Myers’ EXPLORING

PSYCHOLOGY (7th Ed)

Chapter 4
The Developing Person
James A. McCubbin, PhD
Clemson University

Worth Publishers
The Developing
Person
 Developmental Psychology
 study of physical, cognitive, and social changes
across the life span
Developmental Issues
 Nature versus Nurture
 How much is human development influenced by our
heredity (nature) and how much by our experience
(nurture)?
 Continuity versus Stages
 Is development gradual and continuous or does it proceed
through a sequence of separate stages?
 Stability versus Change
 Do our early personality traits persist through life, or do
we become different persons as we age?
Infancy and Childhood
 Maturation
 biological growth
processes that enable
orderly changes in
behavior
 relatively uninfluenced by
experience
 sets the course for
development while
experience adjusts it
At birth 3 months 15 months
Cortical Neurons
Infancy and Childhood
 Schema
 a concept or framework that organizes and interprets
information
 Cognition
 mental activities associated with thinking, knowing,
and remembering
 Sensorimotor Stage
 stage during which infants know the world mostly in
terms of their sensory impression and motor activities
Infancy and Childhood
 Object Permanence
 the awareness that things continue to exist even when not
perceived
 Preoperational Stage
 stage during which a child learns to use language but does not
yet comprehend mental operations of concrete logic
 Conservation
 the principle that properties such as mass, volume, and number
remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects
 part of Piaget’s concrete operational reasoning
 Piaget’s Theory of
Cognitive Development
Typical Age Description Developmental
Range of Stage Phenomena
Birth to nearly 2 years Sensorimotor •Object permanence
Experiencing the world through •Stranger anxiety
senses and actions (looking,
touching, mouthing)
About 2 to 6 years Preoperational •Pretend play
Representing things •Egocentrism
with words and images •Language development
but lacking logical reasoning
About 7 to 11 years Concrete operational •Conservation
Thinking logically about concrete •Mathematical
events; grasping concrete analogies transformations
and performing arithmetical operations
About 12 through Formal operational •Abstract logic
adulthood Abstract reasoning •Potential for
moral reasoning
Infants Can Think
 After sucking on one of these, babies looked
longer at the nipple they had felt in their mouth
Cognitive Development
 Baby Mathematics
 Shown a numerically impossible outcome, infants
stare longer (Wynn, 1992)
4. Possible outcome: Screen
drops, revealing one object.

1. Objects placed 2. Screen 3. One object

in case. comes up. is removed.

4. Possible outcome: Screen

drops, revealing two object.
Piaget’s Theory of
Cognitive Development
 Egocentrism
 the inability of the preoperational child to take another’s point of
view
 Theory of Mind
 people’s ideas about their own and others’ mental states
 Concrete Operational Stage
 stage during which children gain the mental operations that enable
them to think logically about concrete events
 Formal Operational Stage
 stage during which people begin to think logically about abstract
concepts
Social Development
 Stranger Anxiety
 fear of strangers that infants commonly
display
 beginning by about 8 months of age
 Attachment
 an emotional tie with another person
 shown in young children by seeking closeness
to the caregiver and showing distress on
separation
Social Development

 Harlow’s Surrogate
Mother Experiments
 Monkeys preferred
contact with the
comfortable cloth
mother, even while
feeding from the
nourishing wire
mother
Social Development

 Critical Period
 an optimal period shortly after birth when an
organism’s exposure to certain stimuli or
experiences produces proper development
 Imprinting
 the process by which certain animals form
attachments during a critical period very early
in life
Social Development

 Monkeys raised
by artificial
mothers were
terror-stricken
when placed in
strange situations
without their
surrogate
mothers
 Social Development
Percentage
of infants
 Groups of infants
100
who cried
when their
who had and had
mothers left
80 Day care not experienced
day care were
60 left by their
mothers in a
40
Home
unfamiliar room
20

0
3.5 5.5 7.5 9.5 11.5 13.5 20 29
Age in months
Social Development

 Basic Trust (Erik Erikson)

 a sense that the world is predictable and
trustworthy
 said to be formed during infancy by
appropriate experiences with responsive
caregivers
Social Development
 The correlation between authoritative parenting
and social competence in children

Parenting Child’s traits

style (e.g., self-reliant
(e.g.,authoritative) socially competent)

