Book Understanding Life-Span human development
Chapter 1
Children in many societies of the world are far more responsible and self-sufficient far earlier in life
than children in the United States are.
1.1 How should we think about development?
Development: systematic changes and continuities in the individual that occur between conception
and death.
1. Physical development: the growth of the body and its orans, the functioning of physiological
systems including the brain, physical signs of aging, changes in motor abilities and so on.
2. Cognitive development: changes and continuities in perception, language, learning, memory,
problem solving, and other mental processes.
3. 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 in the larger society.
Biological aging: deterioration of organisms (including humans) that leads inevitably to their death.
People do not always improve or worsen, but instead become different than they were.
Aging: involves more than biological aging; it refers to a range of physical, cognitive, and
psychosocial changes, positive and negative.
In short, development involves gains, losses, neutral changes, and continuities in each phase of the
life span, and aging is part of it.
Period of life Age range
Prenatal period Conception to birth
Infancy First 2 years of life
Preschool period 2-5
Middle childhood 6-10
Adolescence 10-18
Emerging adult 18-25
Early adulthood 25-40
Middle adulthood 40-65
Late adulthood Above 65
Not all phases are exactly belonging to years, everyone develops in a different speed. So these
ages are just approximate.
Emerging adulthood: transitional period between adolescence and full-fledged adulthood that
extends from about 18 to 25.
Emerged after WWII, college-aged youth spend years getting educated and saving money in order
to launch their adult lives.
It is clear that adolescents in modern societies are taking longer and longer to enter adult roles.
,Culture is often defined as the shared understanding and way of life of people. It 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 their society, and how people should lead their lives as
adults.
Age grade: socially designed age group in a society. Each grade is assigned different statuses, roles,
privileges, and responsibilities.
There are several ways to define different stages of human development. You can look at way more
than just age.
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.
Age norms: expectations of a society is a way of telling people how to act in their age.
Social clock: a person’s sense of when things should be done and when he or she is ahead of or
behind the schedule dictated by age norms.
Our own society is diverse with respect to race and ethnicity, or people’s affiliation with a group
based on common heritage or traditions. It is also diverse with respect to socioeconomic status
(SES), or standing in society based on such indicators as occupational prestige, education and
income.
Poverty can be very damaging to human development.
Life expectancy: average number of years a newborn who is born can be expected to live.
We must view development in its historical, cultural, and subcultural context.
Nature-nurture issue: question of how biological forces and environmental forces act and interact to
make us what we are.
Nature: emphasize the influence of heredity, emphasize on inborn or innate. Genetically influenced
maturational processes guide all of us through many of the same developmental changes at about
the same points in our lives.
Nurture: emphasize changes in response to environment. External stimuli that can affect us. Process
through which experience brings about relatively permanent changes in thoughts, feelings or
behavior.
Some researchers say its nature and nurture. Its nature affecting nurture and nurture affecting
nature.
Nature Nurture
Hereditary Environment
Maturation Learning
Genes Experience
Innate or biologically based predispositions Cultural influences
1.2 What is the science of Life-span development?
The science of development consists of the study of those changes and continuities and their causes.
,Goals and uses of studying development
1. Describing
2. Predicting
3. Explaining
4. Optimizing development
No two people (even identical twins) develop along precisely the same pathways.
Evidence-based practice: grounding what educators and human service and health professionals do
in research and ensuring that the curricula and treatments they provide have been demonstrated to
be effective.
Baby biographies: first form of findings written down about growth and development of biographer’s
own children.
Darwin was one of the first, his interest came from his evolutionary perspective.
Baby biographies were very difficult to compare, mostly about only one child and not objecitively
observed.
Darwin influenced G. Stanley Hall, first president of the American Psychological Association.
- Wanted to collect a more objective data from larger samples of individuals.
- Developed the questionnaire
- Wrote the book: Adolescence (1904)
- Adolescence was a time of storm and stress according to hall.
- Deserves much credit for stimulating scientific research on the entire human life span and
for raising many important questions about it
Gerontology: study of aging and old age.
Life-span perspective of human development emerged in the 1960s and 1970s.
Paul Baltes laid out seven key assumptions about the life-span perspective:
1. Development is a lifelong process
2. Development is multidirectional: different aspects of human functioning have different
trajectories of change
3. Development involves both gains and loss: gain inevitably brings with it loss of some kind
4. Development is characterized by lifelong plasticity
a. Plasticity: capacity to change in response to experience.
b. Neuroplasticity: brain’s remarkable ability to change in response to experience
throughout the life span
5. Development is shaped by its historical-cultural context: our development is shaped by how
our lives play out over time in the social contexts and historical times in which we develop.
