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PS1509 Lifespan Development Notes (1º)
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LIFESPAN DEVELOPMENT, LECTURE I- INTRODUCTION
1-What is developmental psychology?
It is fundamentally interested in how and why things change in people over time. Primarily focus on what drives this change:
in abilities, in structure, in understanding
It does that by looking at different areas of psychology like cognition, emotions, evolution, etc and the way they change
throughout the lifespan.
It wonders about the trajectory of the changes (continuous, on stages, etc.), the reason of the changes, and includes.
2-Terms in developmental psychology
Child: dictionary says it is a person between birth and puberty, legal system says in someone under 18. There are arguments
that say a person is not considered an adult until 25 because it is when frontal lobe is fully developed.
Useful table to think about the different stages of development:
3-Measurement is developmental psychology
The Stroop effect: named after John Stroop (1935). Measures the phenomena that there is an increased reaction tine
when you need to name the colour of an incongruously printed word. Demonstrates the difficulty in inhibiting an
automatic response (reading the word, to only say the colour of the letters), instead you need to consciously control
your behaviour. This is a way of measuring executive functioning (controlling, organising and planning your
behaviour).
Adults tend to be good at this task, but not child, so when do the executive functions develop? The reproduction of
this task through the lifespan can show us the evolution of the development.
In order to measure executive function, we need to adapt the task to the development of the subject, if a baby
cannot read, the Stroop effect won´t be useful, so we can use others like: Go-No Go task, Dragon/Bear Task (child
has to copy exactly what the bear does but not what the dragon does, they copy both indistinctly) , card sorting task,
…
This graphic shows the evolution of the performance on the bear/dragon task from 3.5 years to 4.5 years. We can
see through these ages executive functions develop substantially.
We are interested
success, etc. They are not completely developed until the age of 25, so we can
observe a real increase in development between the ages of 3-4-5, then steadily
increases until the age of 25, and after, a decline starts.
Methods of measurement specially un young children (lacking words, language
or any traditional communication way): looking (preferential looking, looking
times (amount of times the subject looks to something or somewhere), facial
expressions (gaze, how they reacting), gestures (motor control like pointing or
reaching), brain imaging (more invasive), etc.
4-Areas of developmental psychology
4.1-Physical and motor development
The physical changes within the central nervous system that are influenced by the environment and the maturational process.
It is about the development of key motor skills
,It is important to mention how unable are human infancies to do most things compared to other animals, particularly in
relation to physical and motor development. They can walk basically as they are born, we need years.
Some questions as developmental psychologist in relation to physical and motor development are: what are the areas of the
brain that develop fastest? What is the impact of early experience? How do we learn to walk? Etc.
How we learn to walk?
0 month: turns head to side, moves legs alternately as if crawling
when on back. Not under conscious control, more like a reflex.
3 months: head erect when held up, lifts head and shoulders with
hands or elbow when on stomach, sits with support.
6 months: sits alone momentarily, rolls from back to stomach.
Typical development progression
9 months: sits alone, pulls self to sitting position in crib, makes forward progression in prone position to toy, walks
holding on to furniture. (enough strength in core muscles)
12 months: stands alone, can sit down, creeping perfected.
18 months: walks well, climbs stairs or chair
24 months: walking perfected, up and down stairs, backward forward.
4.2-Cognitive development Other development progressions
The development of cognitive abilities like memory, thinking, perceiving and understanding the world.
It seeks for the understanding of the causes and mechanisms that drive the development of cognitive abilities, wondering
things like how do we learn to count or to control our behaviour, how good is 2 or 45 year olds memory, etc.
One example is de development of episodic memory, which receives and stores information about temporal dated episode or
event and the relation between these events (traditional memories). The development of episodic memory does not start until
the age of 2-3, so there is no real episodic memory before that, which we call Infantile Amnesia. It is because of the big
amount of new neuronal connections that are being created and also the lack of self-awareness and language.
4.3-Emotional development
The development of expressing, understanding and control of emotions. It is the development and consequence of emotional
bonds. The main questions are how do these bonds develop? What difference are these bonds and how do they affect later
life? Does your early relationship with your mother affect later relationships? How do life events affect your emotion
development?
Another example is the development of the expression of happiness:
<1 month: fleeting smiles, often during REM sleep. Induced by internal states.
3-8th week: smiles in reaction to external events.
3rd month: smiles directed towards people, social smiles. Smiles become more focused on others, and laughter
begins.
7th month: familiar individuals focus of smiles linked to the development of relational bond.
By end of year: laughs at unexpected events.
4.4-Social development
The development of social behaviour and understanding of social world and the impact of the social world on the
development of the child.
The questions are how and why do different gender roles develop? How does friendship develop over childhood? How do
different social experiences affect children?
As an example, friendship: ongoing reciprocal relations with chosen companions.
, In infants, the relationship with peers lack real reciprocal understanding in terms of social interaction. They play moves from
what we call parallel play (play close but not together) to beginning social play (real social interaction) at the end of infancy
(towards 18 months old).
Preschool (early childhood): development of elective friendships (mainly based on similarity), showing clear prosocial
behaviour (sharing toys) and beginning of development of Hostility.
School age (middle and later childhood): development of understanding of reciprocal nature of friendship (development of
social understanding/empathy) and of gender based friendship patterns (larger hierarchical groups for boys, smaller more
intimate friendship for girls), but also further development of hostile behaviours (gender type aggression, friendship jealousy)
Adolescence: increased intimacy and expectations for friendship and increase role of socialisation for peers.
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