Human Growth and Development
Human Growth and Development asks you to apply developmental theory to client behavior across the lifespan, not to recite it. Items target Piaget, Erikson, Kohlberg, attachment, family life-cycle stages, learning theory, and the judgment call between developmentally typical behavior and clinically concerning behavior.
Core frameworks
- Piaget: sensorimotor (0–2; object permanence), preoperational (2–7; egocentrism, centration, irreversibility, no conservation), concrete operational (7–11; conservation, classification, seriation), formal operational (11+; hypothetical-deductive reasoning). Stages are ordered, but ages are approximate.
- Erikson: trust/mistrust (infancy), autonomy/shame (toddler), initiative/guilt (preschool), industry/inferiority (school age), identity/role confusion (adolescence), intimacy/isolation (young adult), generativity/stagnation (midlife), integrity/despair (late life). Each crisis resolves on a continuum, not pass/fail.
- Kohlberg: preconventional (punishment avoidance; instrumental exchange), conventional (social approval; law and order), postconventional (social contract; universal principles). Reasoning stage predicts reasoning, not behavior.
- Attachment: Bowlby's internal working models; Ainsworth's secure, avoidant, ambivalent/resistant, plus disorganized (Main & Solomon).
Worked example
A 5-year-old watches water poured from a short, wide glass into a tall, narrow one and insists the tall glass holds more. The child centers on height and ignores width - centration plus irreversibility - which is preoperational thinking. The correct inference is not that the child has a memory or attention deficit, and not that conservation has emerged. The counselor normalizes the cognition and, if assessing, notes the stage.
Traps that cost marks
- Swapping industry vs. inferiority (school age) with initiative vs. guilt (preschool).
- Reading Kohlberg's conventional level as less moral rather than differently reasoned.
- Labeling a developmentally normative behavior (e.g., parallel play at 3) as pathology.
- Confusing attachment styles with parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, uninvolved).