Human Development — Psychology STD 11 Humanities — Question

The child develops physically, gains height and weight, learns to walk, runs, jumps and plays with a ball. Socially, the child's world expands from the parents to the family and adult near home and at school. Now we describe the development takes place in the age of childhood.It is as following:

1. Physical Development: Early development follows the two principles:

1. Development proceeds cephalocaudally: From the cephalic or head region to the caudal or tail region. Children gain control over the upper part of the body before the lower part.
2. Growth proceeds proximodistal trend: from the centre of body and moves towards the extremities or more distal regions.

2. Motor Development: Motor development of childhood involve the major accomplishment in gross and fine motor skills:

1. Gross motor skills during the early childhood years involve the use of arms and legs, and moving around with confidence and more purposefully in the environment.

Other types of gross motor skills also develop in childhood:

• In 3 years- Hopping, jumping, running.
• In 4 years- Climb up and downstairs with one foot on each step.
• In 5 years- Run hard, enjoy races.

2. Fine motor skills-finger dexterity and eye-hand coordination improve substantially during early childhood. Other types of fine motor skills also develop in childhood.

• In 3 years- Build blocks, pick objects with forefinger and thumb.
• In 4 years- Fit jigsaw puzzle precisely.
• In 5 years- Hand arms and body all coordinative with eye movement.

3. During these years the child's preference for left or right hand also develops.

3. Cognitive Development: The child's ability to acquire the concept of object permanence enables his/her to use mental symbols to represent objects. Cognitive development in early childhood focuses on Piaget's stages:

• Sensorimotor: 0-2 years- Infant explores the world by coordinating sensory experiences with physical actions.
• Preoperational thoughts: 2-7 years-Features of preoperational thought are following:

1. Egocentrism (self-focus) i.e. children see the world only in terms of their own selves and are not able to appreciate other's point of view.

• Children because of egocentrism, engage in animism-thinking ie all things are living, like oneself.
• They attribute life-like qualities to inanimate objects e.g. If a child while running slips on the road he/she might show animism by saying "road hurt me”.

2. Centration i.e. focusing on a single characteristic or feature for understanding an event e.g. a child may insist on drinking a “big glass" of juice, preferring a tall narrow glass to a short broad one, even though both might be holding the same amount of juice.

3. Concrete operational thoughts: 7-11 years– It is made up of operations.

• Mental actions that allows the child to do mentally what was done physically before.
• Concrete operations are also mental actions that are reversible.
• This stage allows the child to focus on different characteristics and not focus on one aspect of the objects.

4. Formal operational stage: 11-15 years. The adolescents can apply logic more abstractly, hypothetical thinking develops.

The growing cognitive abilities of children facilitate the acquisition of language.

4. Social-emotional Development: The dimensions of children's Socio-emotional development are the self, gender and moral development.

1. The child due to socialisation has developed a sense of who he/she is and whom he/she wants to be identified with.
2. According to Erikson, the way parents respond to their self-initiated activities leads to developing a sense of initiative or sense of guilt. e.g. giving freedom and opportunity for play like cycling of skatting etc. and answering children's questions will create a sense of support for the initiative taken. If child becomes deprived from such support then he/she develops a feeling of guilt and low self esteem.
3. Self-understanding in early childhood is limited to defining oneself through physical characteristics. e.g. I m tall or I am a girl.
4. Self-understanding also include social comparison. e.g. I am smart and popular. This development shift leads to establishing one's differences from others as an individual. Once the children enter school their social world expands beyond their families. Thus the increased time the children spend with their peers shapes their development

5. Moral Development: Another important aspect of the child's development is learning to differentiate between the rightness or wrongness of human acts.

• According to “Lawrence Kohlborg", they pass through the various stages of moral development.
• According to him children's approach about right and wrong are different at different ages.