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• The study of human development is the scientific study of processes of change and stability throughout the human lifespan
• Developmental scientists look at ways in which people change from conception through maturity as well as at characteristics that remain fairly stable

  
• The study of human development impacts child rearing, education, health, and social policy
• Human development


  Development included more than infancy and childhood, and can be either positive or negative. Parenthood, maternal employment, and marital satisfaction are now also studied as part of developmental psychology
• Goals of human developmental psychology

  • Describe
  • Explain
  • Predict
  • Intervene/Modify/Control
• Domains of development


  • Physical
  • Cognitive
  • Psychosocial
• The domains of development are intricately interconnected and each aspect affects the others
• Periods of the lifespan

  • Prenatal Period (conception to birth)
  • Infancy and Toddlerhood (birth to age 3)
  • Early Childhood (ages 3 to 6)
  • Middle Childhood (ages 6 to 11)
  • Adolescence (ages 11 to about 20)
  • Emerging and Young Adulthood (ages 20 to 40)
  • Middle Adulthood (ages 40 to 65)
  • Late Adulthood (age 65 and over)

  
• Although individual differences exist, developmentalists suggest that certain basic needs must be met and certain tasks mastered for typical development to occur
• Heredity


  Inborn traits or characteristics inherited from the biological parents
• Environment


  Totality of nonhereditary, or experiential, influences on development
• Maturation


  Unfolding of a natural sequence of physical and behavioral changes
• Nuclear family


  Two-generational kinship, economic, and household unit consisting of one or two parents and their biological children, adopted children, or stepchildren
• Extended family


  Multigenerational kinship network of parents, children, and other relatives, sometimes living together in an extended-family household
• Socioeconomic status (SES)


  Combination of economic and social factors describing an individual or family, including income, education, and occupation
• Risk factors


  Conditions that increase the likelihood of a negative developmental outcome
• Culture


  A society's or group's total way of life, including customs, traditions, beliefs, values, language, and physical products—all learned behavior, passed on from parents to children
• Ethnic group


  A group united by ancestry, race, religion, language, or national origins, which contribute to a sense of shared identity
• Ethnic gloss


  Overgeneralization about an ethnic or cultural group that obscures differences within the group
• Historical generation


  A group of people strongly influenced by a major historical event during their formative period
• Cohort


  A group of people born at about the same time
• Normative


  Characteristic of an event that occurs in a similar way for most people in a group (age-graded and history-graded)
• Nonnormative


  Characteristic of an unusual event that happens to a particular person or a typical event that happens at an unusual time of life
• Critical period


  Specific time when a given event or its absence has a specific impact on development
• Plasticity


  Range of modifiability of performance
• Sensitive periods


  Times in development when a person is particularly open to certain kinds of experiences
• Imprinting


  Instinctive form of learning in which, during a critical period in early development, a young animal forms an attachment to the first moving object it sees, usually the mother
• Principles of the life-span developmental approach

  • Development is lifelong
  • Development is multidimensional
  • Development involves changing resource allocations
  • Development shows plasticity
  • Development is multidirectional
  • Relative influences of biology and culture shift over the life span
  • Development is influenced by the historical and cultural context