Developmental Psychology – Summary
Week 1
Chapter 1: Understanding Life-Span Human Development
1.1 How Should We Think about Development?
- Development = systematic changes and continuities in the individual that occur between
conception and death (from womb to tomb)
➢ Developmental changes: orderly, patterned, relatively enduring
➢ Changes: gains, losses, differences
➢ Continuities: ways in which we remain the same or continue to reflect our past selves
- Three broad domains of systematic changes and continuities:
➢ Physical development: growth of body and organs, functioning of physiological systems
including brain, physical signs of aging, changes in motor abilities, etc
➢ Cognitive development: changes and continuities in perception, language, learning,
memory, problem solving, etc
➢ Psychosocial development: changes and carryover in personal and interpersonal aspects
of development, such as motives, emotions, personality traits, interpersonal skills and
relationships, and roles played in the family and larger society
- Changes in one area affect others
- Growth = physical changes that occur from conception to maturity
- Biological aging = deterioration of organisms (including humans) that leads inevitably to their
death
- Biologically: development involves growth in early life, stability in early and middle
adulthood, and declines associated with now-accumulated effects of aging in later life
- Many aspects of development: do not follow “gain-stability-loss” model
➢ Developmental change at any age: both gains and losses
➢ Cruikshank: decline thought to be main theme of aging, yet actually time of ripening
➢ Not always improvement or worsening, sometimes just neutral changes
- Ageing = a range of physical, cognitive, and psychosocial changes, positive and negative, in
the mature organism
Conceptualising the Life Span
- Age: rough indicator of developmental status
- New development after WWII: emerging adulthood
➢ Jeffrey Arnett
➢ Exploring identities, unstable lives, self-focused, in between, believe they have limitless
possibilities
, - Frank Furstenberg: five traditional markers of adulthood
➢ Completing an education
➢ Being financially independent
➢ Leaving home
➢ Marrying
➢ Having children
- Adolescents in modern societies: taking longer and longer to enter adult roles
Cultural Differences
- Culture = the shared understanding and way of life of a people
➢ Includes beliefs, values, and practices concerning the nature of humans in different
phases of the life span, what children need to be taught to function in society, and how
people should lead their lives as adults
➢ Different cultures: different developmental pathways
- Age grade = socially defined age group in a society, assigned different statuses, roles,
privileges, and responsibilities
- Cultures differ in age grades they recognise and in how they mark the transition from one
age grade to another
- Rite of passage = ritual that marks a person’s passage from one status to another, usually in
reference to the transition from childhood to adulthood
- Adolescent rites of passage: more common in traditional societies than in modern industrial
societies
- Age norms (Bernice Neugarten) = society’s ways of telling people how to act their age
➢ Influence people’s decisions about how to lead their lives
➢ Basis for the social clock = a person’s sense of when things should be done and when
they are ahead of or behind the schedule dictated by age norms
➢ Affect how easily people adjust to life transitions
- Age norms have been weakening for some time
Subcultural Differences
- Age grades, age norms, and social clocks also differing from subculture to subculture
- Society diverse with respect to race, ethnicity, or people’s affiliation with a group based on
common heritage or traditions, socioeconomic status (SES), or standing in society based on
indicators like occupational prestige, education, and income
- Low-SES communities: reach milestones of adulthood sooner
- Regardless of race and ethnicity: poverty very damaging to human development
Historical Changes
- Childhood as an age of innocence
➢ Until roughly 17th century in Western cultures: children not viewed as distinctly different
from adults
- Adolescence = transitional period between childhood and adulthood that begins with
puberty and involves significant physical, cognitive, and psychosocial changes
➢ Not defined until late 19th and early 20th century
➢ Rise of industrialisation: need of educated labour force, making schooling compulsory
, - Emerging adulthood
➢ Defined in late 20th and early 21st centuries
- Middle age as an emptying of the nest
➢ Emerged in 20th century as parents began to bear fewer children and live long enough to
see them grow up
- Old age as retirement
➢ Last half of 20th century: social security, pensions, etc.
➢ Before that: working until dropping dead
Projecting the Future
- Life expectancy in early 21st century in US 79 years (1900: 47 years)
- Life expectancy generally greater for females than males; highest among Hispanic Americans
and lowest among African Americans, in-between among European Americans
- Wealth associated with longer life than poverty
- Life expectancy in US lower than longest-lived countries (e.g., Japan), but longer than most
African countries
- By 2030: 20% of US population retired, possible emerging conflicts between generations over
resources
- In sum: necessary to view development in its historical, cultural, and subcultural context
Framing the Nature-Nurture Issue
- Nature-nurture issue = the question of how biological forces and environmental forces act
and interact to make us what we are
1) Nature
- Nature side of debate: those emphasising the influence of heredity, universal maturational
processes guided by genes, biologically based or innate predispositions produced by
evolution, and biological influences of hormones, neurotransmitters, and other biochemicals
- Some aspects of development = inborn or innate, others = product of maturation (biological
unfolding of individual as sketched out in genes)
- Genetically influenced maturational processes: guide everyone through many of the same
developmental changes at about the same points in our lives
- Individual hereditary endowment: makes each person’s development unique
2) Nurture
- Nurture side: those emphasising change in response to environment, i.e., all external
physical and social conditions, stimuli, and events that can affect us
- Emphasis on learning = process through which experience brings about relatively permanent
changes in thoughts, feelings, or behaviour
3) The Interplay of Nature and Nurture
, - Developmental changes = products of complex interplay between nature and nurture
