After reading this chapter, students should be able to:
- Identify and describe the four topical areas studied by lifespan developmentalists
- Identify and describe the age ranges on which lifespan developmental research focuses
- Explain Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model of development and how its main components can impact individual development
- Recognize the impact of culture, ethnicity, and race on development
- Define cohorts and explain their relation to history-graded, age-graded, and socioculturally-graded influences on development
- Be able to discuss some of the key questions asked by lifespan development researchers regarding the nature of developmental change; the importance of critical periods; the benefits of lifespan approaches versus more focused approaches; and the nature-nurture controversy
- Explain the difference between the notion of critical periods and sensitive periods across the lifespan
- Identify the main theoretical perspectives used in the field of lifespan development
- Explain Sigmund Freud’s and Erik Erikson’s contributions to the psychodynamic perspective of lifespan development research
- Discuss the benefits and shortcomings of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory
- Describe and discuss John B. Watson’s use of classical and operant conditioning and its contribution to other behavioral theories of development
- Explain how Albert Bandura utilized social-cognitive development theory to describe learning
- Identify the benefits and shortcomings of the behavioral perspective within the lifespan development approach
- Understand how Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development differs from Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of development
- Describe the characteristics of the information processing approach of development and how this approach is different from Piaget’s approach to explaining development
- Recognize and understand the main characteristics of the humanistic approach to development
- Recognize the work of Konrad Lorenz and explain how the evolutionary perspective relates to the field of ethology
- Understand the role of research hypotheses and methods in scientific research
- Identify the two main types of research strategies and explain the basic differences between these two types
- Identify and discuss naturalistic observations and case studies
- Understand the main difference between a treatment and a control group in an experimental research design
- Recognize the difference between an independent and a dependent variable in experimental studies
- Describe how the settings of a field and a laboratory study differ
- Understand the complementary benefits of theoretical research and applied research in the field of lifespan development
- Identify and distinguish between the main research strategies used for measuring developmental change
- Recognize and understand the basic principles of ethics that must be followed in research
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