Developmental Psychology
Lifespan Development and Developmental Psychology
It is easy to see how an individual has changed in his or her development through watching and analyzing childrens daily activities. When we consider the daily activities of adults or rather the aged people, we easily see how far we are yet to move in our development. This explains lifespan development as a process in development of people from conception to adulthood through adolescence. The process is involved with shaping individuals life from the initial time of conception to when the individual dies. Although different individuals have different life trends and patterns, all these life patterns or rather the course taken by each individual life is influenced by sociological, psychological and biological factors. Lifespan development gives an understanding of the methods, concepts and findings from various researches which are central to the developmental psychology study and practice. My career is involved with the extent of development through gradual knowledge accumulation with regard to development in various stages, or the extent to which childrens innate mental structure changes from birth with regard to what they learn through their experience. Many researches are being carried out to determine the interrelationship between individual behavior, personal characteristics and environmental factors such as society and its impact on development.
Developmental psychology relates to many applied fields such as forensic developmental psychology which is concerned with how children act and react in the context of forensic, child psychopathology which refers to the occurrence of psychological disorders in adolescents and children. Examples of child psychopathology include attention-deficit disorders, oppositional defiant disorders and pervasive development disorders among others.
Development Theories
To acquire knowledge on children development stages, especially from birth to adulthood, a number of theories have been used. These theories have different perspectives of viewing determinants of child development from birth. They broaden our understanding on the development process giving understanding of how different variables influence development in various stages, either negatively or positively.
Piagetian - Cognitive Development Theory
This theory is involved with the nature and development of individuals intelligence. According to this theory, in order to adapt human intelligence, the intelligence being adapted should have the static and transformational aspect of reality. Intelligence achieved through actions and events of developing people ensures equilibrium in environment and individuals relations. The environment in which any individual grows in is assimilated in action schemes available. The peculiarity of the environment accommodates or transforms these schemes of action. Intelligence development thus involves a continuous accommodation and assimilation process. Intelligence changes qualitively with developmental stages to attain more abstract, increasingly broader, and more equilibrated structures.
According to the cognitive development theory, four main periods are involved, with completely reversible equilibrated thought development. In the sensorimotor - the first stage in cognitive development, infants coordinate sensory experiences such as hearing and seeing with motoric and physical actions in order to understand the world they live in. Childrens physical actions from the world they live in give them knowledge of the world. Their progress is described by reflexive, institutional action at birth and start of symbolic thought at the end of the stage.
The preoperational period of cognitive development theory is concerned with the mind of the children. The child learns to present and use various objects by drawing, words and images. The child gets the ability to form magical belies, mental reasoning and stale concepts. The thinking of the child is egocentric, and faces difficulties in attempts to take other peoples viewpoints. The stage involves children from birth to two years.
Most of the children between the ages of seven and eleven years are in concrete operational stage of cognitive development. In this stage, children can appropriately use logic. They also have the ability to sort objects according to their characteristics, to recognize logical relationships and perform transitive inferences, to identify and name objects according to their characteristics such as size and appearance, to understand that objects or numbers can be changed, and be returned to the original status, and to understand that the number, length and quantity of items is not related to the objects appearance or arrangement. (Piaget 2001, pp. 6)
The formal operational period of the cognitive development stage involves children at puberty through adolescence to adulthood. Individuals in this period think abstractly beyond their concrete experiences, they can draw conclusions given information, and their reasoning is logical. They have the ability to apply these processes in hypothetical situations. The ability of an adolescent in formal operational period to solve a problem verbally reflects their thoughts abstract quality. The young adults in this period can solve problems through devising plans, and test the solution to the problem systematically. In solving the problem, they use the best path which is characterized by development of best guesses or hypotheses and its systemic deduction or conclusion. In this stage, young adults can understand love, values and logical proofs they start being fascinated with that they are capable of, and entertain future possibilities. Their way of thinking about social matters is governed by their egocentrism. This egocentrism can be divided into two types of imaginary thinking, social thinking which is involved with the behavior of getting attention , of personal fable which is involved with the sense of invincibility and personal uniqueness.
