NURS2003 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Social Learning Theory, Behavioural Genetics, 6 Years
CHAPTER 1 – THE PEOPLE AND THE FIELD
Who We Are and What We Study
Developmentalists: researchers and practitioners whose professional interest lies
in the study of the human lifespan
Chart the universal changes we undergo from birth to old age, explore
individual differences in development, study the impact of normative and non-
normative life transitions and explore every other topic relevant to our
unfolding life
Lifespan development: the scientific field covering all of the human lifespan
Roots lie in child development
Synthesises what researches know about our unfolding life
Multidisciplinary: draws on fields as different as neuroscience, nursing,
psychology and social policy to understand every aspect of human
development
Explores the predictable milestones on our human journey from walking to
working (are people right to worry about their learning abilities in their fifties?
What is physical aging, or puberty or menopause all about? Are there specific
emotions we feel as we approach that final universal milestone, death?)
Focusses on the individual differences that give spice to human life
(developmentalists want to understand what causes the striking differences
between people in temperament, talents and traits – interested in exploring
individual differences in the timing of developmental milestones)
Explores the impact of life transitions and practices (deals with normative
transitions, focusses on non-normative transitions, explores more enduring life
practices such as smoking, spanking or sleeping in the same bed as your
child)
Child development: the scientific study of development from birth through
adolescence
Gerontology: the scientific study of the aging process and older adults
Adult development: the scientific study of the adult part of life
Normative transitions: predictable life changes that occur during development
(e.g. retirement, becoming parents, beginning middle school)
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Non-normative transitions: unpredictable or atypical life changes that occur
during development (e.g. divorce, death of a child, how recent declines in the
economy affect how we approach the world)
Setting the Context
Contexts of development: fundamental markers, including cohort, socioeconomic
status, culture and gender that shape how we develop throughout the lifespan
Cohort: the age group with whom we travel through life
Baby boom cohort: the huge age group born between 1946 and 1964
Dramatically affected society as it passes through the lifespan
Cohorts of babies born before the twentieth century faced a shorter, harsher
childhood and many did not survive
Emerging adulthood: the phase of life that begins after high school, tapers off
toward the late twenties and is devoted to constructing an adult life
Lasts from age 18 to roughly the late twenties, devoted to exploring our place
in the world
As life got easier and education got longer, we first extended the growing-up
phase of life to include adolescence and in the recent years, with a new life
stage called emerging adulthood, have extended the start date of full
adulthood to our late twenties
Average life expectancy: a person’s fifty-fifty chance at birth of living to a given
age
Within striking distance of the maximum lifespan in the most affluent parts of
the world
Twentieth-century life expectancy life revolution: the dramatic increase in average
life expectancy that occurred during the first half of the twentieth century in the
developed world
Most important milestone that has occurred in the history of our species
Most dramatic increases in longevity occurred during the early decades of the
last century when public health improvements and medical advances such as
antibiotics wiped out deaths from many infectious diseases
The illnesses we now die from called chronic diseases such as heart disease,
cancer and stroke are tied to the aging process itself
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Dramatic advances in curing infectious disease and shift to deaths from
chronic illnesses allowed us to survive to later life
Maximum lifespan: the biological limit of the human life (about 105 years)
Young-old: people in their sixties and seventies
Often look and feel middle-aged
Reject the idea that they are old
Old-old: people aged 80 and older
More likely to have physical and mental disabilities
More prone to fit the stereotype of the frail, dependent older adult
Second major twentieth-century lifespan change: occurred in the 1960s with the
sexual revolution, women’s movement and counterculture movement
These lifestyle revolutions have given us incredible freedom to engineer our
own adult path
Great Recession of 2008: dramatic loss of jobs (and consumer spending) that
began with the bursting of the US housing bubble in late 2007
Caused us to rethink adult markers, from retirement to leaving home for
college
Coupled with the widening of income inequalities, is currently clouding the
landscape of the twenty-first-century life
Income inequality: the gap between the rich and poor within a nation. Specifically,
when income inequality is wide, a nation has a few very affluent residents and a
mass of disadvantaged citizens
The widening gap between the super rich and everyone else
Socioeconomic status (SES): a basic marker referring to status on the
educational and especially income rungs
Refers to our education and income on our unfolding lives
People who live in poverty face a harsher, more stressful, more shorter life
Living in poverty makes people vulnerable to a cascade of problems (e.g.
being born less healthy, attending lower-quality schools, living in more
dangerous neighbourhoods, dying at a younger age)
Developed world: the most affluent countries in the world
Nations are defined by their wealth or high median per-person incomes
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Document Summary
Chapter 1 the people and the field. Developmentalists: researchers and practitioners whose professional interest lies in the study of the human lifespan. Chart the universal changes we undergo from birth to old age, explore individual differences in development, study the impact of normative and non- normative life transitions and explore every other topic relevant to our unfolding life. Lifespan development: the scientific field covering all of the human lifespan. Synthesises what researches know about our unfolding life. Multidisciplinary: draws on fields as different as neuroscience, nursing, psychology and social policy to understand every aspect of human development. Are there specific emotions we feel as we approach that final universal milestone, death?) Explores the impact of life transitions and practices (deals with normative transitions, focusses on non-normative transitions, explores more enduring life practices such as smoking, spanking or sleeping in the same bed as your child) Child development: the scientific study of development from birth through adolescence.
