Chapter 11Chapter 11

Human Development Across the Life Span

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““My Heart Leaps Up”My Heart Leaps Up”My heart leaps up when I My heart leaps up when I beholdbeholdA rainbow in the sky;A rainbow in the sky;So was it when my life beganSo was it when my life beganSo is it now I am a manSo is it now I am a manSo be it when I shall grow oldSo be it when I shall grow oldOr let me die!Or let me die!The Child is father of the ManThe Child is father of the ManAnd I could wish my days to beAnd I could wish my days to beBound each to each to natural Bound each to each to natural piety.piety.

William WordsworthWilliam Wordsworth

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Progress Before Birth: Prenatal Development

3 phases– germinal stage = first 2 weeks

• conception, implantation, formation of placenta– embryonic stage = 2 weeks – 2 months

• formation of vital organs and systems– fetal stage = 2 months – birth

• bodily growth continues, movement capability begins, brain cells multiply

• age of viability

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Environmental Factors and Prenatal Development periods of vulnerability in prenatal period (pg

435) Maternal nutrition

– Malnutrition linked to increased risk of birth complications, neurological problems, and psychopathology

Maternal drug use– Tobacco, alcohol, prescription, and recreational drugs– Fetal alcohol syndrome

Maternal illness– Rubella, syphilis, mumps, genital herpes, AIDS, severe

influenza– Prenatal health care– Prevention through guidance

Infant mortality by countries – next slide Preventive care for children

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Slide 5

Cross-cultural comparisons of infant mortality

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The Childhood Years: Motor Development

Basic Principles– Cephalocaudal trend – head to foot– Proximodistal trend – center-outward

Maturation – gradual unfolding of genetic blueprint Developmental norms – next slide

– median age – growth charts– 95% level– Cultural variations

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Easy and Difficult Babies: Differences in Temperament Longitudinal vs. cross-sectional designs – Thomas, Chess, and Birch (1970)

– 3 basic temperamental styles• easy – 40%• slow-to-warm-up – 15%• difficult – 10%• mixed – 35%

– stable over time

Kagan & Snidman (1991)– Inhibited vs. uninhibited temperament

• inhibited – 15 - 20%• uninhibited – 25 - 30%

– stable over time, genetically based

Go home and ask mom and dad about when your temperament you were a baby.

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Early Emotional Development: Attachment Separation anxiety

– Ainsworth (1979) – The strange situation and patterns of attachment

• Secure • Anxious-ambivalent• Avoidant• Next slide, cross-cultural comparison• Effects on mating strategy –• Developing secure attachment

– Bonding at birth – contact comfort – Harlow –Daycare– Cultural factors

Evolutionary perspectives on attachment

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Attachment: Secure attachment is indicated when an infant explores the situation freely

in the presence of the mother, but displays distress when the mother leaves, and responds enthusiastically when the mother returns

– Caregivers who are sensitive and responsive to an infant’s needs are more likely to develop a secure attachment with the infant

Insecure-avoidant attachment is indicated by exploration, but minimal interest in the mother, the infant showing little distress when the mother leaves, and avoiding her when she returns

Insecure-ambivalent attachment is indicated by the infant seeking closeness to the mother and not exploring the situation, high level of distress when the mother leaves, and ambivalent behavior when she returns by alternately clinging to and pushing away from her

Insecure-disorganized (disoriented) attachment is marked by the infant’s confusion when the mother leaves and when she returns– The infant acts disoriented, seems overwhelmed by the situation, and

does not demonstrate a consistent way of coping with it

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Cultural variations in attachment patterns

Attachment and mating strategy, from childhood to puberty

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Parenting Styles

Authoritarian Parents are demanding, expect unquestioned obedience, are not responsive to their children’s desires, and communicate poorly with their children

Authoritative Parents are demanding but set rational limits for their children and communicate well with their children

Permissive Parents make few demands and are overly responsive to their child’s desires, letting their children do pretty much as they please

Uninvolved Parents minimize both the time they spend with the children and their emotional involvement with them, doing little more than providing for basic needs

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Stage Theories of Development: Personality

Stage theories, three components– progress through stages in order– progress through stages related to age– major discontinuities in development - slide

Erik Erikson (1963) – slide– Eight stages spanning the lifespan– Psychosocial crises determining balance between opposing

polarities in personality

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Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages

1 Trust vs. Mistrust(birth to 1 year)

Infants learn that they can or cannot trust others to take care of their basic needs

2 Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt (1 to 2 years)

Children learn to be self-sufficient in many activities such as toilet training, walking, and exploring; if restrained too much they learn to doubt their abilities and feel shame

3 Initiative vs. Guilt (3 to 5 years)

Children learn to assume more responsibility by taking the initiative but will feel guilty if they overstep limits set by parents

4 Industry vs. Inferiority (5 years to puberty)

Children learn to be competent by mastering new intellectual, social, and physical skills or feel inferior if they fail to develop these skills

