Developmental Psychology

The Study of Human Development

Human Development
- Focuses on the scientific study of the systematic process of change and stability in people from womb to tomb or the
Life-span Development.
- Growth and development are more obvious during infancy and childhood given the rapid pace of change.
- Development is a complex and multifaceted process which is shaped by interacting arcs of influence.
- Goals are to describe, to explain, to predict, and to intervene.
Domain of Development
• Physical
- Growth of the body and brain, sensory and motor skills, and health.
• Cognitive
- Learning, attention, memory, language, thinking, reasoning, and creativity.
• Psychosocial
- Emotions, personality, and social relationships.
Period of Life Span
- The division of the periods is a social construct invented by a particular culture or society.
Age Period Physical Cognitive Psychosocial
Developments Developments Developments
Prenatal Period Physical growth is rapid. Abilities to learn and Fetus responds to mother’s
Conception to Birth Basic Body structures and remember and to respond to voice and develops a
organs like brain form. sensory stimuli are preference for it.
developing.
Infancy to All senses operate at birth. Abilities to learn and There is an attachment to
Toddlerhood Physical growth and motor remember, use of symbols, parents and interest in other
skills develop rapidly. The and ability to solve problems children increases. Self-
Birth to age 3 brain grows in complexity are present. Language and awareness develops. There is
and is sensitive to comprehension develop a shift from dependence to
environmental influence. rapidly autonomy.
Early Childhood Growth is steady; Thinking is egocentric Understanding emotions
Age 3 to 6 appearance is more adultlike. (because of an illogical idea becomes complex.
Appetite and sleep problems about the world). Memory Independence, initiative, and
are common. Gross motor and language improve self-control increases.
skills and strength improves. Gender identity develops.
Middle Childhood Physical growth slows. Children start to think Self-concept becomes more
Age 6 to 11 Strength and athletic skills logically. Memory and complex affecting esteem.
improve. health is common language skills improve. Peers assume central
but better than other stages. Strengths and weaknesses importance.
are visible.
Adolescence Physical growth is rapid and Scientific reasoning develops Search for identity such as
Age 11 to 20 profound. Reproductive but immature thinking sexual identity becomes
maturity occurs. persists. central. Peer groups exert
influence.
Early Adulthood Physical condition peaks Thought and moral Personality traits and styles
Age 20 to 40 then decline slightly. judgements are complex. become stable or established
Lifestyle choice influence Educational and but may not last; changes in
health. occupational choices are personality are influenced by
made. life stages. Most people
marry and become parents.
Middle Adulthood Slow deterioration of Mental abilities peak: Sense of identity continues
Age 40 to 65 sensory abilities, health, expertise and practical to develop. Dual
stamina, and strength may problem-solving skills are responsibilities of caring
begin. Woman experience high. Creative output may children and parents may
menopause. decline but improve in cause stress. Launching of
quality. There is a peak of children leaves empty nest.
career reach or burnout.
 Late Adulthood Most people are healthy and Most people are mentally Retirement age occurs.
Age 65 and up active, although health alert. Although intelligence Family and close friends
declines. Slowing of reaction and memory may deteriorate, may provide support. Search
time affects functioning. most people find ways to for meaning of life assumes
compensate. central importance.

Influence on Development
• Heredity
• Environment
• Maturation
- Physical and behavioral patterns alteration.
Context of Development
- Human beings develop within social and historical contexts.
• Family
- Nuclear or extended Family.
• Socioeconomic Status
- Combination of economic and social factors describing a family: income, education, or occupation.
• Risk Factor
- Conditions that increase the likelihood of a negative developmental outcome.
• Culture and Race/Ethnicity
- Culture is a society or group’s total way of life passed on from generation to generation.
- Ethnic groups are a group united by ancestry, race, religion, language, or national origins. Which contributed to a
sense of shared identity.
o Ethnic Gloss – Overgeneralization that obscures differences within an ethnic group.
• The Historical Context
- Societal and environmental happenings.
Normative and Nonnormative Influence
• Normative
- Biological and environmental events that affect people.
▪ Normative Age-graded Influences – Events that happen for people in the same age bracket.
▪ Normative History-graded Influences – Significant events such as war that shape the whole historical
generation or cohort–people born at the same time.
• Nonnormative
- Unusual events that have a major impact on individual lives because they disturb the expected sequence of life
cycle such as death of loved ones.
Timing of Influences: Critical or Sensitive Periods
• Critical Period
- Specific time when a given event, or its absence, influences development.
- An example of a critical period is birth that is theorized by Konrad Lorenz in which the first moving image
seen by a baby is to whom they will be attached. This phenomenon is called imprinting.
• Sensitive Period
- Times of development when a person is open to certain kinds of experiences.
- Plasticity – Range of modifiability of performance.
The Life-Span Developmental Approach
- Paul B. Baltes and his colleagues identified 7 principles of a life-span approach.
1. Development is lifelong.
2. Development is multidimensional.
3. Development is multidirectional.
4. Relative Influences of biology and culture shift over the life span
5. Development involves changing resource allocations.
6. Development shows plasticity.
7. Development is influenced by the historical and cultural contexts.
Theory and Research

Theory
- A set of logically related concepts or statements that seek to describe and explain development through generating
hypothesis (prediction that can be tested by further research).
- Theorists explain development depends in their assumptions about two (2) basic issues: (1) whether people are active
or reactive in their own development, and (2) whether development is continuous or occurs in stages.
Issue 1: Is Development Active or Reactive?
• John Locke’s Mechanistic Model
- English philosopher John Locke held that a young child is a Tabula Rasa–a “black slate”–upon the society
writes.
- In Mechanistic Model, people are like machines, they do not operate of their own will; they react to
environmental stimulus.
• Jean Jacques Rosseau’s Organismic Model
- Frech philosopher Jean Jacque Rosseau believed that children are born “noble salvages” who develop according
to their own natural tendencies if not corrupted by society.
- Organismic Model sees people as active, growing organisms that set their own development in motion; the
human driving force is internal.
- The environmental influence does not cause development, though they can speed or slow it.
Issue 2: Is Development Continuous or Discontinuous?
• Quantitative Change
- Development is always governed by the same process and involves the gradual refinement and extension of
early skills into later abilities, allowing one to make predictions about future characteristics on the basis of past
performance.
- Changes is number or amount, such as height weight, or vocabulary size.
- Its primary characteristic is that you are measuring the same thing over time, even if there might be more or less
of it.
• Qualitative Change
- Development is discontinuous and marked by the emergence of new phenomena that could not be easily
predicted on the basis of past functioning.
- Organismic theorists are proponents of stage theories in which development is seen as occurring in a series of
distinct stage, like stairways.
Theoretical Perspectives
Perspective 1: Psychoanalytic
• Psychosexual Perspective
- Sigmund Freud, a Viennese physician founded Psychoanalytic Perspective.
- Freud proposed that humans were born with a series of innate, biological based drives such as hunger, sex, and
aggression.
- Freud believed that early experiences shaped later functioning.
- Hypothetical parts of human parts:
▪ Id – Operates under the pleasure principle–the drive to seek immediate satisfaction of their needs
and desires.
▪ Ego – Represents reason, develops gradually during the first year (age 5-6) or so of life and operates
under reality principle. It finds ways to mediates the impulses of id to the demand of superego.
▪ Superego – The conscience and incorporates socially approved “should” and “should nots” into the
child’s value system. The superego is highly demanding; if its standards are not met, a child may
feel guilty and anxious.
 - Conflicts occur in sequence of five stages of Psychosexual Development:
Psychosocial Age Source of Main Result of Unmet
Development Pleasure Pleasure
Oral Birth to 12-18 months Mouth oriented activities. One may grow up as
nail-biters or smokers.
Anal 12-18 months to 3 years Anal region: toilet training Toddlers who had strict
and expelling feces. toilet training may
become obsessively
clean, rigidly tied to
schedules and routines,
or defiantly messy.
Phallic 3-6 years Child becomes attached to Boys develop sexual
parent of other sex and later attraction to their mother
identifies with same-sex Puberty-Adulthood
parent. One of gratification (Oedipus Complex);
shifts to genital region. girls to their fathers
(Electra Complex).
Latency 6 years to puberty Time to relative calm They redirect their sexual
between more turbulent energies into other
stages. pursuits, such as
schoolwork,
relationships, and
hobbies.
Genital Puberty to Adulthood Re-emergence of sexual Can resurface to flow in
impulses of phallic stage, socially accepted
channeled into more adult channels–Heterosexual
sexuality. Relations with other
persons outside the
family of origin.
- If children received too much gratification in any of these stages, they are at risk of Fixation–an arrest in
development that can show up in adult personality.
• Psychosocial Development
- Erik Erikson was a pioneer of a life-span perspective as he believed that development was a lifelong process.
- Psychosocial Development is an eight-stage theory that focuses across life span; the socially and culturally
influenced process of development of the ego, or self:

Age Crisis Virtue Developed

Infancy to 18 months Trust vs Mistrust Hope
18 to 3 years Autonomy vs Doubt Will
3 to 6 years Initiative vs Guilt Purpose
6 to 12 years Industry vs. Inferiority Competency
12 to 20 years Identity vs Confusion Fidelity
20 to 40 years Intimacy vs Isolation Love
20 to 65 years Generativity vs Stagnation Care
65 and over Integrity vs Despair Wisdom

Perspective 2: Learning
- Theorist of learning perspective argued that development was the result of learning.
- The learning approach was the dominant ideology in the field of Psychology in the 1950s.
- Two major sub theories were:
• Behaviorism
- Behaviorism is a mechanistic theory that observed behavior as a predictable response to experience.
- Two kinds of associative learning are:
▪ Classical Conditioning – Ivan Pavlov believed that response to a stimulus is evoked after repeated
association with a stimulus that normally elicits the response. Supported by John B. Watson in his
“Little Albert” experiment saying that likes and dislikes can be a result of conditioned learning.
▪ Operant Conditioning – B.F. Skinner argued that an organism will tend to repeat a response that
has been reinforced by desirable outcome and will suppress a response that has been punished.
Reinforcement is the process by the behavior is strengthened, increasing the likelihood of being
repeated; if a response is no longer reinforced, it will eventually be extinguished.
 • Social Learning Theory
- Expanded by the American psychologist Alber Bandura.
- Social Learning Theory maintains that people learn appropriate behavior by observing and imitating models
called Observational Learning.
- It suggests that the impetus for development is bidirectional called Reciprocal Determinism–the person acts on
the world as the world acts on the person.
- In 1980, Bandura called changed its name to Social Cognitive Theory as it creates emphasis on cognitive
processes.
Perspective 3: Cognitive
- This perspective focuses on thought processes and the behavior that reflects those processes.
• Cognitive-Stage Theory
- Jean Piaget, a Swiss theoretician believed that cognitive development starts from private exploration and
inborn’s ability to adapt to the environment.
- The cognitive growth occurs through:
▪ Organization – People create complex cognitive structures called Schemes, patterns of thought and
behavior used in situations. The more they gain knowledge, the more complex their schemes would
be.
▪ Adaption – How children handle new information from what they already know. It occurs through
two processes:
• Assimilation – taking new knowledge and incorporating it to the existing knowledge.
• Accommodation – adjusting cognitive structure to fit the new information.
▪ Equilibration – children strive for this as they want their views of the world and experience to
match. Disequilibrium may arise when views and experience do not match.
- Cognitive development occurs in four stages:
▪ Sensorimotor Intelligence (Birth-2 years) – Senses and actions
▪ Preoperational Thinking (2-7 years) – language and mental images
▪ Concrete Operational Thinking (7-12 years) – logical thinking and categories
▪ Formal Operational Thinking (12 years onwards) – hypothetical thinking and scientific reasoning
• Sociocultural Theory
- Lev Vygostky, a Russian Psychologist described cognitive growth as a collaborative process.
- People learn through social interaction as this guidance called Scaffolding (support to help the learning of the
child) could assist children to cross the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), the gap between what the
children already knows and what they accomplished with assistance.
▪ The Information-Processing Approach – seeks to explain cognitive development by analyzing
how a child use and retain information while learning.
Perspective 4: Contextual
- According to this perspective, development can be understood only on its social context.
- Individual is not separately interacting with the environment, but as an inseparable part of it.
• Bioecological Theory
- Urie Bronfenbrenner, and American psychologist believed that development is a result of biological make up
and environmental influence.
- Context of Multiple Environment that affects the child:
▪ Microsystem – Immediate and inner family, and close peer groups.
▪ Mesosystem – The interaction of Microsystem with each other.
▪ Exosystem – Government, and Educational and Economic system,
▪ Macrosystem – Social and cultural values, Customs, and beliefs.
▪ Chronosystem – Changes overtime, and historical and biological events
Perspective 5: Evolutionary/Sociobiological
• E.O. Wilson
- Influenced by Darwin’s evolutionary psychology, E.O. Wilson proposed Evolutionary/sociobiological
perspective wherein only the toughest will survive.
- Natural selection is the most important theoretical advances of modern science that can be broken down into
postulates:
1. Organisms vary.
 2. There are never enough resources for all organisms to survive.
3. Individual differences in organisms are heritable.
- These traits can be physical, behavioral, or psychological.
- Ethology is the study of the adaptive behaviors of species in natural context which behaviors evolved by the
natural selection.
• John Bowlby
- He experimented the infants’ attachment through the use of Rhesus Monkey which he viewed infants’
attachment to a caregiver as a mechanism that evolved in part to protect them for predators.
Research Methods
• Quantitative Research
- Deals with objectively measurable, numerical data.
- Steps of Quantitative Research:
1. Identification of a Problem
2. Formulation of Hypothesis
3. Collection of Data
4. Statistical Analysis of the Data
5. Formation of Tentative Conclusions
6. Dissemination of Findings
• Qualitative Research
- Focuses on the how and why of behavior. Nonnumerical descriptions of participants’ feelings, beliefs, and
experiences.
Forms of Data Collection
• Self Reports
o Diary, visual report, interview, or questionnaire
• Observation
o Naturalistic and laboratory observation
• Behavioral and Performance measures
Basic Research Design
• Case Study
• Ethnographic studies
• Correlational studies
• Experiments
Development of Research Designs
• Cross-Sectional Study – illustrates similarities and differences between people of different age.
• Longitudinal Study – tracks people over time and focuses on individual change with age.
• Sequential Study – combines two approaches to minimize drawbacks of separate approaches.
Forming a New Life

