Introduction to Human Development

Human Development: An Ever-Evolving Field

• Human beings undergo continuous change from conception, evolving from a single cell into a unique individual with common developmental patterns.
• Human development is the scientific study of patterns of change and stability and seeks to answer which characteristics endure or change and why.
• The study of human development is systematic, coherent, organized, and adaptive, with findings impacting child rearing, education, health, and social policy.
• Developmental scientists recognize human development as a lifelong process.

Human Development Today

• The goals of the scientific discipline of human development are to describe, explain, predict, and intervene.
• The field of human development is continuously evolving through new investigations and reflects advances in technology.
• Digital technology and computers are used to scan facial expressions for early signs of emotions and analyze mother-baby communication.
• Brain imaging techniques are used to probe mysteries of temperament, pinpoint the sources of logical thought, and compare a normally aging brain with one affected by dementia.
• Today, human development is an interdisciplinary science, drawing from psychology, psychiatry, sociology, anthropology, biology, genetics, family science, education, history, and medicine.

Domains of Development

• Scientists study physical, cognitive, and psychosocial domains across the life span.
• Physical development includes growth of the body and brain, sensory capacities, motor skills, and health.
• Cognitive development includes learning, attention, memory, language, thinking, reasoning, and creativity.
• Psychosocial development includes emotions, personality, and social relationships.
• The domains are interrelated, with each affecting the others.
• Physical fitness affects brain function, thinking, mood, and vulnerability to disease.
• Language precocity can boost self-worth, while frequent ear infections can slow language development.
• Puberty's physical and hormonal changes impact one's sense of self, while physical changes in older adults can affect intellectual or personality deterioration.
• Cognitive changes relate to physical, emotional, and social factors.
• Psychosocial development impacts cognitive and physical functioning, and physical/cognitive capacities shape self-esteem, social acceptance, and occupational choices.

Periods of the Life Span

• Dividing the life span into periods is a social construction.
• There is no objectively definable moment a child becomes an adult or a young person becomes old.
• This text follows eight periods generally accepted in Western industrial societies: before birth, infancy and toddlerhood, early childhood, middle childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle adulthood, and late adulthood.
• Specific developmental needs must be met and tasks mastered during each period for normal development to occur.

Influences on Development

• Studies of development look at the universal processes experienced by all normal human beings.
• They also consider individual differences in characteristics, influences, and developmental outcomes.
• Influences on development originate from heredity and environment.
• Many typical changes in infancy and early childhood are tied to maturation of the body and brain.
• As children grow, individual differences in innate characteristics and life experiences play a greater role.

Contexts of Development

• The nuclear family consists of one or two parents and their children.
• The extended family includes a multigenerational network of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and more distant relatives.
• A family’s socioeconomic status (SES) is based on its income and the adults’ educational and occupational levels.
• SES affects verbal interactions and developmental outcomes, like health and cognitive performance.
• Poverty can lead to increased risk factors and long-lasting harm to the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial well-being of children and families.
• An ethnic group is united by a distinctive culture, ancestry, religion, language, and/or national origin.
• Culture includes customs, traditions, laws, knowledge, beliefs, values, language, and physical products – all learned, shared, and transmitted behaviors and attitudes.
• Categories of culture, race, and ethnicity are recognized as fluid

Normative and Nonnormative Influences

• Normative influences are biological or environmental events that affect many or most people in a society in similar ways.
• Normative age-graded influences are similar for people in a particular age group and are fairly predictable.
• Normative history-graded influences are significant environmental events that shape the behavior and attitudes of an age cohort or a historical generation.
• Nonnormative influences are unusual events that have a major impact on individual lives because they disturb the expected sequence of the life cycle
• They can either be typical events that happen at an atypical time of life, or atypical events

Timing of Influences: Critical or Sensitive Periods

• During a critical period a given event, or its absence, has a specific impact on development
• if a muscle problem interfering with the ability to focus both eyes on the same object is not corrected within a critical period early in childhood, depth perception probably will not develop
• Sensitive periods are the times in development when a person is particularly opened to certain kinds of experiences
• With humans however, they are more susceptible during sensitive periods that in the critical period of animals.

Paul B. Baltes's Life-Span Developmental Approach

• Development is lifelong and is affected by what happened before and will affect what is to come as well as possess unique characteristics and value.
• Development is multidimensional and occurs along biological, psychological, and social dimensions.
• Development is multidirectional and people may gain in one area and lose in another.
• Relative influences of biology and culture shift over the life span.
• Development involves changing resource allocations.
• Development shows plasticity.
• Development is influenced by the historical and cultural context.