Unit 2: Human Development

Stages of Life Span Development:

i. Prenatal stage
ii. Infancy
iii. Childhood
iv. Adolescence
v. Adulthood
i. Prenatal Stage:
- Stage of conception to birth
- The one-cell entity (zygote) established at conception
contains 23 pairs of chromosomes
- One member of each pair is from the mother, and the
other is from the father
- When an egg and a sperm meet at the moment of
fertilization, the egg provides an X chromosome, and
the sperm provides either an X or a Y chromosome.
- If the sperm contributes an X chromosome, the child
will have an XX pairing on the 23rd chromosome and
will be a girl.
- If the sperm contributes a Y chromosome, the result
will be an XY pairing—a boy.
Ten to fourteen days after fertilization, it becomes
implanted in the wall of the uterus. For the next six
weeks it is known as an embryo and develops
rapidly.
By the third week the embryo is about one-fifth of
an inch (one-half centimeter) long, and the region
of the head is clearly visible.
By the end of the eighth week the embryo is about
one inch long, and a face as well as arms and legs
are present. By this time, too, all major internal
organs have begun to form
The nervous system develops rapidly, and simple
reflexes begin to appear during the eighth or ninth
week after fertilization
 During the next seven months the developing child
—now called a fetus—shows an increasingly human
form. Different parts of the body grow at different
rates during this period. At first, the head grows
rapidly compared to the trunk and legs; later, the
lower parts of the body grow more rapidly.
 The external genitals take shape, so the sex of the
fetus is recognizable by the twelfth week.
 By the twentieth week it is almost 10 inches (25 cm)

long and weighs 8 or 9 ounces (227–255 g).

