Human Development: Lifespan Perspective

• The study of human development begins from conception and continues throughout life
• Changes people experience during their lifetimes have certain patterns in common
• Knowledge of human development has impact and applications.

Human Development: Constant Evolution

• Human development is the scientific study of systematic processes of change and stability throughout the human lifespan (human evolution)
• Development is systematic and adaptative
• Adaptability can help people deal with transitions
• Development is lifelong or life-cycle oriented, "from womb to tomb"

Four Goals of Developmental Psychology

• Description is a goal of developmental psychology, including when children say their first word
• Explanation is a goal of developmental psychology, including how children learn to use language.
• Understanding the process is key
• Prediction is a goal of developmental psychology, such as if a language delay will affect speech
• Intervention is a goal of developmental psychology, asking if therapy can help with speech delays

Developmental Mastery: Change & Stability

• Physical development involves body, brain, senses, motor skills and health
• Cognitive development involves learning, memory, moral development, language, thought and creativity
• Psychosocial development involves personality, emotional life and relationships

Life Cycle Periods

• Life cycle periods are based on subjective perceptions or presumptions
• Life cycle periods are the invention of a particular culture and society and vary by culture and change over generations
• Adolescence was recently introduced into industrialized societies
• Prenatal period spans conception to birth
• Infancy and toddlerhood spans from birth to 3 years
• Early childhood spans 3-6 years
• Middle childhood spans 6-11 years
• Adolescence spans 11-20 years
• Young adulthood spans 20-40 years
• Middle adulthood spans 40-65 years
• Late adulthood spans 65 years and Over

Influences on Development

• Individuals vary in characteristics, like sex, height, health, energy, intelligence, and the timing of development
• Heredity refers to traits inherited from biological parents and involves nature and canalization (rate of genes)
• The environment includes physical and social influences and nurture
• Maturation refers to sequences of physical and behavioural patterns, which involves the means, and is constant throughout development

Context of Development: Family

• Family is the first and most important agent of socialization
• Nuclear family consists of people you live with like parents and siblings -> stable over time
• Extended family consists of the whole family like uncles, grandparents, parents, cousins etc

Context of Development: Socioeconomic Status (Risk Factor)

• Poverty-related risks increase the likelihood of negative outcomes
• Behavioural and emotional problems are poverty-related risks
• Cognitive and school performance problems, along with the emotional state of the parents and environment are poverty-related risks
• Living in neighbourhoods with high rates of unemployment contributes to a potential lack of social support

Context of Development: Protection and resilience factors

• Parents report feeling close to their children, feel safe in their homes and schools, and eat together

Context of Development: Culture and Race

• Culture and Race is a "total" and "complete" way of life of a society
• Culture and Race is a group united by ancestry, race, religion, language, or national origins

Context of Development: Normative and Non-Normative Influences

• Normative influences encompass event characteristics that typically occur similarly for most people in a group

Context of Development: Normative Age-Graded Changes

• Normative Age-Graded Changes are similar for an age group
• Normative Age-Graded Changes consist of an event that occurs similarly for most people in a group such as the timing of biological events like puberty and menopause

Context of Development: Normative History-Graded Changes

• Normative History-Graded Changes are significant events in the environment that shape the attitudes of a "historic" generation
• A Historical Generation is a group of people who experience the same life-changing event during their formative years, like Children of WWII with a strong sense of trust and interdependence
• A Cohort is a group of people born at about the same time and a historical generation can contain more than one cohort

Context of Development: Non-Normative Changes

• Non-normative are unusual events that greatly affect an individual's life because they alter the expected sequence of the life cycle
• Examples are puberty at 20, adolescent marriage and death of a father in infancy
• Atypical events which are non-normative entail premature birth and winning the lottery

Moment of Influences

• Imprinting is an instinctive form of learning in which, during the critical period of early development, a young animal becomes attached to the first moving object it sees, which is almost always the mother
• The critical period is a specific moment when an event or its absence has a concrete effect on development
• Plasticity is the range of modifiability or the ability to adapt, and there are sensitive periods, which are moments in development when a person is more open to certain experiences

Basic Theoretical Terms: Theory

• A theory is a set of logically related concepts that seek to describe, explain development, and predict types of behaviour under certain conditions
• Theories help to identify and observe connections between isolated data
• Theories include examples like mammals giving birth or isolated information, but these must be tested, as theories are united it through hypotheses

