Chapter 3: Lifespan Development
In 1938, a group of researchers at Harvard University began a study that most of us would find hard to imagine finishing. They chose a few hundred young men, still students, and decided to follow them — not for a month, not for a year, but for the rest of their lives. Every few years the researchers came back. They measured the men’s health, and asked about their work, their marriages, their worries and their joys. Later they added a second group of boys growing up in the poorer neighbourhoods of Boston. Decade after decade the questions continued, until the once-young men were grandfathers in their eighties and nineties.
Why would anyone spend the better part of a century simply watching people grow older? Because the researchers wanted to see the whole shape of a human life — how a child becomes a teenager, a teenager becomes an adult, and an adult grows old. When they finally looked back across all those years, one finding stood out above money or fame: the people who had built warm, close relationships tended to stay healthier and more content, right to the end.
That long, patient study captures exactly what this chapter is about — the journey of development that begins at conception and never quite stops.
Diagram
Fig 3.0-1 – a winding path of a single human life moving through its stages, from conception and infancy through childhood and adolescence to adulthood and old age, labelled to show that development continues at every stage rather than ending in childhood
By the end of this chapter you will be able to answer each of these questions for yourself.
3.1 Importance of Studying Lifespan Development
Think of the oldest person you know and the youngest child in your family. Between them lies an entire human story of change — in the body, in the mind, in feelings and in relationships. That whole story, from its very first moment to its last, is what psychologists study under the heading of lifespan development.
A new life begins at conception, the moment the egg and sperm unite to form a single cell. From that point onward the person keeps changing, and the changing does not stop when childhood ends. It continues through adolescence, adulthood and old age. This is why psychologists prefer to study the whole life rather than any single slice of it.
Lifespan development is the process by which a person changes, physically and psychologically, across the entire span of life from conception until death.
Every human life travels a broadly similar route. That route is usually divided into recognisable periods — the prenatal period, infancy, babyhood, early and late childhood, and then adolescence — before it continues into the years of adulthood. Most people pass through these periods in the same order, though each of us moves at our own pace. Along the way there are developmental milestones, which are the notable achievements that mark a person’s progress, such as a baby’s first step or first word.
Reading the Map of a Life
Studying this route is a little like being handed the map of a journey before setting out. Once you know the usual course, you can tell whether the changes happening in yourself or in someone else are following the expected pattern, moving ahead of it, or falling behind.
This matters because it turns vague worry into useful knowledge. A parent who understands the typical order of milestones can judge whether a child’s slow speech is simply an individual difference or a genuine delay that deserves attention.
Recognising Difficulties Early
When a delay or difficulty is spotted early, something can usually be done about it. Early identification allows early intervention, meaning a planned step taken to support or correct development before a problem grows larger. Parents, teachers, paediatricians, anganwadi workers and counsellors all rely on this knowledge to decide when a child simply needs time and when a child needs extra help.
Understanding People at Every Age
The value of this knowledge is not limited to childhood. It helps a teacher make sense of a Class IX student who has suddenly become moody and argumentative, and helps that same student understand that the storminess of these years is a normal part of growing up. It helps adult children support ageing parents with patience rather than frustration. In short, it gives us a fairer, kinder and more accurate picture of the people around us — and of ourselves.
3.2 Development, Growth, and Maturation
In everyday speech we use the words growth, development and maturation as if they all mean the same thing. In psychology they do not. Each describes a different kind of change, and telling them apart is the first step to understanding how a person actually unfolds over time.
3.2.1 What Development Means
Development refers to the whole series of orderly, progressive changes that a person passes through across life. These changes are not random. They follow a broadly predictable pattern, and they arise from two forces working together — the natural unfolding of the body and the experiences a person gathers along the way.
Notice that this definition mentions two kinds of change. A quantitative change is a change in amount — a child grows taller or heavier. A qualitative change is a change in kind — a child moves from babbling sounds to speaking full sentences. Development includes both, which is what makes it far broader than mere physical increase.
Characteristics of Development
Development is a continuous process. It begins at conception and carries on, without ever fully stopping, until the end of life. Even when we cannot see it happening, change is quietly in progress underneath.
It is also a cumulative process, meaning each new step is built upon the steps before it. A child’s first word rests on months of listening and babbling; a first step rests on earlier crawling and standing. Nothing appears out of nowhere.
Development follows an orderly, predictable sequence that is broadly the same for everyone. It generally moves from the general to the specific — a baby first waves its whole arm at an object and only later learns the fine finger movements needed to pick it up.
At the same time, development is individualised. The overall route is shared, but the exact pace differs from person to person, so two children of the same age may be at quite different points.
Finally, development is the joint product of heredity and environment. Neither acts alone; the two constantly interact — a point important enough that the whole of the next section is given to it.
3.2.2 Growth
Growth is the narrower of the two ideas. It refers only to the quantitative side of change — increases in the size of the body, such as gains in height, weight and overall dimensions. Because these are physical, they can be measured directly with a scale or a measuring tape.
Growth also has a natural limit. It is rapid in the early years, slows over time, and eventually stops altogether once the body reaches its full adult size. A person does not keep growing taller forever.
3.2.3 Growth versus Development
The clearest way to hold the two apart is to see that growth is one part of the larger process of development. All growth is a form of development, but not all development is growth. When a child’s reasoning becomes sharper or their emotions become better controlled, that is development without any accompanying increase in bodily size.
The educators L. D. Crow and A. Crow captured this by noting that growth refers to structural and physical change, while development also takes in the changes in behaviour that result from a person’s dealings with their surroundings. The table below sets out the main differences.
3.2.4 Maturation
Some changes in a child appear almost on their own, without any teaching, once the child is old enough. A baby is not taught to sit, to crawl or to grasp; these abilities emerge as the body and nervous system ripen. This unfolding is called maturation.
Maturation is the part of development that is driven by the body’s own genetically set timetable. It proceeds in a fixed order, at a pace largely built into the person, and it depends on biological readiness rather than on specific practice.
This introduces the idea of readiness — the point at which a child is biologically prepared to acquire a skill. Before readiness arrives, no amount of coaching will produce the skill; after it arrives, the skill emerges easily. The concept of maturation was pioneered by the American psychologist Arnold Gesell in the early twentieth century, who argued that much of early development simply waits for the body to mature.
3.3 Determinants of Development: Heredity, Environment, and Context
What actually decides how a person turns out? Two great forces are at work from the very first moment of life: the biological inheritance a person is born with, and the surrounding world in which that person grows. This section looks at each force, at how the two combine, and at the layered environment within which all of it takes place.
3.3.1 Heredity
Heredity is the passing on of characteristics from parents to their children through their biological material. An infant arrives already carrying a great many features received from its parents and earlier ancestors, from eye colour to certain predispositions of temperament.
To see how this works, we have to go back to the beginning of a life. The male and female reproductive cells are the sperm and the ovum. At fertilisation, a single sperm unites with the ovum. Each of these cells carries 23 chromosomes — thread-like structures that hold the hereditary material — so their union produces a single new cell with 46 chromosomes, arranged in 23 pairs.
