1. Developing Through the Life Span Chapter 5

2. Ages and Perspectives
Typically life span study is broken into categories
Ages:
neonatal, newborn up to a month
infant and toddler (a months to 5ish)
middle childhood (6-11)
adolescence (12 to or 12 to 22)
early adult (18 to 40 or 22 to 40)
middle adult (40 to 60)
late adult + new: late-late adult
Perspectives
physical
social/personality
cognitive

3. Across the life-span Physical Social Cognitive Issue Details
Nature/Nurture
How do genetic inheritance (our nature) and experience (the nurture we receive) influence our behavior?
Continuity/Stages
Is developmental a gradual, continuous process or a sequence of separate stages?
Stability/Change
Do our early personality traits persist through life, or do we become different persons as we age.
Physical
Social
Cognitive

4. Physical Development
To understand emergence of motor skills and memory we must understand the developing brain.
The brain initially overproduces neurons. Peaking around 28 billion at 7 months, these neurons are pruned (shed) to 23 billion at birth.
The greatest neuronal spurt is in the frontal lobe enabling the individual for rational thought. This is thought to be complete by age 16 or so.

5. The Competent Newborn
Infants are born with reflexes that aid survival, (e.g. rooting reflex, Babinski, Moro, and sucking).
Offspring cries are important signals for parents.
Carl and Ann Purcell/ Corbis
Lightscapes, Inc. Corbis

6. Experience has little effect on this sequence.
Motor Development
Experience has little effect on this sequence.
OBJECTIVE 6| Outline four events in the motor development sequence from birth to toddlerhood, and evaluate the effects of maturation and experience on that sequence.

7. Learning gross and fine motor skills
Video: Baby Body sense

8. begins with puberty (sexual maturation). Menarche and spermarche?
“Adolescence”
begins with puberty (sexual maturation).
Menarche and spermarche?
What is the difference between
Primary sexual characteristics
and
Secondary sexual characteristics?
Early and late maturing children have a different set of social issues.
OBJECTIVE 18| Identify the major physical changes during adolescence.

9. Today psychologists believe that development is a lifelong process.
Adolescence
Today psychologists believe that development is a lifelong process.
By age 16 to 25, the neurons in the frontal cortex have grown and completed mylenation. This is thought to enable better rational thought.
Frontal cortex lags behind limbic system development. Along with hormonal surges, this may explain occasional teen impulsiveness.
OBJECTIVE 17| Define adolescence.
AP Photo/ Jeff Chiu

10. Middle Adulthood
Muscular strength, reaction time, sensory abilities and
cardiac output begin to decline after mid-twenties.
Around 50, women go through menopause; and men (sperm o’ slow down )have decreased levels of hormones and fertility.
OBJECTIVE 25| Identify major physical changes that occur in middle adulthood.
Willie Mays batting performance.

11. Old Age: Sensory Abilities
After age 70, hearing, distance perception, and the sense of smell diminish, as do muscle strength, reaction time and stamina. After 80, neural processes slow down.
Michael Newman/ PhotoEdit

12. Old Age: Motor Abilities
At 70, our motor abilities also decline.
Fatal accidents also increase around this age.

13. Old Age: Life Expectancy
Approx. Life expectancy
~44 in 1900
49 in 1950
67 in 2004,
80 today (in developed countries).
OBJECTIVE 26| Compare life expectancy in the mid-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and discuss changes in sensory abilities and health (including frequency of dementia) in older adults.
Gorges Gobet/ AP Photo

14. Death and Dying Video “Death: An Overview”
There is no “normal” reaction or set series of grief stages.
Kubler-Ross identified some stages of grief:
denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
What is a “good” death?
What do you want done with your body?
Funeral customs
OBJECTIVE 32| Describe the range of reactions to the death of a loved one.
Chris Steele-Perkins/ Magnum Photos

15. Cognitive Development
Piaget:
Search for equilibrium. Our cognitive development is shaped by errors we make and discovered learning.
Schemas are mental frameworks we create from our own experiences.
Assimilation involves incorporating new experiences into our current understanding (schema).
Adjusting a schema and modifying it is called accommodation
OBJECTIVE 8| State Piaget’s understanding of how the mind develops, and discuss the importance of assimilation and accommodation in this process.
Both photos: Courtesy of Judy DeLoache

16. Piaget’s Theory
OBJECTIVE 9| Outline Piaget’s four main stages of cognitive development, and comment on how children’s thinking changes during these four stages.

17. Cognitive Development
Investigators study infant’s getting habituated to objects over some duration of time.
New objects are paid more attention than habituated ones, showing learning.
Infants love to look at faces, bold colors, and new things.
Even though a boring color Much more fascinating

18. Maturation and Infant Memory
On average, the earliest conscious memory able to be recalled later in life is around 3½ years.
Earliest age of conscious memory is about 18 months
A 5-year-old has a sense of self, time, more schemata and an increased long-term memory, thus organization of memory is different from 3-4 year of age.
Habituation
OBJECTIVE 7| Explain why we have few memories of experiences during our first three years of life.
Courtesy of Carolyn Rovee-Collier
Amy Pedersen

19. Sensorimotor Stage: Criticisms
BUT: Infants seem to be able to count up to 2 things.
Wynn (1992, 2000) showed children stared longer at the wrong number of objects than the right ones.

