01 – About Human Development

DVPSY | 2024 - 2025 | NOT FOR SALE

●​ Can either be positive or negative

OUTLINE
1.​ The Study of Human Development
7 PRINCIPLES OF LIFE-SPAN DEVELOPMENT
a.​ Human Development
b.​ Life-Span Development
2.​ Basic Concepts of Development ●​ Development is Lifelong.
a.​ Domains of Development ○​ Development starts from conception to death
b.​ 8 Periods of Human ○​ Each period has its own unique
Development characteristics
c.​ Conceptions of Age ○​ No period is more important than the other
3.​ Influences on Development
●​ Development is Multidimensional.
a.​ Nature vs. Nurture
b.​ Contexts of Development ○​ Occurs along multiple interacting dimensions
c.​ Normative vs. Nonnormative – biological, cognitive, psychological, and
d.​ Timing of Influences social
○​ Each may develop at varying rates
●​ Development is Multidirectional.
THE STUDY OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT ○​ As people gain in one area, they may lose in
another, sometimes at the same time
DEFINING HUMAN DEVELOPMENT ○​ Hence, it’s advisable for children to learn
language as early as possible
Human Development — scientific study of patterns ●​ Relative Influences of Biology and Culture Shift
of change and stability throughout the human Over Lifespan.
lifespan ○​ Influenced by both biology and culture
●​ Development is complex and multifaceted ○​ Balance between the two change over time
●​ Research findings are often applied to child ○​ As we age, we learn to rely more on culture
rearing, education, health, and social policy ●​ Development Involves Changing Resource
Allocations.
○​ Individuals choose to invest their resource of
Goals of Developmental Psychology time, energy, talent, money, and social
★​ Describe behavior and how it changes
support in varying ways
★​ Explain processes / causes of change
○​ For growth, maintenance or recovery, or for
★​ Predict future behavior
★​ Intervene to enhance / modify behavior dealing with loss
●​ Development Shows Plasticity.
○​ Many abilities can be improved significantly
Key Terms in Development with training and practice, even late in life
●​ Growth: physical and physiological changes ●​ Development is Contextual.
(structure and form); quantitative ○​ Each person develops within multiple
●​ Development: relatively predictable pattern of contexts – circumstances or conditions
changes (organization and function); qualitative defined in part b y maturation and in part by
●​ Maturation: unfolding of traits resulting from the time and place
interaction of heredity and environment; broad ○​ Ex. historical influences, SES, family
term

Risk, Protective, and Causal Factors BASIC CONCEPTS OF DEVELOPMENT

●​ Risk Factor: increase likelihood of negative
developmental outcomes
DOMAINS OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
●​ Protective Factor: reduce likelihood of negative
developmental outcomes Physical Growth of the body and brain,
●​ Causal Factor: leads to the negative sensory capacities, motor skills,
developmental outcome and health

Bound by the rules of biology

DEFINING LIFE-SPAN DEVELOPMENT
Cognitive Learning, attention, memory,
Life-Span Development — concept of human language, thinking, reasoning,
and creativity
development as a lifelong process, which can be
studied scientifically Capacity to learn / make use of
●​ From “womb to tomb” mental processes

1 | @studywithky
Psychosocial Emotions, personality, and
changes in relationships Biological Clock: timelines set by
the body
Involves social environment
Psychological Individual’s adaptive capacities
Also called “socioemotional” compared with those of other
individuals of the same
chronological age
8 PERIODS OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Social Social roles and expectations
1.​ Prenatal Period (conception to birth) related to a person’s age
○​ Rapid formation of basic body structures and Social Clock: timelines set by
organs society
○​ Fetus begins to learn how to respond to
mother’s voice and other sensory stimuli
2.​ Infancy and Toddlerhood (birth to 3 years) INFLUENCES ON DEVELOPMENT
○​ More physical growth, especially cognitive
and motor skills
NATURE VS. NURTURE
○​ Centers around attachment to parents
3.​ Early Childhood (3 to 6 years)
Nature — development is influenced by heredity
○​ Preschool Years: acquisition of school
●​ Nativists: adopt an extreme hereditary position
readiness skills (ex. identifying numbers &
●​ Basic assumption is that the characteristics of
letters)
humans are a product of evolution and that
○​ Egocentrism: inability to differentiate
individual differences are because of one’s unique
between own perspective with others
genetic code
4.​ Middle Childhood (6 to 11 years)
●​ Heredity: Genetic roll of the dice / inherited from
○​ Elementary Years: building of fundamental
biological parents
skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic
●​ Maturation: unfolding of a natural sequence of
○​ Exposure to larger world
physical changes and behavioral patterns
○​ Achievement is central theme
●​ Epigenetics: study of how the environment and
5.​ Adolescence (11 to 20 years)
other factors can influence gene expression
○​ Rapid physical changes due to puberty
○​ Identity and independence
Nurture — development is influenced by the
○​ Logical, idealistic, and abstract thought
environment (aka empiricist approach)
○​ More time outside family
●​ Empiricists: extreme nurture position
6.​ Emerging and Young Adulthood (20 to 40
●​ Basic assumption is that at birth, the human mind
years)
is a tabula rasa and that our experiences
○​ Transition between adolescence and
contributes to our development
adulthood
●​ What we know now is a result of our environment
○​ Marked by exploration and experimentation
●​ Ex. BF Skinner’s operant conditioning and Albert
of occupational, sexual, ideological roles
Bandura’s Social Learning Theory (Bobo Doll
7.​ Middle Adulthood (40 to 65 years)
Experiment)
○​ Expansion of personal and social
●​ Environment: Totality of non hereditary or
responsibilities beyond family
experiential influence
○​ Maintaining career satisfaction
●​ From womb to tomb
8.​ Late Adulthood (65 and over)
○​ Period of life review, retirement, and
Nature vs. Nurture in Personality Development
adjustment to new social roles
●​ Twin Studies have shown that identical twins
○​ Decline in health and abilities
reared apart tens to have more similar
○​ Young-Old (65 – 74)
personalities, indicating a genetic component to
○​ Old-Old (75 – 84)
personality
○​ Oldest-Old (85 – 99)
●​ Around 40-60% variance can be attributed to
○​ Centenarians (≥ 100)
genetics
●​ Twin and adoption studies show that 40-50% of
CONCEPTIONS OF AGE individual differences in personality traits are the
result of genetic differences
Chronological Number of years that have ●​ Other 50-60% is a result of environmental
elapsed since birth
differences
Biological Age in terms of individual’s ●​ Major influence on personality is nonshared
biological health environmental influences

2 | @studywithky
●​ Studies have shown that personality is relatively ○​ Gender roles and expectations may affect
stable but can also change with life-changing one’s development
events ○​ There are differences in experiences based on
gender
CONTEXTS OF DEVELOPMENT
NORMATIVE VS. NONNORMATIVE
●​ Family
○​ Nuclear: household unit consisting of 1-2 Normative Influences – significant events that affect
parents and their children; most common in majority of society
western culture ●​ Normative History-Graded Influences: similar in
○​ Extended: multigenerational network of a historical generation (ex. Pandemic)
grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other distant ○​ Historical Generation: a group of people who
relatives; most common in asian households experience the event at a formative time in
○​ Blended: consists of two adults, the child or their lives
children that they have had together, and one ○​ Cohort: a group of people born at about the
or more children that they have had with same time (ex. Gen Z)
previous partners ●​ Normative Age-Graded Influences: similar in a
●​ Socioeconomic Status (SES) particular age group (ex. Age of Retirement)
○​ Combination of social and economic factors
describing an individual or family Nonnormative Influences – unusual events that
○​ Risk Factor: conditions that increase the disturb the expected sequence of life cycle
likelihood of a negative outcome ●​ Unusual events that have a major impact on
○​ Poverty is stressful and can damage children individual lives because they disturb the
and families’ physical, cognitive, and expected sequence of the life cycle
psychosocial well-being ●​ Either typical events that happen at an atypical
○​ Poor children are more likely to go hungry, time of life or atypical events
have frequent illnesses, lack access to
healthcare, experience violence and conflict, TIMING OF INFLUENCES
show emotional behavioral problems, and
have their cognitive potential and school Critical Period – time when it is essential for a person
performance suffer to be expected to a specific stimulus to develop
○​ Harm done by poverty is often indirect ●​ Very short in duration
through parents’ environment ●​ With well-defined beginning and end
○​ Negative effects of poverty are not inevitable ●​ Effects are irreversible
○​ Positive development can still occur despite ●​ Ex. anoxia during birth
this
●​ Culture, Race, & Ethnicity — continuously Sensitive Period – less sensitive than critical period
shaped and redefined by social and political ●​ No exact time frame
force ●​ Results are not necessarily as dramatic or
○​ Culture: behavior patterns, beliefs, and all irreversible
other products of a particular group of people ●​ Wherein humans are highly responsive to
that are passed on from generation to experiences
generation ●​ Ex. language development during toddlerhood
○​ Ethnicity: rooted in cultural heritage, and early childhood
nationality, race, religion, and language
○​ Ethnic Group: people united by distinctive
REFERENCES
culture, ancestry, religion, language, or Papalia, D., & Martorell, G. (2015). Experience human
national origin development (13th ed.). McGraw Hill Education.
○​ Ethnic Gloss: overgeneralization that Santrock, J. W. (2019). Life-span development (17th ed.).
obscures or blurs variation McGraw-Hill Education.
○​ Race: identifiable biological category that is
impossible to measure reliably
○​ Patterns affect development by their
influence on the composition of households,
economic and social resources, ways its
members act toward one another, food they
eat, and etc
●​ Gender

3 | @studywithky
 02 – Theories and Research Methods
DVPSY | 2024 - 2025 | NOT FOR SALE

●​ Qualitative Change: marked by the emergence

OUTLINE of new phenomenon that cannot be easily
1.​ Basic Theoretical Issues
predicted on the basis of past functioning
a.​ Active vs. Reactive
b.​ Continuity vs. Discontinuity ●​ Stage Theories: development is seen as occurring
2.​ Theoretical Perspectives in a series of distinct stages
a.​ Psychoanalytic Perspective ●​ Stages cannot be skipped, and development only
b.​ Learning Perspective proceeds in a positive direction
c.​ Cognitive Perspective ●​ Ex. Psychosexual Development
d.​ Contextual Perspective
e.​ Ethological Perspective
f.​ Other Developmental THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
Theories
3.​ Research Methods
a.​ Research Designs SUMMARY OF THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
b.​ Challenges
●​ Behavioral Perspectives
○​ Observable behaviors and environmental
BASIC THEORETICAL ISSUES determinants
○​ Development as a function of learned
IS DEVELOPMENT ACTIVE OR REACTIVE? behaviors
●​ Ethological Perspectives
Active Development — people create experiences for ○​ Development as a process of adaptation
themselves and are motivated to learn about the ○​ Behaviors common to all children from
world around them different cultures
●​ Jean Jacques Rousseau: noble savages — ○​ Childhood behaviors result from the need to
develop naturally if not corrupted by society survive and adapt
○​ Father of developmental psychology ●​ Ecological Perspectives
○​ Children are intrinsically good and develop in ○​ Development is influenced by environmental
a natural plan which unfold at different stages systems that a child actively participates and
○​ Forerunner of Nativist Approach belongs in
●​ Organismic Model: people as active, growing ○​ Bronfenbrenner’s Systems Theory
organisms that set their own development in ●​ Psychoanalytic Perspectives
motion ○​ Behavior stems from unconscious processes
●​ People initiate and react to events and early family experiences
○​ Manifest in dreams, slips of speech,
Reactive Development — people are shaped by mannerisms, and emotional problems
input from their environment
●​ John Locke: tabula rasa — blank slate PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE
○​ Believed that all children are born equal
○​ Forerunner of Empiricism ★​ Theories that describe development as primarily
●​ Mechanistic Model: people are viewed as unconscious and greatly shaped by early childhood
machines that react to their environment experiences
●​ Emphasis on the influence of the experiences
(input) on behavior (output)
Psychosexual Theory — emphasized the role of
unconscious drives and early childhood in human
IS DEVELOPMENT CONTINUOUS OR
development
DISCONTINUOUS?
●​ Proposed by Sigmund Freud
●​ People are born with a series of innate,
Continuous Development — views development as
biologically based drives (ex. sex, hunger,
gradual and incremental
aggression) which must be satisfied in order for
●​ Quantitative Change: involves numbers /
development to occur and adult personality to
measurement
form
●​ Ex. Height, Weight
○​ Fixation: an arrest in development caused by
the over/under gratification
Discontinuous Development — views development
○​ Results in the development of certain
as abrupt or uneven
disorders

1 | @studywithky
●​ Focus of pleasure and sexual impulses shifts from ●​ Sexual energy shifts to academics,
the mouth to the anus and eventually to the relationships, and hobbies/interests
genitals as children grow up 5.​ Genital Stage (12 onwards)
●​ “The child is the father of the man” ●​ Stage in development where the libido
re-emerges
●​ Energy shifts to heterosexual relationships
PROVINCE DESCRIPTION
●​ This period marks the onset of romantic and
Id Source of primitive drives / impulses sexual emotions, leading to the formation of
intimate relationships
Governed by the Pleasure Principle and
Primary Process Thought
STAGE EROGENOUS ZONE
Ego Intermediary between Id and Superego
Oral Stage (birth to 2) Mouth (sucking and
Governed by the Reality Principle, feeding for nourishment)
Primary Narcissism, and Secondary
Process Thought Substages
-​ Oral Receptive (sucking
Superego Ethical component of personality phase)
-​ Oral Sadistic (biting
Involves the rewarding and punishing phase)
function (Conscience)
Anal Stage (2 to 3) Anus (withholding and
Begins as harsh / unrealistic when it came expelling feces)
to demands
Toilet Training
-​ Strict → Anal Retentive
1.​ Oral Stage (0-2) -​ Lenient → Anal
●​ Stage in development governed by the Id Expulsive
●​ Source of pleasure is from breastfeeding
Anal Triad
○​ Oral Fixation: persistent need for oral -​ Obstinacy
gratification -​ Stinginess
○​ Oral Passive: (under gratification) trusting -​ Orderliness
and dependent
Phallic Stage (3 to 6) Genitals (masturbation is
○​ Oral Aggressive: (over gratification) normal at this stage)
dominating, hostile, and verbally abusive
2.​ Anal Stage (2-3) Male Oedipus Complex
-​ Begins w/ castration
●​ Ego gradually develops
anxiety
●​ Source of pleasure is from expelling (push) or -​ Boy identifies w/ father
withholding (pull) (toilet training) and is attracted to
○​ Anal Retentive: (lenient) tidy and mother
-​ All are born bisexual
obsessive
○​ Anal Expulsive: (strict) untidy and Female Oedipus Complex
generous -​ Begins w/ penis envy
-​ Penis envy is rooted in
●​ Anal Triad: parsimoniousness, obstinacy, and
the idea that everyone
orderliness should have a penis
3.​ Phallic Stage (3-6) -​ Hostility is directed to
the mother for the lack
●​ Superego gradually develops and marked by
of penis
libido -​ Attraction is focused on
●​ Children at this stage tend to explore genital the father
area (ex. masturbation)
Latency Stage (6 to Repression (focus on social
●​ Understanding of anatomical sex differences
puberty) and intellectual skills)
begins to form resulting in Male/Female
Oedipus Complex aka Psychosexual-dormant
○​ Fixation in men: anxiety about sexual
Genital Stage (puberty Someone outside the
performance, need for reassurance and
onward) family (heterosexual
validation, tendency to be overly awakening)
assertive/aggressive
○​ Fixation in women: desire to dominate
Psychosocial Theory — extension of Freud’s
men, a rivalry with other women, or the
psychosexual theory that emphasizes the influence of
need for male attention or approval
social interactions
4.​ Latency Stage (6-12)
●​ Proposed by Erik Erikson
●​ Stage of development where the libido is
dormant / suppressed

2 | @studywithky
●​ Each stage is marked by an interaction of the 8.​ Ego Integrity vs. Despair (60 onwards)
opposites (syntonic vs. dystonic) ●​ Individuals begin to reflect on the past and
●​ Argued that humans also develop according to come to terms with life as it is
their desire to affiliate with other people ○​ ↑ Syntonic: Presumption
○​ ↓ Dystonic: Disdain
●​ Sense of integrity is dependent on the
★​ Erikson extended Freud’s theory by elevating the
importance of social factors, making it more flexible amount of care they receive from significant
others

1.​ Trust vs. Mistrust (0-2)

AGE SYNTONIC DYSTONIC VIRTUE
●​ Oral-sensory mode
●​ Infant learns to listen to biological urges Infancy Trust Mistrust Hope
through their interaction with their caregiver
●​ Perception of the world depends on how their Early Autonomy Shame & Will
caregiver responds to their needs Childhood Doubt
○​ ↑ Syntonic (Maladaptive): Sensory
Play Age Initiative Guilt Purpose
Distortion
○​ ↓ Dystonic (Malignant): Withdrawal School Age Industry Inferiority Competence
2.​ Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt (2-3)
●​ Muscular-anal mode Adolescence Identity Identity Fidelity
Confusion
●​ Child begins to learn control over their body
and assert their sense of independence Early Intimacy Isolation Love
○​ ↑ Syntonic: Impulsiveness Adulthood
○​ ↓ Dystonic: Compulsiveness
Middle Age Generativity Stagnation Care
3.​ Initiative vs. Guilt (3-6)
●​ Locomotor Old Age Ego Integrity Despair Wisdom
●​ Child begins to explore the world through
play and encounter challenges that require
LEARNING PERSPECTIVE
purposeful and responsible behavior
○​ ↑ Syntonic: Ruthlessness
○​ ↓ Dystonic: Inhibition ★​ Theories that describe development as conscious
●​ Sense of morality gradually develops and a result of learning due to environmental
4.​ Industry vs. Inferiority (6-12) influences (observable behavior)
●​ Focus shifts to peers, teachers and ★​ Questioned Freud’s overemphasis of the
unconscious mind
community
○​ Sense of morality is highly dependent on
their peers and teachers Operant Conditioning — learning results from the
●​ Energy is exerted towards building resilience use of reinforcements to modify the occurrence of
and mastering intellectual skills behavior
○​ ↑ Syntonic: Narrow Virtuosity ●​ Proposed by B.F. Skinner (Skinner’s Box
○​ ↓ Dystonic: Inertia Experiment)
5.​ Identity vs. Identity Confusion (12-18) ●​ Influenced by Thorndike’s Law of Effect
●​ Marked as a critical stage in development
●​ Teens begin to develop their sense of identity
in relation to their community
○​ ↑ Syntonic: Fanaticism
○​ ↓ Dystonic: Repudiation
6.​ Intimacy vs. Isolation (18-40)
●​ Genitality
●​ Stage in development where individuals
begin forming intimate relationships
○​ ↑ Syntonic: Promiscuity
○​ ↓ Dystonic: Exclusion
7.​ Generativity vs. Stagnation (40-60)
●​ Procreativity Effects of Punishment
●​ Characterized by being productive and ●​ Suppression of behavior
responsible parents to lead the next ●​ Conditions of negative feelings
generation ●​ Spreads its effects
○​ ↑ Syntonic: Overextension
○​ ↓ Dystonic: Rejectivity Schedules of Reinforcement

3 | @studywithky
●​ Intermittent Schedule – best in RETAINING ●​ Happens when a when a neutral stimulus
behaviors becomes linked to a conditioned stimulus
●​ Continuous Scheduled – best in teaching NEW ●​ Stimulus is first made meaningful or
behaviors consequential for an organism through an
initial step of learning, and then that stimulus
is used as a basis for learning about some
SCHEDULE OCCURRENCE OF REINFORCEMENT
new stimulus
Ratio Interval

Fixed Reward is Reward is

administered after a administered after a
fixed number of fixed length of
responses is made time

Ex. Output-based Ex. Payroll

performance

Variable Reward is Reward is

(Unspecifi administered after a administered at
ed) varying number of varied lengths of
responses is made time

Ex. Game level Ex. Slot machine

advancement

Classical Conditioning — learning based on

associating a stimulus that does not ordinarily elicit a
response with another stimulus that does elicit the
response
●​ Proposed by Ivan Pavlov
●​ Illustrated by an experiment conducted by Pavlov

★​ If you pair a neutral stimulus (NS) with an Social Cognitive Theory — learning based on the
unconditioned stimulus (US) that already triggers human characteristic of plasticity, which is influenced
an unconditioned response (UR), that neutral
by extrinsic and intrinsic factors
stimulus will become a conditioned stimulus (CS),
●​ Proposed by Albert Bandura
triggering a conditioned response (CR) similar to
the original unconditioned response ●​ Argued that people have the capacity to regulate
their lives through the Triadic Reciprocal
Causation Model
1.​ Before Conditioning ○​ Takes an agentic approach wherein people
●​ The NS elicits no response from the dog while are both the producers and products of social
the US triggers the dog to salivate systems
○​ NS: Bell ○​ People regulate their behavior through moral
○​ US: Meat Powder → UR: Salivation agency
2.​ During Conditioning ●​ Observational Learning: learning by observing
●​ NS is paired with the US repeatedly to and imitating
produce a CR from the dog ●​ Reciprocal Determinism: argues that there is an
○​ NS: Bell → CR: Salivation interplay between our personality, how we
○​ US: Meat Powder interpret events, and how they influence us
3.​ After Conditioning
●​ After repeated exposure to the NS and US, the
NS now triggers the dog to salivate (CR)
○​ NS: Bell → CS: Bell → CR: Salivation
○​ Generalization: dog generalizes the
response to a similar stimulus
○​ Discrimination: learned tendency to
respond to the stimulus used in training
●​ Extinction: weakening of CR where the CS
repeatedly occurs without the US
●​ Spontaneous Recovery: reappearance of CR Principles that Influence Modeling
when CS is presented again after extinction ★​ People are most likely to model high-status people
4.​ Higher-Order Conditioning

4 | @studywithky
 ★​ People who lack skill or status are most likely to Adaptation Handling new information in light of
model what they already know
★​ People tend to model behavior that they see as
Assimilation: taking in new information
being rewarding to the model
Accommodation: adjusting one’s
cognitive structures to fit new
MEDIATIONAL PROCESS OF information
OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING
Equilibration Balancing cognitive structures and new
Attentional Observer must pay attention to the experiences
appropriate features of the model’s
behavior
1.​ Sensorimotor Stage (0-2)
Retentional Observer must then retain some of the ●​ Stage of rapid growth
information gathered through ●​ Characterized by the coordination of sensory
observation
input and motor activity
Rehearsal may be important ●​ Stage Attainment: Object Permanence
○​ Simple Reflexes: use of infant reflexes to
Motor Observer must know cognitively and explore the world
Reproduction roughly what are to be done to
reproduce the behavior and translate ○​ Primary Circular Reactions: repetition of
them into a coordinated pattern of pleasurable actions discovered by chance
muscle movements ○​ Secondary Circular Reactions: repetition
of actions to trigger a response
Incentives Observer must then have an
expectation that the performance of the ○​ Coordination: actions become
new behavior will result in some type of goal-oriented
reinforcement ○​ Tertiary Circular Reactions: trial and
error / experimentation (little scientist)
Vicarious Reinforcement
○​ Representational Thought: symbolic
thought begins to gradually develop
2.​ Preoperational Stage (2-7)
COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE ●​ Child develops a representational system and
use symbols to represent people, places, and
★​ Focus of developmental psychology shifts to the events
analysis of thought processes ●​ Children begin to engage in
pretend/symbolic play
●​ Stage in cognitive development marked by
Cognitive Development Theory — cornerstone in the
language development
field of developmental psychology
●​ Stage Attainment: Theory of Mind
●​ Proposed by Jean Piaget
○​ Present
●​ Argued that children’s intelligence undergo
★​ Animism: belief that objects have
changes as they grow
lifelike characteristics
●​ Each stage of cognitive development builds upon
★​ Artificialism: belief that
the previous and may vary among people in
environmental characteristics can be
terms of timing / pace
attributed to human actions /
●​ Schema: knowledge structure that allows
interventions
organisms to interpret and understand the world
★​ Egocentrism: inability to see a
around them
situation from another perspective
○​ Cognitive Structure: pattern of thought /
★​ Transductive Reasoning: inability to
pattern
understand the true relationship
○​ Sensorimotor Schema: organized pattern of
between cause and effect
behavior used to represent objects of
○​ Absent
experience; first structure to appear
★​ Reversibility: ability to understand
○​ Symbolic Schema: ability to think about
that actions can be reversed or
objects without their presence
undone
○​ Operational Schema: cognitive operations
★​ Conservation: principle that
applied to objects / events
irrelevant changes in the external
appearance of objects have no effect
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT on the object’s quantity
3.​ Concrete Operational Stage (7-11)
Organization Creation of categories
●​ Child begins to logically solve problems about
concrete events

5 | @studywithky
 ●​ Systematic thinking remains difficult
●​ Stage Attainment: Conservation CONTEXTUAL PERSPECTIVE
●​ Children now understand the principle of
seriation and reversibility
★​ Ecological Theory – proposes that we are
●​ Egocentric thought diminishes surrounded by environmental systems that influence
●​ Child can also perform basic mathematical our development
operations ★​ This relationship is bidirectional / reciprocal
4.​ Formal Operational Stage (11 onwards) ★​ Also includes Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory
●​ Highest stage of cognitive development
●​ Individual can now think abstractly, deal with
Bioecological Theory — brings focus to the
hypothetical situations, solve algebraic
environmental systems that are involved
problems, and think about possibilities
●​ Proposed by Urie Bronfenbrenner
●​ Aka period of unlimited logical thought
●​ Development is complex and multifaceted
●​ Research findings are often applied to child
★​ Multiple developmentalists later proposed the rearing, education, health, and social policy
addition of Postformal Thought in Piaget’s stages of
cognitive development
★​ Characterized by Dialectic Thinking, and is more
interpretative and relativistic
★​ There is no uniform conception of postformal
thought

Sociocultural Theory — learning as a collaborative

process
●​ Proposed by Lev Vygotsky
●​ Argued that social and cultural processes guide
children’s cognitive development
●​ “It takes a village to raise a child”
●​ Believed that language and self talk is an
important tool in learning, shaping thought, and
self-regulation SYSTEM DESCRIPTION
●​ Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): gap
Microsystem Immediate environment
between what children are able to do and what
they are not ready to accomplish Ex. Family, peers, school
●​ Scaffolding: assistance from advanced individual
Mesosystem Interrelationships between 2 or more
microsystems

Ex. Connection between school and

family, work performance

Exosystem Social settings that cannot be

experienced directly but still influence
the individual

Ex. Parent’s workplace

Macrosystem Larger cultural or societal context in

which the microsystem, mesosystem,
and exosystem are embedded

Ex. Traditions
3 Forms of Language
●​ Social Speech: external communication used to Chronosystem Changes over time
talk to others; age of 2
Ex. History, divorce
●​ Private Speech: directed to self and serves as
intellectual function; age of 3; used in
problem-solving ETHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
●​ Private Speech goes Underground: diminishing
audibility as it takes in a self-regulation function ★​ Ethological Theory – stresses that development is
and is transformed to silent inner speech; age of 7 strongly influenced by biology and is tied to
evolution
★​ Characterized by critical / sensitive periods

6 | @studywithky
 ●​ Separation Anxiety: distress level when separated
Cloth Mother vs. Wire Mother — experiment that from a caregiver
involved infant monkeys and 2 surrogate mothers
●​ Conducted by Harry Harlow Strange Situation — a standardized procedure to
●​ Through the experiment, he discovered that early observe attachment security among children
attachments were a result of receiving comfort ●​ Devised by Mary Ainsworth
and attention rather than simply being fed ●​ Experiment was conducted on children ages 9-18
months old
Imprinting — process in which infant animals form
an attachment to the first moving object they see
●​ Studied by Konrad Lorenz by experimenting on
geese and ducks
●​ He discovered that mothers and their babies has
an innate genetic imprint that activate when the
baby is born

Attachment Theory — stresses the importance of

forming attachments in early development for
ATTACHMENT STYLES
survival
●​ Proposed by John Bowlby Type B: Characterized by positive model of
●​ Conceptualized Harlow’s monkey experiment by Secure others and of self
applying it to humans, specifically infants Attachment
Child uses caregiver as a secure
●​ Suggests that humans have an innate tendency
base to explore surroundings and
to form attachments with other people seek comfort when frightened
●​ Particularly one main attachment figure
(monotropy) because of proximity-seeking Type A: Characterized by negative model of
Avoidant others but positive model of self
(infants seek/desire to be close to their mothers to
(Dismissive)
increase likelihood of survival) Attachment Child has no preference between
●​ Mothering is useless if it is delayed until after 2.5 caregiver or stranger
to 3 years for most children, if delayed until after
Type C: Characterized by positive model of
12 months
Ambivalent others but negative model of self
●​ Maternal Deprivation Hypothesis: postulates (Anxious /
that continual disruption of the attachment could Preoccupied) Child does not explore in the
Attachment presence of the caregiver; behavior
result in long-term cog, social, and emotional
is inconsistent when reunited with
difficulties for the infant caregiver and resistant to soothing
●​ Permanent and irreversible
●​ Attachment to the primary caregiver becomes Disorganized Characterized by negative model of
(Fearful-Avoidant) others and of self
the basis of our internal working model and the
Attachment
prototype for all future social relationships Child shows no clear attachment
●​ This caregiver acts as a home base that helps behavior, often a result of neglect /
them develop a sense of security abuse

Added by Main and Solomon

STAGES OF SEPARATION ANXIETY
Separation-Individuation Process — stresses that
Protest Stage Child cries and resist soothing when
the caregiver is first out of sight part of the infant’s body is connected to the mother
●​ Proposed by Margaret Mahler
Child attempts to look for caregiver ●​ Argued that the child’s main goal is to mentally
separate from the mother
Despair Child becomes quiet, sad, passive,
listless, and apathetic as separation
continues
STAGE CHARACTERISTICS
Detachment Child becomes emotionally detached
from caregiver and other people Mother is viewed as an
intrinsic part of the infant

Evidences that the Infant has Formed an Infant is unaware that

Normal Autistic
needs may come from an
Attachment to the Caregiver (0-1 month)
external source
●​ Stranger Anxiety: response to the arrival of a
stranger Primary goal is to achieve a
state of equilibrium

7 | @studywithky
 Mother is viewed as the has moral implications that conflict with one
main source of another
need-satisfaction ★​ Black & White Phenomenon – thought pattern that
makes people think in absolutes; aka dichotomous
Serves as the basis upon
Normal Symbiotic thinking
which future relationships
(1-5 months) ★​ Moral Stimulation – situations that prompt
will be formed
individuals to develop their moral and ethical beliefs
Primary goal is to fulfill the
infant’s physiological needs
and psychological desires Piaget’s Stages of Moral Development — a
two-stage process that outlines how children's moral
Separation-Individuation Stage
reasoning evolves as they grow
Primary focus shifts from ●​ Laid the foundation for the next theories of moral
internal to external development (ex. Kohlberg)