Basic Theoretical Terms: Hypothesis

• A hypothesis are explanations that can be tested through the implementation of research

Active or Reactive Development: Mechanistic

• Mechanistic perspective states we are a result of the environment shaping us akin to Pavlov's classical conditioning
• Mechanistic perspective means our development is reactive and we are not agents of our development
• Mechanistic perspective is continuous focused on quantitative change, governed by the same processes

Active or Reactive Development: Organicist

• Organicist perspective maintains our development is active, holding responsibility and the need to seek
• Organicist agents of change (assets) and is not determined by our experience, akin to Piaget, and is discontinuous, focused on qualitative change
• Organicist perspective occurs through distinguishable stages

Main Theoretical Perspectives: Psychoanalytic (Freud)

• Psychanalytic perspective involves unconscious emotions and impulses, focusing on unconscious forces motivate human behaviour
• Psychoanalysis looks at patient identification of unconscious emotional conflicts through questions to evoke unconscious memories of the past

Main Theoretical Perspectives: Parts of the Personality (Freud)

• Freudian perspective people are born with biological drives that must be redirected to live in society
• The Ello / Id consists of the pleasure principle and its immediate satisfaction of needs and desires
• The Yo / Ego, in the first year of life, subscribes to the reality principle. This gratifies de Id but acceptable to the superego
• The Superyó / Superego is about following Social Rules (Moral) and "Should and shouldn't" it starts from 5 to 6 years

Theoretical Perspectives: Sigmun Freud Stages

• The oral stage age is birth to 15 months, involving unconscious conflict and sucking and feeding

• The anal stage age is 12-18 months to 3 years, involving unconscious conflict and potty training

• The phallic stage age is 3 to 6 years, involving unconscious conflict and sexual attachment to parents

• The latency stage age is 6 years to puberty, involving unconscious conflict and socialization

• The genital stage age is puberty to adult, involving unconscious conflict and mature adult sexuality

• Fixation results in an arrest in development that can show up in adult personality

Main Theoretical Perspectives: Erikson's Psychosocial Theory

• Erikson emphasized society's influence on personality development
• Pioneering the life-span perspective, Erikson asserts development is lifelong
• Each of the 8 stages of development involves a "crisis", or tendencies into conflict or competition
• Each resolution of a crisis, a "virtue", or basic strength is obtained

Main Theoretical Perspectives: Learning/Behaviorism (Mechanistic)

• Behaviourism centers around associative learning, reaction to conditions of both painful or threatening and pleasant circumstance
• Classical conditioning was pioneered by Ivan Pavlov (Stimulus and Response) and John Watson (Fear Conditioning, "Little Albert")
• The individual learns from the consequences of "operating" in the environment in operant conditioning
• B.F. Skinner formulated his ideas by working with animals, then applying them to humans
• Reinforcement increases the likelihood of behaviour reoccurring involves positive reinforcement (giving a reward, like Candy for finishing a task) and negative reinforcement (removing something aversive, like No chores for getting an A+ on homework)
• Punishment decreases the likelihood of behavior reoccurring through positive punishment (adding something aversive, like Getting scolded) and negative punishment (removing something pleasant, like Taking away car keys or Getting a “time-out")

Main Theoretical Perspectives: Bandura/Social Learning

• Albert Bandura saw development as "bidirectional" through reciprocal determinism
• Reciprocal determinism occurs when the person acts in the world in the same way that the world acts on the person
• Modelling and observation entails children learn by observing, observing models and such ways to act on your models like parents or friends

Main Theoretical Perspectives: Social Cognitive Theory (1989)

• People learn chunks of behaviour, and mentally put the chunks together into complex new behaviour patterns
• Feedback results in standards for judging actions and self-efficacy, giving a sense of one’s capability to master challenges and achieve goals

Main Theoretical Perspectives: Piaget

• Emphasizes cognitive processes as central to development, a product of what Children develop by understanding and acting on their world
• Children develop a more accurate picture of their surroundings and greater competence in dealing with them
• Clinical method: combines observation and questions
• Development begins with an innate ability to adapt, as seen with turning the head toward the nipple in infancy
• Development occurs through three processes: The organization, adaptation and balancing.

