Chapter 9 Lifespan Development

Developmental Psychology - scientific study of development across a lifespan

● Focused on how people change & mature
● Physical development involves growth and changes in body, brain, senses, motor skills,
and health
● Cognitive development involves learning, attention, memory, language, thinking,
reasoning, and creativity
● Psychosocial development involves emotions, personality, and social relationships.
● Will refer to these domains throughout chapter

Normative Approach
● What is normal development?”
● Across these three domains—physical, cognitive, and psychosocial
● Early normative psychologists studied large numbers of children to determine norms
(i.e., average ages) for developmental milestones - approximate ages reach specific
normative events (e.g., crawling, walking, writing, dressing, naming colors, speaking in
sentences, and starting puberty)
● Can use these “norms” as general guidelines to compare children with same-age peers
to determine

Continuous development = smooth slope of progression

Discontinuous development = growth in more discrete stages

Universal Development Process

● Stage theories hold that the sequence of development is universal.
● For example, language development milestones similar sequence
● All cultures - coo then babble ; babble at about same age ; first word around 12 months
● However, motor development can vary by culture
● Different practices can accelerate or inhibit developmental milestones such as sitting,
crawling, and walking

Ache Society in Paraguay

● Aché mothers carry young children to protect them
● Their children walk around 23–25 months
● Western cultures walk around 12 months
● However, ~9 years, Aché motor skills surpass U.S. children
● Can climb trees up to 25 feet tall
● Development influenced by multiple contexts, so development of motor functions may
vary across cultures

Nature vs. Nurture Debate

● Are we who we are because of nature (biology and genetics), or are we who we are
because of nurture (our environment and culture)?
 ● How are personalities and traits a product of biology, and shaped by the environment?
● For example, why do biological children sometimes act like their parents—is it because
of genetics or early childhood environment and what the child has learned from the
parents?

The Achievement Gap - persistent difference in grades, test scores, and graduation rates
among students of different ethnicities, races, and—in certain subjects—sexes
● Achievement gaps strongly influenced by socioeconomic differences
● Large-scale interventions → difficult
● Recommended that programs foster aptitude and achievement among disadvantaged
children
● Low-income children perform worse on numerous educational variables: standardized
test scores, graduation rates, and college entrance rates, and higher school dropout
rates
● Problems may start before children enter school

Early Developmental Gap

● Middle- and high-income parents interacted with children differently than low-income
parents.
● Middle- and high-income parents talk to children more, starting in infancy
● By 3, high-income children knew almost double the number of words known by their
low-income counterparts
● Heard an estimated 30 million more words
● Before entering kindergarten, high-income children score 60% higher on achievement
tests than their low-income peers

Interventions
● University of Chicago:
○ Encourage parents to speak more to children
○ Designing preschools where students from ALL economic backgrounds are in
same classroom
■ Low-income children made significant language gains

Psychosexual Theory of Development

● Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
○ Personality develops during early childhood
○ Childhood shape personalities and adult behavior
○ Development as discontinuous
○ Pass through a series of stages and without proper nurturance become stuck, or
fixated
○ Pleasure-seeking urges focused on different body area
○ Five stages of psychosexual development: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital
● Freud’s ideas have not found support in modern research, but personality is shaped,
partially, by childhood experiences
Psychosocial Theory of Development
● Erik Erikson (1902–1994)
○ Stage theorist
○ Emphasizes social nature of development
○ Personality development during lifespan.
○ Social interactions affects sense of self, or ego identity
○ People are motivated by a need to achieve competence in certain areas
○ Eight stages of development over lifespan
○ Each stage has a conflict, or task, to resolve
○ Successful task completion results in competence and healthy personality
○ Failure leads to feelings of inadequacy
Cognitive Development
● Jean Piaget (1896–1980)
○ Stage theorist
○ Focused cognitive growth
○ Believed thinking is central to development
○ Children naturally inquisitive
○ Children do not think and reason like adults
○ Theory holds that cognitive abilities develop through specific stages
○ Exemplifies discontinuity approach
○ Each new stage → distinct shift in thought and reasoning
● Children develop schemata to understand world
○ Schemata are concepts (mental models) that help us categorize and interpret
information
○ By adulthood → have schemata for almost everything.
○ New information requires adjusting schemata through:
■ First, Assimilation – incorporate new info into existing schema (refine)
■ Second, Accommodation - change schemata based on new information
and create new schema
● Sensorimotor stage:
○ birth to ~2 years
○ learn through their senses and motor behavior
○ 5 and 8 months, child develops object permanence - understanding that even if
something is out of sight, it still exists
○ About same time, exhibit stranger anxiety - fear of unfamiliar people
■ Cannot assimilate stranger into an existing schema
■ Can’t predict experience with stranger → fear response
● Preoperational stage:
○ 2 to 7 years
○ Can use symbols to represent words, images, and ideas
○ Engage in pretend play
○ Begin to use language
○ Cannot understand adult logic or mentally manipulate information (operational
refers to logical manipulation)
○ Cannot perform mental operations
■ Don’t have conservation - if you change appearance of something, it is
still equal in size as long as nothing has been removed or added
○ Display egocentrism - children cannot take perspective of others ; thinks
everyone sees, thinks, and feels just as they do
● Concrete operational stage
○ 7 to 11 years
○ Think logically about real (concrete) events firm grasp on use of numbers start
using memory strategies
 ○ Perform mathematical operations and understand transformations (e.g., add is
opposite of subtract)
○ Master conservation
○ Understand principle of reversibility - objects can be changed and then
returned back to their original form or condition
● Formal operational stage:
○ 11 to adulthood
○ Think logically only about concrete events
○ Can also deal with abstract ideas and hypothetical situations
○ Can use abstract thinking to problem solve, look at alternative solutions, and test
these solutions
○ A renewed egocentrism occurs

