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CHAPTER 7
DEVELOPMENT OVER THE LIFESPAN
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► LECTURE GUIDE
➢ 7.1 Prenatal Development
➢ 7.2 The Neonatal Period: Abilities of the Newborn Child
➢ 7.3 Infancy: Building on the Neonatal Blueprint
➢ 7.4 How Children Acquire Language
➢ 7.5 Cognitive Development: Piaget’s Theory
➢ 7.6 Social and Emotional Development
➢ 7.7 Adolescence and Culture
➢ 7.8 Physical Maturation in Adolescence
➢ 7.9 Neural and Cognitive Development in Adolescence
➢ 7.10 Moral Development
➢ 7.11 Social and Emotional Development
➢ 7.12 Early Adulthood: Explorations, Autonomy, and Intimacy
➢ 7.13 The Challenges of Midlife: Complexity and Generativity
➢ 7.14 Late Adulthood: The Age of Integrity
Copyright © 2017, 2014, 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
▼ FULL CHAPTER RESOURCES
➢ Key Questions
➢ Core Concepts
➢ Psychology Matters
➢ Lecture Launchers and Discussion Topics
➢ Activities and Exercises
➢ Handouts
➢ Web Resources
LECTURE GUIDE
Introduction
KEY QUESTION
What Innate Abilities Does the Infant Possess?
7.1 CORE CONCEPT
Newborns have innate abilities for finding nourishment, avoiding harmful situations, and
interacting with others, all of which enable survival.
Development over the Lifespan
➢ Developmental psychology is the psychology of growth, change, and consistency from
conception to death.
➢ The questions for developmental psychologists are these:
o How do individuals predictably change throughout the lifespan, and what roles do
heredity and environment play in these changes?
o What is the relative weight of each of these factors?
o How might the two factors interact to ultimately produce a given characteristic?
➢ Two methods for studying the influences of heredity (nature) and environment (nurture)
are twin studies and adoption studies.
7.1 Lecture Outline: Prenatal Development
Lecture Launchers/Discussions Topics:

➢ Talk That Talk, Baby
Classroom Activities, Demonstrations, and Exercises:
➢ Constructing a Life Line to Illustrate Erikson’s Stages of Development
➢ Newborn Reflexes
➢ Reflexes and Motor Development
➢ The prenatal period, the developmental period between conception and birth, is a time of
furious development that readies the organism for life outside the womb.
➢ Development typically occurs over the span of 9 months and is divided into three phases:
the germinal, embryonic, and fetal stages.
7.1.1. Three Phases of Prenatal Development
➢ Shortly after conception, the fertilized egg, or zygote begins to grow through cell division.
➢ During the germinal phase, one cell divides many times, and when the number of cells
reaches about 150, the zygote implants itself in the lining of the uterus.
➢ At this point, it becomes an embryo, now connected to the mother’s body and thus
affected by anything she eats or drinks or to which she is otherwise exposed.
➢ During the embryonic phase, the genetic plan determines how all the organs that will
ultimately be part of the newborn starts to form, and in accordance with this plan, cells
start to specialize as components of particular organ systems.
➢ One example of specialization, or differentiation, is the development of anatomical sex; if
the embryo’s genetic plan contains two X chromosomes, the child will be female, but if it
contains an X and a Y chromosome, a male will develop.
➢ After the eighth week, the developing embryo is called a fetus, and in the fetal stage,
spontaneous movements and basic reflexes begin to appear.
➢ By the 16th week, the brain is fully formed and the fetus can feel pain.
➢ By the 27th week, the fetus can hear sounds outside the womb, enabling the ability to
recognize certain sounds and rhythms shortly after birth.
➢ The brain continues to develop, growing new neurons at a rate of 250,000 per minute until
at birth the baby’s brain contains some 100 billion neurons.
7.1.2. Teratogens: Prenatal Toxins

➢ During prenatal development, the placenta is the organ that surrounds the fetus and serves
as a conduit between mother and child.
➢ The placenta lets nutrients in and takes waste out, and while it can screen out some
harmful substances, some toxic substances, teratogens, can still get in.
➢ Teratogens include viruses, certain drugs and chemicals, some herbs, nicotine, and
alcohol.
➢ Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) can occur in children of mothers who drink alcohol during
pregnancy; it is a leading cause of mental retardation
o Mothers who consume one or more drinks per day risk fetal alcohol exposure, which
can impair development of language ability, memory, learning, and other cognitive
and physical functions.
o In some cases, fewer than five drinks per week can result in lower IQ and
significantly retarded physical development.
➢ Smoking by the mother, which results in the exposure of the fetus to nicotine, and
ingestion of some commonly taken herbs and supplements, can result in children born
with lower birth weight, learning deficits, and a greater risk of sudden infant death
syndrome.
7.2 Lecture Outline: The Neonatal Period: Abilities of the Newborn Child
➢ The term neonatal period refers to the first month after birth.
➢ Newborns are born with all five senses working, as well as a variety of behavioral reflexes
they use to respond to and manipulate their environment.
➢ These many abilities effectively help the newborn survive and thrive in their environment.
7.2.1 Innate Reflexes

➢ Babies are born with a set of innate reflexes, providing a biological platform for later
development.
➢ Among these are the postural reflex, allowing babies to sit with support; the grasping
reflex, enabling them to cling to a caregiver; the rooting reflex, enabling them to turn
their heads toward anything that strokes their cheeks and suck on it; and the stepping
reflex, in which babies stretch their legs in a walking motion when they are held upright.
➢ All of these, plus the cooing, smiling, and crying that build social relationships, are highly
adaptive and promote survival.
7.2.2. Sensory Abilities in the Newborn

➢ Newborns can respond to taste: the sweeter the fluid, the more forcefully and continuously
the infant will suck.
➢ This and other responses to food are part of the newborn’s ability to seek healthy
nourishment.
➢ Heredity, which biases a newborn’s sense of taste, also programs a preference for human
faces over other visual patterns.
➢ Newborns are nearsighted, which helps them recognize their mother’s face, usually close
by, by a few days after birth.
➢ Their focal point lengthens over time, and by about seven weeks, infants’ visual pathways
and motor coordination enable them to develop eye contact with a caregiver—an
important element in establishing a relationship.
➢ They have visual preferences as abilities: while color vision is present at birth, their ability
to distinguish them becomes dramatically better a month or two later; they also prefer to
look at objects with a high degree of contrast, such as checkerboards.
➢ At three months, babies can perceive depth.
➢ Infants seem to possess a sense of “more” or “less,” comparing a current observed
quantity with that observed in the past, and later providing the foundation for the later
development of more complex skills, such as those required for arithmetic.
➢ Infants prefer human voices over other sounds, female voice to male, and the sound and
rhythms of their own language to other nonnative languages; within a few weeks after
birth, they can recognize the sound of their mother’s voice.
7.2.3. Social Abilities

➢ Infants are built for social interaction and will imitate other people’s behavior, a response
known as mimicry.
➢ Synchronicity, the close coordination between the gazing, vocalizing, touching, and
smiling of infants and caregivers, is the means through which infants interact with their
caregivers, beginning immediately after birth.
➢ These early interactions, the combined result of nature (mirror neurons) and nurture
(positive reinforcement gained through mimicry) form the basis for the later development
of empathy.
7.3 Lecture Outline: Infancy: Building a Neonatal Blueprint
➢ Following the neonatal period, the child enters infancy, a period that lasts until about 18
months of age, the time when speech begins to become better developed.
➢ It is a time of rapid, genetically programmed growth and still-heavy reliance on reflexes
and “instinctive” behaviors.
7.3.1. Neural Development

➢ While the prenatal brain focused on producing new brain cells, many of the neurons are
not fully connected with each other at birth.
➢ Stimulation from the environment assumes an important role in creating and consolidating
connections.
➢ The more frequently the fledgling neurons are utilized, the more permanent they become.
➢ As the dendrites and axons grow and connect, the total mass of neural tissue in the brain
increases rapidly.
➢ After a 50% increase in the first 2 years and after doubling in the first 4 years, in the next
10 years the types of experiences the infant is exposed to will largely determine which
regions and functions of the brain become most developed.
1. Synaptic Pruning
➢ By about 11 years of age, unused connections begin to be trimmed away in a
process called synaptic pruning.
➢ This process does not destroy the neurons themselves but instead returns them to an
uncommitted state, awaiting a role in future development.
2. Sensitive Periods
➢ Not only are the early years the most productive time for brain development in
many areas, including language and emotional intelligence, in some domains such
as hearing and vision, stimulation must occur during a specific window of
opportunity, called sensitive periods, or the ability will not develop normally.
7.3.2. The Genetic Leash

➢ Sitting, crawling, and walking, as well as other processes of physical development, all
occur on their own biological time schedules.
➢ Psychologists use the term maturation for the unfolding of these genetically programmed
processes of growth and development over time.
➢ When organisms are raised under adequate environmental conditions, their maturation
follows a predictable pattern.
➢ While maturation dictates the general time frame in which an individual becomes
biologically ready for a new phase, heredity can speed up or slow down the process, a
principle known as the genetic leash.
7.3.3. The Effects of Poverty on Development
➢ Research has found that those who live in poverty may have significantly smaller brains,
perhaps as much as 6% smaller, than those who do not.
➢ Many factors, including cognitive stimulation and enhanced nutrition, can offset these
effects.
7.3.4. Contact Comfort

➢ As infants develop greater sensory and motor abilities through both nature and nurture,
they rely on caregivers to provide the necessary stimulation.
➢ Touch, provided by caregivers, provides stimulation and reassurance.
➢ The Harlows’ experiments with infant monkeys demonstrated that they preferred a
terrycloth monkey to a wire monkey.
➢ In humans, touch stimulates the release of endorphins and a daily massage results in faster
weight gain.
➢ Other benefits associated with contact comfort include faster intellectual development,
improved digestive tract functioning, improved circulation, and decreased production of
stress hormones.
7.3.5. Attachment
➢ Attachment is the enduring socioemotional relationship between a child and a parent or
other caregiver.
➢ The establishment of attachment is important because it lays the foundation for other close
relationships that follow throughout a person’s life.
➢ Attachment, not limited to biological parents, occurs in other species as well; birds will
imprint on the first moving object or individual that they see.
➢ Human attachment begins in the first few weeks and functions as a survival strategy for
infants.
1. Attachment Styles
➢ Researchers Ainsworth and Lamb found that children differ in their styles of
attachment.
➢ Securely attached children are relaxed and comfortable with their caregivers and
tolerant of new situations and strangers, experiencing separation anxiety when
caregivers left them, but calming down when caregivers returned.
➢ Insecurely attached children can be divided into two categories: anxious-
ambivalent and avoidant.
▪ Anxious-ambivalent children wanted contact with their caregivers but cried
with fear and anger when separated from then and proved difficult to console
when reunited.
▪ Avoidant children weren’t interested in contact, displaying no distress when
separated from their caregivers and no particular happiness when reunited.
➢ Overall, some 65% of American children are securely attached, about 20% are
avoidant, and 15% are anxious-ambivalent.
➢ As attachment patterns in infancy affect a variety of childhood and adult behaviors,
including aggression, job satisfaction, relationship choices, and intimacy
experiences, there has been much research on the topic.
➢ Attachment styles seem to be a result of the interaction between heredity and
environment.
2. Culture and Attachment

➢ A judgment of the “ideal” attachment style depends upon the values of the culture
in which it occurs.
3. Long-Term Effects of Attachment

➢ As children grow up, they widen their attachments to include family members
besides caregivers, friends, teachers, coworkers, and others in their community.
➢ Evidence suggests that the primary attachment continues to serve as the working
model for these other attachments; what the child learns to expect from the
caregiver becomes the lens through which other attachments are viewed.
➢ Attachment is powerful and is a good predictor of later problems with social
relationships; however, many people succeed in overcoming attachment difficulties
and “reset” the working model.
7.3.6. Psychosocial Development: Trust Versus Mistrust

