LIFE SPAN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

MEANING OF DEVELOPMENT:

Development psychology is a branch of psychology that studies human development or changes.

Hurlock- "Development refers to a progressive series of changes in an orderly and coherent pattern. It may be defined as enhancing and expanding capacities to provide greater facility for functioning."

Balts- "Development is the function of different interactive forces."

Hence during development, changes are in a specific sequence, coherent (related to each other), and progressive (in a forward direction, i.e. from childhood to old age).

Development can be defined as systematic changes and continuities in the individual that occur between conception and death, or from "womb to Tomb."

Developmental psychology: It is the systematic study of physical, emotional, cognitive, personality, habitual, or social changes that occur over a lifespan in a person.

this means that development concentrates on the changes in memory and social interaction throughout the entire lifespan.

Life span development psychology is a field of psychology that helps us understand and explain the predictable and common changes and differences in human behavior that characterize different facets of life.

These changes can be either inter-individual (differences among people of different ages and life circumstances) or intra-individual (differences in changes occurring in a person's life like thoughts, emotions, behavior, etc.).

LSPD is concerned with studying changes in memory and social interaction throughout an entire lifespan.

2 ways of studying development-

1. Limit biography to the behaviors and relevant events within a specific period or age(cross-section), or

2. Study of a specific age group or in-depth study of a certain behavior over time(longitudinal).

TYPES OF DEVELOPMENT:

Development entails many changes like physical, cognitive, and psychosocial changes.

Physical development includes changes in the body and its organs like aging, organ development, signs of aging, changes in motor ability, etc.

Cognitive development involves changes in perception, language, learning, memory, problem-solving, and other mental processes.

Psychosocial development refers to changes in personal and interpersonal aspects of development like motives, emotions, personality traits, interpersonal skills, relationships, and roles played in family and society.

All these three types of development are interconnected. For example, a baby learning to crawl now has new opportunities to develop her mind by exploring kitchen cabinets and to hone her social skills by trailing her parents from room to room.

NATURE OF CHANGES: Changes can also be either the appearance/acquisition of new symptoms or the disappearance of old symptoms.

Biological aging is the deterioration of organisms, including humans, that leads to inevitable death. Biologically speaking, development involves growth in early life, stability in early and middle adulthood, and decline associated with now accumulated effects of aging in later life.

However, we cannot associate aging with only gains or losses. For example, as children age, they gain many cognitive abilities but may lose their self-esteem and become prone to depression (Robins et Al. 2002), while people above the age of 60 may have lost lots of their senses and motor abilities. Still, they do much better on vocabulary tests as compared to adults between the ages of 18-30 (Verhaeghen 2003).

Decline is always thought to be the central theme of aging, yet, for many, old age is a time of ripening, of becoming most ourselves. (Margaret 2009).

In short, development involves gains, losses, neutral changes, and continuities in each phase of the lifespan.

Age grades, age norms, social cycle, and meaning of age differ from culture to culture and also among different races, ethnicities, traditions, and socio-economic statuses.

According to Paul blates- development across lifespan involves both games and losses with age certain capabilities become more refined and sophisticated while others involving loss of skill and capacity for exampal vocabulary trends to grow throughout childhood and continuous through most of adulthood but physical abilities like reaction time improves until middle adulthood and after that begins to decline (baltes 2003).

Is development continuous?

This depends on how we collect data. We understand development in a dialectical order i.e. development is not a straightforward or linear process but one that involves the interplay of both continuity and discontinuity. CHANGE OR DEVELOPMENT IS NOT A SUDDEN OR GRADUAL PROCESS. There is some underlying structure or order to change and development, which means they follow certain patterns or principles. Our understanding of the world and our ability to make informed decisions about change and development are influenced by the way we collect and analyze data.

For example, physical development happens in spurts, from early infancy, children grow at a discontinuous but predictable rate till the age of 6 when it slows down and then another growth spurt occurs at the age of 10.

Continuity-discontinuity issue:

Continuity issue views change or development as gradual or stable. Children become more skillful in thinking, talking, or acting as much as the same way as they get taller.

Discontinuity views development as more abrupt. a succession of changes that produce different behaviors in different age-specific life periods are called stages. Biological changes provide the potential for these changes.

Stage psychologists view development as discontinuous. growth or development is described as occurring in stages that are qualitatively different from one another.

