Human Growth and Development
What this domain tests
Stage theories and developmental milestones from infancy through older adulthood, and your ability to match a described behavior to the correct stage or construct.
Core theories
- Erikson's eight psychosocial stages: trust/mistrust, autonomy/shame-doubt, initiative/guilt, industry/inferiority, identity/role confusion, intimacy/isolation, generativity/stagnation, integrity/despair.
- Piaget: sensorimotor (0-2; object permanence, circular reactions), preoperational (2-7; symbolic thought, egocentrism, centration, no conservation), concrete operational (7-11; conservation, reversibility, classification), formal operational (11+; hypothetico-deductive reasoning).
- Kohlberg: preconventional, conventional, postconventional moral reasoning; Gilligan critiques it with an ethic of care. Kohlberg measures reasoning, not conduct.
- Attachment (Bowlby; Ainsworth's Strange Situation): secure, insecure-avoidant, insecure-resistant/ambivalent, and disorganized (Main & Solomon).
- Vygotsky's zone of proximal development and scaffolding; Bronfenbrenner's micro-, meso-, exo-, macro-, and chronosystems; Bandura's modeling and self-efficacy; Marcia's identity statuses (diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, achievement); Levinson's seasons of life.
- Aging: crystallized intelligence is maintained or grows; fluid intelligence and processing speed decline.
Worked example
A 4-year-old insists the tall narrow glass holds more juice than the short wide one. Reasoning: this is preoperational thought, showing centration and failure of conservation. Respond at the child's level rather than teaching volume, and note that the same child would likely succeed near age 7-8.
Traps that cost marks
- Mixing up Piaget's age bands (preoperational is 2-7, not 0-7).
- Erikson's adolescent crisis is identity vs role confusion, not intimacy.
- Attachment classification describes caregiver responsiveness, not infant temperament alone.
- Confusing Piaget's stages with Kohlberg's levels.