➢ The evidence supporting attachment dovetails with the first stage in Erik Erikson’s major
theory of lifespan theory development.
➢ His theory, that we form basic beliefs about our social world and ourselves as we go
through life, influencing our development through the critical choices that we make,
begins with the choice between trust and mistrust.
➢ In the first 18 months, Erikson theorized, the major developmental task facing the infant is
to develop a sense of trust in the world.
➢ Infants who develop a secure attachment style see the caregiver as a “safe base” from
which to explore the world, are comfortable in new situations, and possess an adventurous
and resilient spirit to help them navigate through life.
➢ Children who do not develop this will experience difficulties navigating through later
developmental challenges; the issue of trust remains unresolved and acts as a barrier
between the individual and the social world and will have trouble forming and maintaining
relationships.
➢ Criticism of Erikson’s theory revolves primarily around whether they can be experienced
at different times for different people (based at least in part on cultural norms), although
critics also note that Erikson based his work primarily on his own clinical observations
rather than on rigorous scientific methods.
➢ Many of Erikson’s observations have been supported by methodologically sound research.
PSYCHOLOGY MATTERS: Not Just Fun and Games: The Role of Child’s Play in Life
Success
Self-control is the ability to delay instant gratification in pursuit of longer-range positive

outcomes. It is a psychological trait of the utmost importance in having success in life, because
the ability to restrain impulses and make effective choices is embedded in self-control. Low self-
control in children is a strong predictor of delinquency and criminal behavior. Higher self-control
is linked to a variety of positive outcomes, including happier relationships, higher grades, better
self-esteem, secure attachment, and less alcohol abuse.
The sooner that self-control is nurtured, the sooner it is developed. Clear, consistent rules and
routines can help children learn self-control by helping children manage their worlds and
providing guidelines for achieving their goals. Too much structure in childhood play is a concern
to psychologists, however, because it deprives a child of opportunities for imaginative play.
Improvisational thinking requires more thinking, planning, creativity, and self-management, all
of which are executive functions. Imaginative play also helps build vocabulary and lengthens
attention spans. Parents and teachers should encourage behaviors, including play that encourages
self-control.
KEY QUESTION
What Are the Developmental Tasks of Childhood?
7.2 CORE CONCEPT
Nature and nurture work together to help children master important developmental tasks,
especially in the areas of language acquisition, cognitive development, and development
of social relationships.
7.4 Lecture Outline: How Children Acquire Language

➢ Object Permanence Changes
➢ Day Care and Social Development
➢ Critical Periods: The Story of Genie
➢ Gender Roles and Parenting
➢ Gender Identity and the Case of David Reimer
➢ The Effect of Divorce on Children
➢ Does Spanking Lead Children to Become More Violent?
➢ Illustrating Piagetian Concepts
➢ One of the defining characteristics of humans is the use of complex language.
7.4.1. Language Structures in the Brain

➢ Mimicry accounts for only part of language learning; according to Noam Chomsky, a
psycholinguist, an inborn mental structure, the language acquisition device (LAD),
facilitates the learning of language because it is innately programmed with some of the
fundamental rules of grammar.
➢ Chomsky proposed that this “mental software” helps children acquire the vocabulary,
grammar, and rules of language to which they are exposed.
➢ The agreement of experts is reinforced by research based on the Human Genome Project
providing evidence that the foundations of language are in part genetic, with additional
evidence demonstrating that children worldwide learn their native languages in very
similar stages at very similar times.
➢ Although infants are born with the ability to produce the sounds of the approximately
4,000 languages spoken on earth, by about 6 months of age they have zeroed in and
focused on the dominant language in their environment.
➢ This culture-specific language selection suggests that the built-in capacity for language is
not a rigid device, but rather a set of “listening rules” or guidelines for perceiving
language.
➢ Babies pay attention to the sound strings they hear others speak, especially the beginnings,
endings, and stressed syllables, and by employing their “listening guides,” they deduce the
patterns and rules for producing their own speech.
7.4.2. Acquiring Vocabulary and Grammar

➢ There is a sequence of learning activities leading to the production of language.
➢ Babbling, the production of repetitive syllables, starts as early as 4 months, and it is the
first step in the baby’s experimentation with the building blocks of language.
➢ By about 1 year, babies enter the one-word stage and are speaking full words.
➢ At this time, babies begin a “naming explosion,” their efforts at pointing to objects and
naming them.
➢ By age 2, babies enter the two-word stage, increasing the range of meanings they can
convey.
➢ At that age, children have a vocabulary of nearly 1,000 words, which expands to about
10,000 by age 6.
➢ The pace of vocabulary acquisition increases as time goes on.
1. Practice Makes Perfect

➢ The role of culture and the environment impact the degree and pace at which
children learn language.
➢ The frequency of practice makes a difference; parents who read and talk with their
children spur language acquisition.
2. Grammar Turns Vocabulary into Language

➢ Grammar is the set of rules that specify how to use the elements of language and
word order to produce understandable sentences.
➢ Different languages use considerably different rules.
3. First Sentences
➢ In their early two and three-word sentences, children produce telegraphic speech—
short, simple sequences of nouns and verbs without plurals, tenses, or function
words.
➢ To develop the ability to make full sentences, children must learn to use other forms
of speech, such as modifiers (adjectives and adverbs) and articles (the, those), and
they must learn to put words together grammatically.
➢ As children’s language ability develops, they become skilled in using morphemes,
the meaningful units that make up words.
➢ Often, children make mistakes because they don’t know the rules or apply an
inappropriate one.
➢ A common error is overregularization, applying a word too widely.
7.4.3. Other Language Skills

➢ To communicate effectively, children have to learn the social rules of conversation: how
to join a discussion, how to take turns talking and listening, how to make contributions
that are relevant.
➢ Adult speakers use body language, intonation, and facial expressions to enhance their
communication, respond to feedback, and take the perspective of the listener; children
have to master these skills to become successful communicators.
➢ As they grow older, children also learn to express abstract meanings, especially as their
thoughts extend beyond the physical world and into their psychological world.
➢ Language is a major developmental task of childhood—for which children are exquisitely
prepared.
7.5 Lecture Outline: Cognitive Development: Piaget’s Theory
➢ Cognitive development is the global term for the development of thought processes from
childhood to adulthood.
➢ Psychologist Jean Piaget observed children for nearly 50 years and formulated his
observations into a comprehensive theory.
➢ His stage theory of development emphasized Piaget’s view that people undergo
distinctive revolutions in their thought processes, producing four discrete stages that
emerge through childhood and adolescence.
➢ Three key ideas in Piaget’s approach are 1) schemas, 2) the interaction of assimilation and
accommodation, and 3) the stages of cognitive development.
7.5.1. Schemas
➢ Mental structures that guide a developing child’s thought are called schemas.
➢ Schemas form and change as we develop and organize our knowledge to deal with new
experiences and predict future events.
➢ Assimilation is a mental process that incorporates new information into existing schemas,
while accommodation is the process of restructuring or modifying schemas to
accommodate the new information.
➢ For Piaget, cognitive development results from the continual interweaving of assimilation
and accommodation.
7.5.2. Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

➢ Piaget identified and named four stages in a child’s cognitive development: the
sensorimotor stage (birth to about age 2), the preoperational stage (early childhood), the
concrete operational stage (middle childhood), and the formal operational stage
(adolescence).
➢ While maturation dictates that all children go through these stages, the interaction of
heredity and environment means that some children pass more quickly through a given
stage than others.
1. The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to about Age 2)

➢ In this stage, children explore the world primarily through their senses and motor
actions.
➢ They learn to coordinate the information they are receiving through their senses
with their motor abilities—sensorimotor intelligence.
➢ The major achievement of this stage is object permanence, which children learn
beginning at about 8 months—the knowledge that objects exist independently of
one’s own actions or awareness.
➢ The early stages of learning object permanence, when infants have not learned that
their caregivers are there even when they go away temporarily, helps to explain
separation anxiety in infants.
➢ Infants are also learning goal-directed behavior, by which they develop the
ability to keep a single goal in mind as they pursue it.
➢ They are beginning to form mental representations of objects and to recognize
their own relationship with the world.
2. The Preoperational Stage (from about 2 to 7 Years of Age)

➢ The cognitive advances of the preoperational stage grow out of the ability to
represent objects mentally; this stage is marked by a well-developed mental
representation and the use of language.
➢ Its features include egocentrism, animistic thinking, centration, and
irreversibility.
➢ Egocentrism causes children to see the world only in terms of themselves and their
own position.
➢ Animistic thinking involves the belief that inanimate objects have life and mental
processes, just as people do.
➢ Centration occurs when a child focuses his attention too narrowly, missing out on
other important information; the child can “center” on only one bit of information
at a time.
➢ Irreversibility is the inability to think through a series of events or steps involved
in solving a problem and then to reverse course, returning to the mental starting
point; they lack the mental trial-and-error ability of older children.
➢ These features might seem like limitations, but actually children are experimenting
with their newly acquired ability to use mental representations, and in the process
they are often highly creative.
3. The Concrete Operational Stage (from about 7 to about 11 Years of Age)

➢ In the concrete operational stage, children come to realize that many things stay
essentially the same even when their superficial appearance changes
(conservation).
➢ They can now solve problems by manipulating concepts entirely in their minds,
performing mental operations.
7.5.3. Beyond Piaget: Contemporary Perspectives on Cognitive Development

➢ Most psychologists accept Piaget’s broad picture, but researchers have shown that
children are in some ways more intellectually sophisticated at each stage than Piaget
believed.
1. Hints of Abilities Earlier Than Piaget Thought

➢ The limitations that Piaget observed in the sensorimotor and preoperational stages
can be mastered by children in those stages.
➢ Overall, Piaget’s observations regarding the sequence of stages are accurate; but
children today seem to develop some cognitive skills at a more accelerated pace
than Piaget believed.
2. A Theory of Mind
➢ These cognitive advances signal development of a theory of mind, which is an
understanding that others may have beliefs, desires, and emotions different from
one’s own and that these mental states underlie their behavior.
➢ It includes expectations about how people will act in certain situations.
➢ This understanding facilitates empathy for others, enables deception, and increases
our chance of making sound judgments about people when it counts.
➢ These abilities may begin as early as 6 months of age.
3. Stages or Waves?
➢ A second criticism of Piaget’s theory questions his notion of the stages as abrupt
transitions.
➢ Newer research suggests the transition between one stage and another are more
continuous than the stage theory implies.
➢ Psychologist Robert Siegler uses the term “waves,” suggesting gradual change,
rather than “stages,” which suggests abrupt beginnings and endings.
4. The Importance of Culture in Learning

➢ Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky reemphasized the importance of cultural
values and practices in a child’s cognitive development, including the role of
communication in learning.
➢ For Vygotsky, cognitive development was really the mental mastery of the rules
and norms of a culture, transmitted via social interaction.
➢ Scaffolding, a teaching strategy that emphasizes the role of help from others in
support for a person’s learning, creates a support structure for constructing
knowledge.
➢ By paying close attention to a child’s current skill level, parents or teachers can
tailor their instruction to a child by attaching each new lesson to something a child
already knows.
➢ Children need new challenges a bit beyond the child’s current learning ability,
reachable with a little help, but not so far out of reach as to set up a child for
failure—the zone of proximal development.
7.6 Lecture Outline: Social and Emotional Development

➢ Social and emotional development is one of the most important developmental tasks of
childhood, and it relies on both nature and nurture.
7.6.1. Temperament
➢ Temperament is an individual’s characteristic manner of behavior or reaction, and it is
assumed to have a strong genetic bias.
➢ It is a powerful influence upon the way children interact with the world.
➢ Researcher Jerome Kagan observed that 20% of children are born with tendencies toward
shyness, while about 40% are born predisposed to boldness.
➢ Brain-imaging studies indicate that these differences are physiological.
➢ While basic temperaments can be recognized almost at birth, the environment interacts
with these genetic tendencies, so that parenting and other aspects of a child’s experience
can modify the way that temperament expresses itself.
➢ Children are capable of learning a variety of responses to the world within their hereditary
temperamental range, as long as people in their environment teach them.
➢ Temperament is stable over time, capable of being modified, but subject to the genetic
leash.
7.6.2. Socialization
➢ Socialization is the lifelong process of shaping an individual’s behavior pattern, values,
standards, skills, attitudes, and motives to conform to those regarded as desirable in a
particular society.
➢ Institutions such as family, schools, day care, and the media exert pressure on a child to
adopt socially approved values.
➢ One example of socialization is the teaching of gender: boys and girls are often taught
different ways of behaving and interacting.
1. Four Parenting Styles and Their Effects

➢ Parenting styles are supremely important in the socialization process.
➢ Most approaches to parenting fall into one of four distinct styles:
➢ Authoritarian parents live by the slogan, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”
➢ Authoritative parents have high expectations of their children that they enforce
with consequences, which are combined with warmth and respect for their child’s
views.
o Authoritative parents are willing to listen to a child’s ideas and feelings and
often encourage a democratic family atmosphere.
o Authoritative parents usually place a high emphasis on reasoning and
explaining to help children learn to anticipate the consequences of their
behavior.
➢ Permissive parents set few rules and allow children to make their own decisions,
giving most decision-making responsibility to their children.
o Caring and communicative, permissive parents believe children can learn
better from the consequences of their own actions.
➢ Uninvolved parents tend to be either rejecting or indifferent, sometimes to the
point of neglect or abuse.
o Typically, uninvolved parents lead such stress-filled lives that they often have
little time or energy for their children.
➢ There are differing outcomes for each parenting style: children of authoritative
parents tend to be confident, self-reliant, and enthusiastic; children of permissive or
uninvolved parents are typically less mature, more impulsive and demanding, and
more dependent; children of authoritarian parents tend to be anxious and insecure
and are at risk for antisocial behavior.
➢ Culture plays a role in parenting styles and parenting effectiveness.
2. Effects of Day Care

