Lifespan Development
Psychology · Section 3.3 · 18 study cards
Development from conception to death: Piaget and Vygotsky, attachment and parenting, Erikson and Kohlberg, and what changes with age.
Practice this set → Spaced repetition, card by card. No account needed.
Method
Ask which of the three questions is being tested
Nature and nurture, continuity and stages, stability and change. If a question contrasts two theorists, it is usually about one of these: Piaget and Vygotsky differ on the source of cognitive change, and stage theories differ from learning accounts on continuity.
Choose a research design by what the question needs to rule out
- If the worry is that groups differ by generation rather than by age, the design must be longitudinal or sequential, because cross-sectional data confound age with cohort.
- If the worry is time, cost or dropout, cross-sectional is the practical choice and the cohort caveat must be stated.
- If both matter, sequential designs follow several cohorts at once.
Attach one signature task to each stage
- Sensorimotor: object permanence, tested by searching for a hidden object.
- Preoperational: failure of conservation and the three-mountain egocentrism task.
- Concrete operational: conservation passed, reversibility understood.
- Formal operational: hypothetical and abstract reasoning.
Then hold one criticism ready: simplified tasks reveal the competence earlier, so Piaget underestimated ages while getting the sequence right.
Separate the three stage theories by what each is about
Piaget is about thinking, Erikson about social and emotional crises across the whole lifespan, Kohlberg about moral reasoning. When a question describes an adolescent, decide first whether it concerns cognition, identity or morality, and only then name the stage. Kohlberg's level always comes from the reasoning offered, never from the decision reached.
State attachment and parenting findings as correlational
Attachment security, parenting style and child outcomes are measured, not manipulated, so the direction of effect is open and shared genes and temperament are alternative explanations. An answer that names the pattern and then adds this qualification will usually score above one that only names the pattern.
Definitions and theorems
Worked example
A five-year-old watches water poured from a short wide glass into a tall narrow one and says the tall glass now has more. His older sister, aged nine, says the amount is unchanged because nothing was added or removed. Asked whether a boy should steal a drug he cannot afford to save his mother, the nine-year-old says no, because stealing is against the law. Their mother expects him to follow household rules but explains her reasons and lets him argue his case. Identify the developmental stage in each part and classify the parenting style, then state one limitation of each judgement.
Start with the five-year-old. Judging quantity from a single salient dimension, the height of the liquid, is failure of conservation, which places him in Piaget's preoperational stage.
Name the underlying limitation: centration on one dimension and an inability to mentally reverse the pouring.
Now the nine-year-old. She conserves and justifies it by reversibility, which places her in concrete operational thought. Note that she reasons about the concrete materials in front of her rather than about abstract principles.
Turn to the moral dilemma, and score the reasoning rather than the answer. Appealing to the law and to social rules is conventional morality in Kohlberg's scheme. The same refusal justified by fear of being caught would be preconventional.
Classify the parenting. High demands combined with responsiveness, explanation and room for the child's voice is the authoritative style.
State the limitations. Piagetian stage judgements are task-dependent: simplified conservation tasks and nonverbal methods show competence earlier, so a single failed task does not fix a child's stage.
Add the limitation on parenting. The link between authoritative parenting and good outcomes is correlational, so the child's temperament may be shaping the parent, and shared genes could produce the association without any causal effect of style.
Common mistakes
- Treating Piaget's ages as fixed thresholds. The sequence is the claim, not the timetable. Modern methods show object permanence and perspective-taking earlier than his tasks suggested, because his tests required language and motor skills the child had not yet mastered. Say sequence, not schedule.
- Scoring Kohlberg from the decision instead of the reasoning. Two people who both say the drug should be stolen can be at completely different levels, depending on whether they cite avoiding blame, meeting others' expectations, or a principle about the value of life. Always quote the justification in the answer.
- Mixing up Erikson's and Piaget's stages. Piaget's stages are cognitive and stop in adolescence; Erikson's are psychosocial and run to the end of life. A question about identity in adolescence wants identity versus role confusion, not formal operations.
- Stating attachment and parenting findings as causal. These are correlational designs. Temperament and shared genetics are live alternative explanations, and the strength of parenting effects on adult outcomes is smaller than most students assume. Name the pattern, then name the limitation.
- Presenting Kübler-Ross's five stages as a sequence everyone goes through. They were described from observation of dying patients, not established as a required order, and grief varies widely. Describing a bereaved person as 'stuck' in a stage is exactly the misuse the criticism targets.
Practice it
Reading the method is not the same as being able to recall it under pressure. This set drills 18 cards one at a time and schedules each card separately, so the ones you keep missing come back sooner.