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Chapter 1
Introduction
PowerPoints developed by Nicholas Greco IV,
College of Lake County – Grayslake, IL
(c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
The Life-Span Perspective
 Development
the pattern of movement or change that
begins at conception and continues through
the human life span
each of us develops
partly like all other individuals
partly like some other individuals
partly like no other individuals
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Characteristics of the LifeSpan Perspective
 Learning about ourselves and others
development involves growth, but it also
includes decline
 Traditional approach emphasizes extensive
change from birth to adolescence, little or no
change in adulthood, and decline in old age
 Life-span approach emphasizes developmental
change throughout adulthood as well as
childhood
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Life Span versus Life
Expectancy
 Human Life Span
Based on the oldest age documented—122
years
 Maximum life span of humans has not changed
since the beginning of recorded history
 Life Expectancy
the average number of years that a person
born in a particular year can expect to live
Life expectancy increased by 30 years in the 20th
century
(c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
(c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
More Characteristics of the
Life-Span Perspective
 Life-span perspective views
development as
Lifelong
Multidimensional
Multidirectional
Plastic
Multidisciplinary
Contextual
(Baltes, 1987, 2003; Baltes, Lindenberger, & Staudinger, 2006)
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Contexts: Three Types of
Influences
 Normative Age-graded Influences
 Normative History-graded Influences
 Non-normative Life Events
(Baltes, 2003)
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Contemporary Concerns in LifeSpan Development
 Health and Well-Being
 Parenting and Education
 Sociocultural Contexts and Diversity
cross-cultural studies
ethnicity
socioeconomic status (SES)
gender
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Social Policy
 A government’s course of action designed
to promote the welfare of its citizens
values
economics/poverty
politics
children
the elderly
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The Nature of Development
 Biological processes produce changes in
an individual’s physical nature
 Cognitive processes refer to changes in
the individual’s thought, intelligence, and
language
 Socioemotional processes involve
changes in the individual’s relationships
with other people, changes in emotions,
and changes in personality
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Connecting Biological, Cognitive,
and Socioemotional Processes
 Inextricably intertwined
 Two emerging fields
 Developmental cognitive neuroscience
 Developmental social neuroscience
 Bidirectional
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Periods of Development
 Developmental period refers to a time
frame in a person’s life that is
characterized by certain features
prenatal period -- conception to birth
infancy -- birth to 18 or 24 months
early childhood -- end of infancy to age 5 or 6
middle and late childhood -- 6 to 11 years of
age
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Periods of Development
con’t
adolescence -- transition from childhood to
early adulthood, approximately 10 to 12 to 18
to 22 years of age
early adulthood -- late teens or early twenties
through the thirties
middle adulthood -- approximately 40 to about
60 years of age
late adulthood -- sixties or seventies and lasts
until death
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Periods of Development
con’t
 Life-span developmentalists who focus on
adult development and aging increasingly
describe life-span development in terms of
four “ages”
first age: childhood and adolescence
second age: prime adulthood, 20s - 50s
third age: approximately 60 to 79 years
fourth age: approximately 80 years and older
(Baltes, 2006; Willis & Schaie, 2006)
(c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Conceptions of Age
 Chronological age -- number of years
since birth
 Biological age -- age in terms of biological
health
 Psychological age -- individual’s adaptive
capacities
 Social age -- society’s age expectations
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Nature and Nurture
 The nature-nurture issue concerns the
extent to which development is influenced
by nature and by nurture
 Nature refers to an organism’s biological
inheritance
 Nurture to its environmental experiences
 Which has the greatest influence, and how
do the two interact?
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Stability and Change
 The stability-change issue involves the
degree to which early traits and
characteristics persist through life or
change
 Stability is the result of heredity and possibly
early experiences in life
 Plasticity, the potential for change, exists
throughout the life span
 To what degree do early traits and
characteristics persist through life, or how
much do they change?
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Continuity and Discontinuity
 The continuity-discontinuity issue
focuses on the degree to which
development involves either gradual,
cumulative change or distinct stages
 Continuity -- gradual, cumulative change; quantitative
 Discontinuity -- distinct stages; qualitative
 Is change in development gradual or
abrupt?