➢ Is it necessary for a child to have a fulltime caregiver and can day care supplement
or replace some of those care-giving needs?
➢ Children thrive in day care and both intellectually and socially often do better than
those raised by a full-time caregiver.
➢ On the other hand, poor-quality day care experiences can influence children to be
aggressive, depressed, or otherwise maladjusted.
➢ Having alternative caregivers does not in itself cause psychological problems;
rather, it is the quality that makes the difference.
➢ Unfortunately, children who are placed in the poorest quality day care programs are
often from the poorest, most disorganized, and most highly stressed families, and
this volatile combination of inadequate day care and family pressure places some
children at high risk for emotional and behavioral problems.
3. Leisure Influence
➢ On average, American children today spend between 40% and 50% of their waking
hours in discretionary activity, of which almost 7 hours per day (averaged to
include weekends) is spent with media.
➢ Research findings are mixed as to the influence of leisure time on development.
➢ Associated with well-being is time spent with friends and sports; the effects of
television seem to depend primarily upon the type of program being watched—the
content matters more than the medium itself.
➢ Educational television has a positive impact on literacy and cognitive development,
whereas heavy viewing of entertainment television is a strong predictor of later
deficiency in reading ability in young children.
➢ Violent television, as well as violent video games, increases aggressive behavior in
viewers and decreases sensitivity to real-world violence.
➢ Viewing any kind of entertainment television prior to the age of 3 is strongly linked
to attention problems later on.
➢ Frequent video gaming appears to improve visual-spatial processing.
➢ Educational video games can improve critical thinking and learning in a variety of
subjects.
4. Gender Differences in Socialization

➢ There are gender differences in social interaction.
➢ The sexes usually prefer to segregate themselves, a pattern seen across cultures.
➢ Boys are typically more aggressive than girls.
➢ Girls tend to organize themselves in small cooperative groups, whereas boys tend to
form larger hierarchical groups with a “pecking order” structure.
➢ Boys are more likely to play sports or computer games, whereas girls watch more
television.
➢ While evolutionary psychologists believe that these gender differences have an
innate basis that may be related to testosterone production, social-cognitive
psychologists point out that gender roles and behaviors are also learned.
7.6.3. Psychosocial Development in Childhood: Erikson’s Stages
➢ In childhood, individuals progress through three more of Erikson’s psychosocial stages.
1. Autonomy Versus Shame or Self-doubt

➢ During this stage, running from about 16 months to 3 years of age, toddlers are
learning how to walk and talk.
➢ There are many opportunities to directly influence outcomes and independence, or
autonomy.
➢ Children need freedom to try to do things on their own when appropriate; too much
restriction leads to self-doubt, and harsh demands made too early, before the child is
ready, can lead to shame and discourage efforts to persevere in new tasks.
➢ Children who enter this stage with a general sense of trust in the world are more
likely to successfully develop autonomy.
2. Initiative Versus Guilt

➢ Once a child develops trust and autonomy, the next developmental task is to
develop initiative, the ability to initiate activities oneself, rather than merely
responding to others.
➢ Caregivers’ responses to self-initiated activities either encourage or discourage the
freedom and self-confidence needed for the next stage.
3. Industry Versus Inferiority

➢ This stage usually occurs between the ages of 6 and 12, which coincides with
school activities and sports that offer more complex intellectual and motor skills
and provide opportunities for greater social interaction.
➢ Supportive parenting in which parents help children reflect on their experiences and
learn from both their successes and failures promote industry.
➢ Children with overly demanding or disengaged parents may have troubles seeing
their failures in perspective and ultimately a sense of inferiority.
➢ Likewise, children who had trouble working through one or more of the earlier
stages may become discouraged spectators rather than performers, leading to the
term industry versus inferiority for this stage.
PSYCHOLOGY MATTERS HERE: The Puzzle of ADHD
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a psychological disorder involving poor

impulse control, difficulty concentrating on a task for a sustained period of time, high
distractability, and excessive activity. It affects 5% to 7% of school-age American children. In
boys, the symptoms manifest themselves in disruptive behavior, and in girls, who are a minority
of affected children, as a lack of organization or a tendency to lose things. ADHD often results in
poor academic performance and unstable relationships. The impact on multiple domains is a key
criterion for diagnosis and a factor in differentiating true ADHD from the commonly occurring
symptoms of stressful lives or features of ordinary child development. Typically, symptoms
appear in early childhood and, in roughly 50% of cases, disappear in adulthood.
Research to determine the causes of ADHD is in its early stages, although twin studies point to a
strong genetic component. From a nurture standpoint, prenatal exposure to nicotine and alcohol
has been found to increase the incidence. A recent longitudinal study with a national
representative sample found that viewing noneducational television before the age of 3 predicts
attention deficits later in life; the fast-paced movement of entertainment programming during the
time when neural pathways are forming limits the brain’s ability to create pathways for extended
focus and concentration.
Physiologically, the ADHD brain differs from a “normal” brain in dopamine transmission:
people with ADHD seem to receive fewer and weaker dopamine bursts. While ADHD brains
develop normally and achieve normal size, they take a few years longer to do it.
ADHD can be treated effectively with medication and psychological techniques, but optimal
treatment varies from individual to individual. Medication should be carefully monitored.
Behavioral therapy helps children with ADHD control some of their problematic behaviors and
replace them with more effective behaviors. Behavioral therapy is the treatment of choice for
very young children for whom medication is not recommended. It is too soon to know what the
long-term effects of prescribed medication might be.
It should be remembered that ADHD-affected children have many positive traits as well.
KEY QUESTION
What Changes Mark the Transition of Adolescence?
7.3 CORE CONCEPT
Adolescence offers new developmental challenges growing out of physical changes,
cognitive changes, and socioemotional pressures.
7.7 Lecture Outline: Adolescence and Culture

➢ Identity and the Tasks of Adolescence
➢ Adolescents Aren’t Just Slackers
➢ When I Hit Puberty…
➢ Dear Mom and Dad
➢ Moral Development
➢ Adolescence and Identity Development: A Personal Exploration
➢ In industrial societies, adolescence is a developmental period beginning at puberty and

ending at adulthood.
➢ Although the physical changes that take place at this stage are universal, the social and
psychological dimensions of adolescence depend heavily on cultural context.
➢ In most nonindustrial societies, children move directly into adulthood with rites of passage,
special social rituals that mark the transition between developmental stages.
➢ While American culture has some rites of passages, they are less well defined, and as a
result, they do not provide clear markers for the end of childhood and the beginning of
adulthood.
➢ In the United States and other industrialized Western countries, the central role of
adolescence is establishing one’s identity.
7.8 Lecture Outline: Physical Maturation in Adolescence
➢ Puberty, or sexual maturity, for boys begins with increasing size of the testicles, while for
girls typically begins with the enlargement of the breasts.
➢ Sprouting of pubic hair generally follows for both sexes, along with growth of external
genitalia.
This process generally begins around age 10 or 11 for girls and about 2 years later for
boys; it peaks with the production of live sperm in boys and menarche, the onset of
menstruation, in girls.
7.8.1. Body Image
➢ As these changes occur, there is heightened emphasis on peer acceptance, especially by
sexually attractive peers, and an intensifying concern with body image—perception of
and feelings about their own physical appearance.
➢ One of the most formidable tasks of adolescence—developing a realistic body image and
accepting it—is dependent not only on measurable features such as height and weight, but
also on perceptions of other people’s assessments and on cultural standards of physical
beauty.
➢ Physical appearance is one of the biggest concerns among adolescents.
➢ Culture influences the relationship between body image and self-acceptance.
7.8.2. Adolescent Sexuality

➢ A majority of American adolescents report thinking about sex often.
➢ By age 17, about 40% of teens in the United States and Canada have had their first sexual
experience.
➢ Many teens lack adequate knowledge or harbor misconceptions about sex and sexuality,
and this lack of accurate knowledge creates a variety of problems.
➢ Masturbation is the most common orgasmic expression of sexual impulses in adolescence.
➢ Sexual orientation, the direction of one’s sexual interests, begins to emerge in
adolescence, with the majority of adolescents reporting a heterosexual experience.
➢ For females, emotional involvement is an important element of sexual attraction; for
males, personal relationships are less important than the sex act itself.
➢ Data on both masturbation and sexual orientation must be viewed with caution, as same-
sex sexual behavior does not mean that adolescents consider themselves to be gay, lesbian,
or bisexual.
➢ For some, sexual experiences are experimental, and about one in eight teens say they are
unsure of their primary sexual orientation.
➢ Same-sex sexual attraction is difficult to resolve in adolescence because teens are
intensely concerned with the conventions and norms of their society, and even those who
are aware of their sexual orientation may not resolve their orientation issues until
adulthood.
7.9 Lecture Outline: Neural and Cognitive Development in Adolescence
➢ Changes that began in the womb continue to occur in the adolescent brain—the frontal
lobes continue to mature throughout adolescence and into young adulthood.
7.9.1. Teens: Guided by Reason or Emotion?

➢ In adolescence, the amygdala, which drives basic impulses, is fully developed, but the
frontal lobes that are necessary for rational thinking and judgment are not.
➢ This imbalance in the pace of brain development means that the teen brain is wired to
react more emotionally than an adult, for whom both areas are developed, or a child, for
whom neither area is developed.
➢ This imbalance is further complicated by pubescent increases in estrogen and testosterone
levels, and the result is adolescent sensation-seeking and risk-taking behaviors.
➢ It may be that increased risk-taking is part of the adolescent search for identity.
7.9.2. The Brain Undergoes Major Pruning

➢ By early adolescence, regions of the brain that have not been adequately stimulated begin
to be trimmed away in the process of synaptic pruning.
➢ As this occurs, the adolescent brain becomes gradually less adept at learning completely
new things as opportunities for neural connections begin to diminish.
➢ This allows for enhanced development of stronger regions; continued use of established
connections increases the myelin of the neurons, and processing speeds up.
➢ Plasticity is reduced and problematic behavior patterns or traits that have developed
become more resistant to change or intervention.
➢ If the pruning process goes awry, important connections may be lost, which could help
explain the onset in late adolescence and early adulthood of disorders such as
schizophrenia.
7.9.3. Piaget’s Final Stage: Formal Operational Thought

➢ In this final adolescenct stage, formal operational thought, an individual begins to
ponder introspective problems, such as how to become better accepted by peers.
➢ Teens become capable of dealing with abstract and intangible issues, such as fairness,
love, reasons for existence, and hypothetical problems, without needing the concrete base
of the earlier stage.
➢ Current research questions Piaget’s notion that formal operational thought necessarily
develops in adolescence; some adults, it seems, never develop it.
➢ The development of formal operational thought appears dependent upon education and
experience, with college-educated people being more likely to demonstrate it and people
being most likely to demonstrate it in their areas of expertise.
7.10 Lecture Outline: Moral Development
7.10.1. Moral Development: Kohlberg’s Theory

➢ Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg explored the development of moral thought and based
his theory on Piaget’s stages of development, describing moral development as a special
form of reasoning.
➢ Kohlberg was interested in the ways that people reason about moral issues, and after
presenting people with moral dilemmas, he concluded that there were six stages in the
process of moral development:
o Stage 1: People think of rewards and punishment.
o Stage 2: An awareness of other people’s perspectives on the issue.
o Stage 3: People base decisions upon personal relationships and keeping people
happy.
o Stage 4: Maintaining social order is paramount, with people emphasizing laws
rules, policies, duties, and respect.
o Stage 5: Called by Kohlberg the “social contract” stage because it emphasizes the
idea that rules and laws are flexible and can be changed by social consensus and
legislation; fairness is emphasized.
o Stage 6: The individual bases a decision on universal principles of conscience that
he or she would apply to all people in all situations.
➢ Kohlberg’s stages parallel Piaget’s stages, as the individual moves from the concrete to
the abstract.
1. Critiques of Kohlberg’s Theory
➢ Kohlberg says that cross-cultural work demonstrates that people across cultures
attain the same stages in the same order, although research has shown that the
higher stages, particularly 5 and 6, do not always emerge.
➢ Psychologist Carol Gilligan criticized Kohlberg’s theory as having a male bias
when she claimed that for women, moral reasoning is embedded in social
relationships and personal caring; later research does not support the notion of
gender differences.
➢ Research on moral reasoning may have limited practical value, since no close
connection has been found between people’s moral reasoning and their behavior.
7.10.2. Moral Disengagement
1.Moral Standards Interact with Social Influence

➢ Bandura’s Bobo doll studies demonstrated that people model the behaviors of
others.
➢ Positive reinforcement can be the result of doing things that feel good, even if they
are morally questionable.
➢ Moral disengagement permits us to act outside of moral standards without feeling
guilty. It involves four processes:
o Cognitive restructuring
o Diffusion of responsibility
o Distorting the consequences
o Dehumanization
2. Strategies for Overcoming Moral Disengagement

➢ Signing a contract agreeing to honesty can promote honest behavior, and it is more
effective if it is done before rather than after the action.
➢ Being exposed to others in one’s social environment (parents, teachers, etc.) who
promote moral behavior can encourage moral behavior.
7.11 Lecture Outline: Social and Emotional Development
➢ As teens develop their own identity, they begin to spend more time outside the home.
➢ Their activities are gender-based: friendships are based upon emotional closeness, with
friendships among boys emphasizing activities and talk centering on personal
achievements of others.
7.11.1. Psychosocial Development in Adolescence

➢ According to Erikson, the search for identity can be impeded by the confusion of playing
many different roles for many audiences in an expanding social world.
➢ Thus, he called this stage identity versus role confusion.
7.11.2. Gender Issues in Adolescence

➢ The search for identity includes consideration of one’s sex and gender.
➢ Teenage males spend an average of 44 hours per week on the Internet, perhaps
contributing so social awkwardness.
➢ Fatherlessness is also believed to contribute to some of the difficulties associated with
boys feeling a strong sense of masculinity as they mature. It impacts academic and social
adjustment.
➢ The sexualization of girls is an ongoing problem, as sexy clothing and other trends create
a hypersexualized society for young females.
➢ Media is part of the problem, as are the messages that girls receive from influential figures
in their lives.
7.11.3. Do Parents Still Matter?