6. Development is multiply influenced: often-unpredictable outcome of ongoing interactions
between a changing person and her changing world.
7. Development must be studied by multiple disciplines: many disciplines should use different
tools of study and join forces.
1.3 How is development studied
, Basic concepts of scientific research
The scientific method: an attitude or value about the pursuit of knowledge that dictates that
investigators must be objective and must allow their data to decide the merits of their theorizing.
Often, preliminary observations provide ideas for a theory: a set of concepts and propositions
intended to describe and explain certain phenomena.
Jean Piaget: influential theory of cognitive development by closely observing how French children of
different ages responded to items on the Binet IQ test.
Theories generate specific predictions or hypotheses: a theory-based prediction about what will hold
true if we observe a phenomenon.
A good theory should be:
1. Internally consistent: different parts and propositions should hang together and should not
generate contradictory hypotheses
2. Falsifiable: it can be proven wrong. If a theory is vague or does not generate clear
hypotheses, it cannot be tested and will not be useful in advancing knowledge.
3. Supported by data: a good theory should help us better describe, predict and explain human
development, hypotheses should be confirmed by research results.
Sample selection
Any study of development focuses on a particular research sample with the intention of generalizing
the results to a larger population, a well-defined group from which the sample is drawn and about
which we want to draw conclusions.
- Best way random sample, increases confidence
Data collection, three major methods:
1. Verbal reports
- Interviews, written questionnaires, surveys, etc.
- Either about yourself or someone else.
- Shortcomings: cannot be used with people who are unable to understand and speak. Age
can also affect the way in which questions are interpreted. And people try to present
themselves differently because they know they are being observed.
2. Behavioral observations
- Naturalistic observation: Observing people in their everyday.
- Limitations: some behaviors occur to infrequently and unexpectedly to be studied through
naturalistic observations. It is difficult to find a cause of behavior because there are so many
influences. Presence of an observer also influences the way people act.
- Structured observation: create special stimuli, tasks or situations designed to elicit the
behavior of interest.
- Concerns of this observation methods are whether it is generalizable to the real world and
whether participants will behave naturally.
3. Physiological measurements
- Electrodes to measure electrical activity or heart rate and other indicators of arousal to
assess emotions.
Chapter 1
Children in many societies of the world are far more responsible and self-sufficient far earlier in life
than children in the United States are.
1.1 How should we think about development?
Development: systematic changes and continuities in the individual that occur between conception
and death.
1. Physical development: the growth of the body and its orans, the functioning of physiological
systems including the brain, physical signs of aging, changes in motor abilities and so on.
2. Cognitive development: changes and continuities in perception, language, learning, memory,
problem solving, and other mental processes.
3. 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 in the larger society.
Biological aging: deterioration of organisms (including humans) that leads inevitably to their death.
People do not always improve or worsen, but instead become different than they were.
Aging: involves more than biological aging; it refers to a range of physical, cognitive, and
psychosocial changes, positive and negative.
In short, development involves gains, losses, neutral changes, and continuities in each phase of the
life span, and aging is part of it.
Period of life Age range
Prenatal period Conception to birth
Infancy First 2 years of life
Preschool period 2-5
Middle childhood 6-10
Adolescence 10-18
Emerging adult 18-25
Early adulthood 25-40
Middle adulthood 40-65
Late adulthood Above 65
Not all phases are exactly belonging to years, everyone develops in a different speed. So these
ages are just approximate.
Emerging adulthood: transitional period between adolescence and full-fledged adulthood that
extends from about 18 to 25.
Emerged after WWII, college-aged youth spend years getting educated and saving money in order
to launch their adult lives.
It is clear that adolescents in modern societies are taking longer and longer to enter adult roles.
,Culture is often defined as the shared understanding and way of life of people. It 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 their society, and how people should lead their lives as
adults.
Age grade: socially designed age group in a society. Each grade is assigned different statuses, roles,
privileges, and responsibilities.
There are several ways to define different stages of human development. You can look at way more
than just age.
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.
Age norms: expectations of a society is a way of telling people how to act in their age.
Social clock: a person’s sense of when things should be done and when he or she is ahead of or
behind the schedule dictated by age norms.
Our own society is diverse with respect to race and ethnicity, or people’s affiliation with a group
based on common heritage or traditions. It is also diverse with respect to socioeconomic status
(SES), or standing in society based on such indicators as occupational prestige, education and
income.
Poverty can be very damaging to human development.
Life expectancy: average number of years a newborn who is born can be expected to live.
