Advanced Developmental

Psychology

Chapters 11-15
Lifespan 3rd ed.
Broderick & Blewitt
 Changing Brain in Young Adulthood

 Resurgent growth of synapses occurs around puberty in some areas of

the brain, followed by a long period of pruning, which continues into the
early adult years. It may mean an expanded capacity for cognitive
advancement.

 Possible accelerated maturing of electrical activity in frontal cortex could

mean early adulthood important for advanced development of frontal
lobe functions, such as the ability to organize and reorganize attention,
to plan, and to exercise control over one’s behavior and emotions.

 For these reasons, typical timing of college education may be ideally

suited to possible heightened flexibility and plasticity of the frontal cortex
in young adulthood.
 Schaie’s View of Adults Adjusting to
Environmental Pressures
 Acquisition stage – able to learn a skill or a body of knowledge
regardless of whether it has any practical goal or social
implication

 Achieving stage – must apply intellectual skills to the

achievement of long-term goals

 Responsible stage – problem solving must take into account

not only one’s own personal needs and goals but also those of
others in one’s life who have become one’s responsibility
 Schaie’s View of Adults Adjusting to
Environmental Pressures (cont.)
 Reorganization stage – flexibility in problem solving is needed to
create a satisfying, meaningful environment for the rest of life, focus
tends to narrow again to a changed set of personal goals and needs.

 Reintegrative stage – cognitive efforts are aimed more and more at

solving immediate, practical problems

 Legacy-leaving stage – work on establishing a written or oral account

of their lives or of the history of their families to pass on to others –
substantial use of long-term memory and narrative skill, decision making
or use of judgment.
 Perry’s Theory of Intellectual &
Ethical Development
 Dualism
 Position 1: Strict Dualism
 Position 2: Multiplicity (Prelegitimate)
 Position 3: Multiplicity (Subordinate)
 Position 4: Late Multiplicity

 Relativism
 Position 5: Contextual Relativism
 Position 6: Commitment Foreseen
 Position 7, 8, 9: Commitment and Resolve
 Karen Kitchener’s Model of the Development of
Reflective Judgment

Reflective judgment:
 how people analyze elements of a problem
 how people justify their problem solving

 Seven stage developmental theory

 Stages of thinking can be differentiated based on
three dimensions:
 Certainty of knowledge
 Processes used to acquire knowledge
 Kind of evidence used to justify one’s judgments
 Adult Attachment Styles
 Based on Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) developed by Main and
Goldwyn

1. Autonomous (secure)
(also earned secure)

2. Dismissing (insecure)

3. Preoccupied (insecure)

4. Unresolved (insecure)

5. Cannot classify
 Holland’s Theory of Personality-Environment
Types
 By early adulthood each individual has a modal personal orientation –
a typical and preferred style or approach to dealing with social and
environmental tasks.

 A job or career typically makes demands on an individual that are

compatible with one or more of these interactive types.

 Examples of types:
 Social – likely to be sociable, friendly, cooperative, kind, tactful, and
understanding
 Enterprising – likely to be sociable, but more domineering, energetic,
ambitious, talkative, and attention getting
 Super’s Developmental Approach

Describes the developmental processes that determine both the

emergence of one’s vocational self-concept and the multiple
factors that influence job choices over the life span.

Series of life stages in the development of vocational self-concept

and experience, beginning in childhood.

Examples:
Growth stage – children are developing many elements of
identity that will have a bearing on vocational self-concept,
including ideas about their interests, attitudes, skills, and needs.
Exploratory stage – adolescence to young adulthood, vocational
self-concept is tentatively narrowed down, but often career
choices are not finalized
 The “Forgotten Half”
 18- to 24-year olds who do not go to college
 Slight increase in the number of students who go on to college
since the original 1988 study
 Current concern- fewer than ½ of the high school graduates who
begin college complete a degree (a third are not retained to the
their sophomore year)
 Critics challenge that American schools do not adequately
prepare the “forgotten half” by teaching basic academic skills
(reading, math, public speaking, self-management) or specific
job skills through general or vocational curriculum.
 Elements of Life Span Development
Theory
 Web of interacting organismic and environmental influences
viewed as the “architecture” of biology and culture.

 Development seen as a process of adapting to the constant flux

of influences, including growth, maintenance, and regulation of
loss.

