1. Human Development
From Infancy to Old Age

2. Infancy and Childhood

3. Physical, Perceptual, and Language Development
Fetal and Newborn Development
• Developmental psychology is the study of how humans develop and why they develop as they do.
• Environmental and biological factors can affect fetal development.
• Newborns can see, hear, smell, and respond to the environment.
• Maturational readiness shapes newborn development, though each child is unique.
• Brain development and external experiences influence perceptual development.
Physical, Perceptual, and Language Development

4. Physical, Perceptual, and Language Development
Language Acquisition
• Using symbols, or representations, is key to language development.
• Scientists debate the existence of a critical period for language learning.
• Steps to learning language include learning to make signs, learning the meaning of signs, and learning grammar.
• Animal studies have revealed much about the acquisition of language.
Physical, Perceptual, and Language Development

5. Cognitive and Emotional Development

6. Cognitive and Emotional Development
• Research in emotional development focuses on the importance of attachments.
• Experiments with animals reveal the effects of imprinting and contact comfort on developing attachments.
• Some psychologists believe the ages of 6 months to 3 years are a critical period for human children to form attachments.
• Research suggests four patterns of attachment in children: secure attachment, avoidant attachment, resistant attachment, and disorganized attachment.

7. Cognitive and Emotional Development
• Research in emotional development focuses on the importance of attachments. • Experiments with animals reveal the effects of imprinting and contact comfort on developing attachments. • Some psychologists believe the ages of 6 months to 3 years are a critical period for human children to form attachments. • Research suggests four patterns of attachment in children: secure attachment, avoidant attachment, resistant attachment, and disorganized attachment.

8. Parenting Styles and Social Development
• Three distinct parenting styles include authoritarian families, democratic or authoritative families, and permissive or laissez-faire families.
• Studies suggest that adolescents who have grown up in democratic or authoritative families are more confident of their values and goals.
• Child abuse can have serious developmental effects on its victims.
• Parent education for abusive parents shows promise in reducing child abuse.

9. Social Development Social Development
• Socialization involves learning the rules of behavior of a culture, acquiring identities within society, and learning to live with other people and with oneself.
• Sigmund Freud believed children acquire a sense of right and wrong by learning to control powerful sexual and aggressive urges.

10. Social Development Continued
• Freud’s theory of psychosexual development includes fives stages: oral stage, anal stage, phallic stage, latency stage, and genital stage.
• Erik Erikson focused on the importance of the need for social approval to human development.
• Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development includes eight stages in which people confront issues and, if successful, move to the next stage.

11. Social Development The Cognitive-Developmental Approach
• Cognitive theorists argue that social development is the result of the child’s acting on the environment and trying to make sense of experiences.
• Children’s games, especially those involving role taking, allow children to try on adult roles.
• Lawrence Kohlberg studied the importance of being able to see other people’s points of view, linking this ability to social and moral development.
• Kohlberg’s stages of moral development include the pre-conventional, conventional, and postconventional stages

12. Adolescence

13. Adolescence: Physical and Sexual Development
Theories of Adolescence
• Adolescence is the transition period between childhood and adulthood.
• Psychologists have developed contradictory theories of adolescent development: G. Stanley Hall focuses on “storm and stress,” while Margaret Mead addresses cultural influences.
• Every adolescent faces developmental tasks that must be mastered.
• Adolescence is highly individualized, but marked by major physical, social, emotional, and intellectual changes.

14. Adolescence: Physical and Sexual Development
Physical Development
• The physical structure of the brain and the way it works change during adolescence: frontal lobes are late in maturing, and quantities of neurotransmitters change.
• Sexual maturation, or puberty, marks the end of childhood and features a growth spurt as well as menarche in girls, spermarche in boys.
• The rate of sexual maturation varies and has powerful psychological effects on adolescents. • Attitudes about sex have changed from those of previous generations.

15. Adolescence: Personal Development
Cognitive Development
• During adolescence formal operations thinking begins to emerge.
• Higher level thinking allows adolescents to deal with powerful emotional feelings through rationalization.
• Cognitive changes in adolescents lead to changes in personality and social interactions, often marked by idealized thinking.

16. Adolescence: Personal Development
Moral Development
• Lawrence Kohlberg identified three levels of moral development, subdivided into six stages.
• Level I: Preconventional morality
• Level II: Conventional morality
• Level III: Postconventional morality
• Moral development tends to occur in adolescence, when individuals gain the capacity for formal operations thinking.

17. Moral Development

18. Adolescence: Personal Development
Identity Development
• Developmental psychologists continue to disagree on issues of continuity versus discontinuity and stability versus change.
• Some psychologists argue that adolescents must go through an identity crisis to achieve a sense of self. Examples: Erik Erikson and the crisis of identity formation versus identity confusion, James Marcia’s four categories of crisis and commitment.

19. Identity Development Continued
• Other psychologists believe that adolescence is a smooth transition to adulthood, rather than a time of crisis and stress. Examples: A.C. Petersen and the role of external events, Albert Bandura’s social learning theory, Margaret Mead and the influence of culture.

20. Adolescence: Social Development
The Roles of Families and Peers
• A principal developmental task for adolescents is to become independent of their families.
• Peer groups and cliques fulfill the need for closeness with others and help adolescents establish an identity.
• Most adolescents tend to choose friends with values close to those of their parents, which reinforces parental values.

21. Adolescence: Social Development
Difficulties During Adolescence
• Many adolescents experience temporary psychological difficulties, though most adjust fairly quickly.
• The illusion of invulnerability can lead to acts of juvenile delinquency.

22. Adolescence: Personal Development
• Teenage depression can be triggered by events involving the loss of a loved one or the breakdown of the family. Depressed teens may appear angry, hyperactive, and be in danger of suicide.
• The pressures of adolescence can lead to eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, especially among females.

23. Adolescence: Gender Roles and Differences

24. Adolescence: Gender Roles
• Gender identity is one’s sense of oneself as male, female, or transgender.
• Gender roles are standards of behavior society expects from people of a given gender identity. Gender stereotypes are oversimplified or prejudiced ideas about gender roles.
• Sexual orientation can be homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or asexual.
• Androgynous gender roles are becoming more accepted in society
Adolescence: Gender Roles

25. Adolescence: Gender Roles
Gender Differences
• Psychologists have identified certain gender differences in personality, such as self-confidence, aggression, verbal communication styles, and nonverbal communication styles.
• Psychologists have found very few gender differences in cognitive abilities.

26. Adolescence: Gender Roles
Perspectives on Gender Differences
• Most psychologists agree that nature and nurture interact to influence gender differences.
• Psychologists disagree on the emphasis that should be given to biological and environmental factors. Theories include: biological, psychoanalytical, social learning, and cognitive-developmental.
• The gender roles of men and women in society are changing, especially in the workforce.