Beyond Formal Operational Thought

● Several of Piaget’s ideas have come under criticism based
● Studies support a model of development that is more continuous than Piaget’s discrete
stages
● Children reach cognitive milestones earlier than Piaget describes
● Many developmental psychologists suggest a fifth stage of cognitive development,
postformal stage - decisions are made based on situations and circumstances, and
logic is integrated with emotion as adults develop principles that depend on contexts
● Problem solving abilities change in adulthood:
○ Tend to think more deeply about many areas of our lives, such as relationships,
work, and politics
○ Postformal thinkers can draw on past experiences to help them solve new
problems.
○ Recognize that an ideal solution to a problem at work may not be best solution to
a disagreement at home

Moral Development
● Preconventional morality (before age 9)
● Conventional morality (early adolescence)
 ● Post-conventional morality (once formal operational thought is attained), only a few fully
achieve
● Highest stage responses that
reflected the value of a human life
overrides the pharmacist’s greed
● Moral reasoning is very different from
moral behavior
● Sometimes what we say we would do
in a situation is not what we actually
do in that situation.
● Kohlberg identified three levels of
moral reasoning: pre-conventional,
conventional, and
post-conventional: Each level is
associated with increasingly complex
stages of moral development.

Prenatal Development
● Germinal Stage (Weeks 1–2)
○ Mother and father pass DNA on to child at conception - when sperm fertilizes an
egg and forms a zygote begins as a one-cell structure
○ Genetic makeup and sex of baby are determined
○ First week after conception, zygote divides and multiplies, going from a one-cell
structure to two cells, then four cells, and so on - mitosis
○ As the cells divide, they become more specialized, forming different organs and
body parts.
● Embryonic Stage (Weeks 3–8)
○ After zygote divides for 7–10 days
○ Implants itself in lining of uterus
○ Upon implantation → embryo
○ Blood vessels grow, forming the placenta - a structure connected to the uterus
that provides nourishment and oxygen from the mother to the developing embryo
via the umbilical cord
○ Basic structures start to develop into areas that will become head, chest, and
abdomen
○ Heart begins to beat and organs form and begin to function
○ Neural tube forms along back of the embryo, developing into spinal cord and
brain
● Fetal Stage (Weeks 9–40)
○ After nine weeks,, embryo is called a fetus
○ About size of kidney bean
○ 9–12 weeks, sex organs begin to differentiate
○ 16 weeks fetus ~4.5 inches
■ Fingers and toes are fully developed
 ○ 24 weeks → weighs up to 1.4 pound
■ Hearing has developed
■ Internal organs, such as the lungs, heart, stomach, and intestines, have
formed enough that a fetus born prematurely has a chance of surviving
○ 16 to 28 weeks → Brain continues to develop, doubling in size from
○ ~36 weeks → weighs about 6 pounds and is about 18.5 inches long
○ 37 week → all fetus’s organ systems are developed enough to survive
○ ~40 weeks → birth
○ ***Teratogens can influence all stages of development
● During the fetal stage, the baby's brain develops and the body adds size and weight,
until the fetus reaches full-term development.
● Prenatal Influences
○ Genetic and environmental factors affect development
○ Most everything mother ingests, including food, liquid, and even medication,
travels through placenta to fetus
○ A teratogen is any environmental agent—biological, chemical, or physical—that
causes damage to the developing embryo or fetus.
○ Alcohol and most drugs cross placenta and affect fetus
○ Fetal Alcohol Syndrome – excessive alcohol consumption
■ Physically, small head size and abnormal facial features
■ Cognitively, poor judgment, poor impulse control, higher rates of ADHD,
learning issues, and lower IQ scores
○ Teratogens can influence sperm and ovum → drugs impact the health of the DNA

