Developmental Psychology (Psych 170)

Athena Grace R. Raagas

BA in Psychology III
CHAPTER 1: (Papalia)

Human ●​ field of human development focuses on the scientific study of the systematic processes
Development: An of change and stability in people.
Ever- ○​ ways in which people change from conception through maturity as well as at
Evolving Field characteristics that remain fairly stable.

STUDYING THE LIFE SPAN

●​ development included more than infancy and childhood.
●​ researchers consider life-span development to be from “womb to tomb,” comprising the
entire human life span from conception to death.
○​ acknowledge that development can be either positive (e.g., becoming toilet
trained or enrolling in a college course after retirement) or negative (e.g., once
again wetting the bed after a traumatic event or isolating yourself after
retirement).
HUMAN DEVELOPMENT TODAY
●​ as the field of human development itself developed, its goals came to include
description, explanation, prediction, and intervention.
○​ describe when most children say their first word or how large their vocabulary is
at a certain age, developmental scientists observe large groups of children and
establish norms, or averages, for behavior at various ages.
○​ attempt to explain how children acquire language and why some children learn
to speak later than usual.
○​ knowledge may make it possible to predict future behavior, such as the
likelihood that a child will have serious speech problems.
○​ an understanding of how language develops may be used to intervene in
development, for example, by giving a child speech therapy.
●​ development is best understood with input from a variety of theoretical and research
orientations and is most appropriately studied using multiple disciplines.
●​ students of human development draw collaboratively from a wide range of disciplines,
including psychology, psychiatry, sociology, anthropology, biology, genetics, family
science, education, history, and medicine.

The Study of DOMAINS OF DEVELOPMENT

Human ●​ growth of the body and brain, sensory capacities, motor skills, and health are parts of
Development: physical development
Basic Concepts ○​ physical domain includes changes in height and weight, sensory capabilities, the
nervous system, as well as the propensity for disease and illness.
●​ learning, attention, memory, language, thinking, reasoning, and creativity make up
cognitive development
○​ cognitive domain encompasses the changes in intelligence, wisdom, perception,
problem-solving, memory, and language.
●​ emotions, personality, and social relationships are aspects of psychosocial
development
○​ psychosocial domain focuses on changes in emotion, self-perception and
interpersonal relationships with families, peers, and friends.
PERIODS OF THE LIFE SPAN
●​ division of the life span into periods is a social construction: a concept or practice that
is an invention of a particular culture or society.
○​ the concept of childhood is a social construction, the form it takes varies across
cultures.
●​ young children in Colonial times were expected to do adultlike tasks such as knitting
socks and spinning wool
Influences on ●​ Inuit parents in the Canadian Arctic believe that young children are not yet capable of
Development thought and reason and therefore are lenient when their children cry or become angry.
●​ parents on the Pacific Island of Tonga regularly beat 3- to 5-year-olds, whose crying is
attributed to willfulness
●​ similar construction involves adolescence,which is a recent concept that emerged as
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society became more industrialized.

●​ study individual differences in characteristics, influences, and developmental

outcomes.
●​ differ in gender, height, weight, and body build; in health and energy level; in
●​ intelligence; and in temperament, personality, and emotional reactions.

HEREDITY, ENVIRONMENT, AND MATURATION

●​ some influences are internal and driven by heredity and biological processes.
○​ consists of the inborn traits and characteristics provided by a child’s biological
parents.
●​ other influences stem from the environment outside the body, starting at conception
with the prenatal environment in the womb and continuing throughout life.
○​ totality of nonhereditary, or experiential, influences on development.
●​ even though intelligence is strongly influenced by heredity, it is also affected by parental
stimulation, education, peer influence, and other variables.
●​ many typical changes of infancy and early childhood, such as the abilities to walk and
talk, are tied to maturation of the body and brain—the unfolding of a natural sequence
of physical changes and behavior patterns.
CONTEXTS OF DEVELOPMENT
Developmental Psychology (Psych 170)

Family
●​ nuclear family is a household unit consisting of one or two parents and their children,
whether biological, adopted, or stepchildren.
○​ two-generational kinship, economic, and household unit consisting of one or two
parents and their biological children, adopted children, or stepchildren.
○​ increased incidence of divorce also has affected the nuclear family.