➢ Nature affects nurture and nurture affects nature
1.2 What Is the Science of Life-Span Development?
- Science of development = study of changes and continuities across lifespan and their causes
Goals and Uses of Studying Development
- Goals driving study of lifespan development
➢ Describing: characterising the functioning of humans at different ages and tracing how it
changes with age; describing both normal development and individual differences
➢ Predicting: identifying factors that predict development
➢ Explaining: establishing whether factors cause some individuals to develop differently
than others do
➢ Optimising development: evaluating ways to help humans develop in positive directions
- Evidence-based practice = grounding what one does in research and ensuring that the
curricula and treatments one provides have been demonstrated to be effective
Early Beginnings
- First scientific investigations of development: late 19th century
➢ Baby biographies, e.g., by Charles Darwin
➔ Evolutionary perspective, strongly influenced early theories of human development
to focus on universal, biologically based maturational changes
- Downsides of baby biographies: difficult to compare, not objective, not generalisable
- Founder of developmental psychology: G. Stanley Hall
➢ Attempted to collect more objective data from larger sample of individuals
➢ Developed questionnaire as research tool
➢ Influential book: “Adolescence” (1904)
➢ Inspired by Darwin’s evolutionary theory: drew parallels between adolescence and
turbulent period in evolution of human society during which barbarism gave way to
modern civilisation
➢ Adolescence = storm and stress
➢ “Senescence” (1922): focus on society’s treatment of older members, recognising that
aging involves more than just decline
The Modern Life-Span Perspective
- During 20th century: science of human development breaking into age-group specialty areas
➢ Infant and child development, adolescence, gerontology (study of aging and old age)
- Development often viewed as something happening during infancy, childhood, and
adolescence, proceeding through universal stages, and leading to outcome of mature adult
functioning
- 1960s and 1970s: emergence of true life-span perspective on human development
- Paul Baltes: seven key assumptions of life-span perspective
➢ Development = lifelong process (and best seen in context of whole life span)
Week 1
Chapter 1: Understanding Life-Span Human Development
1.1 How Should We Think about Development?
- Development = systematic changes and continuities in the individual that occur between
conception and death (from womb to tomb)
➢ Developmental changes: orderly, patterned, relatively enduring
➢ Changes: gains, losses, differences
➢ Continuities: ways in which we remain the same or continue to reflect our past selves
- Three broad domains of systematic changes and continuities:
➢ Physical development: growth of body and organs, functioning of physiological systems
including brain, physical signs of aging, changes in motor abilities, etc
➢ Cognitive development: changes and continuities in perception, language, learning,
memory, problem solving, etc
➢ Psychosocial development: changes and carryover in personal and interpersonal aspects
of development, such as motives, emotions, personality traits, interpersonal skills and
relationships, and roles played in the family and larger society
- Changes in one area affect others
- Growth = physical changes that occur from conception to maturity
- Biological aging = deterioration of organisms (including humans) that leads inevitably to their
death
- Biologically: development involves growth in early life, stability in early and middle
adulthood, and declines associated with now-accumulated effects of aging in later life
- Many aspects of development: do not follow “gain-stability-loss” model
➢ Developmental change at any age: both gains and losses
➢ Cruikshank: decline thought to be main theme of aging, yet actually time of ripening
➢ Not always improvement or worsening, sometimes just neutral changes
- Ageing = a range of physical, cognitive, and psychosocial changes, positive and negative, in
the mature organism
Conceptualising the Life Span
- Age: rough indicator of developmental status
- New development after WWII: emerging adulthood
➢ Jeffrey Arnett
➢ Exploring identities, unstable lives, self-focused, in between, believe they have limitless
possibilities
, - Frank Furstenberg: five traditional markers of adulthood
➢ Completing an education
➢ Being financially independent
➢ Leaving home
➢ Marrying
➢ Having children
- Adolescents in modern societies: taking longer and longer to enter adult roles
Cultural Differences
- Culture = the shared understanding and way of life of a people
➢ Includes beliefs, values, and practices concerning the nature of humans in different
phases of the life span, what children need to be taught to function in society, and how
people should lead their lives as adults
➢ Different cultures: different developmental pathways
- Age grade = socially defined age group in a society, assigned different statuses, roles,
privileges, and responsibilities
- Cultures differ in age grades they recognise and in how they mark the transition from one
age grade to another
- Rite of passage = ritual that marks a person’s passage from one status to another, usually in
reference to the transition from childhood to adulthood
- Adolescent rites of passage: more common in traditional societies than in modern industrial
societies
- Age norms (Bernice Neugarten) = society’s ways of telling people how to act their age
➢ Influence people’s decisions about how to lead their lives
➢ Basis for the social clock = a person’s sense of when things should be done and when
