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1: Lifespan Psychology

  • Page ID
    20401
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    • 1.1: Introduction to Life Span, Growth and Development
      This course is commonly referred to as the “womb to tomb” course because it is the story of our journeys from conception to death. Human development is the study of how we change over time.  Although this course is often offered in psychology, this is a very interdisciplinary course. Psychologists, nutritionists, sociologists, anthropologists, educators, and health care professionals all contribute to our knowledge of the life span.
    • 1.2: The Cohort Effect
      One important context that is sometimes mistaken for age is the cohort effect. A cohort is a group of people who are born at roughly the same period in a particular society.  Another context that influences our lives is our social standing, socioeconomic status, or social class. Socioeconomic status is a way to identify families and households based on their shared levels of education, income, and occupation.
    • 1.3: Culture
      Culture is often referred to as a blueprint or guideline shared by a group of people that specifies how to live. It includes ideas about what is right and wrong, what to strive for, what to eat, how to speak, what is valued, as well as what kinds of emotions are called for in certain situations. Culture teaches us how to live in a society and allows us to advance because each new generation can benefit from the solutions found and passed down from previous generations.
    • 1.4: Periods of Development
      Developmentalists break the life span into nine stages: prenatal development, infancy and toddlerhood, early childhood, middle childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, middle adulthood, late adulthood, and death and dying. The stages reflects unique aspects of the various stages of childhood and adulthood that will be explored in this book. So while both an 8 month old and an 8 year old are considered children, they have very different motor abilities, social relationships, and cognitive skills.
    • 1.5: Research Methods
      The hallmark of scientific investigation is that of following a set of procedures designed to keep questioning or skepticism alive while describing, explaining, or testing any phenomenon. Descriptive studies focus on describing an occurrence. Explanatory studies are efforts to answer the question “why.” Evaluation research is designed to assess the effectiveness of policies or programs. Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for evidence that supports our own views.
    • 1.6: Life Stages
    • 1.7: Introduction to Life Span, Growth and Development
    • 1.8: Introduction to Life Span Development
    • 1.9: 49 Up
    • 1.10: Meet Neil

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    This page titled 1: Lifespan Psychology is shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Laura Overstreet via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.