Life-Span Development

Life-Span Perspective

• The pattern of change starts at conception and continues throughout life.
• Development is lifelong and flexible, including growth, maintenance, and change.
• Development is shaped by biological, cultural, and personal factors across contexts.
• Development is lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic, multidisciplinary, and contextual.
• Development involves growth, maintenance, and regulation.
• Development is constructed through biological, sociocultural, and individual factors.

Developmental Principles

• Development is lifelong and impacts every segment of life from conception onward.
• No age period dominates development, as each stage is influenced by past events and affects future ones.
• Development is multidimensional, influenced by interacting biological, cognitive, and socioemotional dimensions.
• Biological: Physical growth or changes, like puberty and hormonal changes.
• Cognitive: Changes in thinking, learning, and memory, like a child learning math.
• Socioemotional: Changes in emotions, personality, and social relationships, such as forming friendships.
• Some dimensions or components of a dimension expand while others shrink throughout life.
• In adolescence, individuals establishing romantic relationships may spend less time with friends.
• Plasticity is the capacity for change, and many abilities can be improved through practice.
• Psychologists, neuroscientists, and medical researchers share a common interest in unlocking development's mysteries.
• Development is contextual, happening in different contexts and settings, and each person develops with multiple contexts.
• Context includes everyone in a community with historical, economic, social, and cultural factors.
• Normative age-graded influences are similar for individuals in a specific age group, like puberty, menopause, beginning education, and retirement.
• Normative history-graded influences are common to people of a particular generation due to historical events.
• The COVID-19 pandemic shaped the development of children and teenagers who experienced school closures, online learning, and social isolation.
• World War II influenced the worldview and resilience of individuals who lived through the war, especially during childhood or adolescence, and faced food shortages, loss, or displacement.
• Nonnormative life events are unusual occurrences that greatly impact individuals' lives, such as losing a parent at a young age, or surviving a serious accident/illness.
• Development involves growth, maintenance, and regulation of loss, with resources used for growth in childhood, maintenance in midlife, and dealing with loss in older age.
• Development is a co-construction of biology, culture, and the individual, where the brain shapes culture, and culture shapes the brain and individual experiences.
• Individuals can surpass their genetic inheritance and environment.

The Nature of Development

• Biological processes involve changes in an individual's physical nature, such as genes inherited from parents and brain development.
• Cognitive processes involve changes in an individual's thought, intelligence, and language.
• Socioemotional processes involve changes in an individual's relationships with others, emotions, and personality.
• Biological, cognitive, and socioemotional processes interact as individuals develop.

Periods of Development

• Prenatal period: conception to birth
• Infancy: birth to 18-24 months
• Early childhood: 3-5 years
• Middle and late childhood: 6-10/11 years
• Adolescence: 10-12 and 18-21 years
• Early adulthood: 20s and 30s
• Middle adulthood: 40s and 50s
• Late adulthood: 60s-70s to death
• A developmental period is a life stage with specific characteristics, that aids in organizing and understanding development with the contribution of biological, cognitive, and socioemotional processes.
• Normal aging: Psychological functioning stays stable with a modest decline in the early 80s.
• Pathological aging: Above-average decline in health/functioning with age due to diseases or health issues.
• Successful aging: Minimal decline in function, maintains quality of life, and actively engages in life.

Conceptions of Age

• Chronological age: Number of years since birth.
• Biological age: Age in terms of biological health, including functional capacities of vital organs.
• The younger the biological age, the longer the expected life, regardless of chronological age.
• Psychological age: adaptive capacities compared to those of others of the same chronological age in terms of cognitive functioning.
• Social age: connectedness with others. Better social relationships give happier and longer lives.

Developmental Issues

• "Human psychology was the same in every culture".
• People in the West tend to be more individualistic, while those in Eastern countries tend to be more collectivist.

Nature and Nurture

• Development is influenced by nature (biological inheritance) and nurture (environmental experiences).

Stability and Change

• Degree to which early traits and characteristics persist through life or change.

Continuity and Discontinuity

• Degree to which development involves gradual, cumulative change (continuity) or distinct stages (discontinuity).

Developmental Theories

• The pleasure principle, drive for immediate need satisfaction, governs newborns.
• Reality principle balances the ID and superego to satisfy desires within reality's limitations.
• The moral principle includes the conscience and incorporates socially approved dos and don'ts.
• Child may grow up to become nail-biters, excessive eating, and smokers from needs not met.
• When a toddler has has too strict toilet training, this results in anal retention (neatness) or anal expulsion (messiness) traits.
• Oedipus and Electra complexes form.
• Boys develop sexual attachment to mothers and aggression to fathers.
• Girls develop sexual attraction to fathers and aggression to mothers.
• Fixation can lead to self-esteem or promiscuity issues.
• Sexual energies are redirected during the relatively calm latency stage through building friendships as well as social and intellectual development.
• Sexual urges repressed during latency resurface in adulthood.
• Fixation at previous stages can cause issues like possessiveness or inadequacy in later relationships.
• Erik Erikson covers eight stages across the human lifespan.
• Each stage includes what Erikson originally called a personality crisis.
• Each stage needs to balance a positive and negative tendency.
• A baby develops whether the world is a good/safe place, and will either be trusting or mistrusting.
• An anxious, suspicious child will develop from mistrust than from trust.
• Kids can develop initiative from new experience rather than guilt.
• Desire of kids to learn develops is from actions not to feel guilty.
• Kids should face failures with more support so they can develop a sense of direction of guilt.
• Kids must learn new skills to avoid feeling inept.
• Kids must have a will to succeed so they can avoid facing failure.
• Adolescents should focus on themselves so they can stay clear of confusion.
• Individuals need to establish commitment with others so they dont suffer from isolation.
• There can be problems when people can establish new social relationships or there could be many good new relationships.
• People try to contribute with their lives but at the end of their life they feel that they could have done more.
• Older adults will like to have acceptance so they can die with honor.
• They should make hard decisions now rather than regretting it later.
• B.F. Skinner argued organisms repeat responses reinforced by desirable consequences.
• Ivan Pavlov's dog experiment illustrated a sound can yield responses to stimulus.