Developmental psychology emerged from the scientific study of orderly psychological changes that typically occur in a person's life from birth to old age. This branch of psychology signifies the importance of the accumulation of knowledge a person gains in response to the surrounding conditions throughout their life to expand their range of development. (Lerner, 1976) People of all ages are continuously growing and developing: physically and mentally. All things physical and mental are bridged creating a connection of correspondence, especially when the idea of development comes into play. The advancement in a persons growth is ultimately caused by the brain, which functions as the center of sensation, intellectual and nervous activity. The whole idea of maturation is deeply infused with the conception of cognitive and psychological development. Concepts of development and how they are relative to a certain individual and the accomplishments that this particular person has made physically, psychosocially, and cognitively can be explained throughout this paper. The person that will be analyzed within this paper is Essence Using all of the knowledge known about Erikson and the stages of psychosocial development, Essence seems to be stuck in the identity versus identity confusion stage. This stage explores the ability of a person to find true identity; a trueself amongst society while using all of the skills and knowledge gained throughout a life lived so far. Essence has spent her life from age 10 through quite recently, living for other people and protecting other people from detrimental abuses, emotionally and mentally, to the point where she could not find who she was as person. She says “I lived to make sure my siblings, better yet all of my family, lived well, to make sure they had everything they could ever need, even if I, myself struggled to meet certain goals and
Developmental theories are often based on an age-related stages, or milestones, that signify meaningful changes in physical, cognitive, behavioral and social aspects within the human lifespan. One of the most well known developmental theories is Sigmund Freud’s psychosexual stages of development. Freud, like others after him, theorized that early childhood experiences play an important role in personality development. Although, contemporary developmental theories include adolescence, adulthood, and late adulthood, the theories early focus on childhood development makes this approach particularly useful when working with children.
Theories of child development have been researched and published over the years. These researches have been done by popular theorists four of whom are Piaget (1896 –1980), Vygotsky (1896 –1934), Ausubel (1918 –2008) and Kohlberg (1927 –1987). First and foremost let me define the term theory. A theory is a collection of related statements; the principal function of which is to summarize and explain observations. It is in a sense an invention designed to make sense of what we know or suspect. Developmental theory on the other hand is a systematic statement of principles and generalizations that provides a coherent framework for understanding how and why people change as they grow older. The writer in her essay will outline two theories of development Lawrence Kohlberg and Jean Piaget who spoke about the moral and cognitive development respectively.
Berger, K. (2011). The developing person through the life span. (8th ed., pp. 39-42). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.
In the past century, numerous developmental psychologists have attempted to explain the development of a child. According to different developmental theorists, children centre their development on separate aspects of development; cognitive, physical, social and behavioural. Biology over time has sculpted our behaviour as human beings yet we are also a product of experience. Developmental psychology studies the various skills and knowledge we have including how we acquire them and it is so important that we have an understanding of it so that parents/caregivers know what to expect and how to support their developing child.