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5 Identity vs. Role Confusion (adolescence)

Adolescents develop a sense of identity by experimenting with different roles; no role experimentation may result in role confusion

6 Intimacy vs. Isolation(young adulthood)

Young adults form intimate relationships with others or become isolated because of failure to do so

7 Generativity vs. Stagnation (middle adulthood)

Middle-aged adults feel they are helping the next generation though their work and child rearing, or they stagnate because they feel that they are not helping

8 Integrity vs. Despair (late adulthood)

Older adults assess their lives and develop sense of integrity if they find lives have been meaningful; develop sense of despair if not meaningful

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Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

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Sensorimotor Stage Infant learns about the world through their sensory and motor

interactions (including reflexes) Lack object permanence, the knowledge than an object

exists independent of perceptual contact Symbolic representation of objects and events starts to

develop during the latter part of the sensorimotor stage (e.g., use of telegraphic speech)

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Preoperational Stage The child’s thinking becomes more symbolic and

language-based, but remains egocentric and lacks the mental operations that allow logical thinking

Egocentrism is the inability to distinguish one’s own perceptions, thoughts, and feelings from those of others– Cannot perceive the world from another person’s perspective

The child, however, can pretend, imagine, and engage in make-believe play

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Preoperational Stage

Conservation is the knowledge that the quantitative properties of an object (such as mass, volume, and number) remain the same despite changes in appearance– Some grasp of conservation

marks the end of the preoperational stage and the beginning of the concrete-operational stage

– The liquid/beakers problem is a common test of conservation ability

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Preoperational Stage A major reason why a preoperational child does not

understand conservation is that the child lacks an understanding of reversibility, the knowledge that reversing a transformation brings about the conditions that existed before the transformation

Child’s thinking also reflects centration, the tendency to focus on only one aspect of a problem at a time

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Concrete Operational Stage Children gain a fuller understanding of conservation and other

mental operations that allow them to think logically, but only about concrete events– Conservation for liquids, numbers, and matter acquired early,

but conservation of length acquired later in the stage– Develops transitivity (e.g., if A > B, and B > C, then A > C)– Develops seriation, the ability to order stimuli along a

quantitative dimension (e.g., a set of pencils by their length) The reasoning of concrete operational children is tied to

immediate reality (i.e., what is in front of them and tangible) and not with the hypothetical world of possibility

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Formal Operational Stage

The child gains the capacity for hypothetical-deductive thought– Can engage in hypothetical

thought and in systematic deduction and testing of hypotheses

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Formal Operational Stage In one scientific thinking task, the child is shown several flasks of what appear

to be the same clear liquid and is told one combination of two of these liquids would produce a clear liquid

– The task is to determine which combination would produce the blue liquid

– The concrete operational child just starts mixing different clear liquids together haphazardly

– The formal operational child develops a systematic plan for deducing what the correct combination must be by determining all of the possible combinations and then systematically testing each one

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Formal Operational Stage The formal operational child can evaluate the logic of

verbal statements without referring to concrete situations– For example, the formal operational

child would judge the statement “If mice are bigger than horses, and horses are bigger than cats, then mice are bigger than cats” to be true, even though in “real life” mice are not bigger than cats

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Evaluation of Piaget’s Theory Recent research has shown that rudiments of many of

Piaget’s key concepts (e.g., object permanence) may begin to appear at earlier stages than Piaget proposed– For example, research that involved tracking infants’ eye

movements has found that infants as young as 3 months continue to stare at the place where the object disappeared from sight, indicating some degree of object permanence

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Evaluation of Piaget’s Theory1. Not all people reach formal operational thought2. The theory may be biased in favor of Western culture3. There is no real theory of what occurs after the onset of

adolescence4. Despite refinements, recent research has indeed

shown that cognitive development seems to proceed in the general sequence of stages that Piaget proposed

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Other Cognitive Abilities

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory – Thought and Language (1934)– Importance of social interactions in cognitive development– Zone of proximal development (ZPD) – difference in

accomplishing alone and with help from others Inhibition – disinhibition – innate? Memory abilities – active maintenance rehearsal 9-

10 years Memory capacities - metacognition

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The Development of Moral Reasoning Kohlberg (1976)

– Reasoning as opposed to behavior• Moral dilemmas

– Measured nature and progression of moral reasoning

– 3 levels, each with 2 sublevels – slide• Preconventional – punishment S1 – naïve reward S2• Conventional - good boy/good girl S3 – authority S4• Postconventional - social contract S5 – individual principles

and conscience S6– Longitudinal studies – (slide) , research issues (use of

males), reasoning versus behavior Greene’s et al. studies of moral judgments and brain

functioning – fMRI studies using 60 moral dilemmas

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Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Reasoning

Built on an earlier theory of moral reasoning proposed by Piaget, using a series of stories that involved moral dilemmas to assess a person’s level of moral reasoning

Discerned three levels of moral reasoning based on responses to the stories and the reasoning behind the responses given

