Human development

1. Human development Dr Madhuranga Agampody

2. What is Human Development? • It is a pattern of movement and change • Some things change • Some things stay the same • Movement & change include growth, transition, and decline.

3. Developmental psychology • Developmental psychology is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes, emotional changes, and perception changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult development, aging, and the entire life span.

4. Processes in Development

5. The Lifespan Perspective • History • Studied child development since about 1900. • Studied adult development since about 1960. • The reason for the difference is cultural change & increased longevity (life expectancy).

6. Life Expectancy Changes • Lifespan, the maximum number of years a human being could live (about 120 years) remains relatively constant. • Life expectancy, the number of years a person can expect to live when born in a certain place in a certain year, changes. • U.S., 1900 47 years • U.S., 2005, 77 years (30 year increase)

7. What are the characteristics of the lifespan perspective? • Multidimensional • Biological • Cognitive • Socioemotional • Multidirectional • Growth and decline • Plastic • Potential for change

8. Lifespan Research is Multidisciplinary • Where did this information come from? • Research and study in many fields of endeavor including psychology, sociology, anthropology, education, and medicine.

9. What types of influences form the context of development? • Normative age-graded (cultural) • e.g., puberty, graduation, retirement • Normative history-graded (historical) • e.g., war, famine, earthquakes, terrorism • Non-normative life events & conditions (personal) • Individual experiences, biology, personality

10. What types of influences form the context of development? • Worldview – View of Human Nature

11. Historical Views of Human Nature • Prevailing views of children (human nature) throughout history? • Preformationism • Original Sin • Tabula Rasa • Innate Goodness • How does each view affect child-rearing practices?

12. Historical View: Preformationism • Time: 6th 15th Centuries • View: Children are basically small adults without unique needs and characteristics. • Effect: Little or no need for special treatment

13. Historical View - Original Sin • Time: 16th Century (Puritan) • View: Children are born sinful and more apt to grow up to do evil than good. • Effect: Parents must discipline children to ensure morality and ultimate salvation.

14. Historical View - Tabula Rasa • Time: 17th Century, philosopher John Locke (behaviorist) • View: Children are born “blank slates” and parents can train them in any direction they wish (with little resistance). • Effect: Shaping children’s behavior by reward and punishment.

15. Historical View – Innate Goodness • Time: 18th Century, philosopher Jean Jacque Rousseau (humanist) • View: Children are “noble savages” who are born with an innate sense of morality. • Effect: Parents should not try to mold them at all.

16. What are the issues of developmental psychology? • Nature vs. nurture • Stability vs. change • Continuity vs. discontinuity

17. Issue 1: Nature/nurture • Nature = biological inheritance (genetics) • Rousseau (humanists) • Nurture = all experience • Locke (tabula rasa) • Is that all there is? (Is it neither?) • Are they separable? Is it both? • What is epigenetic theory? • Interaction of nature and nurture

18. Issue 2: Stability/change • When characteristics are biologically inherited or the result of early experiences, can they be changed? (This is the issue of plasticity again.) • Are the effects of early and late experiences equal, or are early ones more important (or later ones)?

19. Issue 3: Continuity/discontinuity • Did the change happen suddenly or gradually (first step; first word)? • Is there a marker event? • Does the old resemble the new (butterfly)?

20. What does age have to do with it? • How many ways can we conceptualize (think about) age? • Chronological age: years since birth • Biological age: health; vital organ capacity • Psychological age: adaptable; learning; flexible; good judgment • Social age: roles, expectations

21. What are the periods (age groups) of development? These are not standard across textbooks. However, they roughly agree. • Prenatal - conception to birth • Infancy – birth to about 2 years • Early childhood – about ages 2-6 (preschool) • Middle & late childhood – about ages 6-11 • Adolescence – ages 10-12 or puberty until about ages 18-22 or independence

22. What are the periods (age groups) of development? • Early adulthood – ages 20/25 – 40/45 • Middle adulthood – ages 40/45 – 60/65 • Late adulthood – ages 60/65 on • Young old: 65-84 • Oldest old: 85+

23. To what extent are we becoming an age-irrelevant society? • People‘s lives are more varied. • We have a loose “social clock.” • The frequency of reported happiness is about the same for all ages. (78%)

24. Five Theories (Perspectives) of Development Psychological • Psychoanalytic (Freud) • Cognitive • Behavioral and Social Cognitive Other • Ethological • Ecological

25. Psychoanalytic Theory: Erik Erikson (1902-1994) • Eight psychosocial stages in the lifespan • Trust v. mistrust • Autonomy v. shame/doubt • Initiative v. guilt • Industry v. inferiority • Identity v. confusion • Intimacy v. isolation • Generativity v. stagnation • Integrity v. despair

