After reading this chapter, students should understand that:
- Lifespan development takes a scientific approach to studying human growth, change, and stability
- Lifespan developmentalists seek to understand the universal principles of development, traits, and characteristics that differentiate people from each other, and how cultural, racial, and ethnic differences explain development
- There are four topical areas in lifespan development: physical, cognitive, personality, and social development
- The lifespan is divided into broad age ranges, which include: the prenatal period, infancy and toddlerhood, the preschool period, middle childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle adulthood, and late adulthood
- People mature at different rates and reach developmental milestones at different points in time
- Urie Bronfenbrenner proposed an ecological approach to studying lifespan development and suggested that four levels of the environment simultaneously influence individuals and their development
- The four levels of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model are: the microsystem (immediate environment), the mesosystem (connects various aspects of the mycrosystem), the exosystem (larger institutions of one’s society that are not necessarily in direct contact with the person), and the macrosystem (larger cultural influences, such as national government and social values).
- As a biological factor, race is not independent of environment and cultural context, and it harder to attribute a particular behavior or set of behaviors to race per se without considering the environment.
- Individuals belonging to the same cohort are products of the social time in which they live, as they experience the same social events such as wars, famines, economic upturns, etc.
- Development can be seen as being continuous or discontinuous. Continuous development is quantitative in nature and gradual, with achievements at one level building on those of previous levels.
- Changes in discontinuous development occur in distinct steps or stages, with each stage bringing about behaviors that are assumed qualitatively different from behaviors expressed at earlier stages.
- During development, there are specific times called critical periods, when a particular event has its greatest consequences on development.
- Some lifespan developmentalists talk of sensitive periods, rather than critical periods, and propose that consequences of absent stimuli are sometimes reversible.
- The nature-nurture controversy seeks to determine how much of our behavior is due to genetics and how much is due to the physical and social environment in which we are raised
- Theories of lifespan development are formal, and based on the systematic integration of prior findings and theories. This allows other researchers to draw their own conclusions, which may not always be immediately apparent.
- Theories in lifespan development research focus primarily on the inner person; the outer person; human beings’ natural capacities to acquire information; and to what extent genetic inheritance contributes to individual behavior
- Advocates of the psychodynamic perspective believe that inner forces, memories, and conflicts outside an individual’s consciousness motivate behavior.
- Freud’s psychoanalytic theory presupposes that everyone’s personality has three aspects: the id, the ego, and the superego.
- According to Freud’s theory of psychosexual development, children pass through a series of stages characterized by pleasure, or gratification, that is focused on a particular biological function and body part.
- Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development focuses on our interactions with and the understanding of one another, as well as the awareness of the self as a member of society, and argues that development continues throughout the lifespan.
- The behavioral perspective suggests that the key to understanding development lies in observable behavior and outside stimuli in the environment.
- John B. Watson was interested in what motivates learning and he used two types of learning, classical and operant conditioning, to show that any behavior can be produced if a person’s environment is effectively controlled.
- According to Watson, the presence of reinforcements or punishments can determine whether children and adults seek to repeat a particular behavior.
- Albert Bandura supports the idea that we learn through modeling -- observing the behavior of another person. This approach represents the main characteristic of Bandura’s social-cognitive learning theory.
- Bandura identified four distinct steps in his social-cognitive learning theory: attention to critical features of a behavior; recall of the behavior; reproduction of the behavior; and motivation to learn and carry out the behavior.
- Piaget suggested that human thinking is arranged in schemes and that the development of children’s abilities to understand the world around them can be explained through the processes of assimilation and accommodation, both vital components of a fixed sequence of universal stages of cognitive development.
- Researchers who support the information processing approach to cognitive development assume that quantitative advances can characterize an individual’s capacity to handle information.
- Vygostky’s sociocultural theory presents that cognitive development is a result of the social interactions between members of a particular culture.
- The humanistic perspective uses the notions of free will and self-actualization to emphasize that people have a natural capacity to make decisions about their lives and as such, are able to control their behavior.
- Proponents of the evolutionary approach to understanding human development believe that our genetic inheritance determines not only our physical traits (such as skin and eye color) but also certain personality traits and social behaviors. To demonstrate the importance of biological determinants in behavior patterns, Konrad Lorenz did an experiment with newborn geese.
- The main critique of the evolutionary perspective is that it pays insufficient attention to the role of the environment and social issues.
- Developmental researchers use theories to form predictions (hypotheses) that can be tested through the process of careful, controlled techniques involving systematic, orderly observation and data collection.
- There are two main types of research:
- correlational research, which seeks to identify whether there is an association or relationship between two variables;
- experimental research, which is designed to discover causal relationships between various variables.
- Just because two variables are correlated does not necessarily prove that they are causally linked.
- Correlation coefficient values can range from +1.0 to -1.0, with a positive correlation indicating that as the value of one variable increases, the value of the other variable will also increase. In contrast, a negative correlation tells us that as the value of one of the variables increases, the value of the other factor decreases.
- Correlational studies can be carried out either through observing some naturally occurring behavior without intervention in the situation (a.k.a., naturalistic observation) or through extensive, in-depth interviews with a particular individual or small group (a.k.a., case studies).
- In an experimental research, two different groups of participants – a treatment and a control group -- are assigned two different treatments (e.g., drug and no drug). Researchers than manipulate one variable (independent variable) in order to measure expected change in another variable (dependent variable).
- Random assignment of participants to groups is a critical component of any experiment.
- Research studies may be conducted either in naturally occurring settings (typical of correlational studies) or in laboratory settings (typical of experimental studies).
- Theoretical and applied research both play a significant role in shaping and resolving a variety of public policy issues.
- Longitudinal studies, cross-sectional studies, and cross-sequential studies address the measurement of change and differences over age and time.
- Basic ethical principles require that researchers’ protect the participants in their studies from any physical and/or psychological harm. They must also obtain from each participant a signed consent form before being permitted to participate in the study, and finally, researchers must refrain from using deception and must ensure confidentiality.
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