We must view development in its historical, cultural, and subcultural context.
Nature-nurture issue: question of how biological forces and environmental forces act and interact to
make us what we are.
Nature: emphasize the influence of heredity, emphasize on inborn or innate. Genetically influenced
maturational processes guide all of us through many of the same developmental changes at about
the same points in our lives.
Nurture: emphasize changes in response to environment. External stimuli that can affect us. Process
through which experience brings about relatively permanent changes in thoughts, feelings or
behavior.
Some researchers say its nature and nurture. Its nature affecting nurture and nurture affecting
nature.
Nature Nurture
Hereditary Environment
Maturation Learning
Genes Experience
Innate or biologically based predispositions Cultural influences
1.2 What is the science of Life-span development?
The science of development consists of the study of those changes and continuities and their causes.
,Goals and uses of studying development
1. Describing
2. Predicting
3. Explaining
4. Optimizing development
No two people (even identical twins) develop along precisely the same pathways.
Evidence-based practice: grounding what educators and human service and health professionals do
in research and ensuring that the curricula and treatments they provide have been demonstrated to
be effective.
Baby biographies: first form of findings written down about growth and development of biographer’s
own children.
Darwin was one of the first, his interest came from his evolutionary perspective.
Baby biographies were very difficult to compare, mostly about only one child and not objecitively
observed.
Darwin influenced G. Stanley Hall, first president of the American Psychological Association.
- Wanted to collect a more objective data from larger samples of individuals.
- Developed the questionnaire
- Wrote the book: Adolescence (1904)
- Adolescence was a time of storm and stress according to hall.
- Deserves much credit for stimulating scientific research on the entire human life span and
for raising many important questions about it
Gerontology: study of aging and old age.
Life-span perspective of human development emerged in the 1960s and 1970s.
Paul Baltes laid out seven key assumptions about the life-span perspective:
1. Development is a lifelong process
2. Development is multidirectional: different aspects of human functioning have different
trajectories of change
3. Development involves both gains and loss: gain inevitably brings with it loss of some kind
4. Development is characterized by lifelong plasticity
a. Plasticity: capacity to change in response to experience.
b. Neuroplasticity: brain’s remarkable ability to change in response to experience
throughout the life span
5. Development is shaped by its historical-cultural context: our development is shaped by how
our lives play out over time in the social contexts and historical times in which we develop.
6. Development is multiply influenced: often-unpredictable outcome of ongoing interactions
between a changing person and her changing world.
7. Development must be studied by multiple disciplines: many disciplines should use different
tools of study and join forces.
1.3 How is development studied
, Basic concepts of scientific research
The scientific method: an attitude or value about the pursuit of knowledge that dictates that
investigators must be objective and must allow their data to decide the merits of their theorizing.
Often, preliminary observations provide ideas for a theory: a set of concepts and propositions
intended to describe and explain certain phenomena.
Jean Piaget: influential theory of cognitive development by closely observing how French children of
different ages responded to items on the Binet IQ test.
Theories generate specific predictions or hypotheses: a theory-based prediction about what will hold
true if we observe a phenomenon.
A good theory should be:
1. Internally consistent: different parts and propositions should hang together and should not
generate contradictory hypotheses
2. Falsifiable: it can be proven wrong. If a theory is vague or does not generate clear
hypotheses, it cannot be tested and will not be useful in advancing knowledge.
3. Supported by data: a good theory should help us better describe, predict and explain human
development, hypotheses should be confirmed by research results.
Sample selection
Any study of development focuses on a particular research sample with the intention of generalizing
the results to a larger population, a well-defined group from which the sample is drawn and about
which we want to draw conclusions.
- Best way random sample, increases confidence
Data collection, three major methods:
1. Verbal reports
- Interviews, written questionnaires, surveys, etc.
- Either about yourself or someone else.
- Shortcomings: cannot be used with people who are unable to understand and speak. Age
can also affect the way in which questions are interpreted. And people try to present
themselves differently because they know they are being observed.
2. Behavioral observations
- Naturalistic observation: Observing people in their everyday.
- Limitations: some behaviors occur to infrequently and unexpectedly to be studied through
naturalistic observations. It is difficult to find a cause of behavior because there are so many
influences. Presence of an observer also influences the way people act.
- Structured observation: create special stimuli, tasks or situations designed to elicit the
behavior of interest.
- Concerns of this observation methods are whether it is generalizable to the real world and
whether participants will behave naturally.
3. Physiological measurements
- Electrodes to measure electrical activity or heart rate and other indicators of arousal to
assess emotions.
