©Prentice Hall 20039-1 Understanding Psychology 6 th Edition Charles G. Morris and Albert A. Maisto...

©Prentice Hall 2003 9-1

Understanding Psychology6th Edition

Charles G. Morris and Albert A. Maisto

PowerPoint Presentation byH. Lynn Bradman

Metropolitan Community College


Chapter 9

Life-Span Development


Enduring Issues and Methods in

Developmental Psychology• What are some of the limitations of the

methods used to study development? • Cross-sectional studies involve studying

different age groups of people• Longitudinal studies test the same group of

individuals at different times in their lives.


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.

• Biographical: – Studying developmental changes by

reconstructing subjects’ past through interviews and investigating the effects of past events on current behaviors.


Cross-Sectional Studies

• Advantages– Inexpensive– Relatively quick to complete– No high attrition rate


Cross-Sectional Studies

• Disadvantages– Different age groups may be dissimilar– Age and maturity may not be equivalent– Confounds cohort and age differences


Longitudinal Studies

• Advantages– Detailed information about subjects– Provides great detail of developmental

changes– Follows same cohort groups


Longitudinal Studies

• Disadvantages– Expensive and time consuming– Potential for high attrition rates– May confound age differences & differences

in assessment tools


Biographical Studies

• Advantages:– Rich detail about one individual’s life– Allows for in-depth study of one individual


Biographical Studies

• Disadvantages– Individual’s recall is often untrustworthy– Can be very time consuming and expensive


Prenatal Development

• The period of development from conception to birth.


Prenatal Development

• Prenatal development: – Development from conception to birth.

• Embryo: – 2 weeks after conception to 3 months.

• Fetus: – 3 months after conception to birth.


Importance of the Placenta

• During prenatal development teratogens can pass through the placenta and cause irreparable harm to the embryo or fetus.

• This harm is greatest if the drug or other substance is introduced just at the time when some major developmental process is taking place.

• If the same substance is introduced outside this critical period, little or even no harm may result.


Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)

• Alcohol is a drug most commonly abused by pregnant women.

• Heavy alcohol consumption by the mother during pregnancy is characterized by facial deformities, heart defects, stunted growth, and cognitive impairments.

• Smaller amounts of alcohol may also cause impairments.


The Newborn


Reflexes

• Rooting reflex: – A baby turns its head toward something

touching its cheek and gropes around with its mouth.

• Sucking reflex: – Sucking on any object placed in a baby’s

mouth.

• Swallowing reflex: – Enables the baby to swallow liquids without

choking.


Reflexes

• Grasping reflex: – Closing their fists on anything placed in

their hands.

• Stepping reflex: – The light stepping motions made by babies

if they are held upright with their feet just touching a surface.


Temperament

• The physical and emotional characteristics of the newborn child and young infant.

• Babies are born with individual differences in personality called temperament differences.

• Often a baby's temperament remains quite stable over time due to a combination of genetic and environmental influences.


Temperament

• Stability in temperament is not inevitable; changes in temperament can also take place.

• Your own temperament may be both similar to and different from the temperament you displayed as a newborn.


Three Types of Temperaments

• Easy: – Good-natured and adaptable, easy to care

for and please

• Difficult: – Moody and intense, reacting to new people

and new situations negatively and strongly

• Slow-to-warm-up: – Relatively inactive and slow to respond to

new things, and when they do react, their reactions are mild


Perceptual Abilities

• All of a baby's senses are functioning at birth:– Sight – Hearing – Taste – Smell – Touch


Vision

• A baby’s least developed sense is probably vision, which takes 6 to 8 months to become as good as the average college student's.

• Infants prefer: a novel picture or pattern with clear contrasts and their own mother rather than a stranger.


Depth Perception

• Crawling babies will not cross over onto the deep side during the visual cliff experiments.

• Babies too young to crawl: – No anxiety, but do demonstrate depth

perception

• 2-4 months old: – Begin to perceive patterns, objects, and

depth


Other Senses

• Although it is hard to tell exactly what a baby's sensory world is like, newborns seem particularly adept at discriminating speech sounds;

• This suggests that their hearing is quite good.