●​ extended family—a multigenerational network of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins,

and more distant relatives—is the traditional family form.
Socioeconomic Status
●​ in the United States, race or ethnicity are often associated with socioeconomic status.
○​ combination of economic and social factors describing an individual or family,
including income, education, and occupation.
○​ threats to well-being multiply if, as often happens, several risk factors,
conditions that increase the likelihood of a negative outcome, are present.
●​ is a way to identify families and households based on their shared levels of education,
income, and occupation.
●​ 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
Culture and Race/Ethnicity
●​ culture refers to a society’s or group’s total way of life, including its customs, traditions,
laws, knowledge, beliefs, values, language, and physical products, from tools to
artworks—all of the behavior and attitudes that are learned, shared, and transmitted
among members of a social group.
○​ constantly changing, often through contact with other cultures.
○​ is the totality of our shared language, knowledge, material objects, and behavior.
 Developmental Psychology (Psych 170)

●​ belief that our own culture is superior is called ethnocentrism and is a normal byproduct
of growing up in a culture.
●​ cultural relativity is an appreciation for cultural differences and the understanding that
cultural practices are best understood from the standpoint of that particular culture.
●​ ethnic group consists of people united by a distinctive culture, ancestry, religion,
language, or national origin, all of which contribute to a sense of shared identity and
shared attitudes, beliefs, and values.
●​ this diversity within groups, a term such as black or Hispanic can be an ethnic
gloss—an overgeneralization that obscures or blurs such variations.

●​ term race, historically and popularly viewed as an identifiable biological category, is more
accurately defined as a social construct.
●​ race as a social category remains a factor in research because it makes a difference in
“how individuals are treated, where they live, their employment opportunities, the quality
of their health care, and whether [they] can fully participate” in their society
The Historical Context
●​ as early longitudinal studies of childhood extended into the adult years, investigators
began to focus on how certain experiences, tied to time and place, affect the course of
people’s lives.

NORMATIVE AND NONNORMATIVE INFLUENCES

●​ understand similarities and differences in development, we need to look at two types of
normative influences: biological or environmental events that affect many or most
people in a society in similar ways and events that touch only certain individuals
●​ normative age-graded influences are highly similar for people in a particular age
group.
○​ age-grade is a specific age group, such as toddler, adolescent, or senior.
●​ normative history-graded influences are significant events (such as the Great
Depression or World War II) that shape the behavior and attitudes of a historical
generation: a group of people who experience the event at a formative time in their
lives.
●​ historical generation is not the same as an age cohort: a group of people born at about
the same time.
○​ cohort is a group of people who are born at roughly the same period in a
particular society.
●​ nonnormative influences are unusual events that have a major impact on individual
lives because they disturb the expected sequence of the life cycle.
○​ are either typical events that happen at an atypical time of life (such as the death
of a parent when a child is young) or atypical events (such as surviving a plane
crash)

TIMING OF INFLUENCES: CRITICAL OR SENSITIVE PERIODS

●​ imprinting is an instinctive form of learning in which, during a critical period in early
The Life-Span development, a young animal forms an attachment to the first moving object it sees,
Developmental usually the mother.
Approach ●​ critical period is a specific time when a given event, or its absence, has a specific
impact on development.
○​ if a necessary event does not occur during a critical period of maturation, normal
development will not occur; and the resulting abnormal patterns may be
irreversible
○​ critical period - specific time when a given event or its absence has a specific
impact on development.
●​ the length of a critical period is not absolutely fixed;
●​ many aspects of development, even in the physical domain, have been found to show
plasticity, or modifiability of performance, it may be more useful to think about sensitive
periods, when a developing person is especially responsive to certain kinds of
experiences​
○​ sensitive periods - times in development when a person is particularly open to
certain kinds of experiences.
●​ is growing evidence that plasticity is not just a general characteristic of development
that applies to all members of a species, but that there are individual differences in
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plasticity of responses to environmental events as well.

Paul B. Baltes (1936–2006) and his colleagues (1987; Baltes & Smith, 2004;
Baltes, Lindenberger, & Staudinger, 1998; Staudinger & Bluck, 2001) have
identified seven key principles of a life-span developmental approach that
sum up many of the concepts discussed in this chapter.