26. Erikson’s Theory

27. Freudian Stages

28. Cognitive Theories (1960s) • Emphasize thinking, reasoning, language • Jean Piaget: Swiss (1896-1980) • Children actively construct understanding • Four stages • Lev Vygotsky: Russian • Knowledge is constructed through interaction with other people • Information Processing • Analogy between human brain & computer

29. Piaget’s Stages • According to Piaget, children progress through four distinct cognitive stage • Sensorimotor (0-2 years) • Preoperations (2-7 years) • Concrete Operations (7-12 years) • Formal Operations (12 and up) • As a child progresses to a new stage, his/her thinking is qualitatively different

30. Piaget’s Stages cont.. Sensorimotor • Understand the world through senses and motor actions • Develop object permanence – the idea that an object still exists even if it can’t be seen Preoperative (“before logic”) • Symbolic thought – ability to use words, images, and symbols to represent the world • Thinking is egocentric (the inability to take another person’s perspective)

31. Cont…. Concrete Operations • Can do logical operations • Understand reversibility • Can do conservation – two equal quantities remain equal even if the appearance of one has changed Formal Operations: • Can do abstract & hypothetical reasoning

32. Piaget’s Four Stages of Cognitive Development

33. culture literature science INPUT OUTPUT religion history math Information-Processing Theory

34. Behavioral Theories • Ivan Pavlov: Classical Conditioning • Pair a neutral stimulus (CS)with a stimulus (UCS) that automatically produces a response (UCR). • John B. Watson: Emotional responses can be classically conditioned (Little Albert). • B. F. Skinner: Operant Conditioning • Behavior followed by a reward is more likely to occur again; punished behavior is less likely to occur again.

35. Key terms • Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS or US) • Biologically relevant stimulus, that without prior learning elicits an…. • Unconditioned Response (UR or UCR) • Conditioned Stimulus (CS) • Neutral stimulus that with many CS – US pairing elicits a • Conditioned Response (CR)

36. UR US CS S-S and S-R

37. Social-cognitive Theories • Albert Bandura: Most social behaviors are learned by observing others, including anger, cruelty, and kindness. • Reciprocal determinism: behavior, the environment, and the person (and their cognitions) mutually influence each other.

38. Bandura’s Social Cognitive Model

39. Ethological Theory • Based on study of animal behavior • Considers the influence of biology/evolution • Considers critical or sensitive periods • Konrad Lorenz: imprinting-rapid, innate learning • John Bowlby: attachment

40. Imprinting is the term used in psychology and ethology to describe any kind of phase-sensitive learning (learning occurring at a particular age or a particular life stage) that is rapid and apparently independent of the consequences of behavior. It was first used to describe situations in which an animal or person learns the characteristics of some stimulus, which is therefore said to be "imprinted" onto the subject. • Innate - native

41. Ecological Theory • UrieBronfenbrenner • Emphasizes environmental concepts • Microsystem: daily life • Mesosystem: relates microsystems • Exosystem: influences from other social systems • Macrosystem: culture • Chronosystem: (time) personal/social history

42. Review of Theories

43. Why would you want to know about development? • Life planning and coping. • To anticipate events and changes • To avoid known pitfalls • To understand what is happening to you • To help others in the same ways

44. Why would we collectively want to know about human development? • How do we apply the results of research on lifespan development? • Parenting advice, self-help, public information. • Designing educational programs. • Business & economic planning (e.g., insurance sales, marketing,) . • Social policy decisions (e.g., laws on marriage, city planning, social programs such as welfare, social security, Medicare).

45. Social Policy Example: Does the government have/spend adequate social welfare resources on children? • Statistical Facts • 15% of US children (almost 50% of ethnic minority children) will be raised in poverty including increased risk for stress from violence, crowding, poor housing, family turmoil, etc. • Social values, beliefs, and priorities. • Parenting and nurturing the next generation of children is our society‘s most important function and we need to take it more seriously than we have in the past. Marian Edelman (Children‘s Defense Fund, 2004)

46. Social Policy Examples Competing needs and priorities lead to research questions? • 40-50% of US children can expect to spend at least 4-5 years in a single-parent home. • Drug-use and AIDS are still problems • Older adults need more medical care • Generational inequity

47. Data • Where do we get our data? • What information are we going to believe?

48. What are the techniques of collecting data? • Observation • Survey/interview: asking questions • Standardized Tests • Physiological Measures • Case Study • Life-history records

49. What are the techniques of collecting data? • Observation • Laboratory • Naturalistic • People act/react differently when they know they are being watched.

50. What are the techniques of collecting data? • Survey/interview: asking questions • Unstructured/open-ended • Structured, quantitative • Ask the right questions of the right people.