This new cell is the zygote, the very first cell of a new individual. Along each chromosome lie the genes, the basic units of heredity, which act as the carriers of inherited characteristics. Half of every pair comes from the mother and half from the father, which is why a child resembles both parents.
As shown in Fig. 3.3-1, one pair among the 46 chromosomes is special: it is the pair of sex chromosomes that decides the child’s biological sex.
Diagram
Fig. 3.3-1 – schematic of fertilisation: an ovum carrying 23 chromosomes and a sperm carrying 23 chromosomes uniting to form a zygote with 46 chromosomes arranged in 23 pairs, with a note that the genes along these chromosomes carry inherited characteristics
A female carries two X chromosomes (XX) and a male carries one X and one Y (XY). The ovum therefore always contributes an X, while the sperm contributes either an X or a Y. If an X-carrying sperm fertilises the ovum, the child is female; if a Y-carrying sperm does, the child is male. In this sense the father’s sperm determines the child’s biological sex.
Heredity clearly shapes physical features such as height, build and colouring, and it also sets certain predispositions — leanings, not certainties — towards particular abilities and vulnerabilities. But heredity never acts in a vacuum, as the next two subsections make clear.
3.3.2 Environment
If heredity is everything a person brings to life from within, the environment is everything that acts on the person from without. It is defined broadly as everything that affects the individual apart from the genes themselves.
The environment starts influencing a person even before birth. The mother’s womb is the first environment: the nourishment, health and conditions there already begin to shape the developing child. After birth, the environment widens rapidly to include the family, the home, food and health, the school, friends, and the wider culture.
Development, then, is a continuous process of adjustment. The person and the surroundings act on each other, and it is through this ceaseless give-and-take that development gradually takes place.
3.3.3 How Heredity and Environment Interact
For a long time, thinkers argued fiercely over which of the two mattered more. This is the famous nature–nurture debate — the question of whether a person is shaped chiefly by inborn nature (heredity) or by the nurturing world (environment).
Some took an extreme hereditarian view, holding that our qualities are largely fixed at birth. Others took an extreme environmentalist view. The behaviourist John Watson, for instance, once boasted that if he were given a dozen healthy infants he could train any of them, at random, to become any kind of specialist — doctor, artist or thief — regardless of their ancestry.
Modern psychology rejects both extremes. The two forces are not rivals but partners: development is the joint product of heredity and environment interacting. A useful way to put it is that heredity sets the possibilities and limits, while environment decides how far those possibilities are actually reached. A child may inherit the potential for great height, but poor nutrition can keep that potential from being fulfilled.
Evidence from Twin Studies
The clearest evidence for this partnership comes from studies of twins. Twins come in two kinds. Identical (monozygotic) twins develop from a single fertilised egg that splits in two, so they share almost all of their genes. Fraternal (dizygotic) twins develop from two separate eggs fertilised by two sperm, so they share only about half of their genes, no more than ordinary brothers and sisters.
This difference gives researchers a natural experiment. Because identical twins share nearly all their genes while fraternal twins share only about half, comparing the two lets us estimate the role of heredity: if identical twins resemble each other far more closely on a trait than fraternal twins do, heredity is likely playing a strong part in that trait.
A second, even more revealing design studies identical twins who were separated early in life and reared apart in different homes. Here the genes are held constant while the environments differ. Where such twins still turn out strikingly alike, the similarity points to heredity; where they differ, the difference must come from their different environments. Real findings show both patterns at once — separated identical twins are often remarkably similar, yet never perfectly identical in behaviour — which is exactly why psychologists conclude that heredity and environment work together rather than one ruling alone.
3.3.4 Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory
Saying that the environment matters is only a start; the environment is not one thing but many layers, nested one inside another. The psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner captured this in his ecological systems theory, which pictures the developing child at the centre of a set of surrounding layers, each influencing the child in a different way.
The innermost layer is the microsystem — the immediate settings the child directly takes part in, such as the family, the school, the neighbourhood and close friends. The influence here is two-way: parents shape the child, but the child also shapes the parents. As shown in Fig. 3.3-2, the layers then widen outward.
Diagram
Fig. 3.3-2 – five concentric rings around a child at the centre, labelled from innermost to outermost as microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem, each ring carrying one everyday example
The mesosystem is not a place but a set of connections — the links between the child’s microsystems, such as the relationship between a child’s parents and teachers. When home and school communicate well, the child benefits.
The exosystem consists of settings the child never directly enters but which still reach the child through the microsystem — most clearly, a parent’s workplace, whose demands and stresses shape how that parent is able to be at home.
The macrosystem is the outermost layer: the wide culture of values, customs, laws and traditions in which everything else is embedded. It is distant from the child yet quietly powerful.
Finally, the chronosystem adds the dimension of time. It captures how the timing of events — the arrival of puberty, the loss of a parent, a change of city, or a shift in society itself — affects the course of development.
3.4 Motor Development across Infancy and Childhood
Motor development is the gradual gaining of control over the movements of the body. It is one of the most visible signs of growing up: within a couple of years a helpless newborn who cannot even hold up its own head becomes a toddler who can walk, climb and pick up tiny objects.
This progress rests on the rapid physical and nervous-system maturation of the early years. As the brain, nerves and muscles ripen, the child becomes able to do more, in a fairly fixed order. The newborn, however, does not begin with voluntary control at all. It begins with reflexes.
3.4.1 Newborn Reflexes
A reflex is an automatic, unlearned response to a particular kind of stimulation. Newborns arrive equipped with a set of these built-in responses, several of which have survival value, helping the baby feed or react to danger before any voluntary control has developed. Four of them are described here.
- The rooting reflex — when the baby’s cheek or the corner of its mouth is stroked, it turns its head towards the touch and opens its mouth, as if searching for the nipple.
- The Moro reflex — in response to a sudden loud sound or a feeling of losing support, the baby flings its arms and legs outwards and then draws them back in, like a startle.
- The grasping reflex — when an object or finger is pressed against the baby’s palm, its fingers automatically close around it in a firm grip.
- The Babinski reflex — when the sole of the baby’s foot is stroked, the toes fan outward and the big toe extends upward.
As shown in Fig. 3.4-1, each reflex is a whole-body or limb response to a very specific trigger.
Diagram
Fig. 3.4-1 – four newborn reflexes shown side by side — rooting, Moro, grasping and Babinski — each with a one-line caption of what the baby does in response to the touch or sound
These reflexes are present at birth and normally fade over the first months as voluntary, purposeful movement takes over. Their appearance and, later, their disappearance are used by doctors as a simple check that the nervous system is developing as it should.
3.4.2 Motor Milestones and Skills
As reflexes give way to voluntary control, the child passes a series of notable achievements. Each of these is a motor milestone.
