Chapter 4 of 812% of exam

Growth and Lifespan Development

This domain runs from prenatal development through late life and includes developmental theories, family influences, life events, and risk and protective factors. Scenario items usually ask which stage, status or model a described behavior fits.

Cognitive development

Piaget and Vygotsky remain the core frameworks for cognitive development. Piaget's stages are tested through the tasks children pass or fail, and Vygotsky's ideas through how adults support learning. Theory-of-mind research adds how children come to understand other people's beliefs.

Preoperational thought
Children about 2 to 7 center on one dimension and fail conservation tasks; conservation arrives in concrete operations.
Piaget & Inhelder (1969)
Zone of proximal development
The gap between independent and assisted performance; adjustable, gradually withdrawn support is called scaffolding.
Vygotsky (1978); Wood, Bruner & Ross (1976)
Theory of mind
Passing a false-belief task shows understanding that others can hold beliefs that differ from reality.
Wimmer & Perner (1983); Baron-Cohen et al. (1985)

Social and emotional development

Social and emotional development covers attachment, temperament, parenting and identity. Most items describe a child's or adolescent's behavior and ask for the matching classification. The categories come from specific research programs with their own definitions.

Attachment classifications
Secure, insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant patterns come from the Strange Situation; a disorganized category was added later.
Ainsworth et al. (1978); Main & Solomon (1990)
Temperament
Thomas and Chess described easy, difficult and slow-to-warm-up children.
Thomas & Chess (1977)
Parenting styles
Authoritative parenting combines high demands with warmth and explanation; authoritarian is demanding but cold; permissive is warm but undemanding.
Baumrind (1966); Maccoby & Martin (1983)
Adolescent identity
Foreclosure is commitment without exploration; moratorium is exploration without commitment. Elkind described the imaginary audience and personal fable.
Marcia (1966); Elkind (1967)

Stage theories across the lifespan

Erikson and Kohlberg are scored on the underlying crisis or reasoning, not the surface behavior. The same choice can reflect different moral levels depending on the justification given. Later-life models describe adaptation to changing resources and time horizons.

Erikson's adult stages
Intimacy versus isolation in young adulthood, generativity versus stagnation in middle adulthood, integrity versus despair in late life.
Erikson (1950)
Kohlberg's levels
Moral level depends on the reasoning given: punishment and exchange (preconventional), social order (conventional), or principles (postconventional).
Kohlberg (1969, 1981)
Aging well
Selective optimization with compensation and socioemotional selectivity describe how older adults adapt goals and relationships.
Baltes & Baltes (1990); Carstensen et al. (1999)

Contexts, risks and methods

The outline covers individual-environment interaction, life events, and risk and protective factors. Items test how settings beyond the family affect development and what population research shows about adversity. Research design matters too, because age comparisons can be confounded with generation.

Ecological systems
A parent's workplace is part of a child's exosystem; the microsystem is the child's own settings.
Bronfenbrenner (1979)
Adverse childhood experiences
The number of ACE categories showed a graded relationship with adult health risks.
Felitti et al. (1998); CDC
Alcohol in pregnancy
CDC states there is no known safe amount or safe time to drink alcohol during pregnancy.
CDC About Alcohol Use During Pregnancy
Cohort effects
Cross-sectional age differences can reflect cohort differences rather than aging.
Schaie (1965)

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