Unit 9:

Developmental
Psychology

PowerPoint®
Presentation
by Jim Foley

1
© 2013 Worth Publishers
 What is developmental psychology?
• Examines how people are continually developing –
physically, cognitively & socially – from infancy through
old age.
• Much of the research focuses on 3 major issues:
– Nature & Nurture: How do genetic inheritance (nature) &
experience (nurture) influence our development?
– Continuity & Stages: Is development a gradual, continuous
process like riding an escalator, or does it proceed through a
sequence of separate stages, like climbing rungs on a ladder?
– Stability & Change: Do our early personality traits persist
through life, or do we become different persons as we age?
 Topics in This Chapter

Issues to keep in mind:

 nature and nurture
 continuity and stages
 stability and change
Stages/ages covered:
 from conception to old
age (womb to the tomb)
Types of development:
 physical
 cognitive
 social/emotional
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 Prenatal Development & The Newborn
• A woman’s ovary releases a mature egg – a cell roughly the
size of a period @ the end of sentence in text; Females are
born with all the immature eggs she’ll ever have.
• A man begins producing sperm @ puberty & although the
production will slow with age, he continues to make sperm
the rest of his life.
• 200 million deposited sperm race upstream, approaching a
cell 85,000x their own size; The relatively few sperm that
reach the egg release digestive enzyme that eats away @
egg’s protective coating.
• As soon as one sperm begins to penetrate & is welcomed in,
the egg’s surface blocks out the others
• Before ½ a day elapses, the egg nucleus & sperm nucleus
fuse…the two have become one.
 The Zygote Stage: First 10 to 14 Days
Prenatal After the nuclei of the egg and
sperm fuse, the cell divides in 2, 4, 8,
Development 16, 100, 1000…
Milestone of the zygote stage: cells
begin to differentiate into specialized
locations and structures
Implantation: The Embyro, 2 to 8 weeks
This stage begins with the multicellular
cluster that implants in the uterine wall.
Milestone of the implantation stage:
differentiated cells develop into organs
and bones
Fetus, 9 weeks to birth
Latin for “offspring” or “young one” Embryo
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Fetal Life: The Dangers

Dangers
• Placenta screens out many
harmful substances but some
slip by
• Teratogens (“monster
makers”) are substances such
as viruses and chemicals that
can damage the developing
embryo or fetus.
• Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)
refers to cognitive, behavioral,
and body/brain structure
abnormalities caused by
exposure to alcohol in the
fetal stage.
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Fetal life: Responding to Sounds

 Fetuses in the womb can respond to

sounds.
 Fetuses can learn to recognize and
adapt to sounds that they previously
heard only in the womb.
 Fetuses can habituate to annoying
sounds, becoming less agitated with
repeated exposure.

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After the Fetal Stage the baby is born!

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 The
Competent
Inborn Skills
Reflexes are responses that are
Newborn inborn and do not have to be learned.
Newborns have reflexes to ensure
that they will be fed.
The rooting reflex--when
something touches a newborn’s
cheek, the infant turns toward that
side with an open mouth.
The sucking reflex can be triggered
by a fingertip.
Crying when hungry is the
newborn talent of using just the
right sounds to motivate parents to
end the noise and feed the baby.
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 More Inborn Abilities
 Newborns (one hour old!) will look twice as long at the
image on the left.
 What can we conclude from this behavior?

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Brain Development:
Building and Connecting Neurons
 In the womb, the number of neurons grows by about 750,000 new
cells per minute in the middle trimester.
 Beginning at birth, the connections among neurons proliferate. As we
learn, we form more branches and more neural networks.
 In infancy, the growth in neural connections takes place initially in the
less complex parts of the brain (the brainstem and limbic system), as
well as the motor and sensory strips.
 This enables body functions and basic survival skills.
 In early childhood, neural connections proliferate in the association
areas.
 This enables advancements in controlling attention and behavior
(frontal lobes) and also in thinking, memory, and language.

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Motor Development
 Maturation takes place in the body and cerebellum
enabling the sequence below.
 Physical training generally cannot change the timing.

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Baby Memory
Infantile Amnesia
 In infancy, the brain forms memories
so differently from the episodic
memory of adulthood that most
people cannot really recall memories
from the first three years of life.
 A birthday party when turning three
might be a person’s first memory.

