Topic 8 Development

Development is a pattern of movement or change that begins at conception and continues

through the human life span.
When we study development, we utilise life-span perspective which states that development
is lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic, multidisciplinary, and contextual. It
involves growth, maintenance, and regulation, and is constructed through biological, socio-
cultural, and individual factors working together.
The lifespan perspective emphasises that developmental changes occur during childhood and
adulthood.
The characteristics of the lifespan perspective are:
1. Lifelong - development happens to us at each stage, there is no single stage of
development which dominates the entire process.
2. Multidimensional – regardless of our age, our body, mind, emotions, and relationships
are changing. Therefore, our development consists of biological, social and cognitive
dimensions and within each of these dimensions, there are many components such as
attention, memory, processing speed, information processing etc.
3. Multidirectional – some of our dimensions or components of dimensions expand and
others shrink. For example, if we learn to speak English during childhood, it can be
difficult to learn another language during adulthood. Additionally, older adults may be
excellent at recalling their experiences to guide their intellectual decision making but
may perform poorly on tasks that require speed in processing information.
4. Plastic – there is a debate on how easy it is for some people to change with regard to
some of their dimensions. Can older adults develop their intellectual capabilities in their
70’s? Some developmental psychologists propose that with training and development
of new strategies this may be possible. This is an area of research that continues to hold
the attention of developmental researchers.
5. Multidisciplinary – developmental psychologists are not the only persons who are
interested in understanding what happens when we develop throughout the life span.
Medical researchers, anthropologists, sociologists, neuroscientists all share the same
interest. Understanding how our intellect develops, how we form social bonds, how we
learn and build memories are all questions that these disciplines seek to understand
6. Contextual – we do not exist in isolation. We interact with peers, families and
institutions. These context factors change and with that we also change.
7. Growth, maintenance, and regulation of loss – part of development is being able to
manage conflicts and competition among three goals of human development: growth,
maintenance and regulation of loss. As we enter middle and late adulthood, the
maintenance and regulation of loss becomes the focus as we shift away from growth.
8. Biology, culture and the individual – development is a co-construction of biology.
Culture and the individual. We shape our culture and are also shaped by culture and the
experiences we have. We navigate our environment by choosing our own
 developmental pathways and in so doing, we select what from our environment can
optimize our overall development. Through the combination of our culture and our
environment we can exceed the genetic capacities we are born with.
Developmental psychology is that branch of psychology that studies the physical, cognitive,
and social change throughout the lifespan.

