Human Growth and Development - Essay Example

HUMAN GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT People are used to considering human beings as creatures that are a kind of ultimate step of evolution, so definitely human physical growth is accompanied with a very special kind of development. Developmental psychology as a scientific field considers the specific changes that human beings go through during the process of growing up, so human development has certain criteria and is possible to be estimated in multiple aspects. Though, the field of exploration causes a bunch of discussions around the relevance of the scientific inquiries and their results. There are multiple theories about the roots of human development and its link with society; the most famous of them are Psychoanalytic theory, learning theory, and Cognitive development theory. Psychoanalytic theory created by Freud and Erikson claims that human behaviour is motivated by unconscious impulses (Elliott 2002). This means that, growing up, a person learns to act in this world by getting some experience and remembering it unconsciously. Later the information that is kept on the back burner of their minds together with some archetypical instincts influences the way people perceive information and learn it. Each person’s unconsciousness has different experience which forms exclusive personalities and their levels of development. Learning theory (behaviour theory) asserts that the knowledge a person acquires during lifetime is the result of pure learning and conditioning. Behaviour theory principles are based on classical conditioning developed by Ivan Pavlov during his famous experiments on animals and the Skinner’s operant conditioning. Classical conditioning shows that a new (neutral) conditioned stimulus can awake reflective reaction if it comes along with an action that stimulates an unconditioned reflexive response. Operant conditioning deals with reward and punishment, which can teach a person to get used to some certain behavioural pattern (Schaefer & Martin 1969). Cognitive development theory created by Jean Piaget is based on the special system of human intelligence (that consists of operative and figurative aspects) (Furth 1977) that transforms during the process of person’s growing up. Thus development here is a kind of learning process that fills human intelligence with new information improving its intellectual level (Piaget 1972). Indeed, scientists are still discussing the relevance of the theories, so they can’t make an arrangement about the single truth of the way how people grow up and develop. Though, all the theories can possibly discuss the same processes from different points of view, using different notions to describe them. Human development can be based on unconscious stimuli which have instinctual roots, but each person can also have specific capabilities of intelligence and learn from environment the skills and information which is needed for one’s existence and adaptation. The biggest discussion in human growth and development issue is about nature vs. nurture as the causes of human development. Although, some studies show that when it comes to such things as the character, health and chances for success in life, nature (genes) usually outweighs education. There is a program that lies in the depths of each and every human being (character, qualities or disease) which is transmitted to their bodies through blood ancestors and it inevitably finds its manifestation. The human brain is an extremely complex structure, which depends on more than thirty thousand genes. Supporters of the paramount influence of heredity as arguments cite numerous studies according to which most aspects of behavior and mental health are given by nature. Proponents of this theory argue that identical twins, separated at birth and raised in completely different conditions, often have very similar traits (Pinker 2004). Still heredity is not the only factor in human development. Heredity and education interact with each other, forming childs personality and inner identity. The importance of the effect of these two factors is enhanced with functional age. In the first three years of life the childs personality is influenced by the relationship between the parents and his temperament. As child gets older biological temperament loses its significance, and environment takes first place (people, atmosphere, everything that a child sees and knows, stresses that he has experienced), supported by genetically determined vulnerability. According to studies, even in the presence of genetic "weaknesses" (which make us susceptible to certain diseases), we still can affect the way they show up or not. Our brain also has an amazing flexibility: genetic structure of the brain, as well as the impact of the environment to which it is exposed, affects the formation of personality throughout life (Plomin et.al. 2008). The evidences that prove the influence of genetic factors on humans are convincible enough if it is concerning the partial influence. Indeed, genetic inheritance has advantage over nurture, but it is difficult to argue the fact that environment also plays a crucial role. It is more likely that the two components of development such as nature and nurture work cooperatively on creation of human personality. There are a lot of social factors that are crucial in human developmental process. Most of them are being discovered within sciences concerning child psychology, as in the childhood a person is the most subjected to be influenced by these factors. First of all, people’s development depends on social environment in which each and every person grows up. The environment includes culture, nationality, country and its level of development, education, religion, and general developmental index of