UNIT 5: Developing Through the Life Span
Big Questions (Unit Focus)Unit 5
1. How does life develop before birth?
2. What are some newborn abilities, and how do researchers explore infants’ mental abilities?
3. During infancy and childhood, how do the brain and motor skills develop?
4. From the perspective of Piaget and of today’s researchers, how does a child’s mind develop?
5. How do parent-infant attachment bonds form?
6. How have psychologists studied attachment differences, and what have they learned?
7. Do parental neglect, family disruption, or day care affect children’s attachments?
8. How do children’s self-concepts develop, and how are children’s traits related to parenting styles?
9. What physical changes mark adolescence?
10. How did Piaget, Kohlberg, and later researchers describe adolescent cognitive and moral development?
12. What is emerging adulthood?
13. What physical changes occur during middle and late adulthood?
14. How do memory and intelligence change with age?
15. What themes and influences mark our social journey from early adulthood to death?
Key Terms
developmental psychology, 173 preoperational stage, 183 puberty, 197
zygote, 174 conservation, 183 primary sex characteristics, 197
embryo, 174 egocentrism, 183 secondary sex characteristics, 197
fetus, 174 theory of mind, 184 menarche, 198
teratogens, 175 concrete operational stage, 185 identity, 203 fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), 175 formal operational stage, 185 social identity, 203
habituation, 175 autism, 186 intimacy, 204
maturation, 177 stranger anxiety, 188 emerging adulthood, 206
cognition, 179 attachment, 188 menopause, 207
schema, 180 critical period, 189 cross-sectional study, 214
assimilation, 180 imprinting, 189 longitudinal study, 214
accommodation, 180 basic trust, 191 crystallized intelligence, 215 sensorimotor stage, 181 self-concept, 194 fluid intelligence, 215 object permanence, 181 adolescence, 196 social clock, 217
Key Psychologists - Developmental Psychology
Ainsworth, Mary (1913-1999)
-development psychologist who devised a research procedure called the Strange Situation to observe attachment relationships between infants and their mothers
-used labels of secure attachment and insecure attachment
-securely attached infants tend to be well-adjusted, form successful social relationships, and perform better at school
-insecurely attached infants tend to form shallow relationships, appear withdrawn, and sometimes display a strong need for affection
Bandura, Albert (1925- )
Baumrind, Diana (1927- )
-best known for her work on parenting styles based on “parental responsiveness” and “parental demandingness”
-permissive parents = set few rules, make minimal demands, allow children to reach own decisions -authoritative parents = set firm rules, make reasonable demands, listen to child’s viewpoint while still
insisting on responsible behavior
-authoritarian parents = set rigid rules, enforce strict punishments, and rarely listen to child’s viewpoint
Erikson, Erik (1902-1994)
-influential theory on social development; said as we progress from infancy to old age, we enter eight psychosocial stages of development
-each stage corresponds with physical changes taking place in a distinctive setting
-combination of physiological changes and new social environments creates psychosocial crisis -particularly interested in adolescents struggle to overcome “role confusion” and find an identity -coined the phrase “identity crisis” to describe adolescents struggle to create meaningful identity
Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939)
-believed he discovered the unconscious mind; a part of our mind over which we do not have conscious control that determines, in part, how we think and behave
-proposed that we must examine the unconscious mind through dream analysis, word association, and other psychoanalytic therapy techniques if we are to understand human thought and behavior -has been criticized for being unscientific and creating unverifiable theories
-placed special emphasis on how childhood experiences influenced adult personality
Gilligan, Carol (1936- )
-best known for her critique of Kohlberg’s theory of moral development
-wrote book In a Different Voice arguing the participants in Kohlberg’s studies were all male -said scoring method Kohlberg used was biased toward boys
-she said moral concerns of women focus on caring and compassion
Harlow, Harry (1905-1981)
-developmental psychologist who conducted a famous series of experiments on rhesus monkeys -gave orphaned baby monkeys two artificial surrogate “mothers”
-a cloth “mother” provided no milk but offered a soft terrycloth cover -a wire “mother” provided milk but offered no contact comfort
-whenever the baby monkeys were frightened, they preferred the cloth mother for protection/comfort
Kohlberg, Lawrence (1927-1987)
-American psychologist who used moral dilemmas to study moral reasoning -stages of moral development is milestone in developmental psychology
Lorenz, Konrad (1903-1989)
-regarded as the founder of ethology, the comparative study of animal behavior (including humans) and their natural surroundings
-studied imprinting and aggression
-concluded that the mechanism inhibiting aggression works less well in humans than among other species
Piaget, Jean (1896-1980) (Cognitive Developmental Theory)
-Swiss psychologist who focused on the rational, perceiving child who has the capacity to make sense of the world; developed a stage theory describing how infants, children, and adolescents use
distinctly different cognitive abilities to understand the world
-describes how children view the world through schemata, cognitive rules we use to interpret the world -normally we incorporate our experiences into these existing schemata in a process called assimilation -sometimes information doesn’t fit into or violates our schemata, so we must accommodate and change
Vygotsky, Lev (1896-1934)
-pioneering Russian psychologist and author
-placed emphasis on how culture and social interactions with parents and other significant people influenced a child’s cognitive development.
-Vygotsky said children learn their culture’s habits of mind through a process he called internalization
Key Theories & Processes
1. Erikson’s Theory of Personality Development
2. Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
3. Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development
4. Types of Attachment