Human Developmental Theories

We have theories of development because observers of human behaviour have been intrigued
by what they saw children and adults do. Developmental theorists try to make sense of what
they observed us humans do and by so doing, construct a story of the human journey from
infancy through childhood and into adulthood.
Cognitive Development – Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980)
Jean Piaget offers a cognitive development theory which stemmed from his observation of
incorrect responses being given by children on a test. The interesting part of the observation
was that all the incorrect answers were similar across children of a similar age. This theory is
a general theory of how biology and experience shape our cognitive development. Much in the
same way that our physical bodies have structures that enable us to adapt to the world, we also
have mental structures that help us adapt to the world.
Piaget studied children’s cognition which is all the mental activities associated with thinking,
knowing, remembering and communicating. Children are believed to develop in a series of
stages from simple reflexes to complex adult thinking. Our intellectual progression reflects our
continuous struggle to understand and make sense of our world. During his studies, he
concluded that children tend to reason and think differently from adults.
One way in which we make sense of the world is through mental schemas which is a framework
which organises and interprets information. Our behavioural schemas, that is physical activities
are characteristic of infancy while mental schemas, or our cognitive activities, develop during
childhood. A baby’s schema consists of simple actions like holding an object, grasping at
something or looking. Older children have schemas that would involve some degree of strategy
and problem solving. By the time we enter adulthood, we would have created an enormous
amount of schemas
Piaget proposed two concepts to explain how we form schemas:
Assimilation: interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas. For example,
a child who learns the word cat to identify the family’s pet would then include all similar
looking animals into the same category such as other breeds of cats or small dogs and even
rabbits
Accommodation: adjusting schemas to take into account new experiences.
Children constantly engage in cognitive organisation of their experiences by grouping isolated
events, experiences and thoughts into a higher-order system. As children continue to refine this
organisation, they continue to develop. As children continue to explore and try to understand
their environment, there would be times where they experience a cognitive conflict which
Piaget called a disequilibrium. For example, a child may observe that after pouring water from
a short, wide container into a taller thinner one, there may extra water which will cause them
to wonder where did this so called extra water come from. The experience of this disequilibrium
motivates them to change. A growing child would assimilate, accommodate, adjust their old
schemas, develop new schemas and organise and reorganise the old and new schemas.
Eventually their organisation is fundamentally different from the old organisation; it is a new
way of thinking.
Piaget’s Stages of Development:
Stage 1: Sensorimotor stage [birth to 2 years]
During this stage, infants start to construct an understanding of their world by coordinating
their sensory experiences with physical and motoric actions. Hence the term, sensorimotor.
Infants start this stage with little more than reflexes with which to work. By the end of this
stage, they can produce complex patterns. One of the biggest cognitive developmental
milestones to be achieved during this stage is called the development of object permanence.
For babies, at the start of this first stage, objects seem to have no permanent existence, and they
are barely capable of differentiating between themselves and the rest of the world. Object
permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist when they cannot be seen, heard
or touched. One of the ways in which we can determine if object permanence is developed is
to observe the behaviour of an infant after introducing them to a new and interesting object
which you have then hidden from them. If the infant appears to be looking for the object, then
it can be concluded that they have developed an understanding that the object continues to exist
despite being out of their vision. There has been some criticism to exactly when Piaget
suggested that object permanence occurs. Rather than appearing promptly at the age of 6
months or 8 months, other researchers believe that this an outcome of a gradual development,
instead choosing to believe that development is a continuous process rather than an abrupt
change.
Stage 2 Preoperational Stage [2 to 7 years]
The second stage of development occurs between the ages of 2 and 7 which Piaget called the
preoperational stage. During this stage, children begin to represent their world with words,
images, and drawings, and symbolic thought goes beyond simple connections of sensory
information and physical action. Stable concepts are formed, mental reasoning emerges,
egocentrism is present and magical beliefs are constructed. The term preoperational was given
to this stage because Piaget believed that children between 2 and 7 cannot perform operations
or what he called reversible mental actions. For example, being able to subtract mentally is an
example of an operation. Preoperational thought is the beginning of the child’s ability to
reconstruct in thought what has been established in behaviour. He believed that before the age
of 6 children were not capable of understanding conservation which is the principle that
quantity remains the same despite changes in shape. Piaget’s conservation task is a well-known
test to determine if a child can think operationally.
 A child is presented with two beakers of
water. Water from beaker B is poured into
beaker C which is taller and thinner. This
child is then asked whether the quantity of
water in beakers A and C are the same. The
preoperational child will say no. When
asked to point to the beaker holding more
water, the preoperational child will point to
beaker C

Children are capable of symbolic thinking earlier than Piaget thought, which is observed as
pretend play. When 2-and-a-half-year-old children were shown a model room and the
researcher hid a miniature stuffed dog to the back of the miniature couch, these children were
not capable of locating the stuffed dog placed behind the couch in an actual room. However,
children at the age of 3 were capable of doing so. At this stage, children were egocentric. The
concept of egocentrism according to Piaget is the inability of the child to distinguish between
their perspective and someone else’s perspective. The mountain task is a popular test to
determine whether children are still egocentric, hence still in the preoperational stage.

