Download study of human development

BELL WORK:
WHEN YOU HEAR THE PHRASE
“HUMAN DEVELOPMENT”
WHAT COMES TO MIND?
Answer the above in at least 1 paragraph (5
sentences) and be prepared to share!
THE STUDY OF
HUMAN
DEVELOPMENT
Human Development
■ This is an ever-evolving field of study
■ Human development defined as the scientific study of age-related
changes in behavior, thinking, emotion, and personality
– Development is both systematic and adaptive
■ How do you think studying human development will be useful to you?
■ Life-span development
– This is a 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:
– 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
Influences of Development
■ Individual differences:
– Differences in characteristics, influences, or developmental outcomes
■ 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?
■ You have 5 minutes to pick a side of the debate.
– Need to write down 3 opinions of why you support said
side
■ Write in full sentences and be ready to share!
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—learned and
shared behavior passed on from parents to children
■ normative age-graded influences: is an 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
■ 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
– A 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 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
1. Development is lifelong
2. Development is multidimensional
3. Development is multidirectional
4. 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