Human Development

ICBT CAMPUS
Nithila Theivendran
Developmental Psychology
 Developmental psychology involves studying
about how we grow, develop and change
throughout our lifespan.
 Development is defined as the physiological,
behavioral, cognitive, and social changes that
occur throughout human life, which are guided by
both genetic predispositions (nature) and by
environmental influences (nurture).
 It is the sequence of changes over the full life
span of an organism.
 It is an irreversible sequence of stages that
regularly follow one upon the other.
 Prenatal Period
 Begins at conception when a sperm cell from
the male penetrates the female’s (ovum) egg
cell and unites to form a fertilized egg called
the zygote.
 It takes approximately 38 weeks for the single
cell to transform into a newborn baby.
 This developmental stage from fertilization to
birth is called prenatal stage of development.
 First Stage: Germinal
Period
 This process occurs in the first two weeks of
conception and is called the germinal period.
 This egg divides repeatedly and by the time it
reaches the womb, it consists of more than
100 cells, called the blastocyst.
 The now embryo implants into the womb
lining.
 These cells differentiate and specialize in
different tasks forming the inner and outer
layer of the organism.
 Second Stage: Embryonic
Period
 The period between three to eight weeks after
conception is called the embryonic period.
During week 4, the embryo is curved and has a
tail resembling a tadpole.
 The embryo differentiates into different cell
layers.
 The inner layer (endoderm) develops into the
digestive and respiratory system.
 The middle layer (mesoderm) develops into the
circulatory system, bones, muscles, excretory
system and reproductive system.
 The outermost layer (ectoderm) folds into a
neural tube which becomes the brain and spinal
cord. Eyes develop.
 Third Stage: Fetal Period
 The fetal period begins two months after
conception and lasts for seven months.
 By the eighth week the embryo is one inch long
and the face, arms and legs, internal organs
become present and form.
 The sex glands become active, nervous system
rapidly develop and simple reflexes such as
grasping appear.
 The finger and toe nails, hair follicles, eyelids
also emerge.
Third Stage: Fetal Period
 The organs mature to a point of being able to
survive outside the womb.
 The sex of the fetus is recognizable by the
twelfth week. At the twenty fourth week, the
neurons in the brain become present and the
eyes formed are sensitive to light.
 By the eighth month, the fetus is fully formed.
At birth, they usually weigh more than 7 pounds
and about 20 inches long.
 Post-Natal Development
 Also known as neonates upto one month old.
 Human babies are born good motor coordination
and highly acute sensory capabilities.
 They have different kinds
of reflexes and motor
activities that help
newborn babies to survive
after birth.
 Reflexes are inborn ,
unlearned, automatic
responses to certain
environmental stimuli.
 Name Stimulus Response Significance

The baby turns its

head toward the Ensures the infant’s
The baby’s cheek is
Rooting reflex stroking, open its feeding will be a
stroked
mouth, and tries to reflexive habit.
suck.

Protects eyes from

A light is flashed in the The baby closes both strong and
Blink reflex
baby’s eyes eyes. potentially
dangerous stimuli.

A soft pinprick is Keeps the exploring

The baby flexes the
Withdrawal applied to the sole of infant away from
leg
baby’s foot painful stimuli