Learning Skills
 Infants can learn skills (procedural
memories).
 This three month old can learn, and
recall a month later, that specific foot
movements move specific mobiles.
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Cognitive
Development
Cognition refers to the mental
activities that help us function,
including:
problem-solving.
figuring out how the world
works.
developing models and
concepts.
storing and retrieving
knowledge.
understanding and using
language.
using self-talk and inner
thoughts.
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Cognitive Development:
Jean Piaget (1896-1980)
 We don’t start out being able to think like adults.
 Jean Piaget studied the errors in cognition made by
children in order to understand in what ways they think
differently than adults.
The error below is an inability to understand scale
(relative size).

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Jean Piaget and Cognitive Development:
Schemas
 An infant’s mind works hard to make sense of our
experiences in the world.
 An early tool to organize those experiences is a schema,
a mental container we build to hold our experiences.
 Schemas can take the form of images, models, and/or
concepts.
This child has formed a schema called “COW” which he
uses to think about animals of a certain shape and size.
“Cow!” “Cow!”

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 Jean Piaget and Cognitive
Development:
Assimilation and Accommodation
How can this girl use her “dog”
schema when encountering a cat?

 She can assimilate the experience into her schema by

referring to the cat as a “dog”
or
 she can accommodate her animal schema by separating the
cat, and even different types of dogs, into separate 18
schemas.
Jean Piaget’s Stages of
Cognitive Development

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 Sensorimotor Stage
(From Birth to Age 2)
In the sensorimotor stage, children
explore by looking, hearing,
touching, mouthing, and grasping.
Cool cognitive
trick learned at 6
to 8 months,
coming up next:
object
permanence.

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 Hmm, a bear, should
There’s a game I’ve I put it in my mouth?
learned to play all
by myself:
peekaboo!

Object
Permanence
Through games like
“peekaboo,” kids learn
object permanence--
the idea that objects
exist even when they
can’t be seen.

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22
 Can Children Think Abstractly?

Jean Piaget felt that kids in the

sensorimotor stage did not think
abstractly.
Yet there is some evidence that kids in
this stage can notice violations in
physics (such as gravity).
Does that mean babies are doing
physics?

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Is This Math?
If so, kids in the “sensorimotor” stage do math.
Babies stare longer and with surprise
when numbers don’t make sense.
Is this math? Was Jean Piaget wrong?

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What can kids do in the preoperational stage?
1. Represent their
schema, and even
some feelings, with
words and images.
2. Use visual models
to represent other
places, and perform
pretend play.
3. Picture other points
of view, replacing
egocentrism with
theory of mind.
4. Use intuition, but
not logic and
abstraction yet.
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Egocentrism:
“I am the World.”
What mistake is the boy
making?
Yes.
Do you Eleanor.
have a
Sister?

Does
Eleanor No.
have a
brother?

How does this relate to

our definition of
egocentrism?
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• Egocentrism: child has difficulty perceiving things
from another’s point of view
– collective monologues: kids appear to be talking to each
other, but they’re really talking about 2 completely diff.
objects.
– animism: kids believe that nature is alive & controllable
by them or parents; often believe natural things
(trees/rocks) have feelings.
– artificialism: kids believe natural phenomena are
created by people, for instance, that mountains were
created by someone piling up a bunch of dirt.
*Use your finger to trace a capital
letter E on your forehead………..

Which way did you draw it…so others could see it? Or did the E
face you?

-Galinsky, et.al., 2006)

 Maturing beyond Egocentrism:
Developing a “Theory of Mind”
Theory of
mind refers to
the ability to
understand
that others
have their own
thoughts and
perspective.

With a theory of
mind, you can
picture that Sally
will have the wrong
idea about where
the ball is. 29
Examples of Operations that
Preoperational Children Cannot Do…Yet
Conservation refers to the ability to understand that a
quantity is conserved (does not change) even when it is
arranged in a different shape.

Which row
has more
mice?
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 The Concrete
Operational Stage
 begins at ages 6-7 (first grade) to age 11
 children now grasp conservation and
other concrete transformations
 they also understand simple
mathematical transformations the
reversibility of operations (reversing
3 + 7 = 10 to figure out that 10 - 7 = 3).

