Assigned Reading:  Chapter 10.  Continuity and Change Across Time.  Skip pages 353-354, beginning with "Lives, the Computerized Codes...", through "Recycling data." and skip pages 368-369 covering Loevinger's Stages of Ego Development.

Study Questions:
1.  Describe a simple longitudinal study, outlining your research question, your sample, and the type of data that would be collected.  Discuss two factors that might affect your results and make them hard to interpret.
2.  What is attachment?  When is basic attachment said to develop?  Describe the way in which attachment is assessed in children.  How do securely attached children differ from those with insecure attachment? Discuss at least one criticism of the attachment research.

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A.  Stability of personality.  Assumed to exist.  Some attributes more stable than others.

B.  Research strategies for assessing personality stability.
    1.  Cross-sectional.  Studying two or more groups assumed to be at different stages of development.  Data collected at one point in time.
    2.  Longitudinal.  Studies of the same group over time.  Can be simple longitudinal, panel, or retrospective longitudinal, or cross-sectional longitudinal.

C.  Factors affecting the interpretation of longitudinal data
    1.  Personality characteristics may be expressed differently at different ages.
    2.  Major events shared by a group may affect a whole group and make them different from another cohort tested at the same age.

D.  Theories of personality change
    1.  The Social Clock is the societal expectations for how people will behave at different ages.
    2.  Kohlberg.  Changes in how people make moral judgments
    3.  Levinson.  Stages of the life cycle.
    4.  Neo-Freudians.  Ego development
    5.  Erikson.  Psychosocial stages.

E.  Infancy.  The development of attachment.  Attachment is the bond that develops between the infant and the primary caregiver.
    1.  Types of attachment:  secure, anxious, and avoidant.
    2.  Measurement of attachment:  "Strange-situation".  Reactions of the child when the mother is not present.  Is this a valid test?

F.  Childhood.
    1.  How strong is the role of the parents?
    2.  Birth order.  First born and only children higher in achievement motivation.  Younger more relationship oriented.  Having younger siblings increases power motivation.
 
G.  Adolescence and Identity Formation.
    1.  Having a clear and stable identity is important for mental health.
    2.  Ones identity should be known to others.
    3.  Erikson identified the establishment of the self as an independent adult as the task of this age.
    4.  James Marcia tested Erikson's ideas, and extended them by identifying four identity statuses:
        a.  Identity diffusion.  No evidence of exploration nor of having a clear identity.
        b.  Identity foreclosure.  Early acceptance of choices.
        c.  Moratorium.  Active exploration
        d.  Identity achievement.  Development of one's identity.

H.  Adult Life.  Involvement in career building and family building, according to traditional social clock.  Midlife crisis.

I.  Later adult life.  Confidence and security if successful passing through mid-life.  Increasing concerns with generativity.