Class 11 Psychology Chapter 3 Human Development Notes in English

1Meaning of Development

From birth till old age, every person keeps changing. We learn to walk (usually by the first year) and talk (usually by the second year), make friends, go through puberty, work, marry, raise children and grow old. These changes happen in the body, in thinking, in language and in relationships, and they happen together, not one area at a time.

Development includes both growth and decline. Decline is easy to see in old age, for example slower running speed.

1.1 Three processes behind development

1.2 The Life-Span Perspective (LSP)

The life-span perspective is a way of studying development that rests on seven assumptions:

1.3 Box 3.1: Growth, Development, Maturation and Evolution

Developmental changes are of many kinds: change in size (physical growth), in proportion (child to adult), in features (baby teeth falling) and gaining new features.

The book’s milestones: sitting unsupported at about 7 months, standing with support at about 8 months, walking at about one year, for most children. Once the body is ready, a normal environment and a little practice are enough. Pushing a baby to walk early does not help if the baby is not maturationally ready.

2Factors Influencing Development: Heredity and Environment

2.1 Why we differ, yet are alike

In any class, students differ in skin colour, height, temperament, intelligence and memory. Yet all of us are clearly human (Homo sapiens). The answer to “why are we different, yet alike?” is the interaction of heredity and environment.

• Every cell carries the genetic code inherited from parents. Because we share the human genetic code, a fertilised human egg can only become a human baby, never an elephant or a bird.
• Most traits come from combinations of many genes: the book mentions 80,000 or more genes. Not every possible trait in our genes actually shows up.

Genes set the limit; environment works within it. Two book examples:

• A child whose genotype tilts towards being introverted, raised where social mixing is encouraged, may become a little more extroverted.
• A person with “short” height genes will never be taller than average, even with very good nutrition.

2.2 Sandra Scarr (1992): how genes and environment link up

3Context of Development

Development never happens in a vacuum: it is always set in a socio-cultural context. Life transitions such as starting school, becoming an adolescent, getting a job, marriage, children and retirement depend jointly on biological change and on change in the environment.

3.1 Urie Bronfenbrenner’s contextual view (Fig. 3.1)

Bronfenbrenner stressed the role of the environment, drawn as circles around the individual:

In short, a child is shaped by the whole world around her or him, from small chats with playmates to the social and economic conditions of birth. Children in impoverished environments (no books or toys, no visits to library, museum or zoo, ineffective role models, crowded noisy homes) face difficulties in learning.

3.2 Durganand Sinha (1977): ecological model for Indian children

The two layers are concentric and keep interacting. The surrounding layer constantly influences the upper layer, though its effects are not always visible, and the same factors can have different effects on different people. So to understand a person we must see her or him in the context of her or his experiences. (Activity 3.1 asks you to imagine life in a village without city amenities, or the reverse.)

4Overview of Developmental Stages

Life is usually described in stages. Each stage is temporary and has a dominant feature that makes it unique. In each stage the person moves towards a goal (an ability) that has to be achieved in the same order as others before moving on, though people differ in the timing.

5Prenatal Stage

The genetic blueprint guides development, but genes and environment both act. The mother’s age, nutrition and emotional state matter. Diseases carried by the mother such as rubella (German measles), genital herpes and HIV are believed to cause genetic problems in the newborn.

6Infancy (first two years)

The brain grows very fast before and after birth. At birth the baby has most, but not all, brain cells; the connections between them form rapidly. A newborn is not helpless: it breathes, sucks, swallows and passes wastes; in the first week it can tell where a sound comes from, can pick out its mother’s voice, and can copy simple gestures like sticking out the tongue and opening the mouth.

6.1 Motor development and reflexes

Some reflexes (coughing, blinking, yawning) stay for life; others disappear as the brain matures and voluntary control grows.

As muscles and the nervous system mature, finer skills follow: grasping and reaching, sitting, crawling, walking, running. The sequence of motor development is universal, with minor exceptions.

6.2 Sensory abilities

• Vision: newborns prefer some stimuli, such as faces. A newborn sees less sharply than an adult; sight gets better by 6 months, and around the first birthday it nearly matches adult vision (20/20).
• Colour: newborns may tell red from white but are generally colour deficient; colour vision develops by 3 months.
• Hearing: present right after birth; locating sounds improves with age. They recognise the mother’s voice a few hours after birth.
• Touch, pain, smell and taste are also present in the newborn.

