1. Development Across the
Lifespan

2. Chapter in Perspective
• Lifespan Developmental Psychology
– The branch of psychology concerned with the
changes in psychological functioning that
occur, from conception across the entire life
span.
• From conception until death, we change
– Physically
– Cognitively
– Psychosocially

3. Basic Issues In Developmental
Psychology
• Which is more important to human
development?
• Nature
– Genetics
• Nurture
– Environment in which we are raised.

4. Basic Issues In Developmental
Psychology
• Behavior Genetics
– Relatively new field
– Combines
• Psychology
• Biology
– Researchers work on the nature-or-nurture
question.

5. Nature vs Nurture
• Why does a child misbehave?
– Inherited tendency to be active?
• Nature
– The way the parents raised him?
• Nurture
• Most psychologists believe both nature &
nurture shape our behavior.
– Critical question
• How much does nature or nurture determine
behavior?

6. Psychosocial Development
In Childhood
• 3 temperament types in young
children have been identified:
1. Easy
2. Slow-to-warm-up
3. Difficult

7. Temperament
• Heredity
– Important in
determining
temperament
• Environment
– Mother’s child-rearing
attitudes can influence
adolescent
temperament.
• MOM’S FAULT

8. Psychosocial Development
In Childhood
• Sigmund Freud
– Personality develops as a child deals with conflicts
between
• Biological urges
• Demands of society
• Erik Erikson
– Psychosocial crises, or conflicts between
• Psychological needs
• Societal demands
– Main determinants of personality

9. Psychosocial Development
In Childhood
• Erikson's psychosocial crises for childhood
include:
– Basic trust versus basic mistrust (birth to age
1.5 years),
– Autonomy versus shame and doubt (1.5 to 3
years),
– Initiative versus quilt (3 to 7 years), and
– Industry versus inferiority (7 to 10 years).

10. Harry & Marguerite Harlow
• Attachment
• Intense reciprocal relationship occurring
between two people, usually a child and an
adult.
• Studies of young monkeys conducted by
Harry and Marguerite Harlow
– Attachment was determined by contact
comfort, rather than by the presence of food.

11. Harry & Marguerite Harlow
• Determined raising baby monkeys in
isolation in laboratory
– Detrimental effect on social behavior
• A major conclusion of Harlow's research
– Attachment was important
• Did not ensure normal social development.
– Environmental contact (nurture)
• With members of one’s own species is needed
for this kind of development.

12. Cognitive Development
In Childhood
• Changes that occur in our thought
processes throughout life.
– Piaget
• Cognitive development progresses through a series
of qualitative stages

13. Cognitive Development
In Childhood
• Jean Piaget
– 50 years observing children’s intellectual
functioning.
– Cognitive development progresses through a
series of stages.
– All children progress through these stages in
same sequence.

14. Sensorimotor Stage
• Sensorimotor stage
– Birth to age 2
• Infants learn to coordinate their senses and their
motor behavior.
• Organize world into:
– What can I put in my mouth
– What is graspable
– What makes noise
• What they experience directly

15. Sensorimotor Stage
• Object permanence
– Perception that objects continue to exist
even when out of sight.
– Baby’s favorite game?
• Why?

16. Sensorimotor Stage
• Self-recognition
– Towards end of stage
– Rouge test Lewis & Brooks 1979
– Placed in front of mirror
– Touched nose at 18 – 24 months.

17. Preoperational Stage
• Ages 2 to 7
– Able to use mental representations & language
to describe, remember & reason about the
world, though only an egocentric fashion.
• Mental representations
– See object in head
• Egocentrism
– Can’t see things from another person's
point of view.

18. Preoperational Stage
• Animistic Thinking
– Imagining that inanimate objects have life & mental
processes.
• Child tripped over coffee table, what will they say?
• Fantasy Play
– Believe they are Batman
• Symbolic Gestures
– Stick becomes a gun

19. Cognitive Development
In Childhood
• Piaget demonstrated
that preoperational
children do not grasp
the principle of
conservation, the
understanding that a
change in the size or
shape of a substance
does not change the
amount of that
substance.

20. Concrete Operational
• Ages 7 - 11
• Able to:
– Represent objects mentally
– Begin to use logical reasoning about the world
• Not able to:
– Think abstractly
• What would happen if we had no thumbs?

21. Formal Operational
• Adolescence to adulthood
• Able to think abstractly
– Think in terms of possibilities as opposed
to concrete reality.

22. Adolescence
• In U.S. society, no single event marks the
passage from childhood to adulthood.
• Children experience an extended period of
adolescence, which lasts roughly from age
12 to age 20.
– Not expected to work

23. Adolescence
• Thought & behavior continues to be
somewhat childish &contradictory.
• Personal fable
– One is not subject to the same rules as other
people.
– Unique
– Invulnerable

24. Adolescence
• Imaginary audience
– Assumption that everyone else is concerned
with his or her appearance and behavior.

25. End