Development Describes the growth of humans throughout the lifespan, from conception to death. The scientific study of human development seeks to understand and explain how and why people change throughout life. This includes all aspects of human growth, including physical, emotional, intellectual, social, perceptual, and personality development. The scientific study of development is important not only to psychology, but also to sociology, education, and health care. Development does not Just Involve the biological and physical aspects of growth, but also the cognitive and social aspects associated with development throughout life.
The study of human development is important in a number of subjects, including biology, anthropology, sociology, education, history, and psychology. Most important, however, are the practical applications of studying human development. By better understanding how and why people change and grow, we can then apply this knowledge to helping people live up to their full potential. 2. Human Development Refers to the study of the human cycle from conception to death. It focuses on the continuous chronological processes or changes which are cumulative.
It encompasses the physical, cognitive and solo-Montreal changes that occur In an individual. 3. Stages of Development Infancy (1 month to 1 year) Early Childhood (2 to 6 years) School Age ( 7 to 12 years) Adolescence (13-20 years) Early Adulthood (21-30 years) Middle adulthood (31-50 years) Late Adulthood (51 years and above) Death 4. Aspects of Development Cognitive development is primarily concerned with the ways in which infants and children acquire, develop, and use internal mental capabilities such as problem solving, memory, and language.
Major topics in cognitive development are the study f language acquisition and the development of perceptual and motor skills. Pigged was one of the influential early psychologists to study the development of cognitive ablest. HIS theory suggests that development proceeds through a set of stages from Developmental psychologists who are interested in social and emotional development examine how individuals develop social and emotional competencies. For example, they study how children form friendships, how they understand and deal with emotions, and how identity develops.
Research in this area may involve duty of the relationship between cognition or cognitive development and social behavior. Physical development concerns the physical maturation of an individual’s body until it reaches the adult stature. Although physical growth is a highly regular process, all children differ tremendously in the timing of their growth spurts. Studies are being done to analyze how the differences in these timings affect and are related to other variables of developmental psychology such as information processing speed.
Traditional measures of physical maturity using x-rays are less in practice nowadays, imparted to simple measurements of body parts such as height, weight, head circumference, and arm span. Researchers interested in memory development look at the way our memory develops from childhood and onward. According to Fuzzy-trace theory, we have two separate memory processes: verbatim and gist. These two traces begin to develop at different times as well as at a different pace. Children as young as 4 years-old have verbatim memory, memory for surface information, which increases up to early adulthood, at which point it begins to decline.
On the other hand, our capacity for sit memory, memory for semantic information, increases up to early adulthood, at which point it consistent through old age. Furthermore, our reliance on gist memory traces in reasoning increases as we age. 5. Principles of Development First of the principles which Ballets (1987) discussed is the belief that development is lifelong. This belief has two separate aspects. First, the potential for development extends across the entire life span: there is no assumption that the life course must reach a plateau or decline during adulthood and old age.
Second, development may involve processes which are not present at birth but emerge throughout the life span. Development is also multidimensional and multidimensional. Multidimensionality refers to the fact that development cannot be described by a single criterion such as increases or decreases in a behavior. The principle of multidimensionality maintains that there is no single, normal path that development must or should take. In other words, healthy developmental outcomes are achieved in a wide variety of ways.
Development is often comprised of multiple abilities which take different directions, showing different types of change or constancy. Another principle of development is the belief that development involves both gains and losses. According to Ballets, any developmental process involves aspects of growth and decline. For example, formal schooling increases a child’s knowledge base and follow rules de@ned by others. These two aspects of growth and decline need not occur in equal strength, and, moreover, the balance between gains and losses can change with time.
A fifth principle articulated by Ballets (1987) is that development is plastic. Plasticity refers to the within-person variability which is possible for a apart- alular behavior or development. For example, infants who have a hemisphere of the brain removed shortly after birth (as a treatment for epilepsy) can recover the functions associated with that hemisphere as the brain reorganizes itself and the remaining hemisphere takes over those functions. A key part of the research agendas in developmental psychology is to understand the nature and the limits of plasticity in various domains of functioning.
The sixth principle states that development is also situated in contexts and in history. Development varies across the different contexts n which we live our lives. For example, social and rural environments are associated with different sets of factors which have the potential to impact on development; understanding how development differs for individuals within these two settings requires an understanding of the differing contexts. Development is also historically situated; that is, the historical time period in which we grow up affects our development.
Finally, Ballets suggests that the study of developmental psychology is multidisciplinary. That is, the sources of age-related changes do not lie within the roving of any one discipline. For example, psychological methodologies may not be appropriate for understanding factors that are sociological in nature. Rather, an understanding of human development will be achieved only by research conducted from the perspective of disciplines such as sociology, linguistics, anthropology, and computer science. 6. Theories of Development: Theories of development provide a framework for thinking about human growth, development, and learning.
But why do we study development? What can we learn from psychological theories of development? If you have ever wondered about what motivates human thought and behavior, understanding these theories can provide useful insight into individuals and society. Psychoanalytic Theories: Psychoanalytic theories of development began with the work of Sigmund Freud, who believed that early childhood experiences had a lasting effect on the course of development. Fraud’s work was enormously influential and inspired other psychologists to expand upon his work and develop theories of their own.