Other Senses

• Infants have likes and dislikes with regard to smells.

• Infants like sweet flavors, a preference which persists through childhood.


Infancy and Childhood


Physical Growth

• During the first dozen years of life a helpless infant becomes a competent older child.

• This transformation encompasses many important kinds of changes, including physical, motor, cognitive, and social developments.


Physical Growth

• Growth of the body is most rapid during the first year, with the average baby growing approximately 10 inches and gaining about 15 pounds.

• It then slows down considerably until early adolescence.

• When growth does occur, it happens suddenly, almost overnight, rather than through small, steady changes.


Motor Development

• Babies tend to reach the major milestones in early motor development at broadly similar ages, give or take a few months.

• The average ages are called developmental norms.

• Maturation, the biological process that lead to developmental changes, also is shaped by experiences with the environment.


Developmental Trends

• Cephalocaudal: – Development occurs in areas near the head

(cephalo) first and areas farther from the head develop later (caudal means tail).

• Proximodistal: – Development occurs near the center of the

body (proximal) first and near the extremities (distal) later.


Developmental Trends

• Gross to specific development: – Children tend to gain control of gross (large

muscle) movement before they gain control of specific (or fine motor control) movement.


Cognitive Development

• According to the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, children undergo qualitative changes in thinking as they grow older.

• Piaget depicted these changes as a series of stages.


Cognitive Development (Piaget)

• Sensory-motor stage (birth-2)• Preoperational stage (2-7)• Concrete operational (7-11)• Formal operational (11-15)


Sensory-Motor Stage

• Object permanence: – The concept that things continue to exist

even when they are out of sight.

• Mental representations: – Mental images or symbols (such as words)

used to think about or remember an object, a person, or an event.


Preoperational Stage

• A child becomes able to use mental representations and language to describe, remember, and reason about the world.

• Egocentric: – Unable to see things from another person’s

point of view.


Concrete-Operational Stage

• A child can attend to more than one thing at a time and understand someone else’s point of view, though thinking is limited to concrete matters.

• A child can understand conservation.


Principles of Conservation

• The concept that basic amounts remain constant despite superficial changes in appearances.


Formal-Operational Stage

• Teenagers acquire the ability to think abstractly and test ideas mentally using logic.


Criticisms of Piaget’s Theory

• Piaget underestimated the cognitive ability of infants.

• Cognitive milestones are reached sooner than Piaget believed.

• Piaget did not take the role of social interaction into account.

• The stage theory does not address human diversity.


Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development

• Preconventional: – Interpreting behavior in terms of its

concrete consequences.

• Conventional: – Interpreting behavior in terms of social and

societal approval.

• Postconventional: – Emphasis on abstract principles, for

example justice, liberty, and equality.


Criticisms of Kohlberg’s Theory

• Many people never progress beyond the conventional level.

• The theory does not take into account cultural differences in morals.

• Carol Gilligan has pointed out that there may be a gender bias in the theory.


Language Development

• Some psychologists believe that childhood is a critical period for acquiring language.

• If so, this would explain why learning a second language is also easier for children than for adults.



• Cooing (around 2 months): – Vowel-like utterances

• Babbling (3-4 months): – Meaningless sounds that are the building

blocks for later language development.



• Intonation (4-6 months): – The changing of pitch that adults use to

distinguish questions from statements.

• Holophrases (12-20 months): – One word sentences.


Theories of Language Development

• B. F. Skinner: – Language develops as a result of

reinforcement by the environment.

• Language is a learned behavior like any other human behavior.


Theories of Language Development

• Noam Chomsky: – Humans have an innate ability to acquire

language.

• We are born with a language acquisition device, an innate, internal mechanism for processing speech.

• This device allows children to understand the basic rules of grammar.


Social Development

• Developing a sense of independence is just one of the tasks that children face in their social development.

• During the toddler period, a growing awareness of being a separate person makes developing some autonomy from parents an important issue.


Imprinting

• A form of primitive bonding seen in some species of animals.

• The newborn animal has a tendency to follow the first moving thing it sees after it is born or hatched.

