Study sheet: Lifespan Development Psychology

📋 Course Outline

1. Prenatal Development Stages
2. Prenatal Influences and Risks
3. Motor Development in Infancy
4. Attachment and Emotional Bonds
5. Attachment Patterns
6. Early Language Development
7. Piaget Cognitive Development
8. Vygotsky Sociocultural Theory
9. Adolescence and Adult Personality
10. Ageing and Neural Change

📖 1. Prenatal Development Stages

📝 Essential Points

• 🔄 Prenatal development proceeds through these stages:

  1. Fertilization
  2. Zygote formation
  3. Cellular division
  4. Blastocyst formation
  5. Implantation

• Fertilization occurs when a human egg and sperm fuse, combining 23 female chromosomes and 23 male chromosomes to produce 46 chromosomes.

• The germinal stage lasts from day 0 to day 14 and ends with implantation of the blastocyst into the uterine wall.

• During the embryonic stage, the outer cell mass develops into the placenta and the inner cell mass develops into the embryo.

• The fetal stage lasts from week 9 to week 38 and involves final growth, development of human features, increasing activity, and preparation for birth.

💡 Memory Hook

Fertilization → zygote → cellular division → blastocyst → implantation

📖 2. Prenatal Influences and Risks

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Epigenetics : explains how environmental conditions can affect genes, linking nature and nurture

★ Must-know

📌 Nature refers to genetic influences, whereas nurture refers to environmental influences on prenatal development.

• Teratogens are environmental influences that can harm the developing embryo and are therefore part of nurture.

• Foetal alcohol syndrome and intellectual disability can result from maternal alcohol use during pregnancy.

Further detail

• Factors that can affect prenatal development include:

  • Maternal stress and emotions
  • Alcohol use
  • Smoking
  • Maternal illness
  • Malnutrition
  • Drug use
  • Diabetes
  • Radiation
  • Cultural and family influences

• Rubella may cause these defects:

  • Heart defects
  • Deafness
  • Blindness
  • Mental retardation
  • Cataracts
  • Liver defects
  • Pancreas defects

💡 Memory Hook

Nature is genetic, whereas nurture is environmental

📖 3. Motor Development in Infancy

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Motor development : the progression of muscular coordination required for physical activities
• Maturation : development that reflects the gradual unfolding of a genetic blueprint through age-related physical changes rather than experience and learning

★ Must-know

• 🔄 Basic motor development progresses from:
  1. Grasping and reaching
  2. Sitting and crawling
  3. Walking and running

Further detail

• During free play, infants average 2.3 thousand steps and 17 falls per hour.

💡 Memory Hook

Grasping → sitting and crawling → walking and running

📖 4. Attachment and Emotional Bonds

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Attachment : a close emotional bond of affection between infants and caregivers

★ Must-know

• Separation anxiety peaks between 14 and 18 months and then declines.

• Harlow’s rhesus monkeys preferred a cloth artificial mother that provided comfort over a wire mother that provided food, challenging reinforcement theory. — Harry Harlow

• Bowlby proposed that infants are biologically programmed to elicit protective responses from adults. — John Bowlby

Further detail

• Infants usually show more smiling and laughing with their mothers at 2 to 3 months and a pronounced preference for their mothers at 6 to 8 months.

💡 Memory Hook

Comfort from the cloth mother outweighs food from the wire mother

📖 5. Attachment Patterns

📝 Essential Points

• The attachment patterns are: (Mary Ainsworth):

  • Secure attachment
  • Anxious-ambivalent attachment
  • Avoidant attachment
  • Disorganized-disoriented attachment

• Securely attached babies use their mothers as a security base, become distressed during separation, welcome contact on reunion, and explore relatively positively when strangers are present.

• Avoidantly attached babies are usually not upset when their mothers leave, avoid them on return, explore little with them, and are not greatly upset by strangers.

• Ambivalently attached babies become anxious before separation, become extremely upset when their mothers leave, and both seek and resist contact when their mothers return.

💡 Memory Hook

Secure attachment explores; avoidant attachment withdraws; ambivalent attachment both approaches and resists

📖 6. Early Language Development

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Fast mapping : the process by which children map a word onto an underlying concept after only one exposure
• Telegraphic speech : early speech in which children mainly use content words and omit articles, prepositions, and other less critical words

★ Must-know

• Language helps people communicate, socialize, and establish and maintain relationships.

