Name of Topic: Foundations of
Human Development
Class: M.sc I (HDF- Home Science)
Subject Teacher: Dr. Kavita Koradia
Associate Professor
Department of Home Science
University of Rajasthan
Basic Themes in Human
Development
Active (Organismic) vs. Passive
(Mechanistic) Organism
Continuity vs. Discontinuity in
development
• Normative development is typically viewed as a
continual and cumulative process. The continuity view
says that change is gradual.
• Children become more skillful in thinking, talking or
acting much the same way as they get taller.
• The discontinuity view sees development as more
abrupt-a succession of changes that produce different
behaviors in different age-specific life periods called
stages.
• Biological changes provide the potential for these
changes.
• Psychologists of the discontinuity view believe that
people go through the same stages, in the same order,
but not necessarily at the same rate.
Learning vs. Maturation
• Learning is the acquisition of knowledge, skills, behaviors, values,
or preferences.
• It can occur both consciously and unconsciously.
• It can occur through education, training, experience as well through
personal development.
• Moreover, there is no age limit for learning; we learn new things
every day, all throughout our lives.
• And, this type of learning happens through observing,
experimenting and experiencing.
• Curiosity and intrinsic motivation are the factors that often promote
a person to learn.
• Furthermore, our capacity to learn varies depending on different
factors such as motivation, personality, intelligence level, and
learning style.
• Maturation is basically the process of maturing or growing.
• It is the process by which we change, grow and develop
throughout our lives.
• Also, this is a biological, physical and mental process.
• We can basically categorize maturation into two sections as
physical maturation and cognitive maturation.
• Physical maturation naturally refers to the physical changes
and development in our bodies.
• Cognitive maturation, on the other hand, refers to the
cognitive development from our birth to adulthood. We learn
to think, learn and interact with various people and situations.
• Developing reasoning skills, language acquisition, and
developing intellect and memory are some examples of
cognitive development.
Cognition vs. Language
• Language and cognition are two separate but closely
interacting mechanisms.
• Language accumulates cultural wisdom; cognition develops
mental representations modeling surrounding world and
adapts cultural knowledge to concrete circumstances of life.
• Language is acquired from surrounding language “ready-
made” and therefore can be acquired early in life. This early
acquisition of language in childhood encompasses the entire
hierarchy from sounds to words, to phrases, and to highest
concepts existing in culture.
• Cognition is developed from experience. Yet cognition
cannot be acquired from experience alone; language is a
necessary intermediary, like a “teacher.”
• There has been a long debate on if language and cognition are
separate mental faculties or whether language emerges from general
cognitive abilities.
• Generally cognition refers to how we think, pay attention,
remember, and learn.
• Children are born ready and willing to develop cognitive skills. They
have been compared to little scientists. They are constantly learning
new ideas, how things work, and how to solve problems. They are
trying to figure out how the world works.
• Children are not passive learners – they actively seek out
information.
• Language and cognition are partners in child development. We use
language to learn new ideas, to talk about our thoughts and fears,
and interact with those around us.
• Language is how thoughts fly through the air from one mind to
another. Language skills and cognitive skills are related to each other.
• Stronger language skills mean stronger cognitive skills.
Effect of Early stimulation & deprivation
• Experience plays an essential role in building brain
architecture after birth.
• Not surprisingly, the absence of key experiences during
these critical periods can exert serious and in some
cases, lasting effects on multiple domains of
development.
• For example, much has been learned from studies of
rodents and nonhuman primates in which sensory loss is
induced (e.g., the animal is deprived of light or sound)
or in which animals are selectively reared (e.g., deprived
of seeing faces results in permanent damage.
• Early stimulation means the set of actions and exercises that aim to help
develop the child’s abilities, whether motor, cognitive or social. In other
words, the aim is to offer children different situations that allow them to
explore and thus awaken skills and naturally develop abilities.
• According to experts, these techniques are most effective when there are
more neural connections. This happens, precisely, from 0 to 6 years. This is
why it is important to start infant stimulation as soon as possible.
• Recent advances in brain research have proven that an infant’s environment
has a dramatic affect on brain building and healthy development.
• It is this early stage of brain development that results in how, and how well,
one thinks and learns—both as children and as adults.
• In the first years of a baby’s life, the brain is busy building its wiring system.
Activity in the brain creates tiny electrical connections called synapses.
• The amount of stimulation an infant receives directly affects how many
synapses are formed.
• Repetitive and consistent stimulation strengthens these connections and
makes them permanent.
• Interesting stimulation can enhance curiosity, attentiveness, concentration
and love of learning in the growing infant and toddler.
Early Deprivation
• Early deprivation (i.e., an insufficiency or lack of parental
care) has been identified as a significant adverse early
experience that may affect multiple facets of child
development and cause long-term outcomes in physical and
mental health, cognition and behavior.
• It can simply be defined as a negative influence on human
growth created by serious deprivation or adverse
stimulation.
• Early deprivation has been identified as an important risk
factor for negative developmental outcomes in a variety of
functional domains, from physical and mental health to
cognition and behavior.
• Early childhood deprivation is associated with higher rates of
neuro-developmental and mental disorders in adulthood.
• Researches on Institutional children has frequently reported profound levels of
psychosocial deprivation: that is, even when a child's basic physical and
educational needs are addressed, institutional environments prohibit the
development of early attachment and other crucial relationships between the
child and a stable adult caregiver.
• Such relationships are critical for children's socio-emotional development and
well-being, and form the foundational layer for the development of self-
regulation and adaptive skills.
• Children residing in institutions have been reported to show delays in physical
growth, deficits in motor development, and profound delays in cognitive
functioning and language development
• These delays and deficits may persist for a long time after a child has been placed
into foster care or adopted.
• Thus, early experience of institutionalization and its duration have been shown to
be associated with various developmental disorders and functional deficits in
children and adolescents, such as deficits in visual memory and executive
functioning , attachment disorder behavior, internalizing, externalizing, and
attention problems , among others.
• The effects of early institutionalization are typically viewed as a combination of
the outcomes of early stress, similar to other early adversities, that involves
neurobiological mechanisms linking exposure to adverse experiences in childhood