people that surround a person. According to certain researches social factors often contribute to creation of an individual, shaping the personality according to the criteria of normality in the society the individual lives in. This literally means a kind of adaptation an individual goes through experiencing changes in his personality in order to live comfortable within society. For instance, researches show that in the society where a religion is predominated people tend to become more socially conservative, because population average makes them feel safer being conservative and religious (Gaskins et.al. 2013). This means that people develop according to the social norms that prevail in their society in order to feel less different than others. Obviously, social factor’s roots lie in human nature as a social and political creature. Human social microcosm also plays crucial role in shaping personality and human developmental process. Modern family diversity makes society variegated what can influence a child’s developmental strategy and raise certain contradictions in mentality. Family diversity means not only different types of families like nuclear one, families with single parent either mother or father etc. but also homosexual families, children without parents, unmarried couples and so on (Patterson & Hastings 2007). Watching the relationships that exist within his family a child learns the norms of social behaviour. The standards determine the attitude to both gender roles and society in general. If a child gets used to seeing homosexual parents and their relationships it can form the understanding of such kind of relations as normal in his mind, so later he can start to anticipate an opposite gender. This certainly can eventually cause different social problems but nowadays society is so diverse that people are free to make more open-minded decisions about their own development. The reason for this is that even though a person’s family can raise certain understanding of normative in the mind, still dealing with macrocosm and the social factors mentioned above the person can re-learn stereotypes and positions that were raised in the one by one’s family. In the article “Socialization in the Context of Family Diversity” (2007) Patterson and Hastings claim that indeed family diversity influences formation of rather deviant personalities that are supposed to exist together in society. Although when they are happened to interact with each other all the time and share social activities, they often change their positions in favor of society in general and integrate. One of the examples of such integration is creation of liberal societies in Western democratic countries. As far as information is widely available nowadays, to learn more about human growth and development it is possible to seek for some knowledge in the education-portal.com. The website contains a wide educational course on the topic that can be found by this URL:http://education-portal.com/academy/course/human-growth-and-development-course.html. The source provides all the wishing to learn more about the most popular social theories about human development, so the information is quite understandable, relevant, and definitely is up-to-date. As far as the course is prepared by university professors it is possible to say that the data provided by the website is valid and is concerning the most crucial issues of the subject. Also, the ultimate report on human development made by the United Nations Developmental Programme available here: http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr14-report-en-1.pdf reveals some important statistics about latest level of human development of all the countries of the world. United Kingdom happens to be on the 14th place of world’s human development and shows good scores in educational and cultural aspects. Though, some European countries, Canada, and the United States take higher positions in development because of their technological and economic success. Interesting nuance here is that such social problems and unemployment which exist in the United Kingdom lower the position of the country before more developed ones. Human growth and development has a lot of aspects to be explored and theories to be proved. However, it is clear that human development is rather vast realm as it concerns everything engaged with human beings from early child development to global processes and life quality. References Elliott, A., 2002, Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction, Second Edition, Duke University Press. Schaefer, H.H., and Martin, P.L., 1969, Behavioral Therapy, McGraw-Hill, New York. Furth, H. G., 1977, The operative and figurative aspects of knowledge in Piagets theory. B. A. Geber (Ed.), Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Piaget, J., 1972, The Psychology of Intelligence. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield. Pinker, S., 2004, Why nature & nurture wont go away, Dædalus. Plomin, R., DeFries, J. C., McClearn, G. E., & McGuffin, P., 2008, Behavioral Genetics (5th edition). Worth Publishers, New York. Gaskins, B., Golder, M., Siegel, D.A., 2013, ‘Religious Participation, Social Conservatism, and Human Development’, The Journal of Politics, 75(4) 1125-1141. Patterson, C. J., Hastings, P.D., 2007, ‘Socialization in the Context of Family Diversity’, Handbook of Socialization: Theory and Research, Guilford Publications, London. Psychology 103: Human Growth And Development, education-portal.com., viewed 15 January 2015, from: http://education-portal.com/academy/course/human-growth-and-development-course.html Human Development Report 2014. Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience, viewed 15 January 2015, from: http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr14-report-en-1.pdf Read More