Development

• Lifespan development is an area of psychology that involves studying changes that occur throughout our lifetime
• Lifespan development (specifically) is how physical, cognitive, social, and emotional changes affect our thoughts, feelings behaviours over time.
• Physical development involves growth and changes in the body and brain, the senses, motor skills, and health and wellness.
• Cognitive development involves learning, attention, memory, language, thinking, reasoning, and creativity.
• Social development is about children and young people learning the values, knowledge and skills that enable them to relate to others.
• Emotional development involves learning what feelings and emotions are, understanding how and why they occur, recognising your own feelings and those of others, and developing effective ways for managing those feelings.
• Developmental theories explain why we behave as we do at different stages of life.
• Prenatal period: conception to birth
• Infancy: 0 to 2 years old
• childhood: 3 to 12 years old.
• adolescence: 12 to 19 years old.
• young adulthood: 20 to 40 years old
• middle adulthood: 40 to 65 years old
• late adulthood: over 65 years old
• Nature refers to how genetics influence an individual's personality, whereas nurture refers to how their environment (including relationships and experiences) impacts their development.
• •Two views of human development 1. stage theories: there are distinct phases to intellectual and personality development 2. continuity: development is continuous
• •Genotype—underlying genetic makeup
• •Phenotype—traits that are expressed
• •Dominant genes—will always be expressed if present
• •Recessive genes—will not be expressed in the presence of dominant genes
• •Prenatal environment can have lifetime influence on health and intellectual ability
• •Conception—when a sperm penetrates the ovum
• •Zygote—a fertilized egg
• •Germinal period—first two weeks after conception
• •Embryonic period—weeks three througheight after conception
• •Fetal period—two months after conceptionuntil birth
• Influences on Prenatal Development

  1. Nutrition 2. Anxiety 3. Mother’s general health 4. Maternal age 5. Teratogens—any agents that causebirth defects 6. Disease
• •Infants are born with immature visual system
• •Rooting—turning the head and opening the mouth in the direction of a touch on the cheek
• •Sucking—sucking rhythmically in response to oral stimulation
• •Grasping—curling the fingers around an object
• •Temperament--inborn predisposition to consistently behave and react in a certain way
• •Attachment-- emotional bond between infant and caregiver
• •Parents who are consistently warm, responsive, and sensitive to the infant’s needs usually have infants who are securely attached
• •Parents who are neglectful, inconsistent, or insensitive to infant’s needs usually have infants who are insecurely attached
• •Noam Chomsky asserts that every child is born with a biological predisposition to learn language  “universal grammar”
• •Motherese or infant directed speech--style of speech used by adults (mostly parents) in all cultures to talk to babies and children
• •Comprehension vocabulary--words that the infant or child understands
• •Production vocabulary--words that the infant or child understands and can speak
• •Gender—cultural, social, and psychological meanings associated with masculinity or femininity