• By the twenty-fourth week all the neurons that will
be present in the brain have been produced. The eyes
are formed and are sensitive to light by the end of
the twenty-fourth to twenty-sixth week.
During the last three months of pregnancy, the
fetus gains about eight ounces each week. By the
seventh and eighth months, it appears to be
virtually fully formed.
At birth, babies weigh more than 7 pounds (3.17
kilograms) on average and are about 20 inches
(50.8 cm) long.
Psychological issues and Hazards in prenatal
stage:
The major prenatal environmental influences on the
fetus are the following:
a. Mother’s nutrition . What a mother eats during
her pregnancy can have important implications for
the health of her baby. Seriously undernourished
mothers cannot provide adequate nutrition to a
growing fetus, and they are likely to give birth to
underweight babies. Poorly nourished babies are
also more susceptible to disease, and a lack of
nourishment may have an adverse impact on their
mental development.
b. Mother’s illness . Several diseases that have a
relatively minor effect on the health of a mother can
have devastating consequences for a developing
fetus if they are contracted during the early part of a
pregnancy.
c. Mother’s emotional state:
A mother’s emotional state affects her baby.
Mothers who are anxious and tense during the last
months of their pregnancies are more apt to have
irritable infants who sleep and eat poorly.
d. Mother’s use of drugs:
Mothers who take illegal, physically addictive
drugs such as cocaine run the risk of giving birth to
babies who are similarly addicted. Their newborns
suffer painful withdrawal symptoms and sometimes
show permanent physical and mental impairment.
Even legal drugs taken by a
e. Alcohol . Alcohol is extremely dangerous to fetal
development. For example, 1 out of every 750
infants is born with fetal alcohol syndrome ( FAS ),
a condition resulting in below-average intelligence,
growth delays, and facial deformities.
f. Nicotine use . Pregnant mothers who smoke put
their children at considerable risk. Smoking while
pregnant can lead to miscarriage and infant death.
For children who do survive, the negative
consequences of mother’s tobacco use can last a
lifetime.
ii. Infancy:
 Infancy period from birth to one year (two years).
A neonate is born with a number of reflexes —
unlearned, involuntary responses that occur
automatically in the presence of certain stimuli.
Critical for survival, many of those reflexes
unfold naturally as part of an infant’s ongoing
maturation.
rooting reflex, a sucking reflex, grasping reflex etc
 Infants lose these primitive reflexes after the first few
months of life and replace them with more complex
and organized behaviors.
 Although at birth a neonate is capable of only jerky,
limited voluntary movements, the ability to move
independently rows enormously during the first year
of life.
 The typical baby rolls over by the age of about 3
months, sits without support at about 6 months, stands
alone at about 11 months, and walks at just over a year
old.
 Not only does the ability to make large-scale
movements improve during this time, but fine-muscle
movements also become increasingly sophisticated.
 Three-month-old infants already display behavioral
reactions suggestive of such emotional states as
surprise, distress, relaxation, and excitement. New
emotional states, including anger, sadness, and fear, all
appear by the first year.
 Infants’ emotional life is centered on the attachments
they form to their mothers or other primary caregivers,
and through these interactions infants learn to love,
trust, and depend on other human beings.
 Babies begin to smile at other people beginning at
about two months, and their attachments to mothers and
caregivers are developed by about six months. These
attachments form the basis for healthy emotional
and social development throughout childhood.
Psychological Hazards in infancy:
a. Parent’s helplessness and post natal adjustment
of infant
b. Ignorance of individuality of infant and post
natal adjustment
c. Developmental lag
d. Lack of stimulation
e. New Parent Blues (stress, anxiety, depression
etc in post pregnancy)
f. Unfavorable attitude of significant people
iii. Childhood:
 It is the period from three to twelve years.
 From age 3 to the beginning of adolescence at around
age 13, growth averages a gain of about 5 pounds and
3 inches a year.
 The nature of a child’s early social development
provides the foundation for social relationships that
will last a lifetime.
 The nature of attachment between children and their
mothers has far-reaching consequences for later
development. For example, children who are securely
attached to their mothers tend to be more socially and
emotionally competent than are their less securely
attached peers, and others find them more cooperative,
capable, and playful.
 Children become less dependent on their parents,
more self-reliant, and increasingly prefer to play
with friends. Initially, play is relatively
independent: they pay more attention to toys than
to one another when playing.
 Later, children actively interact, modify one
another’s behavior, and exchange roles during
play.
As children reach school age, their social
interactions begin to follow set patterns and
become more frequent. They may engage in
elaborate games involving teams and rigid rules.
In short, social interaction helps children interpret
the meaning of others’ behavior and develop the
capacity to respond appropriately. Furthermore,
children learn physical and emotional self-
control.
Psychological Hazards in Childhood:
a. Speech Hazards:
 Communication is essential for social belonging.
 In children with inadequate speech quality,
communication will not be clear. This can lead to feelings
of inferiority and inadequacy.
b. Social Hazards:
 Children with communication problem will become
unpopular among peers.
 They may feel isolated and lonely, often not getting the
opportunities to develop peer approved behaviors.
 Children may also experience discrimination due to caste,
religion, sex etc. This can result in manifestation of
biased behavior.
c. Play Hazards:
 Children may not get adequate play exposure due to
geographical location or due to parental decisions.
 Such children have higher chance of being rejected
by other children, may feel inferior, lack the skill to
work in team and not develop motor skill needed at
that age.
d. Moral Hazards:
 Inconsistent disciplining can cause children to have
reduced capacity to conform to social expectations
 Children get confused when too many people take
decisions in their life.
iv. Adolescence:
 Adolescence, the developmental stage between
childhood and adulthood, is a crucial period. It is a
time of profound changes and, occasionally, turmoil.
Considerable biological change occurs as adolescents
attain sexual and physical maturity.
 At the same time and rivaling these physiological
changes, important social, emotional, and cognitive
changes occur as adolescents strive for independence
and move toward adulthood.
 A spurt in height, the growth of breasts in girls,
deepening voices in boys, the development of body
hair, and intense sexual feelings cause curiosity,
interest, and sometimes embarrassment for individuals
entering adolescence.
 Developmental psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg
theorized that people move through a three-level
sequence of moral reasoning in a fixed order.
However, he contended that few people ever
