| The pattern of change that begins at conception and continues through the life span. Most development involves growth, although it also includes decline brought on by aging and dying | Development |
| The perspective that development is lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic, multidisciplinary and contextual; involves growth, maintenance and regulation; and is constructed through biological, sociocultural, and individual factors working together | Lifespan Perspective |
| 5000 years | How long did it take to increase life expectancy from 18 to 41 years of age? |
| Influences that are similar for indiviauls in a particular age group (walking and talking at a certain age) | Normative age-graded influences |
| Influences that are common to people of a particular generation because of historical circumstances (war, pandemic etc) | Normative history-graded influences |
| Unusual occurrences that have a major impact on an individuals life (Rape, abuse, car accident etc) | Nonnormative life events |
| The behaviour patterns, beliefs, and all other products of a group that are passed on from generation to generation | Culture |
| Comparison of one culture with wone or more other cultures. These provide information about the degree to which development is similar, or universal, across cultures, and the degree to which it is culture-specific. | Cross-cultural studies |
| A characteristic based on cultural heritage, nationality characteristics, race, religion, and language | Ethnicity |
| Refers to the group of people with similar occupational, educational, and economic characteristics | Socioeconomic status (SES) |
| The Characteristics of people as male or female | Gender |
| Characteristic: Good intellectual functioning. Appealing, sociablie, easygoing disposition. Self-confidence, high self-esteem. Talents. Faith | Source: Individual |
| Characteristic: Close reltionship to caring parent figure. Authoritative parenting: warmth, structure, high expectation. Socioeconomic advantages. Connections to extended supportive family networks. | Source: Family |
| Characteristic: Bonds to caring adults outside the family. Connection to positive organisations. Attending effective schools. | Source: Extrafamilial Context |
| A national governments course of action designed to promote the welfare of it citizens | Social Policy |
| Produce changes in the individuals physical nature. Genes inherited from parents, the development of the brain height and weight gains, changes in motor skills, nutrition, exercise, the hormonal changes of puberty, and cardiovascular decline are all examples of how this process affects development | Biological Processes |
| Refers to changes in the individual's thought, intelligence, and language. Watching a colourful mobile swinging above the crib, putting together two-word sentence, memorising a poem, imagining what it would be like to be a move star, and solving a crossword puzzle all involve this process | Cognitive Processes |
| Involve changes in the individuals relationship with other people, changes in emotions, and change in personality. An infant's smile in response to a parent's touch, a toddler's aggressive attack on a playmate, a school-age child's development of assertiveness, an adolescent's joy at the senior prom, and the affection of an elderly couple all reflect the role of this process in development. | Socioemotional Processess |
| Explores links between development, cognitive processes, and the brain | Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience |
| Exmaines connections between socioemotional processes, development and the brain | Developmental Social Neuroscience |
| Conception to Birth | Prenatal Period |
| Birth to 18-24 months | Infancy |
| 3-5 Years | Early Childhood |
| 6 to 10/11 Years | Middle and late Childhood |
| 10-12 to 18-21 years | Adolescence |
| 20s and 30s | Early Adulthood |
| 40s and 50s | Middle Adulthood |
| 60+ | Late Adulthood |
| Life-span developmentalists focus on adult development and aging increasingly describe life-span development in terms of four 'ages' | Four Ages |
| Childhood and Adolescence | First Age |
| Prime adulthood, ages 20 through 59 | Second Age |
| Approximately 60 to 79 years of age | Third Age |
| Approximately 80+ | Fourth Age |
| K. Warner Shaie (2016) recently described three different developmental patterns that provide a portrait of how aging can involve individual variations | Three developmental Patterns of Aging |
| Characterises most individuals, for whom psycholigiucal functioning often peaks in early middle age, remains relatively stable until the late fifties to early sizties, and then shows a modest decline through the early eighties. However, marked decline can occur as individuals near death | Normal Aging |