• Human infants do not imprint on the first moving objects they see, but they do form attachment.


Social Development

• Attachment: – The emotional bond that develops in the

first year of life that makes human babies cling to their caregivers for safety and comfort.


Parent-Child Relationships

• Parents can encourage independence in their children by allowing them to make choices and do things on their own within a framework of reasonable and consistently enforced limits.



• Other major social issues during the childhood years include:– Forming a secure attachment toward and

trust in other people (infancy) – Learning to take initiative in tackling new

tasks (the preschool years) – Mastering some of the many skills that will

be needed in adulthood (middle and later childhood).



• Socialization: – Socialization, the process by which children

learn their cultures' behaviors and attitudes is an important task of childhood.


Play As Social Development

• Solitary play: – A child engaged in some activity alone; The

earliest form of play.

• Parallel play: – Two children playing side by side at the

same activities, paying little or no attention to each other; The earliest form of social interaction between toddlers.


Play As Social Development

• Cooperative play: – Two or more children engaged in play that

requires interaction.

• Peer group: – A network of same-aged friends and

acquaintances who give one another emotional and social support.


Sex Role Development

• Gender identity (age 3): – The knowledge that one is male or female.

• Gender constancy (age 4 or 5): – The realization that gender cannot be

changed.


Sex Role Development

• Gender-role awareness: – Knowledge of what behavior is appropriate

for each gender.

• Gender stereotypes: – General beliefs about characteristics that

men and women possess.

• Sex-typed behavior: – Socially prescribed ways of behaving that

differ for boys and girls.


What Do You Think?

• Does television viewing have a harmful effect on children?


Adolescence


Physical Changes in Adolescence

• Rapid growth and sexual maturation are just part of the transformation that occurs during this period.

• The child turns into an adult, not only physically but also cognitively, socially, and personally.


Growth Spurt

• A rapid increase in height and weight that occurs during adolescence.

• The growth spurt for girls typically occurs around age 10.5.

• The growth spurt for boys typically occurs around age 12.5.


Sexual Development of Females

• The first sign of puberty is the growth spurt.

• The breasts begin to develop and pubic hair begins to appear.

• Menarche (the first menstrual period) occurs a year after the development of the breasts (between 12.5 and 13 years old).


Sexual Development of Males

• The initial sign of puberty is the growth of the testes (around 11.5 years old).

• During the growth spurt (around age 12.5) enlargement of the penis occurs.

• Development of pubic hair.• Development of facial hair.• The first ejaculation (around age 13.5).• The deepening of the voice is one of the

last changes.


Early Versus Late Development

• Early development for boys has positive impact:– They are better in sports and receive

greater respect from their peers.

• Early development has both positive and negative effects for girls:– Early developing girls may be admired by

other girls, but may be treated as a sex object by boys.


Cognitive Changes


Cognitive Distortions in Adolescence

• Imaginary audience: – The deluded belief of adolescents that they

are constantly being observed by others.

• Personal fable: – The deluded belief of adolescents that they

are unique, very important, and invulnerable.


Forming an Identity

• Identity formation: – The development of a stable sense of self,

necessary to make the transition from dependence on others to dependence on oneself.

• Identity crisis: – A period of intense self-examination and

decision making; Part of the process of identity formation.


Possible Outcomes of an Identity Crisis

• Identity achievement: – Successful resolution of identity crisis

• Identity foreclosure: – Chosen an identity that pleases others

• Moratorium: – Still exploring various roles, but have not

chosen one yet

• Identity diffusion: – Avoid considering role options in any

conscious manner


Some Problems of Adolescence

• Declines in self-esteem may result from the physical, social, or emotional changes

• In addition, teenagers have to cope with the demands of their new sexuality, the potential for early pregnancy, and the threat of violence in their peer groups.

• Depression and suicide rates for teens are up from past decades.


Risk Factors of Teen Suicide

• Being female• Thinking about suicide• Having a mental disorder, for example

depression• Having a poorly educated father who is

absent from the home


Adulthood

• Reaching developmental milestones in adulthood is much less predictable than in earlier years.

