Human Development
Human development is the study of change and continuity across the lifespan; the exam tests stage theories, domains of development and the nature-nurture interaction.
Principles
Development is lifelong, multidimensional (physical, cognitive, socio-emotional), plastic, contextual and multidisciplinary.
Prenatal and infancy
Germinal, embryonic and foetal stages; teratogens harm the foetus. Newborn reflexes (rooting, sucking, grasping) are adaptive. Motor development follows cephalocaudal (head to tail) and proximodistal (centre outward) directions. Attachment: Bowlby's ethological view; Ainsworth's Strange Situation classifies secure, avoidant, ambivalent/resistant and disorganised patterns.
Piaget's cognitive stages
- Sensorimotor (0-2): object permanence develops.
- Preoperational (2-7): egocentrism, animism, symbolic play, failure of conservation.
- Concrete operational (7-11): conservation, classification, seriation, reversibility.
- Formal operational (11+): abstract and hypothetical-deductive reasoning.
Worked example
A 5-year-old watches water poured from a short wide glass into a tall narrow one and insists there is 'more'. Reasoning: she centres on height and ignores width, so she has not acquired conservation - typical of the preoperational stage, not evidence of low intelligence.
Psychosocial stages
Erikson: trust vs mistrust, autonomy vs shame, initiative vs guilt, industry vs inferiority, identity vs role confusion (adolescence), intimacy, generativity and integrity.
Traps
- Mixing the ages of Piaget's stages.
- Assuming everyone reaches formal operations.
- Treating development as only growth in size.
- Ignoring that heredity and environment interact.