Main Theoretical Perspectives: The Organization

• The organization involves Creation of categories or systems of knowledge (Schemes).
• Schemes are organized patterns of thought and behavior that are used to think and act in a particular situation.

Main Theoretical Perspectives: Adaptation

• Adaptation is about how children handle new information in light of what they already know.
• Assimilation involves incorporating new information into an existing cognitive structure and accommodation is for dealing with changes in a new cognitive structure

Main Theoretical Perspectives: Balancing

• Balancing dictates the shift from assimilation to accommodation
• Equilibrium is the process between assimilation and accommodation

Main Theoretical Perspectives: Four Universal Stages

• Sensori-motor stage (0-2 years) entails understanding the world through senses and motor skills

• There's typically no conceptual/reflective thought at this stage

• Thought uses physical actions

• Object permanence and mental/physical actions define this stage

• Pre-operational stage (2-6 years) entails symbolic thought through language

• Can be egocentric with personal views, or initiate imagination through creativity

• Specific operations (7-11 years) involves logical concepts

• Development involves objective interpretations

• Mastery is developed, such as number and classification

• Formal operations (+12 years) occurs with broad experience

• The key focus becomes ethical interest

• Understanding is developed with interest in the philosophical view

Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory

• The sociocultural theory focuses on social and cultural processes that guide children's cognitive development and stresses active engagement with their environment
• People learn through collaborative processes, with an emphasis on language
• Zone of actual development (ZAD): A child able to do something alone
• Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): A time in which you are ready to learn a new skill, but you need support (scaffolding)
• Zone of high potential (ZHP): What you are able to do in the future at your highest level

Information Processing Approach

• Analyses the processes involved in making sense of incoming information (computer metaphor)
• Inferring what happens between the stimulus (sensory) and response, this approach helps children become aware to improve and become active thinkers

Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Theory

• Contextual influence states development can only be understood in its social contexts
• Bronfenbrenner's approach describes the range of interacting influences that impact development
• Micro-systems include someone's immediate family who interact and relate
• A meso-system relates to outside system interaction, like the interaction between Pablo's family and the town hall
• A macro-system relates to social values, which are dominant believes, like culture and the values present

Evolutionary Perspective

• Use Darwin's theory of evolution: with survival of the fittest -> Animals with the traits adapted to the environment survive pass on their traits via: Natural selection which entail that as environments change, traits change and adapt

Ethology

• Is the study of animal behaviours with an adaptive value and innate behaviours evolved to increase survival

Developmental psychology

• Bidirectionality between biology and the environment studies how this interaction produces behaviour and development
• Strategies include behaviours adaptable to different ages and humans unconsciously strive for person survival and genetic legacy, resulting in a development of mechanisms that solve problems

Conclusion about the study

• No one theory is universally accepted in humans
• There tend to be mechanistic influences used nowadays

Quantitative Research Methods

• How much or how many are the focal point of quantitative research.
• Methods consists of laboratory measurements with random selection or generalized data via: correlation and experimentation

Scientific method: Quantitative

• Involves Identification of a problem, formulation of hypotheses, gathering, and statistical analysis. Can leads to possible dissemination

Qualitative Research

• Qualitative methods explore how and why
• Examines subjective feelings while more flexible.
• Can uses case studies or ethnographic studies to do so

Sampling

• Involves using random samples and random selection

Data collect

• Can be self-reports

Naturalistic Observation

• Involves people watching in natural enviorments although bias is present

Behavioral Measures

• Objectives measurement from electronic devices can be used in tests

Meaningful measures

• Valid and reliable measurement in testing

Operational definitions

• Is about making abstract ideas measureable

Cognitive neuroscience

• Is about emerging in field of bridge to cognitive science

Research designs

• Involves experimental and correlation

CASE STUDIES

• Entails specific details via an individual case which entail short comings

ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDIES

• Entails participant observations so there can be subject bias however
• Is useful in cross study

CORRELATIONAL STUDIES

• Involves identifying variables that can exist and their magnitude

EXPERIMENTS

• Where experimenter uses variable to determine factors as they must be replciate

PURPOSES OF CROSS CULTURAL RESEARCH

• Can biases in the Western, with motor skills becoming culture specific

RESEARCH DESINGS

• Longitudinal or cross sectional are performed

Ethics

• To ensure the the respect and safety of all participants