Exemplified by milestones
in motor development PIAGET’S STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT
which physically allow
increased separation, such Premoral Infants have no concept of morality
Differentiation/Hatching
as crawling Stage
(5-9 months)
Survival is their priority
Infant becomes
increasingly interested in Heteronomous Obedience to authority figures
discovering the mother Stage
rather than trying to Focus is on consequences rather than
become symbiotically intentions
unified with her
Moral Realism: rules are
Child begins to walk and non-negotiable and imposed by
Practicing explore freely while parents
(9-14 months) keeping an optimal
distance with the mother Immanent Justice: bad behavior is
always followed by punishment
Child’s desire to achieve
independence is marred by Autonomous Moral Relativism: rules become
a fear of abandonment Stage negotiable

Beginning: child returns to

the caretaker in order to 1.​ Pre-Moral Stage (⁓4)
share experiences and
●​ Infants have little understanding of rules
excitement
●​ Can’t carry out mental operations yet
Rapprochement Crisis: child is torn in 2.​ Heteronomous Stage (4-7)
(14-24 months) choosing between physical ●​ Moral Realism: justice and and rules are
and emotional proximity to
the caretaker or perceived as unchangeable and imposed by
independence authority
●​ Children believe consequences dictate
Solution: child reaches a
healthy medium between
severity of bad behavior
the two extremes due to ●​ Immanent Justice: bad behavior =
language and superego punishment
development
●​ Many believe that accidents are cases of
Mental model of the
divine retribution (transductive reasoning)
mother allows the child to 3.​ Autonomous Stage (⁓10 onwards)
Object Constancy
explore their environment ●​ Moral Relativism: justice and rules as human
(24 months and up)
even when they are
conventions and can be negotiated
physically separated
●​ Notions of fairness and appropriate justice is
well-developed
OTHER DEVELOPMENTAL THEORIES
Kohlberg’s Moral Development Theory — focuses on
★​ Morality – principles concerning the distinction how children develop morality and moral reasoning
between right and wrong ●​ Used the Heinz Dilemma to gather information
●​ Emphasis is on the development of Justice and
Types of Morality Fairness
★​ Moral Dumbfounding – ability to know what is right
or wrong but is unable to explain why
★​ Moral Dilemma – situation in which a person faces a KOHLBERG’S STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT
choice between two or more actions, each of which

8 | @studywithky
 Level I Stage 1: Obedience and Punishment Level II Conventional Morality –
(Self) Caring for others
Stage 2: Individualism and Exchange
Level III Post Conventional Morality –
Level II Stage 3: Good Boy/Girl Caring for everyone, including self
(Others)
Stage 4: Law and Order
1.​ Level I: Preconventional Morality (0-9)
Level III Stage 5: Social Contract ●​ Moral judgment is entirely focused on the self
(Everyone) and the need to survive
Stage 6: Universal Ethical Principles ●​ Once the woman realizes that she has a
responsibility to others, she realizes that this
1.​ Level I: Preconventional Morality (0-9) stage is characterized as selfish
●​ Stage 1: Obedience and Punishment 2.​ Level II: Conventional Morality (9-20)
○​ Morality is based on the avoidance of ●​ Moral judgment becomes concentrated on
punishment caring for others
●​ Stage 2: Individualism and Exchange ●​ This concern for others overrides her concern
○​ Morality is based on self-interest for herself, leading to a morality focused on
2.​ Level II: Conventional Morality (9-20) self-sacrifice
●​ Stage 3: Good Boy/Girl 3.​ Level III: Post Conventional Morality (20
○​ Morality is based on the need to be onwards)
accepted by others ●​ Moral judgment is dictated by the Principle
○​ Social approval of Nonviolence
●​ Stage 4: Law and Order ●​ The needs of the self are just as important as
○​ Morality is based on the law the needs of others, which causes the woman
3.​ Level III: Post Conventional Morality (20 to arrive at a universal ethic of care and
onwards) concern
●​ Stage 5: Social Contract
○​ Morality is based on the common good Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love — proposes
(intent) three components of love, which combine in different
○​ Right to express ourselves ways to create eight kinds of love
●​ Stage 6: Universal Ethical Principles ●​ Intimacy: emotional connection
○​ Morality is based on personal principles ○​ Feelings of closeness, connectedness, and
○​ Governed by Conscience bondedness in loving relationships
○​ Typically remains stable over time
Criticisms of Kohlberg’s Theory ○​ Can be controlled
●​ Cultural Bias: appropriate for Western culture ○​ People’s awareness of it tends to fluctuate
only ○​ Derived from the emotional investment in the
●​ Gender Bias: all participants were males; not relationship
applicable to women because they’re centered on ○​ Partners high in intimacy value and
caring rather than justice understand their partners
●​ Moral reasoning ≠ moral behavior ●​ Passion: desire / physical attraction
●​ Overemphasis on Justice: factors such as ○​ Drives that lead to romance, physical
compassion and caring were not considered attraction, sexual consummation, and related
●​ Age Bias: most of the subjects in his sample were phenomena in loving relationships
children under the age of 16; Heinz dilemma may ○​ Cannot be controlled due to its physiological
have been too abstract for them to understand aspect
○​ Tends to have a large role in short-term
Gilligan’s Theory of Moral Development — modified relationships and only a medium role in
Kohlberg’s Moral Development Theory long-term relationships
●​ Pointed out that women develop morality ○​ Includes sources of motivational and other
differently forms of arousal that lead to the experience of
●​ Emphasis is on the development of Care and passion in a loving relationship
Empathy ○​ Derived from motivational involvement in the
relationship
●​ Decision/Commitment: desire to be with
GILLIGAN’S STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT
someone for a long time
Level I Preconventional Morality – ○​ Commitment: cognitive elements that are
The self and the need to survive involved in decision making about the
existence of and potential long-term
commitment to a loving relationship

9 | @studywithky
 ○​ Represents cognitive factors such as
Casual interactions
acknowledging that one is in love and
committed to maintaining the relationship Liking Intimacy only
○​ More easily controlled than the intimacy
Friendship
component
○​ Plays a large role in long-term relationships Infatuation Passion only

Love at first sight

Involves a high degree of

psychophysiological arousal, increased
hormonal secretions, erection of
genitals (penis or clitoris), and so on

Empty Love Commitment only

Found in some long-term

relationships where the couple has
lost feelings for one another

Romantic Love Intimacy + Passion

Can be found towards the beginning

of some long-term relationships

Lee’s Wheel Model of Love Romeo and Juliet

●​ Primary Love Styles

Companionate Intimacy + Commitment
○​ Eros (red) Love
■​ Passionate love; Loving an ideal person Long-term, committed friendship
■​ Passionate, erotic
Fatuous Love Passion + Commitment
■​ Both physical and emotional passion
○​ Storge (yellow) Commitment is made on the basis of
■​ Friendly love; Love as friendship passion without the stabilizing
element of intimate involvement
■​ Natural affection
■​ Often represented by familial love Hollywood
○​ Ludos (blue)
■​ Playful love; love as a game Consummate All 3 components are present
Love
■​ Playful and fun but not necessarily serious
Unconditional love
■​ Not ready for commitment and wary of
too much intimacy
●​ Secondary Love Styles RESEARCH METHODS
○​ Mania (purple): obsessive love
○​ Agape (orange): selfless love
○​ Pragma (green): practical love Theory and Research
●​ Theories inspire further research and predict its
results by generating hypotheses
●​ Research cannot say a theory is true
●​ It can only indicate whether a theory is accurate
in its predictions

COMMON RESEARCH DESIGNS

●​ Case Study
○​ In-depth study of a single individual
○​ Provides a detailed picture of one person and
can generate hypothesis
○​ Criticism: may not generalize to others,
conclusions are not directly testable, and
cannot establish cause and effect
●​ Ethnographic Study
8 TYPES OF LOVE ○​ In-depth study of a culture
○​ Can help overcome culturally-based biases
Nonlove None of the 3 components are present and can test universality of developmental
phenomena
10 | @studywithky
 ○​ Criticism: observer bias
REFERENCES
●​ Correlational Study Newman, B., & Newman, P. (2016). Theories of human
○​ Attempt to find positive or negative development (2nd ed.). Psychology Press.
relationship between variables Newman, B., & Newman, P. (2017). Development through
○​ Enables prediction and can suggest life: A psychosocial approach (11th ed.). Cengage
hypotheses about causal relationships Learning.
Papalia, D., & Martorell, G. (2015). Experience human
○​ Criticism: cannot establish cause and effect
development (13th ed.). McGraw Hill Education.
●​ Experiment
Santrock, J. W. (2019). Life-span development (17th ed.).
○​ Controlled procedure conducted in a McGraw-Hill Education.
laboratory or field
○​ Establishes cause and effect relationships,
highly controlled, and can be repeated
○​ Criticism: findings may not be generalized to
situations outside the laboratory
●​ Cross-Sectional
○​ Data is collected from different ages at a
single point in time
○​ Used to assess age-related differences
○​ Criticism: subject to cohort effects
●​ Longitudinal
○​ Repeated observations of the same group of
people
○​ Focuses on individual changes with age
○​ Does change really occur with age?
○​ Criticism: prone to attrition and
cross-generational effect
●​ Sequential
○​ Combination of cross-sectional and
longitudinal research design
■​ Cross-sectional → participants
■​ Longitudinal → duration of study
○​ Track people of different ages overtime
○​ Criticism: time consuming and complex

CHALLENGES ASSOCIATED WITH

DEVELOPMENTAL RESEARCH

●​ Ethical Concerns
○​ The Institutional Review Boards (IRB) must
review and approve all research proposal that
are conducted in the university
○​ This is to ensure that research will be done
ethically and that the potential benefits
outweighs the risk
●​ Recruitment
○​ It is difficult to recruit infants, young children,
and vulnerable populations
●​ Attrition
○​ Common in longitudinal a s developmental
research
○​ Studies with infants and young children tend
to have higher attrition rates than studies
have with adults

11 | @studywithky
 03 – Prenatal Development and Childbirth
DVPSY | 2024 - 2025 | NOT FOR SALE

unequally as a result of an abnormal

formation of blood vessels in the placenta
OUTLINE
1.​ Biological Beginnings
a.​ Conceiving New Life Cell Division
b.​ Mechanisms of Heredity
c.​ Patterns of Genetic Transmission
d.​ Influences of Heredity and
Environment
2.​ Prenatal Development
a.​ Stages of Prenatal Development
b.​ Assessment Techniques
c.​ Prenatal Environment
3.​ Childbirth
a.​ Childbirth and Culture
b.​ The Birth Process
c.​ Complications of Childbirth
4.​ Postpartum Period
a.​ Physical Adjustments ●​ Mitosis – process by which somatic cell’s nucleus
b.​ Emotional and Psychological duplicates itself to form two new cells
Adjustments
○​ Genetic identity of the parent cell is
c.​ Bonding
preserved, leading to minimal genetic
variation among daughter cells
BIOLOGICAL BEGINNINGS ○​ Results in the formation of two identical
diploid daughter cells
●​ Meiosis – specialized form of cell division that is
CONCEIVING NEW LIFE involved in the production of gametes for sexual
reproduction
Fertilization – marks the beginning of development ○​ Introduces genetic diversity and results in
where the sperm and ovum combine to create a genetically unique daughter cells
zygote in the fallopian tube ○​ Results in the formation of four non-identical
●​ Fertile Window: unpredictable time during haploid daughter cells
which conception is possible
○​ Maturation of sex cells must occur prior MECHANISMS OF HEREDITY
intercourse for conception to be possible
■​ Women → Menarche Gene – segments of DNA that contain the
■​ Men → Nocturnal Emission instructions for building and maintaining an
○​ Ovulation: rupture of a mature follicle which organism
occur every 28 days until menopause ●​ Help cells to reproduce themselves and help
●​ Zygote duplicates itself through the process of manufacture the proteins that maintain life
cell division to produce all cells that make up a ●​ Chromosomes: threadlike structures that come
baby in 23 pairs and contain DNA
●​ Unsuccessful fertilization results in the death of ○​ Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA): a complex
both gametes molecule that contains genetic information
○​ Sperm cells are absorbed by the white blood ○​ Mutation: a permanent alteration in the DNA
cells sequence of a gene; can result from errors in
○​ Ovum exits the body through the vagina DNA replication during cell division, exposure
to mutagens or a viral infection
Multiple Births ●​ Proteins: building blocks of cells and regulators
●​ Dizygotic Twins – fraternal twins that result from that direct the body’s processes
the fertilization of 2 separate eggs by 2 sperms ●​ Human Genome: reference point that shows the
○​ Tend to run in families and passed down from location of all human genes
a woman’s mother ●​ Genetic expression is also affected by their
○​ Result of multiple eggs being released at one environment by exciting or inhibiting genes
time ○​ Methylation: tiny atoms attach themselves to
●​ Monozygotic Twins – identical twins that result the outside of a gene resulting in certain
from the cleaving of 1 fertilized egg genes becoming turned on or off
○​ Twin-to-twin Transfusion Syndrome:
condition in which nutrients are shared

1 | @studywithky
 ○​ Susceptibility Genes: genes that make the ●​ Genotype: person’s genetic heritage; the actual
individual more vulnerable to specific genetic material
diseases or accelerated aging ●​ Phenotype: the observable, physical, and
○​ Longevity Genes: genes that make the biochemical traits of an organism
individual less vulnerable to certain diseases
and more likely to live to an older age Epigenesis – mechanism that turns genes on or off
and determines functions of body cells
Sex-Linked Genes – genes that determine an ●​ Genes are turned off or on as they are needed by
individual's sex / gender at birth; twenty-third pair of the developing body or when triggered by the
chromosomes environment
●​ XX: Female sex chromosomes ●​ Explains why identical twins, even though their
●​ XY: Male sex chromosomes genomes are identical, do not look exactly the
●​ Autosomes: chromosomes that are not related to same
sexual expression ●​ Cells are particularly susceptible to epigenetic
●​ X-linked Inheritance: when a mutated gene is modification during critical periods such as
carried on the X chromosome puberty and pregnancy
○​ More commonly expressed in males because ●​ Genetic Imprinting: occurs when the expression
they lack a second X chromosome to mask of a gene has different effects depending on
the effects of the recessive allele whether the mother or the father passed on the
○​ Females carrying one normal and one gene
mutated X-linked allele are typically carriers ○​ Certain genes are "imprinted" or marked with
and may not express the disorder chemical modifications during gamete
formation
PATTERNS OF GENETIC TRANSMISSION ○​ This imprinting affects how the genes are
expressed in the offspring
Mendelian Genetics – describes the inheritance of ○​ Imprinting Disorders: aberrations in genetic
traits from one generation to the next imprinting (ex. Prader-Willi Syndrome)
●​ Mendel's laws of inheritance include law of
dominance, law of segregation, and law of
CHROMOSOMAL ABNORMALITIES
independent assortment
●​ Allele: two or more alternative forms of a gene Down extra copy of chromosome 21
that occupy the same position on paired Syndrome
chromosomes and affect the same trait (Trisomy 21) associated with intellectual
○​ Homozygous: possessing two identical alleles disabilities, distinctive facial features,
for a trait and an increased risk of certain health
issues
○​ Heterozygous: possessing two different
alleles for a trait
Cri-du-chat deletion on the short arm of
●​ Dominant Inheritance: pattern of inheritance in Syndrome chromosome 5
which, when a child receives different alleles, only
the dominant one is expressed may have a distinctive cry resembling
○​ Dominant Gene: an allele that is expressed in a cat
the phenotype even when only one copy is
present in the genotype (heterozygous Edwards extra copy of chromosome 18
Syndrome
condition)
(Trisomy 18) associated with severe intellectual
●​ Recessive Inheritance: pattern of inheritance in
disabilities, congenital heart defects,
which a child receives identical recessive alleles, and abnormalities in various organ
resulting in expression of a nondominant trait systems
○​ Recessive Gene: an allele that is expressed in
the phenotype only when two copies are Patau extra copy of chromosome 13
present in the genotype (homozygous Syndrome
condition) (Trisomy 13) severe developmental and physical
abnormalities, including intellectual
○​ Most mutated genes are recessive
disabilities, heart defects, and cleft lip
●​ Polygenic Inheritance: inheritance of traits that
and palate
are controlled by multiple genes, each with a
small additive effect Prader-Willi genes on chromosome 15 are missing
Multifactorial Transmission – a phenomenon by Syndrome or inactive
which environmental experience modifies the
expression of the genotype for most traits intellectual disabilities, obesity, and
behavioral issues

2 | @studywithky
Alpha, mutation in chromosome 14 limits the body’s oxygen
Antitrypsin supply; joint swelling, and heart /
Deficiency enzyme deficiency that can lead to kidney failure
cirrhosis of the liver, emphysema, and
degenerative disease in middle age Tay-Sachs deceleration of mental and physical
Disease development caused by an
Alpha mutation in chromosome 16 accumulation of lipids in the nervous
Thalassemia system
severe anemia that reduces the ability
of the blood to carry oxygen, and all Diabetes body doesn't produce enough insulin,
affected infants are stillborn or die which causes abnormal metabolism
soon after birth of sugar

Beta mutation in chromosome 11 Huntington’s central nervous system deteriorates,

Thalassemia Disease producing problems in muscle
(Cooley’s severe anemia resulting in weakness, coordination and mental deterioration
Anemia) fatigue, and frequent illness; usually
fatal in adolescence or young
adulthood SEX-LINKED ABNORMALITIES

Cystic Fibrosis mutation in chromosome 7 Angelman absence or dysfunction of maternal

Syndrome genes on chromosome 15
overproduction of mucus which
collect in the lungs and digestive tract; developmental delays, seizures, and a
children do not grow normally and happy demeanor
usually do not live beyond the age of
30 Turner occurs in females with a single X
Syndrome (XO) chromosome (45, X)
Anencephaly influenced by a combination of
environmental and genetic factors short stature, webbed neck, and
associated with the formation and infertility
closure of the neural tube during
embryonic development Klinefelter affects males with an extra X
Syndrome chromosome (XXY)
absence of the cerebral hemispheres (XXY)
and the overlying skull and scalp; reduced fertility, gynecomastia
infants are stillborn or die soon after (enlarged breasts), and other physical
birth characteristics

Spina Bifida mutation in chromosome 11; the Triple X occurs in females with an extra X
neural tube / spinal column fails to Syndrome chromosome (47, XXX)
close properly (XXX)
most individuals have no or mild
muscle weakness or paralysis, loss of symptoms, but some may experience
bladder and bowel control, learning difficulties, menstrual
hydrocephalus, and mental irregularities, and mental retardation
retardation
XYY Syndrome affects males with an extra Y
Phenylketonuri caused by the inability to metabolize chromosome (47, XYY)
a the amino acid, phenylalanine
(PKU) tall structure, low IQ, especially verbal
intellectual disability / hyperactivity if
left untreated Fragile X expansion of a particular region on
Syndrome the X chromosome
Polycystic Infantile form: enlarged kidneys,
Kidney Disease leading to respiratory problems and minor to severe mental retardation,
congestive heart failure delayed speech and motor
development, speech impairments,
Adult form: kidney pain, kidney and hyperactivity
stones, and hypertension resulting in
chronic kidney failure Duchenne mutation in the X sex chromosome
Muscular
Sickle-cell a recessive gene causes the red blood Dystrophy fatal disease usually found in males;
Anemia cell to become a hook-shaped “sickle” marked by muscle weakness, minor
that cannot carry oxygen properly mental retardation, respiratory failure
and death in young adulthood

3 | @studywithky
 ○​ Although heredity accounts for most of the
INFLUENCES OF HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT similarity between siblings, the nonshared
environment accounts for most of the
Behavior Genetics – field that seeks to discover the difference
influence of heredity and environment on individual ○​ Children’s genetic differences may lead
differences in human traits and development parents to react to them differently and treat
●​ Heritability: statistical estimate of contribution of them differently
heredity to individual differences in a specific trait
within a given population Characteristics Influenced by Heredity and
●​ Concordant: tendency of twins to share the same Environment
trait or disorder ●​ Obesity
●​ Twin Study: behavioral similarity of identical twins ●​ Intelligence
is compared with the behavioral similarity of ●​ Temperament and Personality
fraternal twins ●​ Schizophrenia
●​ Adoption Study: seek to discover whether the
behavior and psychological characteristics of
PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT
adopted children are more like those of their
adoptive parents or more like those of their
biological parents DEFINING PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT

How Heredity and the Environment Work Together Prenatal Development – gestation that takes place in
●​ Reaction Range three stages: germinal, embryonic, and fetal
○​ Range of potential expressions of a hereditary ●​ Gestation: period of development between
trait conception and birth
○​ Depends on environmental opportunities and ●​ Gestational Age: age of an unborn baby dated
constraints and a person’s behavior from the first day of an expectant mother’s last
●​ Canalization menstrual cycle
○​ Illustrates how heredity restricts the range of ●​ Cephalocaudal Principle: dictates that
development for some traits development proceeds from the head to the
○​ Strongly programmed by genes and there is lower part of the trunk
little opportunity for variance in their ●​ Proximodistal Principle: dictates that parts of the
expression body near the center develop before the
○​ It would take an extreme change in extremities
environment to alter their course
●​ Genotype-Environment Interaction
○​ Effects of similar environmental conditions on
genetically different individuals
○​ Genetically similar children often develop
differently depending on their home
environments
○​ Analogous to diathesis-stress model
●​ Genotype-Environment Correlations
○​ Tendency of certain genetic and
environmental influences to reinforce each
other
○​ Passive: when an individual’s environment is
correlated with the genetic makeup they
inherit from their parents
○​ Evocative: when an individual's genetically
influenced characteristics evoke specific
responses from others in their environment
○​ Active: when individuals seek out or create
environments that are compatible with their
interests (niche-picking) STAGES OF PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT
●​ Nonshared Environment
○​ Unique environment in which each child in a Germinal Period (fertilization to 2 weeks)
family grows up
○​ Consists of distinctive influences or influences
that affect one child differently than another

4 | @studywithky
 ○​ Ectoderm: outermost layer, which will
become the nervous system and brain,
sensory receptors, and skin parts
●​ Life-support systems for the embryo also develop
rapidly
○​ Amnion: sac that contains a clear fluid that
protects and provides a controlled
environment for the fetus
○​ Umbilical Cord: connects the baby to the
placenta
●​ At the 36th hour of fertilization, the zygote enters ○​ Placenta: a disk-shaped group of tissues in
a period of rapid cell division and duplication which small blood vessels from the mother
(mitosis) and the offspring intertwine but do not join
○​ By the 3rd day (72nd Hour), the cell has ●​ Organogenesis: organs and major body systems
divided into 16 → 32 cells (respiratory, digestive, and nervous) develop
○​ By the 4th day, 32 → 64 → 128 cells (blastocyst) rapidly
●​ 4th – 5th Day: fertilized ovum makes its way ●​ Critical Period: embryo is most vulnerable to
through the fallopian tube to the uterus destructive influences in the prenatal
●​ 6th – 7th Day: blastocyst begins to implant itself environment
in the uterine wall through the process of ○​ Spontaneous Abortion: natural expulsion
implantation from the uterus of an embryo that cannot
○​ Blastocyst: fluid-filled sphere, which floats survive outside the womb (miscarriage); often
freely in the uterus occurs during the first trimester
○​ Embryonic Disk: thickened cell mass from ○​ Stillbirth: miscarriage that occurs after 20
which the embryo begins to develop weeks of gestation
○​ Implantation: attachment of the blastocyst to ●​ 3rd Week: neural tube that eventually becomes
the uterine wall the spinal cord forms
●​ 11th – 15th Day: process of implantation concludes ○​ 21 Days: eyes begin to appear
which marks the beginning of the embryonic ○​ 24 Days: cells for the heart begin to
stage differentiate
○​ Other parts of the blastocyst begin to develop ●​ 4th Week: urogenital system becomes apparent
into organs that will nurture and protect ○​ Arm and leg buds emerge
development in the womb ○​ Four chambers of the heart take shape
○​ Amniotic Sac: fluid-filled membrane that ○​ Blood vessels appear
encases the developing embryo ●​ 5th – 8th Week: arms and legs differentiate
○​ Placenta: allows oxygen, nourishment, and further
wastes to pass between mother and embryo ○​ Face starts to form but still is not very
○​ Umbilical Cord: connects a developing fetus recognizable
to the placenta, allowing for the exchange of ○​ Intestinal tract develops
nutrients, oxygen, and waste products ○​ Facial structures fuse
between the fetus and the mother
Fetal Stage (8 Weeks to Birth)
Embryonic Stage (2 to 8 Weeks) ●​ 8th Week: Developing organism weighs about
1/30 ounce and is just over 1 inch long and first
bone cells appear which marks the beginning of
fetal stage
●​ At this stage, fetus grows rapidly to about 20
times its previous length, and organs / body
systems become more complex
●​ 12th Week: fetus swallows and inhales some of
the amniotic fluid which stimulate the budding
senses of taste and smell
●​ 13th Week: fetus is about 3 inches long and
●​ Blastocyst is now called an embryo
weighs about 4/5th of an ounce
○​ Endoderm: inner layer of cells, which will
○​ Arms, legs, and head move spontaneously,
develop into the digestive and respiratory
and its mouth opens and closes due to
systems
immature cortex
○​ Mesoderm: middle layer, which will become
the circulatory system, bones, muscles,
excretory system, and reproductive system

5 | @studywithky
 ○​ Face, forehead, eyelids, nose, and chin are
metabolic disorders
distinguishable, as are the upper arms, lower
arms, hands, and lower limbs Sample of amniotic fluid is
●​ 14th Week: olfactory system is well developed withdrawn by syringe

and mature taste cells appear Brings a small risk of

●​ 26th Week: fetus begins to respond to sound and miscarriage
vibration and then reach a plateau at about 32
weeks Maternal Blood Triple Screen: measures three
Screening substances in the mother’s
●​ 29th – 30th Week: thalamocortical pathways blood
responsible for pain perception appear to be
functional and facial expressions of pain appear Occurs between the 15th to 19th
weeks of pregnancy
more frequently by 36 weeks
Identifies pregnancies that have
ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUES an elevated risk for birth defects

Can be used to detect

Prenatal Diagnostic Tests – tests that check for congenital heart disease risk in
possible genetic disorders and birth defects the fetus

Embryoscopy Tiny viewing scope is inserted in

TEST DESCRIPTION woman’s abdomen to view
embryo or fetus
Ultrasound Conducted 7 weeks into a
Sonography pregnancy and at various times Assist in diagnosis of
later in pregnancy non-chromosomal genetic
disorders
High-frequency sound waves
are directed into the pregnant Has most risk
woman’s abdomen
Umbilical Cord Needle guided by ultrasound is
Echo from the sounds is Sampling inserted into blood vessels of
transformed into a visual umbilical cord
representation of the fetus’s (aka Cordocentesis or
inner structures Fetal blood sampling) Allows direct access to fetal
DNA for diagnostic measures
Can detect many abnormalities (assessment of blood disorders
in the fetus, number of fetuses, and infections) and therapeutic
and give clues to the baby’s sex measures (blood transfusions)

Brain-Imaging Fetal MRI: used to diagnose Brings small risk of fetal loss or
Techniques fetal malformations miscarriage

Uses a powerful magnet and

radio images to generate Infertility – inability to conceive a child after 12
detailed images of the body’s months of regular intercourse without contraception
organs and structures
●​ In vitro fertilization (IVF): eggs and sperm are
May not provide good results in combined in a laboratory dish; success rate
the first trimester of pregnancy depends on the mother’s age
due to small fetal structures and ●​ Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI): direct
movement artifacts
injection of a single sperm into an egg to facilitate
Beneficial in assessing central fertilization; used in cases of male infertility or low
nervous system abnormalities in sperm count
the third semester of pregnancy
●​ Egg Donation: using eggs from a donor to
Chorionic Villus Occurs between the 10th and achieve pregnancy
Sampling 12th weeks of pregnancy ●​ Sperm Donation: using sperms from a donor to
achieve pregnancy
Detects genetic defects and
chromosomal abnormalities
●​ Surrogacy: involves a woman carrying and giving
birth to a child for another person or couple
Small sample of the placenta is ●​ Cryopreservation: involves freezing and storing
removed and tested
eggs, sperm, or embryos for future use
Brings a small risk of limb ●​ Adoption: social and legal process that
deformity establishes a parent-child relationship between
persons unrelated at birth
Amniocentesis Occurs between the 15th and
○​ Open Adoption: involves sharing identifying
18th weeks of pregnancy
information and having contact with the
Detects chromosomal or biological parents

6 | @studywithky
 ○​ Closed Adoption: involves not having such
cerebral palsy-like symptoms
sharing and contact
Pesticides: Congenital defects,
PRENATAL ENVIRONMENT neurodevelopmental disorders

Teratogen – an environmental agent that can Maternal Diabetes: Heart defects, neural tube
interfere with normal prenatal development; Conditions defects, macrosomia (large baby)
vulnerability may depend on genes
Hypothyroidism: Intellectual
disabilities, growth delays
COMMON TERATOGENS & THEIR POSSIBLE RISKS

Alcohol Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) CHILDBIRTH

Facial abnormalities, growth

deficiencies, intellectual disabilities, CHILDBIRTH AND CULTURE
behavioral problems, heart defects
Parturition – act or process of giving birth that
Tobacco Low birth weight, preterm birth, typically begins about 2 weeks before delivery
stillbirth, Sudden Infant Death
●​ Uterine contractions that expel the fetus begin
Syndrome (SIDS), respiratory issues,
about 266 days after conception, as a tightening
developmental delays
of the uterus
Drugs Cocaine: Preterm birth, low birth ●​ Braxton-Hicks Contractions: false contractions
weight, neonatal abstinence that last for 2 minutes and occur during the final
syndrome (NAS), attention deficits months of pregnancy, or even as early as the
second trimester
Heroin & Opioids: Neonatal
withdrawal, respiratory distress,
THE BIRTH PROCESS
increased risk of SIDS

Methamphetamine: Low birth

weight, delayed growth, cognitive and
behavioral issues

Thalidomide: Limb deformities

(phocomelia), heart defects

Isotretinoin (Accutane): Severe birth

defects, brain and heart abnormalities

Infections Toxoplasmosis: Brain damage,

hydrocephalus, blindness Stage 1: Dilation of the Cervix
●​ The longest stage, typically lasting 12 to 14 hours
Other infections (syphilis, varicella, for a woman having her first child
Zika): Microcephaly, stillbirth,
●​ Regular and increasingly frequent uterine
developmental issues
contractions (15 to 20 minutes apart at first) cause
Rubella: Cataracts, deafness, heart
the cervix to shorten and dilate in preparation for
defects delivery
●​ Contractions occur every 2 to 5 minutes towards
Cytomegalovirus (CMV): Hearing loss, the end of the first stage
intellectual disabilities ●​ The stage lasts until the cervix is fully open at 10
cm. or 4 in.
Herpes simplex virus (HSV): Brain
damage, organ failure, neonatal death
Stage 2: Descent and Emergence of the Baby
Environment Radiation: Microcephaly, intellectual
●​ Typically lasts up to an hour or two
disabilities, growth retardation, ●​ Begins when the baby’s head begins to move
increased cancer risk through the cervix into the vaginal canal
●​ Ends when the baby emerges completely from
Lead: Cognitive impairments, the mother’s body; baby is born but is still
developmental delays, behavioral attached to the placenta
issues