An object pressed into The baby grass the Helps in exploratory

Grasp reflex
the baby’s palm object pressed . learning.
 Cognitive Development
 It is the process by which a
child’s understanding of the
environment changes as a
function of age and
experience.
 Jean Piaget developed a four
stage theory claiming that
children gain their cognitive
ability in a fixed
developmental order at a
specific time.
 Schemas
 Schemas are cognitive structures in the long
term memory which help them remember,
organize and interpret information.
 As children come across new things
schemas change, they attempt to settle the
new knowledge with the existing schemas
by adapting to two distinct method.
 Schemas
 Assimilation: they make use of the already
developed schemas to understand new
information. However, everything cannot be
assimilated into the existing schemas, for
example, a child calling a stranger,
“mummy”.
 Accommodation: involves learning the
new information and then modifying the
existing schema and creating new schemas
to incorporate new information.
 Assimilation &
Accommodation
 Paiget’s Stages
1. Sensorimortor stage (birth – 2 years):
 Infants gain an understanding of the world
through their senses and their motor
activities (actions or body movements).
 As they use their sense to perceive the
world, when they don’t directly perceive the
object, the object doesn’t exist for them.
“Out of sight is always out of mind”.
 They lack object permanence.
 Piaget’s Stages
2. Preoperational stage (2-7 years):
 They begin to represent the world with
words and images which reflects increased
symbolic thinking.
 They begin to use language and are able to
think abstractly about objects.
 They lack the ability to deduce or reason,
that is, their thinking is governed by
perception rather than logic.
 They think what they can see everyone sees
and show animistic thinking which is the
belief that all inanimate objects are alive and
have feelings.
 They lack the ability to transform objects
mentally.
 They can’t perform operations which are
mental representations that are reversible.
They will be able to understand, for example,
8+2=10 but not the reverse, 10-2=8.
 Children in this stage lack the concept
of conservation.
 Conservation is the belief in the
permanence of certain attributes of
objects or situations in spite of
superficial changes.
 When given a short beaker and a long
thin beaker. The long thin beaker is
filled with the same volume of water
from the short beaker and asked
whether they are the same.
 The 4 year old child says that the long
thin beaker contain more water as
she can’t mentally reverse the
pouring action but an 8 year old will
say that the volume is the same.
 They experience centration, the inability to
realize that any change in shape or position
can be returned mentally to its original
state.
 They are egocentric, the inability to
understand other people’s point of view.
 The theory of mind, the “ability to take
another person’s viewpoint” increases
rapidly .
 Piaget’s Stages
3. Concrete operational stage (age 7-11
years).
 Frequently use more accurate transitions,
operations and abstract concepts including those
of time space and numbers.
 They attain the ability to understand
conservation and that even if there are changes
in the form of an object it doesn’t necessarily
mean the quantity of the object changes.
 They can gradually reason logically about
concrete events and are able to classify objects
into different sets. They understand that other
people have thoughts and feelings.
 Piaget’s Theory
4. Formal operational stage (age of 11
onwards to the adult years).
 They are capable of thinking abstractly,
understanding ethics and using philosophical and
scientific lines of thought.
 They are able to create make believe situations,
hypothetical possibilities and are more idealistic.
Adolescents adapt to hypothetical-deductive
reasoning to develop hypotheses and ways to
solve problems.
 Moral Development
 Changes in the capacity to
reason about the rightness or
wrongness of various actions
that occur with age.
 Kohlberg theorized that
individuals judge moral issues
depending on their cognitive
development.
 He found that moral
reasoning consists of three
levels with each two sub
stages in fixed order.
 What Do You Think?
 A man’s wife is dying of cancer and there is
only one drug that can save her. The only place
to get the drug is at the store of a pharmacist
who is known to overcharge people for drugs.
 The man can only pay $1,000, but the
pharmacist wants $2,000, and refuses to sell it
to him for less, or to let him pay later.
 Desperate, the man later breaks into the
pharmacy and steals the medicine.
 Should he have done that? Was it right or
wrong? Why?
 Kohlberg's Theory
1. The preconventional stage (age 4 to 10)
where younger children think in terms of the
external authority. Whether an act is right or
wrong is wholly based on the act’s physical
consequences.
 Stage 1 is punishment orientation, whatever
avoids a punishment.
 Stage 2 is naïve hedonistic orientation,
whatever gains a reward or favor in return, in
other words, “You scratch my back and I’ll
scratch yours”.
E.g. The child will say that man should not steal the
drug, because if he does, he’ll be punished.
 Kohlberg’s Stage
2. The conventional stage (age 10 to 13) holds on
to judging what is considered right or wrong based
on the internalized standards of others.
 Stage 3 is the good boy-nice girl orientation, the
“morality of mutual relationships”, where the
children make decisions based on what others will
think of them and usually act to please and help
others.
 Stage 4 is labeled as authority orientation, the
“morality of the social system and conscience”,
where the children base their decisions on the laws
of society focusing on doing one’s duty, maintaining
the given social order and showing respect for the