• There are certain experiences and changes that take place sooner or later in nearly everyone's life and certain needs that nearly every adult tries to fulfill.


Lifestyle Options in Adulthood

• Marriage (more than 90% of Americans eventually marry)

• Cohabitation• Gay or lesbian relationship• Remaining single


Adjustments to Parenthood

• Parents may have little time or energy for each other.

• Parents may experience conflict between their careers and home responsibilities.

• Marital satisfaction tends to decline after the arrival of the first child.


Possible Effects of Divorce on Children

• Poorer school performance• Self-esteem problems• Problems with gender-role development• Emotional adjustments• Difficulty maintaining relationships• Negative attitude toward marriage


Work

• The vast majority of adults are moderately or highly satisfied with their jobs and would continue to work even if they didn't need to for financial reasons.

• Balancing the demands of job and family is often difficult, however, especially for women, because they tend to have most of the responsibility for housework and childcare.


Work

• Yet despite this stress of a 'double shift,' a job outside the home is a positive, self-esteem-boosting factor in most women's lives.


Cognitive Changes

• An adult's thinking is more flexible and practical than an adolescent's.

• Whereas adolescents search for the one "correct" solution to a problem, adults realize that there may be several "right" solutions or none at all.

• Adults also place less faith in authorities than adolescents do.


Personality Changes

• Certain broad patterns of personality change occur in adulthood.

• As people grow older, they tend to become less self-centered and more comfortable in interpersonal relationships.


Personality Changes

• They also develop better coping skills and new ways of adapting.

• By middle age many adults feel an increasing commitment to, and responsibility for, others.

• This suggests that many adults are successfully meeting what Erik Erikson saw as the major challenge of middle adulthood.


Middle Adulthood

• Midlife crisis: – A time when adults discover they no longer

feel fulfilled in their jobs or personal lives and attempt to make a decisive shift

– Most people do not experience a midlife crisis.

• Midlife transition: – A process whereby adults assess the past and

formulate new goals for the future.

• Menopause: – The time in a woman’s life when menstruation

ceases.


Late Adulthood

• Over the past century life expectancy in America has increased mainly because of improved health care and nutrition.

• There is, however, a sizable gender gap, with women living an average of 7 years longer than men.

• There is also a sizable racial gap, with white Americans living an average of 5 years longer than blacks.


Factors that Affect Physical Well-Being

• Diet• Amount of exercise• Quality of health care• Smoking or drug use• Overexposure to the sun• Attitude and interest


Adjustments to Retirement

• Psychological adjustments• Financial adjustments• Marital (or relationship) adjustments• Social adjustments


Sexual and Social Behavior

• Although their sexual responses may be slowed, most continue to enjoy sex in their sixties and seventies.

• Still, gradual social changes occur in late adulthood.

• Older adults start to interact with fewer people and perform fewer social roles.

• They may also become less influenced by social rules and expectations.


The Aging Process

• The aging mind works a little more slowly, and certain kinds of memories are more difficult to store and retrieve, but these changes are generally not extensive enough to interfere with most everyday tasks.

• Healthy older adults who engage in intellectually stimulating activities usually maintain a high level of mental functioning.


Alzheimer’s Disease

• A disorder characterized by progressive losses in memory and cognition and changes in personality that is believed to be caused by a deterioration of the brain’s structure and function.


Risk Factors for Developing Alzheimer’s

Disease• Family history of dementia• Having Down syndrome or Parkinson’s

disease• Being born to a woman over the age of

40• Suffering a head trauma• Being heterozygous for a certain gene

located on chromosome 19


Facing Death

• Most elderly people fear death less than younger people do.

• What they do fear are the pain, indignity, depersonalization, and loneliness associated with a terminal illness.

• They also worry about becoming a financial burden to their families.

• The death of a spouse may be the most severe challenge the elderly face.


Kübler-Ross’s Stages of Dying

• Denial• Anger• Bargaining• Depression• Acceptance

©Prentice Hall 20039-1 Understanding Psychology 6 th Edition Charles G. Morris and Albert A. Maisto...

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