Chapter 11

1. Chapter 11 Human Development Across the Life Span

2. “My Heart Leaps Up” My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky; So was it when my life began So is it now I am a man So be it when I shall grow old Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each to natural piety. William Wordsworth

3. Progress Before Birth: Prenatal Development • 3 phases • germinal stage = first 2 weeks • conception, implantation, formation of placenta • embryonic stage = 2 weeks – 2 months • formation of vital organs and systems • fetal stage = 2 months – birth • bodily growth continues, movement capability begins, brain cells multiply • age of viability

5. Environmental Factors and Prenatal Development • periods of vulnerability in prenatal period (pg 435) • Maternal nutrition • Malnutrition linked to increased risk of birth complications, neurological problems, and psychopathology • Maternal drug use • Tobacco, alcohol, prescription, and recreational drugs • Fetal alcohol syndrome • Maternal illness • Rubella, syphilis, mumps, genital herpes, AIDS, severe influenza • Prenatal health care • Prevention through guidance • Infant mortality by countries – next slide • Preventive care for children

6. Slide 5 Cross-cultural comparisons of infant mortality

7. The Childhood Years: Motor Development • Basic Principles • Cephalocaudal trend – head to foot • Proximodistal trend – center-outward • Maturation – gradual unfolding of genetic blueprint • Developmental norms – next slide • median age – growth charts • 95% level • Cultural variations

8. Developmental Motor milestones

9. Easy and Difficult Babies: Differences in Temperament • Longitudinal vs. cross-sectional designs – • Thomas, Chess, and Birch (1970) • 3 basic temperamental styles • easy – 40% • slow-to-warm-up – 15% • difficult – 10% • mixed – 35% • stable over time • Kagan & Snidman (1991) • Inhibited vs. uninhibited temperament • inhibited – 15 - 20% • uninhibited – 25 - 30% • stable over time, genetically based Go home and ask mom and dad about when your temperament you were a baby.

11. Early Emotional Development: Attachment • Separation anxiety • Ainsworth (1979) • The strange situation and patterns of attachment • Secure • Anxious-ambivalent • Avoidant • Next slide, cross-cultural comparison • Effects on mating strategy – • Developing secure attachment • Bonding at birth – contact comfort – Harlow –Daycare • Cultural factors • Evolutionary perspectives on attachment

12. Attachment: • Secure attachment is indicated when an infant explores the situation freely in the presence of the mother, but displays distress when the mother leaves, and responds enthusiastically when the mother returns • Caregivers who are sensitive and responsive to an infant’s needs are more likely to develop a secure attachment with the infant • Insecure-avoidant attachmentis indicated by exploration, but minimal interest in the mother, the infant showing little distress when the mother leaves, and avoiding her when she returns • Insecure-ambivalent attachment is indicated by the infant seeking closeness to the mother and not exploring the situation, high level of distress when the mother leaves, and ambivalent behavior when she returns by alternately clinging to and pushing away from her • Insecure-disorganized (disoriented) attachment is marked by the infant’s confusion when the mother leaves and when she returns • The infant acts disoriented, seems overwhelmed by the situation, and does not demonstrate a consistent way of coping with it

13. Cultural variations in attachment patterns Attachment and mating strategy, from childhood to puberty

15. Parenting Styles

16. Stage Theories of Development: Personality • Stage theories, three components • progress through stages in order • progress through stages related to age • major discontinuities in development - slide • Erik Erikson (1963) – slide • Eight stages spanning the lifespan • Psychosocial crises determining balance between opposing polarities in personality

19. Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages

21. Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

22. Sensorimotor Stage • Infant learns about the world through their sensory and motor interactions (including reflexes) • Lack object permanence, the knowledge than an object exists independent of perceptual contact • Symbolic representation of objects and events starts to develop during the latter part of the sensorimotor stage (e.g., use of telegraphic speech)

23. Preoperational Stage • The child’s thinking becomes more symbolic and language-based, but remains egocentric and lacks the mental operations that allow logical thinking • Egocentrism is the inability to distinguish one’s own perceptions, thoughts, and feelings from those of others • Cannot perceive the world from another person’s perspective • The child, however, can pretend, imagine, and engage in make-believe play

24. Preoperational Stage • Conservation is the knowledge that the quantitative properties of an object (such as mass, volume, and number) remain the same despite changes in appearance • Some grasp of conservation marks the end of the preoperational stage and the beginning of the concrete-operational stage • The liquid/beakers problem is a common test of conservation ability

26. Preoperational Stage • A major reason why a preoperational child does not understand conservation is that the child lacks an understanding of reversibility, the knowledge that reversing a transformation brings about the conditions that existed before the transformation • Child’s thinking also reflects centration, the tendency to focus on only one aspect of a problem at a time

27. Concrete Operational Stage • Children gain a fuller understanding of conservation and other mental operations that allow them to think logically, but only about concrete events • Conservation for liquids, numbers, and matter acquired early, but conservation of length acquired later in the stage • Develops transitivity (e.g., if A > B, and B > C, then A > C) • Develops seriation, the ability to order stimuli along a quantitative dimension (e.g., a set of pencils by their length) • The reasoning of concrete operational children is tied to immediate reality (i.e., what is in front of them and tangible) and not with the hypothetical world of possibility