6.3 Cognitive development: Jean Piaget

Piaget said children actively construct their understanding of the world; information does not just pour in. As they grow, they adapt their thinking to new ideas. Each stage has a different way of thinking, linked to age. What makes a stage more advanced is the way of thinking, not the amount of information.

In infancy the child experiences the world through looking, hearing, touching, mouthing and grasping, and lives in the present: “out of sight is out of mind”. Hide a toy in front of a young infant and she will not search for it.

Language: the base of verbal communication is present early. Babbling begins somewhere between 3 and 6 months.

6.4 Socio-emotional development: attachment

Babies are social from birth: they prefer familiar faces and coo and gurgle when a parent is near. By 6 to 8 months they move more and prefer the mother’s company; they cry when frightened by a new face or separated, and smile or hug when reunited.

This also explains why small children cling to a favourite toy or blanket: it gives comfort, and they give it up as they grow more confident.

Erik Erikson (1968): the first year is the key time for attachment and is the stage of trust versus mistrust. Trust grows from physical comfort and sensitive, responsive parenting, and gives an expectation that the world is safe and good.

7Childhood

7.1 Physical development

Growth slows in early childhood compared with infancy. Early physical development follows two principles:

These trends come from a maturing nervous system: even visually impaired children follow the same sequence. Children then look slimmer as the trunk lengthens and body fat falls. The brain and head grow faster than any other body part, which helps eye-hand coordination, holding a pencil and early writing. In middle and late childhood, weight gain comes mainly from larger skeletal and muscular systems and some organs.

7.2 Motor development

Gross motor skills use arms and legs to move around confidently; fine motor skills mean finger dexterity and eye-hand coordination. Hand preference (left or right) also develops now.

7.3 Cognitive development

Preoperational stage (2-7 years): because the child now has object permanence, she can use mental symbols for things not present, for example drawing a house, tree or dog. But she still cannot mentally do what she did physically before.

Concrete operational stage (7-11 years, middle and late childhood): intuitive thought gives way to logical thought.

Now the child looks at several features at once, sees that things can be viewed in different ways, so egocentrism declines. Thinking becomes flexible: she can consider alternatives and mentally retrace steps. But she still cannot think abstractly, that is, handle ideas without objects (steps of an algebraic equation, or imagining lines of latitude and longitude). Growing thinking also helps language: vocabulary and grammar. (Activity 3.2: pour equal water into a tall thin glass in front of a Class II and a Class V child and compare their answers.)

7.4 Socio-emotional development

Its key parts are self, gender and moral development.

Self: through socialisation the child knows who she is and whom she wants to be like, and wants to do things her own way.

• Erikson: initiative vs guilt. Freedom to play (cycling, running, skating) and answers to the child’s questions support initiative. Calling questions useless and games stupid builds guilt about self-initiated activities, which may last into later life.
• Early childhood: self described by physical characteristics (“I am tall”, “I am a girl”).
• Middle and late childhood: self described by internal characteristics (“I am smart and popular”), social aspects (member of the school music club) and social comparison (“I got more marks than Atul”). This helps the child see how she differs from others.
• At school the social world widens; time with peers shapes development.

(Activity 3.3: act like the other gender for an hour and note reactions.)

7.5 Moral development: Lawrence Kohlberg

Moral development means learning to tell right from wrong, to feel guilt, to take another’s position and to help people in trouble. Kohlberg said children pass through age-related stages of moral development, as they do in thinking. He told children stories with moral dilemmas and asked what the character should do and why.

(The book’s Summary says Kohlberg’s moral reasoning moves through three levels linked to age and decided by cognitive development. Activity 3.4 discusses euthanasia, “mercy killing”.) By the end of childhood the child has coordination and balance, reasons logically and is part of social systems like family and peer group.

8Challenges of Adolescence

It is a time of rapid biological and psychological change. The physical changes are universal, but the social and psychological experience depends on culture: where adolescence is seen as confusing, teenagers have a different experience from cultures that see it as the start of adult responsibility. Adolescence is not universal across cultures, though most societies have at least a short one.

8.1 Physical development

Puberty ends childhood and starts adolescence. It is a gradual process, not a sudden event. Its hormones produce:

Variation is normal: of two same-age boys, one may finish puberty before the other begins. Both genes and environment act: identical twins reach menarche closer in time than fraternal twins; girls from affluent families reach it earlier than girls from poor families; and the age of menarche is falling in industrialised nations because of better nutrition and medical care.

