Chapter 1

Introduction

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 The Importance of Studying Life-Span
Development 1

Studying life-span development:

• Prepares the individual to take responsibility for children.

• Gives insight about individuals’ lives and history.

• Provides knowledge about what individuals’ lives will be like as

they age into their adult years.

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 The Importance of Studying Life-Span
Development 2

Development: the pattern of change beginning at conception and

continuing throughout the life span.
• Involves growth.
• Also includes decline brought on by aging and dying.

Life-span perspective: the perspective that development is

lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic,
multidisciplinary, and contextual.
• Development involves growth, maintenance, and regulation and
is constructed through biological, sociocultural, and individual
factors working together.
• The emphasis is on developmental change throughout
childhood and adulthood.

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 Life Expectancy 1

• The upper boundary of the human life span is 122 years.

• Life expectancy in the United States is about 79 years.
• People are living longer in part due to better sanitation, nutrition,
and medicine.
• Currently, more people are over 60 than under 18.

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 Characteristics of the Life-Span Perspective
Development has these qualities:

•Development occurs across one’s entire life or is lifelong.

•Development is multidimensional, meaning it involves the dynamic

interaction of factors like physical, emotional, and psychosocial
development

•Development is multidirectional and results in gains and losses

throughout life

•Development is plastic, meaning that characteristics are malleable or

changeable.

•Development is influenced by contextual and socio-cultural

influences.

•Development is multidisciplinary (Psychologists, sociologists, neuroscientists,

anthropologists, educators, economists, historians, medical researchers, and others )

• It involves growth, maintenance, and regulation of loss.

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 Types of Contextual Influences
Normative age-graded influences are similar for individuals in a
particular age group.
• For example, starting school, puberty, menopause.

Normative history-graded influences have common generational

experiences due to historical events.

• In the 1930s, the Great Depression; in the 19 60s to 1970s, the civil
rights and women’s rights movements; in 2001, the attacks on 9/11.
Nonnormative life events are unusual occurrences that have a major
life impact.

• For example, early pregnancy, losing a parent as a child, winning the

lottery.

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 Some Contemporary Concerns 1

Health and well-being:

• Lifestyles and psychological states have powerful influences on
health and well-being.
• For example, there is a positive connection between exercise
and cognitive development.

Parenting and education:

• Many questions involve pressures on the contemporary family
and conditions impairing the effectiveness of U.S. schools.

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 Some Contemporary Concerns 2

Sociocultural contexts and diversity:

• Culture: behavior patterns, beliefs, and all other products of a
group passed on from generation to generation.
• Cross-cultural studies: comparison of one culture with one or
more other cultures to gain information about their
developmental similarities.

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 Some Contemporary Concerns 3

Ethnicity: a characteristic based on cultural heritage, nationality

characteristics, race, religion, and language.
• Pride of ethnic identity has positive outcomes.

Socioeconomic status: grouping of people with similar

occupational, educational, and economic characteristics.
Gender: characteristics of people as males or females.
• Transgender refers to individuals who adopt a gender identity
that differs from the one assigned to them at birth.

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 Some Contemporary Concerns 5

Social policy: a national government’s course of action designed

to promote the welfare of its citizens.
Values, economics, and politics all shape a nation’s social policy.
Social policy issues include:
• The increase in the number of children living in poverty and
resulting stressors.
• The well-being of older adults, with escalating health care costs
and the need for access to adequate health care.

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 Some Contemporary Concerns 7

Technology:
There has been an almost overwhelming increase in the use of
technology at all points in human development.
Topics to consider include:
• The potential effects on language development.
• Screen time versus participation in physical activity.
• Whether media multitasking is harmful or beneficial.
• The degree to which older adults are adapting.

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 The Nature of Development: Topics 2

FIGURE 6: PROCESSES INVOLVED IN DEVELOPMENTAL CHANGES

Biological, cognitive, and socioemotional processes interact as individuals develop.

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 Biological, Cognitive, and Socioemotional
Processes 1

Biological processes: changes in an individual’s physical nature.

• Science now allows for the study of an individual’s
genetic makeup.
Cognitive processes: changes in an individual’s thought,
intelligence, and language.
Socioemotional processes: changes in an individual’s
relationships, emotions, and personality.
Biological, cognitive, and socioemotional processes interact as
individuals develop.

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 Biological, Cognitive, and Socioemotional
Processes 3

FIGURE 7: PROCESSES AND PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT

The unfolding of life’s periods of development is influenced by the interaction of biological, cognitive, and socioemotional
processes.
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 Periods of Development 1

Developmental period refers to a time frame in a person’s life

characterized by certain features.
• Prenatal period: conception to birth.
• Infancy: birth to 18 or 24 months.
• Toddler: 18 months to 3 years of age.
• Early childhood: 3 to 5 years of age.
• Middle and late childhood: about 6 to 10 or 11 years old.
• Adolescence: 10 to 12 years old, to 18 to 21 years old.
• Emerging adulthood: 18 to 25 years of age.
• Early adulthood: early twenties through the thirties.
• Middle adulthood: forties and fifties.
• Late adulthood: sixties or seventies, until death.

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 Periods of Development 2

Four ages:
Life-span developmentalists who focus on adult development and
aging typically describe development in terms of four “ages.”
• First age: childhood and adolescence.
• Second age: prime adulthood, ages 20 to 59.
• Third age: approximately 60 to 79 years of age.
• Fourth age: approximately 80 years and older.

Development in one period is connected to development in

another period.

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 Periods of Development 3

Three developmental patterns of aging:

• Normal aging: describes most individuals, with psychological
functioning peaking early middle age.
• Pathological aging: describes individuals with above average
decline as they age, developing a condition leading to mild
cognitive impairment or chronic disease that impairs daily
functioning.
• Successful aging: describes individuals maintaining positive
physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development longer in
life.