 Successful development seen as the relative maximization of

gains and the minimization of losses.
The Big 5 Personality Traits

Neuroticism Tense, touchy, moody, anxious, self-

conscious

Extraversion Outgoing, active, talkative, assertive,

energetic

Agreeableness Warm, compliant, kind, generous,

sympathetic

Conscientiousness Organized, well-planned, efficient, self-

controlled, reliable

Openness to experience Creative, artistic, wide-ranging interests,

positive orientation towards learning
 Sources of Change Impacting Adult
Development
 Age-graded changes
 Physical changes
 Cognitive changes
 Life-task or life-course changes
 History graded changes
 Cohort effects
 Nonnormative changes
 Unexpected events
 Gottman: Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse
 Four kinds of negativity that do the most
damage to relationships and are highly
predictive of divorce

 Criticism

 Defensiveness

 Contempt

 Stonewalling
Personality and Well-Being
 Personality traits like extraversion and neuroticism are strongly
correlated with subjective well-being measures, much more so than
external factors like wealth.

 Extraverts, who tend to focus interest on things outside the self, are
happier than introverts, who focus more attention on their own interior
experience.

 Neuroticism, including tendencies to be self-conscious, anxious, hostile

and impulsive, is negatively correlated with happiness.
Relationships and Well-Being

 Evidence supports the importance of “love” for happiness.

 Both extraverts and introverts report more pleasant emotions in social

situations.

 Receiving support is clearly linked to better coping with life’s stresses,

but giving social support is also a key ingredient of happiness.

 Married women and men report more happiness than unmarried people.

 Being married is also associated with a lower risk of depression.

 Fowler: Developmental Shifts in
Spirituality & Faith
 Stage 1: Intuitive-Projective
 Stage 2: Mythic-Literal
 Stage 3: Synthetic-Conventional
 Stage 4: Individuative-Reflective
 Stage 5: Conjunctive
 Stage 6: Universalizing
 Stress
Two types:

1. Life events that are discrete, often traumatic, events that have
a clear onset

2. Daily hassles which are chronic, problematic situations

Research indicates that chronic daily stress is very important in the

development of psychological as well as physical symptoms
 allostatic load
 kindling-behavioral sensitization
 Psychological Resilience Factors

 Positive attitude
 Active coping strategies
 Cognitive flexibility/cognitive reappraisal
 Moral compass
 Physical exercise
 Social support and roles models or mentors
 Physical Changes
in Late Adulthood
 Gradual decline from peak functioning of most physiological
systems beginning as early as 30. By late adulthood, losses
usually noticeable and require some adjustment in expectations
or lifestyle

 Immune system becomes progressively less effective

 Increasing sensory deficits

 Onset of pain, stiffness, and swelling of joints and surrounding

tissues – arthritis
 Cognitive Changes
in Late Adulthood
 Gradual decline in fluid intelligence or mechanics of intellectual function,
processing speed slows and inhibitory functions decline with age, may
limit efficiency of working memory operations

 Balanced by maintenance or advancement of crystallized intelligence or

pragmatics, semantic memory is enriched with age.

 Dementia

 Terminal Drop

 Autobiographical memory
 Baltes: Maintain Well-Being

 Three processes are key to successful development at any age,

and especially in the later years

 Selection – process of narrowing our goals and limiting the

domains in which we expend effort

 Optimization – finding ways to enhance the achievement of

remaining goals or finding environments that are enhancing

 Compensation – when a loss prevents the use of one means to

an end, we can compensate by finding another means
 Making the Transition to Retirement

Atchley’s (1976) phases of retirement:

 Stage 1- honeymoon

 Stage 2- disenchantment

 Stage 3- reorientation

 Stage 4- stability

 Stage 5- termination
 The Role of Wisdom
in Aging Well
 “Expertise in the fundamental pragmatics of life”

 Many problems adults face do not have one right answer- they are ill-
defined or ill-structured
 Wisdom involves solving problems using a more relativist perspective and
recognizing that problems are complex with contextually embedded truth
systems
 Involve “post-formal” thought (advanced logical thinking)
 Involves creativity and intelligence
 In leadership roles- wise people are able to balance the need for change
with the need for stability
 Wisdom is related to age and training and experience in one’s occupation
 Bowlby: Phases of the Grieving
Process
 Shock

 Protest

 Despair

 Reorganization