As physical development, there may be periods of little change followed by periods of rapid and dramatic change. Individuals may vary in the rate at which they develop, and the order of development from one stage to another. Development should be understood in terms of both continuous and discontinuous process

The emergence of new changes, and the split of the whole in parts, all define discontinu whereas gradually organized data shows continuity or the genetic principle. Development is a dialectical process and depends on how we collect data.

6 to 11 age grade is continuous

6 to 7, 8 to 9, 11 to 10, 10 to 11 age grades are discontinuous

(Separate is continuous and the average is discontinuous.)

It depends on the theoretical orientation technique of data collection and the change in type

Werner and langer view- change in 1) quantity and 2) quality

Werner- Orthogenetic Stage- One of the most well-known developmental theories that align with the orthogenetic perspective is Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Piaget proposed that children progress through a series of stages, each marked by distinct cognitive abilities and understanding of the world. His theory emphasizes the idea of orderly progression and innate developmental patterns.

Overall, the term "orthogenetic" in developmental psychology signifies a perspective that underscores the idea of development as an organized, progressive, and continuous process with inherent patterns and stages.

According to these orthogenetic principles, development is characterized by changes that move individuals toward greater integration. Integration refers to the idea that individuals become more unified and coordinated in their functioning as they develop.

The term "complementary differentiation" suggests that while individuals become more integrated, they also become more specialized or differentiated in certain aspects. In other words, they develop unique skills, characteristics, or roles that complement their overall integration. This can be thought of as individuals becoming both more unified and more specialized as they grow and develop. Individuals not only change within themselves but also in how they relate and adapt to the world around them. Development is influenced by and has an impact on their interactions with their environment.

Development involves 2 types of changes-

Intra-individual changes- two or more qualities within a person(these don't all develop at the same rate).

Inter-individual changes- qualities between two different people (these develop at different rates as well).

Balts- gave two types of changes:

Normative changes - 1) Age-graded changes- what kind of development should happen at what age?

2) History-graded changes- environmental conditions like wars, floods, etc. Affecting a person's development.

Non-normative changes- These are an individual's genetic differences that are not affected by past experiences.

Changes can also be qualitative or quantitative.

2 laws of development

1. Cephalacaudal law - It states that development moves from head to toe/ top to bottom.

2. Proxymodistal law- development moves from central to peripheral. E.g.. First-hand movements then fingers.

Purpose of studying developmental psychology -

description,

Explanation,

Prediction,

Intervention (control).

Lifespan perspective: It is a view that development occurs throughout a life as a result of changing interaction of physical, biological, social, historical, cultural, and psychological influences.

It takes into consideration, all changes that occur over a period of time as a result of many interacting factors. Many behaviors develop at different times and rates and influence changes that may occur later in life. The view believes that changes occur throughout life and asserts that behavior can be corrected in the adult years.

Characteristics of Lifespan Perspective

1. Development represents the study of changes in behavior over a whole life span.

2. Development is affected by many interacting factors.

3. Changes occur throughout the different phases of a

4. The impact of changes is cumulative, earlier events affect later development.

5. Development occurs within the contexts and cultures.

Since development is seen as the cumulative effect of many different changes occurring at different times, lifespan research often involves the study of individuals over long periods of time.

Characteristics of life span human development - by Balts

1. Life-long development- from womb to tomb

2. Multidimensional- intellectual, emotional, physical, etc all development. They are different fields in which development happens but not necessarily at the same rate.

3. Multidirectional- In some aspects there is increase, decrease, stay linear, etc. that is development happens in many directions

4. Plasticity- behavior may be affected by many factors (able to change shape due to various reasons)

5. Historical embeddedness- Changes/development happens due to prehistoric factors.

6. Multidisciplinary- studies various fields like neurology, biology, and anthropology.

7. Contextualism- biography, country, social, political background, and geology all affect development

8. Predictable- development at different age grades is predictable looking at the past of the person, family history, and gender norms.

Contextual View: The view that development or change must be understood in terms of the total setting or context in which it occurs (Sameroff, 1983). Here development is seen as a dynamic process where individuals and the environment continuously interact and affect each other. thus behavior can not be interpreted out of its context. Some of the popular contexts are- biological, family, social, cultural, historical, economic, intellectual, etc.

Culture represents the shared values and beliefs, knowledge, and experience of a group of people that are passed on through the language and customs of the people living within the culture. human development cannot be studied in a cultural vacuum because it is guided by cultural values, norms, and expectations.