These milestones appear in a broadly fixed sequence: a baby first learns to sit, then to crawl, then to stand while holding on, and finally to walk unaided. Later come running, climbing and skipping. The exact ages vary from child to child, but the order is remarkably consistent.
The many skills involved are usually sorted into two families. The first are the gross motor skills.
The second are the fine motor skills.
As a rule, gross motor control develops earlier than fine motor control, because the large muscles come under command before the small ones. A child can run about long before the hand is steady enough to write neatly.
3.5 Cognitive Development: Piaget’s Theory
Cognitive development is the growth of a person’s ability to think, reason, remember and understand the world. No account of it has been more influential than that of the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, who spent decades watching children think — and who overturned the old idea that a child’s mind is simply a smaller, emptier version of an adult’s.
3.5.1 The Constructivist Approach and Key Concepts
Piaget was trained as a biologist, and it shows in his thinking. He saw the growing mind rather as he saw a living organism: something that actively adapts to its surroundings. Children, he argued, are not born with knowledge and are not simply handed it by adults. They build their own understanding through their own activity — exploring, touching, testing and questioning. Because the child constructs knowledge for itself, Piaget’s view is called the constructivist approach.
The building blocks of thought, in this view, are schemas.
In a baby, the earliest schemas are simple action patterns, such as grasping or sucking. As the child grows, schemas become mental rather than physical, standing for objects and ideas. But how do schemas change and grow? Piaget described two complementary processes.
Through assimilation, the child interprets a new experience by fitting it into a schema they already have. A toddler who knows the schema “dog” may, on first seeing a cow, call it a “big dog”. Through accommodation, the child adjusts an old schema, or creates a new one, because the existing schema no longer fits — learning, in time, that a cow is not a dog at all.
The two processes are kept in balance by equilibration. When a child’s current schemas explain the world comfortably, thinking is in balance. When they meet something the old schemas cannot handle, they feel a mismatch — a state of disequilibrium — and this discomfort is exactly what pushes them to accommodate, forming better schemas. In this way, disequilibrium is the engine that drives cognitive growth forward.
Piaget proposed that this growth unfolds through four stages, shown in Fig. 3.5-1. He held that the stages come in a fixed order that no child skips, and that they are universal — the same everywhere. Each stage represents a genuinely new way of thinking, not just more knowledge than before.
Diagram
Fig. 3.5-1 – the four Piagetian stages as a left-to-right sequence with age bands: Sensorimotor (birth–2 years), Preoperational (2–7 years), Concrete Operational (7–11 years) and Formal Operational (11 years onward), with a one-word note on the hallmark of each
3.5.2 The Sensorimotor Stage
The first stage, from birth to about two years, is the sensorimotor stage. Its name captures its nature: the infant comes to know the world not through thought but through the senses and through motor action — by looking, mouthing, grasping and moving.
Much of the baby’s early learning happens through circular reactions, Piaget’s term for the way an infant repeats an action that first happened by chance because it finds the result interesting. A baby who accidentally makes a sound and enjoys it will repeat it again and again, and in doing so strengthens the schema. Over the stage’s six substages, behaviour advances from simple reflexes, through repeating actions centred first on the baby’s own body and then on outside objects, to genuinely intentional, goal-directed behaviour.
A landmark achievement of this stage is object permanence — the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard or touched.
Towards the end of the stage the child becomes capable of mental representation — holding images and ideas in mind rather than acting them out physically. This shows in deferred imitation, the ability to copy an action seen earlier when the model is no longer present, and in the first make-believe play. With mental representation, the infant crosses the bridge from acting to thinking.
3.5.3 The Preoperational Stage
From about two to seven years, in the preoperational stage, the child’s power of mental representation grows rapidly. Language blossoms, and with it symbolic play — pretend play in which one thing stands for another, as when a child treats a stick as a sword or a box as a car. This ability to let a symbol stand for something else is a huge cognitive leap.
Yet the preoperational child’s thinking still has striking limits. Chief among them is egocentrism — the tendency to see the world only from one’s own point of view, unable to imagine how things look to someone else. A related feature is animism, the belief that lifeless objects have feelings and intentions, as when a child says the sun is “crying” because it is hidden by clouds.
The most famous limitation is the child’s failure at conservation.
The classic demonstration is shown in Fig. 3.5-2. When water from a short, wide glass is poured into a tall, narrow one, the preoperational child insists the tall glass now “has more”. Two errors lie behind this. The child shows centration, focusing on a single feature (the height of the water) while ignoring another (the width). And the child shows irreversibility — an inability to mentally reverse the pouring to see that the amount must be unchanged.
Diagram
Fig. 3.5-2 – the conservation-of-liquid task: equal amounts of water in two identical short glasses, then one poured into a tall narrow glass; a preoperational child judges that the tall glass “has more” because the water level is higher
3.5.4 The Concrete Operational Stage
Between about seven and eleven years, in the concrete operational stage, thinking becomes far more logical and organised — provided it stays anchored to real, concrete things the child can picture or handle.
The child now achieves conservation, because two new abilities have arrived. Through decentration, the child can attend to several features of a situation at once, realising that the taller glass is also narrower, so the two changes cancel out. Through reversibility, the child can mentally undo an action, “pouring the water back” in the mind to see that the amount never changed.
Other logical skills fall into place. The child masters classification, sorting objects into groups and sub-groups (understanding that roses are a kind of flower). The child develops seriation — arranging items along a dimension, such as ordering sticks from shortest to longest. What the child still cannot do well is reason about the purely abstract or hypothetical; thinking remains tied to the concrete and the real.
3.5.5 The Formal Operational Stage
The fourth and final stage, from about eleven years onward, is the formal operational stage. Here thinking finally breaks free of the concrete and becomes able to handle the abstract and the possible.
Its hallmark is hypothetico-deductive reasoning — the ability to start from a general idea, imagine the various possibilities it allows, form a specific prediction, and then test that prediction in an orderly way. The adolescent can also engage in propositional thought, judging whether a statement is logically sound purely from its wording, without needing to see it acted out in the real world.
3.5.6 Evaluating Piaget’s Theory
Piaget’s achievement is hard to overstate. He offered the first comprehensive theory of how thinking develops, replaced the picture of the passive child with that of an active young explorer, and transformed education — child-centred, activity-based teaching owes much to him. His observations have been repeated across the world and broadly hold up.
Even so, later research has qualified his claims in several ways. Careful experiments suggest that he underestimated young children: with simpler, more familiar tasks, children often show abilities such as some grasp of number or others’ viewpoints earlier than Piaget’s stages allow. His evidence, too, rested on a small and unrepresentative sample — famously, he drew heavily on close observation of his own three children — which makes broad generalisation uncertain.
Critics also argue that he underplayed the social and cultural context of development. The Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky stressed that children learn largely through interaction with more knowledgeable others, a dimension Piaget’s solitary young scientist rather neglects. Finally, development may be less rigidly staged than Piaget suggested, with children’s reasoning shifting more gradually and varying from one kind of task to another.