➢ In American society, the adolescent encounters new values, receives less structure and
adult guidance, and feels a strong need for peer acceptance.
➢ Parents are still important, and parents who continue to monitor their teen’s activities and
maintain open and healthy communication throughout the years are most likely to see their
teenagers get through the challenges of adolescence successfully.
7.11.4. Is Adolescence a Period of Turmoil?

➢ Problems with loneliness, depression, and shyness can become significant during
adolescence and may account for the sharp increase in suicide among teenagers.
➢ Adolescents are likely to have conflicts with their parents, experience extremes of mood,
engage in risky behaviors, and experience problems in relationships and self-esteem.
➢ Yet for most adolescents, these years are not a time of anxiety and despair but of relative
tranquility.
PSYCHOLOGY MATTERS: Using Psychology to Learn Psychology
Developmental psychologist William Perry has found that thinking abilities continue to develop
well past the formal operational stage, and that cognitive development proceeds in students of all
ages. Perspectives on learning change: what the social sciences are about, and what students are
supposed to learn in college. As students progress through their college experience, they move
away from the “one way of thinking” view and realize that multiple perspectives exist and are
valuable.
KEY QUESTION
What Developmental Challenges Do Adults Face?
7.4 CORE CONCEPT
➢ Nature and nurture continue to interact as we progress through a series of transitions in
adulthood, with cultural norms about age combining with new technology to increase
both the length and quality of life for many adults.
➢ Most psychologists now agree that development is continuous, rather than occurring in
rigid stages.
➢ Adulthood is changing in the Western world thanks to improvements in health care
and technology; most adults are living longer than ever before.
➢ This revolution in aging is prompting renewed study of adult development to see
whether previous theories still hold up.
7.12 Lecture Outline: Early Adulthood: Explorations, Autonomy, and

Intimacy

➢ Predicting Alzheimer’s Disease
➢ Theories of Physical Aging
➢ Myths About Aging
➢ Ageism
➢ Life Expectancy
➢ Getting Old
7.12.1. Intimacy Versus Isolation

➢ Intimacy, according to Erikson, is the ability to make a full commitment—sexual,
emotional and moral—to another person.
➢ Making this commitment requires compromising personal preferences, accepting
responsibilities, and yielding some privacy and independence in exchange for great
rewards.
➢ The first step is resolving the crisis of adolescence and achieving a clear sense of identity.
➢ As more choices become available in the 21st century than ever before, this task becomes
more complicated than ever before.
7.12.2. Emerging Adulthood: The In-Between Stage

➢ Emerging adulthood is the transitional period between adolescence and adulthood.
➢ It is a time of exploration and experimentation in all areas, trying out different kinds of
work, exploring alternative lifestyles and worldviews, and thinking about relationship
partners.
➢ Young adults take more risks than at any time of their lives, including adolescence.
7.12.3. Modern Approaches to Intimacy

➢ Marriage often occurs more than once in an individual’s life.
➢ About half of all marriages end in divorce.
➢ An increasing number of couples are cohabiting rather than marrying.
➢ Married people are more likely to see each other as partners and friends and are less likely
to feel constrained by society’s expectations of “husband and wife”—the peer marriage
approach.
➢ There is no correlation between the frequency of a couple’s conflicts and the health of
their relationship.
7.13 Lecture Outline: The Challenges of Midlife: Complexity and
Generativity
➢ Research finds middle adulthood to be a peak period of development in many respects.

➢ Cognitively, many adults have developed considerable skill in combining and integrating
a variety of thinking styles.
➢ They are expert at integrating their cognitions and emotions, resulting in more thoughtful,
deliberate, and reflective coping responses to stressful events.
➢ The midlife adult can juggle a variety of interests—work, family, community, hobbies,
and self-care—characterizing a healthy midlife.
7.13.1. Generativity Versus Stagnation

➢ According to Erikson, generativity, the process of making a commitment beyond oneself
to family, work, society, or future generations, is the major developmental task of
adulthood.
➢ People in midlife broaden their focus beyond self and partner to include children,
volunteering, or participating in the community in other ways.
➢ Adults who express a strong sense of generativity and productivity also report high life
satisfaction.
➢ Some adults who have not resolved earlier crisis of identity may experience a “midlife
crisis,” questioning past choices.
➢ The notion that adults become depressed and lose direction when their children leave
home is a myth.
7.13.2. Transitions
➢ Adult life is a progression of transitions that involve redefining, or transformation, of life
roles.
➢ Successful transitions typically involve heightened self-reflection, reappraisal of the
current role exploration of new possibilities offering a renewed sense of meaning, the
decision to let go of an old role, and a commitment to a new role.
➢ Transitions are a natural response to the changing conditions of life, and adults who live
the longest and healthiest lives are the ones who successfully navigate through them and
emerge from each with a renewed sense of meaning and passion for life.
7.14 Lecture Outline: Late Adulthood: The Age of Integrity
➢ As the Baby Boom generation reaches the age of 65, nearly one-fourth of the American
population will be in this age group.
➢ From a biological perspective, aging means decline—energy reserves are reduced and cell
machinery functions less efficiently.
➢ From a cognitive perspective, many abilities, including some expert skills and some
aspects of memory, can improve.
➢ Activity, whether physical, social-emotional, or cognitive, is the key to healthy aging—
“Use it or lose it!”
➢ Many of our negative assumptions about aging are related to cultural values.
7.14.1. Ego-Integrity Versus Despair

➢ According to Erikson, an increasing awareness of our own mortality, physical changes,
behavior, and social roles result in Erikson’s stage, ego-integrity versus despair.
➢ Ego-integrity involves the ability to look back on life and enjoy a sense of wholeness
after reflecting upon good times and bad, appreciating the good and accepting the bad.
➢ Erikson believed that previous challenges must have been successfully resolved, and for
those whose previous crises had unhealthy solutions, despair may be the result.
7.14.2. Physical Changes

➢ Aging people develop wrinkles, have thinning hair, and decrease in height by an inch or
two.
➢ Senses dull and the heart and lungs operate less efficiently, decreasing physical stamina.
➢ Adults can take control of their bodies in ways that are reducing deterioration thought at
one time to be inevitable, although successful aging takes into consideration both
individual potential and realistic limits.
➢ A myth in Western culture is that elderly people cannot be physically active.
➢ There is no age in which sex cannot be enjoyed in late adulthood.
7.14.3. Cognitive Changes

➢ Certain parts of the brain lose mass, but there is little evidence that this causes general
mental decline.
➢ Performance on tasks requiring imagination seems to decline, and people acquire
information more slowly in their 70s and 80s.
➢ Brain imaging shows that older people’s brains compensate by processing information
differently, using more brain regions.
➢ Mental exercise keeps aging brains working more effectively.
➢ Vocabulary is consistently better in the elderly, as are social skills and some types of
skilled performance.
➢ Physical exercise improves learning, memory, and other cognitive functions.
➢ Age-related memory problems appear in the memory system associated with processing
and storing new information.
➢ Memory loss does not diminish access to information stored long ago.
➢ People explain memory loss differently depending upon the age of the forgetful person;
younger adults attribute forgetfulness to a lack of effort in other young adults’ memory
failure but to old age in older adults.
➢ Alzheimer’s disease, a degenerative disorder of the brain that produces diminished
thinking ability, memory problem, and, ultimately, death, is estimated to occur in about
10% of the population over the age of 65, with the incidence increasing to more than 50%
in people over 85 years.
➢ An early symptom is memory loss, causing anxiety among older adults experiencing
incidents of forgetfulness.
7.14.4. Social and Emotional Changes

➢ While an unfortunate consequence of living a long life is outliving some friends and
family members, older adults generally maintain healthy emotions and relationships.
➢ As people age, they tend to engage in selective social interaction, maintaining only the
most rewarding contacts for the investment of physical and social energy.
➢ Older adults seem to benefit from emotional systems that grow keener with age and
manage their emotions by seeking out positive environments and avoiding the negative
ones.
➢ They define well-being in terms of their relationships with others.
7.14.5. Keys to Successful Aging

➢ Remain both active and close to people by doing volunteer work, traveling, joining clubs,
taking classes, and spending time with grandchildren.
➢ Anything that isolates us from sources of social support—from a reliable network of
friends and family—puts us at risk of a host of physical ills, mental problems, and even
social pathologies.
➢ Successful aging consists of maximizing the most of gains while minimizing the impact of
losses.
PSYCHOLOGY MATTERS: A Look Back at the Jim Twins and Your Own Development
This chapter began with an account of a pair of identical twins raised apart and the similarities in
their traits. Twin studies are an important form of research, but their results have brought
criticism as well. Studies have shown that identical twins show remarkable similarities, mainly in
the categories in which they might be expected: intelligence, temperament, gestures, postures,
and pace of speech, all of which are genetically influenced. Identical twins do not display
identical behavior across the board, however, and twins reared together show greater similarities
than those raised apart—pointing to the effects of environment. Twin pairs, originally separated
but later reunited before they were studied, resemble each other more closely and have an
incentive to maximize their similarities to please the researchers. Also, identical twins are often
treated alike because they look alike. Thus, neither heredity nor environment acts alone: they
work together to shape an individual.
CRITICAL THINKING APPLIED: The Mozart Effect
Could listening to Mozart improve IQ? This finding was announced by a pair of research
scientists, and after receiving extensive media coverage, spawned a host of innovations and new
childrearing practices. Using critical thinking questions to analyze research results, it cannot be
concluded that listening to Mozart raises IQ scores.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
➢ Scaffolding
➢ The Consequences of Sexual Abuse
➢ Decade Word Association
➢ Developmental Comparisons Across Species
➢ The Day Center
▲ Return to Table of Contents
Chapter 7 Key Questions

1. What innate abilities does the infant possess?
2. What are the developmental tasks of childhood?
3. What changes mark the transition of adolescence?
4. What developmental challenges do adults face?
Chapter 7 Core Concepts

1. Newborns have innate abilities for finding nourishment, avoiding harmful situations, and
interacting with others—all of which enable survival.
2. Nature and nurture work together to help children master important developmental tasks,
especially in the areas of language acquisition, cognitive development, and development of
social relationships.
3. Adolescence offers new developmental challenges growing out of physical changes, cognitive
changes, and socioemotional pressures.
4. Nature and nurture continue to interact as we progress through a series of transitions in
adulthood, with cultural norms about age combining with new technology to increase both
the length and quality of life for many adults.
Chapter 7 Psychology Matters
1. Not Just Fun and Games: The Role of Child’s Play in Life Success
2. The Puzzle of ADHD
3. Using Psychology to Learn Psychology
4. A Look Back at the Jim Twins and Your Own Development
▼ LECTURE LAUNCHERS AND DISCUSSION TOPICS

Talk That Talk, Baby
Object Permanence Changes
Day Care and Social Development
Critical Periods: The Story of Genie
Gender Roles and Parenting
Gender Identity and the Case of David Reimer
Identity and the Tasks of Adolescence
Adolescents Aren’t Just Slackers
When I Hit Puberty…
Predicting Alzheimer’s Disease
Theories of Physical Aging
Myths About Aging
Scaffolding
The Consequences of Sexual Abuse
Lecture Launcher: Talk That Talk, Baby
“Does baby want to play with the beads?! Do yoooooouuuu want to play with the beeeeeaaaaads?
Yes you doooooo!! Yes you doooooooo, don’t yooouuuuuuuuu?!!” The high-pitched, drawn-out
baby talk that new babies seem to find mesmerizing and new parents seem to find necessary may
have a deeper significance than previously suspected. That semi-annoying tendency to repeatedly
accentuate vowel sounds may serve an important function in language development, and may have
a universal component.
Patricia Kuhl, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington, studied mothers in Sweden,