Fertilization
- Or conception, is the process by which sperm and ovum combine to create a cell called Zygote that duplicates itself
repeatedly by cell division to produce all cells to make up a baby.
How Fertilization takes place?
- At birth, a girl is believed to have about 2 million immature ova in her two ovaries, each ovum in its own follicle or
sac.
- In a sexually mature woman, ovulation (rupture of a mature follicle in either ovary) occurs every 28 days until
menopause called menstruation when the ovum that is swept along the Fallopian tube by the Cilia towards the
uterus or womb does not meet a mature sperm.
- Sperm (produced by the men’s testicles at a rate of hundred million a day and re ejaculated in the semen at sexual
climax) swim through the cervix but only a tiny fraction make it far to the ovum.
- If fertilization does not occur, ovum passes through the uterus and exists through the vagina, while sperm are
absorbed by the woman’s white blood cells.
What Causes Multiple Births?
• Dizygotic twins
- Fraternal twins; result of two separate eggs being fertilized.
- Tend to run in families and are the result of multiple eggs being released.
- The common type of twins.
• Monozygotic twins
- Identical twins; result of one egg being fertilized by two sperm.
- The rate of Monozygotic twins appears to be constant at all time and places.
Heredity
- The process of genetic transmission of heritable characteristics from parents to offspring.
- The genetic code is carried out by DNA or Deoxyribonucleic Acid whose steps are made of pairs of chemical units
called bases that is divided into 4 letters of genetic code: Adenine (A), Thymine (T), Cytosine (C), and Guanine (G).
- Chromosomes are coils of DNA that consists of smaller segment called Genes, which the complete sequence of
genes in human body constitutes to the human genome.
- Through the cell division called meiosis, every cell in human body (except the sex cells–sperm and ova) has 23 pairs
of chromosomes.
- Through the mitosis, a process by which non-sex cells divide in half repeatedly, the DNA replicates itself. However,
mistakes of copying may happen, and mutation (permanent alteration in genes that may produce harmful
characteristics) may result.
What Determine Sex?
- 22 pairs of chromosomes are autosome–non sex chromosome and 1 sex chromosome.
- The mother contributes an X chromosome, and the sperm is the one carrying either X chromosome for femaleness,
or a Y chromosome called SRY Gene for maleness.
- An X-carrying sperm will produce XX, a genetic female; a Y-carrying sperm will produce XY, a genetic male.
- When SRY gene signal the Y chromosome to turn on, formation of testes is triggered. This includes HOX genes and
signaling called WNt-4, a variant that can masculinize female fetus.
- X chromosomes help to die off bad allele which females have 2; one normally turned off or on in
cell tissue while the 75% of the genes on the extra X chromosome are inactive whole 15% remain active;10% are
active in some woman but not in other.
Patterns of Genetic Transmission
- Genes that can produce alternative expressions are called alleles. And when both alleles are the same, the person is
homozygous; when different, the person is heterozygous.
- Most traits result from Polygenic inheritance.
 - Environmental experience modifies the expression of the genotype for most traits called Multifactorial
Transmission, which illustrates interaction of nature and nurture.
- However, when a trait is not fully expressed, it is called Incomplete dominance.
• Dominant Inheritance
- Always expressed.
• Recessive Gene
- Must have two recessive alleles, one from parent to be expressed.
• Genotype
- An organism’s complete set of genetic material.
• Phenotype
- A set of observable traits of an organism; product of the genotype.
Epigenesis
- Or Epigenetics is a phenomenon that occurs when genes are turned off or on as they are needed by the developing
body.
- Twins are different despite having the same genomes, it is because their epigenomes differ.
- Siblings are also different because of nonshared environmental effects growing up.
- Concordant – the tendency to which twis may share the same disability.
- Epigenetic modifications may be heritable. Example is genetic imprinting; genetic information inherited from the
mother is activated, while the other is suppressed.
How Heredity and Environment work together?
- Heritability determines whether trait is from genetics or environment.
- Reaction Range refers to a range of potential expressions of hereditary trait.
- The metaphor of canalization illustrates how heredity restricts the range of development of some traits; cognition
and personality are not highly canalized, while eye color is canalized.
Genotype-Environment Interaction
- Defects of similar environment conditions on genetically different individuals.
Genotype-Environment Correlation
- Tendency of certain genetic and environmental influence to reinforce each other.
- Genotype-Environment Correlation works in 3 ways:
▪ Passive Correlations – The trait is a combination of genetic and environmental influences.
▪ Reactive or Evocative Correlations – Children with differing genetic make ups has the trait
because of an environmental influence.
▪ Active Correlations – One has the tendency to seek out environment that are compatible for them
which is also called niche-picking.
Birth Defects and Genetic Disorder
Disorder Characteristics of Condition
Alpha Thalassemia Severe anemia that reduces ability of the blood to carry oxygen
Beta Thalassemia (Cooley’s Anemia) Severe anemia resulting in weakness, fatigue and illness
Cystic Fibrosis Overproduction of mucus, which collects in the lung and digestive tract;
children do not grow normally; inherited
Duchene Muscular Dystrophy Fatal disease usually found in males; marked by muscle weakness; minor
mental retardation is common; respiratory failure and death may occur
Hemophilia Excessive bleeding, usually found in males; can lead to arthritis
Anencephaly Absence of brain tissues; infants may die after birth
Spina Bifida Incompletely closed spinal canal, muscle weakness or paralysis and loss of
bladder and bowel control; often accompanied by hydrocephalus, and mental
retardation
Phenylketonuria (PKU) Metabolic disorder resulting in mental retardation
Polycystic Kidney Disease Enlarged kidneys, leading to respiration and heart problems for infants;
kidney problem and hypertension for adults
Sickle-cell Anemia Deformed red blood cell
Tay-Sachs Disease Degenerative disease of the brain and nerve cells
Genetic Counselling
- Can help prospective parents assess their risk of bearing children with genetic or chromosomal defect.
- Genetic or Chromosomal defects can be shown through a chart called Karyotype.
Prenatal Development
- Gestation is a period of development between conception and birth; the gestational age starts from the mother’s last
menstruation.
- Cephalocaudal principle, in Latin means “head to tail,” dictates that development starts form head downwards.
- Proximodistal Principle, from Latin means “near to far,” dictates that development starts form the center outwards.
Three Stages of Prenatal Development
1. Germinal
- First 2 weeks of prenatal development.
- Before implantation, Embryonic Disk develops as some cells around the edge of blastocyst cluster, to which
the embryo will grow.
- The mass will be divided into 3 layers:
▪ Ectoderm – the upper layer; the outer layer of skin, nails, hair, teeth, sensory organs, and the
nervous system.
▪ Endoderm – the inner layer; will become the digestive system, liver, pancreas, salivary gland, and
respiratory system.
▪ Mesoderm – the middle layer; will develop into the inner layer of skin, muscle, skeleton, and
excretory and circulatory system.
- The other parts of blastocyst will begin to form into organs that will protect the baby:
▪ Amniotic Sac – fluid-filled membrane with its outer layer–Amnion and Chorion
▪ Placenta
▪ Umbilical cord
2. Embryonic
- 2 to 8 weeks, organs and major body system develop, called Arganogenesis.
- Spontaneous abortion or miscarriage is highly common in this term, first trimester.
3. Fetal
- 8 weeks to birth; final stage of gestation. Fetus grew 20 times its previous length and organs and body systems
are more complex.
Birth and Physical Development during the First Three Years