Stage 3: Expulsion of the Placenta

Mercury: Neurological disorders,
●​ Lasts between 10 minutes and 1 hour

7 | @studywithky
●​ Placenta and the remainder of the umbilical cord ●​ Analgesic: type of medication that reduces the
are expelled from the mother perception of pain by depressing the activity of
the central nervous system
ELECTRONIC FETAL MONITORING ●​ Epidural: pain reliever that is injected into a space
in the spinal cord between the vertebrae in the
●​ Used to track the fetus’s heartbeat during labor lumbar (lower) region
and delivery
●​ Indicates how the fetal heart is responding to the Non Medicated Delivery
stress of uterine contractions ●​ Lamaze Method (prepared childbirth): method
●​ Most commonly done with the use of sensors by which expectant mothers are taught to work
attached to the woman’s midsection and held in actively with their bodies through controlled
place with an electric belt breathing and learns to relax muscles as a
●​ Sensors monitor heart rate and alert medical conditioned response
personnel of potentially problematic changes ●​ LeBoyer Method: woman gives birth in a quiet
●​ Can provide valuable information in high-risk room under low lights to reduce stress, and the
deliveries but is costly, restricts the mother’s newborn is gently massaged to ease crying
movements during labor, and has an extremely ●​ Submersion Method: laboring mother is
high false-positive rate submerged in a soothing pool of water
●​ Bradley Method: rejects all obstetrical procedures
VAGINAL VS. CESAREAN DELIVERY and other medical interventions
●​ Doula: experienced mentor, coach, and helper
Vaginal Delivery who can furnish emotional support and
●​ Usual method of childbirth information and can stay at a woman’s bedside
●​ Infant is expelled through the laboring mother’s throughout labor
vagina
ASSESSING THE NEWBORN
Cesarean Delivery
●​ Used to surgically remove the baby from the Apgar Scale
uterus through an incision in the mother’s ●​ Evaluates an infant’s heart rate, respiratory effort,
abdomen muscle tone, body color, and reflex irritability
●​ Commonly performed when labor progresses too ●​ Low Apgar scores are associated with long-term
slowly, when the fetus seems to be in trouble, or needs for additional support in education and
when the mother is bleeding vaginally decreased educational attainment, increased risk
●​ Needed when the fetus is in a critical position or of developmental vulnerability at 5 years of age,
when the head is too big to pass through the and increased risk for developing ADHD
mother’s pelvis
○​ Breech Position: feet or buttocks first
○​ Transverse Position: lying crosswise in the
uterus
●​ Carry risks of serious complications for the
mother, such as bleeding, infection, damage to
pelvic organs, and postoperative pain, and
heighten risks of problems in future pregnancies

MEDICATED VS. NON MEDICATED DELIVERY

Natural Childbirth – method that aims to reduce the

mother’s pain by decreasing her fear by providing
information about childbirth and teaching her and
her partner to use breathing methods and relaxation
techniques during delivery

Medicated Delivery Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale

●​ Chloroform: common practice of sedation during (NBAS)
the mid-nineteenth century ●​ Assesses the newborn’s neurological
●​ Pudendal Block: local (vaginal) anesthesia given development, reflexes, and reactions to people
during the second stage of labor and objects
●​ Typically performed within 24 to 36 hours after
birth

8 | @studywithky
●​ Designed to assess normal, healthy, full-term EMOTIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ADJUSTMENTS
infants
●​ Postpartum mothers tend to experience
Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Network emotional fluctuations which decrease within
Neurobehavioral Scale (NNNS) several weeks after the delivery, some experience
●​ Provides another assessment of the newborn’s more long-lasting emotional swings
behavior, neurological and stress responses, and ●​ Postpartum Blues: feelings of depression,
regulatory capacities anxiousness, and upset after birth; usually go
●​ Especially designed to assess at-risk infants away after one or two weeks
●​ Postpartum Depression: involves a major
COMPLICATIONS OF CHILDBIRTH depressive episode that typically occurs about
four weeks after delivery
Low birth weight infants – infants that weigh less ○​ Symptoms include strong feelings of sadness,
than 5 pounds 8 ounces at birth anxiety, or despair that for at least a two-week
●​ Very Low: weigh less than 3 pounds 4 ounces period,
●​ Extremely Low: weigh less than 2 pounds ○​ Often have troubles in coping with daily tasks

Preterm infants – those born three weeks or more BONDING

before the pregnancy has reached the completion of
37 weeks of gestation Bonding – formation of a close connection between
●​ Physicians believe that during the period shortly parents and their newborn in the period shortly after
after birth, the parents and newborn need to form birth
an emotional attachment as a foundation for ●​ Physicians believe that during the period shortly
optimal development in years to come after birth, the parents and newborn need to form
an emotional attachment as a foundation for
Small for date infants – those whose birth weight is optimal development in years to come
below normal when the length of the pregnancy is ●​ However, early bonding has not been found to be
considered critical in the development of a competent infant
●​ Had more than a fourfold increased risk of death ●​ Rooming-in Arrangement: baby remains in the
●​ Weigh less than 90 percent of all babies of the mother’s room most of the time during its
same gestational age hospital stay
●​ Kangaroo Care: involves infants being carried,
usually by the mother, with skin-to-skin contact;
POSTPARTUM PERIOD
intended for low-birth-weight and preterm
infants
Postpartum
●​ Period after childbirth when the mother adjusts,
REFERENCES
both physically and psychologically, to the Papalia, D., & Martorell, G. (2015). Experience human
process of childbirth development (13th ed.). McGraw Hill Education.
●​ Lasts for about six weeks or until the body has Santrock, J. W. (2019). Life-span development (17th ed.).
completed its adjustment and returned to a near McGraw-Hill Education.
prepregnant state

PHYSICAL ADJUSTMENTS

●​ Women experience great deal of energy or feel

exhausted and let down after birth
●​ Fatigue can undermine the new mother’s sense
of well-being and confidence in her ability to cope
with a new baby and a new family life
●​ Most women tend to experience loss of sleep
during pregnancy and in the postpartum period
which can contribute to stress, marital conflict,
and impaired decision making
●​ When the placenta is delivered, estrogen and
progesterone levels drop steeply and remain low
until the ovaries start producing hormones again

9 | @studywithky
 04 – Development in Infancy
DVPSY | 2024 - 2025 | NOT FOR SALE

●​ Most babies start to breathe as soon as they’re

exposed to air
OUTLINE
1.​ The Newborn Baby ○​ Anoxia: lack of oxygen
a.​ Size and Appearance ○​ Hypoxia: reduced oxygen supply
b.​ Body Systems ○​ Most premature babies are susceptible to
c.​ Medical and Behavioral respiratory problems due to limited air sacs
Assessments ●​ Infants excrete meconium during the first few
d.​ States of Arousal days and have no control over sphincter muscles
2.​ Physical Development
●​ Body temperature is typically maintained via
a.​ Growth Patterns
b.​ The Brain and Reflex Behaviors increase of activity
c.​ Early Sensory Capacities ●​ Neonatal Jaundice: infant jaundice caused by
3.​ Motor Development immaturity of the liver
a.​ Milestones
b.​ Perception and Theories Infant Mortality
4.​ Cognitive Development ●​ The chief causes of neonatal death worldwide are
a.​ Behaviorist Approach
preterm birth complications, childbirth
b.​ Psychometric Approach
c.​ Piagetian Approach complications, and sepsis
d.​ Information-Processing ●​ Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: sudden death
Approach of an infant under age 1
e.​ Cognitive Neuroscience ○​ Triple Risk Model: SIDS is the result of 3
Approach overlapping factors
f.​ Social-Contextual Approach
○​ SIDS will occur only if a vulnerable infant is
g.​ Language Development
5.​ Psychosocial Development exposed to a stressor during the critical
a.​ Defining Personality period
b.​ Emotions
c.​ Developmental Issues MEDICAL AND BEHAVIORAL ASSESSMENTS
d.​ Relationships
e.​ Moral Development Apgar Scale – first physical assessment that is
administered a minute after delivery and 5 minutes
after birth
THE NEWBORN BABY
●​ 7-10 (within 5 minutes): excellent condition
●​ < 5-7: need help establish breathing
SIZE AND APPEARANCE ●​ < 4: needs immediate lifesaving treatment
●​ 0-3 (10, 15, and 20 minutes after birth):
Neonatal Period – a time of transition from associated to cerebral palsy
intrauterine to extrauterine life
●​ Boys tend to be longer and heavier than girls
●​ Distinctive features include a large head and a
receding chin
●​ Fontanels: area on the baby’s head where bones
do not meet to allow easy passage (gradually
close in the first 18 months)
●​ Most newborns have thin skin that barely covers
the capillaries, giving them a pinkish cast
●​ Lanugo: fuzzy prenatal hair
Brazelton Scale – first neurological and behavioral
●​ Vernix Caseosa: cheesy varnish, protects the baby
test that measures the neonate’s responses to the
against infection
environment
●​ Witch’s Milk: secretion that leaks from newborn’s
●​ Identifies strengths and possible vulnerabilities in
breasts, believed to have magical properties
neurological functioning
●​ Helps predict future development
BODY SYSTEMS
●​ Administered to infants up to 2 months old
●​ Takes about 30 minutes, and scores are based on
●​ Most bodily systems and regulations were
a baby’s best performance
accomplished by the mother prior birth
●​ At birth, the baby’s systems and functions begin
to separate during the first 4-6 hours

1 | @studywithky
 GROWTH PATTERNS
BRAZELTON NEONATAL BEHAVIORAL ASSESSMENT
SCALE
Principles of Growth
Motor Organization Activity level and the ability to
★​ Cephalocaudal – growth from top to bottom, head to
bring a hand to the mouth
head
Reflexes State changes, such as irritability, ★​ Proximodistal – growth from inside out, gross motor
excitability, and ability to quiet control to fine motor control
down after being upset

Attention and General alertness and response to ●​ Rapid growth in occurs during the 1st year of life
Interactive visual and auditory stimuli and diminishes during the 2nd and 3rd years
Capacities
●​ Boys grow larger compared to girls
Central Nervous tremors and changes in skin ●​ Genes and the environment influences the size
System Instability and appearance
●​ Teething begins at 3-4 months with the first tooth
appearing between 5-9 months
STATES OF AROUSAL
○​ Babies generally have 6-8 teeth by their 1st
birthday
States of Arousal – infant's physiological and
○​ 20 teeth appear by age 2 ½
behavioral status at a given moment in the periodic
●​ Babies should only consume breast milk or
daily cycle of wakefulness, sleep, and activity
iron-fortified formula for the first 6 months
●​ Inborn and highly individual
○​ Iron-enriched solid foods can be gradually
●​ Changes in state are coordinated by multiple
introduced in the 2nd half of their 1st year
areas of the brain and are accompanied by
○​ Water can also be introduced
changes in the functioning of virtually all body
systems
THE BRAIN AND REFLEX BEHAVIORS
●​ Marker of neurological organization
●​ Youngest babies sleep the most and wake up
Central Nervous System – consists of the brain and
most frequently
the spinal cord
○​ 0-2 months: sleep 14.5 hours/day, waking 1.7
times/night
The Brain
○​ 0-5 months: nap 3 hours/day
●​ The brain growth spurts that begin at the 3rd
○​ Newborns' sleep cycles include 50% active
trimester to 4th year is important to the
(REM-like) sleep
development of neurological functioning
●​ At 2 months, longest sleep is 5.7 hours; at 6-24
●​ During the formative period of early life when the
months, it's 8.3 hours
brain is most plastic, the brain is especially
●​ By 1 year, babies sleep 12.6 hours/night with 0.7
vulnerable
wakings
●​ Cerebellum grows the fastest during the 1st year
●​ By 1-2 years, naps reduce to 1 hour/day
of life
●​ 2-year-olds sleep 13 hours/day, including naps
●​ The Corpus Callosum grows dramatically during
●​ REM sleep decreases to less than 30% by age 3
childhood and reaches adult size by age 10
and continues to decline
○​ Tough tissue that joins that left and right
hemisphere (Cerebrum) together
○​ Lateralization: specialization of the
hemispheres
●​ Regions of the Cerebral Cortex grow rapidly in the
first few months after birth and are mature by 6
months
○​ The Frontal Cortex remain immature for
several years

The Neurons
●​ As neurons multiply, they undergo
complimentary processes of integration and
differentiation
●​ Unused neurons are pruned away to calibrate the
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT developing brain
●​ Only half of the neurons produced survive and
function in adulthood

2 | @studywithky
●​ Myelination begins halfway through gestation ●​ infants show a decreased pain response with
and peaks during the 1 st year skin-to-skin contact

Early Reflexes Development of Olfactory Senses: Smell and Taste

●​ Reflex: automatic, innate response to stimulation ●​ Senses of smell and taste begin to develop in the
●​ Infants have an estimate of 27 major reflexes womb
○​ Primitive: related to instinctive needs for ●​ Flavors from food the mother has consumed are
survival and protection found in amniotic fluid and breast milk
○​ Postural: reactions to changes in position or ●​ Preference for certain tastes and smells can be
balance developed in utero
○​ Locomotor: voluntary movements that do not ●​ Certain taste preferences are largely innate
appear until months after the reflexes have ●​ Newborns much prefer sweet tastes, such as
disappeared breast milk
●​ Most early reflexes disappear during the first 6 to
12 months Development of Hearing
●​ 2 day old infants are able to recognize a word they
heard up to a day earlier
●​ At 1 month, babies can distinguish sounds as
close as ba and pa
●​ By 11 to 17 weeks, infants are able to both
recognize and remember entire sentences after a
brief delay
●​ By 4 months, infants respond preferentially to
speech and music, especially that or their native
language

MOTOR DEVELOPMENT

MILESTONES IN MOTOR DEVELOPMENT

EARLY SENSORY CAPACITIES
Systems of Action — Increasingly complex
Development of Sight combinations of motor skills, which permit a wider or
●​ Out of all primary senses, vision is the least more precise range of movement and more control of
developed at birth the environment
●​ Vision becomes more important as infants ●​ Denver Developmental Screening Test:
become active and alert Screening test given to children 1 month to 6
●​ Focus best from about 1 foot away years old to determine whether they are
●​ Field of peripheral vision is very narrow developing normally
○​ It doubles between 2-10 weeks ○​ Gross Motor Skills: large muscles
○​ Is well-developed by 3 months ○​ Fine Motor Skills: small muscles
●​ Result of Cortical Maturation ●​ Girls have better fine motor control compared to
○​ Ability to follow a moving target develops boys
rapidly in the first months due to cortical ●​ Head Control
maturation ○​ At birth, most infants can turn their heads
○​ Infants are particularly perceptive to vibrant from side to side while lying on their backs
colors ○​ When lying chest down, many can lift their
●​ Binocular vision does not develop until 4-5 heads enough to turn them
months ○​ Within the first 2 to 3 months, they lift their
●​ Generally, infants show privileged attention to heads higher and higher
faces ○​ By 4 months, most infants can keep their
●​ Formal vision screening should begin by age 3 heads erect while being held or supported in
a sitting position
Development of Touch ●​ Hand Control
●​ Touch is the first to develop and mature sensory ○​ Babies are born with a grasping reflex
system ○​ At about 3½ months, most infants can grasp
●​ By 32 weeks of gestation, all body parts are an object of moderate size
sensitive to touch ○​ Small objects are more difficult to hold
●​ Sensitivity increases during the first 5 days of life

3 | @studywithky
 ○​ At 7-11 months, their hands become ●​ Haptic perception: ability to acquire information
coordinated enough to pick up a tiny object by handling objects rather than just looking at
using the pincer grasp them
○​ By 15 months, the average baby can build a ○​ At 28 weeks of gestation, infants were able to
tower of two cubes recognize and remember features of objects
○​ Around their 3rd birthday, the average toddler that were placed in their hands
can copy a circle fairly well ○​ It is only after babies develop enough
●​ Locomotion hand-eye coordination to reach for objects
○​ After 3 months, the average infant begins to and grasp them (5-7 months) that they can
roll over deliberately, first from front to back use their sense of touch effectively to explore
and then from back to front the objects within their reach
○​ By 6-10 months, most babies begin to get
around under their own power by means of Ecological Theory of Perception – describes
creeping or crawling developing motor and perceptual abilities as
○​ Crawling helps babies learn to judge interdependent parts of a functional system that
distances and perceive depth guides behavior in varying contexts
○​ Social Referencing: learn to look to ●​ Proposed by Eleanor Gibson and James Gibson
caregivers for clues as to whether a situation ●​ States that each problem space has its own set of
is secure or frightening information-generating behaviors and its own
○​ All these developments lead up to the major learning curve
motor achievement of infancy – walking ●​ Views the baby as a small scientist testing out
○​ Humans begin to walk later than other new ideas in each situation
species ●​ Based on an experiment conducted by Richard
○​ During the 2nd year, children begin to climb Walk and Eleanor Gibson
stairs one at a time, run, and jump ●​ Walk and Gibson wanted to see if babies would
○​ By age 3½, most children can balance briefly crawl over a visual cliff when urged
on one foot and begin to jump
Dynamic Systems Theory – views motor
development as a dynamic process of active
coordination of multiple systems within the infant in
relation to the environment
●​ Proposed by Ester Thelen
●​ Argues that behavior emerges in the moment
from the self-organization of multiple
components
●​ This approach also allows for variability in the
timeline of individual development

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

BEHAVIORIST APPROACH
PERCEPTION
Behaviorist Approach — concerned with how
●​ Visual Guidance: use of the eyes to guide hand behavior changes in response to experience, basic
movement mechanics of learning
○​ Young infants can locate unseen objects by ●​ Classical Conditioning: learning based on
sound and memory of the object’s location association (prediction)
○​ Younger infants are more likely to correct ○​ Enables infants to anticipate an event before
their reaching movements using it happens
proprioceptive feedback and haptic ○​ Ex. How phobias develop
information rather than vision ●​ Operant Conditioning: learning based on
●​ Depth Perception: ability to perceive objects and reinforcements
surfaces in three dimensions ○​ Reinforcement: increases likelihood of the
○​ cues involve not only binocular coordination behavior to occur again
but also motor control ○​ Punishment: decreases likelihood of the
○​ Kinetic Cues: produced by movement of the behavior to occur again
object or the observer

4 | @studywithky
Infant Memory ●​ Infants learn about themselves and their
●​ Operant Conditioning Techniques were used to environment through sensory and motor activity
investigate infant memory ●​ At this stage, infants transition from reflexes to
●​ Research showed that the length of time that a goal-oriented toddlers
conditioned response lasts increases with age ●​ Schemas become more elaborate as the infant
○​ 2 months old can remember up to 2 days develops
○​ By 18 months, they can remember up to 13
weeks
MOS. STAGE DESCRIPTION
●​ Infant memory is context-dependent and
strongly linked to the original cues encoded 0-1 Primary Reflexes Infants are governed
during learning by reflexes

1-4 Primary Circular Infants repeat

PSYCHOMETRIC APPROACH Reactions pleasurable actions
discovered by chance
Psychometric Approach — measures quantitative
Exploring the self
differences in abilities that make up intelligence
●​ Intelligent Behavior: goal oriented and adaptive 4-8 Secondary Circular Infants repeat actions
to circumstances and conditions of life Reactions to get results beyond
●​ Infant intelligence is typically measure by their own body
assessing what they can do Exploring the
○​ IQ Tests: measure intelligence by comparing environment through
it to the norm objects

8-12 Coordination Infants repeat actions

Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development: to reach a goal
assess infants ages 1 month to 3½ years
Using past experience
to solve new problems

12-18 Tertiary Circular Trial and Error

Reactions
“Little scientist”

18-24 Mental Beginnings of

Representation representational
ability

Transitional stage to
Home Observation for Measurement of the preoperational stage
Environment (HOME): yes-or-no checklist that assess
the child’s home environment
Key Developments of Sensorimotor Stage
●​ HOME scores are correlated with measures of
●​ Deferred Imitation: reproduction of observed
cognitive development
behavior after passage of time
●​ Early intervention may be needed if it does not
○​ Piaget believed that children under 18
provide the necessary conditions that pave the
months cannot engage in deferred imitation
way for cognitive competence
as it requires long-term memory
○​ Research revealed that deferred imitation of
novel events begin by 6-9 months
○​ Imitation varies depending on their goals
●​ Object Concept
○​ Piaget argued that infants under the age of 8
months lack object permanence
○​ This develops by 18-24 months as infants
reliably search for hidden objects
●​ Symbolic Development
○​ Essential task of childhood
PIAGETIAN APPROACH
○​ Pictorial competence: ability to understand
the nature of pictures
Piagetian Approach — concerned with how the
■​ By 15 months, infants begin to use their
mind structures its activities and adapts to the
hands to explore pictures
environment
■​ By 19 months, children are able to name
●​ Sensorimotor Stage of Cognitive Development
objects

5 | @studywithky
 ■​ By age 2, children understand that a ○​ curved lines to straight lines
picture is both an object and a symbol ○​ complex patterns to simple patterns
■​ Picture books support children’s ○​ three-dimensional objects to
acquisition of information about the two-dimensional objects
world ○​ pictures of faces or facelike configurations
■​ Screen time could delay the symbolic ○​ moving objects to stationary objects
development of infants as they cannot ○​ new sights to familiar ones
distinguish what’s fake from reality ●​ Visual Recognition Memory: ability to distinguish
○​ Scale Error: momentary misperception of the a familiar visual stimulus from an unfamiliar one
relative sizes of objects when shown both at the same time
■​ Infants would miniature and actual toy
experiment Perceptual Process
○​ Dual Representation Hypothesis: proposed ●​ Suggest that a rudimentary form of visual
that children under the age of 3 have representation exist at birth rather than months
difficulty grasping spatial relationships after
■​ It is difficult for toddlers to simultaneously ●​ Speed of processing increases rapidly during
mentally represent both the actual object infants’ 1st year
and its symbolic nature ●​ It continues to increase during the 2nd and 3rd
years, as toddlers become better able to
distinguish new information
Evaluating Piagetian Approach
★​ Piaget was correct in the basic progression of skills ●​ Auditory discrimination emerges prenatally
★​ Infants and toddlers are more cognitively competent ●​ Argued that newborn babies have the ability to
that Piaget imagined remember sounds
★​ Infants’ perceptions are far ahead of their motor ●​ Cross-Modal Transfer: ability to use information
abilities gained by one sense to guide another; most
appear to be available at birth
INFORMATION-PROCESSING APPROACH
Attention
Information-Processing Approach — focuses on ●​ Birth to 2 months: Infants' gaze duration
perception, learning, memory, and problem solving increases
●​ Researchers measure and draw inferences from ●​ 4 to 8 months: Looking time shortens, especially
what infants pay attention to and for how long from 4 to 6 months
○​ Shorter looking time is due to more efficient
Habituation: type of learning in which repeated or scanning and rapid attention shifts
continuous exposure to a stimulus reduces attention ○​ Infants with shorter looking times show
to that stimulus better memory and executive control later
●​ Familiarity breeds loss of interest ●​ End of 1st year to 2nd year: Sustained attention
●​ ↑ habituation speed = ↑ intelligence becomes voluntary and task-oriented, with
●​ Dishabituation: increase in responsiveness after looking time plateauing or increasing for complex
presentation of a new stimulus stimuli
●​ Researchers gauge infants’ efficiency by… ●​ Joint attention develops between 10-12 months
○​ Measuring how quickly babies habituate when babies follow adults' gaze
○​ How fast their attention recovers when ○​ Children who follow adults' gaze at 10-11
exposed to new stimuli months have larger vocabularies at 18
○​ How much time they spend looking at new months, 2 years, and 2½ years
and old ○​ Pointing to capture adults' attention
positively impacts children's language
comprehension and production

Infant Conceptualization
●​ Infants first categorizes on the basis of perceptual
features (shape, color, pattern)
●​ By 12-14 months, categories become conceptual,
based on real world knowledge (particularly of
function)

Visual Preference: tendency to spend more time

looking at one sight rather than another
●​ 2 day old babies prefer…

6 | @studywithky
 COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE APPROACH ●​ Helps them communicate their needs, feelings,
and ideas in order to exert more control over their
Cognitive Neuroscience Approach — seeks to lives
identify what brain structures are involved in specific
aspects of cognition
●​ Revealed that explicit memory and implicit
memory are located in different brain structures
○​ Implicit Memory: unconscious recall of
habits/skills (procedural)
■​ Develops early
○​ Explicit Memory: conscious recall of facts,
names, events (declarative)
■​ Delayed imitation of complex behaviors is
evidence that declarative memory has
developed
○​ Rapid growth of the Hippocampus makes
long-term memory possible
●​ Working memory emerges between 6 and 12
months of age
○​ Development of the prefrontal cortex and
associated circuitry makes this possible
○​ May be responsible for the slow development
of object permanence

Prelinguistic Speech
●​ Forerunner of linguistic speech
●​ Utterance of sounds that are not words
●​ Includes crying, cooing, babbling, and accidental
and deliberate imitation of sounds

Early Vocalization
●​ Crying is a newborn’s means of communication
SOCIAL-CONTEXTUAL APPROACH
●​ Cooing: vowel sounds; 6 weeks and 3 months
●​ Babbling: repeating consonant-vowel strings;
Social-Contextual Approach — examines the effects
occurs between 6-10 months
of environmental aspects of the learning process
●​ Guided Participation: adult’s participation in a
Perceiving Language Sounds and Structures
child’s activity that helps to structure it and bring
●​ Imitation of language sounds requires the ability
the child’s understanding of it closer to the adult’s
to perceive differences between sounds
●​ Argued that social interactions with adults
●​ Infants’ brain is preset to discriminate basic
contribute to cognitive competence through
linguistic units, perceive linguistic patterns, and
shared activities that help children learn skills,
categorize them as similar or different
knowledge, and values important in their culture
●​ Phonemes: smallest unit of sound in speech
●​ Based on Vygotsky’s Contextual Theory
○​ Early exposure to a native language shapes
the brain's neural networks in a way that
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
promotes proficiency in that language
○​ Also limits the ability to learn other languages
Language — communication system based on words
later on
and grammar
○​ Exposure can happen prenatally or
●​ Used to represent objects and actions, reflect on
postnatally
people, places, and things
●​ Babies also learn rules for how they fit together

7 | @studywithky
 ○​ Nga may be acceptable in Tagalog but not in ●​ Nouns is the easiest type of word to learn while
other languages novel verbs tend to be difficult
●​ Bilinguals develop 2 modals of language in their
brains rather than 1 First Sentences
●​ By 5 months, infants tend to listen longer to their ●​ At 18-24 months, toddlers begin to put 2 words
name than to other names together to express one idea
●​ At 8 months, infants discern perceptual cues ( ba ●​ First sentences typically deal with day-to-day
and by) and store these possible word forms in events, things, people, or activities
memory (baby) ●​ Telegraphic Speech: early form of sentence use
●​ They also notice pronunciation, stress placed on consisting of few essential words
syllables, and changes in pitch ●​ Syntax: fundamental rules for putting sentences
●​ Early auditory learning lays the foundation for together
later vocabulary growth ○​ Between 20-23 months, children show
increasing competence in syntax
Gestures ○​ They also become more comfortable with
●​ Before they can speak, they point articles, prepositions, conjunctions, plurals,
●​ Symbolic gestures emerge around the same time and verb forms
as babies say their first worlds ●​ By age 3, speech is fluent, longer, and more
●​ Usually appear before children have the complex (3-4 words long)
vocabulary of 25 words
●​ Girls shoe developmental advantage and use Noam Chomsky
gestures at a slightly earlier age than boys ●​ Language Acquisition Device: human’s inborn
●​ Hearing and deaf children use gestures the same biological capacity for language, which
way predisposes them to acquire language
●​ Sign language does not accelerate language ●​ Universal Grammar: proposed that all human
development language share a deep structure rooted in a set of
grammatical rules and categories
First Words ○​ Grammatical rules are hardwired in human
●​ Babies understand many words before they can brain
use them ○​ Helps humans learn language
●​ Holophrase: single word that conveys a complete ●​ Poverty of the Stimulus: argued that there is an
thought depending on the context (Daddy? → insufficiency in the linguistic input received by
Where is Daddy?) young children
●​ Between 10 months to 2 years, there is a shift ●​ Critical Period
from simple associations to following social cues
○​ At 10 months, infants tend to assume a new Characteristics of Early Speech
word refers to whatever object they find most ●​ Highly simplified
interesting ●​ Can understand grammatical relationships they
○​ At 12 months, they begin to pay attention to cannot yet express
cues from adults ●​ Overregularization: occurs when children
○​ By 18-24 months, children follow social cues in inappropriately apply syntactic rule (Daddy goed
learning words, regardless of the intrinsic to the store)
interest of the objects ●​ They also make categorical mistakes
○​ At 24 months, children quickly recognize the ○​ Overextending: overgeneralization
names of familiar objects in the absence of ○​ Underextending: exclusivity
visual cues
●​ Receptive Vocabulary: what infants understand; Variations in Language Development
continues to grow as verbal comprehension ●​ Those hearing impaired still have language and
gradually develops undergo the same sequence of development
○​ By 18 months, 3 out of 4 children can ●​ Children learning 2 languages tend to have
understand 150 words and say 50 of them smaller vocabularies in each language
○​ Late talkers who are quick to recognize words ●​ Bilingual children tend to have more advanced
at 18 months are more likely to show nonverbal executive control skills, theory of mind,
accelerated vocabulary growth in the next and and earlier understanding of syntactical and
year morphological rules of language
●​ Addition of new words to expressive vocabulary is ●​ Code Mixing: use of elements of 2 languages
slow at first ●​ Code Switching: changing one’s speech to match
●​ Naming explosion may occur between 16-24 the situations
months

8 | @studywithky
●​ Frequency with which caregivers read to children ●​ Reflexive Smile: a smile that does not occur in
can influence how well children speak and response to external stimuli and appear during
develop literacy the first month after birth
●​ Anticipatory Smiling: infants smile at an object
and then gaze at an adult while continuing to
PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
smile (12-15 months)
●​ Self-Conscious emotions arise only after children
DEFINING PERSONALITY have developed self-awareness
●​ Altruistic Behavior: acting out of concern with no
Personality — relatively consistent blend of emotions, expectation of reward
temperament, thought, and behavior that makes ●​ Mirror Neurons: underlie empathy and altruism
each person unique
●​ Reflect both inborn and environmental influences Temperament – an early-appearing, biologically
●​ Affect the way children respond to others and based tendency to respond to the environment in
adapt to their world predictable ways
●​ Easy Children: generally happy, rhythmic in
EMOTIONS biological functioning, and accepting of new
experiences
Emotions – subjective reactions to experience that ●​ Difficult Children: more irritable and harder to
are associated with physiological and behavioral please
changes ●​ Slow-to-Warm-Up Children: mild but slow to
Crying: primary way in which infants communicate adapt to new people and situations
their needs and is considered to be an honest signal ●​ Goodness of Fit: the match between a child’s
of need temperament and the environmental demands
●​ A higher pitch and a more monotonic vocalization and constraints the child must deal with
is associated with autonomic system activity ●​ Strong links between infant temperament and
during stressful procedures in infants childhood personality at age of 7
●​ Characteristic of the cries of preterm infants
●​ Earliest smiles resulted from subcortical nervous
system activity
●​ Involuntary smiles appear during periods of REM
Sleep
●​ By 5 months of age, babies have learned to
monitor their caregivers’ expressions
●​ Boys tend to express more anger than girls