| Characterises individuals who show greater than average decline as they age through the adult years. In early old age, they may have mild cognitive impariment, develop Alzheirmer disease later on, or have a chronice disease that impairs their daily functioning. | Pathological Aging |
| Characterises individuals who positive physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development is maintained longer, declining later in old age than is the case for most people. For too long, only the declines that occure in late adulthood were highlighted, but recently there has been increased interest in the concept of successful aging. | Successful Aging |
| Debate about whether development is primarily influenced by nature or nurture. Nature refers to an organism's biological inheritance, nurture to its environmental experiences | Nature-Nurture Issue |
| Debate about whether we become older renditions of our early experience or whether we develop into someone different from who we were at an earlier point in development | Stability-Change issue |
| Debate about the extent to which development involves gradual, cumulative change or distinct stages | Continuity-Discontinuity Issue |
| An approach that can be used to obtain accurate information. It includes the following step: 1) conceptualise the problem, 2) collect data, 3) draw conclusions and 4) revise research conclusions and theory | Scientific Method |
| An interrelated, coherent set of ideas that helps to explain phenomena and facilitate predictions | Theory |
| Specific assumptions and predictions that can be tested to determine their accuracy | Hypotheses |
| Theories that describe development as primarily unconscious and heavily coloured by emotion. Behaviour is merely a surface characteristic, and the symbolic workings of the mind have to be analysed to understand behaviour. Early experiences with parents are emphasised | Psychoanalytic Theories |
| Includes 8 stages of human development. Each stage consist of unique developmental tasks that confront individuals with a crisis that must be resolved. | Erikson's Theory |
| Birth to 1.5 years: Infant's pleasure centres on the mouth | Freud: Oral Stage |
| 1.5 to 3 years: Child's pleasure focuses on the anus | Freud: Anal Stage |
| 3 to 6 years: Child's pleasure focuses on the genitals | Freud: Phallic Stage |
| 6 Years to puberty: Child represses sexual interest and develops social and intellectual skills | Freud: Latency Stage |
| Puberty + : A time of sexual reawakening; source of sexual pleasure becomes someone outside the family | Freud: Genital Stage |
| Because Fured emphasised sexual motivation, his stages of development are known as psychosexual stages. In his view, if the need for pleasure at any stage is either undergratified or overgratified, an individual may become fixated, or lock in, at that stage of development | Freudian Stages |
| Trust vs Mistrust | Erikson: Infancy, first year |
| Autonomy Vs Shame & Doubt | Erikson: Infancy 1-3 years |
| Initiative Vs Guilt | Erikson: Early childhood (Preschool, 3-5) |
| Industry Vs Inferiority | Erikson: Middle and late childhood (6 years to puberty) |
| Identity Vs Identity Confusion | Erikson: Adolescence 10-20years |
| Intimacy Vs Isolation | Erkison: Early Adulthood 20s and 30s |
| Generativity Vs Stagnation | Erikson: Middle adulthood 40s and 50s` |
| Integrity Vs Despair | Erikson: Late adulthood |
| Proposed that individuals go through distinct, universal stages of development. Thus, in terms of the continuity/discontinuity issue, both favour the discontinuity side of the debate. | Erikson's eight Lifespan stages |
| Theory stating that children actively construct their understanding of the world and go through four stages of cognitive development | Piaget's Theory |
| A sociocultural cognitive theory that emphasizes how culture and social interaction guide cognitive development | Vgotsky's Theory |
| The infant constructs an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences with physical actions. An infant progresses from reflexive, instinctual action at birth to the beginning of symvolic thought toward the end of the stage | Piaget: Sensorimotor Stage |
| The child begins to represent the world with words and images. These words and images reflect increased symbolic thinking and go beyond the connection of sensory information and physcial action | Piaget: Preoperational Stage |
| The child can now reason logically about conrete events and classify objects into different sets | Piaget: Concret Operational Stage |
| The adolescent reasons in more abstract, idealistic, and logical ways | Piaget: Formal Operational Stage |
| Contributions of cognitive theories include a positive view of development and an emphasis on the active construction of understanding. Criticisms include skepticism about the pureness of Piaget's stages and too little attention to individual variations | Evaluating Cognitive Theories |
| The view of psychologists who emphasize the behaviour, environment and cognition as the key factors in development. | Social Cognitive Theory |
