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Lecture 1: Introduction, Methods, Lifespan Development
Development: systematic changes and continuities in the individual that occur between
conception and death
- Physical: organs, aging
- Cognitive: perception, language, learning, memory, problem solving
- Psychosocial: motives, emotions, personality traits, relationships
Aging: a range of physical, cognitive and psychosocial changes, positive and negative, in the
mature organism
Age grade: assigned different statuses, roles, privileges and responsibilities
Age norms: society’s way of telling people how to act their age
Social clock: a person’s sense of when things should be done and when they are ahead or
behind the schedule dictated by age norms
Poverty can be very damaging to development: 1 in 5 and 1 in 3 children of color live in poverty
- Lower academic achievement, poorer mental health and poorer physical health
Goals:
- Describing
- Predicting and explaining
- Optimizing development
Gerontology: the study of aging and old age
The modern life-span perspective:
1. Development is a lifelong process
2. Development is multidirectional
3. Development involves both gain and loss
4. Development is characterized by lifelong plasticity
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5. Development is shaped by its historical-cultural context
6. Development is multiply influenced (nature and nurture)
7. Development must be studied by multiple disciplines
Methods of data collection for developmental researchers:
- Verbal reports: asking people questions, interviews, questionnaires or surveys,
personality scales
- Behavioral observations: naturalistic, observing people in their everyday surroundings
- Structured observation: special stimuli, tasks, or situations designed to elicit the
behavior of interest
- Physiological measurements: measuring brain activity with electrodes, hormone levels
in menopausal women, heart rate, fMRI
Cross sectional design: info about age differences
- Age effect: relationship between age and an aspect of development
- Cohort effects: effects of being born as a member of a particular cohort or generation in
a particular historical context, can make a difference what generation you’re born in
Researchers learn nothing about how you change with age
Longitudinal designs: one cohort is assessed repeatedly over time, info about age changes
- Time of measurement effects: effects of historical events and trends occurring when
the data are being collected, can affect anyone alive at the time (vs age effects)
Sequential design: combines the cross-sectional and the longitudinal approach
They tell researchers:
1. Which age-related trends are truly developmental and reflect how most people will
change over time (age effects)
2. Which age trends differ from cohort to cohort and suggest that each generation is
affected by its distinct growing-up experience (cohort effects)
3. Which trends suggest that events during a specific period of history affect all cohorts
alive at thee time (time of measurement effects)
A good theory is:
1. Internally consistent (coherent)
2. Falsifiable
3. Supported by data (confirmed by research)
Narrow conception: a lot of rigid categories, no individual differences, everyone develops a
certain way, no exceptions
Extended conception: development is different for everyone and depends on a lot of factors
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Lecture 2: Theories of Development
The 4 major theories:
Freud: nature
Unconscious processes
- Id: the impulsive, irrational and selfish part of the personality
- Ego: the rational side that tries to find realistic ways of gratifying the instincts
- Superego: individual’s internalized moral standards, insists on finding ethical outlets for
the id’s undesirable impulses (3-6 years)
Freud’s psychosexual stages:
1. Oral stage (birth - 1 year): sucking
2. Anal stage (1 - 3 years): elimination
3. Phallic stage (age 3 - 6): Oedipus and Electra complex
4. Latency (6 - 12 years): sexual impulses are repressed until adolescence - not true
5. Genital (12 +): sexual urges reawaken with puberty
Erikson’s psychosexual stages:
1. Trust vs mistrust (birth - 1 year)
2. Autonomy vs shame and doubt (1 - 3 years)
3. Initiative vs guilt (3 - 6 years)
4. Industry vs inferiority (6 - 12 years)
5. Identity vs role confusion (12 - 20 years): identity crisis
6. Intimacy vs isolation (20 - 40 years)
7. Generativity vs stagnation (40 - 60 years): adults must feel that they will leave something
behind
8. Integrity vs despair (65 +): must come to view their lives as meaningful to face death
without worries and regrets
Watson: classical conditioning - nurture
- Little Albert
Skinner: operant conditioning - nurture
- Positive / negative reinforcement, positive / negative punishment
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Bandura: social cognitive theory
- Observational learning (Bobo doll)
- Latent learning: not evident in behavior
- Vicarious reinforcement: learners become more or less likely to perform a
behavior based on whether consequences experienced by the model they
observe are reinforcing or punishing
- Overimitation
- Reciprocal determinism: human development occurs through a continuous reciprocal
interaction among the person (the individual’s biological and psychological
characteristics and cognitions), their behavior, and their environment
- Environment doesn’t rule, people choose, build and change their environments
Piaget: children think qualitatively different ways from adults
- Constructivism: children construct their own world based on their own understanding
and interaction
4 stages of cognitive development:
- Sensory-motor phase (birth - 2 years): children use their senses and motor actions to
explore and understand the world, at the start they only have innate reflexes but then
they develop increasingly intelligent actions, solutions through symbols
- Preoperational (2 - 7 years): preschoolers use their capacity for symbolic thought to
develop language, engage in pretend play and solve problems, not yet logical,
egocentric, easily fooled by perceptions
- Concrete operations (7 - 11 years): concrete logical operations, mentally classify, add,
and otherwise act on concrete objects in their heads, can solve practical, real-world
problems through a trial-and-error approach, difficulty with hypothetical and abstract
problems
- Formal operations (11 - 12 +): abstract concepts and hypothetical possibilities,
consequences of possible actions, can form hypotheses, scientific method
Criticism: he underestimated the cognitive abilities of young children, if the tasks are made
somewhat simplistic, the children can complete the tasks successfully, also too little emphasis
on social and cultural influences
2 main approaches to cognitive development:
Sociocultural perspective (Vygotsky): each culture provides different skills, which leads to a
different way of thinking, children actively develop by interacting with their sociocultural
environment, children learn via inner speech
More knowledgeable others enable our cognitive growth
Information processing approach: compares human brain to a computer with a hardware and
a software, basic mental processes like attention, memory, making choices and cognitive tasks
Critical period: a maturational period in which the nervous system is especially sensitive to
certain environmental stimuli, if the organism does not receive the appropriate stimulus at the
right time, it's impossible to develop certain associated functions later in life
