Chapter 3
Human Development
After reading this chapter, you would be able to
- Describe the meaning and process of development, explain the influence of heredity, environment and context on human development, identify the stages of development and describe the major characteristics of infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age, and reflect on your own course of development and related experiences.
Contents
I wish I could travel by the road that crosses the baby's mind, and out beyond all bounds; where messengers run errands for no cause between the kingdoms of kings of no history; where Reason makes kites of her laws and flies them, and Truth sets Fact free from its fetters.
– Rabindranath Tagore
- Introduction
- Meaning of Development Life-Span Perspective on Development Growth, Development, Maturation, and Evolution (Box 3.1)
- Factors Influencing Development
- Context of Development
- Overview of Developmental Stages Prenatal Stage
- Infancy
- Childhood Gender and Sex Roles (Box 3.2)
- Challenges of Adolescence
- Adulthood and Old Age
- Key Terms
- Summary
- Review Questions
- Project Ideas
Introduction
If you look around, you will notice that from birth onwards changes of various kinds are taking place in an individual's life, which continue even during old age. Over a span of time, a human grows and develops, learns to communicate, walk, count, and read and write. S/he also learns to distinguish between right and wrong. S/he makes friends, goes through puberty, gets married, rears children, and grows old. Even though we differ from each other, we share many commonalities. Most of us learn to walk by the first year and talk by the second year. This chapter will familiarise you with the changes observed in people during the course of their life-span in different domains. You will learn about key developmental processes and changes taking place in major periods during the life-span: prenatal, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. This would be a journey of personal understanding and self-discovery which should help in your future development. The study of human development would also help you to deal with others better.
MEANING OF DEVELOPMENT
When we think of development, invariably we think of physical changes, as these are commonly observed at home with younger siblings, with parents and grandparents, in school with peers or others around us. From conception until the moment of death, we not only change physically, but we also change in the way we think, use language, and develop social relationships. Remember that, changes are not confined to any one area of a person's life; they occur in the person in an integrated manner. Development is the pattern of progressive, orderly, and predictable changes that begin at conception and continue throughout life. Development mostly involves changes - both growth and decline, as observed during old age.
Development is influenced by an interplay of biological, cognitive, and socio-emotional processes. Development due to genes inherited from parents, such as in height and weight, brain, heart, and lungs development, etc. all point towards the role of biological processes. The role of cognitive processes in development relate to mental activities associated with the processes of knowing, and experiencing, such as thought, perception, attention, problem solving, etc. Socio-emotional processes that influence development refer to changes in an individual's interactions with other people, changes in emotions, and in personality. A child's hug to her/his mother, a young girl's affectionate gesture to her/his sibling, or an adolescent's sorrow at losing a match are all reflections of socio-emotional processes deeply involved in human development.
Although you would be reading about the different processes in different chapters of this textbook, it is important to remember that the biological, cognitive, and socio-emotional processes are interwoven. These processes influence changes in the development of the individual as a whole throughout the human life-span.
Life-Span Perspective on Development
The study of development according to the Life-Span Perspective (LSP) includes the following assumptions :
- Development is lifelong, i.e. it takes place across all age groups starting from
conception to old age. It includes both gains and losses, which interact in dynamic (change in one aspect goes with changes in others) ways throughout the life-span.
The various processes of human development, i.e. biological, cognitive, and socio-emotional are interwoven in the development of a person throughout the life-span.
Development is multi-directional. Some dimensions or components of a given dimension of development may increase, while others show decrement. For example, the experiences of adults may make them wiser and guide their decisions. However, with an increase in age, one's performance is likely to decrease on tasks requiring speed, such as running.
Development is highly plastic, i.e. within person, modifiability is found in psychological development, though plasticity varies among individuals. This means skills and abilities can be improved or developed throughout the life-span.
Development is influenced by historical conditions. For example, the experiences of 20-year olds who lived through the freedom struggle in India would be very different from the experiences of 20 year olds of today. The career orientation of school students today is very different from those students who were in schools 50 years ago.
Development is the concern of a number of disciplines. Different disciplines like psychology, anthropology, sociology, and neuro-sciences study human development, each trying to provide answers to development throughout the life-span.
