SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENT PERIODS IN THE HUMAN LIFE SPAN

Introduction

Although growth and development are dramatic during the first two decades of life,
development is not something that happens only to children and adolescents.

The traditional approach to the study of development emphasizes change from birth to
adolescence and little or no change in adulthood, and old age.But a great deal of
change does happen in the five or six decades after adolescence.

The life-span approach emphasizes developmental change throughout adulthood as

well as childhood.The interplay of biological, cognitive, and socio emotional processes
produces the periods of the human life span.

A developmental period refers to a time frame in a person’s life that is characterized by

certain features. Describing development in terms of these periods helps us to
understand development better.

The most widely used classification of developmental periods involves the eight-period
sequence.

The prenatal period is the time from conception to birth. Infancy is the developmental
period from birth to 18 or 24 months.

Early childhood is the developmental period from the end of infancy to age 5 or 6.

Middle and late childhood is the developmental period from about 6 to 11 years of age.

Adolescence is the developmental period of transition from childhood to early

adulthood, approximately 10 to 12 years of age and ending at 18 to 21 years of age.

Early adulthood is the developmental period that begins in the late teens or early
twenties and lasts through the thirties.

Middle adulthood is the developmental period from approximately 40 years of age to

about 60. Late adulthood is the developmental period that begins in the sixties or
seventies and lasts until death.

Physical development

Prenatal stage involves tremendous growth-from a single cell to an organism complete

with brain and behavioural capabilities-and takes place in approximately a nine-month
period.
In Early childhood period parents eagerly await to see when the child learns how to roll
over and crawl.

Each of these represents a part of physical development. The process happens in an

orderly manner; that is, certain skills and abilities generally occur before others.

For example, most infants learn to crawl before they learn to walk.It is also important to
realize that the rate at which these physical goals are reached can vary from child to
child.

During Middle childhood, children grow in height and weight. In adolescence, children
attain puberty. When children hit puberty, their bodies produce certain hormones which
cause physical changes.

Some of these changes include an increase in height and weight, growth and changes
in sexual organs, sometimes pimples! These physical changes are caused by hormones
produced by the body, such as estrogen and testosterone.

However, because of the different levels of testosterone and estrogen found in the two
genders-boys with more testosterone and girls with more estrogen boys and girls
undergo different physical changes.

During adulthood, there are few changes in height. There may be changes in weight as
people put on or lose weight.‘Some men may experience ‘middle age spread’ as their
waistline expands.Some Women’s weight may fluctuate as a response to pregnancy or
hormone changes associated with post-pregnancy or menopauses factors. Growth in
later adulthood is usually negative growth.

Cognitive development

Much of our knowledge about cognitive development has been influenced by the work
of Piaget.

Piaget’s theory is based on stages, where each stage builds upon the last. Infants are in
the sensory motorstage. Inborn reflexes include rooting-turning their heads towards
something that touches their cheek.

Sucking-the tendency to suck at things that touch their lips.Stepping- the movement of
legs when they are held with their feet touching the floor. The first few times an infant
sucks food from a bottle, grasps an object or crawls, they really have to think about it.

But through repetition, these skills become increasingly subconscious. We know that
repetition creates lasting memories and babies love repetition. Cognitive abilities
associated with memory, reasoning, problem-solving and thinking continue to emerge
throughout childhood.
Jean Piaget Stages of Cognitive Development
• The Sensorimotor Stage: A period of time between birth and age two during
which an infant’s knowledge of the world is limited to his or her sensory
perceptions and motor activities.
Behaviours are limited to simple motor responses caused by sensory stimuli.
• The Preoperational Stage: A Period between ages two and six during which a
child learns to use language.
During this stage, children do not yet understand concrete logic, cannot mentally
manipulate information and are unable to take the point of view of other people.
• The Concrete Operational Stage: A period between ages seven and eleven
during which children gain a better understanding of mental operations. Children
begin thinking logically about concrete events, but have difficulty understanding
abstract or hypothetical concepts.
• The Formal Operational Stage: A period between ages twelve to adulthood when
people develop the ability to think about abstract concepts. Skills such as logical
thought, deductive reasoning and systematic planning also emerge during this
stage.