Vygotskys Cultural-Historical Theory
This theory has helped in understanding of the influence of the surrounding culture to a childs life. The knowledge acquired from this theory gives understanding of the role of scaffolding in development, and gives knowledge on how to live in an environment of artifacts created by activities of prior generations in the environment. According to the theory, for any child or adolescent to enhance cognitive development, the child or adolescent should be active in the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). In order for children to reach the ZPD, assistance from more experienced person or adult is required. When helped and guided by more experienced people, children can do more than what they can do without the guidance. The abilities and skills in the process of developing are usually defined by ZPD, which is actually a range of tasks which needs an individual to depend on a more competent individual to perform. For a clear understanding of the role of surrounding environment to the development of a child, here is an n example a four - year hold child wants to walk across a balance beam. The child makes many attempts but he fails to balance. The child seeks assistance from older sister who is almost graduating from college, and walks across the balance beam while holding the sister. In this case, the sister gives assistance, thus acting as a scaffold. Scaffolding can also involve structures, breaking down the task to be done into smaller easier to follow steps, providing feedback about the childs progress while doing the task, and providing motivation. (Saxe 1990, pp. 11-13).
Children tend to gain competency as they grow in a society supporting scaffolding. As time goes by, the scaffold reduces the amount of their support to the children, in response to the childs performance. Considering the given example, as the child gains confidence to balance while walking across the balance beam, the sister can continually reduce the support from holding childs two hands, to holding one, and eventually to not holding at all as the child gains ability to walk without assistance. Scaffolding influences the cognitive development of a child through installing the necessary skills for independent solving of problems in future. The Vygotskys theory explains the importance of the culture or the society for individuals development. The theory offers a distinguishing feature. Human beings have the ability and need to inhabit an environment with transformations from people who have lived there before. The ability of people to create and utilize artifacts results in transformations and mechanisms of the transmissions from a generation to another.
Freunds Psychosexual Theory
According to this theory, the childhood events and experiences act as major determinants of the childrens behavior. According to this theory, child development involves a series of psychosexual stages
Personality is developed by the age of five years in most children. The early experiences of a childs development process contribute a lot to development of childs personality and subsequent behavior in the childs later life. According to the Freuds psychosexual development theory, psychosexual energy is behaviors driving force. Healthy personality is a result of successful completion of psychosexual stages. This means that unresolved issues at any particular stage cause a persistent focus on that stage. Unless the issue is resolved in the appropriate time, the child development across the developmental stages remains stuck. For example, a child stuck at the oral stage is likely to over rely on others, or seek oral stimuli such as drinking, smoking, or eating.
Development in Context theory
This theory expounds our knowledge on how the environmental planning and design of development relates to its context.
Significance of Attachment in the Emotional Development of an Infant
The bond between mother who is the primary care giver of the infant influences the infants later development. When a close emotional relationship is established between a child and someone special in the childs life, social development of the child begins. The person can be a parent or anybody else in the society. Attachment involves enduring, intense social-emotional relationship. A number of ways are used to illustrate attachment in early childhood and infancy. As the child develops through the different developmental stages, the child tries to relate and behave in relation to the attachment figure. Attachment figures act as secure bases for developing children, who depend on them entirely to explore the environment they live in. When the attachment is withdrawn, the developing child gets distressed, reunited the attachment brings back the childs joy. As the children develop, their behavior orientation is directed towards the attachment figure. The child watches the attachment figures from far, listens to their voices, and seeks their attention. According to the animal study and the Freuds psychodynamic theory, children are believed to have inborn behavior patterns such as smiling, crying and clinging which the child uses as a way of ensuring a proximity with the attachment figure, especially the mother. They also have a biological tendency of attaching to a particular person. This attachment is crucial as it is different from any other attachment which might occur in subsequent development process. (2006, pp. 8).
