Human Development Overview

Human Development

• Human development is the scientific study of how people change and stay the same over time. It examines growth, learning, and adaptation throughout life.
• Life-span development views human development as a lifelong process. It studies growth, change, and stability across all stages of life.
• The life-span perspective posits development as lifelong, multidimensional (affecting multiple areas), multidirectional (changing in various ways), plastic (changeable), multidisciplinary (involving various fields), and contextual (influenced by society, family, and culture). It involves growth, maintaining abilities, and managing losses.

Domains of Development

• Physical development encompasses body and brain growth, sensory abilities, motor skills, and overall health.
• Cognitive development involves learning, attention, memory, language, thinking, reasoning, and creativity.
• Psychosocial development includes changes in emotions, personality, and social relationships.

Important Issues in Development

• Social construction refers to ideas, concepts, or practices created by culture, not necessarily biological or natural. Examples include the concept of "teenager" as a distinct life stage.
• The stability-change issue explores whether early traits remain stable or change over time.
• The continuity-discontinuity issue examines if development is a gradual process (continuity) or occurs in distinct stages (discontinuity).

Growth, Maturation, and Development

• Growth refers to quantifiable physical changes.
• Maturation is the biological process of becoming fully functional, involving the unfolding of physical and behavioral patterns.
• Development involves progressive functional changes in physical, mental, and social areas.
• Learning involves adaptation to the environment through experience.

Genetics and Heredity

• Behavioral genetics studies the relative contributions of genetics and environment to traits.
• Heritability is the proportion of trait variation attributed to genetic differences.
• Gregor Mendel laid groundwork for understanding genetics through his plant experiments.
• Selective breeding explores inherited traits.
• Concordance rate measures the likelihood of shared traits in pairs (e.g., twins).
• Reaction range is the possible outcome range for a trait influenced by the environment.
• Canalization is the limited range of change, where development is less affected by the environment.

Gene-Environment Interaction

• Epigenetics examines how environmental factors influence gene expression.
• Gene-environment interaction explores the combined influence of genes and environment on traits.

Contributions to Emotional Differences

• Emotional differences arise from a combination of genetic traits, shared environmental influences (family experiences), and non-shared environmental influences (unique experiences).

Gene-Environment Correlations

• Passive gene-environment correlation occurs when parents provide an environment influenced by their genetic traits, affecting their children.
• Evocative gene-environment correlation occurs when a child's traits elicit reactions from others.
• Active gene-environment correlation occurs when a child's traits influence the environments they seek.

Context of Development

• Heredity involves traits passed from parents.
• Environment encompasses external factors affecting development.
• Individual differences vary among people in traits like height and personality.
• Family (nuclear and extended) structures affect development.
• Socioeconomic status (SES) impacts access to resources.
• Culture influences beliefs, values, and social behaviors.
• Ethnic gloss simplifies diverse groups.
• Race is a social construct, not based on biological distinctions.
• Gender encompasses social, cultural, psychological traits, distinct from biological sex.
• History influences development. (e.g., the Civil Rights Movement)
• Historical generation & Age cohort influence development.

Normative Influences

• Normative influences affect most people similarly (e.g., puberty).
• Normative age-graded influences are linked to specific ages. (e.g., walking)
• Normative history-graded influences affect generations during formative years. (e.g., the Civil Rights Movement)
• Historical generation and age cohort encompass shared experiences and influences.

Nonnormative Influences

• Nonnormative influences are unusual events that significantly alter development (e.g., divorce).
• Imprinting is rapid learning in early life, like a young animal attaching to the first moving object.
• Critical periods are specific times where events have profound impacts on development.
• Sensitive periods are times of high responsiveness to experiences.

Plasticity

• Plasticity represents the brain's ability to adapt to experiences.

Theories and Models of Development

• A theory is a set of related concepts used to describe, explain, and predict development.
• A hypothesis is a testable prediction.
• Locke's Tabula Rasa suggests children are born a blank slate, shaped by experience.
• Rousseau's "noble savages" emphasizes inherent goodness and natural development.
• The mechanistic model views development through environmental stimuli.
• The organismic model views development as an active process initiated by individuals.

Types of Development

• Continuous development involves gradual changes.
• Discontinuous development occurs in distinct stages.
• Quantitative change involves measurable changes in amount or frequency.
• Qualitative change involves changes in type or kind of ability.

Other Perspectives

• Evolutionary psychology examines adaptation and survival.
• The nativist perspective emphasizes innate biological factors in development (e.g., language).
• The empiricist perspective highlights environmental influences and experience.
• Chomsky's Universal Grammar proposes innate language acquisition abilities.