Despite these limits, the theory remains a landmark. It gave psychology its first clear map of how a child’s reasoning is transformed on the way to adulthood, and much later research has been a conversation with Piaget rather than a replacement of him.
3.6 Socio-Emotional Development: Attachment and the Emerging Self
Growing up is not only a matter of stronger muscles and sharper thinking. It is also the slow unfolding of feelings, relationships and a sense of who one is. This side of growing up is called socio-emotional development, and its very first achievement — formed long before a child can speak — is the deep bond between an infant and the people who care for it.
3.6.1 The Emergence of Attachment
Attachment is the strong, lasting emotional tie a child forms with its caregivers. It is the first form of love a person knows, and it gives the child comfort and security — joy in good times and reassurance in frightening ones.
But what builds this bond? A once-popular idea held that infants attach to whoever feeds them — that love, in effect, grows out of the milk bottle. A famous set of experiments overturned that view.
As shown in Fig. 3.6-1, the choice the baby monkeys made was clear and consistent, and it reshaped how psychologists think about love and care.
Diagram
Fig. 3.6-1 – Harlow’s two surrogate mothers: a bare wire “mother” fitted with a feeding bottle, and a soft cloth “mother” with no bottle, with the infant monkey shown clinging to the cloth mother
3.6.2 The Strange Situation and Attachment Styles
Not all children are attached in the same way. Building on the work of John Bowlby, who saw attachment as a balance between a child’s need to stay near the caregiver and its urge to explore, the psychologist Mary Ainsworth devised a way to measure it. Her procedure, the Strange Situation — used in later attachment research by Michael Lamb and others — observes how a one- to two-year-old reacts through a short series of separations from, and reunions with, the caregiver in an unfamiliar room, with a stranger sometimes present.
From how the child behaves — especially at the moment of reunion — Ainsworth identified three patterns, to which a fourth was later added by Mary Main and Judith Solomon. These are the four attachment styles.
A child with secure attachment uses the caregiver as a safe base from which to explore, may or may not be upset when the caregiver leaves, and is quickly comforted on their return. This is the healthiest pattern, and it tends to develop when caregivers are sensitive and responsive.
A child with avoidant attachment explores freely but seems indifferent to the caregiver, showing little distress at separation and little interest at reunion. It is linked to caregiving that is distant or rejecting.
A child with ambivalent attachment (also called resistant) stays anxiously close, is very distressed at separation, yet is hard to comfort on reunion — seeking contact and resisting it at the same time. It is linked to inconsistent caregiving.
A child with disorganised attachment shows the most confused, contradictory behaviour, perhaps approaching the caregiver and then freezing or turning away. It is the pattern most often linked to caregivers who are themselves frightened, overwhelmed or unable to respond.
3.6.3 The Emergence of Self and Gender Awareness
Alongside its first bonds, the young child slowly discovers something else — its own self. In the early months a baby cannot tell itself apart from the world. By around eighteen months to two years, this changes. A classic test places a spot of rouge on a toddler’s nose and sits the child before a mirror: the younger infant ignores it, but the older toddler touches its own nose, showing it recognises the reflection as itself. This dawning ability is called self-recognition, and it marks the arrival of a genuine sense of self.
As the sense of self grows, children also become aware of gender — the social side of being male or female. It is worth separating two words that are often confused. Sex is a biological matter, decided by the body and its chromosomes. Gender refers to society’s ideas about how males and females should look, feel and behave. The child’s understanding of gender develops through several steps, defined below.
Gender identity is a child’s awareness of being a boy or a girl, which appears at around two to three years, when children can label themselves correctly.
Gender stability is the understanding that one’s gender stays the same over time — that a boy will grow into a man — which appears at around four years.
Gender consistency is the fuller understanding that gender stays constant even if outward appearance, dress or behaviour changes, which appears at around six to seven years.
Two further terms describe the social content the child takes on. A gender role is the set of behaviours and attitudes that a society regards as appropriate for males or for females. A gender stereotype is a widely held, often oversimplified belief about what males and females are typically like.
3.7 Moral Development: Kohlberg’s Theory
As children grow, they gradually work out how people ought to treat one another. This growing sense of right and wrong is called morality, and the way it develops with age is the subject of moral development.
A young child’s morality is narrow and tied to rewards and punishments. With age it broadens into an understanding of rules, duty and, eventually, abstract principles. Along the way the child develops a conscience — an inner sense of right and wrong — and comes to feel guilt when their own actions fall short of it. The most influential account of this journey was given by the psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, who extended the earlier ideas of Jean Piaget on moral development.
3.7.1 The Heinz Dilemma and Kohlberg’s Method
Kohlberg wanted to find out not what people decide is right, but why — the reasoning beneath the decision. To draw out that reasoning, he presented people with a moral dilemma: a short story in which no choice is clearly right, so the person must justify whichever side they take.
His most famous story is the Heinz dilemma. A woman lay dying of a serious illness. A druggist had discovered a medicine that might save her, but charged a price far beyond what her husband, Heinz, could afford. Heinz raised only part of the money, and begged the druggist to sell it more cheaply or let him pay the rest later. The druggist refused. In desperation, Heinz broke into the shop and stole the drug. Should he have done so?
Kohlberg interviewed a group of boys, aged roughly ten to sixteen, on this and other dilemmas. He paid no attention to whether they answered “yes” or “no”. What mattered was the reasoning they gave — for the same answer could come from very different levels of moral thinking. From these reasons, he built a sequence of stages that unfold in a fixed order, shown in Fig. 3.7-1.
Diagram
Fig. 3.7-1 – a rising staircase of six steps grouped into three levels: pre-conventional (steps 1–2), conventional (steps 3–4) and post-conventional (steps 5–6), showing that moral reasoning ascends through the levels in order, each step labelled with its orientation
3.7.2 The Three Levels of Moral Reasoning
Kohlberg held that moral reasoning develops through three broad levels, each divided into two stages — six stages in all. People move through them in order, though not everyone reaches the highest.
The Pre-Conventional Level
At the pre-conventional level, typical of young children, morality is judged entirely by its consequences for oneself. The child has not yet taken on society’s rules.
At Stage 1, the punishment-and-obedience orientation, an action is judged wrong simply if it brings punishment. The child obeys those in authority in order to avoid being punished.
At Stage 2, the naive hedonistic (self-interest) orientation, the child does what serves its own needs and wants, and shows a rough, trading kind of fairness — “you help me and I’ll help you”. Right action is whatever brings reward or satisfies the self.
The Conventional Level
At the conventional level, usually reached by older children and adolescents, morality is based on winning approval and on keeping society running smoothly. Rules are now valued for their own sake.
At Stage 3, the good-boy/good-girl orientation, right action is whatever pleases others and earns their approval. The person wants to be seen as a “good person” — loyal, trustworthy and kind.