Maternal deprivation hypothesis based on the belief that mother or any other care giver should continually sustain an intimate and warm relationship to the infant to reduce the subsequent consequences. A research conducted in hospitals and orphanage shows that intellectual retardation, depression, difficulties in forming and maintaining formed relationship, and emotionally disturbed behaviors are associated with maternal deprivation. Children who have grown without relating with the mother, especially within the first three years of development have difficulties making friends, maintaining made friends, and their performance is also affected. Although the damages caused by these consequences are permanent, they can be reversed by re-uniting the attachment. Many mothers do not respond to their childrens needs, and such children tend to seek satisfaction from other people. This means that instead of having an attachment between the mother and the child, the attachment is between the child and the person satisfying the childs need. In the world we live, not all people can play the role of a mother effectively many children whose mothers ignore and neglect them continue being attached to them despite the neglect. This causes difference in emotional behavior between the child with a secure attachment and the one whose attachment was as a result of lack of alternative choice. (Wertsch 1999, pp. 20)
Children who get secure attachment during their first three years of development are more positive, have higher self esteem, are less aggressive and their emotional and social health is usually excellent. These children have abilities to develop and maintain a healthy relationship with those they live with, and in their subsequent adult life, they are able to relate and maintain happy relationships. On the other hand, children who lack secure attachment suffer the consequences throughout their lives. They suffer depression, they are emotional, and their behavior is troubled and anti-social. These children carry these traits in all development stages, thus facing problems in their adult relationships. To limit such traits, relevant support such as encouragement, counseling, subsequent loving and healthy relations are required.
Children form multiple attachments throughout their development childhood life. The father, other siblings and other people who the children relate with in their development can form other attachments. Although all children require a biological mother to provide care, to hold them and to provide warmth and love which is ideal to all children, some children are brought up by non biological mothers, and some mothers do not provide care to their children. Children brought up by non-biological caretakers tend to form a strong attachment with them, and they grow up feeling cherished and loved by the caretaker. In cases where children are emotionally and socially deprived, they get adverse trauma. To heal these traumas, such individuals require enough care. Early trauma has the power to drag individuals life downwards through hard and negative road, and can cause detrimental effects to the individuals life. (Surgaman 2008, pp. 37).
Conflict between Parents and Adolescents Seems Inevitable
Many terms have been used to refer to adolescence. In development lifespan, adolescence is a period of changes in individuals social, cognitive, biological and psychological characteristics. This developmental stage is considered as a transit from childhood to adulthood. Individuals in this development stage encounter drastic challenge, as they make adjustments in themselves, peers, and family. These changes occur even in institutions. It is important for both parents and their children in adolescence to understand that this is a period of trouble and happiness anxiety and excitement bewilderment and discovery and of departing the past and lining with the future. Adolescence is confusing adolescents in the stage to adults involved with enhancing effective development of young people in this stage, and to the parents nurturing the adolescents throughout this development process.
Family conflict between parents and adolescents is inevitable. In every familys history, conflict is ubiquitous. Various reasons have been given for conflicts between adolescents and parents. According to adolescents report, the conflict is as a result of failure of parents to provide the emotional support they require, either parents or adolescents feeling of failure of the other party to meet what is expected of them, failure of consensus about individual, family or societal values. (Commons 2002, pp. 169)
A study on the findings of a research carried out to more than 1800 European parents, African American and Latino parents nurturing adolescents show that conflict between the parents and adolescents occurs on almost all main everyday matters such as dressing style and daily chores among others rather than from substantial issues such as drug abuse, and sex among others. Other research reports show that as the adolescent develops, the conflicts arising from these issues tend to decrease leaving room for finances as the major cause of the conflict in the older adolescence age. As the young people develop, the level of agreements between them and parents reduce, reducing the levels of conflict, especially in families involving boys. Parents should learn to cope with their youngsters in adolescents since conflict between parents and adolescents is a family life fact.
