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Chapter 4
Developing Through the Lifespan
EXPLORING PSYCHOLOGY in Modules DAVID G. MYERS | C. NATHAN DEWALL
Developmental Psychology’s Major Issues
• Nature and nurture
• How does genetic inheritance interact with
experiences to influence development?
• Continuity and stages
• Which parts of development are gradual and
continuous? Which parts change abruptly in separate
stages?
• Stability and change
• Which traits persist through life?
Prenatal Development and the Newborn
(part 1)
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Prenatal Development and the Newborn
(part 2)
• At each prenatal stage, genetic and
environmental factors affect development
• Language learning in utero; preference for mother’s
voice and language and some environmental sounds
• Placenta screens out most harmful substances;
some slip by
• Teratogens
• Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)
• Maternal stress increases risk for health problems
Prenatal Development and the Newborn
(part 3)
Prenatal Development and the Newborn
(part 4)
• The Competent
Newborn
• Automatic reflex
responses:
• Rooting
• Sucking
• Startle
• Grasping
• Research
• Habituation
• Gazing
• Maternal scent
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Physical Development (part 1)
• Brain Development
• Explosive growth in developing
prenatal brain
• Rapid neural network branching
and linking after birth
• Most rapid frontal lobes growth
from 3 to 6 years; development
continues into adolescence and
beyond
• Neural pruning process shuts
down unused links
• Nature–nurture interaction sculpts
synapses
• Critical period for some skills;
plasticity
Physical Development (part 2)
Physical Development (part 3)
• Motor Development
• Universal motor development sequence
• Skill Development
• Tied to infant’s exercise of maturing muscles and
nervous system
• Genes
• Culture
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Physical Development (part 4)
• Brain Maturation and Infant
Memory
• Rapid neuron growth disrupts
old memory circuits, causing
infantile amnesia
• Brain areas tied to memory
continue to mature during
adolescence
• Rovee-Collier
• Infants learned and
remembered in mobile kicking
experiment
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Cognitive Development (part 1)
• Piaget’s Thinking and Current Thinking
• Children construct their understanding of the world
while interacting with it
• Mental models: Periods of change, stability, and
movement to the next cognitive stage with distinctive
characteristics and thinking are experienced
• Core concepts
• Schema
• Assimilation
• Accommodation
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Cognitive Development (part 2)
• Piaget’s Stages
• Sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2)
• Learning through senses and actions
• Gradual unfolding of object permanence
• Preoperational stage
• Things represented with words and images (until age 6 or
7)
• Unable to perform mental operations
• Lack of the concept of conservation
• Symbolic thinking and pretend play appear earlier than
Piaget predicted
• Inability to take point of view of others (egocentrism)
• Theory of mind gradually develops
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Baby Math
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Cognitive Development (part 3)
• Piaget’s Stages
• Concrete operational stage (about age 7 to 11 years)
• Improved mental operations enable logical thinking about
concrete events; analogies
• Comprehension of mathematical transformation and
conservation
• Formal operational stage (about age 12 onward)
• Reasoning about actual experiences evolves to include
abstract thinking
• Initially includes imagined realities and symbols, then
hypothetical propositions and deductions of consequences
(approaching adolescence)
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Cognitive Development (part 4)
• An Alternative Viewpoint:
Lev Vygotsky and the
Social Child
• Child’s mind grows
through interactions with
the social environment
• Scaffolding offers children
temporary support as
higher levels of thinking
are developed (between
too easy and too difficult)
• Language facilitates social
mentoring and provides
the building blocks for
thinking
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Cognitive Development (part 5)
• Reflecting on Piaget’s Theory
• Contributions: Identification of significant cognitive
milestones and cognitive development sequence;
stimulated interest in how mind develops
• Criticisms: Development more continuous than proposed;
timing of types of thinking seen at earlier ages; some
conceptual abilities missed
• Implications for Parents: Things to Consider
• Young children are incapable of adult logic
• Children’s cognitive development is active, not passive
• Early immaturity is adaptive
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Social Development (part 1)
• At Birth
• Preference for familiar faces and voices
• Gradually reacts to parent attention with coos and
googles
• Around 8 months
• Object permanence
• Stranger anxiety
• Around 13 months
• Anxiety disorder from parents peaks
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Social Development (part 2)
• Attachment
• Emotional tie to another
• Characterized by
seeking closeness and
separation distress
• Origins
• Body contact
• Soft, warm touching or
arousing
• Secure base provision
• Familiarity
• Formed during critical
period
• Imprinting (animals)
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Social Development (part 3)
• Attachment Differences
• Strange situation (Ainsworth research)
• Secure attachment
• Insecure attachment
• Temperament and attachment
• Attachment: Process by which certain animals form strong
attachments during early life
• Temperament: Characteristic emotional reactivity and
intensity
• Attachment styles and later relationships
• Difficult versus easy
• Persistent physiological differences
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Social Development (part 5)
• Attachment Styles and Later Relationship
• Sensitive, loving parent–infant relationships foster
basic, social trust
• Provide a positive foundation for adult relationships
• Contribute to lifelong attitude of trust (Erik Erikson)
• Forms of insecure attachment
• Anxious attachment
• Avoidant attachment
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Social Development (part 6)
• Deprivation of Attachment
• Children who experience enduring abuse do not always
thrive
• Outcomes of adopted Romanian orphans
• Other international research (van Ijzendoorn)
• Abused children’s brains may contribute to heightened
reactivity
• Stronger startle responses as infants
• Heightened reactions to later stress and stress-related disease
• Epigenetic marks that alter normal gene expression
• Some abused children are resilient
• Withstand trauma and become well-adjusted adults
• Develop mental toughness
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Social Development (part 7)
• Parenting Styles (Baumrind and others)
• Authoritarian: Coercive
• Permissive: Unrestraining
• Negligent: Uninvolved
• Authoritative: Confrontive
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Social Development (part 8)
• Culture and Child Raising
• All child-raising advice reflects:
• Advice-giver’s values
• Cultural values that vary across time and place
• Children thrive under various child-raising systems
• North America
• Upper-class British
• Asians
• Africans
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Physical Development (part 1)
• Adolescence
• Transition period from childhood to adulthood
• Puberty to independence
• Storm and stress (Hall), careless vitality, or something in
between?