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 Periods of Development 4

Connections across periods of development:

• Just as there are many connections between biological,
cognitive, and socioemotional processes, so there are many
connections between the periods of the human life span.

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 Developmental Issues 1

Nature-nurture issue: the debate about whether development is

primarily influenced by nature or nurture.
• Nature refers to an organism’s biological inheritance.
• Nurture refers to its environmental experiences.

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 Developmental Issues 2

Stability-change issue: the debate about the degree to which

early traits and characteristics persist through life or change.

Does the individual:

• Becomes an older version of the early self, with the same traits
persisting through life? or
• Develop into someone different from who he or she was at an
earlier point in development?
Continuity-discontinuity issue: the debate about the extent to
which development involves gradual, cumulative change
(continuity), or distinct stages (discontinuity).

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 Developmental Issues 4

Evaluating the developmental issues:

• Most developmentalists acknowledge that development is a
combination of each of these views.
• The extent of their individual influences is still highly debated.

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 Theories of Development

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 Psychoanalytic Theories 1

Psychoanalytic theories: describe development as primarily

unconscious and heavily colored by emotion.
Behavior is a surface characteristic, and the symbolic workings of
the mind have to be analyzed to understand behavior.
Early experiences with parents are emphasized.

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 Psychoanalytic Theories 2

Freud’s theory:
Through his work with patients, Freud became convinced that their
problems were the result of experiences early in life.
He defined five stages of psychosexual development.
Adult personality is determined by the way we resolve conflicts
between sources of pleasure at each stage and the demands of
reality.

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 Psychoanalytic Theories 3

Oral Stage Anal Stage Phallic Stage Latency Stage Genital Stage

Infant’s pleasure Child’s pleasure Child’s pleasure Child represses A time of sexual
centers on the focuses on the focuses on the sexual interest reawakening;
mouth. anus. genitals. and develops source of sexual
social and pleasure
intellectual becomes
skills. someone
outside the
family.

Birth to 1½ 1½ to 3 Years 3 to 6 Years 6 Years to Puberty Onward

Years Puberty

TABLE 10: FREUDIAN STAGES

Because Freud emphasized sexual motivation, his stages of development are known as psychosexual
stages. In his view, if the need for pleasure at any stage is either undergratified or overgratified, an
individual may become fixated, or locked in, at that stage of development.

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 Psychoanalytic Theories 4

Erikson’s psychosocial theory:

According to Erik Erikson, the primary motivation for behavior is
social in nature.
Personality and developmental change occurs throughout the
life span.
Both early and later experiences are important.

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 Psychoanalytic Theories 5

Erikson’s theory: includes eight stages of human development,

each representing a crisis that must be resolved.
• Trust versus mistrust: first year of infancy.
• Autonomy versus shame and doubt: 1 to 3 years.
• Initiative versus guilt: 3 to 5 years.
• Industry versus inferiority: 6 years to puberty.
• Identity versus identity confusion: 10 to 20 years.
• Intimacy versus isolation: twenties and thirties.
• Generativity versus stagnation: forties and fifties.
• Integrity versus despair: sixties to death.

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 Psychoanalytic Theories 6

Evaluating psychoanalytic theories:

Contributions include an emphasis on a developmental framework,
family relationships, and unconscious aspects of the mind.
Criticisms of psychoanalytic theories:
• Lack of scientific support.
• Too much emphasis on sexual underpinnings.
• An image of people that is too negative.

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 Cognitive Theories 1

Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory:

Piaget’s theory: children go through four stages
of cognitive development as they actively
construct their understanding of
the world.
• Sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years of age).
• Preoperational stage (2 to 7 years of age).
• Concrete operational stage (7 to 11 years of
age).
• Formal operational stage (11 years of age
through adulthood.

Two processes underlie this: organization and adaptation.

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 Cognitive Theories 2

Sensorimotor Stage, Birth to 2 Preoperational Stage, 2 Concrete Operational Formal Operational

Years of Age: to 7 Years of Age: Stage, 7 to 11 Years Stage, 11 Years of
The infant constructs an
understanding of the world by The child begins to of Age: Age Through
coordinating sensory experiences represent the world with Adulthood:
with physical actions. words and images. These The child can now
An infant progresses from reflect increased symbolic reason logically about The adolescent
reflexive, instinctual action at thinking and go beyond the concrete events and reasons in more
birth to the beginning of symbolic
thought toward the end of the
connection of sensory in classify objects into abstract, idealistic,
stage. formation and physical different sets. and logical ways.
action.

FIGURE 12: PIAGET’S FOUR STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

According to Piaget, how a child thinks—not how much the child knows—determines the child’s stage of
cognitive development.

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 Cognitive Theories 3

The information-processing theory:

Information-processing theory: emphasizes
that individuals manipulate information, monitor
it, and strategize about it.
Central to this theory are the processes of
memory and thinking.

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 Behavioral and Social Cognitive Theories 1

Skinner’s operant conditioning:

Development consists of the pattern of behavioral changes
brought about by rewards and punishments.
Bandura’s social cognitive theory:
• Emphasizes behavior, environment, and cognition as the key
factors in development.
• Relations between behavior, person/cognitive, and
environmental factors are reciprocal.
• Using forethought, individuals guide and motivate themselves by
creating action plans, formulating goals, and visualizing positive
outcomes of their actions.

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 Behavioral and Social Cognitive Theories 2

FIGURE 14: BANDURA’S SOCIAL COGNITIVE MODEL

The arrows illustrate how relations between behavior, person/cognitive, and environment are reciprocal
rather than one-way. Person/cognitive refers to cognitive processes (for example, thinking and planning)
and personal characteristics (for example, believing that you can control your experiences).

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