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Jack Bauer, PhD
Department of Psychology
University of Dayton
Dayton, OH 45469
(937) 229-2617

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Psychology Department

College of Arts
and Sciences

PSY 353:
Adult Development and Aging

Spring 2009
TTh 1:30 - 2:45, SJ 013
Office Hours: TW 2:00-3:00 and by appointment

T.A.: Sunwoong Park, office hours by appointment
T.A.: Liz Campbell, office hours by appointment

Syllabus
Required Text
Course Objectives
Grading & Requirements
Other Course Policies
Schedule & Readings

Required Text
Santrock, J. W. (2009). Life-Span Development, 12th Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill. Note: You may use the 11th or 10th edition. Also, a copy of the text is on reserve at the library.

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Course Objectives
This course presents an overview of adult development and aging. This course has four main aims. (1) The course is designed for you to cultivate your ability to think from a developmental perspective—a perspective that helps you to step outside the immediate moment and to assess where that moment came from and where it’s going. (2) More specifically, the course is designed to help you better understand and plan your own adulthood from a developmental perspective. (3) The written assessments in this course are designed for you to sharpen your skills at identifying a main idea and explaining that idea clearly. (4) The course is designed to prepare you for future studies and work in psychology.

This course challenges you to think not just about the different changes people encounter throughout adult life but also about how people change, why they change, and what all this says about us as humans. The course assumes that adults develop along several dimensions (e.g., cognitive, emotional, social, biological) and that each of these dimensions contributes to the development of the other dimensions. In adulthood, tracking development in such an integrative way becomes especially complex, but only to a degree that is appropriate to the rich dynamics of everyday adult life. To name just a few factors involved: Each adult participates in several social contexts in his or her everyday activities, and adults vary widely in their overall lifestyles. Plus, adults vary widely in their biological predispositions and physical conditions. Plus, adults have highly idiosyncratic intentions for the future and interpretations of the past, both of which guide future development. As if that weren’t complex enough, an individual’s adulthood can span several decades, during which time several changes occur in each one of those factors. Therefore this course takes an integrative view that attempts to understand adult life over time in a vibrant context of interrelated developmental processes.

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Course Grading & Requirements

Your grade will be calculated from a total of either 500 or 600 points, depending on whether you choose to write a film paper.

Exams. Three exams will cover the content of the class lectures and text. Therefore you are expected to attend class, take notes, and read the text as the course progresses. The exams will require you to integrate information, not just memorize it. The final exam is not cumulative. If you miss an exam, you must have a legitimate reason (by university standards) for taking a make-up exam in order to earn points for that exam. In such a case you must make every attempt to notify me in advance. Exams are worth 100 points each.

Interview paper. This interview project has two purposes: (1) to give you an opportunity to hear first-hand how adults describe their own development and (2) to develop your ability to integrate conceptually the many processes of adult development. You will interview an adult (25 or older) about their perception of his or her own development in the areas of love, work, spirituality, leisure, etc. You will then write a 5-7 page paper that conveys to the reader (1) how the interviewee perceives his or her own development—that is, focus on how the individual constructs meaning in his or her life, rather than merely the facts of his or her life—and (2) how those perceptions relate to theory and research in adult development. The details of this project can be downloaded from the website and will be described in class a few weeks before the paper is due (be sure to download the description and attend). The paper is worth 100 points and is due in class Tuesday, March 24.
Download:
How to do the interview and write the paper

Research paper. This paper requires you to form and communicate an idea or perspective on a specific aspect of adult development or adult life. This idea or perspective must be well reasoned and firmly grounded in research. How to choose a topic: You are encouraged to pick a topic of personal interest to you that relates somehow to developmental psychology and adulthood. You are also encouraged to start by thinking broadly and creatively about your own personal interests—the topic need not be a “textbook” topic—and only then look for some tie to development. If you want help coming up with a topic that interests you or refining your topic, let me know. How to find research articles: This paper is to be based on 3 articles that report on empirical research and that appear in academic, peer-reviewed journals (not newspapers, magazines, websites, etc). You may use only academic articles that either (1) present original research or (2) present a statistical meta-analysis of original research from various articles. Thus, you may not use purely theoretical articles, literature-review articles that do not present original research or statistical meta-analyses, commentaries, or other essay-type articles, even if they appear in peer-reviewed, academic journals. Use PsycINFO or another of the library’s search engines. How to write the paper: Later in the semester, about a month before this paper is due, we will spend an entire class period explaining and talking about how to do this paper (make sure you attend; it's a difficult assignment). In a nutshell, you are required to use a rigid structure to organize your paper. (This forces you to pour your creativity into the ideas, not the organization of the paper.) This structure will help you organize your thoughts in a way that is required for scientific writing—plus it provides a good basic structure for thinking systematically and for writing about fact-based opinions in general. The sections of the paper are: (1) introduction (which briefly states the main point of the paper), (2) summaries of the three articles (each one separately; each including a summary of the article’s main purpose, methodology, results, and conclusions), and (3) integration (which compares and contrasts the articles as well as elaborates on the main point of the paper). The grading key gives more detail (download it!). The paper should be 4-5 pages, double-spaced. Remember to give yourself enough time for this project: You will need to have a very well-organized paper in order to cover the necessary ground in such a short paper without sacrificing substance. I strongly recommend having your topic and articles chosen a few weeks before it is due. Be sure to include the first page of each article with your paper; it should have the article's abstract on it. Due in class: Tuesday, April 28. This paper is worth 100 points. Be sure to download the grading key (though don’t think this covers everything that we’ll cover in the class devoted to how to do this paper). Finally, download a description and examples of how to format citations and references in APA style.
Link to PsycINFO
Download:
• Grading key
• Examples of citations and references in APA style