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Kohlberg’s Levels of Moral Reasoning

1. At the preconventional level of moral reasoning, the emphasis is on avoiding punishment and looking out for your own welfare and needs– Moral reasoning is self-oriented

2. At the conventional level of moral reasoning, moral reasoning is based on social rules and laws– Social approval and being a dutiful citizen are important

3. At the highest level, the postconventional level of moral reasoning, moral reasoning is based on self-chosen ethical principles– Human rights taking precedent over laws; the avoidance of self-

condemnation for violating such principles

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Kohlberg’s Levels of Moral ReasoningLevel 1 Preconventional Morality

Stage 1 Punishment orientation

Compliance with rules to avoid punishment

Stage 2 Reward orientation

Compliance with rules to obtain rewards and satisfy own needs

Level 2 Conventional Morality

Stage 3 Good-girl/ good-boy orientation

Engages in behavior to get approval of others

Stage 4 Law and order orientation

Behavior is guided by duty to uphold laws and rules for their own sake

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Level 3 Postconventional Morality

Stage 5 Social contract orientation

Obeys rules because they are necessary for social order but understands rules are relative

Stage 6 Universal ethical principles orientation

Concerned about self-condemnation for violating universal ethical principles based on human rights

Kohlberg proposed that we all start at the preconventional level as children and as we develop, especially cognitively, we move up the ladder of moral reasoning– The sequence is uniform; however, not everyone reaches

the postconventional level

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Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Reasoning Shortcomings of Kohlberg’s

theory– Studied moral reasoning and

not moral behavior

– May not have adequately represented the morality of women

– The higher stages may be biased toward Western cultures

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Adolescence: Puberty and the Growth Spurt Pubescence – growth spurts 10 – 12 females 12 – 14 males Puberty

– Secondary sex characteristics– Primary sex characteristics

• Menarche / Spermarche• Sperm production• Tanner stages

– Maturation: early vs. late – Belsky’s study• Sex differences in effects of early maturation

Brain Development in adolescence – slide Risk taking – slide Rates of suicide

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Prefrontal Cortex and adolescence development

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Peer influence on risk taking

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The Search for Identity

Problems – suicide rates and brain development Erik Erikson (1968)

– Key challenge - forming a sense of identity James Marcia (1988) – next slide

– 4 identity statuses • Foreclosure• Moratorium• Identity Diffusion• Identity Achievement

Table of ContentsMarcia’s four identity statuses

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Emerging Adulthood as a New Developmental Stage Search for identity extends into adulthood Ages 18 – 25 have become a distinct transitional

stage of life– Characterized by:

• subjective feeling of transition• age of possibilities• self-focused• period of identity formation

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The Expanse of Adulthood Personality development – midlife crisis? - Social development – family life cycle, marriage,

parenthood, empty nest – Career development – patterns, work and in the

home – Physical changes – biological aging process

Cognitive changes – mental abilities - memory, response time -

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Median age at first marriage in United States

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Sternberg’s triangular theory of love.

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Gender Differences and issues

Stereotypes – Cognitive – Social/personality Biological origins – brain hemisphere differences –

Figure Hormone influences – estrogens and androgens Environment influences - socialization Gender role – gender versus sex

Father’s (dad’s) role in children’s well-being

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Death & Dying (Kubler-Ross) Denial – "I feel fine."; "This can't be happening, not to me."

Denial is usually only a temporary defense for the individual. This feeling is generally replaced with heightened awareness of positions and individuals that will be left behind after death.

Anger – "Why me? It's not fair!"; "How can this happen to me?"; "Who is to blame?"Once in the second stage, the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue. Because of anger, the person is very difficult to care for due to misplaced feelings of rage and envy. Any individual that symbolizes life or energy is subject to projected resentment and jealousy.

Bargaining – "Just let me live to see my children graduate."; "I'll do anything for a few more years."; "I will give my life savings if..."The third stage involves the hope that the individual can somehow postpone or delay death. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made with a higher power in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. Psychologically, the individual is saying, "I understand I will die, but if I could just have more time..."

Depression – "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"; "I'm going to die... What's the point?"; "I miss my loved one, why go on?"During the fourth stage, the dying person begins to understand the certainty of death. Because of this, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors and spend much of the time crying and grieving. This process allows the dying person to disconnect oneself from things of love and affection. It is not recommended to attempt to cheer up an individual who is in this stage. It is an important time for grieving that must be processed.

Acceptance – "It's going to be okay."; "I can't fight it, I may as well prepare for it.”In this last stage, the individual begins to come to terms with his mortality or that of his loved one.

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Let’s write about death!

Define “death”. Do you believe in some kind of “afterlife”?

– Why or why not? If so, what’s it like? Why are funerals important? If you could know the exact time and cause of your

death would you want to know? Why or why not? Write about your funeral:

– What would you want it to include?– Who are 3 people that you would want to speak and what

would you hope they say?