chronological age: the number of years that have elapsed since birth • Biological age: a person’s age in terms of biological health • Psychological age: a person’s adaptive capacities compared with those of the individual of the same chronological age

11. Methods of Studying Life-Span Development • Historical • Baby Biographies: Charles Darwin • Questionnaires: G. Stanley Hall

12. HOW ISRESEARCH CONDUCTED • The Scientific Method Theory- a set of concepts and propositions intended to describe and explain some aspect of behavior Hypothesis- specific prediction regarding a particular set of observations Sample Selection Random Sample- a sample formed by identifying all members of the larger population and then, by random means, selecting a portion of that population to study.

13. DATA COLLECTION • Self-report Measures (Verbal Reports) Interviews Questionnaires Surveys Tests/Scales Behavioral Observations Naturalistic Structured Physiological Measurements

14. CORRELATIONAL METHOD • Involves determining whether two or more variables are related in a systematic way. • Advantage No manipulation • Disadvantage Cannot unambiguously establish a causal relationship between variables

15. THE EXPERIMENT • Some aspect of the environment is manipulated or altered to see how this affects the behavior of the sample of individuals being investigated. • Independent Variable: variable in the experiment that is manipulated by the experimenter • Dependent Variable: variable in an experiment that represents the measurable response or behavior of the subjects in the experiment • Random Assignment: researchers assign participants to the experimental and control groups by chance • Advantage Establishes cause • Disadvantages Generalize to the real world; Ethical considerations

16. DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH DESIGNS • Cross-sectional design- performances of people of different age groups, or cohorts are compared. Looks at age differences • Longitudinal design- the performance of one cohort of individuals is assessed repeatedly over time. Looks at age changes • Sequential design- combines the cross-sectional and longitudinal approach in one study

17. FACTORS INFLUENCING DEVELOPMENTAL STUDIES • Age effects- the effects of getting older • Cohort effects- the effects of being born in a particular historical context • Time of measurement effects- the effects of historical events and trends occurring when the data were collected (e.g. the effects of 9/11

18. Theories of Development Organismic model “nature” maturation genetic blueprint individual seen as active Mechanistic model “nurture” environment learning Contextual model “nature x nurture” ecological models

19. The Ecology of Human Development • Bronfenbrenner: Bioecological Model • How nature and nurture interact to produce development • The biological, psychological, person • Four environmental systems • Microsystem: family • Mesosystem: interaction among microsystems • Exosystem: settings one step removed • Macrosystem: culture

20. The Ecology of Human Development • Bronfenbrenner: Bioecological Model • How nature and nurture interact to produce development • The biological, psychological, person • Four environmental systems • Microsystem: family • Mesosystem: interaction among microsystems • Exosystem: settings one step removed • Macrosystem: culture