Infancy Through Childhood

● All healthy babies are born with reflexes: inborn automatic responses to particular forms
of stimulation.
○ Help ensure survival until capable of complex behaviors
○ Rooting reflex - when you stroke a baby’s cheek, she naturally turns her head in
that direction and begins to suck.
○ Sucking reflex - automatic, unlearned, sucking motions
○ Grasping reflex - put your finger into a newborn’s hand, the baby automatically
grasps anything that touches his palms.
○ Moro reflex - newborn’s response if feels like falling ; spreads her arms, pulls
them back in, and then (usually) cries.
● Physical Development
○ Newborns weigh average of 5 to 10 lbs
■ Triples in 1 year
■ Quadruples by year 2 (~20 and 40 lbs)
○ Newborn length avg of 19.5 inches
■ 12 months = 29.5 in
■ 2 years = 34.4 in
○ Growth slows between 4 and 6 8–9 years girls’ growth outpaces → pubertal
growth spurt
 ○ By 10 avg girl weighs 88 lbs and avg boy weighs 85 lbs
● Motor development follows orderly sequence (trunk out)
○ Infants reflexive reactions (e.g., sucking and rooting) →advanced motor
functioning
○ Motor skills - ability to move our bodies and manipulate objects
○ Fine motor skills – use muscles in fingers, toes, and eyes → enable
coordination of small actions (e.g., grasping a toy, writing with a pencil, and using
a spoon).
○ Gross motor skills – use large muscle groups that control our arms and legs
and involve larger movements (e.g., balancing, running, and jumping).
○ Motor skill developmental milestones (Table 9.4)
○ Each milestone = avg age and range
○ E.g.: sitting alone 7 month ; 90% between 5 and 9 months
○ Out of range is a delay and reason for concern
○ Some developmental delays can be addressed through early intervention