During adolescence (between 12 and 18 years of age), the developing teenager

acquires the ability to think systematically about all logical relationships within a
problem.

The transition from concrete thinking to formal logical operations occurs over time. Each
adolescent progresses at varying rates in developing his/her ability to think in more
complex ways.When emotional issues arise, they often interfere with an adolescent’s
ability to think in more complex ways.

The Seattle Longitudinal Study has provided detailed insights into the development of
several intellectual functions across adulthood and middle age.The data suggest that for
inductive reasoning, vocabulary, verbal memory, and spatial orientation, the average
performance peaks occur in the ages from the early 40s to 60s.

Five Primary Mental Abilities are Verbal Meaning, Spatial Orientation, Inductive
Reasoning, Number Ability an Word Fluency Although thinking processes become
slower and less sharp once a person reaches late adulthood, there is individual
variation in these declines.

Personality development

An individual’s personality is a result of the decisions they have made throughout their
life and the memory of the experiences to which these decisions led. There are inherent
natural, genetic, and environmental factors that contribute to the development of our
personality.

According to the process of socialization, “personality also colours our values, beliefs,
and expectations...Hereditary factors that contribute to personality development do so
as a result of interactions with the particular social environment in which people live.”A
person’s characteristic ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving across particular
environmental circumstances, or one’s personality, defines how others view him or her
and dictates the qualities they speak of when discussing the person with others.

Children do not have a specific personality during infancy. From childhood to

adolescence, our personality is shaped by our parents and society until we are able to
independently support ourselves later as a young adult.However, this does not mean
that every child develops healthy psychological functioning to allow them to become
independent adults.

The success of this psychological development consists of a complex interaction of

heredity and environment during particular stages throughout childhood which lay the
foundation for effective or ineffective development.

For example, a child born into a dysfunctional family with sexual, verbal, and physical
abuse is not likely to have a solid foundation for the type of thinking needed to develop
healthy psychological functioning.

Therefore with regard to personality, we see that childhood and adolescent influences
are a major influence on personality throughout life.In fact the personality acquired
through childhood and adolescence remains as a constant personality of the person,
and any change that is produced after this is very slow and takes many years to come
into effect.

The personality acquired during adolescence is quite sudden but the personality
acquired during adulthood is a slow and stabilizing process.Any difficulties encountered
during childhood and adolescence often lead to formation of difficult personalities for the
rest of their life.

Overall, we see that personality shows sudden change during adolescence, but pretty
much stays stable during the rest of the significant development periods of a human life
span.

Social development

Social development refers to the way in which individuals’ interactions with others and
their social relationships grow, change, and remain Stable over the course of life.

Social development in Infants of 2 years: Toddlers begin to respond to others’ emotions

and can show love by giving hugs and kisses.

Social Development in Early Childhood:

• Play serves an important role for children, both in their own skill development and
also in relation to others.
 • Associative play, where children interact and share but do not actually seem to
be playing the same game, characterizes 4-year-olds
• By age five years, children engage in more cooperative play, take turns, and
create games.
• Children at this age prefer same-gender playmates, in other cultures.
• Boys tend to be more involved in rough and tumble play and are more
aggressive.
• Girls are more inclined to engage in nurturing activities and are more
cooperative.

Social Development in Adolescence

• They learn to tolerate individual differences as they come in contact with people
who have different values and life-styles
• They prepare themselves for adult interactions as they begin to form more
intimate relationships.
• Sexual experimentation generally increases during this period.
• They become less dependent on parents, gradually achieving a psychological
sense of autonomy
• For many young adults, choosing a life-long partner is a major task at this stage
of development.