| Illustrates relationships between behaviour, person/cognitive and environment are reciprocal rather than one-way. Person/cognitive refers to cognitive processes and personal characteristics | Bandura's Social Cognitive Model |
| Contributions of the behavioural and socisl cognitive theories include an emphasis on scientific research and environmental determinants of behaviour. Criticisms include too little emphasis on cognition in Skinner's theory and inadequate attention paid to developmental changes. | Evaluating Behavioural and Social Cognitive Theories |
| Stresses that behaviour is strongly influenced by biology, is tied to evolution and is characterised by critical or sensitive periods | Ethology |
| Focuses on five environmental stems: Microsystems, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem. | Brofenbrenner's Ecological Theory |
| Setting in which the individual lives. These contexts include the persons family, peers, school and neighbourhood. It is in this system that the most direct interactions with social agents take place. The individual is not a passive recipient of experience in these settings, but someone who helps to construct the settings | Microsystem |
| Relations between Microsystems or connections between contexts. Examples are the relation of family experiences to school experiences. For example, children who parents have rejected them may have difficulty developing positive relations with others, such as teachers or peer | Mesosystem |
| Consists of links between a social setting in which the individual does not have an active role and the individual's immediate context. For exmaple, a husbands or childs experience at ahome may be influenced by a mothers experience at work. The mother might receive a promotion that requires more travel, which might increase conflict with the husband and change patterns of interaction with the child | Exosystem |
| Involves the culture in which individuals live. | Macrosystem |
| Consists of the patterning of environmental events and transitions over the life course, as well as sociohistorical circumstances. For example, divorce is one transition. Researchers have found that the negative effects of divorce on children often peak in the first year following the divorce. By two years after the divorce, family interaction has become more stable. | Chronosystem |
| An orientation that does not follow any one theoretical appropach but rather selects from each theory whatever is considered the best | Eclectic Theoretical Orientation |
| Studies that involve observing behaviour in real-world settings | Naturalistic Observation |
| A test with uniform procedures for administration and scoring. Many standaardised tests allow a person's performance to be compared with the performance of other individuals. | Standardised Test |
| It is almost impossible to conduct research without the participants knowing they are being studied. The lab setting is unnatural and therefore can cause the participants to behave unnaturally. People who are willing to come to a university lab may not accuratelyt represent groups from diverse cultural backgrounds. People who are unfamiliar with university settings and with the idea of 'helping science' may be intimidated by the lab setting | Laboratory Research Drawbacks |
| An indepth look at a single individual | Case Study |
| Studies designed to observe and record behaviour | Descriptive research |
| Research that attempts to determine the strength of the relationship between two or more events or characteristics | Correlational Research |
| A number based on statistical analysis that is used to describe the degree of association between two variables | Correlation coefficient |
| A research strategy in which individuals of different ages are compared at one time | Cross-sectional Approach |
| A research strategy in which the same individuals ate studied over a period of time, usually several years or more | Longitudinal Approach |
| Effects due to a person's time of birth, era, or generation rather than the person's actual age | Cohort Effects |
| First generation to come of age and enter emerging adulthood in the twenty-first century. Two main characteristics: 1) connection to technology 2) ethnic diversity | Millennials - Born 1980+ |
| Described as lacking an identity and savvy loners | Generation X - Born between 1965 - 1980 |
| Label used because this generation represents the spike in the number of babies born after WW2; the largest generation ever to enter late adulthood in the USA | Baby Boomers - Born between 1946 - 1964 |
| Children of the great depression and WW2; described as conformists and civic minded | Silent Generation - Born between 1928-1945 |
| All participants must know what their research participation will involve and what risks might develop. Even after informed consent is given, participants must retain the right to withdraw from the study at any time and for any reason | Informed Consent |