Russia, and Seattle as they talked to their infants. Swedish, Russian, and English have
substantially different vowel systems, yet the vowel sounds that are common to each language—
“ee,” “ah,” and “oo”—were the same sounds that were unintentionally accentuated in the
mothers’ speech. These parents did not accentuate all sounds or raise the pitch of all words, as
might someone pretending to speak “baby talk.” Rather, acoustic profiles of some 2,363 words
across all three groups revealed that just these important vowels were exaggerated, and,
according to Kuhl, for good reason. By providing an infant with unambiguous examples of what
vowel sounds belong together, the task of language acquisition is presumably made that much
easier. To a 5-month-old learning to enunciate vowel sounds, this can be an important boost.
Some intriguing unanswered questions remain, however. First, although Kuhl and her associates
have demonstrated the type of input given to these infants, it’s not known what babies do with
this information or how and when learning takes place. If an adult did not exaggerate vowel
sounds, for example, it’s not clear whether there would be a negative effect on an infant’s
learning or simply no effect at all. Second, the universality of this effect suggests a biological
basis for knowing how to talk to an infant. “Ee,” “ah,” and “oo” are in fact sounds common to all
human languages. Why they are spontaneously stressed under certain circumstances hints at an
important adaptive tendency.
Neergaard, L. (1997, August 1). Baby talk contributes to an infant’s learning. Austin
American-Statesman, A19.
▼ Return to complete list of Lecture Launchers and Discussion Topics for Chapter 7
▲ Return to Chapter 7: Table of Contents
Lecture Launcher: Object Permanence Changes
Infants often fail to search for a hidden object until approximately 1 year of age, which
suggested to Piaget that the infant lacked the concept of object permanence. Flavell, Miller,
and Miller, however, noted that recent research suggests infants may have a greater
understanding of object permanence earlier than Piaget assumed. The belief that object
permanence does not stabilize until the end of the first year may have been the result of
Piaget’s methodology. That is, his observations were based upon the child’s ability to perform
certain motor behaviors that do not appear until later in development. Flavell and his
colleagues noted, however, that a failure to perform a search for the object does not
necessarily mean that the child lacks the concept of object permanence. Researchers have
developed several techniques that visually present situations that are either possible or
impossible given the rules of object permanence. Based upon observations of the reactions of
infants to these presentations, the results indicated that infants as young as 3 to 4 months
exhibited surprise reactions when situations were presented that were impossible given the
rules of object permanence. Such findings suggest that the concept of object permanence may
appear much earlier than originally proposed by Piaget.
Flavell, J. H., Miller, P. H., & Miller, S. A. (1993). Cognitive development (3rd ed.).
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Reprinted from Hill, W. G. (1995). Instructor's resource manual for Psychology by S. F.

Davis and J. J. Palladino. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Lecture Launcher: Day Care and Social Development
The accumulated data from many studies of day care reveal no consistent negative effects. On
the contrary, many studies find that children actually do better in day care than in home care.
According to one such study of 150 children, ages 2 to 4, the social and intellectual development
of children who were attending day-care centers (part time or full time) was advanced over that
of children in home care (with the mother, a sitter, or a day-care provider in the home) (Clarke-
Stewart, 1991).
What about the effects of putting infants in day care during their critical first year? In a major
longitudinal study of 2,387 children, Frank Mott (1991) investigated whether various forms of
infant care were related to the child’s performance on tests of physical, cognitive, and social
development several years later. First, he controlled for a wide range of factors that would have
been linked with a child’s having been put in day care during infancy, such as mother’s use of
drugs or family income. That done, Mott found no statistically significant association between
day care in infancy and the child’s later motor or social development. As for cognitive
development, the children who had been in day care as infants scored higher than those who had
been at home. On closer inspection, Mott found that healthy baby girls benefited the most by
being away from their mothers in day-care arrangements; healthy baby boys neither gained nor
lost by being in day care; but boys who were physically unhealthy in their first year benefited by
being home in maternal care. Mott concluded that “no type of infant care arrangement can be
generalized as being uniformly preferable or detrimental.”
Most psychologists today, instead of assuming that day care is universally helpful or harmful, are
asking different questions. Specifically, they are concerned with how the quality of day care
affects children’s development, which children do well and which do poorly in different
environments, and how parents and day-care programs can work effectively together. Children
develop well in many kinds of caretaking arrangements. They go through the same stages of
indiscriminate friendliness, fear of strangers, and independence, whether they are at home or in
day care, as long as the care is good (Clarke-Stewart, 1991; Mott, 1991).
Clarke-Stewart, K. A. (1991). A home is not a school: The effects of child care on children’s
development. In S. L. Hofferth & D.A. Phillips (eds.), Child Care Policy Research.
Journal of Social Issues, 47(2), 105-124.
Mott, F. L. (1991). Developmental effects of infant care: The mediating role of gender and
health. In S. L. Hofferth & D. A. Phillips (eds.), Child Care Policy Research. Journal of
Social Issues, 47(2), 139-158.
Lecture Launcher: Critical Periods: The Story of Genie
In 1970, a 13-year-old girl was discovered in Los Angeles. Her name was Genie, and the
conditions in which she was found were appalling. Genie had been treated like an animal since
the age of 20 months. She was confined to a small, curtained room and spent most of her days
strapped to a potty chair, unable to move except for her hands and feet. At night, Genie was
confined in a cage-like crib and restrained in a straightjacket-type garment. She had no bowel or
bladder control, could not stand in an erect posture, was severely malnourished, and was unable
to chew solid food. Genie was also mute; she could not speak and could not understand
language. The only sounds she had ever heard were those made by her father on the occasions he
beat her for crying or making noises. Genie had been held prisoner by her father, a man who
never spoke to her and would not allow anyone else to do so.
Genie was removed from her father’s custody and taken to Los Angeles Children’s Hospital,
where she was nursed back to physical health. She underwent psychological evaluation to
determine her mental status and level of cognitive functioning, including her ability to produce
and comprehend language. Following all necessary assessments, psychologists embarked on the
task of teaching Genie language. Because Genie was attempting to acquire language at age 13,
her psychologists were presented with a unique opportunity to study the critical period theory
relative to learning language, the notion that there is a time early in a child’s life when language
learning must begin if language is to be learned at all. Genie was far past that proposed critical
period. Further, she knew no grammar and had virtually no language ability.
The researchers working with Genie approached the task of teaching her language in much the
same manner they would teach a younger child, by direct exposure to spoken language as a
function of engagement in daily activities. Initially, Genie would speak only one or two words at
a time, but she did progress, up to a point. Though she eventually progressed to the degree of
combining two and three words into phrases, she never progressed beyond the level of a 3- or 4-
year-old child in her language abilities, and never made the progression from simple words into
grammatically correct sentences.
The fact that Genie actually did acquire some facility for language denied support for the
hypothesis that there is a critical period for language acquisition, and that this period falls
somewhere between age 2 and puberty. However, Genie’s failure to attain fluency and grammar
did point to the potential for an optimal period for language acquisition, a period that, if missed,
would result in failure ever to attain complete facility for language. Unfortunately, no more
specific information could be gained from Genie’s experiences because her lack of facility for
language could be attributable to her severely malnourished state, the emotional and physical
abuse suffered at the hands of her father, and her social isolation, as much as to a potential
optimal period for language acquisition.
By age 24, Genie had received 11 years of special education and rehabilitation to include foster
care, yet her language capability remained short of that expected in a 5-year-old child. Did Genie
miss her critical period for language acquisition? We do not know. Her plight has offered many
insights to developmental psychologists, but many final answers remain elusive.
Lecture Launcher: Gender Roles and Parenting
Diana Baumrind noted that some researchers have suggested that androgynous individuals may
assume a more authoritative parenting style, exhibiting more flexibility and competence as parents.
In order to test this hypothesis, she examined parenting and child behaviors as a function of degree
of sex typing. Data were gathered on 9-year-old children and their parents using naturalistic and
structured observations, interviews, tests (including the Bem Sex Role Inventory), and self-reports.
Overall, Baumrind found that there were no differences in parenting styles between androgynous
and nonandrogynous women. Androgynous men, however, tended to be more similar to women
in their approach to childrearing. In addition, she found that androgynous men were also more
unconventional and autonomous in their overall lifestyle patterns. Furthermore, androgynous
parents were more child-centered (responsive to the child), less demanding, and less authoritative
in their parenting practices. Corresponding to their general attitude, sex-typed fathers tended to
be firm, demanding, and positively reinforcing with their children, while sex-typed mothers were
more loving and responsive. Baumrind also reported that both male and female children of sex-
typed parents were somewhat more competent on several social and cognitive tasks, and females
were more assertive. Baumrind concluded that her results indicated that assumptions by some
researchers of advantages associated with androgynous parents with respect to childrearing and
development may not be correct.
Baumrind, D. (1982). Are androgynous individuals more effective persons and

parents? Child Development, 53, 44–75.
Lecture Launcher: Gender Identity and the Case of David Reimer
David Reimer, a Canadian, was born in 1965 as a healthy boy. During circumcision, his penis
was inadvertently destroyed, and he was subsequently raised as a girl. Psychologist John Money
oversaw the case and reported the reassignment as successful, as evidence that gender identity is
primarily learned. This case was particularly interesting because David had an identical twin
brother. Much controversy followed, including David’s admission that he never identified
himself as a female and his subsequent suicide in 2004. Extensive information about this case is
available online, as well as in a book by John Colapinto, As Nature Made Him.
Lecture Launcher: Identity and the Tasks of Adolescence
Sometimes a concept from academic research or theory catches the attention of the public and
becomes integrated into the framework of society’s “general knowledge.” Perhaps this occurs
because the concept is particularly relevant at the time, or because it provides a framework for a
generally recognized problem or issue. The “identity crisis” proposed by Erik Erikson is such a
concept. It was eagerly adopted by American society in the 1960s. At that time, the baby-boom
cohort was reaching youth and adolescence. The Vietnam War loomed as a threat to youth, civil
rights activists challenged the thoughtless discrimination of older generations, and the women’s
liberation movement contested traditional ideas of female identity.
Also, by the 1960s, adolescence had become established as a life stage created by technological
society, a span of years between childhood and full adult status in which the young person prepared
to live and work in an increasingly complex society.
Erikson saw adolescence as a pivotal stage of development in which earlier psychosocial conflicts
return in a new form, and in which the foundations are laid for the intimacy, generativity, and
wisdom that are the favorable outcomes of later stages.
Developmental psychologists sometimes organize discussion of life stages around the

developmental tasks of the stage, the things we must do to be ready to move on to the next stage.
The elements of the identity crisis can be considered “tasks of adolescence.”
1. Acquiring temporal perspective. One aspect of temporal perspective is to have a clear

conception of past and future and to have the confidence to plan for the future. Another aspect
of temporal perspective is the ability to regulate one’s own time. Freshmen entering the
university who are living away from home for the first time often have difficulty regulating
their own time. With no parent present to say, “Go to bed,” they will solve the world’s
problems all night and be unable to get up for class the next morning. There are people in
middle age who lose jobs, miss airplanes, and alienate friends because of their lack of ability
to regulate their time.
2. Acquiring self-certainty. Self-certainty is equivalent to what is also referred to as

self-confidence or self-esteem. Erikson thought that efforts to begin to “sever the apron
strings” and to become an autonomous or independent person begin early in life, about the
time we begin to walk. If the child sees herself being able to do for herself and accomplish
little things independently, then she has the basis to develop confidence in herself. In
adolescence, there are new threats to self-confidence—the prospect of having to be
financially independent and to find a desirable partner, for example. Another aspect of
self-certainty or self-esteem is that it must be accompanied by a self-image that is compatible
with reality. Self-esteem that is unrealistic is a defense, a fantasy that prevents
self-fulfillment.
3. Role experimentation. During childhood, we usually look to parents or teachers for role
models. In adolescence, young people are likely to reject earlier models and to go through a
series of “trying on” different roles. The movies and television provide a smorgasbord of
roles and role models. Role models can be real people, characters from fiction, historical
personages, or creations of our own imagination. Erikson thought that role experimentation
is a healthy manifestation of the search for identity, but at some time we have to take the
pieces we like from our role experimentation and put them together into a consistent identity.
The opposite of role experimentation is role fixation. Sometimes one encounters a young
person who has had an identity laid on him so heavily by parents that attempts at role
experimentation produce too much guilt to be pursued.
4. Apprenticeship. Theorists are often reluctant to talk about anything as mundane as getting
a job and earning a living. Erikson recognized that the prospect of having to be
self-supporting is a real concern of adolescents. This doesn’t mean that an adolescent has to
choose his or her life’s work in junior high school, but it does mean making general
preparation for independence. You may not have chosen a career or even have decided on a
major, but the fact that you are here in class suggests that you do not suffer from what Erikson
called “work paralysis.”
5. Sexual polarization. The obvious meaning of this aspect of identity is that adolescents must
decide whether they are heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual. It must be very difficult for
the young person who has a homosexual orientation to establish a positive identity during
adolescence. There are great pressures for denial and for conformity to sexual roles that
parents and most peers consider “normal.” Erikson wrote about the aspect of sexual
polarization that can be described as “comfort and confidence in the role of male or female.”
In early adolescence, young people often feel sexually inadequate because their bodies are
less than perfect, or because they feel inferior to peers who tell tall tales of sexual adventures
and prowess. Sexual roles are not as clearly delineated as they formerly were, particularly in
the case of the female role, and young females may feel less than feminine if they have
ambitious career aspirations and inadequate as humans if they don’t.
6. Questions of authority and being a leader and a follower. Resentment of authority is so

