Developmental psychology

Originally concerned with infants and young children, the field has extended to include adolescence, adult development, the aging, and the entire life span. This field of study scrutinizes adjustments across an extensive variety of subjects including motor skills and other psycho-physiological processes; cognitive development involving areas such as moral understanding, problem solving, and conceptual understanding; language acquisition; personality, social, and emotional development; and self-concept and distinctiveness formation.

Developmental psychology consists of issues such as the extent to which development occurs through the gradual process of accretion of understanding in opposition to stage-like development, or the extent to which a child is born with natural psychological configuration versus learning through experience. Many researchers take interest in the dealings between personal characteristics, the individual’s behavior, and environmental factors including the social context, and their impact on development; others take a more intently focused approach.

At each stage of development come developmental tasks required of the person to meet physical and emotional needs. In this paper, the writer will discuss the influences on development from outside forces during the infancy, childhood, adolescent, adulthood, and senior stages. Stepping-stones of physical development include playing with small toys, crawling, and walking.

Physical development involves the development of gross and fine motor skills, normally begins in infancy, and fully develops by the time the child reaches even. Some of the factors that affect physical development include culture, environment and hereditary. The central components of physical development, for instance learning muscle control, are universal. However, the manner in which fine and motor skills are developed is variable to culture. Take for example how young children acquire physical development through the playing of little league baseball while in other countries activities like rugby or soccer are more common.

An important fundamental aspect of physical development is accessibility to both indoor and outdoor environments (Fenell, 2000). Giving a child the opportunity to explore diverse environments allows the child to learn and develop new gross and fine motor skills, such as swimming or riding a bicycle. Hereditary is responsible for some physical characteristics and growth aspects of development in both fetal and childhood development. Each individual carries genes from both the mother and father, which depending on the balance can determine weight, height, skin color, hair color, eye color.

Genes are responsible for the cognitive and mental processes as well as the physical features, and pass them down from generation to generation. According to ThinkQuest. org, there are both dominant and recessive genes for every individual personal characteristic (love, 2001). For instance, if one parent has light hair and the other dark, the more dominant gene will determine the resulting color of the child. Genes determine wide multiplicities of hereditary physical characteristics.

Even though genes take part largely in the developmental process, the environment also has a position in determining physical development and characteristics. If a parent exposes an unborn child to pollutants or chemicals in the womb at certain stages in the developmental process, it can modify their deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, and cause transmutations that may not otherwise have transpired. Understanding adolescents can tend to frustrate parents but one can begin to understand this age group if her or she looks at its position on the growth succession.

As one may notice, the adolescent stage is the last step before being an adult. Adolescents may face a range of developmental issues. According to Havighurst (1952), two imperative areas include work and relationships. He highlights the importance of discovering a place and purpose in society. Levinson (1978) focuses on altering relationships and on examination, while Erikson (1968) comments on intimacy and commitment to personal goals. Super (1963) indicates that exploring and crystallizing occupational choice are vital to older adolescents and young adults.

What seems palpable is that older adolescents and young adults penetrate conversions with the goal of becoming autonomously functioning adults, as they struggle to meet developing career and personal related needs. Rapid and increasing changes in labor market and post-secondary educational opportunities mean that adolescents are now faced with the challenge of reaching personal and career needs when neither offers assurance or a sense of personal control (Borgen, Amundson, 2000). There are several perspectives that attempt to explain different developments in the life of a child from infancy to aging adults.

While no one theory is entirely accurate, all theories share valuable information that should glean from them. Maturational perspectives determine that the point of neurological development and the hereditarily directed boost of physiological developments unswervingly affect the development of physical abilities. This is reflected when a child’s writing ability increases throughout years of schooling because of the neurological growth that occurs (Ganly, 2007). It is also evident as a child hits puberty, and the child’s body begins to mature physically.

Psychodynamic perspectives hypothesize that when children, adolescents, and adults face social decisions they are directed by the urges presented by aggression and sexuality, but they are also led by a want for social involvement and approval. Through many diverse stages, children and adults learn to use their impulses in a way that is constructive to society (Ganly, 2007). This concept exemplifies when a person strikes another, or explodes on parents or teachers. In this paper, the writer has discussed various aspects of human development including physical, cognitive, social, moral, and personality developments.

While discussing the stages of development the writer examined the factors that affect physical development in developmental stages from infancy to senior hood. The writer then explained the factors that affect cognitive development while addressing both hereditary and environmental influences. Finally, the writer concludes with an explanation of what factors affect social, moral, and personality development including two theoretical perspectives associated with the moral, social and personality development.