● Baillargeon’s study
○ In Baillargeon’s study, infants observed a truck (a) roll down an unobstructed
track, (b) roll down an unobstructed track with an obstruction (box) beside it, and
(c) roll down and pass through what appeared to be an obstruction.
○ Cognitive Development
■ Even very young children understand objects and how they work long
before they have experience with those objects (as young as 3 months
old)
■ The infants spent significantly more time looking at this impossible event
(c)
■ Baillargeon (1987) concluded infants knew solid objects cannot pass
through each other
 ■ Suggest very young children have an understanding of objects and how
they work
■ Piaget (1954) would have said that is beyond their cognitive abilities due
to their limited experiences in the world
● Cognitive milestones
○ Infants shake their head “no” around 6–9 months
○ ~ 9–12 months respond to verbal requests like “wave bye-bye” or “blow a kiss”
○ Toddlers (12–24 months) have mastered object permanence enjoy games like
hide and seek realize that when someone leaves the room they will come back
○ Toddlers also point to pictures in books and look in appropriate places when you
ask them to find objects
● Preschool-age children (i.e., 3–5 years old) also progress in cognitive development
○ Can count, name colors, and tell you their name and age
○ Understand basic time concepts and sequencing (e.g., before and after)
○ Can predict what will happen next in a story
○ Enjoy humor in stories
○ Symbolic thought → enjoy pretend play and inventing elaborate characters and
scenarios
○ Blossoming curiosity → “Why?”
● An important cognitive change occurs in children this age. Recall that Piaget described
2–3 year olds as egocentric, meaning that they do not have an awareness of others’
points of view.
● Between 3 and 5 years old, children understand that people have thoughts, feelings, and
beliefs different from their own → theory-of-mind (TOM)
● When children develop TOM, they can recognize that others might have false beliefs
● Because they understand luck and fairness, children in middle and late childhood (6–11
years old) are able to follow rules for games.
● Attachment → long-standing connection or bond with others.
○ How do parent and infant attachment bonds form? How does neglect affect these
bonds? What accounts for children’s attachment differences?
○ Harry Harlow (UW-Madison), John Bowlby, and Mary Ainsworth
○ Harlow’s monkey experiments
■ Separated newborn monkeys from mothers
■ Presented with two surrogate mothers
● One surrogate was wire mesh and dispensed milk
● Other was softer and made from cloth (no milk)
○ Preferred soft, cuddly cloth monkey
○ Only went to wire monkey for food
○ Previously thought that babies become attached to people that provide
nourishment
○ Harlow → feelings of comfort and security are critical components to
maternal-infant bonding
● John Bowlby → attachment - affectional bond or tie that an infant forms with mother
○ Bond helps with normal social and emotional development
 ○ Attachment bond is very powerful and continues throughout life
○ A “secure base” to define a healthy attachment
■ Parental presence gives child a sense of safety as explores surroundings
■ Two things for a healthy attachment:
■ Caregiver must be responsive to the child’s physical, social, and
emotional needs
■ Caregiver and child must engage in mutually enjoyable interactions
● Mary Ainsworth – do children differ in ways they bond, and if so, why.
○ Used Strange Situation procedure
○ Mother (or primary caregiver) and the infant (age 12-18 months) are in a room
together
○ Toys in room
○ Caregiver and child spend time alone in room
○ After child has explored surroundings, a stranger enters the room
○ The mother then leaves her baby with the stranger.
○ After a few minutes, she returns to comfort her child.
○ Based on infants/toddlers responded to the separation and reunion, three types
of parent-child attachments: secure, avoidant, and resistant
○ (Ainsworth & Bell, 1970). A fourth style, known as disorganized attachment,
was later described (Main & Solomon, 1990).
○ Secure most common ; toddler prefers his parent over a stranger ; attachment
figure is a secure base to explore the environment and is sought out in times of
stress.
○ Distressed when their caregivers left but happy to see them when returned
● Avoidant – child is unresponsive to parent, does not use parent as a secure base, does
not care if the parent leaves. When a parent returns, the child is slow to show a positive
reaction.
● Resistant – display clingy behavior, but reject attachment figure’s attempts to interact,
does not explore toys in the room. During separation they became extremely disturbed
and angry with their parents. When a parent returns, children are difficult to comfort.
● Disorganized - behaved oddly in Strange Situation freeze, run around the room in an
erratic manner, or try to run away when caregiver returns
● Self-Concept
○ Primary psychosocial milestone is development of a positive sense of self, or a
self-concept - an understanding of who they are
○ 2–4 year olds show increase in social behavior after establishing a self-concept
■ Enjoy playing with other children
■ Have difficulty sharing their possessions
■ Through play children understand their gender roles and can label
themselves as a girl or boy
● Four parenting styles:
○ Authoritative - parent gives reasonable demands and consistent limits,
expresses warmth and affection, and listens to the child’s point of view. Parents
set rules and explain the reasons behind them.
 ○ Authoritarian - parent places high value on conformity and obedience. Parents
are often strict, tightly monitor their children, and express little warmth. This style
can create anxious, withdrawn, and unhappy kids.
○ Permissive - kids run the show and anything goes ; make few demands and
rarely use punishment ; very nurturing and loving, and may be friends rather than
parents.
○ Uninvolved - parents are indifferent, uninvolved, and sometimes referred to as
neglectful ; don’t respond to the child’s needs and make relatively few demands.
● Temperament - innate traits that influence how one thinks, behaves, and reacts with the
environment
● Easy temperaments → positive emotions, adapt well to change, and are capable of
regulating emotions
● Difficult temperaments → negative emotions, difficulty adapting to change, and
regulating emotions
○ Temperament might influence parental interactions

Middle and Late Childhood

● Cognitive skills continue to expand in middle and late childhood (6–11 years old)
● Thought processes become more logical and organized
● Understand concepts such as the past, present, and future
○ Ability to plan and work toward goals
○ Process complex ideas such as addition and subtraction and cause-and-effect
relationships
○ Attention spans tend to be very limited until ~11 years