The Birth Process

- Labor is brought by a series of uterine and cervical contraction (occurs 266 days after conception), and other changes
called parturition, typically starts 2 weeks before delivery.
- A woman may feel false contraction known as Braxton-Hicks Contraction as early as 2nd trimester.
- Through Electronic Fetal Monitoring, fetus’s heartbeat can be monitored during labor and delivery, however, may
provide false-positive rate of suggesting that fetuses are in trouble.
Stages of Childbirth
Stage 1: Dilation of the Cervix
- Longest, typically last 12-14 hours.
- During this stage, uterine contraction occurs 15-29 minutes apart; at the end of the stage, contractions occur every 2-
5 minutes until cervix is fully dilated (10 cm).
Stage 2: Descent and Emergence of the Baby
- Lasts 1-2 hours.
- Begins when the baby’s head begins to move though the cervix to the vaginal canal; it ends when the baby is out of
the mother’s body, still attached to the placenta by the umbilical cord, which should be cut and clamped.
Stage 3: Expulsion of the Placenta
- Lasts between 10 minutes-1 hour.
- The placenta and umbilical cord are expelled from the mother.
Medical vs Nonmedical Delivery
• Natural childbirth
- Or Prepared Childbirth is a method of childbirth that uses breathing exercises and relaxation to reduce pain and
fear.
• LeBoyer Method
- Introduced in 1970s; a woman gives birth in a quiet and under low light room to reduce stress; the child is
massaged to relieve crying.
• Water Childbirth
- Developed by Micheal Odent; a laboring woman is submerged in a soothing pool of water.
• Usage of Anesthesia
o Pudental block – Vaginal anesthesia
o Analgesic – Reduces the perception of pain by depressing the activity of the Central Nervous System.
o Epidural – Injected into a space in the spinal cord between vertebrae in the lumbar region which blocks the
nerve pathways that would carry the sensation of pain.
• Doula
- An experienced mentor who furnished emotional support during labor.
The Newborn Baby
- The neonatal period is the first 4 weeks of life, wherein the neonate of newborn is 20 inches long and 7 ½ pounds;
boys are longer and heavier than girls.
- The areas in the neonate’s head where the bones of the skull do not meet is called fontanels. It is covered by a
membrane that allows for flexibility in shape and eases the passage of the neonate through the vaginal canal. It fuses
on the first 18 months.
- Some neonates are hairy because the lanugo (prenatal hair) has not fallen off and covered with vermix caseosa (an
oily protection against infection) that dries off within the first few days.
Body Systems
- Most of the transition of the baby after delivery occurs during the first 4 to 6 hours.
 - As the umbilical cord cannot supply oxygen to the baby after the delivery, Anoxia (lack of oxygen or hypoxia
(reduced oxygen supply) may occur if breathing does not begin in 5 minutes; this birth trauma may cause permanent
brain damage.
- During the first few days, infants secrete meconium (stringy, greenish-black waste formed in the fetal intestinal
tract).
- The sphincter muscles automatically when the bowels and bladder are full which they can’t control for many months.
- The layer of fat helps infants to keep their body temperature; this could also be through activity increase when the
temperature drops.
- 3-4 days after birth, half of the babies develop neonatal jaundice (their skin and eyeballs turn yellow) caused by
immaturity of the liver; not serious however, severe jaundice that is not treated may result in brain damage.
Medical and Behavioral Assessment
• Apgar Scale
- 1 minute and 5 minutes after delivery, most babies are assessed using Apgar Scale.
- Dr. Virgina Apgar name the scale to remember its five subsets are:
▪ Appearance (color)
▪ Pulse (heartbeat)
▪ Grimace (reflex irritability)
▪ Activity (muscle tone)
▪ Respiration (breathing)
- The newborn is rated 0, 1, or 2 on each measure; total score is 10. A score of 7-10 in 5 minutes means the baby
is in good condition; 5-7 means the baby needs help to establish breathing. 4 or more at 10 minutes means no
long-term damage is likely to result; 0-3 at 10-20 minutes means newborn is associated with cerebral palsy or
neurological problems.
• Assessing Neurological Status: The Brazelton Scale
- Developed by Dr. T. Berry Brazelton for 2 months old infants that lasts for 30 minutes.
- Neurological and behavioral test to measure neonate’s response to environment to identify neurological
functioning problems and predict future development.
- Assesses motor skills, reflexes, mood, attention, and central nervous system instability.
• Neonatal Screening for Medical Conditions
- Screening test administered after birth to discover rare conditions like PKU (can be treated if infant is fed a
special diet at first 3-6 weeks of life) to provide necessary intervention.
• Denver Development Screening Test
- Screening test given to 1 month child to 6 years old to determine whether development is normal through
measuring gross (usage of large muscles) and fine motor skills (usage of small muscle and eye-hand
coordination)
Complication of Childbirth
• Low Birth Weight (LBW)
- Neonates born weighing less than 5 pounds.
- Two types of LBW babies:
▪ Born early – Preterm infants; born before 37th week rather than typical 40 weeks.
▪ Born small
- Reasons for LBW include:
▪ Demographic and socioeconomic factors
▪ Medical factors predating the pregnancy.
▪ Prenatal behavior and environmental factors
▪ Medical conditions associated with the pregnancy.
- Babies born early lack an amount of lung-coating substance called surfactant which keeps air sacs from
collapsing, resulting to irregular breathing.
- Immediate Treatment includes:
▪ Placing LBW baby in an antiseptic, temperature-controlled crib, and fed through tubes,
▪ Kangaroo Care – Skin to skin contact for an hour or so.
• Postmaturity
- Postmature is a fetus not yet born as of 2 weeks after the due.
- Placenta that aged may become less efficient in supplying the fetus with oxygen.
 - The mother is at higher risk of cesarean delivery, perineal tears, postpartum hemorrhage; the neonate is at risk of
dystocia (a condition where the babies should be stuck behind mother’s pelvic bone), low Apgar scores, brain
damage, and death.
• Stillbirth
- Death of a fetus at or after the 20th week of gestation; could be at 28 weeks or more.
- Prenatal surgery could be executed to correct congenital problems in the wombs or be delivered prematurely to
prevent stillbirths.
• Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)
- Sudden and unexplained death of a perceived healthy infant.
- It peaks between 2 and 4 months which affects the Infant Mortality Rate (proportion of babies who die within
the 1st year.
Nutrition
• Breastfeeding
- As children grow faster during the first 3 years, breastfeeding is the “ultimate health food” that helps physical,
cognitive, and emotional development.
- Breastfeeding should begin immediately after birth for at least a year, or longer; babies should only be breast-
fed for 6 months.
• Milk Formula
- Breastfeeding is inadvisable for mothers with AIDS, HIV, or Tuberculosis, if she had been taking drugs or
exposed to radiation.
- Infants during the 1st year should receive fortified formula; at 1 year can have cow’s milk.
Major Parts of the Brain
- By the age of 6, the brain is almost adult size, but some parts remain to develop.
- Brain Growth Spurts is when brain starts to develop at 3 weeks after conception.
- Plasticity is molding of the brain through experience.
- Lateralization is the specialization of right and left hemisphere.
• Right Hemisphere
- It is responsible and holds out emotions, it creates images, it perceives the world around us.
• Left Hemisphere
- It is responsible for verbal and other cognitive processes.
• Brain stem
- It is the most ancient part of the brain, responsible for moving, sleeping, and present in animals as well.

Categories of the brain (HMF):

• Hindbrain
- It is the closest to the spinal cord.
- Structures (MPC):
▪ Medulla – Blood Pressure, breathing and circulation.
▪ Pons – Coordinating movements, the bridge that connects the cerebellum to the rest of the body.
▪ Cerebellum – Motor coordination and balance.
• Midbrain
- It coordinates movements with sensory input and contains parts of reticular activating system or RAS (It has
the contribution in sleeping, arousal, and tension)
• Forebrain
- The largest part located in the front part of the brain.
- It involves emotions, experiences, and expressions.
• Thalamus - It relay sensory information to higher region of the brain.
• Hypothalamus - it is concerned with the vital functions, emotional and motivational state.
• Corpus callosum - The connection of the right and the left hemisphere of the brain.
• Limbic System - It is located at the edge of the center of the brain, concern with the emotional
processing and memory.
▪ Amygdala - for response (fear), memory and emotions.
▪ Hippocampus - for short- and long-term memory.
▪ Nucleus Accumbens - for motivational and action.
• Basal ganglia - includes caudate nucleus, processing visual information, movement, and memory.
 • Cerebral cortex - largest part of the brain, for planning, reasoning, creating, it contains 80%
neurons.
Brain Lobes (FPTO)
o Frontal Lobe
• Higher cognitive functions (thinking, reasoning, planning)
o Parietal Lobe
• Sensations of touch and body functioning.
o Temporal Lobe
• Sounds, hearing, auditory
o Occipital Lobe
• Visual and eyesight
Brain Cells
- The brain is composed of neurons (produce Neurotransmitters that send information or signals) and glial cells
(protects neurons).
- Parts of the Neurons:
▪ Axons – Transmits impulses to other neurons.
▪ Dendrites – Receives the messages.
▪ Synapses – The connection to other neurons.
- As neurons function, they undergo the complementary process of integration (neurons makes sure that functions are
executed) and differentiation (each neuron takes on a specific function).
- Normal elimination of excess cells to function efficiently is called cell death.
- Myelination is the process of coating the neural pathways with substance called Myelin to enable signals to travel
faster.
Reflexes
• Primitive Reflexes
- Related to instinctive needs for survival or protection.
• Postural Reflexes
- Reaction to changes in position or balance.
• Moro Reflex
- Response to being startled or beginning to fall.
• Locomotor Reflexes
- Walking and swimming reflexes
▪ Self-locomotion (crawling and creeping)
▪ Social Referencing (looking for clues and security in situations through visual guidance–use of eyes
to guide movements of other parts of the body.)
Death Perception
- Ability to perceive objects and surfaces three-dimensionally.
Haptic Perception
- Ability to acquire information about properties of objects.
Ecological Theory
- Theory developed by Eleanor and James Gibson, which describes developing motor and perceptual skills that guides
behavior in situations.
- He experimented this through putting a baby on a visual cliff (illusion of depth).
Dynamic System Theory (DST)
- Esther Thelen’s Theory, which holds that motor development is a dynamic process of active coordination of multiple
systems within the infant in relation to environment.
Cognitive Development during the First Three Years
Studying Cognitive Development
- Behaviorist, psychometrician, Piagetian, information-processing, cognitive neuroscience, and social-contextual can
shed light on how early cognition develops.

Behaviorist Approach
- Concerned with basic mechanics of learning.
- Two simple types of learning that behaviorists study is.
▪ Classical Conditioning
▪ Operant Conditioning
- Rovee-Collier;s research suggests that infant’s memory processes are much like those of adults, though this
conclusion has been questioned. Infants’ memories can be jogged by periodic reminders.

Psychometric Approach
- Seeks measure Intelligent behavior (a behavior that is goal-oriented and adaptive to circumstances).
- Its goals are to measure what make up intelligence (such as reasoning and comprehension) to predict future
performance.
- This is measured through Intelligence Quotient (IQ) Test (seek to measure intelligence by comparing performance
with standardized norms).
- Tests for Infants and Toddlers:
▪ Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development
- Standardized test of infant’s and toddlers’ (age 1 month-3 ½ years) mental and motor
development.
- Assesses five developmental areas: Cognitive, language, motor, social-emotional, and adaptive
behavior.
- Separate scores are called Developmental Quotients (DQs).
▪ Home Observation for Measurements of the Environment (HOME)
- Instrument to measure the influence of the home environment on the cognitive growth of
children.
- Includes six subscales that measure.
• the number of book and appropriate play materials at home,
• the parent’s involvement with the child, parental emotional and verbal responsiveness,
• acceptance of the child’s behavior,
• organization of the environment, opportunities for daily and varied stimulation.
- Effective Early Intervention (a process that aims to help families meet their children’s developmental needs) are
those that.
▪ Start early and continue throughout the preschool years.
▪ Highly time-sensitive
▪ Center-based, providing direct educational experiences, not just parental training.
▪ Take a comprehensive approach, including health, family counselling, and social services.
▪ Tailored to individual differences and needs.

Piagetian Approach
- Describes qualitative stages in cognitive functioning.
- Substages of sensorimotor stage:
▪ Use of Reflexes (Birth-1 month) – they do not coordinate information from their senses.
▪ Primary Circular Reactions (1-4 months) – Action and response both involve infant’s own body
and pleasure.
▪ Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8 months) – Infants mirror actions with interesting results; they
are more interested in the environment.
▪ Coordination of Secondary Schemes (8-12 months) – uses previously learned behaviors to attain
their goals.
▪ Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18 months) – shows curiosity and execute experimentation; they
purposefully vary their actions to see results.
 • Mental Combinations (18-24 months) – Toddlers begin to demonstrate insights; they use
symbols through the use Representation Ability (capacity to store symbols and events);
and pretention to mentally represent events without action.
- During Piaget’s sensorimotor stage, infants’ schemes become more elaborate. They progress from primary to
secondary to tertiary circular reactions (infant learns to reproduce desired occurrences originally discovered by
chance) and finally to the development of representational ability, which makes possible deferred imitation
(reproduction of observed behavior by calling up stored symbols of it), pretending, and problem solving.
- Key Developments of the Sensorimotor stage includes:
▪ Imitation – starts at 6th substage, after the development of mental representation.
▪ Object Permanence – Develops between 3rd and 6th substage.
▪ Symbolic Development – starts at 6th substage’s representational thinking.
▪ Categorization – Starts at 6th substage, categorization of functions.
▪ Casuality – starts at 4-6 months to 1 year; effects of their own actions.
▪ Number – Starts at 6th substage; they can recognize numbers without thinking.
- Dual Representation Hypothesis propose that children under 3 have difficulty grasping spatial relationships due to
the need to keep more than one mental representation at a time.

Information-Processing Approach
- Analyzes the processes involved in perceiving and handling information.
- Contrary to Piaget’s ideas, such research suggests that representational ability is present virtually from birth.
- Most information-processing research are based on Habituation (type of learning in which familiarity with a
stimulus reduces, slows, or stops response); increase in responsiveness after presentation of a new hypothesis is
called dishabituation.
- Infants have the tendency to spend more time looking at one sight than another is called Visual Preference as
infants can distinguish a familiar visual stimulus from an unfamiliar one when shown both at the same time
called Visual Recognition Memory.
- Infants also has Cross-Modal Transfer, the ability to use information gained by one sense to guide another.
- Joint Attention, a shared attention focus, typically initiated with eye gaze or pointing which is important to
social interaction, language acquisition, and the understanding of other’s mental states and intentions.
- Violation-of-expectations is a research method in which dishabituation to a stimulus that conflicts with
experience is taken as evidence that an infant recognizes the new stimulus as surprising.

Cognitive Neuroscience Approach

- Links brain processes with cognitive ones
- Neurological developments help explain the emergence of Piagetian skills and memory abilities.
- Long term memory systems:
▪ Implicit Memory – remembering without effort or awareness.
▪ Explicit Memory – known as declarative memory; conscious or intentional recollection.
- Working Memory emerges between 6-12 months of age; short term storage of information the brain is currently
processing or working on.

Socia-Contextual Approach
- Focuses on environmental influences, particularly parents and other caregivers.
- Social interactions with adults contribute to cognitive competence through shared activities that help children learn
skills, knowledge, and values important in their culture.
- Adult’s participation in a child’s activity that helps to structure it and bring the child’s understanding of it closer to
the adults. This is called Guided Participation.
- Language:
▪ Prelinguistic Speech – utterance of sounds that are not words, such as crying.
▪ Holophrase – single word that conveys complete thought.
▪ Telegraphic Speech – Early form of sentence use consisting of only essential words.
▪ Syntax – Rules for forming sentences in a particular language.
▪ Code Mixing – speaking and using two languages.
▪ Code Switching – changing speech to match the necessity.
▪ Child-directed speech (CDS) – Form of speech often used in talking to babies or toddlers.
- Chomsky’s view called Nativism emphasizes the active role of the learner; he suggested that an inborn language
acquisition device (LAD) programs children’s brains to analyze the language they hear and to figure out its rules.
Psychosocial Development during the First Three Years

Foundation of Psychosocial Development

- Although babies share common patterns of development, each shows a distinct personality (consistent blend of
emotions, temperament, thought, and behavior that makes a person unique).