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Formal Operational Stage (Age 11 +)
Concrete operations Includes arithmetic
include analogies such transformations:
as “My brain is like a
computer.” if 4 + 8 = 12, 12 – 4 = ?

Formal operations
includes allegorical Includes algebra:
thinking such as “People if x = 3y and x – 2y = 4,
who live in glass houses
shouldn’t throw stones” what is x?
(understanding that this is
a comment on hypocrisy).

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Reassessment of Jean Piaget’s Theory
Using Models:
Symbolic Thinking? Although Jean Piaget’s
Three-year-olds can use a tiny observation and stage theory
model of a room as a map, are useful, today’s researchers
helping them to picture the believe:
location of objects in a full-
sized room. 1.development is a continuous
Does this 3-year-old ability process.
mean that Piaget was wrong?
Do kids use symbolic thought 2.children show some mental
much earlier than he abilities and operations at an
suggested? earlier age than Piaget thought.
3.formal logic is a smaller part
of cognition, even for adults,
than Piaget believed.
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Lev Vygotsky: Alternative to Jean Piaget
 Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934)
studied kids too, but focused on
how they learn in the context of
social communication.
 Principle: children learn thinking
skills by internalizing language
from others and developing
inner speech: “Put the big blocks
on the bottom, not the top…”
 Vygotsky saw development as
building on a scaffold of
mentoring, language, and
cognitive support from parents
and others.
 https://www.youtube.com/watc
h?v=InzmZtHuZPY

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 Social Development:
Attachment
Attachment refers to an emotional tie to another person.
In children, attachment can appear as a desire for physical closeness to a caregiver.

Origins of Attachment
Experiments with monkeys
suggest that attachment is
based on physical affection
and comfortable body
contact, and not based on
being rewarded with food.

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– Familiarity: that with which we are used to…
• Critical Period: optimal period shortly after birth when an
organism’s exposure to certain stimuli or experiences
produces proper development; (language, faces, voices)
• Imprinting: Konrad Lorenz (1937) – process by which certain
animals form attachments during critical period very early in
life; chicks will follow the 1st moving object they see believing
it to be their mother & once formed this attachment is
difficult to reverse.
– Implications for human children: like to read the same books, rewatch
the same movies, reenact family traditions, eat familiar foods b/c
familiarity is a safety signal.
Attachment Variation:
Styles of Dealing with Separation
The degree and style of parent-child attachment has
been tested by Mary Ainsworth in the “strange
situations” test. In this test, a child is observed as: Reactions to Separation and
1.a mother and infant child are alone in an unfamiliar
(“strange”) room; the child explores the room as the Reunion
mother just sits.
2.a stranger enters the room, talks to the mother, and Secure attachment: most
approaches the child; the mother leaves the room.
3.After a few moments, the mother returns. children (60 percent) feel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s608077NtNI distress when mother leaves,
and seek contact with her when
she returns
Insecure attachment (anxious
style): clinging to mother, less
likely to explore environment,
and may get loudly upset with
mother’s departure and remain
upset when she returns
Insecure attachment (avoidant
style): seeming indifferent to
mother’s departure and return 38
 What causes these different attachment styles:
nature or nurture?

Is the “strange situations” Is the behavior a reaction to the way

behavior mainly a function of the parents have interacted with the
the child’s inborn child previously? If so, is that caused
temperament? by the parenting behavior?
 Temperament refers to a  Mary Ainsworth believed that
person’s characteristic style sensitive, responsive, calm
and intensity of emotional parenting is correlated with the
reactivity. secure attachment style.
 Some infants have an “easy”  Monkeys with unresponsive
temperament; they are artificial mothers showed anxious
happy, relaxed, and calm, insecure attachment.
with predictable rhythms of
needing to eat and sleep.  Training in sensitive responding
 Some infants seem to be for parents of temperamentally-
“difficult”; they are irritable, difficult children led to doubled
with unpredictable needs rates of secure attachment.
and behavior, and intense
reactions. 39
 Fathers
Count
Too
 Many studies of the
impact of parenting have
focused on mothers.
 Correlational studies show
a strong relationship
between paternal (father)
involvement in parenting
and the child’s academic
success, health, and
overall well-being.