28. Formal Operational Stage • The child gains the capacity for hypothetical-deductive thought • Can engage in hypothetical thought and in systematic deduction and testing of hypotheses

29. Formal Operational Stage • In one scientific thinking task, the child is shown several flasks of what appear to be the same clear liquid and is told one combination of two of these liquids would produce a clear liquid • The task is to determine which combination would produce the blue liquid • The concrete operational child just starts mixing different clear liquids together haphazardly • The formal operational child develops a systematic plan for deducing what the correct combination must be by determining all of the possible combinations and then systematically testing each one

30. Formal Operational Stage • The formal operational child can evaluate the logic of verbal statements without referring to concrete situations • For example, the formal operational child would judge the statement “If mice are bigger than horses, and horses are bigger than cats, then mice are bigger than cats” to be true, even though in “real life” mice are not bigger than cats

31. Evaluation of Piaget’s Theory • Recent research has shown that rudiments of many of Piaget’s key concepts (e.g., object permanence) may begin to appear at earlier stages than Piaget proposed • For example, research that involved tracking infants’ eye movements has found that infants as young as 3 months continue to stare at the place where the object disappeared from sight, indicating some degree of object permanence

32. Evaluation of Piaget’s Theory 1. Not all people reach formal operational thought 2. The theory may be biased in favor of Western culture 3. There is no real theory of what occurs after the onset of adolescence 4. Despite refinements, recent research has indeed shown that cognitive development seems to proceed in the general sequence of stages that Piaget proposed

33. Other Cognitive Abilities • Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory • Thought and Language (1934) • Importance of social interactions in cognitive development • Zone of proximal development (ZPD) – difference in accomplishing alone and with help from others • Inhibition – disinhibition – innate? • Memory abilities – active maintenance rehearsal 9-10 years • Memory capacities - metacognition

34. The Development of Moral Reasoning • Kohlberg (1976) • Reasoning as opposed to behavior • Moral dilemmas • Measured nature and progression of moral reasoning • 3 levels, each with 2 sublevels – slide • Preconventional – punishment S1 – naïve reward S2 • Conventional - good boy/good girl S3 – authority S4 • Postconventional - social contract S5 – individual principles and conscience S6 • Longitudinal studies – (slide) , research issues (use of males), reasoning versus behavior • Greene’s et al. studies of moral judgments and brain functioning – fMRI studies using 60 moral dilemmas

35. Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Reasoning • Built on an earlier theory of moral reasoning proposed by Piaget, using a series of stories that involved moral dilemmas to assess a person’s level of moral reasoning • Discerned three levels of moral reasoning based on responses to the stories and the reasoning behind the responses given

36. Kohlberg’s Levels of Moral Reasoning 1. At the preconventional levelof moral reasoning, the emphasis is on avoiding punishment and looking out for your own welfare and needs • Moral reasoning is self-oriented 2. At the conventional levelof moral reasoning, moral reasoning is based on social rules and laws • Social approval and being a dutiful citizen are important 3. At the highest level, the postconventional levelof moral reasoning, moral reasoning is based on self-chosen ethical principles • Human rights taking precedent over laws; the avoidance of self-condemnation for violating such principles

37. Kohlberg’s Levels of Moral Reasoning

38. Kohlberg proposed that we all start at the preconventional level as children and as we develop, especially cognitively, we move up the ladder of moral reasoning • The sequence is uniform; however, not everyone reaches the postconventional level

39. Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Reasoning • Shortcomings of Kohlberg’s theory • Studied moral reasoning and not moral behavior • May not have adequately represented the morality of women • The higher stages may be biased toward Western cultures

40. Adolescence: Puberty and the Growth Spurt • Pubescence – growth spurts 10 – 12 females 12 – 14 males • Puberty • Secondary sex characteristics • Primary sex characteristics • Menarche / Spermarche • Sperm production • Tanner stages • Maturation: early vs. late – Belsky’s study • Sex differences in effects of early maturation • Brain Development in adolescence – slide • Risk taking – slide • Rates of suicide

41. Prefrontal Cortex and adolescence development

42. Peer influence on risk taking

43. The Search for Identity • Problems – suicide rates and brain development • Erik Erikson (1968) • Key challenge - forming a sense of identity • James Marcia (1988) – next slide • 4 identity statuses • Foreclosure • Moratorium • Identity Diffusion • Identity Achievement

44. Marcia’s four identity statuses

45. Emerging Adulthood as a New Developmental Stage • Search for identity extends into adulthood • Ages 18 – 25 have become a distinct transitional stage of life • Characterized by: • subjective feeling of transition • age of possibilities • self-focused • period of identity formation

46. The Expanse of Adulthood • Personality development – midlife crisis? - • Social development – family life cycle, marriage, parenthood, empty nest – • Career development – patterns, work and in the home – • Physical changes – biological aging process • Cognitive changes – mental abilities - memory, response time -

47. Median age at first marriage in United States

48. Sternberg’s triangular theory of love.

49. What are your LOVE indicators? Each person will identify one indicator of LOVE and an example of how it could be measured. (Did you come upon this from “firsthand” experience or second party?) Then make a poster with the group identifiers.