Emotions
- Subjective reactions to experience that are associated with physiological and behavioral changes.
- Emotional development is orderly; complex emotions seem to develop from earlier, simpler ones.
- Brain development is closely linked with emotional development.
- Psychosocial Development of Infants and Toddlers:
Age Characteristics
0-3 months They begin to show interest and curiosity, and they smile at people.
3-6 months They show emotions; the time of social awakening and early reciprocal
exchanges between the baby and the caregiver
6-9 months They express more differentiated emotions, showing joy, fear, anger,
and surprise
9-12 months Infants are intensely preoccupied with their principal caregiver, may become
afraid of strangers, and act subdued in new situations. They communicate
emotions more clearly, showing moods, and ambivalence.
12-18 months Toddlers explore their environment, using the people they are most attached to
as a secure base. As they master the environment, they become more confident
and more eager to assert themselves.
18-36 months Toddlers sometimes become anxious because they now realize how much they
are separating from their caregivers; they ease it by identifying with adults.

Early Signs of Emotion

• Crying
• Smiling and Laughing
o Social Smiling occurs in the beginning of the 2nd month when newborn infants gaze their parents and smile
at them, signaling positive participation in the relationship.
o Anticipatory Smiling is when an infant smiles at an object and then gazes at an adult while smiling.
• Facial Expressions
• Motor Activity
• Body Language
• Physiological Changes

Why do Emotions Appear?

- Self-conscious (such as embarrassment, empathy, and envy) and self-evaluative emotions (such as pride, shame,
and guilt) arise after the development of self-awareness (Realization that one’s existence and functioning are
separate from those of other people and things).

Altruistic Behavior
- Activity intended to help another person with no expectation of reward.
- Altruism and empathy are caused by an identified brain cells called mirror neurons (fires when a person does
something or observes someone else doing the same thing).

Temperament
- Early individual differences of babies; appears to be inborn and to have a biological basis.
- These differences of Temperament patters can be shaped by experiences.
- Children may fall into 1 of 3 categories of temperament: easy, difficult, and slow to warm up.
- Cross-cultural differences in temperament may reflect child-raising practices as appropriateness of environmental
demands and constraints to a child’s temperament is essential. This is called Goodness of fit.
- However, children can have a temperament called Behavioral Inhibition which asks how boldly or cautiously a
child approaches unfamiliar objects and situations.
Early Social Experiences: The Family
- Child-raising practices and caregiving roles vary around the world.
• Mother’s Role
- Infants have strong needs for maternal closeness, warmth, and responsiveness as well as physical care.
- Proved by the experimentation of Harry Harlow with Rhesus Monkey.
• Father’s Role
- Fatherhood is a social construction; fathering roles differ in various cultures.

Gender
- Being a female or a male; it influences identity.
- Although significant gender differences typically do not appear until after infancy, U.S. fathers, especially, promote
early gender-typing (children are learning appropriate gender roles).

Developmental Issues in Infancy

• Developing Trust
- According to Erikson, infants in the first 18 months are in the first stage of personality development, basic sense
of trust versus mistrust. Sensitive, responsive, consistent caregiving is the key to successful resolution of this
conflict.
• Developing Attachments
- Attachment is a reciprocal, enduring emotional tie between people that contributes to the quality of
relationship.
- A parent’s memories of childhood attachment can influence his or her own child’s attachment.
- Strange Situation (laboratory technique used to study infant attachment). has found four patterns of
attachment:
▪ Secure Attachment – an infant feels resiliency and comfort during distress.
▪ Avoidant Attachment – unaffected by a caregiver leaving or returning.
▪ Ambivalent (resistant) Attachment – an infant becomes anxious before the primary caregiver
leaves, is extremely upset during his or her absence, and both seeks and resists contact on his or her
return.
▪ Disorganized-disoriented Attachment – Infant seem to lack a cohesive strategy to deal with the
stress of the Strange Situation. Instead, they show contradictory, repetitive, or misdirected behaviors
(such as seeking closeness to the stranger instead of the mother or showing a fear response upon the
caregiver’s entry)
• Stranger Anxiety and Separation Anxiety
- may arise at 6 months of age; related to temperament and circumstances.
▪ Stranger Anxiety – Wariness of strange people and places, shown by some infants during 6 months
of age.
▪ Separation Anxiety – Distress shown by someone, typically an infant, when a familiar caregiver
leaves.

• Mutual Regulation
- Process by which infant and caregiver communicate emotional states to each other and respond appropriately.
• Social Referencing
- Understanding an ambiguous situation by seeking another person’s perception of it.

Developmental Issues in Toddlerhood

• Self Concept
- The self-concept (sense of self; descriptive and evaluative mental picture of one’s abilities and traits) arises
between 4 and 10 months, as infants begin to perceive a difference between self and others and to experience a
sense of agency and self coherence.
• Development of Autonomy
- Erikson’s second stage concerns autonomy vs. shame and doubt which is marked by a shift from external
control to self-control.
- Toilet training is an important step toward autonomy and self-control; so is language.

Moral Development: Socialization and Internalization

• Socialization
- Development of habits, skills, values, and motives shared by responsible, productive members of a society.
 • Internalization
- Process by which children accept societal standards of conduct during socialization.

Self Regulation
- A child’s independent control of behavior to conform to understood social expectations.

Compliance
• Conscience
- Internal standards of behavior, which usually control one’s conduct and produce emotional discomfort when
violated.
• Situational Compliance
- Obedience to a parent’s orders only in the presence of signs of ongoing parental control.
• Committed Compliance
- Wholehearted obedience to a parent’s orders without reminders or lapses.
• Receptive Cooperation
- Willingness to cooperate harmoniously with a parent in daily interactions, including routines, chores, hygiene,
and play.

Relationships with Other Children

• Siblings
- Sibling relationships play a distinct role in socialization; what children learn from relations with siblings carries
over to relationships outside the home.
• Peer
- Between ages 1½ and 3 years, children tend to show more interest in other children and an increasing
understanding of how to deal with them.

Children of Working Parents: Maternal

- Mothers’ employment during a child’s first 3 years seems to have little impact on development, but cognitive
development may suffer when a mother works 30 or more hours a week by her child’s 9th month.
- Substitute childcare varies in quality. The most important element in quality of care is the caregiver.
- Although quality, quantity, stability, and type of care influence psychosocial and cognitive development, the
influence of family characteristics seems greater overall.

Maltreatment: Abuse and Neglect

- Most victims of maltreatment are infants and toddlers. Some die due to nonorganic failure to thrive (slowed
physical growth with no known medical cause, accompanied by poor developmental and emotional functioning).
Others are victims of shaken baby syndrome (form of maltreatment in which shaking a child can cause brain
damage, paralysis, or death).
- Forms of maltreatment:
▪ Physical Abuse – Action taken deliberately to endanger another person, involving potential bodily
injury.
▪ Neglect – Failure to meet a dependent’s basic needs.
▪ Sexual Abuse – Physically or psychologically harmful sexual activity or any sexual activity
involving a child and an older person.
▪ Emotional Maltreatment – Rejection, terrorization, isolation, exploitation, degradation, ridicule, or
failure to provide emotional support, love, and affection; or other action or inaction that may cause
behavioral, cognitive, emotional, or mental disorders.
Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood
Aspects of Physical Development
- Physical growth continues during the years from 3 to 6, but more slowly than during infancy and toddlerhood. Boys
are on average slightly taller, heavier, and more muscular than girls. Internal body systems are maturing.
- Sleep patterns change during early childhood are affected by cultural expectations. Occasional sleepwalking, sleep
terrors, and nightmares are common, but persistent sleep problems may indicate emotional disturbances.
- Sleepwalking, sleep talking, and night terrors occur when children are sleeping deprived, difficult child
temperament, high overall childhood anxiety, have a fever or are on medications, or when conditions are noisy.
- Most children stay dry, day and night, by age 3 to 5, but enuresis, repeated and involuntary urination at night by
children old enough to be expected to have bladder control, is not unusual but usually outgrown without special help.

Height (inches) Weight (pounds)

Age Boys Girls Boys Girls
3 39 36.6 35.3 34.5
4 42 41.7 40.8 40.3
5 44.8 44.2 46.6 45.0
6 47.2 46.7 52.8 52.4

Brain Development
- Brain development continues steadily throughout childhood and affects motor development.

Motor Skills
- Children progress rapidly in gross and fine motor skills, developing more complex systems of action.
- Type of motor skills involves:
▪ Gross Motor Skills – Physical skills that involve the large muscles such as running and jumping.
▪ Fine Motor Skills – Physical skills that involve the small muscles and eye-hand coordination such
as buttoning shirts and drawing pictures, involve eye-hand.
- As they develop motor skills, preschoolers continually merge abilities they already have with those they are
acquiring to produce more complex capabilities known as systems of action, increasingly complex combinations of
skills, which permit a wider or more precise range of movement and more control of the environment.
- Example of systems of action is handedness, the preference for using one hand over the other, is usually evident by
about age 3, reflecting dominance by one hemisphere of the brain.

Health and Safety

- Although major contagious illnesses are rare today in industrialized countries due to widespread immunization,
preventable disease continues to be a major problem in the developing world.
• Obesity
- The prevalence of obesity among preschoolers has increased.
- Undernutrition, a form of malnutrition is often the result of chronic and persistent hunger which can affect all
aspects of development.
• Oral Health
- Child’s oral health can be improved when they are provided with regular dental care and fluoride supplements.
- Oral health is an important component of overall health. It starts in childhood with two common areas of oral
health of concern to parents: thumb sucking and tooth decay.
- By age 3, all the babies’ teeth are in place, and the permanent teeth, appears at about age 6, are developing.
Thus, parents usually can safely ignore the common habit of thumb sucking in children under age 4. If children
stop sucking thumbs or fingers by that age, their permanent teeth are not likely to be affected.
• Food Allergies
- Food allergies are becoming increasingly common.
- Ninety percent of food allergies can be attributed to eight foods: milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, soy, wheat,
and shellfish.
• Accidents and Deaths
- Accidents, most frequently in the home, are the leading cause of death in childhood in the United States.
- Environmental factors such as exposure to poverty, homelessness, smoking, air pollution, and pesticides
increase the risks of illness or injury. Lead poisoning can have serious physical, cognitive, and behavioral
effects.
Piagetian Approach: The Preoperational Child
- Children in the preoperational stage (the second major stage of cognitive development, in which symbolic thought
expands but children cannot yet use logic effectively) show several advances and some immature aspects of thought.
- The symbolic function (ability to use mental representations like words, numbers, or images) to which a child has
attached meaning) enables children to reflect on people, objects, and events that are not physically present.
- Symbolic function is shown in:
▪ Deferred imitation – Children imitate an action at some point after having observed it.
▪ Pretend play – Play involving imaginary people and situations; also called fantasy play, dramatic
play, or imaginative play.
▪ Language
- Symbolic development helps preoperational children make more accurate judgments of spatial relationships.
- Piaget said that children cannot yet reason logically about cause and effect however, transduction implies that a
child has a tendency to mentally link particular phenomena, whether or not there is logically a causal relationship.
- By age 4, children can classify by two criteria, such as color and shape, which they use to categorize “good,” “bad”
therefore, children have the tendency to attribute life to objects that are not alive, which is called animism.

Immature Aspects of Preoperational Thought

- Preoperational children have the tendency to focus on one aspect of a situation and neglect others, called centration,
and failing to understand that an operation can go in two or more directions, called irreversibility because they
cannot think simultaneously about several aspects of a situation called decenter.
- Form of centration
▪ Egocentrism – Implies that a preoperational child is inability to consider another person’s point of
view. Preoperational children are less egocentric than Piaget thought.
▪ Conservation – Awareness that two objects that are equal according to a certain measure remain
equal in the face of perceptual alteration so long as nothing has been added to or taken away from
either object. Centration keeps preoperational children from understanding conservation.
- Theory of mind, which develops markedly between ages 3 and 5, includes awareness of social cognition,
understanding of other people’s mind and ability to distinguish fantasy from reality. However, maturational, and
environmental influences affect individual differences in theory-of-mind development.