Adolescents
● Begins at puberty and ends at emerging adulthood
● In US, adolescence is time to develop independence from parents while remaining
connected to them
● Age range from 12 to 18 years
● Some predictable physical, cognitive, and psychosocial milestones
● Physical Development
○ Begins with puberty
○ Physical changes in puberty are predictable
○ Onset and pace of puberty vary widely
○ Physical changes → adrenarche and gonadarche, the maturing of the adrenal
glands and sex glands
○ Primary sexual characteristics - organs for reproduction
○ Secondary sexual characteristics - physical signs of sexual maturation that do
not directly involve sex organs
○ During puberty, both sexes experience a rapid increase in height
○ For girls, start ~8 to 13 years, adult height at 10 and 16 years
○ For boys, start 10 to 16 years, adult height at 13 and 17 years
 ○ Both nature (i.e., genes) and nurture (e.g., nutrition, medications, and medical
conditions) influence height.
● Frontal Lobe
○ Brain growth continues into the early 20s. The development of the frontal lobe, in
particular, is important during this stage.
○ Adolescents engage in increased risk-taking behaviors and emotional outbursts
due to frontal lobes still developing.
○ Frontal lobes → judgment, impulse control, motivation, emotions, attention,
inhibition, reward centers, and planning
● Cognitive Development
○ More complex thinking abilities → increased processing speed and efficiency
○ Move beyond concrete thinking to abstract thought
○ Piaget refers to this stage as formal operational thought
○ Ability to consider multiple points of view, imagine hypothetical situations, debate
ideas and opinions
○ Not uncommon to question authority or challenge established societal norms
● Cognitive empathy, theory-of-mind, ability to take others’ perspective and feel concern
for others - cognitive empathy → social problem solving and conflict avoidance
○ Supportive fathers they could discuss their worries with were found to be better
able to take the perspective of others
● Psychosocial Development
○ Refine sense of self as they relate to others
○ Erikson → identity versus role confusion
○ Main questions: “Who am I?” & “Who do I want to be?”
○ Some adopt values and roles that their parents expect
○ Others develop opposite identities that align with a peer group
○ Peer relationships are central
○ Most teens report positive feelings toward parents
○ Warm and healthy parent-child relationships have been associated with positive
child outcomes, such as better grades and fewer school behavior problems, in
US as well as other countries

Emerging Adulthood
● Newly defined period from 18 years to mid-20s ; in-between time where identity
exploration is focused on work and love
● When does a person become an adult?
● There are many ways to answer this question
● In US, you are legally considered an adult at 18 years old
● But numerous limitations on age; drinking, smoking (in some states), renting car

Adulthood
● Begins around 20 years
● 3 distinct stages: early, middle, and late
● Physical Development
 ○ Early adulthood (20 to early 40s)
■ Physical maturation is complete, but height and weight may increase
slightly
■ Physical abilities at their peak including muscle strength, reaction time,
sensory abilities, and cardiac functioning
■ Many women have children in young adulthood years
○ Middle adulthood (40s to 60s)
■ Physical decline is gradual
■ Skin loses some elasticity and wrinkles show aging
■ Visual acuity decreases
■ Women experience a gradual decline in fertility as they approach
menopause, the end of the menstrual cycle, around 50 years old
■ Both genders gain weight: abdominal area for men and in the hips and
thighs for women. Hair begins to thin and turn gray.
● Cognitive Development
○ Spend many years in adulthood (more than any other stage), cognitive changes
are numerous and complex
○ Cognitive changes could be more active than in infancy and early childhood
○ Interestingly, older brains recruit different brain regions than younger brains to do
the same task.
○ Lose brain mass after ~30.
○ Think back to neural pruning → is less more with our brain?
○ Cognitive abilities remain steady in early and middle adulthood
○ Crystalized intelligence holds steady and may even improve
○ Stable to increasing scores on intelligence tests until their mid-30s to mid-50s
○ In late adulthood a decline in fluid intelligence (it slows)
○ Delay onset of cognitive decline?
○ Mental and physical activity help
● Psychosocial Development
○ Aspects of healthy aging include activities, social connectedness, and role of a
person’s culture
○ We need to have and continue to find meaning throughout our lives
○ Early and middle adulthood find meaning in work and family life
○ Relate to Erikson’s generativity and intimacy.
○ As mentioned previously, adults define themselves by what they do—their
careers
○ Positive relationships with significant others in adult years contribute to a state of
well-being
○ Most adults in US identify through their relationships with family—particularly
spouses, children, and parents
○ Raising children can be stressful
○ Parents reap rewards down the road when adult children have a positive effect
on parental well-being
○ Stable marriage contributes to well-being throughout adulthood
 ○ Another aspect of positive aging social connectedness and social support
○ Socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that our social support and
friendships dwindle in number, but remain as close, if not closer than in earlier
years
● Death and Dying
○ Elizabeth Kübler-Ross described process of an individual accepting own death
○ Proposed five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and
acceptance
○ Most individuals experience these stages, but stages may occur in different
orders and durations.
○ Not all people experience all stages
○ Not everyone facing death or loss of a loved one experiences the negative
emotions outlined in the Kübler-Ross model