common among American adolescents that it is tempting to think of it as normal.
Differentiating between legitimate authority and arbitrary authority is a task of identity
establishment. Identity formation includes being able to take the role of leader or follower in
the appropriate circumstances.
7. Ideological commitment. As the identity is formed, young people must select a basic
philosophy, a set of values, an orientation toward religion and politics. Excessive zeal for a
cause, dramatic religious conversion, or allegiance to a cult are some of the more extreme
symptoms of young people searching for something to believe in. The task the adolescent
faces is to adopt an ideology that is internally consistent and compatible with the self and the
self-image.
It may seem as though identity formation requires that one lay down plans for the remainder of
one’s life and adopt beliefs that will guide one’s behavior for all future time. This is, of course, not
the situation. Identity formation brings together various aspects of the self into a coherent whole
and establishes a psychic “core” that defines the self. It is probably not a coincidence that Erikson’s
identity crisis begins concurrently with Piaget’s stage of formal operations. Some of the cognitive
skills of the mature intellect represented by this stage of cognitive development are instrumental
in bringing together the threads of the self.
Lecture Launcher: Adolescents Aren’t Just Slackers
Many of the negative stereotypes about adolescents involve their “laziness” and inability to pay
attention and complete tasks. As most college students are in their early 20s, they can easily
recall situations in which their parents seemed to get frustrated by their behaviors and decisions.
There is a general sense that teenagers are “flaky” and seem to “lose their minds” during puberty.
It may make students relieved to find out that many of the attention and concentration problems
of adolescence are related to a lack of brain maturation. Recent studies have demonstrated that
the brain areas related to multi-tasking, which are located in the frontal cortex, are continuing to
develop throughout adolescence. Another source of conflict between parents and teens is
associated with teen sleeping patterns. Contrary to earlier beliefs that teens are just lazy, research
has shown that teenagers need to sleep longer and later than adults in order to function optimally.
Lecture Launcher: When I Hit Puberty…
Ask students to complete the sentence "When I hit puberty…” After a few students share their
responses, lead a discussion about the psychological impact of the timing of puberty and how it
can shape the self-image with which we enter adulthood.
▼Return to complete list of Lecture Launchers and Discussion Topics for Chapter 7
Lecture Launcher: Predicting Alzheimer’s Disease
Alzheimer’s disease tragically afflicts many elderly people each year, resulting in a gradual
deterioration of memory, reasoning ability, and personality. Even more disturbing is that the
diagnosis of Alzheimer’s can only be made conclusively upon autopsy, when the plaques and
tangles in the brain characteristic of the disorder can be confirmed. However, the results of an
archival study have suggested that linguistic markers may predict Alzheimer’s with some degree
of accuracy.
David Snowdon, an epidemiologist at the University of Kentucky, led a research team that
examined the writings of 93 nuns. In the 1930s, when these women entered a Milwaukee
convent, they composed brief autobiographical essays, which subsequently were scored by
Snowdon’s team for linguistic markers such as the density of ideas or grammatical complexity.
For example, a nun who might have written “I plan to give my all to God” probably would score
low on such measures, whereas a nun who composed the beatitude “I long to linger in the sweet
garden of Christ, rejoicing in the splendor that He is and thanking Him daily for His abundances”
might not win a literature contest, but certainly shows a greater degree of complexity in her
writing. All of the nuns lived under highly similar conditions. Sixty years later, however, those
nuns who scored low on the psycholinguistic markers were more prone to develop Alzheimer’s.
Of the 14 nuns who had died, in fact, 5 had low idea density scores, and all 5 had Alzheimer’s
disease.
What this reveals about the course of Alzheimer’s is still something of a mystery. It may be, for
example, that as young women these nuns were already showing signs of the disorder,
suggesting that Alzheimer’s develops slowly and insidiously over a prolonged period of time.
Studies showing that some forms of Alzheimer’s can afflict people in their 20s complement this
idea. An alternative, however, is that linguistic skills may offer some “immunity” to the
development of Alzheimer’s, much as the adage “use it or lose it” suggests. Perhaps those nuns
with more highly developed linguistic ability were better able to stave off the effects of this
disorder. As with most studies of this nature, the causality of events remains murky. Other
archival data, or other markers of ability (such as mathematics scores or measures of reasoning
or memory) may shed more light on this encouraging line of research.
Indeed, Snowdon and his associates have imposed on the generous nuns of the School Sisters of
Notre Dame one more time. The research team has recently discovered an important link
between strokes and declines in mental abilities seen in Alzheimer’s patients. Among 61
deceased nuns whose brains all clearly showed signs of Alzheimer’s, 19 seemed in life to have
escaped the confusion, dementia, and mental deterioration so characteristic of the disease. In one
case, a 101-year-old nun remained, by all accounts, as sharp as a tack, even though her brain was
a battlefield of plagues, tangles, and gaping holes. The key was that she, like 18 of the others,
had not suffered from strokes during old age. In fact, only 57% of stroke-free nuns developed
Alzheimer’s, compared to 93% of nuns who had a history of ministrokes. In an additional
comparison, Snowdon looked at the brains of 41 nuns who did not have Alzheimer’s-like brains
but who had suffered strokes; these women had no significant decrease in their overall mental
competence.
An avenue for treatment suggests itself. By preventing strokes, it may be possible to delay the
onset of symptoms in Alzheimer’s patients. The double whammy of dealing with two brain
diseases in a single individual may be halved, providing substantial comfort to those dealing with
Alzheimer’s.
Nash, J. M. (March 24, 1997). Medicine. Time, 80–82.
Rogers, A. (1996, March 4). The weight of words: Can writing style predict
dementia? Newsweek, 55.
Lecture Launcher: Theories of Physical Aging
Growing old, it’s been said, sure beats the alternative. The process of aging may be
inevitable, but at least the mechanisms of aging can be understood with some degree of certainty.
Wear and Tear Theories
This general class of theories proposes that the human body is analogous to a machine in
that our parts begin to wear down and malfunction as they age. Although this seems to make
sense and may apply to some body systems (e.g., elbow or knee problems experienced by
athletes), it fails to account for the fact that the body’s systems are continuously engaged in
repairing and replacing damaged tissue. In addition, it does not explain why continued use or
exertion of body systems, such as that associated with routine exercise, actually improves
functioning.
Accumulation Theories
This group of theories focuses on explanations of aging that are the result of problems at
the cellular level. One theory attributes aging to an accumulation of cellular reproduction errors.
For example, the aging of the skin may be the result of increasing errors in cellular reproduction
due to damage in cellular DNA from exposure to the sun and other toxic substances. Another
accumulation theory is the metabolic waste theory. This theory suggests that aging results from
the accumulation of undisposed waste products in the cells. Waste accumulation, however,
seems to result from changes in the body's ability to remove waste and thus may be more a
symptom of aging than a cause. A third accumulation theory attributes aging to the buildup of
fibrous proteins (collagen and elastin) in the body. The buildup of these proteins is associated
with external aspects of aging such as wrinkles and sagging skin.
Immune System Malfunction
Another theory focuses on the potential contribution of declines in immune system

functioning with age. For example, research has demonstrated that the ability of the immune
system to produce antibodies begins to decline after adolescence. Some studies also have
suggested that the immune system may lose its ability to detect and destroy slightly mutated
cells, allowing them to reproduce and accumulate in the body. The autoimmune theory of aging,
however, suggests that the immune system loses its ability to differentiate between normal and
abnormal cells, resulting in the destruction of healthy cells.
Genetic Clock
This approach suggests that cells are preprogrammed to survive and reproduce for a
specific period, after which they begin to degenerate and die. Based upon studies of human cell
regeneration limits, researchers estimate that the maximum human life span would be between
110 and 120 years.
Berger, K. S. (1994). The developing person through the life span (3rd ed.). New York:
Worth.
Hayslip, B., Jr., & Panek, P. E. (1993). Adult development and aging (2nd ed.). New York:
HarperCollins.
Adapted from Hill, W. G. (1995). Instructor's resource manual for Psychology by S. F.

Davis and J. J. Palladino. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Lecture Launcher: Myths about Aging
Aging is one of the mysteries of human life that has been a focus of science for a number of
years. Researchers divide aging into two categories: primary aging and secondary aging.
Secondary aging is change that occurs as a result of disease, stress, poor diet, lack of exercise, or
exposure to toxic substances—any factor that contributes to aging that is actually or potentially
preventable. What is left is primary aging. If genes were programmed to effect changes with age,
that would be primary aging.
As research progresses, many of the myths, misconceptions, and stereotypes associated with
aging are being shattered; more of what was thought to be primary aging is, in fact, secondary
aging. For example, research done in the 1950s and 1960s by highly regarded psychologists
showed that IQ scores reach a peak in the 20s, remain stable until 40, decrease slowly from 40 to
60, and decline very rapidly after the age of 60. The idea of deterioration of cognitive functions
with age seemed to be established, but more recent research using longitudinal data has
challenged the earlier studies. Recent research has shown that significant changes in cognitive
functions do not begin until the mid-70s, and even then intellectual capacities remain intact for
people who continue to exercise them and remain in good health. In studies with rats, Marian
Diamond has shown that rats that live in an enriched environment continue to show thickening of
the cortex when they are beyond the normal life span of rats.
One of the myths of aging is that people undergo personality changes as they grow older.
Longitudinal data have been collected on a large group of volunteers for 30 years by the
Gerontological Research Center for the National Institute on Aging. The data show stability of
personality from young adulthood through old age. The director of the research noted that a
person who is warm, sociable, and outgoing at 20 is likely to be warm, sociable, and outgoing at
80. He also observed that if you are likely to complain about physical symptoms when you are
80, you were probably a complainer when you were 20.
Based on research in the 1950s, it was concluded that there is an age-related decrease in cardiac
output, the amount of blood the heart pumps per unit of time. Thirty years later, using the same
treadmill test, the results were different. Many of the older participants showed no decrease in
cardiac output, and among those who showed a decrease, the problem was associated with lack
of exercise. During the 30 years, a great deal was learned about heart disease. Many of the
participants in the earlier study were not the healthy-hearted specimens they were believed to be.
The conclusions from the recent research are that decrease in cardiac output is probably
secondary aging, and not an inevitable consequence of growing older.
Growing old is something we do not like to think about. When you consider the alternative,
growing old is not bad. Many young people do not like to face the fact that habits and lifestyles
they adopt today are likely to have a profound effect at the other end of life. Some young people
say they don’t want to live that long, but there is never a good day to die, and most young people
of today are likely to grow old, to live to be at least 75 or 80. When you get there, you may not
consider yourself old, like the 83-years-old woman that refused to shop in a certain store because
she considered the clothes they carried only appropriate for old ladies.
AN AGING SOCIETY
With the emphasis on “saving social security” that everyone saw in the recent presidential
elections, we have just begun to see the coming impact of the aging of American society. As the
population continues to age, and there are relatively fewer young people to physically and
economically care for older people, there will clearly have to be some major changes in many
social programs and how some elements in our society function. For example, social security
will have to be changed to keep it from becoming insolvent when the “baby boom” generation
reaches its peak retirement years. Programs like Medicare will also have to be revamped.
Retirement ages may be moved farther back, so that the standard retirement age in the not-too-
distant future may be 70 instead of 65. While today’s elderly are generally healthier than the
elderly of previous generations, as they reach their 80s and 90s (and even 100s), many will need
extensive health care and nursing home care. This will require record numbers of health-care
workers to help care for the elderly. In what other ways might an aging population impact
society? This can be a thought-provoking discussion for students.
EUTHANASIA
One of the more controversial issues related to aging, and the health problems that often
accompany it, is the issue of euthanasia. Dr. Jack Kervorkian’s active euthanasia efforts
eventually resulted in his being jailed but brought a lot of controversy and publicity to this issue.
You might ask students how they feel about this issue. Is active euthanasia ever justified? If so,
under what circumstances? What moral issues does active euthanasia raise? What potential
abuses could result from legalized active euthanasia? What about the slippery slope argument
that once we begin allowing active euthanasia in some cases, it becomes easier to begin allowing
it for less severe cases, and eventually it becomes just an easy way of getting rid of
“inconvenient” elderly people who are a “nuisance” because of their ill health and discomfort?
While most Americans oppose active euthanasia because of these potential abuses, the picture is
not as clear when it comes to the issue of passive euthanasia, in which no active steps are taken
to shorten the person’s life, but no efforts are made to keep an individual alive when the person
could be kept alive with outside help. Some researchers claim that well over 50% of physicians
have occasionally engaged in passive euthanasia. How do students feel about this? How do their
feelings about passive euthanasia differ from their feelings about active euthanasia?
▼Return to complete list of Lecture Launchers and Discussion Topics for Chapter 7
Lecture Launcher: Scaffolding
Retrieve some change from your pocket or purse and count it silently. Look up at the class and
explain that your throat is dry and you would like to buy a drink from a vending machine before
beginning or continuing your lecture. Tell the class that you are a dime short of having enough
change. Ask if there is anyone who will lend you a dime. After a student responds, give the coin
back and explain that the class has just witnessed a demonstration of one of Lev Vygotsky’s
most important concepts about cognitive development: scaffolding. Ask students to generate
examples of how teachers and parents provide minimal help to children (analogous to the dime
you borrowed) that enables them to achieve tasks they would not be able to do on their own.
Lecture Launcher: The Consequences of Sexual Abuse
There is evidence that severe childhood sexual abuse leaves a permanent mark on the brain. The
researchers in both cases used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine the hippocampus, a
brain structure involved in organizing memory, in groups of women. The studies found that the
hippocampal volume of women who had suffered severe sexual abuse as children was smaller than
that of women who were comparable in age but who had not been abused. Both groups of women
were recruited from the same women’s health clinic, where they were receiving general care.
The research teams suggest that this cerebral alteration may predispose people to experience
dissociation and to develop the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Other
investigators have reported similar reductions in hippocampal volume among Vietnam combat
veterans suffering from PTSD. However, the point at which the reduction takes place is not clear,
especially given that many adults who develop PTSD have experienced prior traumas.
If the severe traumas of child sexual abuse or combat release stress hormones that harm the
hippocampus, it may account in part for the fragmented memories experienced by many people
suffering from PTSD. However, it is also known that many trauma survivors display no memory
disruptions, dissociation, or symptoms of PTSD. This has led some researchers to speculate that
a genetic predisposition to react strongly to extreme stress may also be implicated, especially in
men. Further research will hopefully clarify this link between behavior and brain.
Bower, B. (1995). Child sex abuse leaves mark on brain. Science News, 147, 340.
CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES, DEMONSTRATIONS, AND EXERCISES

