Human Development

1. MODULE 2
The Stages of
Development and
Developmental Tasks

2. For every development
stage, there is an
expected development
tasks are not achieved
at the corresponding
developmental stage?
How can you help
children achieve these
developmental tasks?

3. PRE-NATAL STAGE
Referring to pre-natal development, Santrock (2002) asked
following questions succinctly:
"How from so simple a beginning, do endless forms develop
and grow and mature? What was this organism, what is it now,
and what will it become? Birth's fragile moment arrives, when
the newborn is on a threshold between two worlds".

4. INFANCY
(from birth to 2
years)
As newborns, we were not empty-headed organisms,
We cried, kicked, coughed, sucked, saw, heard and
tasted. We slept a lot and occasionally we smiled,
although the meaning of our smiles was not entirely
clear.

5. EARLY CHILDHOOD
(3 to 5 years)
In earlier childhood, our greatest would poem was
being only four years old. We skipped, played, and
ran all day long, never in our lives so busy, busy
becoming something we had not quite grasped yet.
Who knew our thoughts, which worked up into small
mythologies all our own.

6. MIDDLE AND LATE
CHILDHOOD
(6-12 years)
In middle and late childhood, we were on a
different plan, belonging to a generation and
a feeling properly our own.

7. ADOLESCENCE
(13-18 years)
In no order of things was adolescence, the
simple time of life for us. We clothed ourselves
with rainbows and went 'brave as the zodiac.

8. EARLY ADULTHOOD
(19-29 years)
Early childhood is a time for work and a time for love,
sometimes leaving little time for anything else. For some
of us, finding our place in adult society and commiting to
a more stable life take longer than we imagine. We still
ask ourselves who we are and wonder if it isn't enough
just to be.

9. MIDDLE ADULTHOOD
(30-60 years)
In middle adulthood, what we have been forms what we
will be. For some of us, middle age is such a foggy
place, a time when we need to discover what we are
running from to and why. We compare our life with what
we vowed to make it.

10. LATE ADULTHOOD
(61 years and above)
The rhythm and meaning of human development
eventually wend their way to late adulthood, when each
of us stands alone at the heart of the earth and
suddenly it is evening" We shed the leaves of youth and
are stripped by the winds of time down to the truth.

11. In each stage of development a certain tasks or
tasks are expected of every individual. Robert
Havighurst defines developmental task as one
that arises at a certain period in our life, the
successful achievement of which leads to
happiness and success with later tasks while
failure leads to unhappiness, social disapproval,
and difficulty with later tasks, " (Havighurst,
1972).
CONCEPT OF
DEVELOPMENTAL TASK

12. MODULE 3
ISSUES ON HUMAN
DEVELOPMENT

13. Each of us has his/her own
informal way of looking at our
own and other people's
development. These paradigms of
human development while
obviously lacking scholastic vigor,
provide us with a conceptual
framework for understanding
ourselves and others.

14. NATURE vs.
NURTURE
The degree to which human behavior is
determined by genetics/biology (nature) or
learned through interacting with the
environment (nature).

15. NATURE
• Behavior is caused by innate characteristics; The
physiological/biological characteristics we are born
with.
• Genes provide the blueprint for all behaviors,
some present from birth, others pre-
programmed to emerge with age.

16. NURTURE
• An individuals behavior is determined by the
environment - the things people teach them,
the things they observe, and because of the
different situations they are in.

17. CONTINUITY vs.
DISCONTINUITY
• Does development involve gradual, cumulative (continuity) or
distinct changes (discontinuity).
• are two competing theories in developmental psychology that
attempt to explain how people change through the course of
their lives, where the continuity theory says that someone
changes throughout their life long a smooth course while the
discontinuity theory instead contends that people change
abruptly.

18. STABILITY
vs.CHANGE
deals with the issue of whether or not
personality traits present during infancy
endure throughout the lifespan.

19. STABILITY
change debate describe the developmental
psychology discussion about whether
personality traits that are present in an
individual at birth remain constant or change
throughout the lifespan.

20. CHANGE
argue that personalities are modified
by interactions with family, experience
at school and acculturation.

21. A
Development is not all
nature or all nurture, not
all continuity or
discontinuity and not all
stability or all change.

22. The key development is the
interaction of nature and
nurture rather than either
factor alone ( Rutter, 2001 as
quoted by Santrock, 2002 ).
A

23. Both genes and environment are
necessary for a person even to exist.
Without genes, there is no person;
without environment, there is no person (
Scarr and Weinberg, 1980, quoted by
Santrock 2002 ). Heredity and
environment operate together - or
cooperate and interact - to produce a
person's intelligence, temperant, height,
weight... ability to read and so on.