Harmonious marriage,
common genes, or
other third factor
Adolescence
 Adolescence
 the transition period from childhood to
adulthood
 extending from puberty to independence
 Puberty
 the period of sexual maturation
 when one first becomes capable of
reproduction
 Adolescence
 Primary Sex Characteristics
 body structures that make sexual reproduction possible
 ovaries--female
 testes--male
 external genitalia
 Secondary Sex Characteristics
 nonreproductive sexual characteristics
 female--enlarged breast, hips
 male--voice quality, body hair
 Menarche (meh-NAR-key)
 first menstrual period
 Kohlberg’s Moral
Ladder
Morality of abstract
Postconventional principles: to affirm
level agreed-upon rights and  As moral
personal ethical principles
development
Conventional Morality of law and
progresses, the
level social rules: to gain
approval or avoid
focus of concern
disapproval moves from the
self to the wider
Preconventional
social world
Morality of self-interest:
level to avoid punishment
or gain concrete rewards
 Erikson’s Stages of
Psychosocial Development
Approximate
age Stage Description of Task

Infancy Trust vs. mistrust If needs are dependably met, infants

(1st year) develop a sense of basic trust.

Toddler Autonomy vs. shame Toddlers learn to exercise will and

(2nd year) and doubt do things for themselves, or they
doubt their abilities.

Preschooler Initiative vs. guilt Preschoolers learn to initiate tasks

(3-5 years) and carry out plans, or they feel
guilty about efforts to be independent.

Elementary Competence vs. Children learn the pleasure of applying

(6 years- inferiority themselves to tasks, or they feel
puberty) inferior.
 Erikson’s Stages of
Psychosocial Development
Approximate
age Stage Description of Task

Adolescence Identity vs. role Teenagers work at refining a sense of self by

(teens into confusion testing roles and then integrating them to
20s) form a single identity, or they become
confused about who they are.

Young Adult Intimacy vs. Young adults struggle to form close relation-
(20’s to early isolation ships and to gain the capacity for intimate
40s) love, or they feel socially isolated.

Middle Adult Generativity vs. The middle-aged discover a sense of contri-

(40s to 60s) stagnation buting to the world, usually through family
and work, or they may feel a lack of purpose.

Late Adult Integrity vs. When reflecting on his or her life, the older
(late 60s and despair adult may feel a sense of satisfaction or
up) failure.
Social Development
 Identity
 one’s sense of self
 the adolescent’s task is to solidify a sense of
self by testing and integrating various roles
 Intimacy
 the ability to form close, loving relationships
 a primary developmental task in late
adolescence and early adulthood
Social Development
 The changing parent-child relationship
Percent with 100%
positive, warm
interaction
with parents 80

60

40

20

0 2 to 4 5 to 8 9 to 11
Ages of child in years
Adulthood--Cognitive
Changes
100
 Recalling new
Older age groups have
Percent
of names
90 poorer performance names introduced
recalled 80 once, twice or
After three
70 introductions three times is
60 easier for
50
After two younger adults
40 introductions than for older
30
20
ones (Crook &
After one
10 introductions West, 1990).
0
18 40 50 60 70
Age group
 Adulthood--Cognitive
Changes
Number  In a study by
Of words 24
remembered Schonfield &
20 Robertson (1966),
Number of words the ability to recall
16 recognized is
stable with age new information
12 declined during
early and middle
8 Number of words adulthood, but the
recalled declines ability to recognize
4 with age
new information did
0 not.
20 30 40 50 60 70
Age in years
Adulthood
 Crystallized Intelligence
 one’s accumulated knowledge and verbal skills
 tends to increase with age
 Fluid Intelligence
 one’s ability to reason speedily and abstractly
 tends to decrease during late adulthood
 Social Clock
 the culturally preferred timing of social events such as
marriage, parenthood, and retirement
Adulthood
Intelligence
(IQ) score
 Verbal intelligence
Verbal scores are
105
stable with age scores hold steady
100 with age, while
95 nonverbal
90 intelligence scores
85
Nonverbal scores
decline with age
decline (adapted
80 from Kaufman &
75
20 25 35 45 55 65 70 others, 1989).
Verbal scores Age group
Nonverbal scores
Adulthood
 Early-forties midlife crisis?
Emotional
instability
24%
No early 40s
emotional crisis
Females
16

8
Males

0
33 36 39 42 45 48 51 54
Age in Years
Adulthood
 Multinational
Percentage 80
“satisfied” surveys show that
with life
60 age differences in
as a whole
life satisfaction
40 are trivial (Ingle
hart, 1990).
20

0
15 25 35 45 55 65+

Age group