Developing Through The

Life Span
Developmental Psychology
🞐 Study of physical, cognitive, and social
change throughout the life span

🞐 Central Questions
■ Continuity
■ Sources of development
■ Plasticity
■ Individual differences
■ Active/Passive
Research Strategies
🞐 Cross-sectional Studies
▪ Measure individuals of various ages at one
point in time and provide information about
age differences
▪ Advantages and Disadvantages

🞐 Longitudinal Studies
▪ Measure a single individual or group of
individuals over an extended period and give
information about age changes
▪ Advantages and Disadvantages
 Prenatal
Development
Conception
Prenatal Development

🞐 Three periods
■ Germinal Period
■ Embryonic Period
■ Fetal Period

🞐 Germinal Period
■ The zygote
Embryonic Period
🞐 Major organs form
Fetal Period
🞐 Organs begin to function
Teratogens
🞐 Any disease, drug, or environmental agent
that can harm a developing embryo or fetus
Physical Development - Infancy
Physical Development - Adolescence

🞐 Begins at puberty
■ Development of sex characteristics
🞐 Primary = reproductive
🞐 Secondary = non-reproductive

🞐 Main landmarks
■ Women: menarche
■ Men: production of sperm
Physical Changes in Adulthood
🞐 Life Span
■ The maximum age possible for members of a
given species
🞐 Cellular-clock theory
🞐 Wear-and-tear theory

🞐 Life Expectancy
■ The number of years that an average member
of a species is expected to live
 Cognitive
Development
Piaget and Cognitive Development

🞐 Schema
■ A concept or framework that organizes and
interprets information

■ Assimilation
🞐 The process of interpreting new information in terms
of existing schemas

■ Accommodation
🞐 The process of modifying existing schemas in
response to new information
Changing Schemas of the Earth

5th grade

Preschool
Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory

Concrete operational (6-12 years)

Sensorimotor Stage
🞐 Object permanence
■ Realization that objects continue to exist even
when they cannot be seen, heard, or touched
directly
Example
Preoperational Stage
🞐 Egocentrism
■ Inability to take the perspective of another person
Preoperational Stage
🞐 Theory of mind
■ People’s ideas about their own and others’
mental states
Concrete Operational Stage
🞐 Conservation
Conservation Task
Formal Operational Stage
🞐 Hypothetical-Deductive Reasoning

A B C

🞐 Premises
■ All poodles are dogs.
■ All dogs are animals.
🞐 Conclusion
■ Therefore, all poodles are
animals
Development Declines With Age
Aging and Intellectual Functions

🞐 Memory and Forgetting

■ Cognitive abilities do not inevitably decline.

■ But…
Social-Emotional
Development
Parenting Styles

PARENTING High Low

TRAITS Responsiveness Responsiveness

High
Demandingness Authoritative Authoritarian

Low
Demandingness Permissive Neglectful
Attachment

🞐 Strong emotional tie with another person

Styles of Attachment

🞐 Strange Situation
■ A caregiver-infant “separation and reunion” procedure
that is staged in a laboratory to test the security of a
child’s attachment

🞐 Secure Attachment
■ The baby is secure when the parent is present,
distressed by separation, and delighted by reunion

🞐 Insecure Attachment
■ Avoidant
■ Resistant
■ Disorganized/disoriented
Consequences
🞐 Form internal working models

🞐 Secure
■ Believe in romantic love
■ Satisfying relationships
🞐 Happiness, friendliness, mutual trust, enduring
Consequences - Resistant
🞐 Emotional highs and lows
■ Obsessive preoccupation
■ Extreme sexual attraction/jealousy
■ Very willing to commit

🞐 Conflicts
■ Most upset; negative (women)
■ Little support to partners in need
Consequences - Avoidant
🞐 Fear of intimacy
■ Love is doomed to fade

🞐 Conflicts
■ Least warm and supportive (men)
■ Sought support by hinting, sulking
Kohlberg’s Levels of Moral Reasoning
🞐 Preconventional Level
■ Morality judged in terms of reward and punishment

🞐 Conventional Level
■ Morality judged in terms of social order and
approval

🞐 Postconventional Level
■ Morality judged in terms of abstract principles, like
equality and justice
Kohlberg’s Levels of Moral Reasoning
Problems
🞐 Effect of culture

🞐 Behaviour vs. reasoning

Erikson’s Eight Stages of Development
🞐 Trust vs. Mistrust – Infancy
🞐 Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt – Toddlerhood
🞐 Initiative vs. Guilt – Early Childhood
🞐 Industry vs. Inferiority – Middle Childhood
🞐 Identity vs. Role confusion – Adolescence
🞐 Intimacy vs. Isolation – Young adulthood
🞐 Generativity vs. Stagnation – Middle adulthood
🞐 Integrity vs. Despair – Late adulthood
Problems?
🞐 Scientific verification

🞐 Cross-cultural issues
Temperament

🞐 Individual’s innate disposition or behavioural

style and characteristic response
■ Easy
■ Difficult
■ Slow to warm up
■ Unclassifiable
Social and Personal Development
🞐 Peer Influences
■ Conformity

■ Other-gender peers
Identity Crisis?
🞐 An adolescent’s struggle to establish a
personal identity, or self-concept
Adolescence and Mental Health

🞐 The stereotypic images of adolescents

🞐 Three perceived sources of difficulty

🞐 But…
Life Satisfaction
Self-esteem
Dying and Death
🞐 Elisabeth Kübler-Ross proposed five stages
in approaching death
■ Denial
■ Anger
■ Bargaining
■ Depression
■ Acceptance

Controversial!