Life-span Psychology

By
Rasha Samir Refaat
Lecturer of psychiatry
Minia University
Objectives

 Outline principles of mental development

 Outline life tasks and the characteristics of mental
development at each stage of the life cycle
 Outline genetic factors and environmental factors
affecting mental development
Life-span Psychology

• A field devoted to study development, and

understanding all aspects of human growth and
change across the entire lifespan.
• Earlier developmental psychologists focused on
infancy and adolescence.
• Current thinking sees the life span as important
because developmental growth and change
continue throughout every part of life.
 Nature versus Nurture
• The NATURE-NURTURE controversy is over the
relative importance of heredity (nature) versus
the role of the environment (nurture).

• Most developmental psychologists now believe

our behavior is strongly shaped by
CONSTITUTIONAL FACTORS that are largely
hereditary such as body build and TEMPERAMENT
FACTORS that include personality characteristics
such as adaptability to new experience and
regularity as well as tendencies to be happy or
sad, irritable or easy, cheerful or glum.
 Nature versus Nurture

• Biological and genetic research with twin studies

also indicates genetics or NATURE plays a part in
predispositions to physical and mental illnesses as
well as being influenced by NURTURE, our
environment, experience, practice and learning.
 Developmental Psychology

 Types of Development: 1. physical

2. Psychosexual
3. cognitive
4. social
5. Moral
Physical Development
 Examines changes in body size, proportions,
appearances, and the functioning of various body
systems – brain development, needs for food, drink
and sleep, perceptual and motor capabilities, and
physical health.
 Maturation – Biological growth processes that
enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively
uninfluenced by experience.
– Physical growth, regardless of the environment.
– Although the timing of our growth may be
different, the sequence is almost always the
same.
 Development During Infancy and
Childhood:
Healthy Newborns
 Reflexes: Inborn automatic responses. Initially, the
newborn’s behavior is mostly limited to reflexes that
enhance his chances for survival.
 Some major newborn reflexes:
1. The rooting reflex – the infant turns toward the
source of the touch and opens the mouth
2. The sucking reflex – just touching the newborn’s lips
evokes this reflex
3. The grasping reflex – the baby will grip your fingers
so tightly that he or she can be lifted upright.
 Gaze longer at human like objects right from birth, helping
the infant quickly learn to differentiate between the
mother and other humans.

 Vision is the least developed sense at birth

 Optimal viewing distance for the newborn is about 6-12
inches
 The perfect distance for a nursing baby to easily focus
on his mother’s face and make eye contact.
• Newborns respond with increased alertness
to the sound of human voices. Turn head towards
voices.
• The basic sequence of motor skill development
during infancy is universal but once again, timing
varies. Infants do not LEARN these Motor skills, it is
part of maturation.
• First learn to roll over, sit up unsupported, crawl,
walk etc…
Motor Development
 Social and personality development

 Forming close social and emotional relationships with

caregivers is essential to the infant’s physical and
psychological well-being.

 Temperamental qualities:
Temperament: is the inborn predispositions to
consistently behave and react in a certain way.

 Most researchers agree that temperament has a

genetic and biological basis although environment can
modify a child’s basic temperament.
 In the 1950’s Chess & Thomas rated
young infants on a variety of characteristics: such as
activity level, mood, regularity, and attention span.

 About 2/3 of the babies could be classified into one of

three broad temperamental patterns: easy, difficult,
and slow-to-warm-up
 Easy babies
Easily adapt to new experiences, generally display positive
moods and emotions, and have regular sleeping and eating
patterns
Difficult babies
tend to be intensely emotional, are irritable and fussy, cry a
lot, and tend to have irregular sleeping and eating patterns.
Slow-to-warm-up babies
Have a low activity level, withdraw from new situations and
people, and adapt to new experiences very gradually.
 About 1/3 of the infants were characterized as average
babies because they did not fit neatly into one of these
three categories.
 Language development

-Phonology refers to the sounds of a language

 Semantics is the study of words and their meaning

 Grammar refers to the rules used to describe the

structure of a language
 Pragmatics is the study of how people use language to
communicate effectively.

 Every child is born with a biological predisposition to

learn language – any language that is, they possess
what he calls a “universal grammar”:
 Infants can distinguish among the speech sounds of all
the world’s languages. By 10 months, they distinguish
only the speech sounds that are present in the
language to which they have been exposed.

 The cooing and babbling stage of language

development : seems to be a biologically programmed
stage of language development
1. Around 3 months – infant begins to “coo”
2. Around 5 months – infant begins to “babble”
3. Around 9 months – infant begins to babble more in
the sounds specific to their language
 The one-word stage of language development

 Long before babies become accomplished talkers, they

understand much of what is said to them.
 Thus, they have a comprehension vocabulary (words
they understand) that is much larger than their
production vocabulary (the words they can say).
 Around their first birthday, infants produce their first
real words:
 During the one-word stage, babies use a single words.
 The two word stage of language development

 Around their second birthday, infants begin putting

words together to construct a simple “sentence” Such as
“Mama go,” & “Where kitty,”
 These utterances include only the most essential words.
 Children move beyond the two-word stage at around 2½
years of age.
 Language production and comprehension increase
dramatically thereafter.
 Gender-Role Development

 Gender – refers to the cultural and social

meanings for maleness or femaleness
 Gender roles – behaviors, attitudes, and personality traits
that a given culture designates as either masculine or
feminine.
 Gender identity – a person’s psychological sense of being
male or female. Between the ages of 2 and 3, children can
identify themselves and other children as boys or girls, but
the details are still a bit fuzzy for them
 From about 18 months to the age of 2 years, sex
differences in behavior begin to emerge:

 Toddler girls play more with soft toys and dolls, and
ask for help from adults more than toddler boys do.

 Toddler boys play more with blocks and

transportation toys (trucks), and play more roughly
 Explaining gender roles: Two contemporary theories
1. Social learning theory – gender roles are learned through
reinforcement, punishment, and modeling
2. Gender schema theory – children actively develop mental
categories/schemas (mental representations) for
masculinity and femininity
 Gender schemata: Influence how people pay attention
to, perceive, interpret, and remember gender-relevant
behavior. It seems to lead children to perceive
members of their own sex more favorably than
members of the opposite sex.
 Cognitive Development
 Jaen Piaget (biologist) was interested in how an
organism adapts to its environment.
Sensorimotor stage
 From birth to 2 years

 In this period intelligence is demonstrated

through motor activity without the use of
symbols.
Pre-operational stage:
 Toddler and Early Childhood 2-7 years.
 In this period intelligence is demonstrated through
the use of symbols, language use develops, and
memory and imagination are developed, but
thinking is done in a non-logical, manner. Egocentric
thinking predominates
Concrete operational stage:
 Elementary and early adolescence 7-11.

 Intelligence is demonstrated through logical and

systematic manipulation of symbols related to
concrete objects. Operational thinking develops
egocentric thought diminishes.

Formal operational stage

 Adolescence and adulthood 11-15.

 In this stage, intelligence is demonstrated through

the logical use of symbols related to abstract
concepts.
THANK YOU