One of the most famous theorists influenced by Freud was Erik Erikson, whose eight-stage theory f human development remains one of the best-known psychological theories. Learning Theories: During the first half of the twentieth century, a new school of thought known as behaviorism rose to become a dominant force within psychology. Behaviorist’s believed that psychology needed to focus only on observable and quantifiable behaviors in order to become a more scientific discipline. Terms of environmental influences. Some behaviorist’s, such as John B. Watson and B. F.
Skinner, insisted that learning occurs purely through processes of association and reinforcement. Later, psychologist Albert Bandeau rejected this narrow respective and demonstrated the powerful effects of observational learning. Cognitive Theories: Cognitive theories of development look at how thought processes and mental operations influence growth and change. Jean Pigged created one of the most famous theories of cognitive development, suggesting that children are not Just passive recipients of information. Instead, he proposed that children are little scientists” who actively construct their knowledge and understanding of the world. . Heredity and Environment Today, researchers generally agree that heredity and environment have an interactive influence on intelligence. Many researchers believe that there is a reaction range to ‘Q, which refers to the limits placed on IQ by heredity. Heredity places an upper and lower limit on the IQ that can be attained by a given person. The environment determines where within these limits the person’s IQ will lie. Despite the prevailing view that both heredity and environment influence intelligence, researchers still have different opinions about how much each contributes and how they interact.
Hereditary Influences Evidence for hereditary influences on intelligence comes from the following observations: -Family studies show that intelligence tends to run in families. -Twin studies show a higher correlation between identical twins in IQ than between fraternal twins. This holds true even when identical twins reared apart are compared to fraternal twins reared together. -Adoption studies show that adopted children somewhat resemble their biological parents in intelligence. Heritability of Intelligence Heritability is a mathematical estimate that indicates how much of a trait’s variation in a population can be attributed to genes.
Estimates of the heritability of intelligence array, depending on the methods used. Most researchers believe that heritability of intelligence is between 60 percent and 80 percent. Heritability estimates apply only to groups on which the estimates are based. So far, heritability estimates have been based mostly on studies using white, middle-class subjects. Even if heritability of IQ is high, heredity does not necessarily account for differences between groups. Three important factors limit heritability estimates: a single person’s traits. Heritability depends on how similar the environment is for a group of people.
Even with high heritability, a trait can still be influenced by environment. Environmental Influences Evidence for environmental influences on intelligence comes from the following observations: -Adoption studies demonstrate that adopted children show some similarity in IQ to their adoptive parents. -Adoption studies also show that siblings reared together are more similar in IQ than siblings reared apart. This is true even when identical twins reared together are compared to identical twins reared apart. – Biologically unrelated children raised together in the same home have some militarily in ‘Q. IQ declines over time in children raised in deprived environments, such as understaffed orphanages or circumstances of poverty and isolation. Conversely, IQ improves in children who leave deprived environments and enter enriched environments. -People’s performance on IQ tests has improved over time in industrialized countries. This strange phenomenon, which is known as the Flynn effect, is attributed to environmental influences. It cannot be due to heredity, because the world’s gene pool could not have changed in the seventy years or so since IQ testing began.
Maturation and learning Maturation is the process of becoming mature while learning is the act, process, or experience of gaining knowledge or skill. In education, maturation and learning have deep relations with each other. For example, maturation comes with passage of time while learning is took by the child from his/her environment, parents. Learning as a phenomenon has always fascinated people in many different disciplines, and there are many theories and thoughts about what learning is. Learning is relatively permanent change in mental processing, emotional functioning, ND/or behavior as a result of experience.
Learning is the process of understanding, clarifying, and applying the meaning of the knowledge acquired. Furthermore, it can also be an exploration, discovery, refinement, and extension of the learner’s meaning of knowledge. Overall, learning occurs when an individual’s behavior or knowledge changes. Learning has also been defined from the perspectives of two major bodies of learning theory to explain how people learn: behaviorism and cosmogonist. Behaviorism – views learning as a change in observable behavior or performance exulting from external reinforces that stimulate change.
To be considered learning, a change in performance must come about as a result of the learner’s interaction with the environment Cosmogonist – views learning as occurring when a new experience alters some unobservable mental processes that may or may not be manifested by a change in behavior or performance process by which we acquire new knowledge or skills and alter our thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and actions. We human beings, at our best, we do things for a reason or goal and strive to make meanings of our lives.
People develop a knowledge base through conditioning the environment; or through seeking information and thinking about the subject based on their maturation and prior knowledge. When knowledge is purposely put into practice it leads to behavioral competence and, through reflection, to wisdom. Maturation is a developmental process that may be ascribed to heredity or constitutes species-specific behavior. It is a natural process. Maturation is the growth which takes place in the individual. The changes on account of maturation are the results of unfolding and ripening of inherited traits.
They are relatively independent of activity, experience and practice. Maturation involves changes that are associated with normal growth. Learning, on the other hand, is a change in the individual which is not on account of genetic inheritance. It is a process which takes place as a result of stimuli from without. Activity, experience and training lead to changes in the behavior in the process of learning. Learning and maturation are closely interrelated. Sometimes it becomes difficult to say definitely as to which behavioral changes are the results of learning and which are the consequences of maturation.