1. Development is lifelong. Development is a lifelong process of change. Each period of the

life span is affected by what happened before and will affect what is to come. Each period has
unique characteristics and value. No period is more or less important than any other.

2. Development is multidimensional. It occurs along multiple interacting

dimensions—biological, psychological, and social—each of which may develop at varying rates.

3. Development is multidirectional. As people gain in one area, they may lose in another,
sometimes at the same time. Children grow mostly in one direction—up—both in size and in
abilities. Then the balance gradually shifts. Adolescents typically gain in physical abilities, but
their facility in learning a new language typically declines. Some abilities, such as vocabulary,
often continue to increase throughout most of adulthood; others, such as the ability to solve
unfamiliar problems, may diminish; but some new attributes, such as wisdom, may increase with
age.

4. Relative influences of biology and culture shift over the life span. The process of
development is influenced by both biology and culture, but the balance between these
influences changes. Biological abilities, such as sensory acuity and muscular strength and
coordination, weaken with age, but cultural supports, such as education, relationships, and
technologically age-friendly environments, may help compensate.

5. Development involves changing resource allocations. Individuals choose to invest their

resources of time, energy, talent, money, and social support in varying ways. Resources may be
used for growth (for example, learning to play an instrument or improving one’s skill), for
maintenance or recovery (practicing to maintain or regain proficiency), or for dealing with loss
when maintenance and recovery are not possible. The allocation of resources to hese three
functions changes throughout life as the total available pool of resources decreases. In
childhood and young adulthood, the bulk of resources typically goes to growth; in old age, to
regulation of loss. In midlife, the allocation is more evenly balanced among the three functions.

6. Development shows plasticity. Many abilities, such as memory, strength, and endurance,
can be improved significantly with training and practice, even late in life. However, even in
children, plasticity has limits that depend in part on the various influences on development. One
of the tasks of developmental research is to discover to what extent particular kinds of
development can be modified at various ages.

7. Development is influenced by the historical and cultural context. Each person develops
within multiple contexts—circumstances or conditions defined in part by maturation and in part
by time and place. Human beings not only influence but also are influenced by their
historical-cultural context. As we discuss throughout this book, developmental scientists have
found significant cohort differences, for example, in intellectual functioning, in women’s midlife
emotional development, and in the flexibility of personality in old age.

●​ lifespan, or longevity, refers to the length of time a species can exist under the most
optimal conditions.
●​ life expectancy is the predicted number of years a person born in a particular time
period can reasonably expect to live
●​ number of years since your birth, or what is called your chronological age.
●​ another way developmental researchers can think about the concept of age is to
examine how quickly the body is aging, this is your biological age.
●​ our psychologically adaptive capacity compared to others of our chronological age is our
psychological age.
●​ social age is based on the social norms of our culture and the expectations our culture
has for people of our age group.
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1.​ Prenatal Development: Conception occurs and development begins.

a.​ All of the major structures of the body are forming, and 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.
2.​ Infancy and Toddlerhood: The first two years of life are ones of dramatic growth and
change.
a.​ A newborn, with a keen sense of hearing but very poor vision, is transformed into
a walking, talking toddler within a relatively short period of time. 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.
3.​ Early Childhood: This period is also referred to as the preschool years and consists of
the years which follow toddlerhood and precede formal schooling.
a.​ As a two to six-year-old, the child is busy learning language, is gaining a sense of
self and greater independence, and is beginning to learn the workings of the
physical world.
4.​ Middle and Late Childhood: The ages of six to the onset of puberty comprise middle
and late childhood, and much of what children experience at this age is connected to
their involvement in the early grades of school.
a.​ Now the world becomes one of learning and testing new academic skills and by
assessing one’s abilities and accomplishments by making comparisons between
self and others.
5.​ Adolescence: Adolescence is a period of dramatic physical change marked by an
overall growth spurt and sexual maturation, known as puberty.
a.​ It is also a time of cognitive change as the adolescent begins to think of new
possibilities and to consider abstract concepts such as love, fear, and freedom.
Ironically, adolescents have a sense of invincibility that puts them at greater risk
of dying from accidents or contracting sexually transmitted infections that can
have lifelong consequences.
6.​ Emerging Adulthood: The period of emerging adulthood is a transitional time between
the end of adolescence and before individuals acquire all the benchmarks of adulthood.
a.​ Continued identity exploration and preparation for full independence from parents
are demonstrated. Although at one’s physiological peak, emerging adults are
most at risk for involvement in violent crimes and substance abuse.
7.​ Early Adulthood: The twenties and thirties are identified as early adulthood.
a.​ Intimate relationships, establishing families, and work are primary concerns at
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this stage of life.