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 Attachment Styles…
not just about bonding with parents
 Erik Erikson’s concept of basic trust
resembles the concept of attachment, but
extends beyond the family into our feeling
of whether the world is predictable and
trustworthy. Are basic trust and attachment
 Attachment style may be relevant to our
ability to manage and enjoy adult styles determined in childhood?
relationships. It may even be relevant to
our motivations to achieve or to avoid Erik Erikson believed that basic
risks.
trust is established by relationships
with early caregivers.
Are trust and attachment styles:
 set by genetics?
 formed by early experiences
with parents?
 reshaped by new relationship
experiences?

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Deprivation of Attachment
 If children live without safe,
nurturing, affectionate
caretaking, they may still be
resilient, that is bounce back,
attach, and succeed.
 However, if the child
experiences severe, prolonged
deprivation or abuse, he or she
may:
 have difficulty forming
attachments.
 have increased anxiety and
depression.
 have lowered intelligence.
 show increased aggression.
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 Childhood:
Self-Concept
 A major task of infancy
may be to form healthy
attachments.
 A major task of childhood
may be to form a healthy
self-concept: a stable and
positive understanding of
identity.
 By age 8-10, a child moves
from “that’s me in the
mirror” to “I have skills,
preferences, and goals”;
this prepares the child for
confident success.

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 Childhood:
Hypothetical Parenting Styles
Style Response to Child’s Behavior
Authoritarian Parents impose rules “because I said so”
“Too Hard” and expect obedience.
Permissive Parents submit to kids’ desires, not enforcing
“Too Soft” limits or standards for child behavior.
Parents enforce rules, limits, and standards
Authoritative
but also explain, discuss, listen, and express
“Just Right”
respect for child’s ideas and wishes.
What type of parenting styles did your parents use? When/If you are a
parent, what type of parenting style do you think you would use?
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Outcomes with Parenting Styles
 Authoritative parenting,
more than the other two
styles, seems to be
associated with:
 high self-reliance.
 high social
competence.
 high self-esteem.
 low aggression.
 But are these a result of
parenting style, or are
parents responding to a
child’s temperament? Or
are both a function of
culture ? Or genes?
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 Physical Development
Puberty is the time of sexual maturation
(becoming physically able to reproduce).
During puberty, increased sex hormones lead to:
primary and secondary sex characteristics.
some changes in mood and behavior.
Height changes are an early sign of puberty.
Because girls begin puberty sooner than boys,
girls briefly overtake boys in height.

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Adolescent Brain Development
 During puberty, the brain Frontal Lobes are Last to
stops automatically adding Rewire
new connections, and
becomes more efficient by The emotional limbic system
“rewiring.” gets wired for puberty before
 “pruning” away the the frontal judgment centers
connections not being of the brain get wired for
used adulthood.
 coating the well-used As a result, adolescents may
connections in myelin, in understand risks and
order to speed up nerve consequences, but give
conduction more weight to potential
 This makes early thrills and rewards.
adolescence a crucial time Teens have developed a mental
to learn as much as you can! accelerator, but are not in
the habit of using the brakes.
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Adolescent Cognitive Development
According to Jean Piaget,
adolescents are in the formal
operational stage. They use this
reasoning to:
think about how reality compares
to ideals.
think hypothetically about
different choices and their
consequences.
plan how to pursue goals.
think about the minds of others,
including “what do they think of
me?”
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Building Toward Moral Reasoning
 Adolescents see
justice and fairness in Lawrence Kohlberg’s
terms of merit and Levels of Moral Reasoning
equity instead of in
terms of everyone Preconventional morality (up to
getting equal age 9): “Follow the rules because
treatment. if you don’t, you’ll get in trouble;
 Adolescents may if you do, you might get a treat.”
strive to advocate for Conventional morality (early
ideals and political adolescence): “Follow the rules
causes. because we get along better if
 Adolescents think everyone does the right thing.”
about god, meaning,
and purpose in Postconventional morality (later
deeper terms than in adolescence and adulthood):
childhood. “Sometimes rules need to be set
aside to pursue higher principles.”
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 Example:
looting after a natural disaster
Which level of moral reasoning is involved?
Looting is a problem; if everyone did it, there would be
escalating chaos and greater damage to the economy.
Looting is generally wrong, yet morally right when your
family’s survival seems to depend on it.
Looting is wrong because you might get punished, but if no
one is punished, that’s a sign that it’s okay.