A child would be presented with a model of 3 mountains. They would be allowed to walk
around it to see it from different perspectives. The child would then be seated at point A on the
image to the left. Photo 1 shows the view from the child. Photo 2 is a picture of what the view
of the mountains would look like to a person sitting at point B. When the child is asked to
identify the picture of the mountain taken from someone sitting at point B, the preoperational
child would select photo 1, which is their perspective
Stage 3 Concrete operational [7 to 11 years]
Piaget proposed the concrete operational stage of development which occurs between the ages
of 7 and 11. During this stage, children can perform concrete operations and they can reason
logically well as long as the reasoning can be applied to specific or concrete examples. Children
would now grasp the concept of conservation. They would understand that just because
something changes form, it does not necessarily mean that the quantity has changed. At this
stage, children are capable of considering several characteristics of something rather than focus
on a single property of it. They are also capable of completing simple mathematical operations
mentally. One criticism of Piaget’s concrete operational thought was his failure to consider the
fact that models in the child’s life, i.e., a teacher or engaged parent as well as education is the
logics of science and maths can promote the development of operational thought.
Stage 4 Formal Operational [begins at age 12]
By the age of 12, Piaget believed that our reasoning expands beyond just purely concrete
experiences or solely on things that we experience. Our concrete experiences no longer serve
as anchors for our thought. At this stage, we are capable of thinking about make-believe
situations, abstract propositions, and events that are purely hypothetical and then reason
logically about them. Our abstract thinking capabilities at this stage is evident in our use of
verbal problem solving. During the previous stage of concrete operational, the child would
need to see A, B, and C to be able to make the logical inference that if A = B and B = C, the A
=C. The formal operational thinker can figure this out through verbal presentation of the
problem

Kohlberg’s Moral Development

Piaget’s stages of development formed the basis for Kohlberg’s 3 levels of moral development.
These stages are universal. The development we go through from one stage to another is
fostered by opportunities to take the perspective of others and to experience conflict between
one’s current stage of moral thinking and the reasoning of someone at a higher stage. Simply
stated, moral development is the thinking as we consider what is right and wrong. He posed
several scenarios in which a person had a moral dilemma and asked children, adolescents, and
adults whether the action of the person was right or wrong. His observation of their responses
led him to develop three levels of moral development.
Psychosocial Development Erik Erikson (1902 – 1994)
Erikson’s research in various cultures compelled him to produce a life-span psychosocial
dimension to Freud’s psychosexual stages. According to his view, physical maturation has
personal and social repercussions. As a child matures, he or she learns a new skill which opens
up several possibilities for them, but it also increases the demands being placed on the child by
society. Inspired by the role of culture in shaping development, Erikson believed that over
several generations, culture has adapted itself to meet the needs of children, but children also
in turn adapt to their cultural setting. He reasoned that the needs of children are met socially
through parenting, schools, social organisations and a set of community-based values.
According to Erikson, psychosocial development is culturally relevant in two ways. First, the
stages of development that each person goes through is the same universally, however each
culture has its idiosyncratic way of directing and enhancing the child’s behaviour at each stage
of development. Second, he believed that there is cultural relativity within a culture as it
changes over time. Institutions that meet the needs of one generation may be inadequate in
meeting the needs of the next generation. Things like the civil war, the great depression,
industrialization, and migration all brought changes in what children needed to be taught in
order to develop a healthy personality at their time in history. His theory is based on the
epigenetic principle which is basically that each stage build on the previous. At each stage of
development, the maturation that a person goes through places a new challenge on them which
he called a crisis that needs to be resolved to successfully manage the demands of the next stage
of development.

Emphasis on identity
Erikson proposed that the main theme of life was the search for identity. Identity is the
understanding of the self and society. The answer to the question of “who am I” differ at each
stage of development. This struggle to form an identity is prevalent during the adolescent period and
that identity is something which is a central problem in all our lives. During adolescence, we try out
different versions of ourselves in our search for who we are. The version of ourselves at home
with our parents would be very different from the version of us when we are with peers. As we
try out these different selves, the teenager is conflicted and must try to find a way to unify these
different versions to determine what’s their identity. For most persons, we enter the adolescent
period with an identity very similar to our parents, but as we interact with peers, we consider
what is our social identity. This is the “we” aspect of our self-concept; the part of our answer
to Who am I that comes from our group membership. Despite there being universal similarities
in the stages of development, the way it is done in different cultures differ.