Information-Processing Approach: Memory

- Information-processing models describe three steps in memory:
▪ Encoding – Information is prepared for long-term storage and later retrieval.
▪ Storage – Retention of information in memory for future use.
▪ Retrieval – Information is accessed or recalled from memory storage.
- Information-processing models depicts the brain as containing three types of storage:
▪ Sensory Memory – Initial, brief, temporary storage of sensory information.
▪ Working Memory – Short-term storage of information being actively processed.
▪ Long-term Memory – Store unlimited information for long periods of time.
- Although sensory memory shows little change with age, the capacity of working memory increases greatly.
- The central executive is an element of working memory that controls the processing of information from long-term
memory, and the growth of working memory permits the development of executive function, the conscious control
of thoughts, emotions, and actions to accomplish goals or to solve problems.
- Placing material in memory is not enough; it must also be retrieved to be used. There are two types of retrieval:
▪ Recognition – Ability to identify a previously encountered stimulus.
▪ Recall – Ability to reproduce material from memory.
- At all ages, recognition is better than recall, but both increase during early childhood.
- Types of memory:
▪ Generic Memory – Memory that produces scripts (remembered outline of a familiar, repeated
event, used to guide behavior) of familiar routines to guide behavior.
▪ Episodic Memory – Long-term memory of specific experiences or events, linked to time and place.
Early episodic memory is only temporary; it fades or is transferred to generic memory.
▪ Autobiographical Memory – Memory of specific events in one’s life. Autobiographical memory
typically begins at about age 3 or 4; it may be related to self-recognition and language development.
- According to the social interaction model of Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, children and adults co-construct
autobiographical memories by talking about shared experiences.
- Children are more likely to remember unusual activities that they actively participate in.
Intelligence: Psychometric and Vygotskian Approaches
- One factor that may affect the strength of early cognitive skills is intelligence which involves the ability to learn
from situations, adapt to new experiences, and manipulate abstract concepts.
- The two most used psychometric intelligence tests for young children are:
▪ Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales – for ages 2 and up used to measure fluid reasoning, knowledge,
quantitative reasoning, visual-spatial processing, and working memory.
▪ Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence revised (WPPSI-IV) – for children ages
2½ to 7 that yields verbal and performance scores as well as a combined score.

Language Development
- During early childhood, vocabulary increases, and grammar and syntax become fairly sophisticated. To develop
these children should develop emergent literacy, a skill and knowledge that underlie reading and writing.
- At age 3 the average child knows and can use 900 to 1,000 words. By age 6, a child typically has an expressive
vocabulary of 2,600 words and understands more than 20,000. With the help of formal schooling, a child’s passive,
or receptive, vocabulary will quadruple to 80,000 words by the time she enters high school.
- This rapid expansion of vocabulary may occur through fast mapping, which allows a child to absorb the meaning of
a new word after hearing it once or twice in conversation.
- However, as children learn vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, they also become more competent in pragmatics (the
practical knowledge needed to use language for communicative purposes).
- Pragmatics is related to theory of mind because to understand how to use language socially, you have to be able to be
in their shoes. This is an aspect of social speech which is a form of speech intended to be understood by a listener.
- There is also a form of speech that is considered a sign of cognitive immaturity, private speech, or egocentric
speech the process of talking aloud to oneself with no intent to communicate with others.

Early Childhood Education

- Goals of preschool education vary across cultures.
- The academic content of early childhood education programs has increased, but studies support a child-centered
approach.
- Many children today attend full-day kindergarten. Success in kindergarten depends largely on emotional and social
adjustment and prekindergarten preparation.

Types of Preschools
• The Montessori Method
- Maria Montessori dedicated herself to find new methods for educating children with learning disabilities.
• The Reggio Emilia Approach
- In 1940, a group of Italian educators and parents devised a plan to revitalized a crumbling, World War II society
through a new approach to children.
Psychosocial Development in Early Childhood
The Developing Self
- The self-concept is our total picture of our abilities and traits; a cognitive descriptive and evaluative representations
about the self” that determines how we feel about ourselves and guides our actions.
- The self-concept undergoes major change in early childhood.
- According to a neo-Piagetian model, self-definition (group of characteristics used to describe oneself) shifts from
single representations to representational mappings.
- Young children do not see the difference between the real self (the self one is) and the ideal self (the self one would
like to be).

Self Esteem
- Self-esteem is the judgment a person makes about his or her self-worth.
- Self-esteem in early childhood tends to be global and unrealistic, reflecting adult approval.

Regulating Emotions
- Understanding of emotions directed toward the self and of simultaneous emotions develops gradually.
- Social Emotions involve the regulation of social behavior that require self awareness and the understanding of
others' viewpoints.

Erikson: Initiative vs Guilt

- According to Erikson, the developmental conflict of early childhood is initiative versus guilt (third stage in
psychosocial development, in which children balance the urge to pursue goals with reservations about doing so).
- Successful resolution of this conflict results in the virtue of purpose.

Gender
- Gender identity, awareness of one’s femaleness or maleness and all it implies in one’s society of origin, is an
important aspect of the developing self-concept.
- The main gender difference in early childhood is boys’ greater aggressiveness. Girls tend to be more empathic and
prosocial and less prone to problem behavior. Some cognitive differences appear early, others not until
preadolescence or later.

Perspective on Gender Development

- Children learn gender roles (behaviors, interests, attitudes, skills, and personality traits that a culture considers
appropriate for males or females) at an early age through gender-typing (children learn appropriate gender roles).
- Gender stereotypes (preconceived generalizations about male or female role behavior) peak during the preschool.
- Five major perspectives on gender development are:
▪ Biological
- Evidence suggests that some gender differences may be biologically based.
▪ Evolutionary
- Sees children’s gender roles as preparation for adult mating behavior.
- According to Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, the selection of sexual partners is a response
to the differing reproductive pressures early men and women confronted in the struggle for
survival.
▪ Psychoanalytic
- In Freudian theory, a child identifies with the same-sex parent after giving up the wish to
possess the other parent.
- This process, according to Freud, is one of identification, the adoption of characteristics,
beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors of the parent of the same sex.
▪ Cognitive
- Cognitive-developmental theory maintains that gender identity develops from thinking about
one’s gender.
- According to Kohlberg, gender constancy leads to acquisition of gender roles that hinges on
Gender constancy (awareness that one will always be male or female; also called sex-category
constancy).
- Gender Constancy develops:
• Gender Identity – awareness of one’s gender.
 • Gender Stability – awareness that gender does not change.
• Gender Constancy – the realization that one will remain their gender whether they do what
other gender does.
- Gender-schema theory holds that children categorize gender-related information by observing
what males and females do in their culture.
▪ Social Learning
- According to social cognitive theory of Alfred Bandura, children learn gender roles through
socialization.

Play
- Play has physical, cognitive, and psychosocial benefits. Changes in the types of play children engage in reflect
cognitive and social development.
- Children progress cognitively from:
1. Functional Play – involving repetitive large muscular movement.
2. Constructive Play – involving use of objects or materials to make something.
3. Dramatic Play – involving imaginary people or situations; also called pretend play, fantasy play, or
imaginative play.
4. Formal Games with Rules – organized games with known procedures and penalties.
- Children prefer to play with others of their sex. This phenomenon is called Gender Segregation.

Parenting
- Discipline, a method of molding character and of teaching acceptable behavior can be powerful.
- Both positive reinforcement and punishment such as corporal punishment (use of physical force to cause pain but
not injury to correct or control behavior) can be appropriate tools of discipline or may lead to negative consequence.
- Discipline has 3 categories:
▪ Power Assertion – Discipline that discourage undesirable behavior through physical or verbal
enforcement of parental control.
▪ Inductive Techniques – Discipline that appeals a child’s sense of reason and fairness.
▪ Withdrawal of Love – Discipline that involves ignoring, isolating, or showing dislike for a child.
- According to Baumrind, there are 3 parenting styles:
▪ Authoritarian Parenting – emphasizes control and obedience.
▪ Permissive Parenting – emphasizes self-expression and self-regulation.
▪ Authoritative Parenting – blends respect for a child’s individuality while instilling social values.

Special Behavioral Concerns

- The roots of altruism (helping other without expectations of reward) and prosocial behavior (voluntary behavior
intended to help others) appear early. This may be an inborn disposition, which can be cultivated by parental
modeling and encouragement.
- However, aggression can also be culminated such as the following forms:
▪ Instrumental Aggression – using aggression to achieve a goal.
▪ Over (direct) Aggression – aggression that is openly directed at its target.
▪ Relational Aggression – aiming to damage another person’s relationships, reputation, or
psychological well-being.

Relationships with Other Children

- Most sibling interactions are positive. Older siblings tend to initiate activities, and younger siblings to imitate. Same-
sex siblings, especially girls, get along best.
- Siblings tend to resolve disputes on the basis of moral principles.
Physical and Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood
Physical Development
- Physical development is less rapid in middle childhood than in earlier years. Wide differences in height and weight
exist.
- Changes in brain structure and functioning support cognitive advances.
- Because of improved motor development, boys and girls in middle childhood can engage in a wide range of motor
activities such as Rough-and-tumble-play, playful wrestling, hitting, and chasing, or Recess time play, an informal
and spontaneously organized play.
- Informal recess-time activities help develop physical and social skills. Boys’ games tend to be more physical and
girls’ games more verbal.
- Many children, mostly boys, engage in organized, competitive sports. A sound physical education program should
aim at skill development and fitness for all children.

Health, Fitness, and Safety

- Middle childhood is a relatively healthy period; most children are immunized against major illnesses, and the death
rate is the lowest in the life span.
- Concern with body image—how one believes one looks—becomes important early in middle childhood, especially
for girls, and may develop into eating disorders in adolescence.
- Acute Medical Conditions, illnesses that last a short time, and Chronic Medical Conditions, illnesses or
impairments that persist for at least 3 months, may also arise.
- Asthma (chronic respiratory disease characterized by sudden attacks of coughing, wheezing, and difficulty in
breathing), Diabetes (characterized by high levels of glucose in the blood as a result of defective insulin production,
ineffective insulin action, or both), and childhood Hypertension (chronically high blood pressure) is common.

Piagetian Approach: The Concrete Operational Child

- A child from about age 7 to age 12 is in the stage of concrete operations, third stage of Piagetian cognitive
development which children develop logical but not abstract thinking.
- Children are less egocentric than before and are more proficient at tasks requiring logical reasoning, such as spatial
thinking, understanding of causality, categorization, inductive and deductive reasoning, and conservation.
- Neurological development, culture, and schooling seem to contribute to the rate of development of Piagetian skills.

Cognitive Advances: Categorization

• Seriation
- Ability to order items along a dimension.
• Transitive Inferences
- Understanding the relationship between two objects by knowing the relationship of each to a third object.
• Class Inclusion
- Understanding of the relationship between a whole and its parts.

Reasoning
• Inductive Reasoning
- Type of logical reasoning that moves from particular observations about members of a class to a general
conclusion about that class.
• Deductive Reasoning
- Type of logical reasoning that moves from a general premise about a class to a conclusion about a particular
member or members of the class.

Information-Processing Approach: Planning, Attention, and Memory

- The following improves during school years:
o Executive Function – The conscious control of thoughts, emotions, and actions to accomplish goals or solve
problems.
o Reaction time
o Selective attention
o Metamemory – Knowledge of and reflection about memory processes.
o Mnemonic devices – Strategy to aid memory.
o External Memory aids – Mnemonic strategies using something outside the person.
 o Elaboration – Mnemonic strategy of making mental associations involving items to be remembered.
o Rehearsal – Mnemonic strategy to keep an item in working memory through conscious repetition.
o Organization – Mnemonic strategy of categorizing material to be remembered.

Psychometric Approach: Assessment of Intelligence

- Intelligence tests include:
▪ Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-IV) – intelligence test for children; the most
widely used.
▪ Otis-Lennon School Ability Test (OLSAT8) – Group intelligence test for kindergarten through
12th grade.
▪ Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC-II) – an individual test for ages 3 to 18, is
designed to evaluate minority children and children with disabilities.
▪ Dynamic Test – Tests based on Vygotsky’s theory that emphasize potential rather than past
learning.
- Gardner’s theory that each person has several distinct forms of intelligence is called Theory of Multiple
Intelligence.
- Therefore, developers designed culture-free tests—tests with no culture-linked, and culture fair tests consisting
only of experiences common to people in various cultures.
- Types of Intelligence:
▪ Linguistic
▪ Logical-Mathematical
▪ Spatial
▪ Musical
▪ Bodily kinesthetic
▪ Interpersonal
▪ Intrapersonal
▪ Naturalist – Ability to distinguish species and their characteristics.
- Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence focuses on the processes involved in intelligent behavior that has 3
elements:
▪ Componential Element – Analytic aspect of intelligence.
▪ Experimental Element – Insightful or creative aspect of intelligence.
▪ Contextual Element – Practical aspect of intelligence.
- Using the Sternberg Triarchic Abilities Test (STAT), three aspects of intelligence can be measured:
▪ Verbal
▪ Quantitative
▪ Figural
- Tacit Knowledge – Sternberg’s term for information that is not formally taught or openly expressed but is necessary
to get ahead.