At Stage 4, the social-order-maintaining orientation, morality widens beyond the immediate circle to society as a whole. Right action means obeying laws, doing one’s duty and upholding the social order, because rules are seen as essential to keeping society functioning.
The Post-Conventional Level
At the post-conventional level, which only some adults reach, the person realises that laws are human agreements and not the final word on right and wrong. Personal principles may take precedence over social rules.
At Stage 5, the social-contract (legalistic) orientation, laws are viewed as social contracts that exist to serve the general good and that can be changed if they prove unjust. The person weighs the rights and welfare of everyone involved.
At Stage 6, the universal-ethical-principle orientation, the highest stage, morality rests on self-chosen universal principles — justice, equality and human dignity. A person at this stage will follow their conscience even when it means breaking an unjust law.
3.7.3 Evaluating Kohlberg’s Theory
Kohlberg’s theory was a major advance. It showed that moral thinking, like other thinking, develops in an orderly way with age, and it turned attention from what people decide to how they reason. Yet several honest criticisms have been raised.
First, there is a gap between knowing and doing. Understanding what is right does not guarantee acting rightly — a person may reason at a high level and still behave badly under pressure.
Second, the theory is heavily focused on justice and may neglect other moral concerns. The psychologist Carol Gilligan argued that it undervalues an “ethic of care” — compassion, responsibility and concern for relationships — and that, because Kohlberg’s original sample was made up only of boys, the theory may be biased against the way many girls and women reason.
Third, the young, all-male sample raises worries about age and gender bias, and about how far the findings apply to everyone.
Despite these limitations, Kohlberg’s stages remain the standard map of how moral reasoning grows from childhood to adulthood, and later thinking about morality — including the criticisms above — has largely been a response to his work.
3.8 Adolescence
Adolescence is the bridge between childhood and adulthood — the period, roughly from the early teens to about eighteen, that begins with the bodily changes of puberty and ends when a person is treated as a grown-up. It is a time of rapid change on every front at once, which is why it has traditionally been described as a period of “storm and stress”. The mind matures too: the abstract, formal-operational thinking described in section 3.5 arrives now, and it shapes much of what follows in this section.
3.8.1 Physical Changes at Puberty
Puberty is the stage of rapid physical growth during which a young person becomes sexually mature. Driven by a surge of hormones from the gonads (the sex glands), it brings a growth spurt and a set of bodily changes that fall into two kinds.
The primary sex characteristics are the changes in the reproductive organs themselves — the ovaries and uterus in females, the testes in males — that mature and make reproduction possible.
The secondary sex characteristics are the outward features that signal sexual maturity but are not directly involved in reproduction, such as breast development in females, the deepening of the voice in males, and the growth of body hair.
3.8.2 Identity Formation
The great psychological task of adolescence is to answer the question “Who am I?” — to pull together one’s abilities, beliefs and hopes into a stable sense of self. This achievement is called personal identity.
3.8.2.1 Erikson: Identity versus Role Confusion
The psychologist Erik Erikson placed this task at the centre of adolescence. In his account, the young person faces a conflict he named identity versus role confusion. To resolve it, teenagers try out different roles, groups, beliefs and styles — experimenting until they find a self that fits.
Where this exploration succeeds, the adolescent emerges with a clear and confident identity, and gains what Erikson called the virtue of fidelity — the ability to be true to oneself and one’s commitments. Where it fails, the young person is left in role confusion: unsure of who they are or where they belong, drifting from one path to another with little sense of direction.
3.8.2.2 Marcia’s Identity Statuses
The psychologist James Marcia developed Erikson’s idea by asking how far along an adolescent is in forming an identity. He found that the answer depends on two things: whether the person has explored different options, and whether they have made a firm commitment. Combining these gives four identity statuses.
Diagram
Fig. 3.8-1 – a two-by-two grid with “exploration” on one axis and “commitment” on the other, placing the four identity statuses in their cells: diffusion (neither), foreclosure (commitment without exploration), moratorium (exploration without commitment) and achievement (both)
A young person in identity diffusion has neither explored options nor made commitments, and drifts without direction. One in identity foreclosure has committed to an identity — a career, a set of beliefs — but without exploring, simply accepting what parents or others chose for them. One in identity moratorium is in the thick of exploration, actively searching but not yet settled. And one who has reached identity achievement has explored genuinely and then committed to their own chosen values and goals.
3.8.3 Some Major Concerns of Adolescence
The sudden physical, emotional and social changes of these years, together with the pressure to behave like an adult before one feels ready, can be hard to manage. Most young people come through them well, but some develop difficulties. Three that psychologists watch for are delinquency, substance abuse and eating disorders. Each is discussed here in terms of what it means and why it arises.
3.8.3.1 Delinquency
Delinquency refers to socially disapproved or illegal behaviour carried out by young people that breaks the rules of society and may call for correction. Such acts, when committed by minors, are treated as juvenile offences. Several kinds of causes lie behind it.
Personal causes include unmet needs that a young person tries to satisfy by the easiest available means, an impulsive temperament, and the emotional upheaval of adolescence itself, which can spill over into reckless behaviour.
Family causes include unstable or broken homes, harsh or rejecting parenting, and poor supervision. A young person may also copy delinquent behaviour observed in the family.
Social causes include peer pressure and the wish to belong, a sense of alienation from society’s values, a lack of educational or economic opportunity, and the influence of media. It is worth remembering that most adolescents are not delinquent, and that guidance, counselling and rehabilitation can turn such behaviour around.
3.8.3.2 Substance Abuse
Substance abuse is the repeated use of a drug or of alcohol in a way that harms the person — damaging their health, studies and relationships — even as the problems it causes pile up. Adolescents can be especially vulnerable, through curiosity, peer pressure, or an attempt to cope with stress they do not yet have other tools to handle.
Continued use tends to produce three linked symptoms, which the syllabus asks us to understand.
Tolerance means that the body has adjusted to the substance, so a larger amount is needed to produce the effect that a smaller amount once produced.
Dependence means that the person has come to need the substance. This can be physiological, where the body itself has adapted to it, and psychological, where the person feels a strong emotional pull to keep using it.
Withdrawal refers to the unpleasant physical and psychological symptoms that appear when a dependent person stops using the substance.
3.8.3.3 Eating Disorders
Eating disorders are serious mental-health conditions in which a person’s relationship with food and their own body becomes deeply disturbed, usually alongside an intense preoccupation with weight and shape. Two are especially associated with adolescence.
Anorexia nervosa is marked by an intense fear of gaining weight and by severe restriction of eating, even when the person is already underweight. A central feature is a distorted body image: the person sees themselves as overweight when they are not, and may not recognise how serious the situation has become.
Bulimia nervosa is marked by recurring episodes of eating a large amount of food with a sense of loss of control, followed by behaviours meant to undo the eating and prevent weight gain. It is accompanied by great distress and a preoccupation with body weight and shape.
Both conditions are genuine illnesses, not choices or a lack of willpower, and both can be treated. Because they carry real risks to health, they need the care of qualified professionals rather than home remedies.