Psychosexual stages of Development Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939)

Freud made two bold claims about development: the first was that the first few years of life are
the most important years for the formation of personality. The second was that development
involves psychosexual stages. He believed that a behaviour can only be understood if one
knows about how it was developed in the person’s early history. Normal and abnormal
behaviour have their roots in early childhood when the structure of the personality is laid down.
Freud believed that the early interactions between the child’s needs/drives and their social
environment created the pattern for later learning, social adjustment, and coping with anxiety.

Social Development – Attachment

From early infancy, we are displaying behaviours consistent with our social nature. Babies
develop an attachment to their caregivers and respond to familiar faces and voices. They would
coo, smile, and gurgle when they receive the attention of their caregivers to show their
happiness. Attachment is an emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by
their seeking closeness to their caregiver and showing distress on separation. Babies would
cling to their caregivers when they anticipate that they would be separated. Once they are
reunited with the parent/caregiver, they would respond with smiles and hugs. At this time, there
is also stranger anxiety which occurs which is a fear for strangers. Much of this fear stems from
the fact that babies would have developed a schema for familiar faces and when they see a new
face, they cannot assimilate it into their schema. For several years, psychologists would believe
that attachment was based on the child’s dependency on the caregiver for nourishment which
is grounded in the baby’s innate understanding of their need to survive. This all changed
however from an accidental observation made by the Harlow’s during their experimentation
on monkeys as they tried to understand learning.
The Harlow’s bred monkeys for their learning studies and would separate the babies from their
mother for fear of infection etc. Each infant monkey was kept separately in a cage with a cloth.
When the cloth was removed to be washed, they observed that the monkeys would become
distressed. They concluded that this attachment to the blanket served as a direct contradiction
to the previously held belief that babies were attached to caregivers for nourishment. To explore
this observation deeper, they created two artificial mothers. One was a bare cylinder with a
wooden head and an attached feeding bottle. The other was a cylinder wrapped in cloth. When
raised with both artificial mothers, they observed that the infant monkeys would cling more to
the cloth mother for comfort and used her as a base from which they explored their
environment.
Human infants are quite similar, they become attached to the parent/mother who is soft, warm,
and would rock the baby. Much of the emotional attachment stems from touch which can be
soothing for human infants. Humans, quite like the infant monkeys in Harlow’s experiment use
the caregiver with whom they have an attachment as a safe base to explore their environment.
As we grow and go through different stages of development, the safe person we use as a base
change, to peers and then to intimate partners.
John Bowlby presented the idea that infants and their primary caregiver are biologically
predisposed to form attachments. A new-born would engage in certain types of behaviour that
would elicit responses from the caregiver to foster that bonding and attachment. When a baby
cries for attention and then coos and smiles when it is received, they are forming an attachment.
As the baby starts to creep, they would tend to follow the primary caregiver, the main point is
to keep this person close. Attachment is not something that appears suddenly but develops in a
series of phases that starts from the infant’s preference for humans and then the formation of a
partnership between baby and the caregiver. Bowlby believed that infants develop an internal
working model of what attachment is. This entails the role of the caregiver being the person to
provide and care for them and the baby believing themselves as deserving of this care. This
working model of attachment lays the foundation for the infant’s and later the child’s responses
to other people.
To understand the motivation of infants to be near to their caregiver, Mary Ainsworth
developed the experiment called the strange situation. The strange situation is an observational
measure of infant attachment that requires the infant move through a series of introductions,
separations, and reunions with the caregiver and a stranger in a prescribed order. From this, 4
attachment styles were identified
Secure Babies would explore the room with the caregiver in there
attachment When the caregiver exists the room, the infant may mildly protest. On the
caregiver’s return the infant would coo and smile
Insecure The babies have little interaction with the caregiver
avoidant Does not protest or seem distressed when the caregiver leaves
On the caregiver’s return, the infant does not seek to re-establish contact
Insecure Initially clingy but then resist contact by fighting against closeness. They
resistant do not explore the room. On the caregiver’s return, they cry loudly and
resist any attempt for contact
Insecure They may appear dazed and confused. These babies must display strong
disorganised patterns of avoidance and resistance or display certain specified behaviours
such as extreme fearfulness around the caregiver
Parenting Styles
Parenting is a complex activity that requires time and energy. Good parenting requires more
than just quantity of time, but also quality of time. Diana Baumrind (1971) proposed four
parenting styles which were based on a combination of how responsive and how demanding
parents are.
• Authoritarian: this is a restrictive and punitive style where parents give instructions
and directions for children to follow. There are strict limits and controls on the child’s
behaviour with very little verbal exchange between the parent and the child. These
parents may be prone to spanking and enforcing rigid rules. Children raised under this
style of parenting tend to be very unhappy, are fearful, anxious, fail to initiate activity,
and have weak communication.
• Authoritative: these parents encourage their children to be independent within certain
limits and controls. There are a lot of verbal exchanges, and these parents tend to be
warm and nurturing. They encourage and support productive actions of their children
and expect maturity and age-appropriate behaviours of their children. Children raised
under this parenting style are cheerful, confident, goal-oriented, are capable of
maintaining health social relationships and respond to adults in a healthy way.
• Neglectful: parents are very uninvolved in the life of the children. Children tend to
think that other aspects of the parents’ life are more important than them. They have
poor self-control, can’t handle independence, have low self-esteem, are immature,
social incompetent and may be alienated from friends. These children are likely to
engage in delinquency during the adolescent period.
• Indulgent: this parent is highly involved in the life of the child, and places very little
control and limits on the child. Parents who use this style believe that the combination
of warmth and little constraints leads to creativity and confidence in their child.
Children raised under this style never learn control, they tend to be dominant,
egocentric, non-compliant, and have difficulties with peer relations.

