Lifespan Psychology

• Lifespan psychology

  The study of continuity and change throughout the lifespan
• Physical development

  • Fine motor skills
  • Gross motor skills
• Fine motor skills

  Skills involving the small muscle movements of the body
• Fine motor skills

  • Writing with a pen, uses small muscles in the hand
• Gross motor skills

  Skills involving the large muscle movements
• Gross motor skills

  • Walking, uses large muscles in legs
• Cognitive development

  Refers to changes in ability to think and reason, includes changes in languages
• Verbal fluency

  Ability to produce words that are retrieved from memory
• Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon

  Individual knows what they would like to say but unable to recall the specific word required
• Social and emotional development (psychosocial development)

  Encompasses changes in a person's view of themselves, emotions, their relationships with others
• Self-awareness

  Ability for an individual to observe their thoughts, emotions, and behaviours
• Self-concept


  View of an individual about their beliefs, likes & dislikes, strengths/weaknesses
• Brain plasticity

  Ability of neural connections to grow and reorganise
• Developmental plasticity

  Ability of neural connections in the brain to reorganise in response to sensory input from environment
• Developmental plasticity

  • Baby practising a motor skill, such as turning the wheels of a toy truck
• Adaptive plasticity

  Ability of neural connections in brain to recognise in response to learning new information, or to compensate for lost functions and advantage of remaining functions
• Adaptive plasticity

  • Stroke patient suffering from Broca's aphasia due to damage to Broca's area in the left frontal lobe
• Stages of plasticity during infancy

  1. Proliferation

  2. Migration

  3. Circuit formation

  4. Synaptic pruning

  5. Myelination
• Proliferation

  Growth and division of cells, including neurons, that leads to the increase in total cell number
• Most neurons are already formed when the infant is born, some neurons are still created during infancy
• Migration


  Newly generated neurons move throughout the brain until reaching their final position, allowing for connections between neurons (neural circuits) to be made
• Migration of neurons ends around the age of five months
• Circuit formation

  After neurons migrate, they can form neural circuits whereby neurons send electrochemical messages between each other
• During infancy, neural circuits develop rapidly, especially in the primary sensory cortex and primary visual cortex
• Synaptic pruning


  Infants are born with more neurons than required, neurons that do not form active neural connections with other neurons die
• Synaptic pruning increases efficiency of the nervous system by allowing remaining neural connections to strengthen and grow in completely
• Myelination

  Contributes to the dramatic brain growth typical in infants, myelin starts growing over the axons of neurons, insulating neural connections, and allowing for faster and more efficient nerve impulse travel throughout the brain
• Role of brain plasticity in adolescence

  1. Circuit formation continues

  2. Synaptic pruning continues

  3. Loss of grey matter progresses from back to front of brain

  4. Executive functions controlled by prefrontal cortex develop
• Circuit formation continues during childhood and by approx. age eleven in females and twelve in males (volume of grey matter is at its maximum)
• Synaptic pruning continues throughout adolescence and into early adulthood, increasing brain efficiency and specialisation of brain areas in response to sensory experiences
• Loss of grey matter because of synaptic pruning progresses from the back to the front of the brain, with the pre-frontal cortex being the last to structurally change
• Young children can perform goal-directed behaviour through planning, attention and impulse control, these executive functions controlled by the pre-frontal cortex are not able to be consistently used until brain plasticity occurs during adolescence
• Cerebellum


  Continues to grow in volume during adolescence, reaches total volume at approx. 12 years of age in females, and fifteen in males
• Activity in the cerebellum linked to decision-making, reward learning, motivation, emotional control, and processing mood
• Teenagers who are yet to have a fully grown cerebellum typically display impulsive decision-making and some difficulties regulating their emotions
• Corpus callosum


  Thickness increases during adolescence through myelination, various regions grow at different rates, hormonal surges during adolescence may account for these growth patterns
• Neutral networks within the corpus callosum strengthen = stronger connection between the two hemispheres, behavioural and emotional regulation continue to improve
• Amygdala


  Collection of nuclei deep within each temporal lobe that play a role in emotional response and the immediate behavioural reactions as a response to emotion
• Amygdala grows in volume, partly due to pubertal changes
• In adults, pre-frontal cortex regulates the amygdala. In adolescence, the prefrontal cortex is still developing, so the volatile amygdala guides the rational and logical thinking