3.9 Summary
Development is lifelong: it begins at conception and continues until death, so psychologists study the whole lifespan rather than childhood alone. Knowing its usual course lets us recognise difficulties early, intervene, and understand people at every age.
Development is the orderly, progressive series of changes — both quantitative (in amount) and qualitative (in kind) — that unfold through maturation and experience. It is continuous, cumulative, and follows a broadly fixed sequence.
Growth is the quantitative, directly measurable increase in the body, such as height and weight; it slows and stops after a certain age, whereas development continues for the whole of life.
Maturation is development that unfolds through the body’s own genetic timetable. A skill can appear only once the child is biologically ready for it — the idea of readiness.
Heredity passes traits from parents to child through genes carried on chromosomes, which combine at fertilisation to form the zygote. The environment is everything else that affects the person, beginning in the womb.
Heredity and environment are partners, not rivals: genes set the possibilities, and the environment decides how far they are reached. Twin studies — comparing identical, fraternal and separated twins — are the key evidence for this interaction.
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory pictures the child within nested layers of environment: the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem.
Motor development is the gradual gaining of control over body movement. Newborns begin with automatic reflexes — rooting, Moro, grasping and Babinski — which fade as voluntary control takes over.
Progress is marked by motor milestones, and skills divide into gross motor skills (large muscles, as in walking and running) and fine motor skills (small muscles, as in writing and buttoning), with gross motor control developing first.
Piaget saw children as active builders of their own understanding — the constructivist approach — using schemas that grow through assimilation and accommodation, kept in balance by equilibration.
Piaget described four stages: sensorimotor (birth–2 years; the child knows through senses and action, and gains object permanence); preoperational (2–7 years; symbolic play, but egocentrism and failure of conservation); concrete operational (7–11 years; conservation, reversibility, classification and seriation for concrete problems); and formal operational (11 years onward; abstract, hypothetico-deductive reasoning).
Piaget’s theory is criticised for underestimating young children, resting on a small and unrepresentative sample, and neglecting the social and cultural context of development.
Attachment is the strong emotional bond between a child and its caregivers. Harlow’s monkey studies showed it is built on contact comfort — soft physical contact — rather than on feeding.
Ainsworth’s Strange Situation revealed four attachment styles — secure, avoidant, ambivalent and disorganised — each linked to a particular pattern of caregiving.
A sense of self emerges by around two years (self-recognition). Children then develop gender awareness in steps — gender identity, then gender stability, then gender consistency — and take on gender roles and stereotypes; sex is biological, while gender is social.
Morality develops gradually. Kohlberg used moral dilemmas, such as the Heinz story, to study the reasoning behind moral choices rather than the choices themselves.
Kohlberg proposed three levels and six stages: pre-conventional (punishment-and-obedience, then self-interest), conventional (good-boy/good-girl, then social-order maintenance), and post-conventional (social contract, then universal ethical principles).
Kohlberg’s theory is criticised because knowing right does not ensure doing right, because it stresses justice over care (a possible gender bias), and because it may carry a Western, individualist cultural bias.
Adolescence begins with puberty, which brings primary sex characteristics (the maturing reproductive organs) and secondary sex characteristics (outward signs such as voice change and body hair).
The central task of adolescence is forming a personal identity. Erikson named this stage identity versus role confusion, while Marcia described four statuses based on exploration and commitment — diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium and achievement.
Some adolescents face serious difficulties. Delinquency has personal, family and social causes; substance abuse brings tolerance, dependence and withdrawal; and eating disorders — anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa — are serious, treatable illnesses that need professional care. Seeking help is a strength, not a weakness.
3.10 Key Terms
- Accommodation — changing an existing schema, or building a new one, because the old schema no longer fits a new experience.
- Adolescence — the transitional period between childhood and adulthood, beginning with puberty and ending at legal maturity.
- Ambivalent attachment — a style in which the child stays anxiously close, is very upset at separation, yet resists comfort on reunion; linked to inconsistent caregiving.
- Animism — the young child’s belief that lifeless objects have feelings and intentions.
- Anorexia nervosa — an eating disorder marked by an intense fear of gaining weight, severe restriction of eating, and a distorted body image.
- Assimilation — interpreting a new experience by fitting it into a schema one already has, without changing the schema.
- Attachment — the strong, lasting emotional bond a child forms with its caregivers, giving comfort and security.
- Avoidant attachment — a style in which the child seems indifferent to the caregiver, showing little distress at separation and little interest at reunion; linked to distant caregiving.
- Babinski reflex — a newborn reflex in which the toes fan outward when the sole of the foot is stroked.
- Bulimia nervosa — an eating disorder marked by recurring binge eating with a sense of loss of control, followed by behaviours meant to prevent weight gain.
- Centration — focusing on a single feature of a situation while ignoring others, typical of preoperational thinking.
- Chromosome — a thread-like structure inside the cell that carries the genes and the hereditary material.
- Chronosystem — in Bronfenbrenner’s theory, the dimension of time and the effect of the timing of life events on development.
- Circular reactions — the infant’s repeating of an action that first occurred by chance, because its result is interesting.
- Classification — the ability to sort objects into groups and sub-groups, achieved in the concrete operational stage.
- Cognitive development — the growth of a person’s ability to think, reason, remember and understand the world.
- Conception — the moment a new life begins, when the egg and sperm unite.
- Concrete operational stage — Piaget’s third stage (about 7–11 years), in which logical thinking applies to concrete, real problems.
- Conscience — the inner sense of right and wrong that guides moral behaviour.
- Conservation — the understanding that a quantity stays the same when its appearance changes, as long as nothing is added or removed.
- Constructivist approach — Piaget’s view that children actively build their own understanding through their activity.
- Contact comfort — the comfort and security an infant gains from soft physical contact, which builds attachment.
- Conventional level — Kohlberg’s middle level, where morality is based on social approval and maintaining social order.
- Decentration — the ability to attend to several features of a situation at once, achieved in the concrete operational stage.
- Deferred imitation — copying an action seen earlier, when the model is no longer present.
- Delinquency — socially disapproved or illegal behaviour by young people that breaks the rules of society.
- Dependence — a state in which a person has come to need a substance, physically, psychologically, or both.
- Development — the continuous, progressive series of orderly changes, in both size and ability, across the lifespan.
- Developmental milestone — a notable achievement that marks a person’s progress in development.
- Disorganised attachment — a style showing the most confused, contradictory behaviour at reunion; linked to frightening or overwhelmed caregiving.
- Eating disorders — serious mental-health conditions involving disturbed eating and extreme concern with weight and body shape.
- Ecological systems theory — Bronfenbrenner’s model of the child developing within nested layers of environment.
- Egocentrism — the preoperational child’s tendency to see the world only from its own point of view.
- Environment — everything that affects a person’s development except their genes, beginning in the womb.
- Equilibration — the balancing of assimilation and accommodation that drives cognitive growth.