• Puberty
• Period of sexual maturation, during which a person
becomes capable of reproducing
• Timing of puberty
• The sequence of physical changes is more predictable
than its timing
• Gender differences
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Physical Development (part 2)
• The Teenage Brain
• Brain cells
• Brain cells increase their connections until puberty
• Selective pruning of unused neurons and connections begins
• Myelin continues to develop
• Hormonal surge and lagging limbic system development
contribute to impulsiveness, risky behaviors, emotional storms
• APA and U.S. Supreme Court
• 2004: Argument and ruling against death penalty for 16- to 17-
year-olds
• 2012: Ruling against sentencing juveniles to life without parole
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Impulse Control Lags Reward Seeking
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Cognitive Development (part 1)
• Developing
Reasoning Power
• Formal operations
change adolescent
thinking (Piaget)
• Abstract,
hypothetical
reasoning
• Consequences
deduction
• Inconsistency and
hypocrisy detection
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Cognitive Development (part 2)
• Developing Morality (Piaget; Kohlberg)
• Moral reasoning guides moral actions
• Moral people think and act morally
• Morality is influenced by conscious and unconscious
thinking
• Critical tasks
• Discerning right from wrong
• Developing character
• Empathizing with others
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Cognitive Development (part 3)
• Moral reasoning (Kohlberg)
• Posed moral dilemmas to children to develop a hierarchy of
formal reasoning
• Three invariant levels of moral thinking: Preconventional,
conventional, postconventional
• Cultural limitations of postconventional stage noted by critics
• Moral intuition (Haidt)
• Theorized morality is rooted in moral intuitions
• Although the default system is used, it may be manually
overridden (dual processing)
• Moral action
• Depends on social influences and doing the right thing
• Relies on ability to delay impulses and immediate gratification
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Kohlberg’s Levels of Moral Thinking
Example of Moral
Level (approximate age) Focus
Reasoning
Preconventional morality (before age 9) Self-interest; obey rules to avoid “If you save your loved
punishment or gain concrete one, you’ll be a hero.”
rewards.
Conventional morality (early Uphold laws and rules to gain “If you steal the
adolescence) social approval or maintain social medicine, everyone
order. will think you’re a
criminal.”
Postconventional morality (adolescence Actions reflect belief in basic “People have a right to
and beyond) rights and self-defined ethical live.”
principles.
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Social Development (part 1)
• Forming an Identity
• Identity
• Group identity
• Social identity
• Intimacy
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Social Development (part 2)
• Parent and Peer Relationships
• Diminishing parental and increasing peer influence
• Affected by attachments and perceptions
• Selection effect
• Parent–child arguments
• Positive relations
• Networking
• To blame or not to blame
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Emerging Adulthood
Is emerging adulthood a developmental stage?
Which information from the text supports your
answer?
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Physical Development (part 1)
• Physical Changes in Middle Adulthood
• Imperceptible changes in muscular strength, reaction
time, sensory keenness, and cardiac output
• Gradual decline in fertility for males and females;
lessened sexual activity
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Physical Development (part 2)
• Physical Changes in Late Adulthood
• Continuing decrease in muscle strength, reaction time,
stamina, vision, and senses of smell, hearing, and touch
• Weakened immune system; fewer short-term ailments
• Slower reaction time, decreased perceptual and memory
ability; other cognitive declines related directly to changes
in brain; compensating neural plasticity
• Exercise slows aging, enhances bone and muscles, helps
prevent obesity, and slows Alzheimer’s disease
progression
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Cognitive Development (part 1)
• Aging and Memory
• With age, some things are remembered well
(reminiscence bump)
• Individual differences occur in the capacity to learn
and remember
• Memory depends on the type of information being
retrieved, its meaningfulness, and comprehension
versus production
• Tip-of-the-tongue forgetting occurs more frequently
with age
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Cognitive Development (part 2)
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Cognitive Development (part 3)
• Maintaining Mental Abilities
• Brain plasticity is a lifelong phenomenon
• Individuals who engage in “brain fitness” programs
show improved scores on trained tasks; less
generalization to other tasks
• Age is less a predictor of memory and intelligence
than of proximity to death (terminal decline)
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Social Development (part 1)
• Adulthood’s Ages and Stages
• Midlife crisis
• Little support for the perception of the midlife transition as a
crisis
• A major event, not age, triggers crisis for 1 in 4 adults
• Life events trigger transitions to new life stages
• Social clock varies among eras and cultures
• Chance events can impact life path
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Social Development (part 2)
• Basic aspects of adult life (Erikson)
• Intimacy (forming close relationships)
• Generativity (being productive and supporting future
generations)
• Love
• Relatively monogamous pairing
• Similarity of interests and values, emotional and material
support, and intimate self-disclosure
• Age and education level
• No cohabitation before marriage; vow power
• Ratio of positive to negative interactions
• Work
• Interests, sense of competence, accomplishment fit
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Social Development (part 3)
• Well-Being Across the Life Span
• Well-being is related to life satisfaction, positive
feelings, enhanced emotional control, and positive
relationships—not age
• The aging brain nurtures positive feelings; less
responsive amygdala
• Bad feelings associated with negative events fade
faster
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Biopsychosocial Influences on Aging
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