Study sheet: Human Development Part One

📋 Course Outline

1. Meaning and Processes of Development
2. Life-Span Perspective Principles
3. Growth Maturation and Evolution
4. Heredity and Environment
5. Contexts of Development
6. Developmental Stages and Prenatal Life
7. Infancy and Early Childhood
8. Moral Development in Childhood
9. Adolescent Physical and Cognitive Changes
10. Identity Formation in Adolescence
11. Adolescent Challenges and Disorders
12. Adulthood Work and Family
13. Ageing Loss and Adaptation

📖 1. Meaning and Processes of Development

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Development : the pattern of progressive, orderly, and predictable changes that begins at conception and continues throughout life, involving both growth and decline.

📝 Essential Points

• The interwoven developmental processes are:
  • biological processes
  • cognitive processes
  • socio-emotional processes

📖 2. Life-Span Perspective Principles

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Plasticity : the modifiability of psychological development, meaning that skills and abilities can improve throughout the life-span, although plasticity varies among individuals.

★ Must-know

• The life-span perspective treats development as lifelong, extending from conception to old age and involving gains and losses that interact dynamically.

• Development is multidirectional because some dimensions may increase while others decrease, such as increasing wisdom alongside declining speed with age.

Further detail

• Development is influenced by historical conditions, studied by disciplines including psychology, anthropology, sociology, and neuroscience, and shaped by inherited, physical, social, historical, and cultural contexts.

💡 Memory Hook

Lifelong, interwoven, multidirectional, plastic, historical, multidisciplinary, contextual: LI-MPHMC.

📖 3. Growth Maturation and Evolution

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Growth : an increase in the size of body parts or of the organism as a whole, such as an increase in height or weight.
• Maturation : orderly changes largely dictated by a genetic blueprint and unfolding according to an inner, species-specific timetable.
• Evolution : species-specific changes passed from one generation to the next, with natural selection favouring individuals or species adapted to survive and reproduce.

📝 Essential Points

• The emergence of human beings from great apes took about 14 million years, and Homo sapiens came into existence about 50,000 years ago.

💡 Memory Hook

Growth measures size, maturation unfolds genetically, and evolution changes species.

📖 4. Heredity and Environment

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Genotype : a person's actual genetic material or genetic heritage.
• Phenotype : the observable and measurable expression of an individual's genotype, including physical traits and psychological characteristics.

★ Must-know

📌 Genes provide a developmental blueprint and set limits, while the environment influences development within those limits.

Further detail

• Sandra Scarr (1992) proposed that parents' genetically influenced characteristics help shape the environments they provide for their children.

• Genotype-environment interaction occurs through:

  • environments selected by children
  • responses elicited from adults
  • environments provided by parents

💡 Memory Hook

Genes set developmental limits, whereas environments shape outcomes within those limits.

📖 5. Contexts of Development

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Microsystem : the immediate setting in which an individual lives and directly interacts with family, peers, teachers, and the neighbourhood.
• Exosystem : social settings in which the child does not participate directly but that influence the child's immediate experiences, such as a parent's workplace or transfer.
• Mesosystem : relationships between the individual's immediate settings, such as relationships between parents and teachers.
• Macrosystem : the culture in which the individual lives, including its attitudes, beliefs, ideologies, and traditions.
• Chronosystem : events in the individual's life course and the socio-historical circumstances of the period, such as parental divorce or economic setback.

💡 Memory Hook

Microsystem → mesosystem → exosystem → macrosystem → chronosystem.

📖 6. Developmental Stages and Prenatal Life

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Developmental Tasks : skills and accomplishments expected during a particular stage before a person progresses to the next stage.
• Prenatal Stage : the period from conception to birth and typically lasts about 40 weeks.
• Teratogens : environmental agents that cause deviations from normal prenatal development and may lead to serious abnormalities or death.

📝 Essential Points

• Common teratogens include:
  • drugs
  • infections
  • radiation
  • pollution
  • alcohol
  • tobacco
  • carbon monoxide
  • mercury
  • lead

💡 Memory Hook

Prenatal → infancy → childhood → adolescence → adulthood → old age.

📖 7. Infancy and Early Childhood

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Attachment : the close emotional bond of affection that develops between infants and their parents or caregivers.
• Object Permanence : awareness that objects continue to exist when they are not perceived.
• Gender Role : a set of expectations prescribing how females and males should think, act, and feel.

★ Must-know

📌 Sex refers to the biological dimension of being male or female, whereas gender refers to the social dimension and the expectations attached to being male or female.

• Harlow and Harlow's 1962 study found that baby monkeys preferred a cloth surrogate mother over a wire surrogate mother, even when the wire mother provided food, demonstrating the importance of contact comfort.

• Newborn reflexes are automatic, genetically carried responses to stimuli that support survival and provide building blocks for later motor development.

• Infants develop object permanence gradually, beginning to pursue a partially covered object at about 8 months of age.

• According to Erik Erikson (1968), the first year is crucial for developing trust or mistrust, and responsive, sensitive parenting supports secure attachment.

• Piaget's sensorimotor stage lasts from approximately 0 to 2 years, during which infants explore the world through sensory experiences and physical actions.

• Piaget's preoperational stage lasts approximately from 2 to 7 years and is marked by symbolic thought, egocentrism, animism, centration, and intuitive thinking.

• Piaget's concrete operational stage lasts approximately from 7 to 11 years and enables logical reasoning about concrete events, classification, and reversible mental operations.

• During childhood, physical development follows cephalocaudal and proximodistal trends: control develops from head to tail and from the body's centre toward the extremities.