Language and Literacy

- Use of vocabulary, grammar, and syntax become increasingly sophisticated, but the major area of linguistic growth
is in pragmatics.
- The major area of linguistic growth during the school years is in pragmatics – the social context of language.
- Methods of second-language education are controversial for its efficiency.
- However, English Immersion Approach (approach to teaching English as a second language in which instruction is
presented only in English) and two way (dual language) learning (approach to second-language education in which
English speakers and non-English-speakers learn together in their own and each other’s languages) can support eh
Bilingual Education (system of teaching non-English speaking children in their native language while they learn
English, and later switching to all-English instruction)
- Despite the popularity of whole-language programs, early phonetics training such as:
▪ Decoding – Process of phonetic analysis by which a printed word is converted to spoken form
before retrieval from long-term memory.
▪ Phonetic (code-emphasis) approach – Approach to teaching reading that emphasizes decoding of
unfamiliar words.
▪ Whole-Language Approach – Approach to teaching reading that emphasizes visual retrieval and
use of contextual clues.
▪ Visually based Retrieval – Process of retrieving the sound of a printed word when seeing the word.
- Metacognition, thinking about thinking, or awareness of one’s own mental processes.
The Child in School
- Children’s self-efficacy beliefs affect school achievement.
- Girls tend to do better in school than boys.
- Parents influence children’s learning by becoming involved in their schooling, motivating them to achieve, and
transmitting attitudes about learning.
- Socioeconomic status can influence parental beliefs and practices that, in turn, influence achievement.
- Peer acceptance and class size affect learning.
- Current educational issues and innovations include social promotion (the practice of promoting children to keep
them with their age-mates even when they do not meet academic standards), charter schools, homeschooling, and
computer literacy.

Educating Children with Special Needs

- Three frequent sources of learning problems are:
▪ Intellectual Disability – Significantly subnormal cognitive functioning. Also referred to as
cognitive disability or mental retardation.
▪ Learning Disability – Disorders that interfere with specific aspects of learning and school
achievement.
• Dyslexia – A developmental language disorder in which reading achievement is
substantially below the level predicted by IQ or age.
• Disgraphia – A developmental language disorder characterized by inability to write.
▪ Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder – Syndrome characterized by persistent inattention and
distractibility, impulsivity, low tolerance for frustration, and inappropriate overactivity.
- An IQ of 130 or higher is a common standard for identifying gifted children.
- Creativity (ability to see things in a new light—to produce something never seen before or to discern problems
others fail to recognize and find new and unusual solutions) and IQ are not closely linked.
- Two kinds of thinking:
▪ Divergent Thinking – Thinking that produces a variety of fresh, diverse possibilities; what
creativity test measures.
▪ Convergent Thinking – Thinking aimed at finding the one right answer to a problem: what IQ test
measures.
- Special educational programs for gifted children are:
▪ Enrichment Programs – Programs for educating the gifted that broaden and deepen knowledge and
skills through extra activities, projects, field trips, or mentoring.
▪ Acceleration Programs – Programs for educating the gifted that move them through the curriculum
at an unusually rapid pace.
Psychosocial Development in Middle Childhood
The Developing Self
- The cognitive growth that takes place during middle childhood enables children to develop more complex concepts
of themselves and to gain in emotional understanding and control; judgments about the self become more realistic.
- According to Erikson, the chief source of self-esteem is children’s view of their productive competence. This virtue
develops through resolution of the fourth psychosocial conflict, industry versus inferiority.
- Empathy and prosocial behavior increase; emotional regulation involves effortful control.
- Emotional growth is affected by parents’ reactions to displays of negative emotions.

The Child in the Family

- Children are less close to their parents than before, but relationships with parents continue to be important.
- The family environment has two major components: family structure and family atmosphere.
- Middle childhood brings a transitional stage of coregulation in which parent and child share power, and the amount
of autonomy parents provide their children affects how their children feel about them.
- Type of responses include:
▪ Internalizing Behavior – emotional problems are turned inward, such as anxiety or depression.
▪ Externalizing Behavior – a child acts out emotional difficulties, such as aggression or hostility.
- Siblings learn conflict resolution from their relationships with each other, which relationship with parents affects.

The Child in the Peer Group

- The peer group are consisting of children who are similar in age, sex, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status and who
live near one another or go to school together becomes more important in middle childhood.
- The peer group helps children develop social skills, allows them to assess and adopt values independent of parents,
gives them a sense of belonging, and helps develop their self-concept and gender identity which may increase
prejudice (unfavorable attitude toward members of certain groups outside one’s own).
- Intimacy and stability of friendships increase during middle childhood. Boys tend to have more friends, whereas
girls tend to have closer friends.
- During middle childhood, aggression typically declines. Instrumental aggression generally gives way to hostile
aggression, often with a hostile attribution bias (tendency to perceive others as trying to hurt one and act on self-
defense), which is promoted by exposure to media violence.

Mental Health
- Common emotional and behavioral disorders among school-age children include:
▪ Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) – Pattern of behavior marked by hostility and defiance.
▪ Conduct Disorder (CD) – Persistent pattern of aggression, violating norms or the rights of others.
▪ School Phobia – Fear of going to school; a form of separation anxiety disorder or social phobia.
▪ Separation Anxiety Disorder – Anxiety concerning separation from home or from attached people.
▪ Social Phobia – Extreme fear and/or avoidance of social situations.
▪ Generalized Anxiety Disorder – Anxiety not focused on any single target.
▪ Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder – Anxiety aroused by repetitive, intrusive thoughts, images, and
impulses, often leading to compulsive ritual behaviors.
▪ Childhood Depression – Mood disorder; inability to have fun or concentrate, fatigue, feelings of
worthlessness, weight change, physical complaints, and thoughts of death or suicide.
- Treatment techniques include:
▪ Individual Psychotherapy – Psychological therapist sees a troubled person one-on-one.
▪ Family Therapy – – Psychological therapist sees the whole family together for psychotherapy.
▪ Behavior Therapy – Therapeutic approach using principles of learning theory to encourage desired
behaviors or eliminate undesired ones; also called behavior modification.
▪ Art Therapy – Therapeutic approach that allows a person to express troubled feelings without
words, using a variety of art materials and media.
▪ Play Therapy – Therapeutic approach that uses play to help a child cope with emotional distress.
▪ Drug Therapy – Administration of drugs to treat emotional disorders.
- Resilient, children who function well despite challenges or threats, or bounce back from traumatic events. are better
able than others to withstand stress.
- Protective factors, influences that reduce the impact of potentially negative influences and tend to predict positive
outcomes which involve family relationships, cognitive ability, personality, degree of risk, and compensating factors.
Physical and Cognitive Development in Adolescence
Adolescence: A Developmental Transition
- Adolescence in modern industrial societies, is the transition from childhood to adulthood. It lasts from about age 11
until 19 or 20.
- Early adolescence is full of opportunities for physical, cognitive, and psychosocial growth, but also of risks to
healthy development. Risky behavior patterns, such as drinking alcohol, drug abuse, sexual and gang activity, and
use of firearms, tend to increase throughout the teenage years; but most young people experience no major problems.

Puberty
- The pprocess by which a person attains sexual maturity and the ability to reproduce; involves biological changes.
- Puberty is triggered by hormonal changes. Puberty takes about 4 years, typically begins earlier in girls than in boys,
and ends when a person can reproduce; but the timing of these events varies considerably.
- Marked by 2 stages:
▪ The activation of the adrenal glands
▪ Maturing of the sex organs a few years later

Timing, Signs, and Sequence of Puberty and Sexual Maturity

• Primary and Secondary Sex Characteristics
o Primary Sex Characteristics – Organs directly related to reproduction, which enlarge and mature during
adolescence.
o Secondary Sex Characteristics – Physiological signs of sexual maturation (such as breast development and
growth of body hair) that do not involve the sex organs.
• Signs of Puberty
- The first external signs of puberty are breast tissue and pubic hair in girls and enlargement of the testes in boy.
- A girl’s nipples enlarge and protrude, the areolae (the pigmented areas surrounding the nipples) enlarge, and the
breasts assume first a conical and then a rounded shape.
- The voice deepens, especially in boys, partly in response to the growth of the larynx and partly in response to
the production of male hormones.
- The skin becomes coarser and oilier, giving rise to pimples and blackheads.
- The adolescent growth spurt—a rapid increase in height, weight, and muscle and bone growth that occurs
during puberty.
• Signs of Sexual Maturity
- The principal signs of sexual maturity are production of sperm (for males) and menstruation (for females)
o Spermache – Boy’s first ejaculation (wet dreams).
o Menarche – Girl’s first menstruation.
o Adrenarche – When adrenal gland secrets estrogen called Dehydroepiandrosterone or DHEA.
o Gonadarche – Maturing sex organs, which triggers second wave of DHEA production.
• Secular Trend
- Trend that can be seen only by observing several generations, such as the trend toward earlier attainment of
adult height and sexual maturity, which began a century ago in some countries.

The Adolescent Brain

- The adolescent brain is not yet fully mature. It continues to develop the frontal lobes, followed by pruning of excess
nerve cells. Continuing myelination of the frontal lobes facilitates the maturation of cognitive processing.
- Because the limbic areas of the brain mature first and the frontal lobes mature more slowly, this predisposes
adolescents to impulsivity and risk-taking.

Physical and Mental Health

• Physical Activity
- For the most part, the adolescent years are relatively healthy. Health problems often are associated with poverty
or lifestyle.
- Many adolescents do not engage in regular vigorous physical activity.
• Sleep Needs and Problems
- Many adolescents do not get enough sleep because the high school schedule is out of sync with their natural
body rhythms.
• Nutrition and Eating Disorders
 - Concern with body image (perceptions, thoughts, and feelings among one’s body), especially among girls, may
lead to eating disorders such as:
▪ Anorexia Nervosa – Eating disorder characterized by self-starvation.
▪ Bulimia Nervosa – Eating disorder in which a person regularly eats huge quantities of food and then
purges the body by laxatives, induced vomiting, fasting, or excessive exercise.
▪ Binge Eating (BED) – Eating disorder in which a person loses control overeating and binges huge
quantities of food.
• Use and Abuse of Drugs
- Substance abuse is harmful use of alcohol or other drugs. Abuse can lead to substance dependence, or
addiction, which may be physiological, psychological, or both and is likely to continue into adulthood.
- Binge drinking– consuming five or more drinks on one occasion is also common in adolescence.
• Depression and Death
- The prevalence of depression increases in adolescence, especially among girls.
- Leading causes of death among adolescents include motor vehicle accidents, firearm use, and suicide.

Aspects of Cognitive Maturation

- Adolescents enter what Piaget called final stage of cognitive development— formal operations—when they move
away from their reliance on concrete, real-world stimuli and develop the capacity for abstract thought through
Hypothetical-Deductive Reasoning which involves the ability to develop, consider, and test hypothesis.
- According to Kohlberg, adolescents’ moral reasoning is based on a developing sense of justice and growing
cognitive abilities which is divided into:
▪ Preconventional Morality – First level of moral reasoning; control is external, and rules are obeyed
in order to gain rewards or avoid punishment or out of self-interest.
▪ Conventional Morality (or morality of conventional role conformity) – Second level moral
reasoning; standards of authority figures are internalized.
▪ Postconventional Morality (or morality of autonomous moral principles) – Third level of moral
reasoning; people follow internally held moral principles and can decide among conflicting moral
standards.

An Ethic of Care: Gilligan’s Theory

- Carrol Gilligan argued that men, Kohlberg included, viewed morality in terms of justice and fairness. Women held a
different set of values, however, that placed caring and avoiding harm as higher goals than justice.

Types of Information Processing in Long-Term Memory

• Declarative Knowledge – Acquired factual knowledge stored in LTM.
• Procedural Knowledge – Acquired skills stored in LTM.
• Conceptual Knowledge – Acquired interpretative understanding stored in LTM.

Changes in Information Processing

• Structural Change – Change in the structure of the long term and short temr memory.
• Functional Change – Process for obtaining, handling, and retaining information and functional aspect of cognitive
such as learning, remembering, and reasoning.
Psychosocial Development in Adolescence
The Search for Identity
- The search for identity—which Erikson defined as a coherent conception of the self, made up of goals, values, and
beliefs to which the person is solidly committed—comes into focus during the teenage years.
- Erik Erikson described the psychosocial conflict of adolescence as identity versus identity confusion (fifth stage of
psychosocial development; an adolescent seeks to develop a sense of self– the role she or he is to play in society).
- The three major issues in this stage are:
▪ Occupation
▪ Adaption of values
▪ Satisfying sexual identity
- Erikson believed this time-out period, which he called psychosocial moratorium, was ideal for the development of
identity and allowed young people the opportunity to search for commitments to which they could be faithful.
- The virtue that should arise from this conflict is fidelity (sustained loyalty, faith, or sense of belonging those results
from the successful resolution of Erikson’s identity versus identity confusion psychosocial stage of development).