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Evaluating the Developmental
Issues
 Most life-span developmentalists acknowledge that
development is not all nature or all nurture, not all
stability or all change, and not all continuity or all
discontinuity
 Nature and nurture, stability and change, continuity and
discontinuity characterize development throughout the
human life span
(Gottlieb, 2007; Rutter, 2007)
(c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Theories of Development
 The scientific method
Tool to understand or answer questions
about development
Four-step process:
Conceptualize a process or problem to be
studied
Collect research information (data)
Analyze data
Draw conclusions
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Conceptualizing the Problem
 Draw on theories
A theory is an interrelated, coherent set of
ideas that helps to explain phenomena and
make predictions
 Develop hypotheses
Hypotheses are specific assertions and
predictions that can be tested
(c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Theories of Development
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Psychoanalytic Theory
Psychosocial Theory
Cognitive Theory
Behavioral and Social Theory
Ethological Theory
Ecological Theory
 Eclectic Theoretical Orientation
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Psychoanalytic Theory
 Primarily unconscious (beyond
awareness) and heavily colored
by emotion
 Understanding of development
requires analyzing the symbolic
meanings of behavior and the
deep inner workings of the mind
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Psychoanalytic Theory
 Sigmund Freud’s Theory
 behavior and problems are the result of
experiences early in life (mainly first 5 years)
 adult personality -- resolution of conflicts between
sources of pleasure at each stage and the
demands of reality
 Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory
 primary motivation for human behavior is social
and reflects a desire to affiliate with other people
 developmental change occurs throughout the life
span
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Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
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Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages
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Cognitive Theories
 Emphasis on conscious thoughts
 Three important cognitive theories
Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory
Vygotsky’s sociocultural cognitive theory
Information-processing theory
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Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental
Theory
 Children go through four stages of
cognitive development
 Processes underlie this cognitive
construction of the world
organization
adaptation
 Each stage is age-related and consists of
a distinct way of thinking -- a qualitatively
different way of understanding
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Piaget’s Cognitive Stages
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Vygotsky’s Sociocultural
Cognitive Theory
 Emphasizes how culture and social
interaction guide cognitive development
 Cognitive development involves learning
to use the inventions of society, such as
language, mathematical systems, and
memory strategies
(c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
The Information-Processing
Theory
 Emphasis on ways that individuals
manipulate information, monitor it, and
strategize about it
 Individuals develop a gradually increasing
capacity for processing information, which
allows them to acquire increasingly
complex knowledge and skills
(Munakata, 2006; Reed, 2007)
(c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Behavioral and Social Cognitive
Theories
 Behaviorism -- we can study
scientifically only what can be directly
observed and measured
 Two versions of behaviorism
B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning
Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory
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Behavioral and Social Cognitive
Theories
 Skinner’s Operant Conditioning
consequences of a behavior produce changes
in the probability of the behavior’s occurrence
rewards and punishments shape development
 Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory
holds that behavior, environment, and
cognition are the key factors in development
observational learning (also called imitation or
modeling)
 people cognitively represent the behavior of others and then
sometimes adopt this behavior themselves
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(c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Ethological Theory
 Ethology stresses
Behavior is strongly influenced by biology
It is tied to evolution
Characterized by critical or sensitive periods
 Noted ethologists
Konrad Lorenz
John Bowlby
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Ecological Theory
 Emphasis on environmental factors
 Noted ecological theories
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory
theory identifies five environmental
systems: microsystem, mesosystem,
exosystem, macrosystem, and
chronosystem
(c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
(c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
An Eclectic Theoretical
Orientation
 No single theory described in this chapter
can explain entirely the rich complexity of
life-span development, but each has
contributed to our understanding of
development
(c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Research in Life-Span
Development
 Application of scientific method
 Methods for collecting data
observation
laboratory observation
naturalistic observation
asking questions -- survey and interview
standardized testing
case study
physiological measures
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Research Designs
 Descriptive research -- observe and record
behavior
 Correlational research -- describe the
strength of the relationship between two or
more events or characteristics
 Experiment -- regulated procedure in
which one or more factors are manipulated
while all other factors are held constant
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Independent and Dependent
Variables
 Experiments include two types of
changeable factors
independent variable
manipulated, influential, experimental
factor
a potential cause
dependent variable
can change in response to changes in the
independent variable
resulting effect
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Experimental and Control
Groups
 Experimental group is a group whose
experience is manipulated
 A control group is a comparison group
As much like the experimental group as
possible, which is treated in every way like the
experimental group except for the
manipulated factor (independent variable)
Control group serves as a baseline against
which the effects of the manipulated condition
can be compared
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Time Span of Research
 The cross-sectional approach is a research
strategy that simultaneously compares
individuals of different ages
 The longitudinal approach is a research strategy
in which the same individuals are studied over a
period of time, usually several years or more
 A cohort is a group of people who are born at a
similar point in history and share similar
experiences
 Cohort effects are due to a person’s time of birth, era, or
generation but not to actual age
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Conducting Ethical Research
 Rights of participant
 Responsibilities of researchers
 APA’s guidelines address four important
issues
Informed consent
Confidentiality
Debriefing
Deception
(c) 2012 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.