Stages of lifespan development

Prenatal
A zygote is a fertilized egg. For approximately two weeks, it goes through rapid cell division
where the cells begin to differentiate in terms of what their functions will be. After this process,
it becomes an embryo. The embryo grows and develops rapidly, at 40 days, a spine is formed,
and arms and legs begin to develop. By the start of the 9th week, facial features, hands and feet
are formed. During the prenatal stages, the environment and genetics affect our development.
By 6 months, a fetus is responsive to sound
New-born
A new-born has a set of automatic reflexes which are designed for their survival such as the
rooting reflex which aids in food consumption. They do have certain preferences for human
voices and faces, things that facilitate social responsiveness. Nursing babies do also display a
preference for the scent of their mother
Infancy and childhood
At birth, humans have well-formed brain cells however, the nervous system is not fully formed.
After birth, the branching neural networks that enable us to walk, talk and remember
undergoing a type of growth spurt. From the ages of 3 to 6, the most amount of brain growth
is seen in the frontal lobes. As your brain undergoes growth and change, there are associated
behavioural changes which will be manifested as well as certain cognitive capabilities which
will begin to appear. For example, certain fibre pathways tend to proliferate during puberty
which enhances our capabilities for language, agility, and self-control
Adolescence
Adolescence is a transitioning period between childhood and adulthood. It is easily the most
complicated and challenging stage of development. This is the stage where we begin our sexual
maturation and become sexually responsive human being. The timing of puberty alone has
certain challenges where some persons experience puberty later than peers which makes social
interactions uncomfortable, and their self-esteem is challenged. Their brain undergoes selective
pruning, so those neurons not used frequently begin to be phased out. Their frontal lobe
development, responsible for things like self-control and rational thinking takes a back seat to
the emotional limbic system. This accounts for some of the risky behaviours teenagers tend to
engage in and their high emotional reactivity.
Middle Adulthood
Some of our physical abilities start the inevitable decline by the mid 20s. Things like muscular
strength, cardiac output, reaction times. As we age, our physical vigour has less to do with age
and more to do with the person’s health and exercise habits. There is a gradual decline in
fertility in both males and females as well as in physical activity
Old age
Our physical decline begins in early adulthood, but we are only aware of it when we enter old
age. Our visual sharpness declines, our visual depth perception and light to dark adaptation
declines. Muscle strength, reaction time, and stamina also diminish as do our hearing, smelling
and touch sense. As people age, the become less caring of what their bodies look like and more
concerned with how it functions.