TYPE OF CRY PATTERN DESCRIPTION

Basic Hunger Cry Rhythmic cry, which is not

always associated with
hunger

Angry Cry Variation of the rhythmic

cry, in which excess air is
forced through the vocal
cords

Pain Cry Sudden onset of loud crying

without preliminary
moaning, sometimes
DEVELOPMENTAL ISSUES IN INFANCY
followed by holding the
breath
Erikson’s Trust vs. Mistrust
Frustration Cry Two or three drawn-out ●​ Ideally, babies develop a balance between trust
cries, with no prolonged
and mistrust
breath-holding
●​ If trust predominates, as it should, children
develop Hope and the belief that they can fulfill
Smiling and Laughing their needs and obtain their desires
●​ Appear at birth ●​ Sensory Maladjustment: overly trusting and
●​ Social Smiling: when newborn infants gaze and gullible, unrealistic, spoiled
smile at their parents (2nd month) ●​ Withdrawal: never trust anyone, paranoid,
●​ Clowning: silly, nonverbal behaviors used to elicit neurotic, depressive
smiles and laughs from children

9 | @studywithky
 ●​ Children obey societal or parental dictates
Attachment – reciprocal, enduring emotional tie because they believe them to be right and true
between an infant and a caregiver, each of whom ●​ The eventual goal is the development of
contributes to the quality of the relationship conscience
●​ Significant individual is typically the mother ●​ Situational Compliance: extra assistance
●​ Strange Situation: an experiment conducted by provided by their parents reminder and prompts
Ainsworth to assess attachment patterns to complete the task
between infant and adult ●​ Committed Compliance: they were committed to
●​ According to Bowlby, attachment styles resulted following request and could do so without their
from repeated interactions with a caregiver parents direct intervention
○​ Stranger Anxiety: wariness of a person she ●​ Receptive Cooperation: eager willingness to
does not know cooperate harmoniously with a parent, not only in
○​ Separation Anxiety: distress when a familiar disciplinary actions, but in variety of daily
caregiver leaves her interactions
○​ Separation Protest: crying when caregiver
leaves Maltreatment in Infancy and Toddlerhood
●​ Babies react negatively to strangers by 8 or 9 ●​ Nonorganic Failure to thrive: slowed or arrested
months (shows normal development) physical growth with no known medical cause,
●​ Mutual Regulation: the ability of both infant and accompanied by poor developmental and
caregiver to respond appropriately and sensitively emotional functioning
to each other’s mental and emotional states ●​ Shaken Baby Syndrome: baby has a weak neck
●​ Social Referencing: seeking emotional muscles, and a large, heavy head, shaking makes
information to guide behavior the brain bounce back and forth inside the skull

Deception MORAL DEVELOPMENT

●​ Children become capable of telling simple lies at
about 3 Kohlberg’s Preconventional Stage
●​ Ability to lie is considered as developmental ●​ According to Kohlberg, children in Infancy stage is
milestone at the first level of moral development
●​ Preschoolers who are more advanced in their ●​ Infants or children age 0-2 yrs old
understanding of others mental states are better ●​ Characterized by the desire to obey rules and
liars avoid being punished

DEVELOPMENTAL ISSUES IN TODDLERHOOD

REFERENCES
Papalia, D., & Martorell, G. (2015). Experience human
Erikson’s Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt development (13th ed.). McGraw Hill Education.
●​ Impulsiveness: shameless willfulness that leads Santrock, J. W. (2019). Life-span development (17th ed.).
to jump into things without proper consideration; McGraw-Hill Education.
maladaptive
●​ Compulsiveness: perfectionism, rule follower;
malignant
●​ Sphincter Muscle is developed

RELATIONSHIPS

Self-Concept – our image of ourselves; it describes

what we know and feel about ourselves and guides
our actions
●​ By at least 3 months, infants pay attention to their
mirror image
●​ Pretend Play: an early indication of the ability to
understand others mental states and their own
●​ Usage of person pronouns (me, mine) usually at
20-24 months

Socialization – process by which children develop

habits, skills, values, and motives that make them
responsible and productive members of the society

10 | @studywithky
 05 – Early Childhood Development
DVPSY | 2024 - 2025 | NOT FOR SALE

OUTLINE
1.​ Physical Development
a.​ Aspects of Physical Development
b.​ Health and Safety
2.​ Cognitive Development
a.​ Piagetian Approach
b.​ Information-Processing Approach
c.​ Intelligence
d.​ Language Development
e.​ Early Childhood Education
3.​ Psychosocial Development
a.​ The Developing Self Brain Development
b.​ Gender ●​ By age 3, the brain is about 90 percent of adult
c.​ Play weight
d.​ Parenting ●​ Rapid growth occurs in the frontal areas,
e.​ Relationships with Other Children regulating planning and goal setting
●​ Density of synapses in the prefrontal cortex peaks
at age 4
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT ●​ Myelin: fatty layer that envelops the axons of
nerve cells and speeds up the transmission of
nerve impulses
ASPECTS OF PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
●​ Corpus Callosum: a thick bundle of nerve fibers
that connects both hemispheres of the brain
Bodily Growth and Change.
○​ Enables faster and more effective
●​ Children start growing rapidly between the ages
communication between hemispheres
of 3 and 6
○​ Enables better synchronization of sensory
●​ The gradual transition towards adult-like body
functions, attention, arousal, as well as speech
proportions as the head remains relatively large
and hearing
while the other body parts catch up in size
●​ The corpus callosum goes through myelination
●​ Muscular and skeletal growth progresses, which
during childhood and adolescence, with boys
makes children stronger
reaching peak volume later than girls.
●​ The changes, guided by the developing brain and
nervous system, support the growth of various
Motor Skills
motor skills
●​ Development of the sensory and motor regions of
the cerebral cortex enables children to coordinate
their desires with their physical capabilities more
effectively
●​ Gross Motor Skills: physical abilities that require
the use of major muscle groups
●​ Motor skills development has also been linked to
physical activity levels in both children and
adolescents

Sleep Patterns and Problems

●​ Sleep patterns change throughout early
childhood as children grow up, and this period
has its own distinct rhythms
●​ Sleep problems are often behavioral and usually
involve refusing to go to bed, taking a long time
to fall asleep, or frequent night waking, which are
usually outgrown
●​ Enuresis: frequent urination in clothing or in bed

1 | @studywithky
●​ Fine Motor Skills: physical skills that involve the ●​ There have been suggestions that the rise in
small muscles and eye-hand coordination. allergy rates could be linked to changes in dietary
●​ Systems of Action: skills become more intricate, habits, food processing methods, the timing of
allowing for a broader and more accurate range of food introduction, and reduced vitamin D levels
motion and greater control over the surroundings due to decreased sun exposure
●​ Handedness: preference for using a particular
hand Oral Health
●​ Boys are more inclined to be left-handed than ●​ Oral health is an important component of overall
girls health
●​ It commences during childhood, with
HEALTH AND SAFETY thumbsucking and tooth decay being two
prevalent oral health issues that worry parents
Obesity ●​ Fluoride: mineral essential for the maintenance
●​ Likelihood of being obese can be passed down and solidification of bones
through generations, but the primary causes of
the widespread issue of obesity are related to the Deaths and Accidental Injuries
environment ●​ Most preschooler injuries occur at home, often
●​ Obesity and Heart Risk Prevention from fires, drowning, suffocation, poisoning, or
○​ It's recommended for young children to falls
consume around 30 percent of their total ●​ Common medications like aspirin,
calories from fat acetaminophen, cough syrups, and vitamins can
○​ There should be no more than one-third of fat be dangerous to young children
calories coming from saturated fat
Health in Context: Environmental Influences .
Food Security – occurs when households lack reliable ●​ Socioeconomic Status and Race/Ethnicity
access to enough food to maintain a healthy lifestyle ○​ ↓ SES = ↑ risk of illness, injury, and death
●​ Food accessibility problems have a particular ○​ Children living in poverty are at a higher risk
effect on young kids because of their fast growth of having long-term health issues and
and development limitations in physical activities
●​ It is expected that kids may not get enough ○​ They also lack access to health insurance and
micronutrients like vitamin A, zinc, iron, and not getting necessary medical and dental
iodine care
○​ Social factors associated with poverty,
Undernutrition – results from insufficient food intake including heightened stress, also have an
or not consuming enough nutrients essential for impact on their health results.
overall development and well-being ●​ Homelessness: results from circumstances that
●​ Children Stunted: children who seem to have a force people to choose between food, shelter, and
healthy weight but are shorter than expected for other basic needs
their age ○​ Causes encompass insufficient job prospects,
○​ May experience cognitive and physical reductions in public aid, unaffordable
impairments healthcare, domestic abuse, mental health
○​ This form of malnutrition is often the result of issues, and substance abuse
chronic, persistent hunger ●​ Exposure to Environmental Pollutants
●​ Children Wasted: children who are of a suitable ○​ Smoking
height for their age but are slimmer than they are ■​ Leading cause of childhood illness and
expected to be mortality
○​ Generally the result of a recent, rapid weight ■​ Children who are exposed to parental
loss smoke face higher chances of developing
respiratory infections like bronchitis and
Food Allergies pneumonia, ear issues, aggravated
●​ 90% of food allergies can be linked to eight asthma, and reduced lung development
specific foods – milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, ○​ Air Pollution
soy, wheat, and shellfish ■​ Increases the likelihood of mortality and
●​ Children are more likely than adults to have food chronic respiratory illness
allergies, and most children will eventually ■​ Certain environmental pollutants might
outgrow their allergies contribute to specific types of childhood
●​ Children with food allergies tend to be smaller cancer, nervous system disorders,
and shorter, on average, than children who do not attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder,
have food allergies. and intellectual disabilities

2 | @studywithky
 ○​ Chronic Pesticide Damage ○​ Identities: idea that individuals and
■​ Children are more vulnerable than adults numerous things are fundamentally similar,
to chronic pesticide damage even if they undergo changes in external
■​ Low-dose pesticide exposure may affect form, size, or look
the developing brain ○​ Animism: tendency to attribute life to objects
●​ Lead that are not alive
○​ Children can be exposed to high levels of lead ●​ Understanding of Number: infants have a
from contaminated food or water, airborne rudimentary sense of number
industrial waste, or by touching contaminated ○​ Children start to grasp the cardinality
surfaces and then putting their fingers in principle around 2 1⁄2 years old
their mouths ○​ They understand that the number of items in
○​ The effects of lead poisoning on cognitive a set remains the same, regardless of
development are severe and can cause arrangement
neurological and behavioral issues ○​ They also understand that the last number
counted is the total number of items in the
set, regardless of how they counted
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Immature Aspects of Preoperational Thought

PIAGETIAN APPROACH ●​ Centration: tendency to focus on one aspect of a
situation and neglect others.
Preoperational Stage ○​ Centration can limit young children’s thinking
●​ Symbolic thought expands but children cannot about both social and physical relationships.
yet use logic effectively ○​ Decenter: to think simultaneously about
●​ The second significant phase of cognitive several aspects of a situation.
development ●​ Egocentrism: inability to consider another
person’s point of view; a characteristic of young
Advances of Preoperational Thought – children’s thought.
accompanied by a growing understanding of space, ●​ Piaget’s Three-Mountain Task
causality, identities, categorization, and number ○​ A test to measure egocentrism
●​ Symbolic Function: the ability of a child to attach ○​ Preoperational children are unable to
meaning to mental representations such as describe the mountains from the doll’s point
words, numbers, or images of view
○​ Deferred Imitation: ability of children to ●​ Conservation: understanding that two objects
imitate an action after observing it becomes equal in a certain way will still be equal even if
stronger after 18 months they look different, as long as nothing is added to
○​ Pretend Play: play involving imaginary or taken away from either object
people and situations; also called fantasy play, ○​ Irreversibility: failure to understand that an
dramatic play, or imaginative play operation can go in two or more directions
●​ Understanding of Objects in Space ○​ Centration: involves focusing on one
○​ Children start to comprehend the symbols dimension while ignoring the other
that represent physical spaces, but this ○​ Children in the preoperational stage are
development is slow unable to simultaneously think about height
○​ Most children don't reliably understand the and width because they lack the ability to
connections between pictures, maps, or scale decenter and consider multiple aspects of an
models and the objects or spaces they depict object or situation
until they are at least 3 years old
●​ Understanding of Causality Theory of the Mind – awareness of the broad range of
○​ Children cannot reason logically about cause human mental states
and effect ●​ Understanding that others have their own
○​ Instead, they use transduction to mentally distinctive beliefs, desires, and intentions
link events, especially those that are close in ●​ Knowledge About Thinking and Mental States
time, regardless of a logical causal ○​ Between ages 3 and 5, children understand
relationship that thinking occurs in the mind
●​ Understanding of Identities and Categorization ○​ They begin to understand that the mind can
○​ Forms the basis of the developing self-image handle real or imaginary things, and it is
○​ A lot of the procedures connected with different from seeing, talking, touching, and
comprehending the identity of others are knowing
reflected in comprehending one's own ●​ False Beliefs and Deception
identity

3 | @studywithky
 ○​ The knowledge that individuals can possess ○​ Central Executive
mistaken beliefs ■​ In Baddeley’s model, an element of
○​ Arises from the recognition that they can working memory that controls the
maintain inaccurate mental depictions of processing of information
reality ■​ Located in different areas within the
●​ Distinguishing between Appearance and frontal lobes and in certain posterior
Reality areas, mainly in the parietal region
○​ Around the age of 5 or 6, children start to ○​ Executive Function
comprehend the difference between ■​ Develops with the growth of working
appearances and reality memory
●​ Distinguishing between Fantasy and Reality ■​ It is the conscious control of thoughts,
○​ Between 18 months and 3 years, kids learn to emotions, and actions to accomplish
distinguish between real and imagined goals or to solve problems
events
○​ By age three, they can differentiate real Recognition and Recall
things from dreams and tell apart invisible ●​ Recognition: ability to identify something
and imaginary objects encountered before.
○​ Magical Thinking: a way to explain events ●​ Recall: ability to reproduce knowledge from
that seem to lack obvious realistic memory
explanations ●​ Remembering information is not sufficient, it also
○​ Often due to children's lack of knowledge, or needs to be accessed for application
to indulge in pretending, such as believing in ●​ Recognition and recall are forms of retrieval
imaginary companions
●​ Individual Differences in Theory-of-Mind Forming and Retaining Childhood Memories
Development ●​ Early childhood memories are often unintentional
○​ Some kids acquire theory-of-mind skills ○​ Young children recall impactful events
sooner than others ○​ But, these memories tend to be short-lived
○​ This growth is partly due to brain maturation ●​ Generic Memory
and overall enhancements in cognition ○​ Begins at age 2
○​ Brain development is necessary for theory of ○​ Memory that produces scripts of familiar
mind routines to guide behavior and produces a
○​ Neural activity in the prefrontal cortex has script
been identified as important ○​ Script: familiar, repeated event is
○​ An incomplete or ineffective theory of mind remembered as a general outline
may signal cognitive or developmental ○​ It is then used to guide behavior
impairment ●​ Episodic Memory: refers to awareness of having
○​ This can lead to difficulty understanding experienced a particular event at a specific time
others' intentions, lacking awareness of the and place
impact of one's behavior, and struggling with ●​ Autobiographical Memory
social interaction ○​ Memories of distinctive experiences that
make up a person's life history
INFORMATION-PROCESSING APPROACH ○​ A type of episodic memory

Basic Processes and Capacities Influences on Memory Retention

●​ Steps in Encoding Information to Memory ●​ Memories of children last longer due to the
○​ Encoding: information is prepared for uniqueness of the event
long-term storage and later retrieval ●​ Children tend to remember rare or unusual
○​ Storage: retention of information in memory events better
for future use; where information is kept ●​ Social Interaction Model
○​ Retrieval: information is accessed or recalled ○​ Based on Vygotsky's sociocultural theory
from memory storage ○​ Children develop autobiographical memories
●​ Types of Memory by engaging in conversations with adults
○​ Sensory Memory: initial, brief, temporary about shared events
storage of sensory information
○​ Working Memory: short-term storage of INTELLIGENCE
information being actively processed
○​ Long-Term Memory: storage of virtually Traditional Psychometric Measures
unlimited capacity that holds information for ●​ Children aged 3 to 5 are more proficient with
long periods language than younger children

4 | @studywithky
●​ Intelligence tests for this age group can include ○​ Once the child can complete the task
more verbal items and are fairly reliable in independently, the adult removes any
predicting measured intelligence and future unnecessary support
school success from age 5
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales
●​ Intelligence tests for individuals aged 2 and above Vocabulary
●​ Measures fluid reasoning, knowledge, ●​ By age 3, a child knows and uses 900 to 1,000
quantitative reasoning, visual-spatial processing, words
and working memory ●​ Their speaking vocabulary grows to 2,600 words
●​ The child is tasked to define words, thread beads, by age 6 and they understand over 20,000
construct with blocks, identify the missing parts ●​ With formal schooling, their receptive vocabulary
of a picture, follow mazes, and demonstrate an expands to 80,000 by high school
understanding of numbers ●​ This rapid expansion of vocabulary occurs due to
●​ Yields separate measures of verbal and nonverbal Fast Mapping
IQ plus composite scores spanning the five ●​ Fast Mapping: process in which a child
cognitive dimensions comprehends the definition of a new word after
hearing it a few times in conversation.
Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of
Intelligence, Revised (WPPSI-IV) Grammar and Syntax
●​ The child is tasked to provide definitions for ●​ Children's ability to combine syllables into words
words, place beads on a string, construct and sentences becomes more advanced
structures with blocks, point out the absent ●​ They develop a more complex understanding of
elements in a picture, navigate through mazes, grammar and syntax
and demonstrate comprehension of numbers ●​ The deep underlying structure of a language that
●​ The WPPSI-IV has also been confirmed as suitable psychologists refer to when speaking about
for special groups, including children with grammar allows us to produce and comprehend
intellectual disabilities, developmental delays, utterances
language disorders, and autistic disorders ●​ Syntax: pertains to the rules for constructing
sentences in a specific language
Influences on Measured Intelligence – IQ scores
don't reflect innate intelligence but rather a child's Pragmatics and Social Speech
ability to do specific tasks compared to others of the ●​ Pragmatics: involves the practical knowledge of
same age how to use language to communicate
●​ Social Speech: speech intended to be understood
Testing and Teaching Based on Vygotsky’s Theory by a listener
●​ According to Vygotsky, kids gain knowledge by ●​ Private Speech: to talk to oneself out loud
incorporating the outcomes of their interactions without intending to communicate with others.
with adults ○​ Piaget saw private speech, what he called
●​ Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): gap egocentric speech, as a marker of cognitive
between what a child can accomplish immaturity, believing children vocalized their
independently and what the child can achieve unfiltered thoughts
with assistance ○​ Vygotsky saw private speech as
○​ Can be assessed by dynamic tests self-conversation and believed it was part of
○​ They provide a more accurate measure of the learning process
children's intellectual potential than
traditional psychometric tests Delayed Language Development
○​ Dynamic Tests: emphasize potential rather ●​ Approximately 11 percent of children aged 3 to 6
than present achievement experience a communication disorder, with
●​ Scaffolding: helpful support that a more speech or language difficulties being the most
advanced conversational partner (MKO) gives, common
and it should ideally target the ZPD ●​ Speech and language delays can be linked to
●​ As children develop skills, they require less hearing issues, head and facial irregularities, as
support well as premature birth, family history,
●​ If a child struggles with a task, an adult provides socioeconomic conditions, and other
more assistance, or scaffolding developmental setbacks
○​ As the child becomes more capable, the adult
offers less help

5 | @studywithky
Preparation for Literacy ●​ Emotional and social adjustment strongly predict
●​ Children must first develop specific pre-reading academic and social outcomes
skills in order to comprehend what is written on a
page
PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
●​ Emergent Literacy: development of fundamental
skills that eventually lead to being able to read.
●​ Pre-reading skills are divided into two types THE DEVELOPING SELF
○​ Oral language Skills: vocabulary, syntax,
narrative structure, and the understanding The Self Concept and Cognitive Development
that language is used to communicate ●​ Self-Concept: our complete understanding of our
○​ Specific Phonological Skills: help in skills and characteristics
decoding the printed word ●​ It is "a mental interpretation . . . a set of
explanations and assessments about oneself" that
Media and Cognition influences our self-perception and shapes our
●​ Preschool-age children understand the symbolic behavior
nature of television and can imitate behaviors
they see Changes in Self-Definition: The 5 to 7 Shift
●​ TV exposure in early childhood is negatively linked ●​ Self Definition: cluster of characteristics used to
to academic outcomes but not all TV exposure is describe oneself.
bad ○​ The age range when this usually happens is
●​ Cognitive improvements can arise from around 5 to 7 years old, demonstrating the
high-quality children's programming development of self-concept and
improvements in cognitive skills.
EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION ○​ Real Self: one's true self
○​ Ideal Self: the person one aspires to become
Types of Preschools
●​ The Montessori Method Cultural Differences in Self-Definition
○​ Based on the natural intelligence of children ●​ Culture helps shape the understanding of the self
○​ Involves rational, spiritual, and empirical ●​ Parents pass down cultural ideas about
elements self-definition through everyday conversations
○​ Emphasizes children learning independently ●​ Children absorb these cultural styles as young as
at their own pace with appropriate materials age 3 or 4, with differences increasing as they get
and self-chosen tasks older
●​ The Reggio Emilia Approach ●​ Children from cultures valuing autonomy and
○​ Less formal model than Montessori self-expression tend to draw themselves larger,
○​ Teachers help children explore interests while those from cultures emphasizing
through words, movement, play, and music relatedness draw themselves smaller
○​ Learning is purposeful but less structured
than Montessori Self Esteem – judgment children make about their
overall worth; based on their growing cognitive ability
Compensatory Preschool Programs to define and describe themselves
●​ Compensatory preschool programs help ●​ Developmental Changes in Self-Esteem
unprepared children catch up and get ready for ○​ Children typically do not discuss the idea of
school self-worth until they are around 8 years old
●​ Early childhood educators focus on developing ○​ Younger children demonstrate through their
the whole child, aiming to improve cognitive, actions that they possess self-worth
physical, social, and emotional skills ●​ Most young children exhibit overly high levels of
self-esteem, despite individual variations
The Child in Kindergarten ●​ Their self-perception is not grounded in actuality
●​ Many 5-year-olds attend kindergarten, with an ●​ One contributing factor is that self-esteem is
increasing number spending a full day in school influenced, to some extent, by the responses they
●​ Full-day kindergarten has been associated with receive from others, as adults typically offer
small to moderate increases in reading and math favorable and unchallenging feedback
skills compared to a half-day schedule, but these ●​ Contingent Self-Esteem
differences disappear by the end of third grade ○​ The “Helpless” Pattern
●​ The early preparation a child receives before ○​ If a child is praised for hard work and fails, it
kindergarten predicts reading achievement and implies she didn't try hard enough,
school success motivating her to work harder next time
○​ If praised for being smart and she fails, the
implication shifts to her no longer being

6 | @studywithky
 smart, potentially stripping away motivation ●​ Gender Differences: psychological or behavioral
to work hard differences between males and females
●​ Children with noncontingent self-esteem tend to ○​ A controversial area of psychology
attribute failure or disappointment to external ○​ Few measurable differences exist between
factors or the need to try harder baby boys and girls
●​ Children who believe in their ability to succeed ●​ Although some gender differences become more
when they try and enjoy challenges tend to have apparent after age 3, boys and girls generally
parents who praise their efforts and provide remain more alike than different
specific feedback rather than generic praise ●​ Gender Roles: behaviors, interests, attitudes,
skills, and traits that a society deems suitable for
Regulating Emotions – capacity to manage or each gender vary between males and females
control one's emotions ●​ Gender-Typing: process of socialization involves
●​ A crucial developmental milestone in early children learning the appropriate gender roles at
childhood a young age
●​ Self-regulation of emotions assists children in ●​ Gender Stereotypes: preconceived
directing their actions and adapting their generalizations about male or female behavior
reactions to align with societal norms
●​ Culture also is an influence Perspectives on Gender Development
Biological Approach
Understanding Emotions ●​ Argues that the differences we see between boys
●​ Children's emotional understanding seems to and girls are influenced by biological aspects of
develop in a structured and hierarchical manner development
○​ By age 5, they grasp the public aspects of ●​ This includes brain anatomy, genes, prenatal
emotions hormonal exposure, environmental experiences,
○​ They begin to understand what triggers and the activating effects of puberty
others' feelings and how emotions manifest ●​
in others, as well as the potential for recalling Evolutionary Approach
past events to elicit emotions again ●​ Sees gendered behavior as biologically influenced
●​ Understanding Emotions Directed toward the ●​ Children’s gender roles underlie the evolved
Self mating and child-rearing strategies of adult
○​ Social Emotions: involve comparing oneself males and females from this controversial
or one's actions to social standards perspective
○​ They include guilt, shame, and pride ●​ Theory of Sexual Selection: proposed the idea
○​ Develop by age 3 as children gain that gender roles emerged as a result of the
self-awareness and accept parental standards, different reproductive needs of men and women
requiring consideration of others'
perspectives Psychoanalytic Approach
●​ Acquisition of gender identity.
Erikson’s Initiative vs. Guilt ●​ Identification: mechanism through which a
●​ Third stage of psychosocial development young child internalizes attributes, beliefs,
identified by Erik Erikson attitudes, values, and behaviors of the parent of
●​ Focuses on addressing contradictory emotions the same sex
about oneself
●​ Initiative vs. Guilt: involves children managing Cognitive Approach
the desire to pursue objectives while grappling ●​ Kohlberg’s Cognitive-Developmental Theory:
with hesitations about doing so understanding of gender comes before
●​ This conflict represents a split between two displaying gender-specific actions.
aspects of the personality ○​ Children actively seek gender cues and then
○​ One is childlike, full of excitement and a drive adopt behaviors aligned with their perceived
to experiment gender
○​ The other is maturing, always assessing the ○​ Gender Constancy
appropriateness of motives and actions ■​ Child realizes that their gender will always
be the same and then adopts behaviors
GENDER appropriate to their gender
■​ Gender constancy involves developing
Gender Identity — being conscious of whether one is gender identity, stability, and consistency
female or male and understanding its implications in ○​ Gender Identity
one's origin ■​ Around the ages of 2 to 3
●​ A significant part of forming one's self-concept

7 | @studywithky
 ■​ Individuals usually become aware of their
SMILANSKY’S STAGES OF PLAY
own gender as well as that of others
○​ Gender Stability Functional Play The simplest level
■​ The concept that gender does not
Sometimes called locomotor play
change
■​ At this stage, children make gender Consists of repeated practice in large
judgments based on superficial muscular movements, such as rolling
appearances and stereotypical behaviors. a ball

○​ Gender Consistency
Constructive The second level
■​ Typically between the ages of 3 and 7 Play
■​ They come to realize that a girl is still a girl Also called object play
even if she has a short haircut and plays
The use of objects or materials to
with trucks, and a boy is still a boy even if make something, such as a house of
he has long hair and earrings blocks or a crayon drawing
●​ Gender-Schema Theory
Dramatic Play The third level
○​ Suggests that children actively absorb
knowledge about gender from their Also called pretend play, fantasy
environment before displaying gender-typed play, or imaginative play
behavior
Involves imaginary objects, actions,
○​ Places more emphasis on the influence of or roles
culture
●​ Social Learning Approach Formal Games Rules: organized games with known
○​ Developed by Walter Mischel with Rules procedures and penalties, such as
foursquare and freeze tag
○​ Children learn gender roles through imitating
and being rewarded for gender-appropriate
behavior, as well as direct teaching by parents The Social Dimension of Play
and other adults ●​ Developed by Mildred B. Parten
●​ Social Cognitive Theory ●​ Identified six types of play
○​ Developed by Albert Bandura ●​ Observed that as children grow older, their play
○​ Suggests that through socialization, children becomes more social, involving increased
acquire gender roles interaction and cooperation

Influences on Gender Development PARTEN’S DIMENSIONS OF PLAY

●​ Family Influences: experiences typically reinforce
gender-typical attitudes, making it challenging to Unoccupied 0-3m Child is strictly observing
Behavior others
separate genetic influence from environmental
impact Characterized by making
●​ Peer Influences seemingly random
○​ In early childhood, the peer group movements
significantly influences gender-typing
Onlooker 2-3y Child watches others play
○​ Preschoolers often play in sex-segregated Behavior but does not engage
groups reinforcing gender-typed behavior
●​ Cultural Influences Child may ask questions
about play to learn more
○​ Children's books have long perpetuated about it
gender stereotypes
○​ There are almost twice as many male main Solitary 3m-2y Child plays alone
characters as female Independent
Play They engage in activities
○​ There is also greater male representation in that are self-directed
book titles, and significant gender
stereotyping Parallel Play 2½-4y Child plays separately but
close to others

PLAY Helps children further

develop social skills
Cognitive Levels of Play
●​ Children who participate in play that includes Associative Play 3-4y Child begins to develop
social skills through playing
imaginary people or situations with others
●​ It is one of the four levels of play identified by
Smilansky as demonstrating greater cognitive Children start to collaborate
and share toys and resources
complexity in a more deliberate way

8 | @studywithky
 ●​ Families at high risk for child behavior issues
Cooperative or 4y+ Child begins to play with
Organized others in a way that is improved childhood outcomes through early
Supplementary directed toward a common intervention with parenting support services
Play goal

Children engage in BAUMRIND’S PARENTING STYLES

imaginative or pretend play
where they take on different Authoritarian Focuses on authority and
roles compliance

Permissive Emphasizes self-expression and

Gender and Play
self-regulation
●​ Gender Segregation: tendency to select
playmates of one’s own gender Authoritative Values a child's uniqueness while
●​ Culture and Play also aiming to teach social principles
○​ Culture influences play through peer
Neglectful or Introduced by Eleanor Maccoby and
interactions Uninvolved John Martin
○​ Children may face rejection if their behavior
contradicts cultural values, while those Parents prioritize their needs over
those of the child, often due to stress
embodying these values are likely to be or depression
accepted

PARENTING

Forms of Discipline
●​ Discipline: methods of molding character and of
teaching self-control and acceptable behavior
●​ Parents may discipline children to discourage Special Behavioral Concerns
unwanted behavior, but children often gain more ●​ Parents, caregivers, and teachers of preschool
from receiving positive reinforcement for good children are concerned about promoting
behavior altruism, controlling aggression, and addressing
●​ External Reinforcements: may be tangible fears at this stage
(treats, more playtime) or intangible (a smile, a ●​ Prosocial Behavior: any voluntary behavior
word of praise, or a special privilege) intended to help others
●​ Internal Reinforcement: a sense of pleasure or ●​ Altruism
accomplishment ○​ Selfless acts that are driven by genuine
●​ Corporal Punishment: using physical force with concern for others, without expecting
the aim of causing discomfort but not harm in anything in return
order to modify or regulate behavior. ○​ They may involve making sacrifices or
●​ Inductive Reasoning: techniques for maintaining denying oneself
discipline that aim to encourage positive behavior
by appealing to a child's understanding of Types of Aggression
fairness and logic ●​ Instrumental Aggression: using force or hostility
●​ Power Assertion: intended to deter unwanted as a means to achieve an objective is the most
behavior through the use of physical or verbal prevalent form of aggression in young children.
methods to enforce parental authority ●​ Overt (Direct) Aggression: aggression that is
●​ Withdrawal of Love: involves ignoring, isolating, openly directed at its target
or showing dislike for a child ●​ Relational Aggression: aggression is directed
towards harming or disrupting another
Parenting Styles individual's relationships, reputation, or mental
●​ Developed by Diana Baumrind health
●​ Identified three types of parenting styles and
described typical behavior patterns of children Defining Aggression and Fear
raised according to each ●​ Temperament influences child aggression
●​ Research based on Baumrind’s work has ●​ Children who exhibit strong emotions and
consistently supported the benefits of struggle with self-regulation, or have challenging
authoritative parenting temperaments, often display their anger through
●​ It is crucial to identify and promote positive aggressive behavior
parenting practices to prevent early-onset ●​ Fearfulness
problem behavior ○​ Passing fears are common in early childhood

9 | @studywithky
 ○​ Young children often fear animals, including
dogs, snakes, and spiders
○​ By age 6, they tend to fear the dark,
thunderstorms, doctors, and imaginary
creatures.

