Experience Human Development Textbook Notes 09 23 2012 Human Development An Ever Evolving Field Field of human development focuses on the scientific study of the systematic processes of change and stability in people Studying the life span Life span development human development is a lifelong process The Study of Human Development Basic Concepts Domains of Development 3 major domains of the self physical cognitive and psychosocial Physical development growth of the body and brain sensory capacities motor skills and health Cognitive development learning attention memory language thinking reasoning and creativity Psychosocial development emotions personality and social relationships Periods of the life span Social construction a concept or practice that may appear natural and obvious to those who accept it but in reality is an event The Chippewa Indians have two periods of childhood from birth until walking and from walking to puberty Central task for adolescence search for identity personal sexual and occupational Influences on Development Heredity Environment and Maturation Heredity inborn traits or characteristics inherited from the biological parents Environment the world outside the self beginning in the womb and the learning that comes from experience Maturation the unfolding of a natural sequence of physical changes and behavior patterns Contexts of development Nuclear family household unit consisting of one or two parents and their kids whether biological adopted or stepchildren Extended family multigenerational network of grandparents aunts uncles cousins and more distant relatives Socioeconomic Status and Neighborhood Socioeconomic status based on family income and the educational and occupational levels of the adults in the household Expanding global economy is one of the major factors contributing to the overall decrease in poverty All progress made with respect to child poverty since 1974 was wiped out in U S by current recession Risk factors conditions that increase the likelihood of a negative outcome Culture and Race Ethnicity Culture a society s or group s total way of life including customs traditions laws knowledge beliefs values language and physical products Ethnic group consists of people united by a distinctive culture ancestry religion language or national origin By 2040 the minority population is projected to rise to 50 Children of immigrants in the U S are nearly twice as likely as native born children to live with extended families and are less likely to have mothers who work outside the home Ethnic gloss an overgeneralization that obscures or blurs such variations Normative and Nonnormative Influences Normative characteristic of an event that occurs in a similar way for most people in a group Historical generation a group of people who experience the event at a formative time in their lives Age cohort a group of people born at about the same time Nonnormative unusual events that have a major impact on individual lives because they disturb the expected sequence of the life cycles Timing of Influences Critical or sensitive periods Imprinting instinctive form of learning in which during a critical period in early development a young animal forms an attachment to the first moving object it sees mother Critical period a specific time when a given event or its absence has a specific impact on development Plasticity range of modifiability of performance Sensitivity periods times in development when a person in particularly open to certain kinds of experiences Paul B Baltes s Life Span Developmental Approach Include the propositions that 1 development is lifelong 2 development is multidimensional 3 development is multidirectional 4 the 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 Theory and Research 09 23 2012 Basic Theoretical Issues Issue 1 Is Development Active or Reactive Mechanistic Model Model that views human development as a series of predictable responses to stimuli o Behavior results from the operation of biological parts in response to external internal stimuli Organismic model views human development as internally initiated by an active organism and as occurring in a sequence of qualitatively different stages development in motion o Sees people as active growing organisms that set their own o They initiate events not just react Issue 2 Is development continuous or discontinuous Continuous gradual and incremental Quantitative change changes in number or amount height weight size of vocab or frequency of communication Qualitative change changes in kind structure or organization Development occurs in stages Theoretical Perspectives Perspective 1 Psychoanalytic Views development as shaped by unconscious forces that motivate human behavior Psychoanalysis seeks to give patients insight into unconscious emotional conflicts by asking questions designed to summon up long buried memories Sigmund Freud Psychosexual Development Psychosexual development in Freudian theory an unvarying sequence of stages of childhood personality development in which gratification shifts from the mouth to the anus and then to the Erik Erikson Psychosocial development Psychosocial development covers eight stages across the life genitals span Each stage requires the balancing of a positive tendency and a corresponding negative one Perspective 2 Learning Learning Perspective maintains that development results from learning a long lasting change in behavior based on experience or adaptation to the environment Two important learning theories are behaviorism and social learning theory Behaviorism a mechanistic theory that describes observed behavior as a predictable response to experience o Focuses on associative learning in which a mental link is formed between two events Classical conditioning learning based on associating a stimulus that does not ordinarily elicit a response with another stimulus that does elicit the response little Albert Classical conditioning occurs throughout life such as food likes and dislikes fear of dogs Operant conditioning learning based on association of behavior with its consequences Called operant conditioning because the person learns from the consequences of operating on the environment Reinforcement process by which behavior is strengthened increasing the likelihood that the
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