An Introduction to Developmental Psychology

Weekly learning outcomes:

• Reflect on the role of theory in understanding human development and participation.

• Describe how allied health professionals utilise theory when working with clients across the
lifespan.

What is developmental psychology? – developmental psychologists focus on human growth and

changes across the lifespan, including physical, cognitive, social, intellectual, perceptual, personality
and emotional growth.

Aims of developmental psychology.

• Describing change – By asking ‘what has happened over time? How do things change or stay
the same?’
• Explaining change – By asking ‘why do things change or stay the same?’
• Predicting change – By asking ‘how and why might things change or stay the same in the
future?’
• Influencing change – By asking ‘how can the course of development be influenced to improve
outcomes for individuals and populations?’ (particularly interested to allied health
professionals)

Theories of development can be classified along 4 themes (continuums) of which theorists may take
different stances on:

Nature (DNA) and nurture (experience) – to what extent is development primarily the product of
genes, biology and maturation – or of experience, learning and social influences?

Activity and passivity – how much do humans actively shape their own environments and contribute
to their own development – or are they more passive and shaped by forces beyond their control?

Continuity and discontinuity – to what extend to humans change gradually and in quantitative ways –
or progress through qualitatively different stages and change dramatically into different beings?

Universality and context specificity – in what ways is development similar from person to person and
from culture to culture, and in what ways do pathways of development vary considerably depending
on the social context?

(Following is theories of human development).

Psychoanalytic theories:

Freud (psychosexual theory – 5 stages from oral to genital) believes development is passive, that
biology drives development but also early nurture influences it to, discontinuous, and universal.

Erikson (psychosocial theory – 8 conflict stages from trust vs mistrust to integrity vs despair) believes
development is actively, discontinuous, that nature and nurture have an equal influence, and universal
but stages can be expressed differently in different cultures.

Learning theories:

Watson (behavioural learning theory – development is a product of learning through associating 2

stimuli via classical conditioning).
Skinner (behaviour learning theory – development is a product of learning through the consequences
of one’s behaviour through operant conditioning).

Both of these theorists suggest that development is mostly nurture, passive, continuous, and context
specific (direction of development depends on experiences).

Bandura (social cognitive theory – development is a product of social cognition as illustrated by

observational learning and human agency) believes development is more on the nurture side, active,
continuous, and context specific.

Humanistic theories:

Maslow (maslow hierarchy of needs – humans develop through the process of striving to meet
fundamental physiological and psychological needs, from basic needs like shelter to higher level needs
such as self-actualisation) suggest nature and nurture both have equal contribution, active,
continuous, and context specific.

Cognitive theories:

Piaget (cognitive developmental theory – 4 stages of cognitive development from sensory motor to
formal operations) believes nature contributes more to development, active, discontinuity, and
universal.

Vygotsky (social cultural theory – development is shaped by the sociocultural context through social
interactions and cultural tools) suggests development is more nurture, active, continuous, and context
specific.

System theories:

Gottlieb (epigenetic psychobiological systems perspective – development takes many directions

depending on transactions between a changing person and changing environment) believes nature
and nurture contribute equally towards development, development is active, both continuous and
discontinuous and context specific.

(Following is theoretical approaches to lifespan development).

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological approach:

• Bronfenbrenner created a widely used framework for thinking about the multiple layers of
influence on individuals throughout their development.
• Bronfenbrenner model is traditionally discussed in relation to child development, but it can be
applied to understand the context of a person’s development at any stage.
• Has several layers or systems which may be seen as circles of influence laid around the
individual at the centre.
• The Individual – each individual has their own set of characteristics including sex, age, health,
that interacts with the environment at each level.
• Microsystem – comprises the influences closest to the individual including, home life, school
setting, and peer relations.
• Mesosystem – interactions between settings within the microsystem level constitute the
mesosystem.
• Exosystem – describes settings that the person does not directly interact with, but that can
influence them indirectly. For example, if a spouse is promoted at work, this could mean that
 they have a higher workload and this could influence the couple’s relationship down in the
microsystem.
• Macrosystem – the outermost layer, describes the larger cultural context so it might be
attitudes and ideologies of the culture. For example, could be differing attitudes to same sex
marriage between liberal and conservative countries.