The young people encounter problems when negative emotions are exchanged between parents and adolescents. For example, when a father is stressed by the adolescents behavioral and emotional problem, and the mother is depressed or anxious, the adolescent school grade tends to be poor. Nurturing of adolescents and the outcome is different in different families. Parenting styles and socialization are differing with parents or adults. (Demick Andreoletti 2002, pp. 216219)
Application of communication skills can reduce conflicts and subsequent frustrations between parents and adolescents. Good communication skills act as the starting point to resolving frustration in both teenagers and parents. Essential communoication skills entail taking appropriate time to communicate with the other party with minimal distraction. Since teenagers expect to be understood when communicating with the parent, the parent should reflect the statements made by the teenagers. This shows understanding. For any communication to be considered effective, both parties need to understand one another. To ensure that the adolescents have understood their parents statement, they should repeat the statement.
How Stress Can Affect Prenatal Development
Maternal stress influences the outcome of the pregnancy and the subsequent behavior of the children. It acts as functional and permanent structural changes. Review of literature shows that experiences in the early lives of individuals shape the behavior and functioning of the brain. Gestational stress has profound impact on the functioning state of endocrine, and the behavior of the individual in adulthood. The type of stress induced, the pattern of exposure and the gender of the offspring determine the susceptibility of the effect of the stress. When predictable stress is induced on daily and repeated basis, the adult offspring, especially a female one, experiences robust changes. Exposure to stress in prenatal development increased the levels of anxiety-related behaviors. Female offspring experiences prolonged response to corticosterone, unlike the male counterparts who experience increased level of basal ACTH. Pre-natal exposure to different unpredictable stressors pattern had little effect on the HDP. The exposed females had anxiogenic-related behavior. The gonadal steroids of the induced also change in males and the testosterone increases. This means that stress in prenatal development influences the nature of the stress experienced by expectant mothers and the gender of the offspring determines the difference in sensitivity of the developing endocrine and nervous systems to stress. (Cole 2005, pp. 26)
The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) function differs in males and females. In normal gestation, in adulthood females have higher HPA activity compared to the males. Female adults have increased corticosterone compared to male adults. However prenatal stress modifies the hormones whereby the basal levels of corticosterone and ACTH increases in female. The HPA response to stress on exposure to prenatal stress varies with gender and stress paradigm. In cases of random exposure to prenatal stress, HPA response to the induced stress is not altered in either gender. The prenatal stress restraint gives opposing effects to the two genders. Women are susceptible to the anxiogenic effects of prenatal stress. This is associated with affective disorders in women in their adulthood. The sexual dichotomies with regard to exposure to stress in early development stages are well explained by utero glucocorticoids. The females serum corticosterone is higher compared to males. A research using mice showed that gender difference due to differential corticosterone transports into the placenta. More maternal corticosterone is transported to the female fetus in the placenta (Demick Andreoletti 2002, pp.332).
Research Method
Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methodology research design can be used to pursue lifespan development. In qualitative method, the researchers interviewing people in various developmental stages can also give vital data, especially from word of mouth, or objects. The quantitative research is the most preferred in this case. This is because the research has a clear understanding of what heshe is researching on. It is easy to design the study aspects before collecting data on developmental stages. This makes it hard to use qualitative research method whose design emerges with the unfolding of the study. Since the data collected in quantitative research involves numbers and statistics, unlike the qualitative method whose data is in form of objects pictures and words, the quantitative method can be more effective.
Conclusion
Developmental psychology is a career worthy taking. The knowledge acquired in learning developmental stages and theories help in development of behavior in many individuals. A developmental psychologist can help in developing good behavior through counseling and in settling the parent adolescent conflict as well as advising on the developmental risks associated with prenatal stress, the significance of attachment in emotional development of infants, and the role of scaffolders in development of competence.
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