Developmental Psychology

• Paul B. Baltes's 7 key principles of a Life-Span Developmental Approach


  • Development is lifelong
  • Development is multidimensional
  • Development is multidirectional
  • Relative influence of biology and culture shift over the life span
  • Development involves changing resource allocations
  • Development is influenced by the Historical and cultural context
• Plasticity


  Range of modifiability of performance.
• sensitive periods


  Times in development when a person is particularly open to certain kinds of experiences.
• Contrast critical and sensitive periods

  -          Sensitive periods are special time-windows in early development where experience has a profound effect on the brain, while critical periods are a special case wherein experience is absolutely required at fixed developmental periods for subsequent normal function.
• Critical Period


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


  Characteristic of an unusual event that happens to a particular person or a typical event that happens at an unusual time of life.
• 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
• ethnic gloss


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


  A group united by ancestry, race, religion, language, and/or national origins, which contribute to a sense of shared identity.
• 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.
• risk factors


  Conditions that increase the likelihood of a negative developmental outcome.
• socioeconomic status (SES)


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


  Multigenerational kinship network of parents, children, and other relatives, sometimes living together in an extended-family household
• nuclear family


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


  Unfolding of a natural sequence of physical and behavioral changes.
• environment 


  Totality of nonhereditary, or experiential, influences on development.
• Hereditary 


  Inborn traits or characteristics inherited from the biological parents.
• individual differences


  Differences in characteristics, influences, or developmental outcomes.
• social construction


  A concept or practice that may appear natural and obvious to those who accept it, but that in reality is an invention of a particular culture or society.
• psychosocial development 


  Pattern of change in emotions, personality, and social relationships.
• cognitive development 


  Patterns of change in mental abilities, such as learning, attention, memory, language, thinking, reasoning, and creativity.
• Developmental scientists study three major domains:

  Physical, cognitive, and psychosocial
• Physical Development


  Growth of body and brain, including patterns of change in sensory capacities, motor skills, and health.
• Developmental scientists 


  Study processes of change and stability in all domains, or aspects, of development and throughout all periods of the life span.
• Human development goals evolved to include

  Description, explanation, prediction, and intervention
• life-span development


  Concept of human development as a lifelong process, which can be studied scientifically.
• human development


  Scientific study of processes of change and stability throughout the human life span.
• Identify four goals of the scientific study of human development?

  Description, Explanation, Prediction, and Intervention