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 Moral Intuition
 Jonathan Haidt believed moral An Example of Moral
decisions are often driven by Intuition:
moral intuition, that is, quick, Given a hypothetical
gut-feeling decisions. choice to save five people
 This intuition is not just based from an oncoming trolley
in moral reasoning but also in by killing one person,
emotions such as: many people’s choice is
 disgust. We may turn away determined not just by
from choosing an action reasoning, but by disgust.
because it feels awful. Many people would flip a
 elevated feelings. We may switch to make this
get a rewarding delight choice, but not as many
from some moral behavior would push a person on
such as donating to charity. the tracks to save five
 https://www.youtube.com/ others.
watch?v=q1VZMoT_p6w
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 Social Development:
Erik Erikson (1902-1994)
 Erik Erikson’s model of lifelong
psychosocial development sees
adolescence as a struggle to
form an identity, a sense of self,
out of the social roles
adolescents are asked to play.
 Adolescents may try out
different “selves” with peers,
with parents, and with teachers.
 For Erikson, the challenge in
adolescence was to test and
integrate the roles in order to
prevent role confusion (which
of those selves, or what
combination, is really me?).
 Some teens solve this problem
simply by adopting one role,
defined by parents or peers.
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Erik Erikson: Stages of Psychosocial Development

53
Other Eriksonian stages on the minds
of adolescents
While currently in the identity vs. role
confusion stage,
adolescents have ideally just finished
working through the tension of
competence vs. inferiority.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70
yDo6cexyY
They are ready after adolescence to
take on the challenge of intimacy vs.
isolation.

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Adolescence, the sequel…
Emerging Adulthood
In some countries, added years of
education and later marriage has
delayed full adult independence
beyond traditional adolescence. This
seems to have created a new phase
which can be called emerging
adulthood, ages 18-25.

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Adulthood
Is the rest of the
developmental story just
one long plateau of work
and possibly raising kids?

 Physical Development
 physical decline
 lifespan and death
 sensory changes
 Cognitive
Development
 memory
 Social Development
 commitments
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Adult Physical Development
 In our mid-20’s, we
reach a peak in the
natural physical abilities
which come with
biological maturation:
 muscular strength
 cardiac output
 reaction time
 sensory sensitivity
 To what extent can
training overcome the
decline that follows?

57
Physical Changes:
Middle Adulthood The end the
reproductive years
There is a gradual
Between ages 40 and 60, decline in sexual
physical vitality (such as activity in adulthood,
endurance and strength) although sexuality
may still be more of a can continue
function of lifestyle than throughout life.
of biological decline.
Around age 50,
women enter
menopause (the end
Some of being able to get
changes are pregnant).
still driven by According to
genetic evolutionary
maturation, psychologists, why
especially the might it make sense
end of our for women’s fertility
reproductive to end?
years.
58
 The Aging Body
 Potential lifespan for the human More Aged Women
body is estimated to be about 122 The rise in life expectancy,
years. combined with declining birth
 Life expectancy refers to the rates, means a higher
average expected life span. percentage of the world’s
 The worldwide average has population is old.
increased from 49 in 1950 to 69 in More elderly people are
2010. In 2012: women because more men die
South Africa—49 than women at every age. By
Cameroon—55 age 100, women outnumber
Pakistan—66
Thailand--74 men by a ratio of 5 to 1.
United States--75
Ireland--80
Australia—82
Japan--84

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Why don’t we live forever?
Possible biological answers…
 Nurture/Environment
An accumulation of stress, damage, and disease
wears us down until one of these factors kills
us.
 Genes
Some people have genes that protect against
some kinds of damage.
 Even with great genes and environment,
telomeres (the tips at the end of chromosomes)
wear down with every generation of cell
duplication and we stop healing well.

60
Physical Changes with Age
The following abilities
decline as we age:
visual acuity, both
sharpness and brightness
hearing, especially sensing
higher pitch
reaction time and general
motor abilities
neural processing speed,
especially for complex and
novel tasks

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Impact of Sensory and Motor Decline
What specific factors and changes might
explain the results below?

Age 62
Health/Immunity Changes with Age
The The
bad good
news news

The immune system The immune system has

declines with age, and a lifetime’s accumulation
can have difficulty of antibodies, and does
fighting off major well fighting off minor
illnesses. illnesses.

