Lifespan Development

Lifespan Development

Human lifespan development is the pattern of movement or change that begins at conception and continues throughout the life span. Studying lifespan development is extremely beneficial to understanding who we are, how we came to be this way, and where our future will take us. Knowledge of the study of development can be obtained through five theoretical approaches. These approaches include psychoanalytic theories, cognitive theories, behavioral and social cognitive theories, the ethological theory, and the ecological theory. The two main psychoanalytic theories were proposed by Freud and Erickson. According to psychoanalytic theories, development primarily depends on the unconscious mind and is heavily contained
Cognitive theories emphasize thinking, reasoning, language, and other cognitive processes. Piaget proposed a cognitive developmental theory in which children use their cognition to adapt to their world. In his theory, children go through four cognitive stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational. Vygotsky’s sociocultural cognitive theory emphasizes how culture and social interaction guide cognitive development. The information processing approach stresses that individuals manipulate information, monitor it, and strategize about it. Contributions of cognitive theories include and emphasis on the active construction of understanding and developmental changes in thinking. Criticisms include giving too little attention to individual variations and underrating the unconscious aspects of
In Pavlov’s classical conditioning, a neutral stimulus acquires the ability to produce a response originally produced by another stimulus. In Skinner’s operant conditioning, the consequences of a behavior produce changes in the probability of the behavior’s occurrence. In social cognitive theory, observational learning is a key aspect of life span development. Contributions made by these theories include an importance on scientific research, a focus on environmental factors, and the importance person and cognitive factors in social cognitive theory. Criticisms consist of inadequate attention to developmental changes, too much emphasis on environmental determinants, and in Skinner’s view, too little attention to cognition. Ethology stresses that behavior is strongly influenced by biology, is tied to evolution, and is characterized by critical or sensitive periods. Contributions of this theory are a focus on the biological and evolutionary basis of development, the use of careful observations in naturalistic settings, and the emphasis on sensitive periods of development. Criticisms are a belief that the concepts of critical and sensitive periods may be too rigid, too much emphasis is placed on biological foundations, and that the theory has been better at generating research with animals than with