This approach has become the stimulus for a number of similar theories which share the same assumptions on psychological development, yet differ in detail. (Gross, R, 2007) Erik Erikson, a neo-freudian himself accepted Freud’s theory but whereas the psychodynamic approach focuses on five main stages of development until adulthood, Erikson theorised that development is lifelong and continues throughout life until death. (Psychology for A Level 2000)
When studying human development, it is helpful to understand the main developmental domains (i.e physical, cognitive, emotional and moral) and the ways in which people develop within each domain at certain age stages. Use of psychological theories is also helpful to understand the reasons for this development and the ways in which it manifests at different age stages. The objective of this essay is to analyse the influences on development from conception to late adolescence. It will describe theories of lifespan development with information regarding my own development used to support these theories. It will be concluded that theories of lifespan development can be used to explain life experiences in the different developmental domains at different
Developmental Psychology according to Goldstein and Weiner’s (2003) Handbook of Psychology, Volume 6, Developmental Psychology states that this is the study of “how temporal changes in the familial, social, and cultural contexts of life shape the quality of the trajectories of change that individuals traverse across their life spans.” Developmental psychology is basically the study of an individual, from the cradle to the grave and how they contrast and develop in various life spans. Developmental Psychology tackles numerous concepts; however, one of the most controversial and prominent concepts which aims to elucidate the development of a child’s cognitive, emotional and behavioral state would be Diana Baumrind’s conceptualization of the parenting
Theorists such as Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, Erik Erikson, Sigmund Freud, and Lawrence Kohlberg have studied and documented information about the stages of childhood development. The three main stages of childhood development are early childhood, middle childhood and adolescence. Each stage contains developmental behaviors and characteristics of different age groups. However, the childhood development stage that this paper is focus on is the middle childhood stage. During this phase in a child’s life, they go through a variety of changes. Such changes include; physical, cognitive, social and emotional changes. According to this course text, HDEV (2010), middle childhood comprises children between the ages of 6 to 12 years. In addition, in relation to the information that is presented in this text about the
Lifespan development is essential, as it is the changes that happen to us throughout a person’s lifespan. Our development occurs at ages stages where we develop from infancy till death. This essay will contain my life story to display the domains in 5 age stages in my lifespan development. The domains I will be exploring is in this essay is physical, emotional, cognitive, social, cultural and moral domain. The influence of biological and environmental play a significant role in my development. Development is influenced by nature or nurture and its affect will occur throughout lifespan. The changes that occur during development have stage. Each theorists has stages of development where they display the changes. This essay will explore my development that will support theorist such as Erikson, Vygotsky, Berk, Piaget and other theorist. The age stages of prenatal will display physical and emotional domain, Infancy (0-2) will portray social and emotional domain, young children (2-6) will show cognitive and social domain, middle childhood (6-12) will display socio-cultural and moral domain and adolescence will portray nature vs. nurture and cultural domain. Development is crucial for a healthy wellbeing. As a physiotherapist it is significant to understand development in age stages, as it will aid knowing how young children will react compared to an adolescence who is more development mentally, emotionally, physically, socially and culturally.
Human development describes the life stages of human beings that progress from birth to death. This essay will use theorists Erik Erikson and Daniel Levinson to compare early adulthood to middle adulthood focusing on their physical, cognitive, and social development. The essay will also define stress and discuss the best ways to cope with stress.
Psychosocial development throughout the Life Cycle theory (sometimes known as individual development theory) proposes that each individual has the ability to master their environment at all stages of life (Coady & Lehman, 2008; Hutchison, 2008). The theory had its beginnings in Freud’s psychosexual stages of child development; however Erikson is responsible for laying the groundwork for the theory as it is known today, by proposing an epigenetic model of human development (Hutchison, 2008).
Psychosocial development is development on a social realm. Psychosocial development is how one develops their mind, maturity level, and emotions over the course of one’s life. The rate of development depends on different factors such as biological processes as well as environmental factors. A man named Erik Erikson who was a psychoanalyst who believed that early childhood successes and failures were responsible for influencing later developmental stages developed this theory. Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development is based around the theory that social experience has an impact over an entire lifespan. There are eight stages developmental stages of development in the psychosocial theory and I will briefly examine all eight stages in this
Developmental psychology is an area of research devoted to explaining the continuing growth and change that occurs over the course of one’s life. Throughout history many varying theories have been used to attempt to explain the complex process of childhood experiences altering who individuals become as an adult.
For my reflection paper I chose to write about chapter 9 that talks about lifespan development. This chapter grabbed my attention and I found it most interesting. In the textbookit discusses how there are certain factors that uncontrollably make us who we are. Those factorsare "unique combination of genes you inherited from your biological mother and father. Another is the historical era during which you grew up. Your individual development has also been shaped by the cultural, social, and family contexts within which you were raised." (Pg.352) The patterns of our lives are because of developmental psychology. "Developmental psychology is a scientific approach which aims to explain growth, change and consistency though the lifespan. Developmental
In conclusion, I have discussed cognitive development as it relates to the mental aging process of infancy through adolescence. As instructed in the assignment outline, I chose the following three cognitive functions; thinking, intelligence, and language. To the best of my knowledge, I briefly discussed each function based on the information outlined in the text. I also attempted to discuss Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development as they relate to the infancy stage through adolescence throughout the lifespan.