Constructing a Life Line to Illustrate Erikson’s Stages of Development
Newborn Reflexes
Reflexes and Motor Development
The Effect of Divorce on Children
Does Spanking Lead Children to Become More Violent?
Illustrating Piagetian Concepts
Dear Mom and Dad
Moral Development
Adolescence and Identity Development: A Personal Exploration
Ageism
Life Expectancy
Getting Old
“Wearing the Shoes” of the Elderly
Decade Word Association
Developmental Comparisons Across Species
The Day Center
Activity: Constructing a Life Line to Illustrate Erikson’s Stages of Development
Peggy Brick (1981) suggests giving students the opportunity to actively explore Erikson’s stages
of development in their own lives by constructing a “life line.” After discussing the eight stages of
Erikson’s theory, ask students to take out a piece of paper, turn it lengthwise, and draw a line
across the middle of the page. Tell them to put their birth date on the far left and a projected date
of death on the far right. Then have them put the current date a few inches down the line from their
birth date. Now instruct them to list several important events during childhood and adolescence
between their birth date and the current date. For example, they might list an accident, a family
move, a birthday party, their first day of elementary or high school, or a special holiday memory.
After giving them a few minutes to list these events, ask them to consider the future and to list
things that they would like to accomplish during early, middle, and late adulthood, including what
their retirement will be like and what they want to do before they die. Brick suggests pairing
students to let them discuss their timelines and then leading the class in a discussion of what they
learned from the activity. During the discussion, ask students to focus on how the events or
accomplishments that they listed reflect aspects of Erikson’s theory.
Brick, P. (1981). The life cycle. In L. T. Benjamin, Jr. & K. D. Lowman (Eds.), Activities
handbook for the teaching of psychology (pp. 128–130). Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association.
▼Return to complete list of Classroom Activities, Demonstrations, and Exercises for

Chapter 7
Activity: Newborn Reflexes
In discussing newborn reflexes, you can incorporate the narrated, 2.5 min video on reflexes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyVLD0hl0XY
Then you can use the following 58-second, silent video clip as a quick quiz for points or just as
an exercise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt37zeadU7U
It shows, in order, the sucking, grasping, Babinski, and Moro reflexes.

Chapter 7
Activity: Reflexes and Motor Development
Objective: To demonstrate the sequence of milestones in motor and verbal development

Materials: Newborn Reflexes (Handout 7.1); Milestones of Physical Development (Handout
7.2)
Procedure: Give the handouts to the students and ask them to write in the average appearance of
these milestones. As you explain the answers, point out that development and maturation are
predictable and not random. You may also wish to discuss cephalocaudal and proximodistal
patterns of development. Fernald and Fernald (1990) suggest that students indicate which
milestones are due to maturation and which are due to training. Astor-Stetson (1990) offers a
slightly different activity in which students in groups develop lists of five milestones and the
ages that these are achieved.
Astor-Stetson, E. (1990). Implications of the milestones of development. In V. P.

Makosky, C. C. Sileo, L. G. Whittemore, C. P. Landry, & M. L. Skutley (Eds.).
Activities handbook for the teaching of psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 113–114).
Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
Fernald, P. S., & Fernald, L. D. (1990). Early motor and verbal development. In V. P.
Makosky, C. C. Sileo, L. G. Whittemore, C. P. Landry, & M. L. Skutley (Eds.).
Activities handbook for the teaching of psychology (Vol. 3, pp. 111–112).
Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Chapter 7
Activity: The Effect of Divorce on Children
Divorce is troubling, difficult, and painful for children. Discuss with your class about the
negative effects a divorce might have on a child between the ages of 2 and 12 who lives with the
mother and visits with the father on alternate weekends. After mentioning the issues raised
below, ask the class how the concerns may be eliminated.
• The child may feel that he or she caused the divorce.
• The child may feel that the father wouldn’t have left if the father really loved him or her.
• The child may feel insecure. If one parent leaves, the other may leave, too. If the father is
unable to keep a weekend visit with the child, the child may feel that he doesn’t want to
see her or him.
• The child misses the things he or she did with the father and becomes lonely when
thinking about games they played together.
• The child may have a conflict about loyalty to the parents.
• The parents may involve the child in their disputes, or use the child as a pawn to
manipulate one another.
• Financial considerations may make it necessary for the mother to move, and for the child
to change schools and make new friends.
• The mother may have less time for the child after the separation or divorce because of a
job outside of the home, in addition to her usual responsibilities.
• The mother’s own emotional turmoil over the divorce may make it difficult for her to
minister adequately to the child’s needs.
• Although the child visits with the father on a bi-weekly basis, the child may not have
constant access to a male role model.
• The child may perceive female friends of the father and male friends of the mother as
threats to his or her relationship with the parent.
▼ Return to complete list of Classroom Activities, Demonstrations, and Exercises for

Chapter 7
Activity: Does Spanking Lead Children to Become More Violent?
Spanking has had a controversial history as an element of effective child-rearing. Some

Scandinavian cultures have found the practice so abhorrent that it has been outlawed as a form of
parental discipline. On the other hand, some private schools and many parents believe it is an
effective, socially-acceptable, parental choice practice for shaping a child’s behavior. Ask your
students to debate the merits of spanking and the potential consequences it holds for a developing
child’s future behavior. Given what we know about modeling and social learning, is spanking
simply another source of information about aggressive behavior? Given what we know about the
effectiveness of punishment versus reinforcement, how does spanking change behavior in the long
term and short term? Should this simply be a parental decision, or should there be legislation
governing this activity? In particular, does spanking lead children to become more violent? Ask
your students to read more about both sides of this issue before discussing it in class.
Slife, B. (2002). Taking sides: Clashing views on controversial psychological issues

(12th ed.). Guilford, CT: Dushkin Publishing Group.
Chapter 7
Activity: Illustrating Piagetian Concepts
Harper (1979) described two activities that can be used to illustrate Piagetian concepts with adult
students. His demonstrations, which focus on the processes of assimilation, accommodation, and
equilibration, are described below. Holbrook (1992) also described a demonstration that can be
used to illustrate concepts related to conservation.
Assimilation and Accommodation. Harper (1987) suggested a demonstration that illustrates the
Piagetian concepts of assimilation and accommodation. In the first activity, you distribute
lollipops to the class and ask them to eat them. After the students have begun to eat them, point
out that the lollipop tends to elicit the schema of sucking, illustrating how an object is
assimilated into an existing schema. Harper also suggested that you can note that the differences
in how individuals consume the lollipop (such as biting or rolling the lollipop around in their
mouth) reflect elaborations on the basic schema. You can then ask your students to provide
additional examples of the assimilation and accommodation of innate, reflexive schemas in other
everyday activities.
Equilibration and Concept Acquisition. Another demonstration suggested by Harper (1987)

introduces a novel object in order to demonstrate the process of equilibration and its relationship
to concept formation as experienced by a young child. Without telling the students the name or
function of the object, pretend to remove an imaginary object called a “gloquex” (pronounced
glocks) from a box and place it on a table. Tell the students that you have just removed a device
from the box that weighs about 10 kg and is 60 mm x 30 mm x 30 mm in size. Then proceed to
pretend to plug it in and let it warm up. At this point, if students do not begin spontaneously
asking questions about the object, encourage them to do so. Harper (1987) noted that some
common questions and possible answers might include:
1. What is it called? A gloquex.

2. What does it do? The gloquex counteracts negative electromagnetic waves (i.e., bad
vibes) often encountered by instructors in the classroom.
3. How does it work? An inversely reciprocating frim fram bollixes any waves entering the
aperture.
4. What is it made of? Hyperventilated case-hardened mollox.
5. Why can’t I see it? You can’t? (followed by an incredulous look; or alternatively) It’s
clear.
Following the questions, give students a test on their knowledge and understanding of the
gloquex. After the test, point out to the students how their responses are similar to those of a
child learning a new concept. That is, they know the name, general purpose, and that the gloquex
belongs to the category of objects known as machines, but not much else. Because the gloquex
does not easily fit into an existing schema, the students’ responses will often use descriptions
based upon comparisons to previously experienced objects (attempts at assimilation). Ask your
students to discuss how their behavior with respect to the gloquex may be similar to that of an
18-month-old child learning about concepts such as dog or bird.
Harper, G. F. (1979). Introducing Piagetian concepts through the use of familiar and
novel illustrations. Teaching of Psychology, 6, 58–59.
Holbrook, J. E. (1992). Bringing Piaget’s preoperational thought to the minds of
adults: A classroom demonstration. Teaching of Psychology, 19, 169–170.

Chapter 7
Activity: Dear Mom and Dad
Objective: To allow students to communicate developmental issues from a personal perspective

Materials: Handout 7.3
Procedure: Described by Junn (1989), this activity requires that your students write to one or
both parents. In this letter, students are to raise several issues, such as the impact parents had on
their lives, three of the most important strengths and weaknesses possessed by their fathers and
mothers, and how these strengths and weaknesses affected areas of development (e.g., moral
development, intellectual development). Junn suggests that the students thank their parents for
“something special.”
Junn, E. N. (1989). "Dear Mom and Dad": Using personal letters to enhance students’
understanding of developmental issues. Teaching of Psychology, 16, 135–139.