| Researchers are responsible for keeping all of the data they gater on individuals completely confidential and, when possible, completely anonymous | Confidentiality |
| After the study has been completed, participants should be informed of its purpose and the methods that were used. In most cases, the experimenter also can inform participants in a general manner beforehand about the purpose of the research without leading participants to behave in a way they think that the experimenter is expecting | Debriefing |
| In some circumstances, telling the participants beforehand what the research study is about substantially alters the participants behaviour and invalidates the researchers data. In all cases of deveption, however, the psychologist must ensure that the deveption will not harm the participants and that the participants will be debriefed as soon as possible after the study is completed | Deception |
| Using an ethnic label such as "African American" or "Latino" is a superficial way that portrays an ethnic group as being more homogeneous than it really is | Ethnic Gloss |
| Fast an inexpensive. Can reveal age-related change | Cross Sectional Design ADVANTAGES |
| Reveals nothing about individual change over time as each participant test once. Cohort Effects -> age related change may be due to effect, not simply age | Cross Sectional Design DISADVANTAGES |
| Demonstrate sequence of change. Show individual change or consistency. Avoid Cohort Problem | Longitudinal ADVANTAGES |
| Costly. Practice effects | Longitudinal DISADVANTAGE |
| Case studies, Interviews, Observational Studies, Psychological tests, Physiological measures, Surveys | Six different methods of collecting data |
| Freud & Erikson | Who are known for Psychoanalytic developmental theories? |
| Pavlov, Watson and Skinner | Who are known for behavioural developmental theories? |
| Piaget (intellectual), Vgotsky (Social), Kohlberg (moral) | Who are known for cognitive developmental theories? |
| Seven | How many paradoxes are there concerning human development? |
| Developmental Vs Non-developmental | First paradox of human development |
| Continuity Vs Discontinuity | Second paradox of human development |
| Biological Vs Environmental (Nature v Nurture) | Third paradox of human development |
| Activity vs Passivity | Fourth paradox of human development |
| Cognitive Vs Affective | Fifth paradox of human development |
| Macroscopic Vs Microscopic | Sixth paradox of human development |
| General Vs Particular | Seventh paradox of human development |
| Chomsky & Bowlby (language and attachment theories) | Who are known for biological developmental theories? |
| Impulsive, Irrational, Selfish | What is the Id? |
| Rational side of personality that try to find realistic ways of satisfying instincts (emerges in first 2 years) | What is the ego? |
| Moral values of parents (develops between 3 to 60 years) | What is superego? |
| Repression, denial, projection, reaction formation, regression, sublimation | What did Freud suggest were defense mechanisms? |
| They expressed repressed desires and or wishes | What did Freud suggest about dreams? |
| Emphasised uniqueness of individuals (case studies), qualitative stage transitions underlying development. Inspired further research on social and emotional development. Introduced notion of unconscious mind (Freud) | Strengths of Psychodynamic theories |
| Too much emphasis on sexual underpinnings (Freud). Limited methods used (case studies). Ideas too vague to be etest empirically | Weaknesses of psychodynamic theories |
| Jean Piaget | Who's theory believed that an individual passes through a series of qualitatively distinct stages in the same order and at about the same time? |
| Lev Vygotsky | Who believed that cognitive development occurred as a result of children's interaction with the social world rather than the physical world? |
| Theory of Moral Development | What theory is Lawrence Kohlberg associated with? |
| Social Justice | According to Kohlberg: Children's understandings of morality are based upon more advanced understandings of… ? |
| In a stage-like manner dependent upon cognitive development | Who does the Theory of Moral Development advance? |
| Adult period consists of regular alternation between period of: stable functioning (life structures) and developmental upheaval (the transitions) | Daniel Levinson believed… |
| Lifespan development balances growth (or gains) and decline (or loss). Losses predominate over gains in latter half of lifespan. Development continues through THREE processes (SOC) - Selection, Optimisaion, Compensation | Paul Baltes believed… |
| Particular abilities | Selecting |
| Abilities through practice and new new technologies | Optimising |
| For losses of other abilities by finding other ways to accomplish tasks | Compensating |
