CHANGE IS THE WORD BEST

CHAPTER1 ✓
DESCRIBES THE FOCUS OF THE STUDY
Experience Human Development OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT.
Human Development: An ever-
evolving field Periods of the Life Span
The Scientific Study of how Humans Develop:

Development is:

▪ Systematic
▪ Adaptive (deals with transitions)
▪ Lifelong
✓ Life span development- process of
development that can be studied
scientifically.
✓ Womb to tomb

Four Goals of Developmental Influences on Development

Psychology
Describe: When do children say their first words?
: Stating that most children take their first
steps at about a year.
Heredity: inherited traits from biological parents.
Environment: includes what is outside the self and
the learning that comes from the experiences in this
world.

Explain: How do children learn to use language? Maturation: is the unfolding of natural sequence of
physical changes and behavior patterns.
: Stating that most students learn to read
through a combination of phonetic and whole-
word instruction.
Contexts of Development: Family
Predict: Will delayed language development affect
speech? Nuclear: Economic unit

Control/Intervene/Modify: Can therapy help : Dominant in Western societies

speech delays?
Extended: Multigenerational unit

: Common in recent years

Domains of Development Change and
Stability
Socioeconomic Status (SES) Includes:
Physical Development: body, brain, motor skills, and
health ▪ Income, education, and occupation
▪ Risk actors exist in both poor and affluent
Cognitive Development: learning, memory, moral societies.
reasoning, language, thinking, and creativity

Psychosocial Development: personality, emotional

life, and relationships
Periods of the Life Span:
A Social Construction
Social Construction- a concept that may appear
natural to those who accept it, but it is actually just
an invention of a particular society or culture.
▪ Based on subjective perceptions or
assumptions.
▪ Varies among cultures.
▪ Changes over generations.
✓ Adolescence only recently
introduced in industrial societies.
Low SES and Related Risk Factors
Poverty-related risks: increase chance of negative
outcomes
Includes:
▪ Emotional and Behavioral problems
▪ Cognitive and School performance
▪ Parents’ Emotional state and Home
environment
▪ Living in neighborhood with large
unemployment contributes to potential lack
of social support.
Strengths & resilience factors: in poor
neighborhoods
 Parents report feeling close with children
▪
▪ Attend church & feel safe at home and
school
▪ Eat meals together
▪ Events that shape attitudes of a historical
Window on the World:
Children of Immigrant Families
Nearly ¼ of children lived in immigrant families in
2007
▪ Non-white parents
▪ Widely dispersed geographically
▪ Many parents have low paying jobs so
children often live in poverty
▪ Many immigrants live in extended families
Normative
History-Graded
Influences
generation
Historical Generation – A group that
experiences an event at a formative time.
Ex: people who experience the
Great Depression and WWII tend to
show a strong sense of social
interdependence and trust that has
declined among more recent
generations
Cohort – Group born around the same
time.
A historical generation can have
many cohorts only if they experience
major, shaping historical events at a
formative point in their lives.

Contexts of Development
➢ CULTURE Non-Normative
▪
▪
A total way of life
Includes:
Influences
▪ Unusual events that have a major impact on
Customs Knowledge
individual lives.
Traditions Beliefs & values
o Typical events at atypical times
Artwork Language
Puberty at age 20.
Laws
Marriage in teens.
▪ Learned behavior, shared and
Death of a parent when child is
transmitted/passed on to children/among
young.
members of a social group
o Atypical events
▪ Constantly changing
Birth defect.
Winning the lottery.
➢ RACE & ETHNICITY Surviving a plane crash.
▪ Ethnic Group – A shared identity
o United by ancestry, religion, or origin
o Contributes to shared attitudes and
beliefs TIMING OF INFLUENCES
▪ Race – A socially constructed term ➢ Imprinting
o Scholars have no real consensus on ▪ Instinctively following first moving object
definition seen after birth; usually mother
o Categories “fluid” – continuously ▪ Konrad Lorenz and his ducklings
shaped by society and political ▪ Result of Predisposition toward learning –
forces the readiness of an organism’s nervous
▪ Ethnic Gloss system to acquire a certain information
o Overgeneralization that obscures during a brief critical period in early life.
cultural differences within a group
o Examples: “Black” or “Hispanic” ➢ Critical Period
▪ Specific time when an event (given event
➢ HISTORICAL CONTEXT or its absence) has specific impact on
▪ Unique time in which people live and grow development
up
▪ Experiences tied to time and place ▪ Plasticity
▪ Example: Great Depression Modifiability of performance

➢ Sensitive Period
Normative Age-graded ▪ Developmental timing when child is
particularly responsive to certain
Influences experiences
▪ Similar for an age group
▪ Timing of biological events is fairly
predictable within a normal range.
▪ Examples:
RESEARCH IN ACTION:
People don’t experience puberty at age 35 Is there a critical period for language acquisition?
Menopause at 12 ▪ Lenneberg hypothesis
▪ Case study: “Genie”
 BALTE’S LIFE – SPAN
DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACH:
SEVEN KEY PRINCIPLES
Paul B. Baltes (1936–2006)
1. Development is lifelong – each period of life
span is affected by what happened before
and will affect what is to come.
2. Development is multidimensional – occurs
along multiple interacting dimensions
(biological, psychological, and social)
3. Development is multidirectional – as people
gain In one area, they may lose in another,
sometimes at the same time.
4. Relative influences of biology and culture
shift over the life span – process of
development is influences by both biology
and culture, but the balance between
these influences changes.
5. Development involves changing resource
allocations – individuals choose to invest
their resources of time, energy, talent,
money, and social support in varying ways.
It changes throughout life as the total
available pool of resources decreases.
6. Development shows plasticity – in children,
plasticity has limit that depend in part on the
various influences on development.
7. Development is influenced by the historical
and cultural context – develops within
multiple contexts–circumstances or
conditions defined in part by maturation
and in part by time and place.