Psychological side: interest in the opposite sex and new awareness of sexual feelings, pushed by awareness of body changes and by peers, parents and society. Many adolescents lack correct knowledge, since parents find sex hard to discuss, so teenagers become secretive; the risk of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases makes this a serious concern. Developing a sexual identity and accepting one’s physical self (a realistic, acceptable body image) are important developmental tasks. Puberty also brings cognitive and social change.

8.2 Cognitive changes

Thinking becomes abstract, logical and idealistic. Piaget placed formal operational thought between 11 and 15 years. Teenagers compare themselves and others with ideal standards (for example, what an ideal parent is like). Instead of the children’s trial-and-error method, they plan possible actions, ask why something happens and search for solutions systematically: Piaget called this hypothetical deductive reasoning.

Moral reasoning becomes flexible: social rules are no longer absolute. The adolescent weighs options (“Should I smoke because everyone does? Is copying in exams ethical?”) and settles on a personal moral code, which may even lead to a protest march rather than following college norms.

8.3 Adolescent egocentrism: David Elkind

8.4 Forming an identity

Questions like “Who am I? Which subjects should I take? Do I believe in God?” are part of this search. Detachment from parents helps build personal beliefs but can cause conflict with parents and within oneself. Those who cope develop a new sense of self. According to Erikson, those who cannot cope with this identity crisis face identity confusion: they may isolate themselves from peers and family or lose themselves in the crowd. Teenagers swing between wanting independence and depending on parents (“treated like a baby”), and between confidence and insecurity.

In some cultures young people choose their own occupation; in others parents decide and children accept.

8.5 Some major concerns

Peer pressure, new freedom and unresolved problems make adolescence a vulnerable period. Conforming to peers can be positive or negative, and decisions about smoking, drugs, alcohol or breaking rules are often taken without thinking of effects. There is also excitement, joy and competence as challenges are overcome.

9Adulthood and Old Age

9.1 Adulthood

An adult is generally defined as someone who is responsible, mature, self-supporting and well integrated into society. The timing varies: some work while studying, some marry and stop studying, some live with parents after marriage. Adult roles depend on the social context; within one culture the course of adult life is similar.

• Early adulthood: two major tasks: exploring possibilities for adult living, and building a stable life structure. The twenties are the novice phase: a shift from dependence to independence, with a picture of the life one wants, especially marriage and career.
• Career and work: earning, choosing an occupation and building a career are themes of the twenties and thirties. Starting work brings worries about adjusting, proving competence, competition and expectations, and new roles.
• Marriage, parenthood and family: knowing the partner, coping with likes and dislikes, sharing home roles if both work. Becoming a parent can be stressful though full of love; it depends on number of children, social support and the couple’s happiness. Single-parent families (after a spouse’s death or divorce) and families where both parents work face similar stresses: childcare, school-work, illness and workload. Parenting still offers growth, satisfaction and guiding the next generation.
• Middle age: physical decline from maturational change: weaker vision, sensitivity to glare, hearing loss, wrinkles, grey or thinning hair, weight gain.
• Cognition: some abilities decline, others do not. Memory declines more for long-term than short-term tasks: a middle-aged person recalls a phone number just heard but not after a few days. So memory falls off more, but wisdom can grow with the years; still, not every adult becomes wise.

9.2 Old age

When old age starts is hard to say. It was linked to retirement, but people live longer now, so the cut-off is moving upward. Challenges: retirement, widowhood, illness, death in the family. The image is changing: many people over seventy are active, creative and valued in politics, literature, business, art and science. Experience of old age depends on socio-economic conditions, health care, attitudes, social expectations and support.

Successful ageing depends on effectiveness at work, loving family relationships, good friendships, health and cognitive fitness.

• Retirement: some see it as losing a source of satisfaction and self-esteem; others as time for their own interests. Older adults open to new experiences and achievement-oriented keep busy and adjust better.
• Family change: new roles such as grandparenting; children busy elsewhere; dependence on children for money and company may bring hopelessness and depression in some.
• Loss of energy, health and money leads to insecurity and dependency. Indian culture favours dependency of the elderly on their children; parents in oriental cultures raise children hoping to be cared for in old age. The elderly need security and belonging.

9.3 Death

Death can come at any age, but is more likely late in life. In children and young adults it is more often due to accidents; in older adults to chronic disease. Losing a spouse is usually the hardest loss, bringing grief, loneliness, depression, money loss and health risks. Widows far outnumber widowers because women live longer and tend to marry older men. Support from children, grandchildren and friends helps.

(Activity 3.5: interview people aged 20-35, 35-60 and over 60 about major transitions in their lives.)

10NCERT Review Questions: Answers in Brief