Life-span development
liudexiang
Developmental psychology
• The study of the changes that occur in
people from birth through old age.
Enduring issues and methods
• Individual characteristics versus shared
human traits
• Stability versus change
• Heredity versus environment
Enduring issues and methods
• Cross-sectional study : A method of
studying development changes by
comparing people of different ages at
about the same time.
• Cohort : A group of people born during
the same period in historical time.
Enduring issues and methods
• Longitudinal study : A method of studying
developmental changes by evaluating the same
people at different points in their lives.
• Biographical ( or retrospective ) study : A
method of studying developmental changes by
reconstructing people’s past through interviews
and inferring the effects of past events on
current behaviors.
Prenatal development
• Prenatal development : Development
from conception to birth.
• Embryo : A developing human between 2
weeks and 3 months after conception.
• Fetus : A developing human between 3
months after conception and birth.
Prenatal development
• Critical period : A time when certain internal and
external influences have a major effect on
development; at other periods, the same
influences will have little or no effect.
• Fetal alcohol syndrome : A disorder that occurs
in children of women who drink alcohol during
pregnancy; this disorder is characterized by
facial deformities, heart defects, stunted growth,
and cognitive impairments.
The newborn---reflexes
• Rooting reflex : the baby’s tendency to
turn his or her head toward anything that
touches the cheek.
• Sucking reflex : The tendency to suck on
anything that enters the mouth.
• Grasping reflex : the tendency to cling
vigorously to an adult’s finger or to any
other object placed in the baby’s hands.
Temperament
• Temperament : Characteristic patterns of
emotional reactions and emotional self-
regulation.
Infancy and childhood
• Physical development
Motor development
• Motor development : It refers to the
acquisition of skills involving movement,
such as grasping, crawling, and walking.
• Motor development proceeds in a
proximodistal fashion---from nearest the
center of the body to farthest from the
center.
Motor development milestones
The normal sequence of motor
development
• At birth, babies have grasping and
stepping reflexes. At about 2 months, they
can lift their head and shoulders. They can
sit up by themselves at about 6.5 months
and can stand ( while holding on to
something ) at about 9 months. Crawling
begins, on average, at 10 months, and
walking at 1 year.
Maturation
• Maturation refers to biological processes
that unfold as a person grows older and
that contribute to orderly sequences of
developmental changes, such as the
progression from crawling to toddling to
walking.
Cognitive development
Sensory-motor stages
• In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive
development between birth and 2 years of
age in which the individual develops
object performance and acquires the
ability to form mental representation.
Preoperational stage
• In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive
development between 2 and 7 years of
age in which the individual becomes able
to use mental representations and
language to describe, remember, and
reason about the world, though only in an
egocentric fashion.
Concrete-operational stage
• In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive
development between 7 and 11 years of
age in which the individual can attend to
more than one thing at a time and
understand someone else’s point of view,
though thinking is limited to concrete
matters.
Formal-operational stage
• In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive
development between 11 and 15 years of
age in which the individual becomes
capable of abstract thought.
Social development
• Learning to interact with others is an
important aspect of development in
childhood.
Imprinting
• The tendency in certain species to follow
the first moving thing (usually its mother)
it sees after it is born or hatched.
attachment
• Emotional bond that develops in the first
year of life that makes human babies cling
to their caregivers for safety and comfort.
Autonomy
• Sense of independence; a desire not to be
controlled by others.
Socialization
• Process by which children learn the
behaviors and attitudes appropriate to
their family and culture.
The end