Chapter 7
Activity: Moral Development
The text introduces Kohlberg’s stages of moral development by presenting the famous Heinz
dilemma. Vandendorpe (1990) suggests supplementing this discussion with two other moral
dilemmas that seem to be more realistic and relevant to undergraduates. Ask your class to consider
two important dilemmas—exceeding the 65-mph speed limit and cheating in school—and have
them generate every reason they can imagine both for and against these behaviors. Then, divide
the class into small groups and have them classify each reason according to its level of morality
for Kohlberg’s theory. Groups should then decide what rationale they would use for each dilemma
that would be effective in encouraging moral growth in adolescents.
Vandendorpe, M. M. (1990). Three tasks of adolescence: Cognitive, moral, social. In
V. P. Makosky, C. C. Sileo, L. G. Whittemore, C. P. Landry, & M. L. Skutley (Eds.),
Activities handbook for the teaching of psychology: Vol. 3 (pp. 126–127).
Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Chapter 7
Activity: Adolescence and Identity Development: A Personal Exploration
An excellent and involving way for students to consider the topic of adolescent
development is to apply theory and research in this area to their own experiences. For this
assignment, ask your students to write a thoughtful, reflective paper exploring aspects of their
own identity formation during adolescence. Students should be given latitude to address
whatever issues they feel are important and to include personal experiences at their discretion. It
is important to assure students that their papers will be strictly confidential and that they do not
have to reveal any sensitive information about themselves. Although there need not be firm
guidelines for this assignment, you might suggest the following questions as potential issues for
discussion:
1. Describe five positive and five negative characteristics you had as an adolescent. How did
you come to be aware of your positive characteristics? Your negative characteristics? How
did you overcome the negative aspects of your personality?
2. What were your typical concerns during early, middle, and late adolescence? How did you
deal with these concerns?
3. Can you think of one or more events that happened during your high school years that
marked a turning point in your life that had a profound influence on your personality? In
other words, was there an event that caused you to feel that you were crossing some
boundary or somehow growing up and developing into a different, more mature person?
Looking back, how do you feel about it now?
4. What were your peer relationships like? How did they affect your life? How did your peer
relationships change throughout adolescence?
5. What was your relationship with your parents like? Describe some of the positive and
negative aspects. What were the major issues in this relationship? How has your
relationship with your parents changed?
6. How would you generally characterize your adolescence? Was it difficult? Does it support
the “storm and stress” view of adolescence? What were your fears, anxieties, and hopes?
7. Can you think of personal instances thatsupport David Elkind's fallacies of adolescent
thinking, imaginary audience and personal fable? Do these concepts apply to your thoughts
and behaviors at this time?
8. How did your peers influence you with respect to alcohol and tobacco use? What
information about smoking, drugs, and sexual behavior did you receive from school? What
influenced your own decisions about these matters?
Adapted from Siaw, S., & Clark, M. (1995). Instructor's resource guide to accompany Child
psychology: The modern science (2nd ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Chapter 7
Activity: Ageism
Objective: To examine stereotypes about the elderly

Materials: None
Procedure: Ask students to jot down five words or phrases that describe most elderly people.
After allowing time for students to respond, request that someone share the first item on his or
her list. Ask how many others wrote something similar. Continue this procedure until you have
identified three or four widely held beliefs about older adults. Next, ask for volunteers to share
information about their own elderly relatives or acquaintances, or perhaps older social leaders or
celebrities, who do not fit common stereotypes.

Chapter 7
Activity: Life Expectancy
Objective: To make information about middle and late adulthood more personally relevant to
college-aged students
Materials: Handout 7.4
Procedure: Each student should follow the directions on the handout to estimate his or her own
life expectancy.

Chapter 7
Activity: Getting Old
Objective: To demonstrate old age

Materials: Cotton gloves
Procedure: Have several student volunteers try to write, tie their shoes, and carry out other fine
motor tasks while wearing the gloves. Afterward, have the students share how the lack of
dexterity affected them emotionally.
Chapter 7
Activity: “Wearing the Shoes” of the Elderly
Students often have difficulty understanding or appreciating the sensory losses that sometimes
accompany aging. Herbert Shore (1976), who designed a training program to help people who
work with the elderly better understand sensory losses, suggests several simple and effective
simulations, some of which can be experienced in class, and some of which might best be done
out of class.
Hearing. According to Shore, hearing loss is one of the most problematic sensory impairments
for the elderly because the lack of clarity and understanding can lead to suspiciousness and
paranoia. Hearing losses can be simulated by having students wear earplugs, earmuffs, or by
simply putting their fingers in their ears when trying to understand what is being said. Shore also
recommends the “Unfair Hearing Test” in which students try to comprehend a list of words that
have been tape-recorded with slight decibel distortions and with frequencies filtered out.
Vision. Changes in the lenses can be simulated by having students wear underwater goggles. In
addition, taping yellow cellophane on the goggles can help simulate changes in color perception.
Blindness can be simulated by having the student wear a blindfold while trying to perform a
simple task such as tying shoelaces. In addition, you may want to take the blindfolded student on
a “blind walk” so that he or she can experience dependency on a companion. Finally, losses in
peripheral vision can be simulated by taping pieces of paper on the sides of glasses.
Taste. Taste loss commonly experienced by the elderly can be simulated by camouflaging the
texture of food by chopping, pureeing, or liquefying it (or by using commercial baby foods) and
then having a volunteer eat it while blindfolded and wearing a nose clip.
Kinesthesia. Difficulty in mobility can be simulated by wrapping an ace bandage around the
student’s knee or elbow to simulate stiffness in joints. Other physical disabilities, such as those
brought about by a stroke or other injury, can be simulated by writing with the opposite hand,
walking on crutches, using a cane, or relying a wheelchair for a day.
Touch. Losses in tactile sensitivity can be simulated by applying rubber cement or paraffin to a
finger. You can also have students try to identify common objects (that are out of view) while
wearing mittens or plastic baggies on their hands.
Shore, H. (1976). Designing a training program for understanding sensory losses in

aging. The Gerontologist, 16, 157–165.

Chapter 7
Activity: Decade Word Association
Objective: To examine the kinds of ideas students have about the early and middle adulthood
decades
Materials: Decade Association (Handout 7.5)
Procedure: Give each student a copy of Handout 7.5 and ask them to write quickly four words
that come to their minds as they imagine what life is like for people in each decade of early and
middle adulthood. Then, ask them to list the decade it was easiest to think of associations for and
which one was the most difficult.
Rebelsky, F. (1981). Life span development. In L. T. Benjamin, Jr., & K. D. Lowman

(Eds.), Activities handbook for the teaching of psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 131–132).
Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Chapter 7
Activity: Developmental Comparisons Across Species
The authors mention various physical and behavioral milestones in the chapter. In this activity,
students will compare developmental milestones across species. Have students choose a species
for which there is a lot of information available (e.g., the various primates, any domesticated
animal, most songbirds, many types of lizards). On their own, have students research their
species to find ages of at least five different milestones, which they can compare to human
development. For example, at what age does a chimpanzee infant take its first steps compared to
a human infant? At what age does a puppy wean compared to a typical human infant? At what
age do lions usually make their first kill?

Chapter 7
Activity: The Day Center
In this activity, you will use what you have learned about developmental psychology to develop
a day center that will serve the needs of both children and older adults. What will your center
look like? What theories will underlie the development of the center? How will your center
enhance the social, cognitive, and emotional development of the a) children and b) older adults?

Chapter 7
▼ HANDOUT MASTERS
Handout Master 7.1: Newborn Reflexes (p. 456)
Handout Master 7.2: Milestones of Physical Development (p. 457)
Handout Master 7.3: Dear Mom and Dad (p. 458)
Handout Master 7.4: Life Expectancy (p. 459)
Handout Master 7.5: Decade Association (p. 460)

Handout Master 7.1
Newborn Reflexes
Describe the stimuli and the responses of each of these inborn reflexes.
Reflex Initiated by Response
Eye blink
Babinski
reflex
Withdrawal
reflex
Plantar
flexion
Rooting
reflex
Sucking
response
► Return to Activity: Reflexes and Motor Development

▼ Return to complete list of Handout Masters for Chapter 7
Handout Master 7.2

Milestones of Physical Development
Behavior Average age at which activity occurs
Child can raise chin from ground ___________ month(s)
Child can sit with support ___________ month(s)
Child can sit alone ___________ month(s)
Child can stand by holding onto furniture ___________ month(s)
Child can crawl ___________ month(s)
Child can walk when held by hand and led ___________ month(s)
Child can stand alone ___________ month(s)
Child can walk alone ___________ month(s)
Behavior Average age at which activity occurs
► Return to Activity: Reflexes and Motor Development

Handout Master 7.3

Dear Mom and Dad
Date: ________________________
Dear Mom and Dad,
Love,
________________________________________________
► Return to Activity: Dear Mom and Dad

Handout Master 7.4

Life Expectancy
While there is no sure way to calculate your life expectancy, there are certain guidelines that can give
you rough estimates. If you are between 25 and 65 years of age and reasonably healthy, this test
provides a statistical view of your life expectancy.
Start with the number 72
If you are male, subtract 3.

If you are female, add 4.
If you live in an urban area with a population over 2 million, subtract 2.
If a grandparent lived to age 85 or over, add 6.
If all four grandparents lived to age 80 or over, add 6.
If either parent died of a stroke or heart attack before 50, subtract 4.
If a family member under 50 has (or had) cancer, a heart condition, or diabetes,
subtract 2.
As an individual, do you earn over $60,000 a year? subtract 2.
If you finished college, add 1.
If you have a graduate or professional degree, add 2 more.
If you are 65 or over and still working, add 3.
If you live with a spouse or friend, add 5.
If you live alone, subtract 1 for every 10 years alone since age 25.
If you work behind a desk, subtract 3.
If your work requires heavy physical labor, add 3.
If you exercise strenuously three to five times a week, add 3.
Do you sleep more than 10 hours each night? Subtract 4.
Are you intense? Aggressive? Easily angered? Subtract 3.
Are you easy-going and relaxed? Add 3.
Are you happy? Add 1. Unhappy? Subtract 2.
Have you had a speeding ticket in the last year? Subtract 1.
Do you smoke more than two packs a day? Subtract 8. One or two packs? Subtract
6. One-half to one pack? Subtract 3.
Do you drink the equivalent of two drinks of hard liquor a day? Subtract 1.
Are you overweight? By 50 lbs., subtract 8. By 30-50 lbs, subtract 4. By 10-30 lbs.,
subtract 2.
Are you a man over 40 and have annual checkups? Add 2.
If you are a woman and see a gynecologist once a year, add 2.
If you are between 30 and 40, add 2.
If you are over 70, add 5.
Now total it all up and you’ll have a rough estimate of how long you can expect to live.
► Return to Activity: Life Expectancy

Handout Master 7.5

Decade Association
Decade:
20–29: ________ ________ ________ ________
30–39: ________ ________ ________ ________
40–49: ________ ________ ________ ________
50–59: ________ ________ ________ ________
60–69: ________ ________ ________ ________
70–79: ________ ________ ________ ________
80–89: ________ ________ ________ ________
With which decade was it easiest to make associations? ________
With which decade was it hardest to make associations? ________
Approximately how many people do you know at the following stages?
20–29: ________
30–39: ________
40–49: ________
50–59: ________
60–69: ________
70–79: ________
80–89: ________
► Return to Activity: Decade Word Association

WEB RESOURCES
ADOLESCENCE
Sleep Deprivation in Teens: http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct01/sleepteen.html
Science News: Teen’s Ability to Multi-Task Develops Late in Adolescence:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/05/050518104401.htm

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7.1 Lecture Outline: Prenatal Development

Lecture Launchers/Discussions Topics:

7.1.2. Teratogens: Prenatal Toxins

7.2.1 Innate Reflexes

7.2.2. Sensory Abilities in the Newborn

7.2.3. Social Abilities

7.3.1. Neural Development

7.3.2. The Genetic Leash

7.3.3. The Effects of Poverty on Development

7.3.4. Contact Comfort

2. Culture and Attachment

3. Long-Term Effects of Attachment

7.3.6. Psychosocial Development: Trust Versus Mistrust

Self-control is the ability to delay instant gratification in pursuit of longer-range positive

7.4 Lecture Outline: How Children Acquire Language

➢ One of the defining characteristics of humans is the use of complex language.

7.4.1. Language Structures in the Brain

7.4.2. Acquiring Vocabulary and Grammar

1. Practice Makes Perfect

2. Grammar Turns Vocabulary into Language

7.4.3. Other Language Skills

7.5.2. Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

1. The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to about Age 2)

2. The Preoperational Stage (from about 2 to 7 Years of Age)

3. The Concrete Operational Stage (from about 7 to about 11 Years of Age)

7.5.3. Beyond Piaget: Contemporary Perspectives on Cognitive Development

1. Hints of Abilities Earlier Than Piaget Thought

4. The Importance of Culture in Learning

7.6 Lecture Outline: Social and Emotional Development

1. Four Parenting Styles and Their Effects

2. Effects of Day Care

4. Gender Differences in Socialization

1. Autonomy Versus Shame or Self-doubt

2. Initiative Versus Guilt

3. Industry Versus Inferiority

PSYCHOLOGY MATTERS HERE: The Puzzle of ADHD

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a psychological disorder involving poor

7.7 Lecture Outline: Adolescence and Culture

➢ In industrial societies, adolescence is a developmental period beginning at puberty and

7.8 Lecture Outline: Physical Maturation in Adolescence

7.8.2. Adolescent Sexuality

7.9 Lecture Outline: Neural and Cognitive Development in Adolescence

7.9.1. Teens: Guided by Reason or Emotion?

7.9.2. The Brain Undergoes Major Pruning

7.9.3. Piaget’s Final Stage: Formal Operational Thought

7.10 Lecture Outline: Moral Development

7.10.1. Moral Development: Kohlberg’s Theory

1. Critiques of Kohlberg’s Theory

7.10.2. Moral Disengagement

1.Moral Standards Interact with Social Influence

2. Strategies for Overcoming Moral Disengagement

7.11 Lecture Outline: Social and Emotional Development

7.11.1. Psychosocial Development in Adolescence

7.11.2. Gender Issues in Adolescence

7.11.3. Do Parents Still Matter?

7.11.4. Is Adolescence a Period of Turmoil?

PSYCHOLOGY MATTERS: Using Psychology to Learn Psychology

7.12 Lecture Outline: Early Adulthood: Explorations, Autonomy, and

Lecture Launchers/Discussions Topics:

7.12.1. Intimacy Versus Isolation