authority.
 Kohlberg’s Stage
• The child at this stage might reason: “It’s OK
to steal the drug, because no one will think
you are bad if you do. If you don’t, and let
your wife die, you’ll never be able to look
anyone in the eye again”.
 Kohlberg’s Stage
3. The post conventional stage (age of 13
or at young adulthood or never!)
 We base our judgments on the ethical
principles and not the consequences to us.
 Instead of internalizing the standards of
others, they contemplate the moral
alternatives and realize that sometimes
there may be conflicts between the law and
the basic human rights.
 Kohlberg’s Stages
 Stage 5 is termed as social contract
orientation, which expresses that as laws are
created to both the society and the individual; if
they fail to execute it then it must be altered.
 Stage 6 is described as the individual
principles and conscience orientation where
the universal ethical principles initiates the
ethical decisions emphasizing the respect held
for human life, equality, justice and dignity for all
people. These people are willing to violate the
law to follow their conscience.
 Kohlberg's Stages
 E.g The person might argue for stealing as “If
the man doesn't steal the drug, he is putting
property above human life; this makes no
sense. People could live together without
private property, but a respect for human life
is essential”
 They can also argue for not stealing the drug
by reasoning, “If the man stole the drug, he
wouldn’t be blamed by others, but he would
probably blame himself, since he has violated
his own standard of honesty and hurt another
person for his own gain”.
 Social Development
• Socialization is the process of
learning socially acceptable
behaviours, attitudes, and values.
• Erickson proposed a theory
emphasizing the society’s role in
the personality development.
• He proposed that individuals
progress through eight
psychosocial stages during the
life span.
• Each stage has a unique conflict
that needs to be resolved
adequately to have a healthy
development.
• Stage 1: Trust vs. Mistrust (birth to 12
months).
• Erickson believed that “basic trust as the
cornerstone of a healthy personality”.
• Trust is built when the infant’s basic needs such
as food and comfort is met and receives love,
affection and care regularly from the mother or
primary caregiver.
• If these requirements are not met, it results in
mistrust.
• This lays the stage for a lifelong expectation
that the world will be a pleasant place to live in.
• Stage 2: Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
(1 to 3 years).
• The infants develop their physical and mental
abilities and want to do things independently
and develop a sudden violent aspiration to
have a choice.
• Frequently a negative answer of “no” is heard
from these children. He believes that parents
should set appropriate limits and control for a
healthy development but also assist their
desire for autonomy where appropriate.
• However, if they are impatient or
overprotective, children feel shameful and
doubtful of their efforts to express their will and
explore their environment.
• Stage 3: Initiative vs. Guilt (3 to 6 years
old).
• Children are asked to assume more
responsibility for themselves and develop
more initiative.
• However, if children are irresponsible or made
to feel anxious, they may develop guilt.
• Erickson believes that if parents encourage
children’s appropriate attempts at initiative
and firmly but sensitively handle
inappropriate attempts, they will develop a
sense of initiative which lays the foundation
for a “high yet realistic sense of ambition and
independence”
• Stage 4: Industry vs. Inferiority
(6 years to puberty).
• Industry is achieved by mastering
knowledge and intellectually skills and
when they don’t attain these skills they
feel inferior.
• Stage 5: Identity vs. Identity confusion
• Development struggle for teenagers when they
want to establish their own identity, where they
belong and live by values they have formed,
however, failure to do so leads to an identity
crisis.
• They are confronted with many adult statuses
and roles both vocationally and romantically.
• Parents are recommended to allow their
adolescents to explore the various options
within a particular role.
• If a parent forces an identity on an adolescent
without allowing them to explore and if there is
no confirmed future path defined, identity
confusion reigns.
• Stage 6: Intimacy vs. Isolation is
experienced in the twenties and thirties
(early adulthood)
• They are given the task of forming
intimate relationships with others.
• Intimate includes that ability to share
with, care, make sacrifices and commit
to another.
• If they fail to do so, they develop a
sense of social isolation
• Stage 7: Generativity vs. Stagnation
occurs in the forties and fifties (middle
adulthood).
• To develop generativity, the individual must
develop “interest in establishing and
guiding the next generation”.
• If they don’t, they become self absorbed
and indulge themselves and are stagnant.
• Stage 8: Integrity vs. Despair is the final stage
experienced from the sixties onwards (late
adulthood)
• Depends primarily on the outcome of whether
the individual has resolved the conflicts at the
previous stages.
• Individuals look back on their lives with sense
of accomplishment of outmost satisfaction or
despair over many regrets about missed
opportunities and blunders.
 Adolescence
• It is the years between the onset of puberty till
the beginning of adulthood.
Girls Boys
Breasts development Facial hair and body hair and
pubic hair
Height and weight spurt Enlarged Adam’s Apple
Pubic hair and underarm hair Deeper Voice
appears
Menarche Weight and height gain
Broader Hips Broad shoulders
Skin oil and sweat Sperm production
Skin oil and sweat
 Adulthood
• Vocation or career
• Education
• Parenthood
• Physical Changes
• Marital Adjustment
The End