63
Exercise Can Slow the Aging Process

Exercise can:
build muscles and
bones.
stimulate neurogenesis
(in the hippocampus)
and new neural
connections.
maintain telomeres.
improve cognition.
reduce the risk of
dementia.

64
Changes in the Brain with Age
 Myelin-enhanced neural
processing speed peaks in
the teen years, and
declines thereafter.
 Regions of the brain related
to memory begin to shrink
with age, making it harder
to form new memories.
 The frontal lobes atrophy,
leading eventually to
decreased inhibition and
self-control.
 By age 80, a healthy brain is
5 percent lighter than a
brain in middle adulthood.

65
Alzheimer’s Disease
and Other Dementias
Dementia, including the
Alzheimer’s type, is NOT a
“normal” part of aging.
Dementia Symptoms
Brain Changes of
decreased ability to recall Alzheimer’s Disease
recent events and the names of loss of brain cells and
familiar objects and people neural network connections
emotional unpredictability; deterioration of neurons
flat, then uninhibited, then that produce acetylcholine,
angry the memory
confusion, disorientation, and neurotransmitter
eventual inability to think or shriveled and broken
communicate protein filaments forming
plaques at the tips of
neurons
dramatic shrinking of the
brain 66
  Even without the brain changes of
Cognitive dementia, there are some changes in
our ability to learn, process, and recall
Development and  information.
The ability to recognize information, and
Memory to use previous knowledge as expertise,
does not decline with age.
Can you describe and explain the differences in
performance changes in these charts?

67
More Learning and Memory Changes

 Rote memorization ability

declines more than ability
to learn meaningful
information.
 Prospective memory,
planning to recall, (“I must
remember to do…) also
declines.
 The ability to learn new
skills declines less than the
ability to learn new
information.
68
Social Development in Adulthood
Is adult social development driven by biological maturation or by life
experiences and roles?

 The “midlife crisis”--re-evaluating one’s life plan and success--

does not seem to peak at any age.
 For the 25 percent of adults who do have this emotional crisis,
the trigger seems to be the challenge of major illness, divorce,
job loss, or parenting.

69
Psychosocial Development
 Although the “midlife crisis” may not be a function of
age, people do feel pressured by a “social clock” of
achievement expectation.
 Erik Erikson’s observations of age-related issues:

70
Challenges of Healthy Adulthood

Arising first:
Erik Erikson’s
Sigmund Freud
intimacy issue used simpler
(a.k.a. affiliation, terms, saying that
attachment, the healthy adult
connectedness) must find ways to
love and to work.

Arising later: Erik

Erikson’s
generativity issue
(achievement,
productivity,
competence)
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 Commitment Commitment
to Love to Work

 The desire to commit to a  Work roles can largely define adult identity,
loving relationship may have especially in individualistic capitalist
societies.
evolved to help vulnerable  Tough economic times make it difficult to
human children survive long find work, much less follow a career path.
 Work satisfaction seems to be a function of
enough to reproduce. having the work fit a person’s interests and
 Couples who go through providing a sense of competence and
marriage/union ceremonies accomplishment.
tend to stay together more
than couples who simply live
together.
 Marriage, compared to being
single, is associated with
‘happiness’ and with fewer
social problems such as crime
and child delinquency. 72
 Why do people claim to be
happy even as their body
declines?
 Older people attend less to
negative information and more
to positive information.
 They are also more likely to
have accumulated many mildly
positive memories, which last
longer than mildly negative
memories.
 Older people feel an increased
sense of competence and
control, and have greater
stability in mood.

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Coping with Death and Dying
Individual responses to death
may vary.
Grief is more intense when
death occurs unexpectedly
(especially if also too early on
the social clock).
There is NO standard pattern
or length of the grieving process.
It seems to help to have the
support of friends or groups,
and to face the reality of death
and grief while affirming the
value of life.

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 The Final Issue in Development:
Stability and Change
Are we essentially the same person over long
periods?
In general, temperament seems stable.
Traits can vary, especially attitudes, coping
strategies, work habits, and styles of
socializing.
Personality seems to stabilize with age.
Stability helps us form identity, while the
potential for change gives us control over our
lives.
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