Optional (not extra credit) Film Paper. This paper is worth 100 points. If you turn it in, your total course grade will be out of 600 possible points instead of 500 (see Course Grading above). You are to watch the documentary 49 Up (on reserve in the library--or anywhere you can find it), which features interviews of people about their lives. These individuals were interviewed every seven years from the time they were seven years old. Now they’re 49. You are to write a paper on the film, showing how the film portrays human development, particularly in adulthood, by linking the film to theory or research in developmental psychology. You have a good deal of latitude in deciding how to approach this paper. Do this:
• Start by choosing the interviewee(s) and the topics you want to explore in your paper. For instance, you may choose to write about one, two, or a group of the interviewees. You might describe how that person or those individuals developed over time in adulthood, or perhaps even linking their youth to their later development (perhaps covering individual traits and interests and/or social environments and/or other life circumstances). Or you might analyze a particular social factor that differed for the interviewees, like gender or socio-economic status in childhood or adolescence, in terms of its effects on development. Interviewees were chosen for the original interviews to represent a range of demographic categories in England.
• Then, pick one (two at most) developmental theory or principle or body of research, and use those ideas to show how the interviewees developed over time, from childhood to middle age. For example, you might compare and contrast two characters in terms of Erikson's stages of development.
• I'm looking for a well-organized paper that begins with a clear, concise introduction that states the main point or theme(s) of the paper. The introduction should briefly describe the main insight or claim of your paper in the overall. The rest of the paper should explain and illustrate that point. Also, be sure to convey how the individual character(s) experienced their own lives, as they described it. Don't make quick judgments about who they are from the standpoint of a careless observer.
• Do not spend space in the paper summarizing the psychological theories or describing or the film's structure or characters. Assume I know all that. Go straight into analyzing the film in terms of the theories or research.
• If you have any questions about how to approach this task, please ask. This project is designed to strengthen your ability to think about and describe people’s lives in a way that is conceptually clear and well organized. The paper should be 4-5 pages, double-spaced, and is due Friday, May 1 at noon BY EMAIL to me.

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Other Course Policies

The Honor Pledge. I understand that as a student of the University of Dayton, I am a member of our academic and social community. I recognize the importance of my education and the value of experiencing life in such an integrated community. I believe that the value of my education and degree is critically dependent upon the academic integrity of the university community, and so in order to maintain our academic integrity, I pledge to:
• Complete all assignments and examinations by the guidelines given to me by my instructors
• Avoid plagiarism and any other form of misrepresenting someone else's work as my own
• Adhere to the Standards of Conduct as outlined in the Academic Honor Code.
In doing this, I hold myself and my community to a higher standard of excellence, and set an example for my peers to follow.

Assistance with tests, classes, etc. Please let me know if you would like any form of assistance or accommodations in this class. Feel free to call or email me for an individual appointment, or stop by during my office hours. UD asks that we state the following. To request reasonable accommodations due to disability, please contact Student Learning Support (SLS; formerly called LEAD) in the Learning Teaching Center, LTC 023, 229-2066. If you have a Self-Identification form indicating that you have a disability that requires reasonable accommodations, please present it to me so that we may discuss your needs.

Attendance. While you will not be graded for attendance, students find it very difficult to do well on my exams if they miss classes, since my exams are based not on the memorization of facts but on the ability to integrate information—a skill we develop in class.

Note on plagiarism. Plagiarism is grounds for getting 0 points (not just an F) on any assignment (see UD’s policy on plagiarism and its penalties on page 3 of the Student Handbook). So be very careful. If you have any questions, ask. Plagiarism is a form of academic dishonesty that I take very seriously.

Questions. If you have a question, please ask. I am happy to address questions in class, in my office, or by email about how to do an assignment, study for a test, etc. However, if the question deals with material explained in this syllabus, read about it first. Also, do not email me to calculate your course grade. It is your responsibility to keep track of this. The grade is a matter of points. If you want to know what grade is possible for you, just do the math.

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Course Schedule
Readings below are for the 12th edition of the text. Click here for the readings for the 11th edition*

*The main difference between editions is that the 12th edition combined chapters 1 & 2 of earlier editions, so the sections for Ch. 2 in the 12 ed. are found in Ch. 3 in the 11th ed., and so on

** Just the paragraphs in these sections that deal with the day's topic

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