Introduction to Developmental Psychology (Papalia)

Human Development and its Study

• Human development refers to the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial development of a person throughout their lifespan.
• The study of human development has evolved over time, and its research findings have applications to education and social policy.

Life Span Development

• Life span development is a concept of human development as a life-long process that can be studied scientifically.
• It comprises the entire life span from conception to death, and events such as the timing of parenthood, maternal employment, and marital satisfaction are also studied.

Goals of Studying Human Development

• The goals of studying human development are to describe, explain, predict, and intervene in the development process.
• These goals involve describing the typical pattern of development, explaining why a child has a delayed language acquisition, predicting the likelihood of speech problems, and intervening with speech therapy.

Domains of Development

• There are three main domains of development: physical, cognitive, and psychosocial.
• Physical development involves the growth of the body and brain, sensory capacities, motor skills, and health.
• Cognitive development includes learning, attention, memory, language, thinking, reasoning, and creativity.
• Psychosocial development involves emotions, personality, and social relationships.

Periods of the Life Span

• The life span is divided into periods, which is a social construction.
• Developmentalists suggest that certain basic needs must be met and certain tasks mastered for typical development to occur.
• Life-span development is divided into four "ages": childhood to adolescence, prime adulthood, 60s to 79 years old, and 80 years old up to death.

Influences in Development

• The nature vs. nurture debate involves the role of heredity and environment in shaping development.
• Heredity provides the genetic traits and characteristics, while the environment influences development from conception onwards.
• Epigenetics is the tendency of genes to change as we develop or due to environmental influences.

Stability vs. Change and Continuity vs. Discontinuity

• The stability-change issue involves the degree to which early traits and characteristics persist through life or change.
• The continuity-discontinuity issue focuses on the degree to which development involves gradual, cumulative change or distinct stages.

Evaluating Developmental Issues

• Developmentalists debate the extent to which development is influenced by nature, nurture, stability, change, continuity, and discontinuity.
• Maturation is the unfolding of a natural sequence of physical changes and behavior patterns, and individual differences in innate characteristics and life experiences play a greater role as people grow and develop.