- Exosystem — a setting the child does not directly enter but which still affects them, such as a parent’s workplace.
- Fertilisation — the union of a sperm and an ovum that forms the first cell of a new individual.
- Fine motor skills — movements using the small muscles, especially of the hands and fingers, as in writing.
- Formal operational stage — Piaget’s fourth stage (about 11 years onward), marked by abstract and hypothetical reasoning.
- Fraternal (dizygotic) twins — twins from two separate fertilised eggs, sharing about half their genes, like ordinary siblings.
- Gender — society’s ideas about how males and females should look, feel and behave.
- Gender consistency — the understanding that gender stays constant even when appearance or behaviour changes (about 6–7 years).
- Gender identity — a child’s awareness of being a boy or a girl (about 2–3 years).
- Gender role — the set of behaviours and attitudes a society regards as appropriate for males or females.
- Gender stability — the understanding that one’s gender stays the same over time (about 4 years).
- Gender stereotype — a widely held, often oversimplified belief about what males and females are typically like.
- Gene — the basic unit of heredity, carried along the chromosomes.
- Good-boy/good-girl orientation — Kohlberg’s Stage 3, where right action is whatever pleases others and earns approval.
- Grasping reflex — a newborn reflex in which the fingers close firmly around an object pressed on the palm.
- Gross motor skills — movements using the large muscles of the body, as in walking and running.
- Growth — the quantitative, directly measurable increase in body size that slows and stops after a certain age.
- Heredity — the biological transmission of traits from parents to offspring through the genes.
- Hypothetico-deductive reasoning — reasoning from a general idea to a testable prediction, the hallmark of formal operational thought.
- Identical (monozygotic) twins — twins from one fertilised egg that splits, sharing almost all their genes.
- Identity achievement — Marcia’s status of having committed to one’s own values and goals after genuine exploration.
- Identity diffusion — Marcia’s status of neither exploring options nor making commitments.
- Identity foreclosure — Marcia’s status of committing to a ready-made identity without exploration.
- Identity moratorium — Marcia’s status of actively exploring options without yet committing.
- Identity versus role confusion — Erikson’s stage of adolescence, in which the young person must build a coherent sense of self.
- Intervention — a planned step taken to support or correct development before a difficulty grows larger.
- Irreversibility — the preoperational child’s inability to mentally reverse a sequence of steps.
- Lifespan development — the continuous process of physical and psychological change from conception until death.
- Macrosystem — in Bronfenbrenner’s theory, the outermost layer of broad cultural values, customs and laws.
- Maturation — development that unfolds through the body’s own genetically set biological timetable.
- Mental representation — holding images and ideas in the mind rather than acting them out physically.
- Mesosystem — in Bronfenbrenner’s theory, the links between the parts of a child’s microsystem, such as home and school.
- Microsystem — in Bronfenbrenner’s theory, the innermost settings the child directly takes part in, such as family and school.
- Moral development — the way a person’s sense of right and wrong develops with age.
- Moral dilemma — a story in which no choice is clearly right, used to draw out the reasoning behind a moral judgement.
- Morality — principles concerning how people ought to treat one another, especially regarding justice, rights and welfare.
- Moro reflex — a newborn reflex in which the baby flings its limbs out and draws them back in response to a startle.
- Motor development — the gradual gaining of control over the movements of the body.
- Motor milestone — a notable motor achievement most children reach at roughly the same point in development.
- Naive hedonistic (self-interest) orientation — Kohlberg’s Stage 2, where right action serves one’s own needs, with a rough trading fairness.
- Nature–nurture debate — the long-standing question of whether heredity or environment matters more in development.
- Object permanence — the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen or heard.
- Personal identity — a firm, well-organised sense of one’s own values, beliefs, goals and place in the world.
- Post-conventional level — Kohlberg’s highest level, where morality rests on principles that may go beyond mere law.
- Pre-conventional level — Kohlberg’s first level, where morality is judged by its consequences for oneself.
- Preoperational stage — Piaget’s second stage (about 2–7 years), marked by symbolic thought but also egocentrism and lack of conservation.
- Primary sex characteristics — the reproductive organs that mature at puberty and make reproduction possible.
- Propositional thought — judging whether a statement is logically sound from its wording alone, without needing the real situation.
- Puberty — the stage of rapid physical growth during which a young person becomes sexually mature.
- Punishment-and-obedience orientation — Kohlberg’s Stage 1, where an action is judged wrong simply if it brings punishment.
- Qualitative change — a change in kind, such as moving from babbling to speaking in sentences.
- Quantitative change — a change in amount, such as growing taller or heavier.
- Readiness — the point at which a child is biologically prepared to acquire a particular skill.
- Reflex — an automatic, unlearned response to a particular kind of stimulation.
- Reversibility — the ability to mentally undo a sequence of steps, achieved in the concrete operational stage.
- Role confusion — Erikson’s negative outcome for adolescence: being unsure of who one is or where one belongs.
- Rooting reflex — a newborn reflex in which the baby turns its head towards a touch on the cheek and opens its mouth.
- Schema — an organised mental structure or pattern used to make sense of experience.
- Secondary sex characteristics — outward signs of sexual maturity at puberty, such as voice change and body hair, not directly reproductive.
- Secure attachment — the healthiest style, in which the child uses the caregiver as a safe base and is easily comforted; linked to responsive caregiving.
- Self-recognition — the child’s ability to recognise itself, for example in a mirror, marking a genuine sense of self.
- Sensorimotor stage — Piaget’s first stage (birth–2 years), in which the infant knows the world through senses and action.
- Seriation — arranging items along a dimension, such as ordering sticks from shortest to longest.
- Sex — whether a person is biologically male or female, decided by the body and its chromosomes.
- Social-contract (legalistic) orientation — Kohlberg’s Stage 5, where laws are seen as changeable social agreements serving the general good.
- Social-order-maintaining orientation — Kohlberg’s Stage 4, where right action means obeying laws and upholding social order.
- Socio-emotional development — the development of a person’s emotions, relationships and sense of self.
- Strange Situation — Ainsworth’s controlled procedure for assessing a child’s attachment through separations and reunions.
- Substance abuse — the repeated use of a drug or alcohol in a way that harms the person despite continuing problems.
- Symbolic play — pretend play in which one object stands for another, as when a stick becomes a sword.
- Tolerance — a state in which the body has adjusted to a substance, so a larger amount is needed for the same effect.
- Universal-ethical-principle orientation — Kohlberg’s Stage 6, where morality rests on self-chosen universal principles of justice and dignity.
- Withdrawal — the unpleasant physical and psychological symptoms that appear when a dependent person stops using a substance.
- Zygote — the single cell formed at fertilisation, with 46 chromosomes, from which a new individual develops.
3.11 Points to Ponder
- If development truly never stops, is there any age at which a person can be called “finished” becoming who they are — or is a settled self always a little bit of an illusion?