• 🔄 Early communication develops through:

  1. Experimenting with sounds
  2. Associating sounds with objects and actions
  3. Producing word-like sounds

📌 Overextension uses a word for a wider set of objects than intended, whereas underextension uses it for a narrower set.

Further detail

• By year 3, children may overregularize by applying grammatical rules incorrectly to irregular forms, as in saying “I hitted the ball” or “The girl goed home.”

💡 Memory Hook

Babbling → words → telegraphic speech → complex grammar

📖 7. Piaget Cognitive Development

📝 Essential Points

• Piaget’s theory explains how children acquire the abilities to learn, think, communicate, and remember through assimilation, schemas, accommodation, and equilibration.

• The sensorimotor stage involves experiencing the world through senses and actions, and object permanence develops as children learn that objects continue to exist when unseen.

• The preoperational stage is marked by:

  • Symbolic thought
  • Pretend play
  • Egocentrism
  • Animism
  • Centration
  • Irreversibility

📌 Concrete operational children reason logically about concrete events and understand reversibility, whereas formal operational children can think abstractly, hypothetically, systematically, and reflectively.

💡 Memory Hook

Sensorimotor → preoperational → concrete operational → formal operational

📖 8. Vygotsky Sociocultural Theory

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Zone of proximal development : the range of abilities an individual can perform with expert guidance but cannot yet perform independently
• Scaffolding : temporary support during learning whose quality and quantity change according to the child’s skill category

📝 Essential Points

• Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory states that cognitive development is advanced through social interaction with more skilled people and that social learning comes before cognitive development.

• Culture-specific tools mediate the development of learning, memory, attention, and problem-solving abilities.

💡 Memory Hook

Social interaction and scaffolding → development within the zone of proximal development

📖 9. Adolescence and Adult Personality

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Self-esteem : the measure of self-worth based on perceived success and achievements and influenced by how much a person is valued by peers and family

★ Must-know

• Erikson’s intimacy versus isolation stage concerns sharing intimacy through empathy and openness, whereas failure may produce manipulative behaviour and anxiety.

• Generativity versus self-absorption concerns genuine concern for future generations and unselfish guidance, whereas failure produces emptiness and lack of progress. — Erikson

• Integrity versus despair involves finding meaning and satisfaction in past and present life rather than experiencing resentment and bitterness about mistakes and death. — Erikson

Further detail

• Normality in adolescence refers to the degree of psychological adaptation achieved while navigating the difficulties and milestones of this period.

💡 Memory Hook

Autonomy → intimacy → generativity → integrity

📖 10. Ageing and Neural Change

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Dementia : Dementia is not a normal part of ageing and is caused by diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and AIDS.

★ Must-know

• In late adulthood, especially after age 60, brain tissue and brain weight gradually decline because some active neurons decrease in number and others shrink.

• Dementia affects about 10% of people aged 65 to 69 and one-third of people over 85.

• Alzheimer’s disease accounts for roughly 70% of dementia cases and involves progressive cognitive decline, typically over 8 to 10 years, ending in death.

Further detail

• With age, hair tends to thin and become grey, many males develop receding hairlines, and the proportion of body fat tends to increase.

• Older people often report feeling younger than their chronological age, and subjective age begins to diverge from chronological age around age 30.

• Genetic factors account for 70% of the variation in Alzheimer’s disease risk, while chronic inflammation also contributes to its development.

• Protective factors include:

  • Regular exercise
  • Lower cardiovascular risk factors
  • A diet low in meat
  • A diet low in sweets
  • A diet low in high-fat dairy products

💡 Memory Hook

Dementia is a disease-related decline, not a normal part of ageing

📊 Synthesis Tables

Attachment Patterns

Pattern	Separation and reunion	Exploration and strangers
Secure	Distressed by separation; welcomes reunion	Uses mother as security base; relatively positive toward strangers
Avoidant	Usually not distressed; avoids mother on return	Little exploration; not greatly upset by strangers
Ambivalent	Anxious before separation; seeks and resists reunion	Little exploration; wary of strangers