The Life-Span Perspective

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• Chapter 1
• Introduction

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• TheLife-SpanPerspective

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• What Is Life-Span Development?
• A pattern of change involving growth and decline,
  beginning at conception and lasting until death.
• Life phases infancy, childhood, adolescence,
  young adulthood, middle adulthood, and late
  adulthood.

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• The Historical Perspective
• Childhood has been of interest for a long time.
• Adulthood became of interest in the late 1900s.
• Three philosophical views of child development
• Original sin - children were perceived as being
  basically bad, born into the world as evil
  beings.
• Tabula rasa - children are like a blank tablet,
  and acquire their characteristics through
  experience.
• Innate goodness - children are inherently good.
• Childhood is seen as a special time of growth and
  change, influenced by child-rearing practices,
  childhood experiences, and environmental
  influences.

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Average Human Life Expectancy (in Years) at Birth
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• Characteristics of the life-span perspective
• Development is lifelong
• No age period dominates development.
• Biological, cognitive, and socioeconomic
  dimensions of experiences and psychological
  orientation are very important to study.

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• Development is multidimensional age, body, mind,
  emotions, and relationships are affecting and
  changing each other.
• Biological processes involve changes in the
  individuals genes, brain development, height and
  weight gains, changes in motor skills, hormonal
  changes, cardiovascular decline.
• Cognitive processes involve changes in the
  individuals thought intelligence, and language.
• Socioemotional processes involve changes in the
  individuals relationships with other people,
  changes in emotions, and changes in personality.

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Developmental Changes Are a Result of Biological,
Cognitive, and Socioemotional Processes
Biological processes
Socioemotional processes
Cognitive processes
Figure 1.6
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• Development is multidirectional some aspects of
  dimensions shrink and some expand. The processes
  are fluctuating.
• Development is plastic it has the capacity for
  change. How well we adapt to change/our
  flexibility.
• Development is multidisciplinary it is of
  interest to
• Psychologists.
• Sociologists.
• Anthropologists.
• Neuroscientists.
• Medical researchers.

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• Development is contextual a person acts on and
  responds to contexts such as
• Sociocultural and environmental experiences.
• Historical circumstances.
• Life events or unusual circumstances impacting on
  the specific individual.

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• Three Sources of Contextual Influences
• Normative age-graded influences are biological
  and environmental influences that are similar for
  individuals in a particular age group. e.g.
  puberty/adolescence
• Normative history-graded influences are common to
  people of a particular generation because of the
  historical circumstances they experience. e.g.
  weather (draught), wars
• Nonnormative life events are unusual occurrences
  that have a major impact on an individuals life.
  The occurrence, pattern, and sequence of these
  events are not applicable to many individuals.
  e.g. moving, divorce

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• Development involves growth, maintenance, and
  regulation of loss.
• Development is a co-construction of biology,
  culture, and individual factors all working
  together.

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Contexts

• A context is the setting in which development
  occurs. This setting is influenced by historical,
  economic, social, and cultural factors.
• Culture
• Cross-cultural studies
• Ethnicity
• Socioeconomic status
• Gender
• Social Policy
• Generational inequity

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Concerns

• Health and well-being influenced by behavior and
  psychological states
• Parenting family function is influenced by
  various issues (e.g. day care, working parents,
  divorce, etc.)
• Education is influenced by various issues.

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Children Exposed to Six Stressors
Poor housing quality
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Excessive noise
45
Crowding
Exposure to violence
32
Child separation
Family turmoil
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21
16
14
Percentage
12
7
3
Poor children
Middle-income children
Figure 1.5
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• DevelopmentalProcesses and Periods

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• Periods of development focus on time frames
• Prenatal period.
• Infancy.
• Early childhood.
• Middle and late childhood.
• Adolescence.
• Early adulthood.
• Middle adulthood.
• Late adulthood.

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• How important is age?
• Age and Happiness
• No specific age group reports more happiness or
  satisfaction than another, because each age
  period has its own stresses, advantages, and
  disadvantages for example
• Adolescents must cope with identity development,
  feelings of competency, and self-perceptions.
• Older adults must cope with reduced income, less
  energy, decreasing physical skills, concerns
  about death, more leisure time, and accumulation
  of life experiences.

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Age and Happiness
100
Happy people ()
80
60
40
20
0
65
15-24
25-34
35-44
45-54
55-64
Age range (years)
Figure 1.9
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Conceptions of age

• Perhaps we are becoming an age-irrelevant
  society.
• How should age be conceptualized?
• Chronological age.
• Biological age.
• Psychological age.
• Social age.
• How old would you be if you didnt know how old
  you were?

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Number of years since birth
Chronological age
Age in terms of physical health
Biological age
Conceptions of age
Adaptive capacity compared with others of the
same chronological age
Psychological age
Social roles and expectations relative to
chronological age
Social age
Figure 1.10
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• Developmental
• Issues

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• Nature versus nurture
• A debate about whether development is influenced
  most by biological heredity or environmental
  experiences.
• Nature proponents argue that genetic blueprints
  produce commonalities in growth and development.
• Nature proponents acknowledge the influence of
  extreme environments on development.
• Psychologists emphasize the importance of nurture
  and that the range of environments can be vast.

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• Stability and change
• The assumption that nothing much changes in
  adulthood.
• The concept of plasticity, ongoing change.
• Major changes were believed to occur only in the
  first 5 years of childhood (early experience
  doctrine) we are no longer able to ignore the
  rest of the life span.
• There is still a lot of controversy over both
  sides of this issue.

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• Continuity and discontinuity
• The continuitydiscontinuity issue focuses on
  whether development is
• A gradual, cumulative quantitative change process
  or
• A set of distinct stages that are qualitatively
  different from each other

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Discontinuity
Continuity and Discontinuity in Development
Continuity
Figure 1.11
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Evaluating the Issues

• Extreme positions on nature-nurture,
  stability-change, and continuity-discontinuity
  issues are unwise.
• But spirited debate among developmental
  psychologists continue in context of important
  issues such as, gender differences in math
  skills, memory changes in old age, and how to
  remediate negative childhood experiences.
• We will explore many such issues in this class.