- Heredity sets the possibilities and environment decides how far they are reached. How different do you think you might be today if you had grown up in a very different family or place — and how would you ever know?
- Piaget believed his stages are universal, yet how far children travel through them depends on culture and schooling. Does this suggest that mature reasoning is something the world grows in a child, rather than something the child simply possesses?
- If our earliest attachment shapes how we relate to others, can later relationships fully rewrite an insecure beginning, or does the first bond leave a mark that never quite disappears?
- Kohlberg placed abstract principles of justice above loyalty to family and community. Is a person who always chooses principle over loyalty really more moral — or simply moral in a different tradition?
- Erikson said adolescence is the search for an answer to “Who am I?” When identities can be tried on and discarded online in an instant, is forming one settled sense of self becoming harder than before, or just different?
3.12 Objective Questions
- The understanding that an object continues to exist even when it cannot be seen is called: [1 mark]
- conservation
- object permanence
- egocentrism
- seriation
- Twins that develop from a single fertilised egg and share almost all their genes are: [1 mark]
- fraternal twins
- dizygotic twins
- identical twins
- unrelated siblings
- In Bronfenbrenner’s theory, the connection between a child’s home and school forms part of the: [1 mark]
- microsystem
- mesosystem
- exosystem
- macrosystem
- A child who insists that a tall, narrow glass “has more” water after it is poured from a short, wide glass is failing at: [1 mark]
- seriation
- classification
- conservation
- deferred imitation
- According to Kohlberg, obeying a rule only to avoid punishment reflects the: [1 mark]
- good-boy/good-girl orientation
- social-contract orientation
- punishment-and-obedience orientation
- universal-ethical-principle orientation
- Harlow’s experiments with infant monkeys showed that attachment is built mainly on: [1 mark]
- feeding
- contact comfort
- punishment
- imitation
- The Piagetian stage marked by abstract, hypothetico-deductive reasoning is the: [1 mark]
- sensorimotor stage
- preoperational stage
- concrete operational stage
- formal operational stage
- An adolescent who commits to a career chosen by their parents, without exploring other options, is in Marcia’s status of: [1 mark]
- identity diffusion
- identity foreclosure
- identity moratorium
- identity achievement
- Match each name in Column A with the idea in Column B: [4 marks]
| Column A | Column B |
|---|---|
| a. Jean Piaget | i. the Strange Situation and attachment styles |
| b. Lawrence Kohlberg | ii. the ecological systems of development |
| c. Mary Ainsworth | iii. the four stages of cognitive development |
| d. Urie Bronfenbrenner | iv. the stages of moral development |
The newborn reflex in which a baby turns its head towards a touch on the cheek is the ______ reflex. [1 mark]
In Piaget’s theory, interpreting a new experience by fitting it into a schema one already has is called ______. [1 mark]
The outermost layer of Bronfenbrenner’s model, made up of a society’s cultural values, customs and laws, is the ______. [1 mark]
Physical growth continues throughout the whole of life, just as development does. (True/False) [1 mark]
Gender consistency usually develops earlier than gender identity. (True/False) [1 mark]
For each of the following, choose the correct option: a. Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A. b. Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A. c. A is true, but R is false. d. A is false, but R is true.
Assertion (A): A baby in the early months of the sensorimotor stage does not search for a toy that is hidden from view. Reason (R): The baby has not yet developed object permanence. [1 mark]
Assertion (A): Identical twins reared apart are often strikingly similar to one another. Reason (R): Heredity has no influence at all on psychological traits. [1 mark]
Assertion (A): Kohlberg’s theory has been criticised for a possible gender bias. Reason (R): His original sample was made up only of boys. [1 mark]
3.13 Check Your Concepts
Define maturation and give one example. [2 marks] (about 30 words)
State any two differences between growth and development. [2 marks] (about 30 words)
What is meant by a motor milestone? Give one example. [2 marks] (about 30 words)
Name the four attachment styles identified through the Strange Situation. [2 marks] (about 30 words)
Differentiate between assimilation and accommodation, with one example of each. [3 marks] (about 60 words)
Explain briefly why psychologists say that heredity and environment interact rather than compete. [3 marks] (about 60 words)
Distinguish between primary and secondary sex characteristics. [3 marks] (about 60 words)
Explain the difference between tolerance and dependence in the context of substance abuse. [3 marks] (about 60 words)
Explain, with an example, what conservation is and why a child in the preoperational stage fails a conservation task. [4 marks] (about 100 words)
Describe Bronfenbrenner’s five ecological systems, giving one example of each. [4 marks] (about 100 words)
Explain Erikson’s stage of identity versus role confusion, and describe what happens when this conflict is not resolved. [4 marks] (about 100 words)
Describe Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development, and state one criticism of his theory. [6 marks] (about 150 words)
Describe Kohlberg’s three levels of moral development, with the two stages in each, and give one criticism of the theory. [6 marks] (about 150 words)
Discuss the causes of delinquency in adolescence under the headings of personal, family and social factors. [6 marks] (about 150 words)
3.14 Case-Based Questions
- In a daycare centre, eighteen-month-old Ira plays happily while her mother is in the room, glancing back at her from time to time. When her mother steps out, Ira cries; when her mother returns, Ira reaches for her, is quickly comforted, and soon goes back to playing.
- Which attachment style does Ira show? [1]
- What pattern of caregiving is usually linked to this style? [2]
- Name the technique used to assess attachment styles like this, and the psychologist who devised it. [2] [5 marks]
- Seven-year-old Kabir watches his mother pour juice from a short, wide glass into a tall, thin one. He is sure the tall glass now has more juice, even though nothing was added to it.
- Which Piagetian stage is Kabir in, and which stage will he enter next? [2]
- Name the limitation of thinking he is showing. [1]
- Which two new abilities, developing in the next stage, will let him answer correctly? [2] [5 marks]
- A college student, Neha, argues that a law which unfairly punishes poor farmers is only a human agreement and ought to be changed, and that people should weigh the welfare of everyone the law affects.
- At which level and stage of Kohlberg’s theory is Neha reasoning? [2]
- Give one reason for your answer. [1]
- Briefly describe the two stages of the pre-conventional level, for contrast. [2] [5 marks]
- A school counsellor becomes concerned about a Class XI student who has grown intensely preoccupied with her weight, severely limits what she eats although she is not overweight, and still describes herself as “too big” when others do not see her that way.
- Which eating disorder do these features most closely describe? [1]
- Name the distorted way of seeing one’s own body that is central to it. [1]
- What would be a responsible next step for the counsellor, and why is help from a qualified professional important here? [2] [4 marks]
- Two friends discuss their futures. Rohan has thought carefully about several careers, weighed them against his interests, and firmly decided to become a teacher. Sameer has not really thought about it and drifts from one idea to another without settling on anything.
- Which of Marcia’s identity statuses best fits Rohan, and which best fits Sameer? [2]
- On which two dimensions did Marcia base his four statuses? [2] [4 marks]