Gender Differences in Aggression

●​ Aggressiveness stands out as a deviation from the
idea that boys and girls are generally more alike
than dissimilar
●​ This distinction between genders becomes
evident by the time children are 2 years old
●​ Girls typically engage in relational aggression
while boys exhibit instrumental aggression

RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHER CHILDREN

Sibling Relationship
●​ Siblings often argue over property rights or
attention from their parents
●​ These disputes provide children with
opportunities to learn to stand up for their
principles and negotiate disagreements
●​ The nature of the relationship ensures that the
interactions will continue

The Only Child

●​ The Stereotype that Only Child’s are selfish,
spoiled, and lonely are considered false
●​ In terms of academic and career success, only
children tend to perform slightly better than
those with siblings
●​ They are often more motivated to achieve,
possess slightly higher self-esteem, and do not
differ in emotional adjustment, sociability, or
popularity

Playmates and Friends

●​ Friendships develop alongside people's growth
●​ Toddlers play near each other, but around age 3
children start to form friendships
●​ Interactions with casual playmates teach young
children about getting along with others,
problem-solving in relationships, empathy, and
diverse behaviors
●​ They also learn about moral values, gender roles,
and practice adult roles

REFERENCES
Papalia, D., & Martorell, G. (2015). Experience human
development (13th ed.). McGraw Hill Education.
Santrock, J. W. (2019). Life-span development (17th ed.).
McGraw-Hill Education.

10 | @studywithky
 06 – Middle Childhood Development
DVPSY | 2024 - 2025 | NOT FOR SALE

●​ Nutritionists recommend a varied diet, including

plenty of grains, fruits, and vegetables, and high
OUTLINE
1.​ Physical Development levels of complex carbohydrates
a.​ Aspects of Physical ●​ They should consume less than 10% of their
Development calories from added sugars
b.​ Health, Fitness, and Safety ●​ As children grow older, pressures and
2.​ Cognitive Development opportunities for unhealthy eating increase
a.​ Piagetian Approach ●​ Most children get almost a third of their calories
b.​ Information-Processing
through snacks
Approach
c.​ Psychometric Approach
d.​ Language and Literacy Sleep and Sleep Problems
e.​ The Child in School ●​ Decline from 12.5 hours a day to 10 hours a day
f.​ Educating Children with Special ●​ There is also a significant rise in sleep problems
Needs from ages 6-17
3.​ Psychosocial Development ●​ Factors at play include exposure to media
a.​ The Developing Self
screens, physical inactivity, secondhand smoke,
b.​ The Child in the Family
c.​ The Child in the Peer Group poor housing, vandalism, and lack of parks /
d.​ Mental Health playgrounds
●​ Presence of television in the bedroom can also be
highly disruptive
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT ●​ Persistent snoring (at least 3 times a week) may
indicate sleep-disordered breathing (SDB), which
is linked to behavioral and learning difficulties
ASPECTS OF PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
●​ Sleep problems are associated with adjustment
problems, issues in academic performance, and
Height and Weight
later risk of obesity / overweight
●​ Growth slows considerably compared to early
childhood
Brain Development
●​ Main focus is on fine-tuning the physical
●​ Changes in brain can be characterized as
developments achieved in early childhood
resulting in faster, more efficient information
●​ Considerable growth still takes place between
processing and an increased ability to ignore
ages 6 to 11, although it may not be obvious
distractions
●​ By age 11, many are now beginning to resemble
●​ Gray Matter
adults
○​ Volume shows a U-shaped trajectory
●​ Girls retain more fatty tissue compared to boys
○​ Decrease in volume reflects pruning of
unused dendrites which increase efficiency
Tooth Development and Dental Care
○​ Its amount in the frontal cortex is likely linked
●​ Tooth decay remains one of the most common
with differences in IQ
chronic untreated conditions in childhood in the
○​ Generally, gray matter volume peaks earlier in
United State
girls than in boys
●​ In the Philippines. A survey revealed that 97% 6
■​ Caudate – age 7 in girls and age 10 in
year olds had dental caries, and 85% had
boys
odontogenic infection
■​ Parietal lobes – age 11
●​ Untreated dental caries can result in pain,
■​ Temporal lobes – age 14
difficulties chewing food, missed school,
■​ It takes longer in the cerebellum
problems with concentration, and discomfort
●​ Cortex
with appearance
○​ Children’s brains also show changes in the
thickness of the cortex
Nutrition
○​ Peaks in late childhood to early adolescence
●​ Recommended calories per day for school
○​ Generally, gray matter volume peaks 1 to 2
children between 9-13 range from 1,400 to 2.600,
years earlier in girls than in boys
depending on gender and activity level
●​ White Matter
●​ Boys tend to consume more calories compared to
○​ Loss of gray matter is balanced by a steady
girls due to fast metabolism and higher activity
increase in white matter
level
○​ Connections between neurons thicken and
myelinate in the frontal lobes toward the rear

1 | @studywithky
 ○​ Growth in connections between the temporal ●​ May develop into eating disorders
and parietal lobes occur at age 6-13 ●​ Playing with physically unrealistic dolls may be an
○​ Changes in density in the corpus callosum influence in that direction
may also underlie the advances seen in fine
motor control in late childhood Causes of Obesity
●​ Can result from an inherited tendency aggravated
Motor Development and Physical Activity by too little exercise
●​ Children are more likely to be overweight if they
have overweight family members
●​ Inactivity is also a major factor in the rise in
overweight children
●​ Preadolescent girls, children with disabilities,
children who live in public housing, and children
in unsafe neighborhoods with no facilities for
outdoor exercise are most likely to be sedentary

Impact of Overweight
●​ Children commonly have medical problems,
including high blood pressure, high cholesterol,
●​ Most children in developing countries go to work, and high insulin levels
minimizing time for play, resulting to growth ●​ Overweight children are also at risk for behavior
stunts problems, depression, low self-esteem, and falling
●​ In the US, school-age children now spend less behind in physical and social functioning
time on outdoor activities ●​ Overweight children are 5x more likely to be
●​ As children develop, gross and fine motor skills obese in adulthood
gradually develop ●​ They are at risk for problems in adulthood with
●​ Recess hypertension, heart disease, orthopedic problems,
○​ Games children tend to play at recess tend to diabetes, and more
be informal
○​ Most recess activity involves socializing with Other Medical Conditions
peers ●​ Acute Medical Conditions: occasional, short-term
■​ Boys favor physically active games conditions such as infections and warts are
■​ Girls favors games that include verbal common
expression or counting aloud ●​ Chronic Medical Conditions: illnesses or
○​ Younger children spend more time running impairments that persis for at least 3 months
and chasing each other ○​ Asthma: chronic, allergy-based respiratory
○​ About 10 percent of schoolchildren’s free play disease characterized by sudden attacks of
in the early grades, peaking in middle coughing, wheezing, and difficulty breathing
childhood, consists of rough-and-tumble play ■​ Prevalence has leveled off in developed
●​ Organized Sports countries
○​ 6-9 year olds need more flexible rules, shorter ■​ Increasing in developing countries
instruction time, and more free time for ■​ Causes include presence of a gene
practice variant, low level of vitamin D, smoke
○​ Older children are better able to process exposure, and pollution
instruction and learn team strategies ○​ Diabetes: characterized by high levels of
glucose in the blood as a result of defective
HEALTH, FITNESS, AND SAFETY insulin production, action, or both
■​ Type I: insulin deficiency that occurs
Obesity when insulin-producing cells in the
●​ Overweight: body mass index between 85th-95th pancreas are destroyed (highly genetic)
percentile ■​ Type II: insulin resistance and used to be
●​ Obesity: body mass index over the 95th found mainly in overweight and older
percentile adults
●​ A major health issue for children in most ●​ Childhood hypertension
countries, more are underweight in some ●​ Accidental Injuries
developing countries

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Body Image
●​ Become important in middle childhood,
especially in girls PIAGETIAN APPROACH

2 | @studywithky
 ○​ Piaget argued that children at this stage
Concrete Operational Stage — stage in cognitive develop inductive reasoning while deductive
development characterized by the use of mental reasoning develops at adolescence
operations ○​ Research showed that piaget underestimated
●​ At this stage, children have already mastered the the abilities of children
“concrete” world ●​ Conservation: knowing that a quantity doesn't
●​ Children can now think logically because they can change if it's been altered
take multiple aspects of a situation into account ○​ Achieved through 3 areas
●​ Mental operations such as reasoning are used to ■​ Identity: belief that an object will remain
solve concrete problems the same even though it’s in a different
●​ Thinking is still limited to real situations rather shape
than theoretical / abstract ■​ Reversibility: ability to reverse
■​ Decenter: ability to look at more than 1
Cognitive Advancements in Cognitive Abilities aspect of 2 objects at once
●​ Spatial Relationships ○​ It is not until age 8-9 that children correctly
○​ Children are better able to understand spatial solve conservation of weight tasks
relations ○​ Children before the age of 12 are unable to
○​ This allows them to interpret maps, estimate solve conservation tasks involving volume
time to get from one place to another, and ●​ Number and Mathematics
remember routes / landmarks ○​ By age 6-7, many children can count in their
○​ Children are more easily able to navigate the heads
physical environment with which they have ○​ By age 9, most children can count up and
experience down
○​ Can be further improved through training ○​ Children also become more adept at solving
●​ Causality simple story problems
○​ Can assess cause and effect better than early ○​ Ability to estimate progresses with age
childhood ■​ Kindergartners tend to exaggerate the
○​ As children learn more about the world, their distance between low numbers and
growing knowledge informs the quality of exaggerate between high numbers
their reasoning ■​ Most second graders produce number
●​ Categorization lines that are more evenly spaced
○​ Seriation: arranging objects in a series ■​ 2nd, 4th, and 6th graders show a similar
according to one or more dimensions progression in producing number line
■​ Children become increasingly better at from 0-1,000
seriation for dimensions such as time,
length, or color INFORMATION-PROCESSING APPROACH
■​ Children’s later mathematical
achievements are dependent on early Executive Function — conscious control of thoughts,
numeracy emotions, and actions to accomplish goals or solve
■​ Difficulties in seriation predict later problems
learning disabilities in mathematics ●​ As children move through the school years, they
○​ Transitive Inference: understanding the gradually progress in the abilities to regulate and
relationship between 2 objects by knowing sustain attention, process and retain information,
the relationship of each to a 3rd object and plan and monitor their behavior
■​ Early sign of making an educated guess ●​ School-age children also understand more about
using other sources of information how memory works, which enables them to plan
■​ Recent studies showed that children as and use strategies to help them remember
young as 15 months have some limited (metacognition)
ability to reason in this fashion
○​ Class Inclusion: ability to see the relationship Development of Executive Function
between a whole and its parts, and to ●​ The prefrontal cortex shows significant
understand the categories within a whole development during this period
●​ Inductive and Deductive Reasoning ●​ As unneeded synapses prune away and pathways
○​ Inductive Reasoning: making observations become myelinated, processing speed improves
then drawing conclusions about the class as a dramatically
whole ●​ Such developments increases the amount of
○​ Deductive Reasoning: starts with a general information children can keep in working
statement and applies it to particular memory
members of a class

3 | @studywithky
●​ The slow rate of development in the frontal cortex ○​ For ages 6-16
make environmental influences exert a relatively ○​ Measures verbal and performance abilities,
large effect yielding separate scores for each as well as a
●​ High-quality family environments can promote total score (verbal and nonverbal)
the development of executive functioning ○​ Separate subtest scores pinpoint a child’s
●​ Children with robust language skills do well with strengths and help diagnose specific
executive function while those with delays have problems
difficulty ●​ Otis-Lennon School Ability Test (OLSAT8)
○​ Has levels for kindergarten to 12th grade
Selective Attention ○​ Children are asked to classify items, show an
●​ School-age children can concentrate longer than understanding of verbal and numerical
younger children concepts, display general information, and
●​ They can focus on the information they need and follow directions (verbal only)
want while screening out irrelevant information ○​ Separate scores for verbal comprehension,
●​ Growth in selective attention may hinge on the verbal reasoning, pictorial reasoning, figural
executive skill of inhibitory control reasoning, and quantitative reasoning can
identify specific strengths and weaknesses
Working Memory
●​ Increases greatly in middle childhood, laying the The IQ Controversy
foundation for a wide range of cognitive skills ●​ Scores on IQ tests taken during middle school are
●​ Between ages 6-10, there are improvements in fairly good predictors of school achievement,
processing speed and storage capacity especially for highly verbal children
●​ Capacity of child’s working memory directly ●​ IQ at age 11 even has been found to predict length
affects academic success of life, functional independence late in life, and
●​ Training programs have shown to be associated the presence or absence of dementia
with changes in brain activity, particularly in the ●​ Critics claim that the tests underestimate the
frontal and parity cortex, basal ganglia, and intelligence of children who are in ill health or do
dopamine receptor density not do well on tests
●​ This is especially true for visuospatial working ○​ IQ tests do not directly measure native ability
memory ○​ Instead, they infer intelligence from what
children already know (school performance
Development of Memory Strategies only)
●​ Mnemonic Device: associating information with ●​ Because tests are timed, they equate intelligence
something that is easier to remember with speed
●​ External Memory Aids: mnemonic strategies ●​ Variables such as working memory and
using something outside the person self-control have been found to be important in
●​ Rehearsal: repetition predicting academic achievement
●​ Organization: mentally placing information into
categories Influences on Intelligence
●​ Elaboration: associating items with something ●​ Brain Development
else, such as an imagined scene or play ○​ Intelligence is highly heritable, and one
●​ Metamemory: knowledge of and reflection about mechanism of genetic action may be vi brain
memory processes development and structure
○​ By 3rd grade, children know that some people ○​ Brain imaging research shows a moderate
remember better than others and that some correlation between brain size / amount of
things are easier to remember than others gray matter and general intelligence
○​ They become more proficient in their use of ○​ Development changes found in cortical
memory strategies thickness are also strongly influenced by
○​ Metamemory abilities continue to progress genes
through adolescence ■​ Research has found that intelligence is
○​ Children’s understanding about their own highest in those children whose cortex
minds is related to their understanding of thins most quickly or whose white matter
others’ minds develops most rapidly
○​ Efficiency and integration of brain processes
PSYCHOMETRIC APPROACH (global and specific) are associated with
intellectual functioning
Individual Intelligence Tests ●​ Schooling
●​ Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children ○​ Schooling increases tested intelligence
(WISC-IV)

4 | @studywithky
 ○​ Recent meta-analysis suggests the effect of ○​ Tacit Knowledge: information that is not
education on intelligence ranges from 1 to 5 formally taught or openly expressed but is
IQ points per year of schooling necessary to get ahead
○​ However, cognitive gains associated with
schooling do not appear to be general in Other Directions of Intelligence Testing
nature and instead consist of direct gains in ●​ Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children
specific cognitive skills that are then tapped (K-ABC-II)
by IQ tests ○​ Individual test for ages 3-18
○​ Children who are enrolled in schools with an ○​ Designed to evaluate cognitive abilities in
academic focus tend to show greater gains in children with diverse needs and from varying
intellectual performance than children in cultural and linguistic backgrounds
schools with vocational focus ●​ Dynamic Tests
●​ Race/Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Status ○​ Based on Vygotsky’s theories
○​ There is no direct evidence that IQ difference ■​ Static Tests: measure current abilities
among groups are hereditary ■​ Dynamic tests: measure learning
○​ Many inequalities in environment and processes
circumstances can affect self-esteem, ○​ Emphasize potential rather than present
motivation, and academic performance achievement
○​ Contain items up to 2 years above child’s
Theories of Intelligence current level of competence
●​ Gardner’s Theory of Intelligence ○​ Examiners help child when necessary by
asking leading questions, giving examples /
demonstrations, and offering feedback
○​ Test itself is a learning situation

LANGUAGE AND LITERACY

Vocabulary, Grammar, and Syntax

●​ Vocabulary continues to grow and children use
increasingly precise verbs
○​ Identified eight independent kinds of ●​ They learn that certain words have more than one
intelligence meaning, and can tell from the context which
■​ Conventional intelligence tests tap only meaning is intended
three intelligences ●​ Simile and metaphors become increasingly
■​ Linguistic, logical-mathematical, and, to common
some extent, spatial ●​ Children’s understanding of rules of syntax
○​ Argued that these intelligences are distinct become more sophisticated with age
from each other and that high intelligence in ○​ They now focus on the meaning of the
one area does not necessarily accompany sentence as a whole rather than word order
high intelligence in any of the others ○​ Older children use more subordinate clauses
○​ Gardner assessed each intelligence by
observing and not with tests Pragmatics — social context of language
○​ Critics argued that these were more ●​ Good conversationalists probe by asking
accurately labeled as talents and questioned questions before introducing a topic with which
his criteria for defining separate intelligences the other person may not be familiar
●​ Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence ●​ They quickly recognize a breakdown in
○​ Focuses on the processes involved in communication and do something to repair it
intelligent behavior ○​ Boys tend to use more controlling
■​ Componential Element: analytic; how statements, negative interruptions, and
people process information competitive statements
■​ Experiential Element: creative; how ○​ Girls phrase their remarks in a more tentative,
people approach novel tasks conciliatory way and are more polite and
■​ Contextual Element: practical; how cooperative
people adapt to their environment ●​ Most 6 year olds can retell plot of a short book,
○​ Sternberg Triarchic Abilities Test (STAT) movie, or television show
seeks to measure each aspect via ●​ By 7-8 years old, children’s stories become longer
multiple-choice and essay questions and more complex
○​ 3 domains are assessed: verbal, quantitative,
and figural (spatial) Second-Language Learning

5 | @studywithky
●​ Some schools use an english-immersion ○​ Gender differences tend to become more
approach (ESL) to immerse language-minority prominent in high school
children in english ○​ Factors including early experience, biological
●​ Other schools have adopted bilingual education differences, and cultural expectations, may
●​ A less common approach is two-way help explain these differences
(dual-language) learning where children learn ●​ Parenting Practices
together in their own or each other’s language ○​ Has a positive effect on academic
●​ Valuing languages equally reinforces self-esteem achievement
and improves school performance ○​ Parental expectations
○​ School involvement
Becoming Literate: Reading and Writing ●​ Socioeconomic Status
●​ Decoding: process of phonetic analysis by which ○​ Can be a powerful factor in educational
a printed word in converted to spoken form achievement through its influence on family
before retrieval from long-term memory atmosphere, choice of neighborhood,
○​ Child must be able to understand that a word parenting practices, and parents’
is composed of different sounds expectations for children
○​ Child must be able to match the visual ○​ Socioeconomic status may also influence
features of letters and the phonemes and brain development itself
remember which ones go together ●​ Peer Acceptance
○​ Only when these skills are accomplished can ○​ Children who are disliked by their peers tend
children begin to read to do poorly in school
●​ Reading ○​ Teachers can serve as buffers against some of
○​ Phonetic (code-emphasis) Approach: the effects of negative peer interactions
emphasizes decoding of unfamiliar words ●​ Educational Methods
○​ Whole-Language Approach: emphasizes ○​ The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001
visual retrieval and the use of contextual cues ○​ The only real solution to a high failure rate is
■​ Based on the belief that children can to identify at-risk students early and intervene
learn to read and write naturally before they fai
■​ Research has found little support for its ●​ Class Size
claims ●​ Alternative Educational Models
○​ Metacognition: awareness of one’s own ●​ Media Use
mental processes
■​ Can help children monitor their EDUCATING CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS
understanding of what they read and
develop strategies to address challenges Children with Learning Disabilities
●​ Writing ●​ Intellectual Disability
○​ Goes hand in hand with the development of ○​ Indicated by an IQ of about 70 or less
reading ○​ Coupled with a deficiency in age appropriate
○​ Older preschoolers begin using letters, adaptive behavior
numbers, and letterlike shapes as symbols to ○​ Appear before age 18
represent words or parts of words ●​ Learning Disabilities
○​ Writing requires child to judge independently ○​ Dyslexia: reading achievement is
whether the communicative goal has been substantially lower than predicted by IQ or
met age; most commonly diagnosed LD
○​ Often have near-average to
THE CHILD IN SCHOOL higher-than-average intelligence and normal
vision and hearing, but they seem to have
Influences on School Achievement trouble processing sensory information
●​ Self-Efficacy Beliefs ●​ Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
○​ Children with high self-efficacy are more likely ○​ Most common mental disorder in childhood
to succeed ○​ Chronic condition usually marked by
○​ ↑ self-efficacy = ↑motivation persistent inattention, distractibility,
●​ Gender impulsivity, and low tolerance for frustration
○​ Girls tend to do better in school compared to ○​ Frontal cortex show delays in development
boys ○​ Motor cortex is the only area that matures
○​ Some research has suggested that boys faster than normal
outperform girls on science and math but ○​ Often managed with drugs, sometimes
other research has not found a gender gap combined with behavioral therapy,

6 | @studywithky
 counseling, training in social skills, and special
classroom placement Industry vs. Inferiority
●​ 4th stage of psychosocial development
Gifted Children ●​ Children must learn the productive skills their
●​ High general intelligence as shown by an IQ score culture requires or face feelings of inferiority
of 130 or higher ●​ Inability to obtain the praise of adults or peers in
●​ Tends to exclude highly creative children, children their lives could lead to feelings of low self-worth
from minority groups, and children with specific ●​ Parents strongly influence a child’s beliefs about
aptitudes competence and, consequently, the amount of
●​ Causes effort children put into different activities
○​ Enriched family environments with
intellectual or artistic stimulation Emotional Growth
○​ Strong motivation and years of rigorous ●​ As children grow and become exposed to society,
training they become more aware of their own and other
●​ Defining and Measuring Creativity people’s feelings
○​ Ability to see things in a new light ●​ They can better regulate or control their emotions
○​ Produce something never seen before or to and can respond to others; emotional distress
discern problems others fail to recognize and ●​ Children also learn what makes them angry,
find new and unusual solutions fearful, or sad, and how other people may react to
○​ Kinds of Thinking by Guilford (1986) displays of these emotions
■​ Convergent thinking: seeks a single ●​ They also start to understand conflicting
correct answer emotions (love-hate)
■​ Divergent thinking: coming up with a ●​ By 7-8, children are typically aware of feeling
wide array of fresh possibilities shame and pride
■​ Tests of creativity call for divergent ●​ Cultural values affect the expression and
thinking experience of these emotions
●​ Educating Gifted Children ○​ US – pride
○​ Enrichment programs: deepen students’ ○​ Japanese – shame
knowledge and skills through extra classroom ○​ Korean – guilt
activities, research projects, field trips, or ●​ Parents who acknowledge their children’s
expert coaching feelings of distress and help them focus on
○​ Acceleration programs: speed up their solving the root problem foster empathy,
education through early school entrance prosocial development, and social skills
○​ Moderate acceleration does not seem to harm ●​ Emotion Regulation: voluntary control of
social adjustment emotions, attention, and behavior
○​ People who took advanced placement ○​ Children tend to become more empathic and
courses in high school found that they more inclined to prosocial behavior in middle
ultimately achieved more than equally gifted childhood
young people who did not take AP courses ○​ Associated with prefrontal activation in
children as young as 4 years of age
○​ Prosocial children tend to act appropriately in
PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
social situations, to be relatively free from
negative emotion, and to cope with problems
THE DEVELOPING SELF constructively

Representational Systems THE CHILD IN THE FAMILY

●​ 3rd stage of self-definition
●​ Characterized by breadth, balance, and the Parenting Issues
integration and assessment of various aspects of ●​ Middle childhood can communicate well so we
self coregulate
●​ Children at this stage have outgrown their
all-or-nothing self definition Coregulation – transitional stage in the control of
●​ They recognize that they can be smart in certain behavior in which parents exercise general
subjects and dumb in others supervision and children exercise
●​ They can compare their real and ideal self, and moment-to-moment self-regulation
can judge how well they measure up to social ●​ Parents might now rely less on direct intervention
standards in comparison to others and more on discussion with their child
●​ All these changes contribute to the development ●​ The amount of autonomy parents provide affects
of self-esteem, her assessment of her global how children feel about them
self-worth

7 | @studywithky
●​ How children respond to parents’ attempts to ●​ As children begin to move away from parental
regulate their behavior is affected by the overall influence, peer groups open new perspectives
relationship between parent and child ●​ They help children learn how to adjust their needs
●​ Children are more apt to follow their parents’ and desires to those of others
wishes when they believe the parents are fair and ●​ In comparing themselves to others their age,
concerned about their welfare children can gauge their abilities and gain a
●​ Parents of school-age children are more likely to clearer sense of self-efficacy
use inductive techniques ●​ Conformity becomes unhealthy when it becomes
destructive or prompts young people to act
Punishment as Discipline against their better judgment
●​ Physical punishment is associated with negative ●​ Children whose social groups have a norm of
outcomes for children inclusion are less likely to show prejudiced
●​ Parents who continue to spank their children past behavior
10 years tend to have worse relationships with
their children in adolescence Gender and Peer Groups
●​ Group of boys more consistently pursue
Effects of Family Conflicts gender-typed activities
●​ Internalizing Behaviors: anxiety, fearfulness, and ●​ Girls are more likely to engage in cross-gender
depression (anger turned inward) activities
●​ Externalizing Behaviors: aggression, fighting, ●​ Boys play in large groups with leadership
disobedience, and hostility (anger turned hierarchies and engage in more competitive and
outward) rough-and-tumble play
●​ If family conflict resolution is constructive, it can ●​ Girls have more intimate conversations
help children see the need for rules and standards characterized by prosocial interactions and shared
confidences
Family Structure ●​ Boys report liking friends high in positive affect
●​ Children who experience more family transitions and low in anxiety; they are not overly concerned
are more likely to have behavior problems and about how empathic their friends are
engage in delinquent behavior ●​ Girls prefer friends high in empathy and
●​ Negative effect of family transitions appears to be optimism, but low in positive affect
stronger if they occur earlier in development and
for boys Why do Children Segregate?
●​ Boys have higher activity levels ans more vigorous
Adjusting to Divorce/Separation play
●​ Very stressful for children as they may not fully ●​ Same-sex peer groups may help children learn
understand what is happening gender-appropriate behaviors and incorporate
●​ Family’s standard of living is likely to drop and gender roles into their self-concept
child’s relationship with noncustodial parent is
likely to suffer Popularity
●​ Remarriage/second divorce can increase stress, ●​ Positive Nomination: liked the most
renewing feelings of loss ●​ Negative Nomination: liked the least
●​ Sociometric Popularity: tally for each child
Sibling Relationships ○​ Sociometrically popular children receive
●​ Having a warm and supportive relationship is many positive nominations and few negative
associated with better adjustment, social nominations
competence, and better emotion regulation ○​ They generally have good cognitive abilities,
●​ Conflict can also be a laboratory of conflict high achievers, good at solving social
resolution problems, kind and help other children, and
●​ High sibling conflict can result to externalizing are assertive without being disruptive or
and internalizing problems aggressive
●​ Sister are higher in sibling intimacy compared to ●​ Rejected: large number of negative nominations
other dyads ●​ Neglected: few nominations of any kind
●​ Negative influence of an older antisocial sibling ●​ Controversial: many positive and negative
on a younger sibling has been limited to nominations
same-sex siblings ●​ Peer rejection has been linked to lower levels of
classroom participation and poor academic
THE CHILD IN THE PEER GROUP achievement

Peer Influence Friendship

8 | @studywithky
 ○​ Children who are at elevated risk of becoming
antisocial adults also tend to be impulsive and
have low IQ
○​ Parents may also not supervise them well or
may be overly punitive / erratic in their care
●​ Generalized Anxiety Disorder: worry about
anything
○​ Those in middle childhood tend to worry
about grades, school performance
○​ They continuously seek approval and need
constant reassurance
●​ Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: repetitive,
intrusive thoughts, compulsive behavior
●​ Childhood Depression: disorder of mood that
goes beyond normal, temporary sadness
○​ Likely to persist into adulthood
●​ School-age children distinguish among best
○​ Tend to come from families with high levels of
friends, good friends, and casual friends based on
parental depression, anxiety, substance abuse,
intimacy and time spent together
or antisocial behavior
●​ Children at this age typically have 3-5 best friends
○​ Often emerges during transition to middle
but usually play with 1-2 at a time
school, and may be related to stiffer academic
●​ Girls care less about many friends while boys do
pressures, weak self-efficacy beliefs, and lack
of personal investment in academic success
Aggression and Bullying
●​ After age 6-7, most children become less
Protective Factors
aggressive as they grow less egocentric, more
●​ Resilience
empathic, cooperative, and better able to
●​ Protective genes
communicate
●​ Child’s temperament or personality
●​ Instrumental Aggression: hallmark of preschool
●​ Compensating experiences
period
●​ Hostile Aggression: aggression intended to hurt
another person increases in middle childhood
(often verbal than physical) REFERENCES
Papalia, D., & Martorell, G. (2015). Experience human
○​ Boys – more direct
development (13th ed.). McGraw Hill Education.
○​ Girls – indirect
Santrock, J. W. (2019). Life-span development (17th ed.).
●​ Relational Aggression: aggression aimed to McGraw-Hill Education.
affect social status
●​ Hostile Attribution Bias: tendency to perceive
others as trying to hurt one and to strike out in
retaliation or self-defense
●​ Patterns of bullying and victimization may
become established as early as kindergarten
●​ Frequency also increases from elementary to
middle school and declines in high school

MENTAL HEALTH

Common emotional Problems

●​ Disruptive Conduct Disorder: characterized by
temper tantrums and defiant / argumentative
behavior; common among 4-5 year olds,
outgrown by middle school
○​ Oppositional Defiant Disorder: defiance,
disobedience, and hostility toward adult
authority figures lasting at least 6 months
○​ Conduct Disorder: aggressive and antisocial
acts (antisocial personality disorder); common
in adolescent/under 18
○​ Neurological deficits may affect their ability to
feel empathy

9 | @studywithky
 07 – Development in Adolescence
DVPSY | 2024 - 2025 | NOT FOR SALE

OUTLINE
1.​ Physical Development
a.​ Puberty
b.​ The Adolescent Brain
c.​ Physical and Mental Health
2.​ Cognitive Development
a.​ Aspects of Cognitive Maturation
b.​ Educational and Vocational
Issues
3.​ Psychosocial Development
a.​ The Search for Identity
b.​ Sexuality
c.​ Relationships with Family, Peers,
and Adult Society
d.​ Antisocial Behavior and Juvenile
Delinquency

PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT

●​ Adolescence is not a clearly defined physical or

biological category, but rather a social STAGES OF PUBERTY
construction
Adrenarche Occurs between ages 6 and 8
●​ Adolescence offer opportunities for growth in
cognitive and social competence, autonomy, Adrenal glands secrete increasing
self-esteem, and intimacy levels of androgens, most notably
dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)
●​ It is also a time of risk
●​ Psychologists believe the tendency to engage in As DHEA gradually increases, its
risky behaviors may reflect the immaturity of the levels influence the growth of pubic,
axillary (underarm), and facial hair
adolescent brain
It also contributes to faster body
PUBERTY growth, oilier skin, and the
development of body odor

Puberty – process that leads to sexual maturity or Gonadarche Marked by the maturing of the sex
fertility organs which triggers a second
●​ Typically begins at age 8 in girls and age 9 in boys burst of DHEA production
●​ Takes about 3 to 4 years
This triggers the input of estrogen,
which in turn stimulates the growth
How Puberty Begins of female genitals, breasts, and the
●​ Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Gonadal (HPG) development of pubic and
underarm hair.
Activation
○​ Hypothalamus releases elevated levels of In boys, the testes increase the
Gonadotropin Releasing Hormone (GnRH) production of androgens, which
leads to the growth of male genitals,
○​ High levels of GnRH triggers the Pituitary to
muscle mass, and body hair
produce Luteinizing Hormone (LH) /
Follicle-stimulating Hormone (FSH)
○​ In the Gonads… Timing, Signs, and Sequence of Puberty
■​ FSH triggers ova production / menarche and Sexual Maturity
■​ LH triggers the release of testosterone ●​ Sex Characteristics
and androstenedione in boys ○​ Primary Sex Characteristics: organs
●​ HPG activation requires a signal from the CNS in necessary for reproduction (ex. ovaries,
order for the production of LH and FSH to occur vagina, testes, penis)
●​ As hormone levels increase, the adolescent body ○​ Secondary Sex Characteristics: physiological
now undergoes 2 stages of puberty – adrenarche signs of sexual maturation that do not directly
and gonadarche involve sex organs (ex. changes in voice,
breast enlargement, broad shoulders)

1 | @studywithky
 ○​ Changes unfold in a sequence that is much ●​ Effects of early or late maturation are most likely
more consistent than their timing to be negative when adolescents are much more
●​ Signs of Puberty or less developed than peers
○​ Girls
■​ Breasts grow from a conical shape to a THE ADOLESCENT BRAIN
rounded shape
■​ Nipples enlarge and protrude ●​ A steady increase in white matter, nerve fibers
■​ Pubic hair turns from straight to coarse that connect distant portions of the brain, permits
and curly faster information and better communication
○​ Boys across hemispheres
■​ Deepening of voice due to the ○​ Process continues in the frontal lobes
development of the larynx ○​ Occurs early in women than men
■​ Acne is more common ●​ Major spurt in production of gray matter also
■​ Some experience temporary breast occur in the frontal lobes
enlargement ○​ By mid- to late adolescence, young people
●​ The Adolescent Growth Spurt have fewer but stronger, smoother, and more
○​ Rapid increase in height, weight, and muscle effective neuronal connections, making
and bone growth that occurs during puberty cognitive processing more efficient
○​ Girls: begins between ages 9½ and 14½ ●​ Development of the brain starts at the back and
(usually at about 10); reach full height by 15 moves forward
○​ Boys: between 10½ and 16 (usually at 12 or 13); ○​ Subcortical brain areas such as the limbic and
reach full height by 17 reward systems mature earlier
○​ Typically lasts about 2 year ●​ Underdeveloped frontal cortical systems
○​ Young person reaches sexual maturity as ○​ May explain why adolescent tend to seek
soon as it ends thrills and novelty
●​ Signs of Sexual Maturity ○​ May also explain why many of them find it
○​ Spermarche: first ejaculation; principal sign difficult to focus on long-term goals
of sexual maturity in boys ●​ Peers tend to exert a stronger influence in
○​ Menarche: first menstruation (monthly adolescence
shedding of tissues from the lining of the ○​ Result of heightened neurobehavioral
womb) susceptibility to social reward cues
●​ Influences on Pubertal Timing ○​ Concurrent immaturity in the cognitive
○​ Secular Trend: children may be starting control system
puberty earlier but spending more time to
reach full sexual maturity PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH
○​ Potential causes include…
■​ Higher standard of living Physical Activity
■​ Undernutrition ●​ Exercise affects both physical and mental health
■​ Health ●​ A sedentary lifestyle may result in increased risk of
■​ Exposure to endocrine-disrupting poor mental health, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and
chemicals an increased likelihood of heart disease and
○​ Research revealed that children who are cancer in adulthood
exposed to high stress when young tend to
reach pubertal milestone earlier than those Sleep Needs and Problems
who are not ●​ Children generally go to sleep later and sleep less
○​ Firstborns, being born to a single mother and on school days the older they get
harsh maternal parenting practices, are also ●​ Sleep deprivation can sap motivation, cause
at risk irritability, and affect concentration and school
performance
Implications of Pubertal Timing ●​ After puberty, the secretion of melatonin takes
●​ Early maturation has been linked to adult health place later at night, making it difficult for
issues such as cancer, diabetes, and adolescents to go to bed early
cardiovascular diseases
●​ Early puberty can be a predictor of adult obesity Nutrition and Eating Disorders
and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) ●​ Overweight and Obesity
○​ Disorder in women ○​ Being born to overweight or obese parents is
○​ Causes acne, irregular periods, excess hair a risk factor for childhood and adolescent
growth, and the growth of cysts on ovaries obesity

2 | @studywithky
 ○​ Overweight teenagers tend to be in poorer ●​ Risk factors for depression include anxiety, fear of
health than their peers social contact, stressful life events, chronic
○​ They are also more likely have difficulty illnesses such as diabetes or epilepsy, parent-child
attending school or engaging in strenuous conflict, abuse or neglect, alcohol and drug use,
activity sexual activity, and having a parent with a history
○​ Dieting for adolescents may be of depression
counterproductive as interventions in which
dieting is encouraged can sometimes result Death in Adolescence
in weight gain for participants ●​ Motor Vehicle collisions are the leading cause of
●​ Body Image: one’s perception, thoughts, and accidental deaths among US teenagers
feelings about one’s body ●​ Homicides are the third leading cause
○​ Girls tend to express the highest level of body ●​ Suicide is the second cause of death
satisfaction when underweight, some ●​ Young people who consider or attempt suicide
dissatisfaction when average weight, and the tend to have histories of emotional illness
most dissatisfaction when overweight
○​ Anorexia Nervosa: distorted body image,
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
severely underweight, may be withdrawn or
depressed, and afraid of losing control and
becoming overweight ASPECTS OF COGNITIVE MATURATION
○​ Bulimia Nervosa: short-lived binge eating
and then purging by self-induced vomiting, Cognitive Development: Formal Operations
strict dieting, excessive exercise, etc. ●​ Adolescents move away from their reliance on
○​ Binge-eating disorder: binging without concrete, real-world stimuli, and develop the
purging of food capacity for abstract thought
●​ Usually around age 11
Use and Abuse of Drugs ●​ They can now use symbols to represent other
●​ The abuse of nonprescription cough and cold symbols, hidden messages, imagine possibilities,
meds (dextromethorphan) is a recent trend create hypotheses
among adolescents ●​ Hypothetical-Deductive Reasoning: methodical,
●​ Binge Drinking: consuming five or more drinks scientific approach to problem solving, and it
on one occasion characterizes formal operational thinking
●​ Alcohol interacts with inhibitory and excitatory ○​ Involves ability to develop, consider, and test
receptor systems that are developing in hypotheses
adolescence, making them more sensitive to ○​ Piaget attributed it to a combination of brain
rewarding effects of alcohol and less sensitive to maturation and expanding environmental
its negative features opportunities
●​ Those who drink show changes in key prefrontal
areas, including middle frontal gyrus, superior Immature Aspects of Adolescent Thought
frontal gyrus, left frontal cortex, frontal pole, and ●​ Elkind argued that the immature adolescent
left frontal gyrus (areas involved in executive thinking stems from adolescents’ inexperienced
control) ventures into formal operational thought
●​ Use of cigarettes and other tobacco products is ●​ Adolescents tend to be idealistic and critical of
also a global health issue others
●​ Vast majority of smokers begin smoking prior to ●​ Adolescents can keep many alternatives in mind
adulthood and became addicted in adolescence at the same time yet may lack effective strategies
for choosing them
Depression ●​ They do not recognize the difference between
●​ The prevalence of depression increases during expressing an idea and making the sacrifices
adolescence necessary to live up to it
●​ Depression in young people can manifest as ●​ Another characteristic of adolescent thought is
irritability, boredom, or an inability to experience self-consciousness
pleasure ○​ Self-Consciousness: adolescents can think
●​ Being female is a risk factor for depression about thinking – their own and the other
●​ Adolescent people’s
●​ Girls, especially early-maturing girls, are more ○​ Imaginary Audience: assumption that
likely to be depressed than adolescent boys everyone else is thinking about the same
●​ This may be due to biological changes associated thing they are thinking about – themselves
with puberty ●​ Personal Fable: belief that they are special, their
experience is unique, and they are not subject to
the rules that govern the rest of the world

3 | @studywithky
Language Development ●​ Gilligan’s Moral Development focused on how
●​ Adolescence brings further refinements in children develop morality based on care and
vocabulary empathy
●​ By ages 16 to 18, the average young person knows ○​ Applicable to women
approximately 80,000 words ○​ Gilligan believed that women are empathic
●​ Vocabulary knowledge is crucial for reading by nature
comprehension ○​ She also argued that Kohlberg’s theory is
●​ With the advent of abstract thought, adolescents more applicable to men
can define and discuss such abstractions as love,
justice, and freedom Prosocial Behavior
●​ They more frequently use such terms as however, ●​ Prosocial behavior typically increases from
otherwise, anyway, therefore, really, and probably childhood through adolescence
to express logical relationships ●​ Parents who are warm, sympathetic, and use
●​ They become more conscious of words as prosocial reasoning themselves are more likely to
symbols that can have multiple meanings, and have teens who behave in prosocial way
they take pleasure in using irony, puns, and ●​ Girls tend to show more prosocial behavior and
metaphors empathetic concern than boys
●​ Adolescents become more skilled in social ●​ Peers could increase or decrease the occurrence
perspective-taking of prosocial behavior
○​ Ability to tailor their speech to another
person’s POV EDUCATIONAL AND VOCATIONAL ISSUES
●​ Fuzzy-Trace Theory Dual-Process Model:
decision making influenced by two cognitive Influences on School Achievement
systems – verbatim analytical and gist-intuitional, ●​ Student Motivation and Self-Efficacy
which operate in parallel ○​ School: offers opportunities to learn info,
master new skills, and sharpen old skills
Moral Reasoning ○​ Educational practices are based on the
●​ Tendencies that foster moral development assumption that students are, or can be
○​ Take another person’s perspective motivated to learn
○​ Solve social problems ○​ Students high in academic self-efficacy are
○​ Deal with interpersonal relationships likely to do well in school
○​ See themselves as social beings ●​ Gender
●​ Kohlberg’s Moral Development focused on how ○​ Male and female brains show some
children develop morality and moral reasoning differences in structure and organization
○​ Used the Heinz Dilemma to gather ■​ These differences tend to become more
information pronounced with age
○​ Emphasis is on the development of Justice ■​ Girls have more gray matter, and the
and Fairness growth of gray matter peaks earlier
○​ Cosmic Stage: people consider the effect of ■​ Their neurons also have more
their actions not only on other people but on connections
the universe as a whole ■​ On average, boys have bigger brains
■​ They also have more connective white
matter
KOHLBERG’S STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT
■​ They also have more cerebrospinal fluid,
Level I: Stage 1: Obedience and which cushions the longer paths of nerve
Preconventional Punishment impulses.
Morality (0-9)
○​ Boys are more likely to fail to achieve a
Stage 2: Individualism and
Exchange baseline of proficiency in reading,
mathematics, and science
Level II: Stage 3: Good Boy/Girl ○​ Girls do better on verbal tasks that involve
Conventional writing and language usage
Morality (9-20) Stage 3: Good Boy/Girl
○​ Boys do better in activities that involve visual
Level III: Stage 5: Social Contract and spatial functions helpful in math and
Post Conventional science
Morality (20 up) Stage 6: Universal Ethical ●​ Family, Ethnicity, and Peer Influences
Principles ○​ Spillover: experiences in different contexts
influence each other
○​ Stress at home has been shown to predict
problems with attendance and learning

4 | @studywithky
 ○​ Conversely, problems with attendance and career counseling could allow more students
learning contribute to family stress to meet their educational goals
○​ Parental involvement in academic activities is ●​ Adolescents in the Workplace
a far better predictor of which teens will do ○​ Research suggest that suggest that while
well academically working may not affect the academic
○​ Children of minority status are exposed to performance in high school, it may
additional potentially negative influences nonetheless lower the probability of going to
such as discrimination and racism college
●​ The School
○​ A good middle or high school has an orderly,
PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
safe environment, adequate material
resources, a stable teaching staff, and a
positive sense of community THE SEARCH FOR IDENTITY
○​ School culture places a strong emphasis on
academics and fosters the belief that all Identity vs. Identity Confusion
students can learn. ●​ According to Erikson, identity is formed as
○​ It also offers opportunities for extracurricular adolescents solve 3 major issues
activities, which keep students engaged and ○​ Choice of an occupation
prevent them from getting into trouble after ○​ Adoption of values to live by
school ○​ Development of a satisfying sexual identity
●​ Adolescence is a relatively long period of time
TYPES OF PARENTING STYLES
during which young people begin to take on
adult responsibilities but are not fully
Authoritarian Tend to use more punishment and independent
harsh control ●​ Psychosocial Moratorium: time-out period
More optimal in parenting
●​ Erikson believed this time-out period was ideal for
adolescents the development of identity
●​ A satisfactory resolution to identity crisis leads to
Authoritative Strike a balance between making the development of fidelity
demands and being responsive
○​ Sustained loyalty, faith, or a sense of
Tend to have teens who do better belonging to a loved one, friends, or
academically companions
○​ Can also mean identification with a set of
Permissive Tend to act indifferent
values, an ideology, a religion, a political
movement, or an ethnic group
Dropping Out of High School ●​ A failure to form a coherent sense of identity can
●​ Adolescents are more satisfied with school if greatly delay reaching psychological adulthood
allowed to participate in making rules, if they feel ●​ Erikson’s theory describes male identity
supported from teachers and other students, and development as the norm
if the curriculum and instruction are meaningful ○​ Man is not capable of real intimacy until he
and appropriately challenging and fit their has achieved a stable identity
interests, skill level, and needs ○​ Women define themselves through marriage
●​ Reasons for dropouts and motherhood
○​ Low teacher expectations ●​ Fanaticism: believes that his “ways” are the only
○​ Differential treatment ways
○​ Less teacher support ●​ Repudiation: repudiate their membership in the
○​ Perceived irrelevance of the curriculum to world of adults and, even more, they repudiate
culturally under-represented groups their need for an identity

Preparing for Higher Education or Vocations Identity Status

●​ Influences on Students’ Aspirations ●​ Identified by James Marcia through 30-minute,
○​ Self-Efficacy beliefs help shape the semi structured identity-status interviews
occupational options students consider and ●​ The four categories differ according to the
the way they prepare for careers presence or absence of crisis and commitment
○​ Parents’ values with regard to academic ○​ Crisis: period of conscious decision making
achievement influence adolescents’ values ○​ Commitment: personal investment in an
and occupational goals occupation or ideology
○​ Recognition of a broader range of ●​ These categories are not stages; they represent
intelligences and more flexible teaching and the status of identity development at a particular
time

5 | @studywithky
●​ They may change in any direction as young ●​ Sexual Orientation: whether the person is
people continue to develop attracted to person of other sex (Heterosexual),
●​ From late adolescence on, as Marcia proposed, same sex (Bisexual), or of both sexes (Bisexual)
more and more people are in moratorium or ●​ Most gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth begin to
achievement identify as such between the ages of 12 and 17
●​ About half of late adolescents remain in years
foreclosure or diffusion ●​ Transgender: biological sex at birth and gender
identity are not the same
●​ Transsexual: people who seek medical assistance
to permanently transition to their preferred
gender
●​ Brains of gay men and straight women are more
symmetrical, whereas lesbians and straight men,
the right hemisphere is slightly larger
●​ Finding a sense of community is a protective
factor and has been related to less fearfulness, a
decreased risk of suicidality, a sense of comfort,
and increases in resilience

Sexual Behavior
●​ Two major concerns about adolescent sexual
activity are the risks of contracting STIs and
pregnancy
●​ Involved and engaged relationship between
Gender Differences in Identity Formation teens and parents is associated with a decreased
●​ Research suggests that intimacy was more risk of early sexual activity
closely related to identity formation for women ●​ Teens who have supportive relationships with
than men their parents are more likely to delay intercourse
●​ Young women are more competent at intimacy and to use safe sex practices
than men ●​ Meaning in life has also been associated with a
●​ Ego identity at age 15 strongly predicted intimacy decreased risk of unsafe sexual activity, but only in
in romantic relationships at age 25 for both sex adolescent women
●​ The best safeguard for sexually active teens is
Ethnic Factors in Identity Formation regular use of condoms
●​ Cultural Socialization: include practices that
teach children about their racial or ethnic Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) – diseases
heritage, promote cultural customs and spread by sexual contact
traditions, and foster racial/ethnic and cultural ●​ Human Papillomavirus (HPV) or Genital Warts:
pride leading cause of cervical cancer in women
●​ Diffused: has not thought about identity and has ●​ Most curable STIs are Chlamydia and Gonorrhea
done little or no exploration of what their heritage ●​ Genital Herpes: chronic, recurring, often painful,
means and highly contagious disease
●​ Foreclosed: Has strong feelings about identity ●​ Hepatitis B: affects the liver causing both acute
but those feelings are not really based on any and chronic issues that can lead to cirrhosis, liver
serious exploration of identity cancer or death
●​ Moratorium: Has begun to think about what their ●​ Trichomoniasis: parasitic infection
ethnicity means to them but is still confused ●​ Human Immunodeficiency Virus: causes
about it acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS),
●​ Achieved: a good deal of time has been spent transmitted thru bodily fluids
thinking about their identity and what their ●​ Gonorrhea: caused by bacterium Neisseria
ethnicity means within that context; they now gonorrhoeae, spread by contact between infected
understands and accepts his ethnicity moist membranes, characterized by discharge
from penis or vagina and painful urination
SEXUALITY ●​ Syphilis: appearance of a sore where syphilis
enter the body
Sexual Orientation and Identity
●​ Sexual Identity: seeing oneself as a sexual being,
recognizing one’s sexual orientation, and forming
romantic or sexual attachments

6 | @studywithky
Teenage Pregnancy and Childbearing ●​ Greater intimacy, loyalty, and sharing with friends
●​ Teenage moms are likely to have premature or mark a transition toward adultlike friendships
dangerously small and are at heightened risk of ●​ Girl friendships are more intimate
other birth complications ●​ Adolescents are no better able to express their
private thoughts and feelings and consider
RELATIONSHIPS WITH FAMILY, PEERS, another person’s POV
AND ADULT SOCIETY ●​ The influence of peers normally peaks at ages 12
to 13 and declines during middle and late
The Myth of Adolescent Rebellion adolescence
●​ The teenage years have been called a time of ●​ Romantic relationships tend to become more
adolescent rebellion intense and intimate across adolescence
●​ Yet full-fledged rebellion is relatively uncommon ●​ By age 16, adolescents interact with and think
●​ Teenage rebellion is more likely to be associated about romantic partners more than about
with variables such as abusive, indifferent, or parents, friends, or siblings
neglectful parenting ●​ Early adolescents think primarily about how a
●​ Family conflict, depression, and risky behavior are relationship might affect their status in the peer
more common than during other parts of the life group
span ●​ They pay little attention to attachment or support
●​ Negative emotions and mood swings are most needs
intense during early adolescence
●​ By late adolescence, emotionality tends to ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR AND DELINQUENCY
become more stable
Juvenile Delinquency – adolescent who breaks the
Adolescents and Parents law or engages in behavior considered as illegal
●​ Individuation: listening to different music from ●​ Antisocial behaviors tends to run in families
parents, dressed differently, and felt it was ●​ Individuals who have low arousal levels may be
reasonable to keep private things from parents prone to antisocial behaviors as a form of
●​ Involves the struggle for autonomy and sensation seeking to achieve arousal levels a
differentiation, or personal identity normal person experiences
●​ Teens are more likely to disclose information ●​ An early onset type (beginning by age 11) tends to
when parents maintain a warm, responsive family lead to chronic juvenile delinquency in
climate and provide clear expectations without adolescence
being overly controlling ●​ Milder late onset type, tends to arise temporarily
in adolescence
Adolescents and Siblings ●​ Parents of children who become chronically
●​ Adolescents tend to be less close to siblings than antisocial may have failed to reinforce good
to friends behaviors in early childhood and may have been
●​ Sibling relationships become more equal as harsh or inconsistent with their discipline
younger siblings approach or reach adolescence
●​ Younger siblings still look up to their older
REFERENCES
siblings and may try to emulate them Papalia, D., & Martorell, G. (2015). Experience human
development (13th ed.). McGraw Hill Education.
Adolescents and Peers Santrock, J. W. (2019). Life-span development (17th ed.).
●​ An important influence in adolescence is the peer McGraw-Hill Education.
group
●​ The peer group is a…
○​ Source of affection, sympathy, understanding,
and moral guidance
○​ Place for experimentation
○​ Setting for achieving autonomy and
independence from parents
●​ Friendships during this stage tends to become
more reciprocal, more equal, and more table
●​ Levels of peer groupings
○​ Dyadic: one-to-one
○​ Cliques: structured group of friends who do
things together
○​ Crowd: based on personal interactions but on
reputation, image, or identity

7 | @studywithky
 08 – Development in Emerging Adulthood
DVPSY | 2024 - 2025 | NOT FOR SALE

●​ Expression of any disorder is the product of an

interaction between genes and environment
OUTLINE
1.​ Physical Development ●​ A number of genetic variants put people at
a.​ Emerging Adulthood elevated risk
b.​ Health and Fitness ●​ Genes that affect the action of the hormone
c.​ Sexual and Reproductive Issues receptors, stress response systems, and synaptic
2.​ Cognitive Development plasticity may influence a person’s ability to
a.​ Perspectives on Adult Cognition respond adaptively to stressful events
b.​ Moral Reasoning
●​ This sensitivity may then make that person more
c.​ Education and Work
3.​ Psychosocial Development sensitive to the influence of environmental stress,
a.​ Emerging Adulthood: Patterns especially early in development
and Tasks ●​ In an environment low in stress, that sensitivity
b.​ Personality Development: Four might not be expressed
Views
c.​ Foundations of Intimate Behavioral Influences on Health
Relationships
●​ Diet and Nutrition
d.​ Marital and Nonmarital Lifestyles
e.​ Parenthood ○​ Poor diets and a lack of physical activity are
f.​ When Marriage Ends among the leading causes of preventable
diseases, overweight, and obesity
○​ WHO recommends a Mediterranean-style
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains,
and unsaturated fats
○​ This type of diet is associated with reduced
EMERGING ADULTHOOD
risk for a wide variety of cancers
●​ Obesity/Overweight
Emerging Adulthood – proposed transitional period
○​ Increase in obesity can be attributed to
between adolescence and adulthood (Arnett, 2000)
unintended consequences of globalization
●​ Commonly found in industrialized countries
■​ Increases in the availability of
●​ Represents a period of time during which young
nutrient-poor, high-calorie processed
adults can figure out who they are and what they
foods
want to be
■​ Urbanization of the environment
●​ Characterized by…
○​ Increased snacking, availability of inexpensive
○​ Identity exploration
fast foods, supersized portions, labor-saving
○​ Instability
technologies, high-fat diets, and sedentary
○​ Self-focused
recreational pursuits also explain the obesity
○​ Feeling in-between
epidemic
○​ Age of possibilities
●​ Eating Disorders
●​ There are 3 criterias that define Adulthood
○​ Overall, lifetime prevalence rates of eating
○​ Accepting responsibility for oneself
disorders are low
○​ Making independent decisions
○​ Bariatric Surgery: any surgery that is carried
○​ Becoming financially independent
out to induce weight loss
■​ Involves rerouting or removing parts of
HEALTH AND FITNESS
the stomach or small intestine
○​ Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa are
Health Status and Health Issues
the most common eating disorders in young
●​ Habits that young adults develop during this time
adulthood
tend to become ingrained over time
●​ Physical Activity
●​ They are highly predictive of the likelihood they
○​ Generally, adults ages 18 to 64 should engage
will experience good health at older ages
in 75 to 150 minutes of aerobic exercise and
●​ Accidents are the leading cause of death for
muscle-strengthening activities
young Americans age 20 to 44
○​ People who are physically active maintain
●​ Rates of injury, homicide, and substance use peak
healthy body weight, build muscles,
at this time
strengthen heart and lungs, lower blood
●​ Lower socioeconomic status is consistently
pressure, protect against heart disease, etc.
associated with poor health
●​ Stress
○​ The dynamics of this stage in life can lead to
Genetic Influences on Health
increases in perceived stress

1 | @studywithky
 ○​ High levels of chronic stress are related to a ○​ Social Support: refers to material,
host of physical and immunological informational, and psychological resources
impairments derived from the social network
○​ Stress may lead young adults to engage in
risky behaviors, eat unhealthily, have poor Mental Health Problems
quality of sleep, etc. ●​ Alcoholism: long term physical condition
○​ There are 2 types of coping characterized by compulsive drinking that a
■​ Emotion-Focused Coping: manage person is unable to control
emotions by refusing to think about an ●​ Drug Use and Abuse
issue or reframing the event in the ○​ The most common habit-forming drugs
positive light include marijuana and prescription
■​ Problem-Focused Coping: involves painkillers, followed by cocaine and heroin
addressing an issue head-on and ●​ Depression
developing action-oriented ways of ○​ Adolescence and emerging adulthood appear
managing and changing a bad situation to be sensitive periods for the onset of
○​ College-age women more likely to use depressive disorders
emotion-focused strategies ○​ Adolescents who are depressed and who
●​ Sleep depression carries over into adulthood, tend
○​ Among college students, family stress, to have had significant childhood risk factors,
academic stress, is associated with high levels such as neurological or developmental
of insomnia disorders, dysfunctional or unstable families,
○​ Sleep Deprivation affects not only the and childhood behavioral disorders
physical health but also cognitive, emotional, ○​ Adult-onset group tend to have had low levels
and social functioning as well of childhood risk factors and to possess more
○​ Primary cognitive consequence is impaired resources to deal with the challenges of
attention and vigilance emerging adulthood
○​ Chronic sleep deprivation can seriously
worsen cognitive performance SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE ISSUES
○​ Sleep deprivation has been linked to
depression and insomnia and sleep Sexual Behavior and Attitudes
disturbances also are related to the risk of ●​ Premarital sex has been increasing for adults over
postpartum depression 18
●​ Smoking ●​ Sexual Script: stereotyped pattern of role
○​ Smoking is the leading preventable cause of prescriptions for how individuals should behave
death, illness and impoverishment worldwide sexually
○​ A tendency to addiction may be genetic ○​ Emerging adults tend to have more sexual
●​ Alcohol Use partners than in older age groups, but they
○​ College is a prime time and place for drinking have sex less frequently
○​ Risky Drinking: consuming more than 14 ●​ The most common contraceptive are the birth
drinks a week or 4 drinks on any single day for control pills, female sterilization, and condoms
men and more than 7 drinks a week or 3 days ●​ Casual Sex is fairly common. especially on college
on any single day for women campuses
○​ College students tend to drink more ●​ Sexual assaults on women are also a problem in
frequently and more heavily than their non this age group
collegiate peers ○​ Rape: forcible sexual intercourse
○​ Date/Acquaintance Rape: coercive sexual
Indirect Influences on Health activity directed at someone with whom the
●​ Socioeconomic Status and Race/Ethnicity perpetrator is at least casually acquainted
●​ Relationships and Health ●​ Acceptability of homosexual unions is growing,
○​ Social Integration: active engagement in a especially in younger cohorts and in women
broad range of social relationships, activities, ●​ Women are also more likely than men to report
and roles same sex contact
■​ Associated with lower mortality rates ●​ By emerging adulthood, most lesbian, gay,
■​ People with wide social networks and bisexual, and transgender persons are clear about
multiple social roles are more likely to their sexual identity
survive heart attacks and ○​ Median age at which gay, lesbian, and
■​ They ar also less likely to be anxious or bisexual adults report suspecting they might
depressed not be heterosexual is at about 12 years of age

2 | @studywithky
 ○​ Median age they report knowing for sure is 17 ○​ A rich and stimulating environment can
years of age stimulate the development of thicker, denser,
cortical connection
Sexually Transmitted Infections ○​ These physical changes in the brain allow
●​ The highest rates of STIs in the United States are more complex thinking to occur
among emerging adults ages 18 to 25 ○​ Although almost all adults develop the
●​ Chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis all showed capacity for it, not all attain proficiency
increases in prevalence ●​ Postformal Thought: mature type of thinking
●​ Risk is higher among certain ethnic groups that occurs in emerging adulthood
●​ Populations most at risk include men who ○​ Characteristics of postformal thought
●​ have sex with other men, people who share ■​ Ability to deal with inconsistency,
contaminated hypodermic needles, prison contradiction, and compromise
populations, sex workers and their clients, and ■​ Flexibility: draws on intuition and
transgender individuals emotion as well as logic to help people
cope with situations such as social
Menstrual Disorders dilemmas, which are often less clearly
●​ Premenstrual Syndrome: disorder that produces structure
physical discomfort and emotional tension for up ■​ Relativistic: acknowledges that there
to 2 weeks before menstrual period may be more than one valid way of
○​ Is not fully understood, but it appears to be a viewing an issue
response to monthly surges of female ○​ Exposure to higher education is often a
hormones catalyst for the development of this ability
○​ More typical in women in their 30s or older
●​ Dysmenorrhea: caused by contractions of the Life-Span Model of Cognitive Development
uterus which are set in motion by prostaglandin ●​ Proposed by Warner Schaie
●​ Cramps tend to affect younger women, whereas ●​ Looks at the developing uses of cognition within a
PMS is more typical in women in their thirties or social context
older ●​ Consists of 7 stages of cognitive development
●​ Goals shift from acquisition of information and
Infertility: inability to conceive a baby skills to practical integration of knowledge and
●​ Common causes include failure to produce ova, skills to a search for meaning and purpose
mucus in the cervix or disease of the uterine
lining AGE STAGE DESCRIPTION
●​ In both men and women, modifiable
environmental factors are related to infertility Childhood - Acquisitive Acquisition of
●​ Women’s fertility begins to decline in their late Adolescence Stage information and skills

twenties, with substantial decreases during their Mainly for their own sake
thirties or as preparation for
participation in society

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT Late teens - Achieving Utilizing information

Early 30s Stage they know to pursue
goals, such as career and
PERSPECTIVES ON ADULT COGNITION family

Late 30s - Responsible Utilizing their minds to

New Ways of Thinking in Adulthood Early 60s Stage solve practical problems
●​ Reflective Thinking: active, persistent, and associated with
careful consideration responsibilities to others
○​ First defined by John Dewey
30s/40s - Executive People in the executive
○​ Reflective thinkers continually question facts, Middle age Stage stage are responsible for
draw inferences, and make connections societal systems or social
○​ Critical thinking movements
○​ Reflective thinkers can also create complex
They deal with complex
intellectual systems that reconcile apparently relationships on multiple
conflicting ideas levels
○​ At 20-25 years of age, the brain forms new
Middle age - Reorganizational Retirement stage
neurons, synapses, and dendritic connections Late Stage
○​ The cortical regions that handle higher-level Adulthood They reorganize their
thinking become fully myelinated lives and intellectual
energies around
meaningful pursuits that

3 | @studywithky
 ○​ They make moral decisions on the basis of
take the place of paid
work universal principles of justice
○​ Kohlberg argued that most people did not
Late Reintegrative Marked by more reach this level until their twenties
Adulthood Stage biological and cognitive
○​ He believed that the acquisition of this style of
changes
thinking was primarily a function of
People at this stage tend experience
to be more selective ■​ When they encounter values that conflict
about what tasks they
expend effort on with their own
■​ When they are responsible for the welfare
They focus on the of others
purpose of what they do
and concentrate on tasks
●​ Cosmic Stage
that have the most ○​ Sense of unity with the cosmos, nature or God
meaning for them ○​ This enabled them to see moral issues from
the standpoint of the universe as a whole
Advanced Legacy-Creating Preparation for death
Old Age Stage
○​ Adults at this stage might instead reflect on
Creation of legacies the question, “Why be moral?”