Further detail

• Children generally begin acquiring a gender identity and accurately labelling themselves as boys or girls by about 3 years of age.

📖 8. Moral Development in Childhood

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Moral development : the process through which children learn to distinguish right from wrong, feel guilty, take others’ perspectives, and help people in trouble

📝 Essential Points

• According to Kohlberg, children younger than 9 years judge actions through external authority, by viewing punishment as evidence of wrongness and reward as evidence of rightness; by early adolescence, they internalise rules from parents or society to be virtuous and gain approval, and later develop a personal moral code. — Lawrence Kohlberg

💡 Memory Hook

External authority → internalised social rules → personal moral code

📖 9. Adolescent Physical and Cognitive Changes

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Adolescence : the transitional period between childhood and adulthood that begins with puberty and involves rapid biological and psychological change
• Imaginary audience : David Elkind — an adolescent belief that other people are as preoccupied with the adolescent as the adolescent is with themselves, making the adolescent highly self-conscious
• Personal fable : David Elkind — an adolescent sense of uniqueness in which the adolescent believes that nobody can understand their experiences or feelings

★ Must-know

📌 Puberty produces primary sex characteristics directly related to reproduction and secondary sex characteristics that signal sexual maturity without directly serving reproduction.

• Adolescent cognitive development involves increasingly abstract, logical, idealistic, and systematic thought, including reasoning about hypothetical possibilities and systematically seeking solutions. — Piaget

Further detail

• The growth spurt generally begins at age 12 or 13 for boys and age 10 or 11 for girls, although individuals of the same chronological age may follow different pubertal sequences.

💡 Memory Hook

Concrete childhood thought versus abstract, idealistic adolescent thought

📖 10. Identity Formation in Adolescence

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Identity : a person’s sense of who they are, including their values, commitments, and beliefs

★ Must-know

📌 According to Erikson, adolescents who cannot cope with conflicting identities may develop identity confusion, leading them to isolate themselves from peers and family or lose their identity in the crowd.

• The primary task of adolescence is to establish an identity separate from parents by developing personalised beliefs, greater responsibility, continuity, and a clear sense of self.

Further detail

• Adolescent identity formation is influenced by:
  • cultural background
  • family and societal values
  • ethnic background
  • socio-economic status
  • peer support
  • parental relationships
  • vocational commitment

💡 Memory Hook

Identity conflict → confusion, isolation, or loss of identity

📖 11. Adolescent Challenges and Disorders

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Delinquency : behaviours ranging from socially unacceptable actions and legal offences to criminal acts, including truancy, running away, stealing, burglary, and vandalism
• Substance abuse : harmful use of smoking, alcohol, or drugs, which adolescents may adopt because of peer pressure, the desire to appear adult, or attempts to escape stress

★ Must-know

📌 Anorexia nervosa involves relentless pursuit of thinness through starvation, whereas bulimia involves binge eating followed by purging through self-induced vomiting, laxatives, or fasting.

📌 Continued drug, alcohol, or nicotine use can lead to physiological dependency and seriously jeopardise an adolescent’s life, while positive relationships with parents, peers, siblings, and adults can help prevent abuse.

Further detail

📌 Delinquency is associated with low parental support, inappropriate discipline, family discord, poverty, unemployment, and alienation from the middle class, while positive role models, self-worth, and improved peer groups can reduce it.

💡 Memory Hook

Delinquency → substance abuse → eating disorders

📖 12. Adulthood Work and Family

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Adulthood : generally defined by responsibility, maturity, self-support, and integration into society, although the timing of adult roles varies with social context

★ Must-know

• Early adulthood involves exploring possibilities for adult living, developing a stable life structure, and gradually transitioning from dependence to independence.

• Marriage and parenthood require adjustment to a partner’s preferences, sharing domestic roles when both partners work, and managing children, schoolwork, illness, and household and occupational demands.

Further detail

• Career development in the twenties and thirties involves earning a living, choosing an occupation, proving competence, managing competition, and coping with employers’ and one’s own expectations.

💡 Memory Hook

Work → marriage and parenthood → family responsibilities

📖 13. Ageing Loss and Adaptation

★ Must-know

📌 With age, long-term memory tends to decline more than short-term memory, while wisdom may improve, and individual differences in intelligence remain present at every age.

• Older adulthood may involve retirement, widowhood, illness, death in the family, changing family roles, loneliness, financial dependence, and declining health, but older people may also remain active, competent, energetic, and creative.

Further detail

📌 The death of a spouse can produce grief, loneliness, depression, financial loss, and health risks, while support from children, grandchildren, and friends can help the surviving partner cope.

• Middle adulthood commonly involves gradual declines in vision, glare sensitivity, hearing, and aspects of physical appearance, although the rate of change varies among individuals.

• In the Gond culture, death is believed to be caused by magic and demons, whereas in the Tanala culture of Madagascar, natural forces are thought to cause death.

💡 Memory Hook

Retirement as loss of self-esteem versus opportunity for personal interests

📊 Synthesis Tables

Bronfenbrenner's Developmental Contexts

Context	Main influence
Microsystem	Direct settings and interactions
Mesosystem	Relations between immediate settings
Exosystem	Indirect social settings
Macrosystem	Culture, beliefs, and traditions
Chronosystem	Life-course and historical changes

Adolescent Eating Disorders

Disorder	Core pattern	Typical feature
Anorexia nervosa	Relentless pursuit of thinness through starvation	Elimination of foods or eating slimming foods
Bulimia	Binge-and-purge pattern	Vomiting, laxative use, or fasting after a binge