Identity Status
- James Marcia, in research based on Erikson’s theory, described four identity statuses:
▪ Identity achievement – characterized by commitment to choices made following a crisis, a period
spent in exploring alternatives.
▪ Foreclosure – a person who has not spent time considering alternatives is committed to other
people’s plans for his or her life.
▪ Moratorium – a person is currently considering alternatives and seems headed for commitment.
▪ Identity diffusion – characterized by absence of commitment and lack of serious consideration of
alternatives.
- The four categories differ according to the presence or absence of crisis (conscious decision making related to
identity formation) and commitment (personal investment in an occupation or system of beliefs), the two elements
Erikson saw as crucial to forming identity.

Ethnic Factors in Identity Formation

- Ethnicity is an important part of identity. Minority adolescents seem to go through stages of ethnic identity
development much like Marcia’s identity statuses.
- Cultural socialization includes practices that teach children about their racial or ethnic heritage, and promote
cultural customs and traditions, which highlights individual identity.

Sexuality
- Sexual orientation (focus of consistent sexual, romantic, and affectionate interest) is influenced by an interaction of
biological and environmental factors and to be at least partly genetic.
- Because of lack of social acceptance, the course of homosexual identity and relationship development may vary.
- Teenage sexual activity involves risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (infections and diseases
spread by sexual contact).

Relationships with Family, Peers, and Adult Society

- The teenage years have been called a time of adolescent rebellion, a pattern of emotional turmoil, characteristic of a
minority of adolescents, which may involve conflict with family, alienation from adult society, reckless behavior,
and rejection of adult values.
- Adolescents spend an increasing amount of time with peers; The influence of the peer group is strongest.
- Conflict with parents tends to be greatest during early adolescence; relationships with siblings tend to become more
distant during adolescence, and the balance of power between older and younger siblings becomes more equal.
- Individuation may also occur which is when adolescence struggle for autonomy and personal identity.
- Cliques – Structured group of friends who do things together become more important.
- Collective Efficacy – Neighborhood working together.
Physical and Cognitive Development in Emerging and Young Adulthood
Emerging Adulthood
- Developmental scientists suggest that the transitional period between adolescence and adulthood commonly found in
industrialized countries is called emerging adulthood.
- Emerging adulthood consists of multiple milestones or transitions, and their order and timing vary.

Health and Fitness

- Physical and sensory abilities are typically at their peak in emerging and young adulthood.
- Accidents are the leading cause of death in this age group.
- The mapping of the human genome is enabling the discovery of genetic bases for certain disorders.
- Social relationships, especially marriage, tend to be associated with physical and mental health.
- Mental health is generally good in early adulthood, but certain conditions, such as depression, become more
prevalent. Risky drinking, consuming more than 14 drinks a week or 4 drinks a day for men, and more than 7 drinks
a week or 3 drinks a day for women, and alcoholism (disease involving dependence on use of alcohol, causing
interference with normal functioning) are the most common substance disorders.

Sexual and Reproductive Issues

- Sexually transmitted infections, premenstrual syndrome (PMS), physical discomfort and emotional tension for up
to 2 weeks before a menstrual period, and infertility, inability to conceive a child after 12 months of sexual
intercourse without the use of birth control can be concerns during young adulthood.
- The most common cause of infertility in men is a low sperm count; the most common cause in women is blockage of
the fallopian tubes.
- Infertile couples now have many options for assisted reproduction. These techniques involve ethical and practical
issues.

Perspective on Adult Cognition

- One line of neo-Piagetian theory and research concerns higher levels of:
▪ Reflective Thinking – Type of logical thinking that becomes more prominent in adulthood,
involving continuous, active evaluation of information and beliefs in the light of evidence and
implications.
▪ Postformal Thought – Mature type of thinking that relies on subjective experience and intuition as
well as logic and allows room for ambiguity, uncertainty, inconsistency, contradiction, imperfection,
and compromise.
- K. Warner Schaie proposed seven stages of age-related cognitive development:
▪ Acquisitive Stage (childhood and adolescence)
▪ Achieving Stage (late teens or early twenties to early thirties)
▪ Responsible Stage (late thirties to early sixties)
▪ Executive Stage (thirties or forties through middle age)
▪ Reorganizational Stage (end of middle age, beginning of adulthood)
▪ Reintegrative Stage (late adulthood)
▪ Legacy-Creating Stage (advance old age)
- According to Sternberg’s triarchic theory of intelligence, componential element, experiential element, and
contextual element is important during adulthood.
- Tests that measure tacit knowledge (information that is not formally taught but is necessary to get ahead) can be
useful complements to traditional intelligence tests.
- Emotional intelligence (ability to understand and regulate emotions) plays an important part in life success.

Moral Reasoning
- According to Kohlberg, moral development in adulthood depends primarily on experience, although may be
interpreted differently in various cultural contexts.
- Carol Gilligan initially proposed that women have an ethic of care, whereas Kohlberg’s theory emphasizes justice.

Education and Work

- Substantive Complexity, degree to which a person’s work requires thought and independent judgment.
- Spillover Hypothesis implies s that there is a carryover of cognitive gains from work to leisure that explains the
positive relationship between activities in the quality of intellectual functioning.
Psychosocial Development in Emerging and Young Adulthood
Emerging Adulthood: Patterns and Tasks
- Emerging adulthood is often a time of experimentation before assuming adult roles and responsibilities.
- Paths to adulthood may be influenced by such factors as gender, academic ability, early attitudes toward education,
expectations in late adolescence, social class, and ego development.
- Identity development in emerging adulthood may take the form of recentering, the gradual development of a stable
adult identity.

Personality Development: Four Views

- Four theoretical perspectives on adult personality development are:
• Normative-Stage Models
- Describe psychosocial development in terms of a definite sequence of age-related changes.
- The normative crisis of young adulthood is intimacy versus isolation.
• Timing-of-events Model
- Describes adult psychosocial development as a response to the timing of normative life events, commonly
expected life experiences that occur at customary times.
- As society becomes less age-conscious, however, the social clock (set of cultural norms for the times of life
when certain important events, such as marriage, parenthood, and retirement, should occur) has less meaning.
• Trait Models
- Development that focusses on mental, emotional, temperamental, and behavioral traits, or attributes.
- The five-factor model of Costa and McCrae is organized around five groupings of related traits: neuroticism,
extraversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and agreeableness.
• Typological Models
- Identifies broad personality types, or styles.
- Typological research, pioneered by Jack Block, has identified personality types that differ in ego-resiliency
(dynamic capacity to modify one’s level of ego-control in response to environmental and contextual influences)
and ego-control (self-control and the self-regulation of impulses). Persists from childhood to adulthood.

Foundations of Intimate Relationships

- Young adults seek intimacy in relationships with peers and romantic partners. Self-disclosure is an important aspect.
- Women’s friendships tend to be more intimate than men’s.
- Many young adults have friends who are considered fictive kin or biological and psychological family.
- According to Sternberg’s triangular theory of love, love has three aspects: intimacy, passion, and commitment.

Marital and Nonmarital Lifestyles

- Reasons for staying single include:
▪ Career opportunities
▪ Sexual and Lifestyle Freedom,
▪ Desire for self-fulfillment
▪ Reduced Social Pressure to Marry
▪ Financial Constraints
▪ Fear of Divorce
▪ Lack of dating opportunities or of Available Mates.
- Cohabitation (living or existing together) can be a trial marriage, an alternative to marriage, or, in some places,
almost indistinguishable from marriage.
- Marriage (in a variety of forms) is universal and meets basic economic.

Parenthood
- Fathers are usually less involved in child raising than mothers, but more so than in previous generations.
- Marital satisfaction typically declines during the childbearing years.
- In most cases, the burdens of a dual-earner lifestyle fall most heavily on the woman.
- Family-friendly workplace policies may help alleviate marital stress.

When Marriage Ends

- Adjusting to divorce can be painful. Emotional distance from the ex-spouse is a key to adjustment.
- Many divorced people remarry within a few years, but remarriages tend to be less stable than first marriages.
Typological Methods
• Ego-Resilient Model
- Well adjusted, independent and cooperative people.
• Over-Controlled People
- The person who is shy, quiet, anxious, and in risk to depression and withdrawal from conflict.
• Under-Controlled People
- Energetic, impulsive, stubborn, and easily distracted people.
Physical and Cognitive Development in Middle Adulthood
Middle Age: A Social Construct
- Most middle-aged people are in good physical, cognitive, and emotional condition. They have heavy responsibilities
and multiple roles and feel competent to handle them.

Physical Changes
- Although some physiological changes result from aging and genetic makeup, behavior and lifestyle can affect their
timing and extent.
- Most middle-aged adults compensate well for gradual, minor declines in sensory and psychomotor abilities such as:
▪ Presbyopia – Age-related, progressive loss of the eyes’ ability to focus on nearby objects due to loss
of elasticity in the lens.
▪ Myopia – Nearsightedness
▪ Presbycusis – Age-related, gradual loss of hearing, which accelerates after age 55, especially with
regard to sounds at higher frequencies.
- Basal Metabolism is the minimum amount of energy, typically measured in calories, that your body needs to
maintain vital functions while resting.
- Vital capacity—the maximum volume of air the lungs can draw in and expel—may begin to diminish at about age
40 and can drop by as much as 40 percent by age 70.
- Menopause takes place when a woman permanently stops ovulating and menstruating and can no longer conceive.
- Menopause is not a single event; it is a process called the menopausal transition. It begins with perimenopause, also
known as the climacteric, a period of years during which a woman experiences physiological change of menopause.
- A large proportion of middle-aged men experience erectile dysfunction (inability of a man to achieve or maintain an
erect penis). It can have physical causes or related to health, genetic dysfunction, lifestyle, and emotional well-being.

Physical and Mental Health

- Most middle-aged people are healthy and have no functional limitations; may have minor health problems including:
▪ Hypertension – Chronically high blood pressure.
▪ Diabetes
▪ Osteoporosis – Bones become thin and brittle as a result of rapid calcium depletion.
- Postmenopausal women become more susceptible to heart problems; breast cancer occurs often to women in middle
adulthood. Mammography, x-ray examination of the breast.
- Hormone therapy (Treatment with artificial estrogen, sometimes in combination with the hormone progesterone) is
highly effective for treating some of the symptoms of menopause but has a complex pattern of risks and benefits.
- Stress occurs when the body’s ability to cope to stressor (perceived environmental demands that produces stress).

Measuring Cognitive Abilities in Middle Age

- Several of the primary mental abilities remain strong during middle age, but there is great individual variability.
- Fluid intelligence, type of intelligence, proposed by Horn and Cattell, that is applied to novel problems and is
relatively independent of educational and cultural influences, declines earlier than crystallized intelligence, another
type of Intelligence of Horn and Cattell which involves the ability to remember and use learned information; it is
largely dependent on education and culture.

The Distinctiveness of Adult Cognition

- Some theorists propose that cognition takes distinctive forms at midlife. Encapsulation allows expertise to
compensate for declines in information-processing ability due to age by bundling relevant knowledge together.
- Postformal thought seems especially useful in situations calling for integrative thinking.

Creativity
- Creative performance depends on personal attributes and environmental forces.
- Creativity is not strongly related to intelligence.

Work and Education

- A shift away from early retirement and toward more flexible options is occurring.
- Complex work may improve cognitive flexibility; many adults participate in educational activities.
- Literacy training, an ability to use printed and written information to function in society, achieve goals, and
develop knowledge and potential is an urgent need.
Type of Diabetes
• Mature-Onset (Type 2) Diabetes
- Starts at 30 years of age.
- Prevalent with age.
• Juvenile (Type 1) Diabetes
- Insulin dependent.
- Blood sugar increases due to the tendency of the body to not produce enough insulin.
Psychosocial Development in Middle Adulthood
Looking at the Life Course in Middle Age
- Change and continuity must be seen in context and in terms of the whole life span.
- Developmental scientists view midlife psychosocial development both objectively, in terms of trajectories or
pathways, and subjectively, in terms of people’s sense of self and the way they actively construct their lives.

Change at Midlife: Theoretical Approaches

- Trait models suggest developmental change as well as changes in response to life events. Some processes may be
culturally specific.
- Erikson’s seventh psychosocial stage is generativity versus stagnation. Generativity can be expressed through
parenting and grandparenting, teaching or mentorship, productivity or creativity, self-development, and
“maintenance of the world.” The virtue of this period is care.
- Generativity – Giving back to the next generation.