Culture and Moral Reasoning

Sternberg: Insight and Know-How
●​ Culture affects the understanding of morality
●​ Componential Knowledge: analytical abilities
●​ Western cultures tend to focus on individual
●​ Experiential Intelligence: original thinking,
autonomy
experience-based
●​ Asian / Eastern cultures are more concerned with
●​ Contextual Intelligence: knowing your way around
group dynamics and harmony
●​ Tacit Knowledge: inside information, know-how,
●​ Kohlberg believed that certain cultures were
“hacks”, not formally taught or openly expressed;
more likely to provide opportunities for people to
commonsense knowledge of how to get ahead
attain the highest levels of moral reasoning
○​ Includes self-management, management of
●​ This underlying belief in the superiority of a
tasks, and management of others
particular worldview has been criticized as being
○​ It is unrelated to IQ and predicts job
too narrow, and as being biased toward Western
performance better than do psychometric
cultural norms
tests

Gender and Moral Reasoning

Emotional Intelligence – ability to perceive, use,
●​ Gilligan was bothered by what she perceived as a
understand, and manage, or regulate, emotions to
male bias in Kohlberg’s approach
achieve goals
●​ She believed that women’s central dilemma was
●​ Coined by Peter Salovey and John Mayer
the conflict between their needs and the needs of
●​ Mayer-Salovey-CarusoEmotional Intelligence
others
Test (MSCEIT): used to measure emotional
●​ She also argued that women’s moral reasoning
intelligence
was not less complex than men’s
○​ 40-minute battery of questions
●​ Women in her research saw morality in terms of
○​ Generates a score for each of the four abilities,
selfishness versus responsibility
as well as a total score
●​ Other research has also shown that women
●​ EI affects the quality of personal relationships
reason at a higher level than men
○​ Studies have found that college students who
score high on the MSCEIT are more likely to
EDUCATION AND WORK
report positive relationships with parents and
friends
The College Transition
○​ College-age men who score high on the
●​ College is an increasingly important path to
MSCEIT engage in less drug and alcohol use
adulthood
and score higher on well-being measures
●​ Gap Year: taking a year off from formal education
●​ EI also affects effectiveness at work
or the workplace
●​ Distance Learning: courses are delivered via mail,
MORAL REASONING
internet, or other technological means
●​ Family support seems to be a key factor in college
Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development
adjustment
●​ Postconventional Morality
●​ As students gain more experience and think
○​ People become capable of fully principled
more deeply, they begin to realize that much
moral reasoning

4 | @studywithky
 knowledge and many values are somewhat ■​ Early marriage and family formation are
relative associated with poverty and substance
●​ Commitment within Relativism: students decide use
for themselves, ideally, what they want to believe ○​ Those who delay children until young
●​ Whether a person completes college may depend adulthood
not only on motivation, academic aptitude, and ■​ Rather than investing in college, they
preparation, and ability to work independently, move into full-time work
but also on social integration and social support ■​ These young adults bear more children by
their thirties, work more hours, reach an
Entering the World of Work income plateau, and depend more on
●​ By their mid twenties, most emerging adults are government aid
either working or pursuing advanced education ○​ Those who delay parenthood and other
or both traditional markers
●​ Higher education expands employment ■​ They tend to start in the most privileged
opportunities and earning power, decreases the place
chance of unemployment ■​ They also have the most positive
●​ It also enhances long-term quality of life for adults outcomes
worldwide
●​ According to research, people seem to grow in Identity Development in Emerging Adulthood
challenging jobs ●​ Erikson saw the search for identity as a lifelong
○​ Research has revealed a reciprocal task focused largely on this stage of the life span
relationship between the substantive ●​ Recentering: process that underlies the shift to
complexity and a person’s flexibility in coping an adult identity
with cognitive demands ○​ Primary task of emerging adulthood
○​ Substantive Complexity: the degree of ○​ It is a three-stage process in which power,
thought and independent judgment it responsibility, and decision making
requires
●​ A great deal of development in the frontal lobes AGE DESCRIPTION
occurs in young adulthood
○​ The most frontward part of the frontal lobes 1 Beginning The individual is still
has a special function and plays a major role embedded in the family of
origin
in problem solving and planning
○​ This portion of the brain springs into action Expectations for self-reliance
when a person needs to put an unfinished and self-directedness begin
to increase
task on hold and shift attention to another
task 2 During The individual remains
○​ It permits a worker to keep the first task in connected to but no longer
working memory while attending to the embedded within the family
of origin
second
●​ Other aspects of brain development also Toward its end, the individual
influence why adults become less likely to take is moving toward serious
commitments and gaining
risks and are better able to control their behaviors
the resources to support
●​ Spillover Hypothesis: cognitive gains from work them
carry over to non working hours
3 Young Adulthood Marked by independence
from the family of origin and
PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT commitment to a career, a
partner, and possibly
children
EMERGING ADULTHOOD: PATTERNS AND TASKS
●​ The Contemporary Moratorium
Varied Paths to Adulthood ○​ A self-conscious crisis that ideally leads to a
●​ Traditionally, adulthood was marked by moving resolution and identity achievement status
out, marriage, procreation, and establishment of a ○​ Many young adults seem to do little active,
career conscious deliberation, instead taking a
●​ Research has identified three primary pathways passive approach
that characterize the trajectory of young
adulthood Developing Adult Relationships with Parents
○​ Those who begin families early ●​ Emerging adults still need parental acceptance,
■​ They generally do not go to college as it empathy, and support
limits future prospects

5 | @studywithky
●​ Attachment to the parents remains a key
ingredient of well-being Trait Models – psychological models that focus on the
●​ Positive parent-child relationships during early measurement and examination of different traits
adolescence predict warmer and less conflicted ●​ McCrae’s Five-Factor Model: openness,
relationships with both parents when children conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness,
reach age 26 and neuroticism
●​ The quality of the parent-adult child relationship ●​ People’s personalities remain similar does not
may be affected by the relationship between the mean no change occurs
mother and father
●​ The view that these young adults who “fail to
launch” and do not move out of their parents’
homes are selfish slackers who refuse to grow up
is largely inaccurate

FOUR VIEWS OF PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

Normative Stage Models – theoretical approaches

that hold that adults follow a basic sequence of
age-related psychosocial changes

Erikson’s Intimacy vs. Isolation

●​ According to Erikson, if adults cannot make deep Typological Models – seeks to complement and
personal commitments to others, they risk expand trait research by looking at personality
becoming overly isolated and self-absorbed functioning whole
●​ As young adults work to resolve conflicting ●​ Personality Types
demands for intimacy and competitiveness, they ○​ Ego-Resilient: well-adjusted, self-confident,
develop an ethical sense, which Erikson articulate, attentive, helpful, Cooperative,
considered a marker of adulthood task-focused
○​ Love: a mutual devotion between partners ■​ Positive effects of ego resilience are likely
who have chosen to share their lives and have due to its association with positive
children emotions and self-efficacy belief
○​ Promiscuity: tendency to become intimate ○​ Overcontrolled: shy, quiet, anxious,
too freely, too easily; maladaptive dependable, tend to keep thoughts to
○​ Exclusion: tendency to isolate oneself from themselves and withdraw from conflict,
everyone; malignant subject to depression
○​ Undercontrolled: active, energetic, impulsive,
Timing-of-Events Model – holds that the course of stubborn, and easily distracted
development depends on when certain events occur ●​ Three Attachment Styles
in people’s lives ○​ Secure: have positive views in relationships,
●​ If events occur on time, development proceeds find it easy to get close to others, and are not
smoothly. overly concerned about romantic
●​ If not, stress can result relationships
○​ May come from an unexpected even ○​ Avoidant: hesitant about getting involved in
○​ An event that happens off time romantic relationships and once they do, they
○​ Failure of an expected and wanted event to distance themselves to their partners
occur at al ○​ Anxious: demand closeness, less trusting,
●​ Normative Life Events: those typically happen at more emotional, jealous, and possessive
certain times of life
●​ Social Clock: society’s norms for appropriate FOUNDATIONS OF INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS
timing of life events

6 | @studywithky
Friendship
●​ Young adults generally have the largest friendship
network but less stable
●​ Young single adults tend to rely on friendships to
fulfill their social needs more than young married
adults
●​ As they grow older, the number of friends and
time spent together gradually decreases
●​ Women typically have more intimate friendships
than men do
●​ Men are more likely to share information and
activities
MARITAL AND NONMARITAL LIFESTYLES
●​ Intimate relationship requires self-awareness,
empathy, the ability to communicate emotions,
Single Life
resolve conflict, and sustain commitments
●​ Proportion of young adults age 18 to 34 who have
●​ Fictive Kin: treated as family members despite a
not yet married sharply increased over the past
lack of blood relationship
decades
○​ Often develop for gay and lesbian people who
●​ Some young adults stay single because they have
have straight friends of the opposite sex
not found the right mate, some are single by
○​ Single adults without children are also more
choice
likely to develop stronger fictive kin
●​ Friends With Benefits: relationships of
relationships
friendships blended with physical intimacy, but
little commitment
Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love – the way love
develops is a story. The loves are its authors, and the
Gay and Lesbian Relationships
story they create reflects their personalities and their
●​ In the United States, greater social acceptance of
conceptions of love.
homosexuality has led to more gay and lesbian
●​ Three Elements of Love
adults coming out of the closet and living openly
○​ Intimacy: emotional element, involves
●​ Gay and Lesbian relationships mirror heterosexual
self-disclosure, which leads to connection,
relationships
warmth, and trust
○​ More likely to negotiate household chores on
○​ Passion: motivational element, based on
a more egalitarian basis
inner drives that translate physiological
○​ Resolve conflicts in more positive ways
arousal into sexual desire
○​ Less stable
○​ Commitment: cognitive element, the
○​ Lesbian couples are more likely to divorce
decision to love and make the relationship
than gay couples
work (exclusive or marry)

Cohabitation – unmarried couple involved in sexual

relationship live together
●​ Most young adults plan to marry, but only when
they feel ready, and they see getting on their feet
financially and establishing themselves in a stable
jobs or careers
●​ Some research suggests that cohabiting couples
who later marry tend to have unhappier
marriages and greater likelihood of divorce
●​ However, some cohabitors do not seem to be at
higher risk of marital dissolution
●​ These cohabitors may want to marry but put it off
until they feel their economic circumstances
permit it
●​ They view cohabitation as a step along the way to
marriage rather than as a replacement for it

Marriage
●​ Married people tend to be happier than
unmarried people
●​ Sex impacts relationship quality

7 | @studywithky
●​ Women tend to place more importance on
emotional expressiveness than men do

PARENTHOOD

●​ Marital satisfaction typically declines during the

child-raising years, and the more children, the
greater decline
●​ Many couples find their relationship becoming
more traditional following the birth of a child,
with the woman often engaging in the bulk of
caregiving and housekeeping
●​ Combining work and family roles is good for both
men’s and women’s mental and physical health
and has positive effects on the strength of their
relationship

WHEN MARRIAGE ENDS

●​ The most cited reasons are incompatibility, lack of

emotional support, lack of career support, abuse,
premarital cohabitation, and infidelity
●​ Couples are more likely to stay married if they
have children. However, it can create more
conflict and does greater damage
●​ Adults with divorced parents are more likely to
expect that their marriage will not last
(commitment issues)
●​ Divorce tends to reduce long-term well-being
●​ People who were thought they were happily
married tend to react more negatively and adapt
more slowly to divorce
●​ Remarriage is the triumph of hope over
experience
●​ Families in which both parents bring children into
marriage are marked by higher levels of conflict
●​ Remarriages are also more likely to end in divorce
than second marriage

REFERENCES
Papalia, D., & Martorell, G. (2015). Experience human
development (13th ed.). McGraw Hill Education.
Santrock, J. W. (2019). Life-span development (17th ed.).
McGraw-Hill Education.

8 | @studywithky
 09 – Development in Middle Adulthood
DVPSY | 2024 - 2025 | NOT FOR SALE

●​ Sensitivity to taste and smell also declines in

midlife
OUTLINE
1.​ Physical Development ○​ As the taste buds become less sensitive and
a.​ Middle Adulthood the number of olfactory cells diminishes,
b.​ Physical Changes foods may seem more bland
c.​ Physical and Mental Health ●​ Some loss of muscle strength is usually noticeable
2.​ Cognitive Development by age of 45
a.​ Measuring Cognitive Abilities in ○​ 10 to 15 percent of maximum strength may
Middle Age
be gone by 60 as the loss of muscle fiber is
b.​ The Distinctiveness of Adult
Cognition replaced by fat
c.​ Creativity ●​ Basal Metabolism: minimum amount of energy
d.​ Work and Education that your body needs to maintain vital functions
3.​ Psychosocial Development while resting
a.​ Looking at the Life Course in ○​ Manual dexterity generally becomes less
Middle Age efficient with age
b.​ Change at Midlife: Theoretical
○​ As people age, the amount of energy needed
Approaches
c.​ The Self at Midlife: Issues and to maintain the body goes down, particularly
Themes after age 40
d.​ Relationships at Midlife ○​ Simple reaction time slows very little until
e.​ Consensual Relationships about age 50
f.​ Relationships with Maturing ○​ Choice reaction time slows gradually
Children
throughout adulthood
g.​ Other Kinship Ties

The Brain at Midlife

PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT ●​ Aging brain works more slowly and have difficulty
juggling multiple tasks
●​ The ability to ignore distractions declines with age
MIDDLE ADULTHOOD ●​ With increasing age, there is a decrease in the
volume of gray matter
Middle Adulthood – years between ages 40 and 65 ●​ Myelin also begins to break down with age
●​ Middle adulthood is considered to be a distinct ●​ The specific location and extent of these changes
stage of life with its own societal norms, roles, in the gray and white matter are associated with
opportunities, and challenges the severity of processing slowdown and the area
●​ There is no consensus on when midlife begins of cognition in which it occurs
and ends ●​ Adults with a high level of education start off
●​ Middle age can be a time of decline and loss, or it ahead and may function at a higher level for a
can be a time of mastery, competence, and longer period of time
growth ●​ Physical activity in midlife is positively associated
●​ “Afternoon of Life” – Carl Jung with cognitive function and protection against
●​ Balancing work and relationship responsibilities future cognitive declines
in the midst of physical and psychological ●​ Even if declines do occur, knowledge based on
changes associated with aging experience can compensate for the physical
changes
PHYSICAL CHANGES
Structural and Systemic Changes
Sensory and Psychomotor Functioning ●​ By the fifth or sixth decade, the skin may become
●​ Age-related visual problems occur mainly in five less taut and smooth
areas – near vision, dynamic vision, sensitivity to ○​ The layer of fat below the surface becomes
light, visual search, and speed of processing visual thinner, collagen molecules more rigid, and
information elastin fibers more brittle
○​ Presbyopia: difficulty focusing on near ●​ Hair may become thinner due to a slowed
objects replacement rate, and grayer as production of
○​ Myopia: nearsightedness melanin declines
○​ Presbycusis: gradual hearing loss ●​ Vital Capacity: the maximum volume of air the
■​ Hearing loss proceeds more quickly in lungs can draw in and expel; may begin to
men than in women diminish at about age of 40
■​ Noise experienced at the work site

1 | @studywithky
●​ Middle-aged adults are less likely to fall asleep at ○​ Women may experience other symptoms,
daytime, need less sleep to maintain alertness, such as back and jaw pain, nausea and
and slow reductions in slow wave sleeps at night vomiting, indigestion, difficult breathing, or
palpitations
Sexuality and Reproductive Functioning ●​ Prevalence of diabetes doubled in the 1990s
●​ Menopause: when a woman permanently stop ○​ Type 2 Diabetes: mature onset, the most
ovulating and menstruating and can no longer common type; develops after age 30; glucose
conceive a child levels rise because the cells lose their ability to
○​ Occurs one year after the last menstrual use insulin
period ○​ Type 1 Diabetes: juvenile-onset, or
○​ Perimenopause (Climacteric) – beginning of insulin-dependent, in which the levels of
menopause; woman’s production of mature blood sugar rises because the body does not
ova begins to decline, and the ovaries produce enough insulin
produce less estrogen
○​ Hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness, Behavioral Influences on Health
sleep disturbances, mood disturbances, ●​ Excess weight in middle age increases the risk of
urinary incontinence, cognitive disturbances, impaired health and death
somatic symptoms, sexual dysfunction ●​ Physical activity in midlife is an important
○​ Can be treated with Menopause Hormone protective factor as declines in cardiovascular
Therapy and SSRIs fitness are steep after age 45
●​ The menopausal transition generally begins in the ●​ Physical activity can increase the chances of
mid thirties to mid forties, and can take remaining mobile in old age
approximately 3 to 5 years ●​ Physical activity is associated with better
●​ At age 30, men’s testosterone levels, sperm count, cognitive functioning at midlife and a decreased
genetic quality declines risk of dementia in late adulthood
●​ Men at this age also experience sexual
dysfunction due to diabetes, obesity, Socioeconomic Status and Health
hypertension, depression, etc. ●​ People with low SES tend to live in more stressful
environments and thus report higher levels of
perceived stress
●​ This increases the likelihood of engaging in
unhealthy behaviors, such as consuming a poor
diet, smoking, and not exercising

Gender and Health

●​ Women have a higher life expectancy than men
and lower death rates
○​ This may be due to genetic protection given
by the second X chromosome
○​ Before menopause, it is also due to beneficial
effects of estrogen on both cardiovascular
and cognitive health
○​ However, women report being in fair or poor
health than men
PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH ●​ Research showed that women tend to report
more specific symptoms and chronic conditions
Health Trends at Midlife than men
●​ Hypertension is an increasingly important ○​ They also devote more effort to maintaining
concern in midlife their health
○​ World’s leading preventable cause of early ○​ Men on the other hand are less likely to seek
death professional help and more likely to suffer
○​ A risk factor for cardiovascular disease and from chronic health problems such as cancer
kidney disease or high blood pressure
○​ The recommended cutoff for high blood ●​ Bone loss rapidly accelerates in the first 5 to 10
pressure is now 130/80 (previously 140/90) years after menopause as estrogen levels fall
●​ In the United States, cancer has replaced heart ○​ Extreme bone loss may lead to osteoporosis
disease as the leading cause of death between ○​ Common signs of osteoporosis are marked
ages 45 and 64 loss in height and a hunchbacked posture
○​ Chest pain is the most common symptom of
a heart attack in both men and women
2 | @studywithky
●​ Women who have a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation ●​ Cognitively speaking, in many respects
have as much as a 70 percent chance of middle-aged people are in their prime
developing breast cancer ●​ Individuals who score the highest in the study of
○​ PALB2, can also predispose women to a Schaie tend to have positive environmental
higher risk of breast cancer influences
○​ Vast majority of breast cancer cases are ●​ Most participants also showed remarkable
environmentally influenced stability over time, and no significant reductions
○​ Treated by removal of part or all breast and in most abilities until after age 60
chemotherapy ●​ Results revealed that midlife decline in memory
○​ Mammography: diagnostic x-ray of the recall and verbal fluency can predict cognitive
breasts impairment in old age
●​ The most troublesome physical effects of
menopause are linked to reduced levels of
estrogen

Stress in Middle Age – damage that occurs when

perceived environmental demands or stressors
exceed a person’s capacity to cope with them
●​ Systems involved in adapting to stress
○​ Brain → perceives danger
○​ Adrenal Glands → mobilize the body to fight
danger
○​ Immune system → provides the defenses
●​ Stress in midlife may come from role changes, Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence
career transitions, grown children leaving home, ●​ Fluid Intelligence: ability to solve novel problems,
and the renegotiation of family relationships such as problems that require little or no previous
●​ Women experience more stress than men and to knowledge
be more concerned about stress ○​ Peak in young adulthood
●​ The Fight or flight response may be more ○​ Many older adults perform in the real world at
characteristic of men, activated in part by high levels despite declines in fluid
testosterone intelligence
●​ Crystallized Intelligence: ability to remember
Emotions and Health and use information acquired over a lifetime, such
●​ Negative emotions, such as anxiety and despair, as academics
are often associated with poor physical and ○​ Increase through middle age and often until
mental health​ the end of life
○​ Negative emotions serve important adaptive
functions THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF ADULT COGNITION
○​ When negative moods are excessive, they can
have damaging effects on the body, suppress The Role of Expertise
immune functioning, increasing susceptibility ●​ Expertise: a form of crystallized intelligence that
to disease is related to the process of encapsulation
○​ Negative emotions, such as anxiety and ○​ Aka specialized knowledge
despair, are often associated with poor ○​ Advances in expertise continue at least
physical and mental health through middle adulthood
●​ Positive emotions, such as hope, is associated ●​ Encapsulation: process that allows expertise to
with good health and longer life compensate for declines in
information-processing ability by bundling
relevant knowledge together
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT ○​ Makes knowledge easier to access, to add to,
and to use
MEASURING COGNITIVE ABILITIES IN MIDDLE AGE ○​ It takes longer for adults to process new
information
Schaie’s Seattle Longitudinal Study of Adult ○​ It takes shorter for adults to effectively solve
Intelligence problems within their field of expertise
●​ Conducted in 1956 with 500 randomly chosen ●​ Experts show brain activation in areas associated
men and women ages 22 -67 with long-term memory
●​ The participants were followed longitudinally, and ○​ This allows them to integrate information in
assessed every 7 years on timed tests of six long-term memory with working memory in
primary mental abilities “chunks”

3 | @studywithky
 ○​ Thus perform the task at a higher level than Work and Cognitive Development
novices ●​ Work can influence cognitive functioning
●​ Experts generally are not fully aware of the ●​ Adults can affect their cognitive development by
thought processes that lie behind their decisions the occupational choices they make
●​ Such intuitive, experience based thinking is also ●​ Flexible thinkers tend to seek out and obtain
characteristic of postformal thought substantively complex work
○​ Work that requires thought and independent
Integrative Thought – process of integrating judgment
intuition, reason, and imagination ○​ Complex work stimulates more flexible
●​ Important feature of postformal thought thinking
●​ Adults interpret what they read, see, or hear in ○​ Flexible thinking then increases the ability to
terms of its meaning for them do such work
●​ Instead of accepting something at face value, ●​ Openness to experience also affects cognitive
they filter it through their life experience and performance
previous learning ●​ People who are high on openness to experience
are more likely to retain their faculties and show
CREATIVITY high work performance

Characteristics of Creative Achievers The Mature Learner

●​ Creative performance is not strongly related to ●​ Changes in the workplace often entail a need for
general intelligence once a threshold is reached more training or education, especially with the
●​ Intelligence seems to be more strongly advancement of technology
influenced by genetic processes than creativity ●​ With experience, middle aged people can
●​ Creativity seems to be the product of particular perform computer-based tasks as well as young
social contexts as well as individual proclivities adult
○​ Develop from diverse experiences that ●​ Literacy: fundamental requisite for participation
weaken conventional constraints not only in the workplace but in all facets of a
○​ It also develops from challenging experiences modern, information-driven society
that strengthen the ability to persevere and ○​ Middle-aged and older adults tend to have
overcome obstacles lower literacy levels than young adults
●​ Highly creative people are self-starters, risk-takers, ○​ Adults below basic literacy are less likely to be
independent, nonconformist, unconventional, employed
high in emotional intelligence, high in positive ○​ Illiteracy is especially common among
affect, and open to new ideas and experiences women in developing nations, where
education typically is considered unimportant
Creativity and Age
●​ Psychometric tests on divergent thinking reveal RELIGION
that there is a relationship between age and
creativity Religion – organized set of beliefs, practices, rituals,
●​ Research revealed that divergent thinking peaks and symbols that increases an individual’s connection
at late 30s and decline in the 70s to a sacred or transcendent other
●​ A similar age curve emerges when creativity is ●​ Religiousness: degree of affiliation with an
measured by variations in output organized religion, participation in its rituals and
●​ This age curve varies depending on the field practices
●​ Spirituality: involves experiencing something
WORK AND EDUCATION beyond oneself in transcendent manner
●​ Women have consistently shown stronger
Work and Retirement Age interest in religion and spirituality than men
●​ Phased Retirement: people reduce works hours
or days, gradually moving into retirement over a Frankls’ Logotherapy – therapeutic approach that
number of years helps people find personal meaning in life
●​ Bridge Employment: switching to another ●​ According to Victor Frankl, distinct human
company or new line of work qualities are spirituality, freedom, and
●​ People may continue working to maintain their responsibility
physical and emotional health and their personal ○​ Spirituality: a human being’s uniqueness of
and social roles spirit, philosophy, and mind
●​ Or simply because they enjoy the stimulation of ○​ Having a sense of meaning in life can lead to
work clearer guidelines for living one’s life and

4 | @studywithky
 enhanced motivation to take care of oneself ○​ Associated with prosocial behaviors
and reach goals ●​ Care: widening commitment to take care of
●​ 4 Main Needs persons, products, and the ideas one has learned
○​ Need for Purpose: goals and fulfillments to take care for
○​ Need for Values: enable people to decide ●​ People who do not find generativity run the risk of
whether certain acts are right or wrong becoming self-absorbed, self-indulgent, and
○​ Need for a Sense of Efficacy: belief that they stagnant
can control their environment ○​ Stagnation: disconnected from the
○​ Need for Self-Worth communities because of their failure to
contribute
●​ Women report higher generativity than men
PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
●​ For men, having a child early is associated with
greater generativity
LOOKING AT THE LIFE COURSE IN MIDDLE AGE ●​ Overextension: they no longer allow themselves
to relax and rest; maladaptive
●​ Developmental scientists view the course of ●​ Rejectivity: no longer participating or
midlife psychosocial development in several ways contributing in the society; malignant
○​ Objectively: they look at trajectories or
pathways Timing of Events: The Social Clock
○​ Subjectively: they look at how people ●​ The greater fluidity of the life cycle today has
construct their identity and the structure of partly undermined the assumption of a social
their live clock
●​ Individual pathways intersect with those of family ●​ According to Levinson, the transition to middle
members, friends, acquaintances, and strangers adulthood lasts about five years
●​ They must come to grips with the four major
CHANGE AT MIDLIFE: THEORETICAL APPROACHES conflicts
○​ Being young vs old
Trait Models ○​ Being destructive versus being constructive
●​ Research in the Big Five originally claimed that ○​ Being masculine vs. feminine
traits were relatively continuous and were not ○​ Being attached to others vs. separated from
believed to change in any appreciable way after them
the age of 30 ●​ Despite the multiple challenges and variable
●​ More recent data suggest changes during those events of midlife, many middle-aged adults show
years are possible remarkable resilience
●​ Data revealed that conscientiousness tends to be
highest in middle age as a result of work THE SELF AT MIDLIFE: ISSUES AND THEMES
experiences
●​ Retirees tend to increase in agreeableness and Is there a Midlife Crisis?
decrease in activity ●​ Midlife Crisis: changes in personality and lifestyle
●​ Those who become unemployed against their will during middle forties
show decreases in agreeableness and ○​ Many people realize that they will not be able
conscientiousness to fulfill the dreams of their youth, or that
○​ Relationship is stronger, especially in men, fulfillment of their own mortality
the longer the unemployment persists ○​ People who do have crisis at midlife generally
●​ Middle-aged men who remarry tend to become also have crises at other times in their lives as
less neurotic and those who divorce decrease in well
extraversion ○​ Manifestation of a neurotic personality rather
●​ The same five factors may not exist in all cultures than developmental phase
●​ Society dependent on subsistence labor to survive ●​ Turning Point: psychological transition that
are organized around prosociality and involves significant change or transformation in
industriousness the perceived meaning, purpose, or direction of a
person’s life
Normative-Stage Models ○​ Triggered by major life events, normative
●​ Erikson’s Generativity vs. Stagnation changes, or a new understanding of past
●​ Generativity: involved finding meaning through experience
contributing to society and leaving a legacy for ●​ Midlife Review: involves recognizing the
future generations finiteness of life and can be a time of taking stock,
○​ Parenting, teaching, mentorship, productivity, discovering new insights about the self, and
self-generation or self-development
○​ “Maintenance of the work”

5 | @studywithky
 spurring midcourse corrections in the design and ●​ Social Convoy Theory: people move through life
trajectory of one’s life surrounded by social convoys in whom they rely
●​ Developmental Deadlines: time constraints on assistance, well-being, and social support
●​ Ego Resiliency: the ability to adapt flexibly and ○​ Social Convoys: circles of close friends and
resourcefully to potential source of stress family
○​ Generally, the size of the social network peaks
Identity Development in young adulthood and declines thereafter
●​ Whitbourne’s Identity Process Theory (IPT): ○​ Declines in size are primarily seen in
physical characteristics, cognitive abilities, and friendship networks only
personality traits are incorporation into identity ○​ This decline is primarily due to changes in
schemas circumstances and motivational goals
○​ Assimilation: interpretation of new ●​ Socioemotional Selectivity Theory: assumes we
information via existing cognitive structure select our friends based on their ability to meet
○​ Accommodation: involves changing our goals
cognitive structures to more closely align with ○​ Social interaction has 3 main goals
what is encountered ■​ Source of information
○​ Identity Assimilation: involves holding onto a ■​ Helps people develop and maintain a
consistent sense of self in the face of new sense of self
experiences that do not fit the current ■​ Source of emotional well-being
understanding of the self ○​ By middle age, emotion-regulating function
○​ Identity Accommodation: involves adjusting of social contacts begin to reassert itself
the identity schema to fit new experiences
○​ Identity Balance: stable sense of self while Relationships, Gender, and Quality of Life
adjusting their self-schemas to incorporate ●​ For most middle-aged adults, relationships are
new information key to well-being
●​ Generativity and Identity ●​ Older adults increasingly seek out others who
○​ Those women who filled more social roles make them feel good
were more likely to develop a firm sense of ●​ Relationships can also present stressful demands
identity which tend to fall most heavily on women
○​ Successful achievement of identity is ○​ A sense of responsibility and concern for
associated with generativity others may impair a woman’s well-being
○​ Once established, generativity paves the way when problems or misfortunes beset other
for positive life outcome ○​ Men tend to benefit more from relationships
○​ Highly generative people from the ages of 60 than women do
to 75 years were found to have more frequent ●​ Greater concern for the welfare of others may
social contact with and provide more support help explain why middle-aged women tend to be
to others unhappier with their marriages
●​ Narrative Psychology: views the development of
self as a continuous process of constructing one’s CONSENSUAL RELATIONSHIPS
life story
●​ Generativity Scripts: feature redemption and Marriage
associated with psychological well-being ●​ The most common pattern for marriages was for
●​ Highly generative people tend to focus on a marriages to be broken by death and for survivors
theme of redemption to remarry
●​ Marriages generally follow a developmental
Psychological Well-Being and Positive sequence
Mental Health ○​ Initial sharp declines in marriage satisfaction
●​ Emotionality and personality are related to ○​ Followed by a plateau
psychological well-being ○​ Then further, slower declines over the longer
●​ Research based on Ryff’s six-dimensional scale term
has found that midlife is generally a period of ●​ One of the negative impact of marital satisfaction
positive mental health and well-being is the birth of a child
●​ Socioeconomic status is still a factor ●​ Couples who are sexually satisfied are generally
satisfied with their marriages
RELATIONSHIPS AT MIDLIFE
Cohabitation
Theories of Social Contact ●​ Older adults cohabitate due to the desire for an
intimate companion without the commitment of
formal marriage