they are ahead of or behind the schedule dictated by age norms
➢ Affect how easily people adjust to life transitions
- Age norms have been weakening for some time
Subcultural Differences
- Age grades, age norms, and social clocks also differing from subculture to subculture
- Society diverse with respect to race, ethnicity, or people’s affiliation with a group based on
common heritage or traditions, socioeconomic status (SES), or standing in society based on
indicators like occupational prestige, education, and income
- Low-SES communities: reach milestones of adulthood sooner
- Regardless of race and ethnicity: poverty very damaging to human development
Historical Changes
- Childhood as an age of innocence
➢ Until roughly 17th century in Western cultures: children not viewed as distinctly different
from adults
- Adolescence = transitional period between childhood and adulthood that begins with
puberty and involves significant physical, cognitive, and psychosocial changes
➢ Not defined until late 19th and early 20th century
➢ Rise of industrialisation: need of educated labour force, making schooling compulsory
, - Emerging adulthood
➢ Defined in late 20th and early 21st centuries
- Middle age as an emptying of the nest
➢ Emerged in 20th century as parents began to bear fewer children and live long enough to
see them grow up
- Old age as retirement
➢ Last half of 20th century: social security, pensions, etc.
➢ Before that: working until dropping dead
Projecting the Future
- Life expectancy in early 21st century in US 79 years (1900: 47 years)
- Life expectancy generally greater for females than males; highest among Hispanic Americans
and lowest among African Americans, in-between among European Americans
- Wealth associated with longer life than poverty
- Life expectancy in US lower than longest-lived countries (e.g., Japan), but longer than most
African countries
- By 2030: 20% of US population retired, possible emerging conflicts between generations over
resources
- In sum: necessary to view development in its historical, cultural, and subcultural context
Framing the Nature-Nurture Issue
- Nature-nurture issue = the question of how biological forces and environmental forces act
and interact to make us what we are
1) Nature
- Nature side of debate: those emphasising the influence of heredity, universal maturational
processes guided by genes, biologically based or innate predispositions produced by
evolution, and biological influences of hormones, neurotransmitters, and other biochemicals
- Some aspects of development = inborn or innate, others = product of maturation (biological
unfolding of individual as sketched out in genes)
- Genetically influenced maturational processes: guide everyone through many of the same
developmental changes at about the same points in our lives
- Individual hereditary endowment: makes each person’s development unique
2) Nurture
- Nurture side: those emphasising change in response to environment, i.e., all external
physical and social conditions, stimuli, and events that can affect us
- Emphasis on learning = process through which experience brings about relatively permanent
changes in thoughts, feelings, or behaviour
3) The Interplay of Nature and Nurture
, - Developmental changes = products of complex interplay between nature and nurture
➢ Nature affects nurture and nurture affects nature
1.2 What Is the Science of Life-Span Development?
- Science of development = study of changes and continuities across lifespan and their causes
Goals and Uses of Studying Development
- Goals driving study of lifespan development
➢ Describing: characterising the functioning of humans at different ages and tracing how it
changes with age; describing both normal development and individual differences
➢ Predicting: identifying factors that predict development
➢ Explaining: establishing whether factors cause some individuals to develop differently
than others do
➢ Optimising development: evaluating ways to help humans develop in positive directions
- Evidence-based practice = grounding what one does in research and ensuring that the
curricula and treatments one provides have been demonstrated to be effective
Early Beginnings
- First scientific investigations of development: late 19th century
➢ Baby biographies, e.g., by Charles Darwin
➔ Evolutionary perspective, strongly influenced early theories of human development
to focus on universal, biologically based maturational changes
- Downsides of baby biographies: difficult to compare, not objective, not generalisable
- Founder of developmental psychology: G. Stanley Hall
➢ Attempted to collect more objective data from larger sample of individuals
➢ Developed questionnaire as research tool
➢ Influential book: “Adolescence” (1904)
➢ Inspired by Darwin’s evolutionary theory: drew parallels between adolescence and
turbulent period in evolution of human society during which barbarism gave way to
modern civilisation
➢ Adolescence = storm and stress
➢ “Senescence” (1922): focus on society’s treatment of older members, recognising that
aging involves more than just decline
The Modern Life-Span Perspective
- During 20th century: science of human development breaking into age-group specialty areas
➢ Infant and child development, adolescence, gerontology (study of aging and old age)
- Development often viewed as something happening during infancy, childhood, and
adolescence, proceeding through universal stages, and leading to outcome of mature adult
functioning
- 1960s and 1970s: emergence of true life-span perspective on human development
- Paul Baltes: seven key assumptions of life-span perspective
➢ Development = lifelong process (and best seen in context of whole life span)
