Week 11 — Development Across the Lifespan

Welcome to your Week 11 Start Here page.

Why this matters

A preschool teacher puzzling over a child's answer, a nurse on a pediatric ward, and a manager relying on an experienced employee all read the same story: how minds grow and change.

In plain language

You were once a baby who thought a hidden toy had stopped existing, and one day you will be an older adult who knows more words than you do today. Development is the word psychologists use for those changes, and for the things that stay the same, from the first year of life to the last. This week you will follow how thinking grows in four steps, how a helper can stretch what a learner can do, and how a baby forms a deep bond, called attachment, with the people who care for it. You will also see how the big questions of a life, such as "who am I?", change from the teen years to old age. The goal is to read a child's puzzling answer, or a grandparent's sharp memory for facts, as a stage in a long story rather than as a mistake.

• Already covered: Weeks 1 to 10 built the science, the brain, sensing, learning, memory, thinking, and feeling.
• This week: how thinking, relationships, and identity develop from infancy to old age.
• How they connect: Week 9's intelligence returns as two kinds that age differently.
• Where we're going next: Week 12, Personality.

Focus

What changes in a mind across a lifetime, and what stays the same?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] order Piaget's four stages and place a child using the ages 2, 7, and 11
• [ ] explain the zone of proximal development and scaffolding
• [ ] read attachment at the reunion in the Strange Situation
• [ ] place three of Erikson's stages and contrast fluid with crystallized intelligence

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 11 (about 45 minutes), then the lecture and the slides.
2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
3. Do the Analysis Workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
4. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: place a 4-year-old who says the tall glass holds more juice in a stage, and name the hallmark.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor early if a step snags.

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