An individual responds and acts on contexts, which include what was inherited, the physical environment, social, historical, and cultural contexts. For example, the life events in everyone's life are not the same, such as, death of a parent, accident, earthquake, etc., affect the course of one's life as also the positive
Box 3.1 Growth, Development, Maturation, and Evolution
Growth refers to an increase in the size of body parts or of the organism as a whole. It can be measured or quantified, for example, growth in height, weight, etc. Development is a process by which an individual grows and changes throughout the life cycle. The term development applies to the changes that have a direction and hold definite relationship with what precedes it, and in turn, will determine what will come after. A temporary change caused by a brief illness, for example, is not considered a part of development. All changes which occur as a result of development are not of the same kind. Thus, changes in size (physical growth), changes in proportion (child to adult), changes in features (disappearance of baby teeth), and acquiring new features are varied in their pace and scope level. Development includes growth as one of its aspects. Maturation refers to the changes that follow an orderly sequence and are largely dictated by the genetic blueprint which produces commonalities in our growth and development. For example, most children can sit without support by 7 months of age, stand with support by 8 months and walk by one year. Once the underlying physical structure is sufficiently developed, proficiency in these behaviours requires adequate environment and little practice. However, special efforts to accelerate these behaviours do not help if the infant is maturationally not ready. These processes seem to "unfold from within": following an inner, genetically determined timetable that is characteristic of the species. Evolution refers to species-specific changes. Natural selection is an evolutionary process that favours individuals or a species that are best adapted to survive and reproduce. The evolutionary changes are passed from one generation to the next within a species. Evolution proceeds at a very slow pace. Emergence of human beings from great apes took about 14 million years. It has been estimated that the 'Homo sapiens' came into existence only about 50,000 years ago.
influences such as winning an award or getting a good job. People keep on changing with changing contexts.
FACTORS INFLUENCING DEVELOPMENT
Have you observed in your class that some of you have dark skin, others have light coloured skins, colour of your hair and eyes are different, some of you are tall, others short, some are quiet or sad while others are talkative or cheerful. People also differ with respect to intelligence, learning abilities, memory, and other psychological characteristics besides physical characteristics. Despite these variations, no one can be mistaken for any other species: we all are homo sapiens. What causes us to be different from each other but at the same time more like each other? The answer lies in the interaction of heredity and environment.
You have already learned that the principles of heredity explain the mechanism for transmission of characteristics by every species from one generation to the next. We inherit genetic codes from our parents, which are in every cell of our body. Our genetic codes are alike in one important way; they contain the human genetic code. It is because of the human genetic code that a fertilised human egg grows into a human baby and cannot grow into an elephant, a bird or a mouse.
Genetic transmission is very complex. Most characteristics that we observe in humans are combinations of larger number of genes. You can imagine the combinations produced by 80,000 or more genes – accounting for a variety of characteristics and behaviours. It is also not possible to possess all the characteristics made available to us by our genetic structure. The actual genetic material or a person's genetic heritage is known as genotype. However, not all of this genetic material is apparent or distinctly identifiable in our observable characteristics. Phenotype is the way an individual's genotype is expressed in observable and measurable characteristics. Phenotypes include physical traits, such as height, weight, eye and skin colour, and many of the psychological characteristics such as intelligence, creativity, and personality. These observable characteristics of an individual are the result of the interaction between the person's inherited traits and the environment. You know it is the genetic code which predisposes a child to develop in a particular way. Genes provide a distinct blueprint and timetable for the development of an individual. But genes do not exist in isolation and development occurs within the context of an individual's environment. This is what makes each one of us a unique person.
What are the environmental influences? How does the environment affect development? Imagine a child, with genotype that predisposes her/him to be introverted, in an environment that promotes social interaction and extroversion. The influence of such an environment may make the child a little extroverted. Let us take another example. An individual with "short" height genes, even if s/he is in a very good nutritional environment, will never be able to be taller than average. This shows that genes set the limit and within that limit the environment influences development.
You know by now that parents provide the genes for the child's development. Do you know that they also play an important role in determining the type of environment their children will encounter? Sandra Scarr (1992) believes that the environment parents provide for their children depends to some extent on their own genetic predisposition. For example, if parents are intelligent and are good readers they would provide their children with books to read, with the likely outcome that their children would become good readers who enjoy reading. A child's own genotype (what s/he has inherited) such as being cooperative, and attentive is likely to result in teachers and parents giving more pleasant response as compared to children who are not cooperative or not attentive. Besides these, children themselves choose certain environments
based on their genotype. For example, because of their genotype, children may perform well in music or sports and they will seek and spend more time in environments, which will enable them to perform their musical skills; similarly an athlete would seek sports-related environment. These interactions with environment keep changing from infancy through adolescence. Environmental influences are as complex as the genes we inherit.
If your class monitor is selected on the basis of being academically bright and a popular student, do you think it is because of her/his genes or the influence of the environment? If a child from a rural area who is very intelligent, is not able to get a job because of her/his inability to express herself/himself fluently or handle computers, do you think - it is because of genes or environment?
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