Developmental Psychology across the Life Span
Prenatal and infancy
Know germinal, embryonic, and fetal stages, and teratogens. Piaget's stages: sensorimotor (object permanence), preoperational (egocentrism, conservation failure, symbolic play), concrete operational (conservation, logical operations on concrete objects), formal operational (abstract reasoning). Assimilation versus accommodation; schemas. Attachment: Ainsworth's strange situation; secure, avoidant, ambivalent, disorganised; Bowlby's theory. Temperament types (easy, difficult, slow-to-warm-up).
Childhood and adolescence
Erikson's psychosocial stages across life: trust versus mistrust, autonomy versus shame, initiative versus guilt, industry versus inferiority, identity versus role confusion, intimacy versus isolation, generativity versus stagnation, integrity versus despair. Kohlberg's moral stages: preconventional, conventional, postconventional. Vygotsky's zone of proximal development and scaffolding. Adolescence involves puberty, identity formation, and peer influence.
Adulthood and ageing
Physical and cognitive changes; crystallised intelligence maintained; social roles, marriage, parenting, retirement, bereavement. Research designs: cross-sectional (age differences confounded with cohort) versus longitudinal (time-consuming, attrition).
Traps and rule of thumb
A frequent trap is placing object permanence in the preoperational stage; it belongs to sensorimotor. Another is confusing assimilation (fit new into existing schema) with accommodation (change schema). Rule of thumb: assimilation adds data; accommodation changes the schema.