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological approach – three iterations:

• The classic or original Bronfenbrenner’s model or ecological system theory is the most
commonly featured in textbooks and consists of a series of nested circles.
• The next iteration keeps the same idea but adds an extra dimension of time. This edition
named the chrono system, effectively turns a circle into a tube (seen in slides) and aims to
describe the temporal patterning of ecological events and transitions throughout life.
• The final iteration of Bronfenbrenner model is called the process person context time (PPCT)
model. The process part refers to the interactions between the person in their environment,
and the person part refers to the characteristics of that person e.g. sex, age, health etc. The
familiar nested circles or layers of influence are still featured in the PPCT, and comprise the
context part. The time component comprises the chrono system. By decoupling the person
from the circles the PPCT model places a higher emphasis on the role of the individual.

Balte’s lifespan developmental perspective:

• This perspective focuses on constancy and change in biological, cognitive and psychosocial
domains with seven key features that characterize development across the lifespan.
• Hill metaphor of development = childhood and adolescence development see as the province
of youth, mid adulthood characterised as a period of stability, and aging and later adulthood
described as a time of decline. Hill analogy because first you go up, you plod along for a while,
then you start the slippery slide downhill.
• The lifespan developmental perspective articulated by Balte’s is an antidote to the hill
metaphor.
• Lifelong development – development occurs throughout the life course, no one age period is
predominant. Development is not completed at adulthood, and there is potential for growth
at all ages. Development is not just about growth and maturing to more advanced stages,
rather it is a lifelong adaptive process.
• Multidimensionality and directionality – development varies between individuals and among
behaviours as biological, psychological and social factors interact with a unique set of life
experiences for each individual. Not all systems develop at the same rate or change in the
same way within the person over time. Some will remain stable, some declines, some improve
and those that change may do so rapidly or slowly.
• Development as gain and loss – development involves a joint occurrence of gain or growth
and loss or decline. This feature follows on from the idea of multi directionality for example,
people become better able to consider consequences and regulate their actions during
adolescence and early adulthood. This may come with less tolerance for spontaneity and
rapid decision making, and less impulsivity as this period progresses.
• Plasticity – there is capacity for change at all points in the lifespan, the emphasis is on
modifiability.
• Historical embeddedness – lifespan development can vary substantially in accordance with
historical cultural conditions. We need to be aware of this when we interpret the findings of
studies.
 • People – people are active participants in the developmental process. Development isn’t just
something that happens to you, your response is critical. An example of this is how people
adapt to their experiences, how expected, important, or controllable you perceive an event to
be can impact on how you respond to it, and how it impacts on your feelings of competence
and wellbeing.
• Contextualism – multiple factors interacts and influence development, these can be organised
into three categories: age graded normative, history graded normative, and non-normative
influences. Influences refer to biological, social, cultural, and historical factors. And normative
suggests that these are common or typical for individuals. The relative importance of age
graded normative, history graded normative, and non-normative life events varies across the
lifespan. Normative age graded influences are most likely to influence development at early
and later in the lifespan. Normative history graded have the biggest impact on development
during adolescence and young adulthood. The accumulation of non-normative life events
becomes more apparent over the life course and help us to understand individual difference
in life trajectories.
o Normative age graded influences – factors that are closely tied to chronological age.
So things like biology (e.g. learning to walk, entering puberty) or those influenced by
social customs (e.g. starting school, retiring from work).
o Normative history graded influences – influences that are common to people of a
particular generation or cohort, those that grow up in the same time and place. For
example, living through wars, periods of economic depression, social unrest, or
changes in cultural values such as attitudes towards women’s roles. How we
characterise people of different cohorts (baby boomers, gen X, millennials, gen Z)
these features are often derived from history graded influences that they
experienced.
o Non-normative influences – events or influences that are more unpredictable and
unique to the individual as they’re not tied to developmental or historical periods. For
example, experienced the death of a parent at a young age, learning a second
language in midlife.

Life course perspective:

A life course perspective on understanding occupational choice and participation considers five key
principles.

1. Aging and transformation of occupations are lifelong processes; the accumulated experiences
with past occupations impact current forms of engagement.
2. People live interconnected lives, and these networks of relationships shape people’s
occupations.
3. Historic times and societal events shape and alter what people do, how they do it, and give it
meaning.
4. People make choices about their occupations, which reflect their circumstances and perceived
occupational opportunities at that particular time.
5. Antecedents to an event or life transition and the consequences of such events for a person’s
occupations vary according to timing in the life course.

Occupations are embedded in different communities:

Communities influence patterns of people’s lives, shape values and provide structures, opportunities
and constraints to occupational participation.
Over the course of life, people join, form and leave communities depending on formal and informal
structural, age-related or normative expectations. For example, there are formal guidelines about the
age when people retire. These may differ among different communities.

Interpersonal influences transform occupations:

Occupations are influenced by a number of interpersonal mechanisms. These are co-constructed

through people’s actions embedded within social and historical context.