In life there is one thing that is consistent in every individual
and that is change. From the day of
conception people experience change every day of their life until the day they
die. The changes that an individual can
experience are mostly biological as well as psychological, which is all a part
of human development. I plan to briefly
explain the lifespan of development, summarize at least two theories of
lifespan development and explain how heredity and the environment interact to
produce individual differences in development.
According to the Berger text “lifespan development is the science of human
development that seeks to understand how and why people, all kinds of people,
everywhere, or every age-change over time. It depends on theories, data,
analysis, critical thinking, and sound methodology-like every other science”
(Berger, 2011). Lifespan development covers all stages of
development and progress from the birth of a person to their death and is
studied in many different ways.
The study of human development has three major domains, physical,
cognitive and social which all have important milestones to an individual’s
development.
Physical development is the most
important domain because it has to do with the way the human body develops over
a lifespan. The prenatal period is said
to be the most rapid and complex period for human development. From infancy to early childhood, the physical
milestones include developing motor skills like learning to control body
movements, walk, talk, speak, use tools like spoons and forks and use the
restroom (Farrell, 2013).
Cognitive development has to do with the way an individual
identifies with the world and their ability to think, including the
construction of thought processes, learning structures, and systems in the
brain, including remembering, symbolizing, problem, solving, categorizing,
reasoning, judging, creating and decision making ("Cognitive
development," 2009). During the prenatal period, cognitive development is
highly enveloped in physical development as the primary tool for cognition; the
brain is still being developed. During infancy and early childhood, milestones
like speaking, comprehension and object differentiation occur. Thoughts about
the world are simplistic, and judgments are made in an either/or framework
(Farrell, 2013).
Social development is the change over time in an individual’s
understanding of, attitudes concerning, and behavior towards others (Susskind,
2005). During an individual’s lifespan relationships with parents, siblings,
peers and romantic partners all play important roles in social development and
vary from culture to culture.
The lifespan perspective is an approach to the study of human
development that takes into account all phases of life, not just childhood or
adulthood (Berger, 2011 p.10). There are five
characteristics that define the lifespan perspective on human development,
multidirectional, multicontextual, multicultural, multidisciplinary and
plastic. Multidirectional states that
change obviously occurs in each phase of live in every direction. The next perception from the lifespan
perspective is that development is multicontextual, meaning that development
occurs in many contexts, including historical conditions, economic constraints,
and family patterns. The multicultural characteristic states that many
cultures affect how people develop. Lifespan perspective is studied in
many areas of science, like psychology, biology, education, and sociology to
anthropology, history and medicine making it multidisciplinary. Finally,
every individual and every trait within each individual can be altered at any
point in the lifespan which describes the plasticity characteristic.
According to the text “the concept of
plasticity in development provides both hope and realism-hope because change is
possible and realism because development builds on what has come before” (Berger,
2011).
According to
Berger a developmental theory “is a systematic statement of general principles
that provides a coherent framework for understanding how and why people change
as they grow older” (Berger, 2011 p.33).
Sigmund Freud
developed the psychoanalytic theory of lifespan development where he believed
that development in the first six years occurs in three stages, each
characterized by sexual interest and pleasure centered on a particular part of
the body. In infancy, the erotic body
part is the mouth (the oral stage); in early childhood, it is the anus (the
anal stage); in the preschool years, it is the penis (the phallic stage), a
source of pride and fear among boys and a reason for sadness and envy among
girls. Two more developmental periods
then follow early childhood. After the
phallic stage, latency occurs and then, at puberty, the genital stage arrives,
lasting throughout adulthood (Berger, 2011 p.36)
Jean Piaget was the
first person to develop a major cognitive theory. Piaget formed the
central thesis of cognitive theory on how children think changes with time and
experience, and their thought processes always affect their behavior. According to Piaget’s cognitive theory, to
understand human behavior, one must understand how a person thinks. Piaget maintained that cognitive development
occurs in four age-related periods or stages: sensorimotor, preoperational,
concrete operational and formal operational (Berger, 2011 p. 45).
Sigmund Freud and Jean
Piaget’s theories both depend on the role of heredity and the environment in an
individual’s development. Genes are a small section of chromosome; the basic
unit for the transmission of heredity. A
gene consists of a string of chemicals that provide instructions for the cell
to manufacture certain proteins (Berger, 2011 p.62). Genes always affects the environment, and
then the environment affects and individual’s genes. Berger states that “genes can be modified
through epigenetic factors, including drugs and nutrition. Furthermore, genetic expression can be
directed or deflected, depending on the culture and society as well as to the
individual and the family” (Berger,
2011 p.78).
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