The study of Human Development
Human Development
• An ever-evolving field
• What is human development?
– The scientific study of these patterns of change
and stability.
• Development is both systematic and adaptive
Studying the Life Span
• Life-span development
– Concept of development as a lifelong process,
which can be studied scientifically
Human Development Today
• 1. Goals of a scientific discipline
– Description: goal in the study of human development
in which scientists observe behavior in order to
detect patterns or norms in the lives of children and
adults
– Explanation: goal in which scientists attempt to
understand and tell why observed behavior occurs
– Prediction: goal in which scientists use the knowledge
of causes of behavior to change or control behavior
– Intervention: goal in which scientists use the
knowledge of causes of behavior to change or control
behavior
continued
• 2. Interdisciplinary approach—human development takes
information and research from several fields including:
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Psychology
Psychiatry
Sociology
Anthropology
Biology
Genetics
Family Science
Education
History
Medicine
The study of human development:
basic concepts
• Domains of Development
– Domain: An aspect of the self including physical, cognitive,
or psychosocial development
• Physical Development
– Growth of body and brain, sensory capacities, motor skills,
and health
• Cognitive development
– Learning, memory, language, thinking, reasoning, and
creativity
• Psychosocial development
– Emotions, personality, and social relationships
Periods of the Life Span
• Social construction
– Concept about the nature of reality, based on societally
shared perceptions or assumptions
– Periods include
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Prenatal period
Infancy and toddlerhood
Early childhood
Middle childhood
Adolescence
Young adulthood
Middle adulthood
Late adulthood
Influences of Development
• Individual differences:
– Differences in characteristics, influences, or
developmental outcomes.
Heredity, Environment, and
Maturation
• Maturation
– Unfolding of a natural sequence of physical and
behavioral changes, including readiness to master new
abilities
• Heredity:
– Inborn characteristics inherited from biological parent
and called “nature”
• Environment
– Totality of nonhereditary, or experiential, influences on
development and called “nurture”
– Brings us to the big debate………
•Nature Vs. Nurture
• Which is it?
Context of Development
• 1. Family
– Nuclear family:
• Kinship and household unit made up of one or two
parents and their biological, adopted, and/or
stepchildren
– Extended family:
• Multigenerational network of grandparents, aunts,
uncles, and other relatives, sometimes living together
in an extended-family household
• 2. Socioeconomic Status and Neighborhood
– Socioeconomic status (SES): Combination of
economic and social factors describing an individual
or family, including income, education, and
occupation.
– Risk factors: Conditions that increase the likelihood
of a negative developmental outcome
• 3. Culture and Ethnicity
– Culture: A society’s or group’s total way of life,
including customs, traditions, beliefs, laws,
knowledge, values, language, and physical
products— all learned and shared behavior passed
on from parents to children
Normative and Nonnormative
Influence
• Normative: Characteristic of an even that occurs
in a similar way for most people in a group.
• Nonnormative age-graded influences: event or
influence that is highly similar for people in a
particular age group.
– Includes biological (puberty, menopause) and social
(marriage, retirement) events
• Normative history-graded influences: significant
environmental events that shape the behavior
and attitudes of a particular cohort
Cont.
• Historical generation
– A group of people who experience an event, such as
the Great Depression or 9/11, at a formative time of
life
• Cohort
– Group of people born about the same time
• Nonnormative influences
– Unusual events that have a major impact on
individual lives because they disturb the expected
sequence of the life cycle
Timing of Influences: Critical or
Sensitive Periods
• Imprinting
– Phenomenon in which newly hatched birds will instinctively
follow the first moving object they see, the result of the
readiness of the nervous system of the organism to acquire
certain information during a brief critical period in early life
• Critical period
– Specific time when a given event, or its absence, has a specific
impact on development
• Plasticity
– Flexibility or modification of performance
• Sensitive periods
– Times in development when a person is especially responsive
to certain kinds of experience
Baltes’s Life-Span developmental
approach
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Development is lifelong
Development is multidimensional
Development is multidirectional
Relative influences of biology and culture shift over
the life span
5. Development involves changing resource
allocations
6. Development shows plasticity
7. Development is influenced by the historical and
cultural context