reach the highest level of moral reasoning.
 Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development
emphasizes the search for identity during the
adolescent years. During this stage, a time of
major testing, people try to determine what is
unique about themselves. They attempt to
discover who they are, what their strengths are,
and what kinds of roles they are best suited to
play for the rest of their lives—in short, their
identity.
 A person confused about the most appropriate
role to play in life may lack a stable identity,
adopt an unacceptable role such as that of a social
deviant, or have difficulty maintaining close
personal relationships later in life.
 The identity-versus-role-confusion stage has
another important characteristic: declining
reliance on adults for information with a shift
toward using the peer group as a source of social
judgments. The peer group becomes increasingly
important, enabling adolescents to form close,
adult-like relationships and helping them clarify
their personal identities.
 In most families with adolescents, the amount of arguing
clearly rises. Most young teenagers, as part of their
search for identity, experience tension between their
attempts to become independent from their parents and
their actual dependence on them.
 They may experiment with a range of activities that their
parents, and even society as a whole, find objectionable.
 For most families such tensions stabilize during middle
adolescence—around age 15 or 16—and eventually
decline around age 18.
 Another source of conflict with parents lies in the way
adolescents think. Adolescence fosters adolescent
egocentrism, a state of self-absorption in which a
teenager views the world from his or her own point of
view.
Psychological Hazards of Adolescence:
 Identity Crisis
 Failure to mark transition to maturity
 Premarital pregnancy
 Family and peer relationship
v. Adulthood:
 Emerging adulthood is the period beginning in the
late teenage years and extending into the mid-20s.
During emerging adulthood, people are no longer
adolescents, but they haven’t fully taken on the
responsibilities of adulthood. Instead, they are
still engaged in determining who they are and
what their life and career paths should be.
 For most people, early adulthood marks the peak
of physical health. From about 18 to 25 years of
age, people’s strength is greatest, their reflexes
are quickest, and their chances of dying from
disease are quite slim. Moreover, reproductive
capabilities are at their highest level.
 The entry into early adulthood is usually marked by
leaving one’s childhood home and entering the
world of work. People envision life goals and make
career choices. During this period, people typically
launch themselves into careers, marriage, and
families.
 During middle adulthood, people gradually become
aware of changes in their bodies. They often
experience weight gain (although they can avoid
such increases through diet and exercise).
 Furthermore, the sense organs gradually become less
sensitive, and reactions to stimuli are slower. But
generally, the physical declines that occur during
middle adulthood are minor and often unnoticeable.
 The major biological change that does occur
during middle adulthood pertains to reproductive
capabilities. On average, during their late 40s or
early 50s, women begin menopause, during which
they stop menstruating and are no longer fertile.
 For men, the aging process during middle
adulthood is somewhat subtler. In fact, men
remain fertile and capable of fathering children
until well into late adulthood.
 In their early 40s, however, people may begin to
question their lives as they enter a period called the
midlife transition . The idea that life will end at some
point can become more influential in their thinking,
which leads them to question their past
accomplishments.
 Most 40-year-olds view their lives and
accomplishments positively enough to proceed
relatively smoothly through midlife, and the 40s and
50s are often a particularly rewarding period. Rather
than looking to the future, people concentrate on the
present; their involvement with their families, friends,
and other social groups takes on new importance. A
major developmental thrust of this period is to accept
one’s circumstances.
 Finally, during the last stages of adulthood,
people become more accepting of others and of
their own lives and are less concerned about
issues or problems that once bothered them.
 They come to accept the fact that death is
inevitable, and they try to understand their
accomplishments in terms of the broader meaning
of life.
Later Years of Life: Growing Old
Physical changes brought about by the aging
process.:
 The most obvious are those of appearance—hair
thinning and turning gray, skin wrinkling and
folding, and sometimes a slight loss of height as
the thickness of the disks between vertebrae in the
spine decreases.
 But subtler changes also occur in the body’s
biological functioning. For example, sensory
capabilities decrease as a result of aging: Vision,
hearing, smell, and taste become less sensitive.
Reaction time slows, and physical stamina changes
Cognitive Changes: Thinking About—and During—
Late Adulthood
 In general, skills relating to fluid intelligence (which
involves information-processing skills such as
memory, calculations, and analogy solving) show
declines in late adulthood. In contrast, skills relating
to crystallized intelligence (intelligence based on the
accumulation of information, skills, and strategies
learned through experience) remain steady and in
some cases actually improve.
 Some cases of memory loss, however, are produced
by actual disease. For instance, Alzheimer’s disease
is a progressive brain disorder that leads to a gradual
and irreversible decline in cognitive abilities.
 Certainly, late adulthood brings significant
challenges. People who have spent their adult
lives working and then enter retirement bring
about a major shift in the role they play.
 Moreover, many people must face the death of
their spouse. Especially if the marriage has been a
long and good one, the death of a partner means
the loss of a companion, confidante, and lover. It
can also bring about changes in economic well-
being
 Regardless of how people age, most engage in a
process of life review in which they examine and
evaluate their lives. Remembering and
reconsidering what has occurred in the past,
people in late adulthood often come to a better
understanding of themselves.
 They sometimes resolve lingering problems and
conflicts and face their lives with greater wisdom
and serenity.
 Clearly, people in late adulthood are not just
marking time until death. Rather, old age is a time
of continued growth and development as
important as any other period of life.
Psycho-social Hazards in Early Adulthood:
i. Social adjustment problems: The most common
one include difficulty in associating oneself,
inability to develop friendly relationships and
dissatisfaction with the roles the social group
expects the individual to play.
ii. Social mobility: faces new social norms and
values to adjust with. Inability to adjust is often
followed by stress.
Psycho-social Hazards in Mid-adulthood:
 financial pressure
 lack of social skills
 family pressure
 marital hazards

Psycho-social Hazards in Late-adulthood:

 Feeling of inferiority and inadequacy that come
with physical changes
 Reduced income
 Social disengagement
 Mental disorder
 Loss of life partners and peer groups