8.​ Middle Adulthood: The forties through the mid-sixties is referred to as middle
adulthood.
a.​ This is a period in which aging becomes more noticeable and when many people
are at their peak of productivity in love and work.
9.​ Late Adulthood: Late adulthood is sometimes subdivided into two categories:
a.​ The young-old who are from 65-84 years and the oldest-old who are 85 years
and older. One of the primary differences between these groups is that the
young-old are still relatively healthy, productive, active, and the majority continue
to live independently. With both age groups the risks of diseases such as,
arteriosclerosis, cancer, and cerebral vascular disease increases substantially.

Issues in Lifespan Development

●​ Nature and Nurture
●​ Continuity versus Discontinuity
○​ stage theories or discontinuous development assume that developmental
change often occurs in distinct stages that are qualitatively different from each
other, and in a set, universal sequence.
■​ stage theorists assume development is more discontinuous.
○​ information processing theorists, assume development is a more slow and
gradual process known as continuous development.
●​ Active versus Passive
●​ Stability versus Change

Historical Theories on Development

●​ Preformationist View - preformationism, or the belief that a tiny, fully formed human is
implanted in the sperm or egg at conception and then grows in size until birth, was the
predominant early theory.

●​ John Locke - believed that through education a child learns socialization, or what is
needed to be an appropriate member of society.
○​ advocated thinking of a child’s mind as a tabula rasa or blank slate, and
whatever comes into the child’s mind comes from the environment.

●​ Jean-Jacques Rousseau - he did not believe they were blank slates, but instead
developed according to a natural plan which unfolded in different stages
○​ did not believe in teaching them the correct way to think, but believed children
should be allowed to think by themselves according to their own ways and an
inner, biological timetable.

●​ Arnold Gesell - Gesell believed that the child’s development was activated by genes
and he called this process maturation
○​ he believed that development unfolded in fixed sequences, and he opposed
efforts to teach children ahead of schedule as he believed they will engage in
behaviors when their nervous systems had sufficiently matured.

●​ Sigmund Freud - emphasized the importance of early childhood experiences in shaping

our personality and behavior.

Contemporary Theories on Development

●​ Erikson (1902-1994) and Psychosocial Theory:

○​ presents eight developmental stages that encompass the entire lifespan. For that
reason, Erikson’s psychosocial theory forms the foundation for much of our
discussion of psychosocial development.
○​ proposed that each period of life has a unique challenge or crisis that the person
who reaches it must face, referred to as psychosocial crises.
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●​ Learning Theory: Also known as Behaviorism, is based on the premise that it is not
possible to objectively study the mind, and therefore psychologists should limit their
attention to the study of behavior itself.
○​ skinner used the ideas of stimulus and response, along with the application of
rewards or reinforcements, to train pigeons and other animals.
●​ Social Learning Theory, or learning by watching others, was developed by Albert
Bandura (1977).
○​ is interplay between our personality and the way we interpret events and how
they influence us. This concept is called reciprocal determinism.
●​ 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 - became interested in this area when he was asked to test the IQ of
children and began to notice that there was a pattern in their wrong answers.

●​ Lev Vygotsky - sociocultural theory emphasizes the importance of culture and

interaction in the development of cognitive abilities.
○​ Information Processing is not the work of a single theorist, but based on the
ideas and research of several cognitive scientists studying how individuals
perceive, analyze, manipulate, use, and remember information.
■​ approach assumes that humans gradually improve in their processing
skills; that is, cognitive development is continuous rather than stage-like. ​
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●​ Urie Bronfenbrenner - developed the Ecological Systems Theory, which provides a

framework for understanding and studying the many influences on human development
(Bronfenbrenner, 1979).