20. Sensorimotor Stage (0 to 2ish)
In sensorimotor stage babies take the world — through looking, hearing, touching, mouthing and grasping.
Children develop object permanence, i.e., objects that are out of sight are also out of mind.
Doug Goodman

21. Preoperational Stage (2-6ish) A fascinating stage
Children are too young to plan out mental operations (strategies; more exploration and testing things).
They lack “conservation”, enjoy role playing and symbolism (fast-mapping language!)
Ontario Science Center

22. Preoperational stage: Egocentrism and Theory of Mind
Piaget concluded that preschool children are egocentric. They cannot perceive things from another’s point of view.
Theory of mind is to understand someone else’s perspective. People with Autism have trouble with this.

23. Concrete Operational Stage (6 to 11)
Children grasp concrete information and logic, learn a ton of facts, understand conservation problems and math, and begin to plan out mental strategies.
Love to follow rules, and can tell you why something is wrong.
Children in this stage are also able to transform mathematical functions. So if, = 12 then transformation 12 – 4 = 8.

24. Formal Operational Stage : Developing Reasoning Power
Reasoning ability expands from concrete thinking to abstract and hypothetical thinking. We can now use symbols and imagined realities to systematically reason, what Piaget called formal operational thinking.
. Adolescents can conceptualize and judge concepts such as good from evil, truth and justice, and think about God in deeper terms.
OBJECTIVE 19| Describe the changes in reasoning abilities that Piaget called formal operations.
William Thomas Cain/ Getty Images
AP/Wide World Photos

25. Reflecting on Piaget’s Theory
Piaget’s stage theory has been influential globally, validating a number of ideas regarding growth and development in many cultures and societies.
However, today’s researchers believe:
Development is a continuous process.
Children express their mental abilities and operations at earlier ages.
One person can be at different levels in different areas of knowledge.
OBJECTIVE 10| Discuss psychologists’ current views on Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.

26. Cognitive Development
Adolescents’ ability to reason gives them a new level of social awareness. In particular they can think about:
Their own thinking.
What others are thinking.
And think about what others are thinking about them.
How ideals can be reached. Criticize society, parents and even themselves.

27. Old Age: Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease?
With increasing age
the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease increases.
But dementia and Alzheimer’s disease
are not normal part of growing old.
Alan Oddie/ PhotoEdit

28. Successful Aging

29. Well Being Across the Life Span
Well being and people’s feelings of satisfaction are stable across the life span.
OBJECTIVE 31| Describe trends in people’s life satisfaction across the life span.

30. a sense of one’s identity, forms around 6 months.
Social development
Attachment theory
Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages
Moral thinking: a cross between cognition and social learning
Self-concept,
a sense of one’s identity, forms around 6 months.

31. Social Development
Stranger anxiety is fear of strangers and develops around 8 months. This is the age at which infants form schemas for familiar faces and cannot assimilate a new face.
OBJECTIVE 11| Define stranger anxiety.
Separation anxiety peaks at 13 months of age.
© Christina Kennedy/ PhotoEdit

32. Origins of Attachment
In some animals (goslings; NOT IN HUMANS) imprinting is the cause of attachment.
Harlow (1971) showed that infants bond with surrogate mothers because of bodily contact and not nourishment.
Like bodily contact, familiarity in another factor for causing attachment.
You can bond with adopted children, and preemies will bond once they emerge from the incubator.
OBJECTIVE 12| Discuss the effects of nourishment, body contact, and familiarity on infant social attachment.

33. Attachment Differences
Placed in a strange situation, 60% children express secure attachment
The other 30% show insecure attachment, these children cling to their mothers or caregivers, and are less likely to explore the environment.
OBJECTIVE 13| Contrast secure and insecure attachment, and discuss the roles of parents and infants in the development of attachment and an infant’s feelings of basic trust.

34. Child-Rearing Practices
Description
Authoritarian
Parents impose rules and expect obedience.
Permissive
Parents submit to children’s demands.
Authoritative
Parents are demanding but responsive to their children.
Authoritative parenting correlates positively with social competence.
Authoritarian parenting correlates with spanking and bullyimg.
OBJECTIVE 16| Describe three parenting styles, and offer three potential explanations for the link between authoritative parenting and social competence.

35. Social Development
OBJECTIVE 21| Identify Erickson’s eight stages of psychosocial development and their accompanying issues.

36. Moral Thinking
Preconventional Morality: punishment or gain reward.
Conventional Morality:
social rules and laws are upheld for their own sake.
Postconventional Morality: personally perceived ethical principles.
The end