6 | @studywithky
●​ When older adults cohabitate, their relationships ●​ Sandwich Generation: caught in squeeze
are more stable than those of younger cohabiting between the competing needs of their own
adults children and the emerging needs of their parents
●​ Caregiver Burnout: a physical, mental, and
Divorce emotional exhaustion that can affect adults who
●​ Higher divorce rates at middle age care for aged relatives
●​ Divorce is associated with elevated chance of ●​ Respite Care: giving caregivers some time off
chronic health conditions and mortality in both ●​ Relationships with siblings who remain in contact
sexes, but specially in men can be central to psychological well-being in
●​ Long-standing marriages may be less likely to midlife
break up than more recent ones ○​ Grandmothers have closer, warmer, more
●​ Marital Capital – the longer a couple is married, affectionate relationships with their
the more likely they are to have built up joint grandchildren
financial assets, to share the same friends, to go ●​ Kinship Care: grandparents that provides care
through important experiences together, and to but don’t become foster parents or gain custody,
get used to the emotional benefits that marriage have no legal status and few rights
can provide
REFERENCES
Marital Status, Well-Being, and Health Papalia, D., & Martorell, G. (2015). Experience human
●​ Marriage is associated with encouragement of development (13th ed.). McGraw Hill Education.
health-promoting behaviors Santrock, J. W. (2019). Life-span development (17th ed.).
●​ Social support provided by marriage also buffers McGraw-Hill Education.
individuals against life stressors
●​ One factor that seems to affect relationship
quality in gays and lesbians is whether or one
they have internalized society’s negative views on
homosexuality

Friendships
●​ Social networks tend to become smaller and
more intimate at midlife
●​ Friendships still persist and are a strong source of
emotional support and well-being, especially for
women
●​ The quality of midlife friendships often makes up
for what they lack in quantity of time spent

RELATIONSHIPS WITH MATURING CHILDREN

●​ Empty Nest: occurs when the youngest child

leaves home
●​ In a good marriage, departure of children
generally increases marital satisfaction
●​ Revolving Door Syndrome or Boomerang
Phenomenon: returning to parent’s home,
sometimes with their own families
●​ Prolonged parenting may lead to
intergenerational tension when it contradicts
parent’s normative expectations

OTHER KINSHIP TIES

●​ Positive relationships with parents contribute to a

strong sense of self and to emotional well-being
at midlife
●​ Filial Crisis: adults learn to balance love and duty
to their parents with autonomy in a two-way
relationship

7 | @studywithky
 10 – Development in Late Adulthood
DVPSY | 2024 - 2025 | NOT FOR SALE

●​ Gains in life expectancy reflect declines in

mortality rates (proportions of a total population
OUTLINE
1.​ Physical Development or of certain age groups who die in a given year)
a.​ Longevity and Aging ●​ Life Span: longest period that members of a
b.​ Physical Changes species can live
c.​ Physical and Mental Health
2.​ Cognitive Development Trends and Factors in Life Expectancy
a.​ Aspects of Cognitive ●​ Women live longer and have lower mortality rates
Development
at all ages than men
3.​ Psychosocial Development
a.​ Theory and Research on ●​ Female mortality dropped sharply with
Personality Development improvements in prenatal and obstetric care
b.​ Well-Being in Late Adulthood ●​ Women’s longer lives also have been attributed to
c.​ Practical and Social Issues their greater tendency to take care of themselves
Related to Aging and to seek medical care
d.​ Personal Relationships in Late
Life
Why People Age
e.​ Marital Relationships
f.​ Nonmarital Lifestyles and ●​ Senescence: the decline in body functioning
Relationships associated with aging
g.​ Nonmarital Kinship Ties ●​ Genetic Programming Theories: proposed that
people’s bodies age according to instructions
built into genes and that aging is a normal part of
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT development
○​ Programmed Senescence Theory: aging is
OLD AGE the result of the sequential switching on and
off of certain genes
Late Adulthood – includes those aged 65 years and ■​ Senescence is the time when the
above resulting age-associated deficits become
●​ Ageism: prejudice or discrimination based on age evident
●​ Primary Aging: gradual, inevitable process of ■​ Epigenetic changes do not involve
bodily deterioration that begins early in life and changes in the underlying genetic code;
continues through years irrespective of what rather, they involve changes in how genes
people do to stave it off (nature) are expressed
○​ Young Old: 65-74 yrs old ■​ Telomeres become shorter as the cell
○​ Old Old: 75-84 yrs old divides (cells can divide for no more than
○​ Oldest Old: 85 and above 50 times [Hayflick Limit])
○​ Centenarians: 100+ ■​ Once cells can no longer replicate, the
●​ Secondary Aging: results from disease, abuse, body loses its ability to repair damaged
and disuse; factors that are often within a person’s tissue and thus, begin to age
control (nurture) ○​ Endocrine Theory: biological clocks act
●​ Functional Age: how well a person functions in a through hormones to control the pace of
physical and social environment in comparison aging
with others of the same chronological age ○​ Immunological Theory: programmed decline
●​ Elderspeak: inappropriate simplified speech in immune system functions leads to
register that sounds like baby talk and is used increased vulnerability to infectious disease
with older adults and thus to aging and death
●​ Gerontology: study of the aged and aging ○​ Evolutionary Theory: Aging is an evolved trait
processes thus genes that promote reproduction are
●​ Geriatrics: branch of medicine concerned with selected at higher rates than genes that
aging extend lives
●​ Variable-Rate Theories: aging is the result of
LONGEVITY AND AGING random processes that vary from person to
person (Error theories)
Life Expectancy – age to which a person born at a ○​ Wear-and-Tear Theory: cells and tissues have
certain time and place is statistically likely to live, vital parts that wear out
given his or her current age and health status ○​ Free-Radical Theory: accumulated damage
●​ Based on the average longevity (length of an from oxygen radicals causes cells and
individual’s life) eventually organs to stop functioning

1 | @studywithky
 ○​ Rate-of-Living Theory: the greater an ○​ Semanticized Cognition: older adults utilize
organism’s rate of metabolism, the shorter its their vast store of knowledge to strategically
lifespan bolster their diminishing processing
○​ Autoimmune Theory: immune system capacities, allowing them to compensate with
becomes confused and attacks its own body slower, although often better,
cells decision-making
●​ Survival Curve: represents the percentage of ●​ In late adulthood, the brain gradually diminishes
people or animals alive at various age in volume and weight, particularly in the frontal
and temporal regions
PHYSICAL CHANGES IN LATE ADULTHOOD ○​ There is also a reduction in cortical thickness
due to neuronal loss
Heart muscles thicken with Arteries become less ●​ Hippocampus (memory area) also shrinks
age and valves that control flexible ●​ Decrease in the number of dopamine
the flow of blood in and
out of the heart may no neurotransmitters due to losses of synapses
longer open completely which results in slowed response time
●​ Researchers have discovered that older brains can
Lung capacity diminishes Brain cells lose some grow new nerve cells from stem cells
functioning but new
neurons can also be ●​ Physical activity paired with cognitive challenges
produced may be most effective in promoting the growth of
new cells
Kidneys become less Bladder loses its ability to
efficient in removing waste store urine
from the blood Sensory and Psychomotor Functioning
●​ Vision and Hearing
Body fat stabilizes and Muscle mass is lost without ○​ Older eyes need more light to see, are more
then declines exercise
sensitive to glare, and may have trouble
Bone mineral is lost which
locating and reading signs
can be slowed down by ○​ Older adults may also have difficulty with
weight bearing exercise depth or color perception
○​ Losses in visual contrast sensitivity can cause
PHYSICAL CHANGES difficulty reading very small or very light print
○​ Cataracts: cloudy or opaque areas in the lens
Reserve Capacity – backup capacity that helps body of the eyes, are common in older adults
systems function to their utmost limits in times of ○​ Age-Related Macular Degeneration: leading
stress cause of visual impairment in older adults
●​ With age, reserve levels tend to drop, and many ■​ The retinal cells in the macula degenerate
older people cannot respond to extra physical over time
demands as they once did ■​ Center of the retina gradually loses the
●​ The lungs become less effective because of ability to sharply distinguish fine details
reductions in lung volume, atrophy in the ○​ Glaucoma: irreversible damage to the optic
muscles involved with breathing, and reductions nerve caused by increased pressure in the eye
in the ability of cilia to function effectively ○​ Hearing impairments increase with age
●​ Stress can exacerbate this process, making older ●​ Strength, Endurance, Balance, and Reaction
people more susceptible to respiratory infections Time
●​ Elderly adults are more likely to suffer from ○​ Body fat increases with age
arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat) ○​ Declines in muscle strength, aerobic capacity,
●​ Problems with swallowing food, gastric reflux, flexibility, and agility
indigestion, irritable bowel syndrome, ○​ Loss of strength is greater for lower than for
constipation, and reduced absorption of nutrients upper limbs
become more common with age which puts ○​ Functional Fitness: exercises or activities that
them at higher risk for malnutrition improve daily activity
●​ Sleep
The Aging Brain ○​ Older people tend to sleep and dream less
●​ There are declines in the brain’s ability to process than before driven by the normative changes
information rapidly, in executive functioning, and in circadian rhythms
in episodic memory ○​ Hours of deep sleep are more restricted, and
●​ Some areas of the brain compensate by they may awaken more easily and earlier in
becoming more active with age the morning
○​ ↑ age = ↑ prefrontal activity ○​ Poor sleep quality or chronic insomnia can
contribute to depression, neurodegenerative

2 | @studywithky
 disorders such as dementia, and cognitive ○​ Vulnerability results from the influence of
declines multiple genes interacting with
●​ Sexual Functioning environmental factors
○​ Men retain more sexual desire ○​ One consistently identified risk factor for
○​ Both men and women report a decline in depression in adulthood is childhood abuse
sexual desire with age or neglect
○​ Men typically take longer to develop erection ○​ Depression can be treated by antidepressant
and to ejaculate, may need more manual drugs, psychotherapy, or both, and
stimulation, may experience longer intervals antidepressant drugs appear to work equally
between erections or may have difficulty as well as they do at younger ages
doing it ○​ Regular exercise can reduce symptoms of
○​ Women have difficulty in arousal, orgasm, etc. mild to moderate depression
○​ Satisfaction with life, cognitive functioning, ●​ Dementia: deterioration in cognitive and
and psychological well-being are all strongly behavioral functioning due to physiological
related to interest in and having sex causes
○​ General term for physiologically caused
PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH cognitive and behavioral decline sufficient to
interfere with daily activities
Health Status ○​ Cognitive decline becomes increasingly
●​ Poverty is related to a higher incidence of arthritis, common with advanced age
diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, ○​ Most cases are caused by Alzheimer’s Disease
depression, and stroke in the elderly and Parkinson’s Disease
●​ Adults who live in poverty are less likely to engage ○​ Multi-Infarct Dementia: caused by a series of
in such healthy behaviors as leisure-time physical small strokes
activity, avoidance of smoking, and maintenance ○​ Conscientiousness and neuroticism seem to
of appropriate body weight confer protection
○​ Staying engaged with others may also be
Chronic Conditions and Disabilities beneficial, but results are unclear
●​ Worldwide, the leading causes of death at age 50 ○​ Cognitive Reserve: hypothesized fund of
to 69 and older are heart disease, cancers, energy that may enable a deteriorating brain
diabetes, blood and endocrine disorders, chronic to continue to function normally that can
pulmonary disease, and liver disease delay dementia
●​ By 70 years and older, dementia becomes the ●​ Alzheimer’s Disease: progressive, irreversible,
fourth leading cause of death degenerative brain disorder characterized by
●​ Proportion of people who have difficulty with cognitive deterioration and loss of control of
functional activities rises sharply with age bodily functions, leading to death
○​ One of the most common and most feared
Lifestyle Influences on Health and Longevity terminal illnesses among aging persons
●​ Lifelong program of exercise may prevent many ○​ Caused by an accumulation of beta amyloid
physical changes once associated with normal peptide
aging ○​ Excessive amounts of neurofibrillary tangles
●​ Regular exercise can strengthen the heart and (twisted masses of dead neurons) and
lungs and decrease stress amyloid plaque (non-functioning tissue
●​ Inactivity contributes to heart disease, diabetes, formed by beta amyloid in the spaces
colon cancer, and high blood pressure between neurons) were also found in the
●​ Excessive body fat, particularly from a diet heavy brain
in red and processed meats and alcohol, has been ○​ Classic symptoms are memory impairment,
linked to several types of cancer deterioration of language, and deficits in
●​ Excessive weight loss can lead to muscle visual and spatial processing
weakness and general frailty ○​ Most prominent early symptom is inability to
●​ Periodontal Disease: a chronic inflammation of recall recent events or take in new
the gums caused by the bacteria in plaque; information
results in tender or bleeding gums and eventual ○​ Highly influenced by genetics
tooth loss ○​ Amnesia: memory loss
○​ Aphasia: inability to express through speech
Mental and Behavioral Problems ○​ Agnosia: inability to recognize familiar
●​ Depression objects, tastes, smells
○​ Apraxia: misuse of objects because failure to
identify them

3 | @studywithky
 ○​ Anomia: inability to remember the names of ●​ Working Memory: short-term storage of
things information being actively process
●​ Parkinson’s Disease: progressive, irreversible ●​ Tasks that require only rehearsal, show a little
degenerative neurological disorder, characterized decline
by tremor, stiffness, slowed movement, and ●​ Tasks that require reorganization or elaboration
unstable posture show greater falloff
○​ 2nd most common disorder involving ●​ Episodic Memory: linked to specific events; most
progressive neurological degeneration likely to deteriorate with age
○​ L-Dopa is commonly used as treatment ●​ Semantic Memory: consists of meanings, facts,
●​ Vascular Disease: caused by strokes or other and concepts accumulated over lifetime learning;
issues of blood flow in the brain little decline
○​ May be due to diabetes and high cholesterol ●​ Procedural Memory: motor skills and habits that
○​ Have stroke-like episodes once learned; relatively unaffected by age
●​ Lewy Body Dementia: dementia caused by an ●​ Language problems are probably a result of
abnormal aggregation of protein in the brain problems accessing and retrieving information
○​ Stiffness or trembling from the memory
○​ Daytime sleepiness, confusion, or staring ●​ Dysfunction in frontal lobes and hippocampus
○​ Trouble sleeping at night and visual may cause false memories
hallucinations ●​ Older adults seem to have difficulty encoding
●​ Frontotemporal Dementia: leads to personality new episodic memories because of difficulties in
and behavior changes and problems in language forming and later recalling a coherent and
skills cohesive episode
●​ Huntington’s Disease: results from gene ●​ Storage also deteriorate to the point retrieval
mutation which impacts movement, behavior, becomes difficult
and cognition
○​ Personality also changes Wisdom – exceptional breadth and depth of
○​ Loss of coordination, difficulty in swallowing knowledge about the conditions of life and human
and speaking affects and reflective judgment about the application
of knowledge
●​ May involve the lead to transcendence,
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
detachment from preoccupation with the self
●​ The ability to navigate the messiness of life
ASPECTS OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT ●​ Older adults tend to make the most of their
abilities, often exploiting gains in one area to
Intelligence and Processing Abilities offset declines in another
●​ Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale: measure the
intelligence of older adults Cognitive Mechanics – the hardware of the mind
●​ Older adults tend not to perform as well as that reflect the neurophysiological architecture of the
younger adults in WAIS but the difference is brain that was developed through evolution
primarily processing speed and nonverbal ●​ Speed and accuracy, visual and motor memory,
performance discrimination, comparison, and categorization
●​ Classic Aging Pattern: scores drop with age in ●​ Decline begins as soon as early midlife
performance scale and slightly on other scales
●​ For tasks that do not require speed, declines are Cognitive Pragmatics – culture-based software
less likely program of the mind
●​ Cognitive deterioration often may be related to ●​ Reading and writing, language, educational
disuse qualifications, professional skills, life skills
●​ Older adults have more extensive repertoires of ●​ Decline in old age
strategies to apply to interpersonal situations ●​ Selective Attention: focusing on specific aspect
than younger adults do, and they are more likely of experience that is relevant and ignoring
to choose a highly effective strategies irrelevant info
●​ Older adults also tend to have more difficulty with ●​ Divided Attention: concentrating on more than
switching attention one activity at the same time
●​ Sustained Attention: focused and extended
engagement with an object, task, event, or some
other aspect of the environment
Memory and Aging ●​ Executive Attention: involves planning actions,
●​ Sensory Memory: brief storage of sensory allocating attention to goals, detecting and
information

4 | @studywithky
 compensating for errors, monitoring progress on ●​ Terminal Drop: rapid decline in well-being and
tasks, etc. life satisfaction approx. 3-5 yrs before death
●​ Source Memory: ability to remember where one
learned something Coping – adaptive thinking or behavior aimed at
●​ Prospective Memory: remembering to do reducing or relieving stress that arises from harmful,
something in the future threatening, or challenging conditions

PRACTICAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES

PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
RELATED TO AGING

THEORY AND RESEARCH ON Retirement – a dynamic adjustment process that is

PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT best conceptualized as a form of decision making
●​ The age for full eligibility for Social Security
Ego Integrity vs. Despair retirement benefits was raised to 67 years for
●​ The crowning achievement of late adulthood is a people born in 1960 or later
sense of ego integrity ●​ More stringent penalties were instituted for early
●​ At this stage, older adults need to evaluate and retirement at age 62
accept their lives so as to accept death ●​ Five broad categories of resources that help
●​ People who succeed in this final, integrative task determine how well a person adjusts to
gain a sense of the meaning of their lives within retirement:
the larger social order ○​ Individual attributes such as health and
●​ Wisdom: informed and detached concern with financial status
life itself in the face of death itself ○​ Pre-retirement job-related variables such as
●​ Accepting one has lived, without major regrets job stress
●​ Presumption: presumes ego integrity without ○​ Family-related variables such as marriage
actually facing the difficulties of old age; quality and dependents
maladaptive ○​ Retirement transition-related variables
●​ Disdain: contempt of life, one’s own or anyone’s; ○​ Postretirement activities
malignant ●​ Volunteering during retirement has been
positively associated with good health and
The Five-Factor Model negatively associated with depression, functional
●​ Older adults show increases in agreeableness, limitations, and mortality
self-confidence, warmth, emotional stability, and
conscientiousness PHASES OF RETIREMENT
●​ There are also declines in neuroticism, social
vitality, and openness to experience Pre-Retirement Begin to think seriously about the
●​ Why do people show normative changes in life they want for themselves in
retirement and whether they are
personality characteristics? Some researchers financially on track to achieve it
argue that these processes are driven primarily by
intrinsic genetic differences between people that Retirement Makes the transition from full-time
unfold over time work to retirement they’ve planned
●​ Personality traits influence behavior, and behavior
Contentment Positive phase when retirees get to
influences health enjoy the fruits of a lifetime of labor

WELL-BEING IN LATE ADULTHOOD Also called Honeymoon period

Disenchantment They may experience some of the

Well-Being in Old Age emotional downsides of retirements
●​ Older adults have fewer mental disorders and are such as loneliness, disillusionment,
happier and more satisfied with life than younger and a feeling of uselessness

adults
Reorientation People try to figure who they are
●​ Happiness tends to be high in early adulthood, and map their place in the world as
declines until people reach 50 years of age, and a retiree
then tends to rise again until 85 years of age
Routine People accept their situation and
●​ As people get older, they tend to seek out
settle into a new set of routines
activities and people that give them emotional
gratification
●​ They are also better at regulating emotions Aging In Place – staying in their own home
●​ Positivity Effect: older adults are more likely to ●​ The single most important factor keeping people
pay attention to and then remember positive out of institutions is being married
events than negative events ●​ Group living arrangements for Older Adults

5 | @studywithky
 ○​ Retirement Hotel
○​ Retirement Community ●​ Old never-married adults are more likely to prefer
○​ Shared Housing single life and less likely to be lonely
○​ ECHO (Elder Cottage Housing Opportunity) ●​ Less likely to experience Single Strain (chronic
Housing practical and emotional stressor attributed to the
○​ Congregate Housing lack of intimate partner)
○​ Assisted-Living Facility ●​ Gay and Lesbian relationships in late life tend to
○​ Foster-Care Home be strong, supportive, and diverse
○​ Continuing Care Retirement Community
●​ Most common form of abuse is emotional and NONMARITAL KINSHIP TIES
psychological abuse
●​ Older adults who receive more help from their
children than they give them, over time, are more
likely to show increases in psychological stress
●​ Relationships with siblings tend to be among the
long lasting of all relationships
●​ To mourn for a sibling is to mourn for the lost
completeness of the original family within

REFERENCES
Papalia, D., & Martorell, G. (2015). Experience human
development (13th ed.). McGraw Hill Education.
Santrock, J. W. (2019). Life-span development (17th ed.).
McGraw-Hill Education.

PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS IN LATE LIFE

Social Contact and Support Theories

●​ Social Convoy Theory: aging adults maintain
their level of social support by identifying
members of their social network who can help
them
●​ Socioemotional Selectivity Theory: as remaining
time becomes short, older adults choose to spend
time with people and in activities that meet
immediate emotional needs
●​ Even though older adults may have smaller social
networks than younger adults do, they tend to
have as many very close relationships
●​ People who are socially isolated and lonely tend
to show more rapid physical and cognitive
declines

MARITAL RELATIONSHIPS

●​ Married couples who are still together in late

adulthood are more likely than middle-aged
couples to report higher satisfaction and fewer
adjustment problems in their marriages
●​ Close marital relationship can moderate the
negative psychological effects of functional
disabilities by reducing psychological distress
●​ Widowhood has been increasingly associated
with increased mortality, with sharpest declines
seen in the first 6 months following the death of a
spouse

NONMARITAL LIFESTYLES AND RELATIONSHIPS

6 | @studywithky
 11 – Death and Bereavement
PY104 | DVPSY | 2023 - 2024

stress, and attempts to maintain a satisfactory

quality of life
OUTLINE
1.​ The Many, Changing Meanings of
Death and Dying FACING DEATH AND LOSS
2.​ Facing Death and Loss
3.​ Significant Losses
4.​ Medical, Legal, and Ethical Issues: PHYSICAL AND COGNITIVE CHANGES
The “Right to Die” PRECEDING DEATH
5.​ Finding Meaning and Purpose in
Life and Death
●​ Terminal Drop: specifically to a widely observed
decline in cognitive abilities shortly before death
MEANINGS OF DEATH AND DYING ○​ Also called Terminal Decline
○​ Losses of perceptual speed have been found
to predict death nearly 15 years later,
THE CULTURAL CONTEXT although most declines start about 7.7 years
before death occurs
●​ Cultural aspects of death include care of and ●​ Near-Death Experience: often involving a sense
behavior toward the dying and the dead, the of being out of the body or sucked into a tunnel
setting where death usually takes place, and and visions of bright lights or mystical encounters
mourning customs and rituals ○​ Linked to stimulation or damage of various
●​ Expressions of grief, anger, and fear are common brain areas, most notably in bilateral frontal
across cultures and occipital areas
●​ Most cultures have socially sanctioned ways of ○​ Generally experienced as positive as a result
expressing these emotions within the context of of the release of endorphins
mourning or funeral practices ●​ While more highly educated people generally
perform better on cognitive tests, they show
THE MORTALITY REVOLUTION similar rates of decline as do less educated people
●​ Dementia accelerates the rate of decline in all
●​ Advances in medicine and sanitation, new people
treatments for many once-fatal illnesses, and a ●​ Areas of decline include memory capacity,
better-educated, more health conscious perceptual speed, visuospatial abilities, and
population have brought about a mortality everyday cognition
revolution
●​ Top causes of deaths in 1900s are: Pneumonia, CONFRONTING ONE’S OWN DEATH
Influenza, Tuberculosis, Diarrhea, and Enteritis
●​ Today, the most common are heart disease and ●​ Kübler-Ross outlined five stages in coming to
cancer terms with death
●​ As death increasingly became a phenomenon of ●​ She also proposed a similar progression in the
late adulthood, it became “invisible and abstract” \ feelings of people facing imminent bereavement
●​ Thanatology: study of death and dying ●​ Although the emotions she described are
common, not everyone goes through all five
CARE OF THE DYING stages and not necessarily in the same sequence

●​ Hospice Care: personal, patient- and

KUBLER-ROSS’ STAGES OF DEATH
family-centered, compassionate care for the
terminally ill Denial “This can’t be happening to me!”
○​ Hospice facilities offer a specialized type of
palliative care for people whose life Anger “Why me?”
expectancy is 6 months or less
Bargaining Bargaining for extra time
○​ The goal is to allow the person to die in peace
and dignity, while minimizing any pain and “If I can only live to see my daughter
suffering married, I won’t ask for anything more”
○​ Hospice care may take place at home, but
Depression
such care can be given in a hospital or
another institution, or at a hospice center Acceptance
●​ Palliative Care: includes relief of pain and
suffering, controlling of symptoms, alleviation of

1 | @studywithky
 PATTERNS OF GRIEVING
ATTITUDES TOWARDS DEATH
●​ Grief: emotional response that generally follows
closely on the heels of death Infants No concept of death
●​ Bereavement: response to the loss of some
Preschool Little concept of death
whom a person feels close
●​ Grief Work: the working out of psychological Do not develop until age 5
issues connected with grief
Believe that death = sleep

GRIEF WORK MODEL Elementary More realistic orientation towards

death
Shock & Immediately following a death,
Disbelief survivors often feel lost and confused Accept universality of death by age
9
The initial numbness gives way to
overwhelming feelings of sadness and May feel responsible for death
frequent crying
Adolescence More abstract, philosophical views
May last several weeks, especially after of death
a sudden or unexpected death
Unrealistic (personal fable)
Preoccupation May last 6 months to 2 years
with the May react negatively to the
Memory of the Survivor tries to come to terms with likelihood of death due to illness
Dead Person the death but cannot yet accept it
Early Adulthood No evidence for special orientation
Resolution The bereaved person renews interest towards death
in everyday activities
Believe that death is unfair
Memories of the dead person bring
fond feelings mingled with sadness Middle Adulthood Heightened consciousness about
rather than sharp pain and longing death and death anxiety

Fear of death is greater

Multiple Variations of Grieving
●​ Recovery Pattern: mourner goes high to low Older Adults Less death anxiety but more
distress experience and converse about it
●​ Delayed Grief: moderate or elevated initial grief, Realistic and reflective about death
and symptoms worsen over time
●​ Chronic Grief: distressed for a long time
●​ Resilience: the mourner shows a low and SIGNIFICANT LOSSES
gradually diminishing level of grief in response to
the death of a loved one
SIGNIFICANT LOSSES

ATTITUDES ABOUT DEATH AND DYING

●​ Bereavement for women can lead to headaches,
ACROSS THE LIFESPAN
memory problems, difficulty with concentration,
dizziness, indigestion, loss of appetite, or chest
●​ By age 4, children build a partial understanding
pain
of the biological nature of death
●​ Distress of loss can be catalyst for introspection
●​ Adjusting to loss is more difficult if a child had a
and growth
troubled relationship with the person who died
●​ Losing a parent can push adults into resolving
●​ They do not understand death, but they
important developmental issues
understand loss
○​ Achieving a stronger sense of self and more
●​ Often, teens turn to peers for support
pressing, realistic awareness of their own
●​ Young adults will find their entire world collapsing
morality
at once when they knew they are dying instead of
○​ Along with greater sense of purpose,
dealing with other issues
responsibility, commitment, and
●​ Middle-Aged and Older adults are more prepared
interconnectedness to others
with death
●​ After death of a parent, siblings tends to be closer
●​ Terror Management Theory: human’s unique
●​ Losing a child weakens and destroys the marriage
understanding of death, in concert with
if the marriage is not strong
self-preservation needs and capacity for fear,
results in common emotional and psychological MEDICAL, LEGAL, AND ETHICAL ISSUES:
responses when mortality, or thoughts of death THE “RIGHT TO DIE”
are made salient
2 | @studywithky
 existence
SUICIDE
Common in children who lose a
●​ A growing number of people consider a mature parent

adult’s deliberate choice of a time to end his or

Death Darers Unsure about suicide
her life a rational decision and a right to be
defended Risk-taking behavior may not ensure
●​ Suicide rates are highest in the elderly in almost death

all areas of the world May think ahead for ways to be

●​ Men also commit suicide at higher rates than do stopped by others
women

HASTENING DEATH FINDING MEANING AND PURPOSE

IN LIFE AND DEATH
●​ Brain Death: neurological condition which states
the person is brain dead when all electrical FINDING MEANING
activity of the brain has ceased for a specific
period of time ●​ Life Review: a process of reminisce that enables a
○​ Higher portions of the brains dies sooner than person to see the significance of his or her life
lower parts which facilitates breathing and ●​ Within a limited life span, no person can realize all
heartbeat capabilities, gratify all desires, explore all interest,
○​ That is why your brain could be dead but you or experience all the richness that life has to offer
still have heartbeat for the meantime
●​ Euthanasia: good death, intended to end
suffering or to allow terminally ill person to die
with dignity REFERENCES
Papalia, D., & Martorell, G. (2015). Experience human
○​ Passive: involves withholding or
development (13th ed.). McGraw Hill Education.
discontinuing treatment that might extend Santrock, J. W. (2019). Life-span development (17th ed.).
the life of a terminally ill patient such as life McGraw-Hill Education.
support
○​ Active: “mercy killing” involves action taken
directly or deliberate to shorten life
●​ Advance Directive: contains instructions for
when and how to discontinue futile medical care
○​ Living will or a more formal legal document
called a durable power of attorney
○​ Durable Power of Attorney: appoints
another person if the maker of the document
becomes incompetent to do so
●​ Assisted Suicide: physician or someone else
helps a person bring about a self-inflicted death

SCHNEIDMAN'S TYPES OF SUICIDE SEEKERS

Death Seekers Clearly wants to end their life

State of mind changes often

Some may be set on suicide and an

hour later be uncertain

Death Initiators Hurrying the inevitable

Clearly intent on ending their life

Usually someone who is ill or elderly

Believe that death is already coming

Death Ignorers Do not think that death will be the

end of them

Believe that death will bring a happier

3 | @studywithky