The Worker in Adulthood

In the early career stage, the worker questions his competence and degree of
commitment.
As the role of a worker evolves, challenges emerge, including:
• Dealing with the demands and expectations of the job and negotiating the
hierarchy of authority
• Anxiety, coupled with the worry, about being financially self-sufficient
• The Partner in Early Adulthood
• Likely that committing to an intimate relationship that may involve marriage may
not occur until early adulthood, depending on culture.
• Compromise and flexibility are crucial as couples come to agreement about such
issues as spending and saving money, work schedules and habits, relationships
with friends and in-laws, alone time versus couple time, eating and sleeping
patterns, and other daily living matters

The Parent in Adulthood

• Having children led to greater marital satisfaction for couples who already were
satisfied with their relationship
• Couples who had significant conflict prior to becoming parents had increased
difficulty after the birth of the baby.
Middle Adulthood

• Most people make the transition to midlife with little difficulty.

• Aging is different for every individual and varies according to culture, but there
are general trends that occur at some point during this developmental stage.

Individual differences

Students, we have studied the changes during significant developmental periods in the
human life span under the headings of physical, cognitive, personality and social
changes.

It is important to keep in mind that these broad periods which are largely accepted by
lifespan develop mentalists are social constructions.

A social construction is a shared notion of reality, one that is widely accepted but is a
function of society and culture at a given time.Therefore, the age ranges within a period-
and even the periods themselves-are in many ways random and often culturally derived.
For example, the concept of childhood as a special period did not even exist during the
17th century; at that time, children were seen simply as mini adults.

While some periods have a clear-cut boundary others developmental periods do not
have a clear cut boundary.

For example, consider the period of young adulthood, which in Western cultures is
typically assumed to begin at the age of 20. That age, however, is noted only because it
marks the end of the teenage period.

In fact, for many people, such as those enrolled in higher education, the age change
from 19 to 20 has little specialsignificance, coming as it does in the middle of the college
years.For them, more major changes may occur when they leave college and enter the
workforce, which is more likely to happen around the age of 22.Furthermore, in some
non-Western cultures, adulthood may be considered to start much earlier, when
children whose educational opportunities are limited begin full-time work.

In short, there are substantial individual differences in the timing of events in people’s
lives. In part, this is a biological fact of life: People mature at different rates and reach
developmental milestones at different points.However, environmental factors also play a
significant role in determining the age at which a particular event is likely to occur.

For example, the typical age of marriage varies substantially from one culture to
another, depending on part in the functions that marriage plays in a given
culture.Therefore students, it is important to keep in mind, that when developmental
specialists discuss age ranges, they are talking about averages-the times when people,
on average, reach particular stage of development.
Some people will reach the goal earlier, some later, and many will reach it around the
time of the average. Such variation becomes noteworthy only when children show
substantial deviation from the average.

For example, parents whose child begins to speak at a much later age than average
might decide to have their son or daughter tested by a speech therapist.Each of the
broad topical areas of lifespan development-physical, cognitive, social, and personality
development-plays a role throughout the life span.

Consequently, some developmental experts focus on physical development during the

prenatal period, and others during adolescence.

Summary

How can we clearly describe the differences in capacities between infants, children,
adolescents, and adults?One view holds that infants and preschoolers respond to the
world in much the same way as adults do.

The difference between the immature and mature being is simply one of complexity.

For example, when Sita was a baby, her perception of a veena melody, memory for
past events, and ability to sort objects into categories may have been much like our
own.Maybe her only limitation was that she could not perform these skills with as much
information and precision as we can.If this is so, then change in her thinking must be
continuous-a process of gradually augmenting the same types of skills that were there
to begin with.

According to a second view, infants and children have unique ways of thinking, feeling
and behaving, ones quite different from adults’.If so, then development is discontinuous-
a process in which new and different ways of understanding and responding to the
world emerge at specific times.

Theories that accept the discontinuous perspective regard development as taking place
in stages-qualitative changes in thinking, feeling, and behaving that characterize
specific periods of development.

In stage theories, development is like climbing a staircase, with each step

corresponding to a more mature, reorganized way of functioning.The stage concept
assumes that people undergo periods of rapid transformation as they step up from one
stage to the next.In other words, change is fairly sudden rather than gradual and
ongoing.

Students as educators you will have to answer and research this question for yourself
based on your experience and current and future research.In this topic we have studied
significant development periods in the human life span.But the larger question also
remains-does development actually take place in a neat, orderly sequence of stages?In
fact, this ambitious assumption has faced significant challenges.