The Self and Midlife: Issues and Themes

- Key psychosocial issues and themes during middle adulthood concern the existence of the following:
▪ Midlife Crisis – stressful life period precipitated by the review and reevaluation of one’s past,
typically occurring in the early to middle forties.
▪ Identity Development (gender identity)
▪ Psychological Well-being
- When faced with midlife crisis, turning point, a psychological transition that involves significant change or
transformation in the perceived meaning, purpose, or direction of a person’s life may promote positive growth.
- The midlife review involves recognizing the finiteness of life and can be a time of taking stock, discovering new
insights about the self, and spurring midcourse corrections in the design and trajectory of one’s life.
- People with ego resiliency are more likely to navigate midlife crossing successfully.
- According to the identity process theory (IPT) of Susan Krauss Whitbourne (development based on processes of
identity assimilation, effort to fit new experience into an existing self-concept; and identity accommodation,
adjusting the self concept to fit new experience), physical characteristics, cognitive abilities, and personality traits are
incorporated into identity schemas, accumulated perceptions of the self shaped by incoming information from
intimate relationships, work-related situations, and community and other experiences.
- Identity Balance – a tendency to balance assimilation and accommodation.

Relationships at Midlife
- Two theories of the changing importance of relationships are:
▪ Social Convoy Theory – Proposed by Kahn and Antonucci, that people move through life
surrounded by circles of intimate relationships on which they rely for assistance, well-being, and
social support.
▪ Socioemotional Selectivity Theory – Proposed by Carstensen, assumes we select our friends based
on their ability to meet our goals.
- Relationships at midlife are important to physical and mental health but also can present stressful demands.

Consensual Relationships
- Cohabitation is increasing in midlife but may negatively affect men’s well-being.
- Divorce at midlife can be stressful and life-changing; marital capital – financial and emotional benefits built up
during a long-standing marriage, which tend to hold a couple together, prevent midlife divorce.
- Married people tend to be healthier at middle age than people with any other marital status.
- Middle-aged people tend to invest less time in friendships than younger adults do but depend on friends for
emotional support and practical guidance.
- Gender Crossover – Gutman’s term for reversal of gender roles, which occur at the end of active parenting.
- Family Kinkeeper – The one that maintains and keeps family ties; usually woman.
- Kinship Care – Taking care of an orphan relative without the change of custody.
- Filial Maturity – Children learn to accept that their old parents depend on them.
- Filial Crisis – Adults learn to balance life and duty to their parents.
- Sandwich Generation – Taking care of both parents and their children.
- Caregiver Burnout – Physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion affecting adults who provide support to their
parents.
Physical and Cognitive Development in Late Adulthood
Old Age
- Today, efforts to combat ageism—prejudice or discrimination based on age—are making headway, thanks to the
growing visibility of active, healthy older adults.
- Although effects of primary aging, gradual, inevitable process of bodily deterioration throughout life span, may be
beyond people’s control, they often can avoid effects of secondary aging, aging processes that result from disease
and bodily abuse and disuse and are often preventable.
- Specialists in the study of aging sometimes refer to people between ages 65 and 74 as the young old, those over 75 as
the old, and those over 85 as the oldest old will have difficulty managing activities of daily living (ADLs), activities
that support survival, such as eating, dressing, bathing, and getting around the house.
- However, these terms may be more useful when used to refer to functional age, measure of a person’s ability to
function effectively in his or her physical and social environment in comparison with others of the same
chronological age.
- Gerontology is the study of the aged and aging processes.
- Geriatrics is the branch of medicine concerned with processes of aging and medical conditions associated with old
age.

Longevity and Aging

- Life expectancy (age to which a person in particular cohort is statistically likely to live on the basis of the
population’s average longevity or the length of people’s life) has increased dramatically.
- Life span is the longest period that members of our species can live.
- Senescence is the period of the life span marked by declines in physical functioning usually associated with aging;
begins at different ages for different people.
- Theories of biological aging fall into two categories:
▪ Genetic Programing Theories – Theories that explain biological aging as resulting from a
genetically determined developmental timetable.
▪ Viable Rate Theories – Theories that explain biological aging as a result of processes that involve
damage to biological systems and that vary from person to person.
- Hayflick Limit – Genetically controlled limit, proposed by Hayflick, on the number of times cells can divide in
members of a species.
- Free radicals – Unstable, highly reactive atoms or molecules, formed during metabolism, which can cause internal
bodily damage.
- Survival curve – A curve on a graph showing the percentage of people or animals alive at various ages.

Physical Changes
- Changes in body systems and organs are highly variable. Most body systems continue to function fairly well, but
reserve capacity (ability of body organs and systems to put forth 4 to 10 times as much effort as usual under acute
stress; also called organ reserve) declines.
- Although the brain changes with age, the changes are usually modest such as weight and a slowing of responses.
However, the brain can grow new neurons, change processing of information, and build new connections late in life.
- Vision and hearing problems may arise such as the following:
▪ Cataracts – Cloudy or opaque areas in the lens of the eye, which cause blurred vision.
▪ Age-Related Macular Degeneration – Condition in which the center of the retina gradually loses
its ability to discern fine details, leading cause of irreversible visual impairment in older adults.
▪ Glaucoma – Irreversible damage to the optic nerve caused by increased pressure in the eye.
- Functional fitness training refers to exercises or activities that improve daily activity.

Physical and Mental Health

- Most older people are reasonably healthy, especially if they follow a healthy lifestyle. Many do have chronic
conditions such as:
▪ Dementia – Deterioration in cognitive and behavioral functioning due to physiological causes.
▪ Alzheimer’s Disease – Progressive, irreversible, degenerative brain disorder characterized by
cognitive deterioration and loss of control of bodily functions, leading to death.
▪ Parkinson's Disease – Progressive, irreversible degenerative neurological disorder, characterized by
tremor, stiffness, slowed movement, and unstable posture.
 ▪ Neurofibrillary Tangles – Twisted masses of protein fibers found in brains of persons with
Alzheimer’s disease.
▪ Amyloid Plaque – Waxy chunks of insoluble tissue found in brains of persons with Alzheimer’s
disease.
- Cognitive activity may build cognitive reserve and thus delay the onset of dementia. Cognitive reserve, like organ
reserve, may enable a deteriorating brain to continue to function under stress, up to a point, without showing signs of
impairment.
- Behavioral and drug can slow deterioration. Mild cognitive impairment can be an early sign of the disease, and
researchers are developing tools for early diagnosis.

Aspects of Cognitive Development

- Older adults are more effective in solving practical problems that have emotional relevance for them.
- A general slowdown in central nervous system functioning may affect the speed of information processing.
- Intelligence may be a predictor of longevity.
- Sensory memory (Initial, brief, temporary storage of sensory information), semantic memory (Long-term memory
of general factual knowledge, social customs, and language), and procedural memory (Long-term memory of
motor skills, habits, and ways of doing things, which can be recalled without conscious effort; sometimes called
implicit memory) appear nearly as efficient in older adults as in younger adults.
- The capacity of working memory (Short-term storage of information being actively processed) and episodic
memory (Long-term memory of specific experiences or events, linked to time and place) are often less efficient.
- Neurological changes and problems in encoding, storage, and retrieval may account for much of the decline in
memory functioning in older adults. However, the brain can compensate for some age-related declines.
- According to Baltes’s studies, wisdom is not age-related.

Type of Old
- Young Old (65-74)
- Old Old ( 75-84)
- Oldest Old (85 and above)
Psychosocial Development in Late Adulthood
Theory and Research on Personality Development
- Erik Erikson’s final stage, ego integrity versus despair, culminates in the virtue of wisdom, or acceptance of one’s
life and impending death.
- Personality traits show complex patterns of stability and change that are predictive of physical and mental health and
well-being.

Well-Being in Late Adulthood

- Coping is an adaptive thinking or behavior aimed at reducing or relieving stress that arises from harmful,
threatening, or challenging conditions.
- Cognitive-Appraisal Model is a model of coping, proposed by Lazarus and Folkman, that holds that, on the basis of
continuous appraisal of their relationship with the environment, people choose appropriate coping strategies to deal
with situations that tax their normal resources.
- There are two coping strategies:
▪ Problem-Focused Coping – Directed toward eliminating, managing, or improving a stressful
situation; adults of all ages generally prefer problem-focused coping.
▪ Emotion-Focused Coping – Directed toward managing the emotional response to a stressful
situation to lessen its physical or psychological impact; older adults prefer emotion-focused coping.
- According to disengagement theory, a normal part of aging involves a gradual reduction in social involvement and
greater preoccupation with the self.
- According to activity theory, the more active older people remain, the better they age.
- According to continuity theory of Atchley, people’s need to maintain a connection between past and present is
emphasized, and activity is viewed as important, not for its own sake but because it represents continuation of a
previous lifestyle.
- Baltes and his colleagues suggest that successful aging, in the psychosocial as well as the cognitive realm, may
depend on selective optimization with compensation (enhancing overall cognitive functioning by using stronger
abilities to compensate for those that have weakened.).
- Ambiguous Loss – A loss that is not clearly defined or does not bring closure.

Practical and Social Issues Related to Aging

- Most older adults prefer to stay in their own homes, with or without assistance is called aging in place.
- Older women are more likely than older men to live alone.

Personal Relationships
- Relationships are important to older people, even though frequency of social contact declines in old age.
- According to social convoy theory, reductions, or changes in social contact in late life do not impair well-being
because a stable inner circle of social support is maintained.
- According to socioemotional selectivity theory, older people choose to spend time with people who enhance their
emotional well-being.

Marital Relationships
- As life expectancy increases, so does the potential longevity of marriage. More men than women are married in late
life.
- Divorce is uncommon among older people, and most older adults who have been divorced are remarried.

Nonmarital Lifestyles and Relationships

- Never-married adults are less likely to be lonely than divorced or widowed ones.
- Older people enjoy time spent with friends more than with family, but the family is the main source of emotional and
practical support.

Nonmarital Kinship Ties

- Older parents and their adult children frequently see or contact each other, are concerned about each other, and offer
each other assistance.
- Often siblings offer each other emotional support, and sometimes more tangible support as well. Sisters, in
particular, maintain sibling ties.
Dealing with Death and Bereavement
The Many, Changing Meanings of Death and Dying
- Death has biological, social, cultural, historical, religious, legal, psychological, developmental, medical, and ethical
aspects.
- Customs surrounding death and mourning vary greatly from one culture to another, depending on the society’s view
of the nature and consequences of death.
- There is now an upsurge of interest in understanding and dealing realistically and compassionately with death.
Examples of this tendency are a growing interest in thanatology (study of death and dying) and increasing emphasis
on hospice care (personal, patient- and family-centered care for a person with a terminal illness) and palliative care
(aimed at relieving pain and suffering and allowing the terminally ill to die in peace, comfort, and dignity).

Facing Death and Loss

- People often undergo cognitive and functional declines shortly before death.
- Terminal drop, or terminal decline, refers specifically to a widely observed decline in cognitive abilities shortly
before death, even when factors such as demographics and health are controlled for.
- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross proposed five stages grief in coming to terms with dying:
▪ Denial
▪ Anger
▪ Bargaining
▪ Depression
▪ Acceptance.
- Bereavement is a loss, due to death, of someone to whom one feels close and the process of adjustment to the loss.
- Grief work is working out of psychological issues connected with grief.

Significant Losses
- Women are more likely to be widowed, and widowed younger, than men, and may experience widowhood somewhat
differently. Physical and mental health tend to decline after widowhood, but for some people widowhood can
ultimately become a positive developmental experience.
- Death of a parent can precipitate changes in the self and in relationships with others.

Medical, Legal, and Ethical Issues: The “Right to Die”

- Although suicide is no longer illegal in modern societies, there is still a stigma attached to it. Some people maintain a
“right to die,” especially for people with long-term degenerative illness.
- Euthanasia and assisted suicide involve controversial ethical, medical, and legal issues.
- To avoid unnecessary suffering through artificial prolongation of life, passive euthanasia (withholding or
discontinuation of life prolonging treatment of a terminally ill person in order to end suffering or allow death with
dignity) is generally permitted with the patient’s consent or with advance directives.
- However, advance directive (document specifying the type of care wanted by the maker in the event of an
incapacitating or terminal illness) are not consistently followed. Most hospitals now have ethics committees to deal
with decisions about end-of-life care through the help of durable power of attorney, legal instrument that appoints
an individual to make decisions in the event of another person’s incapacitation.
- Active euthanasia (deliberate action taken to shorten the life of a terminally ill person in order to end suffering or to
allow death with dignity; also called mercy killing) and assisted suicide (Suicide in which a physician or someone
else helps a person take his or her own life)are generally illegal, but public support for physician aid-in-dying has
increased.

Finding Meaning and Purpose in Life and Death

- The more meaning and purpose people find in their lives, the less they tend to fear death.
- Life review (reminiscence about one’s life in order to see its significance) can help people prepare for death and give
them a last chance to complete unfinished tasks.
- Even dying can be a developmental experience.