Understanding Developmental Stages, Growth, Maturation, and Heredity

Developmental Stages, Phases, and Periods

Individual human development scholars accept the division of life and the development process based on different characteristics:

• Biologists: Infancy, childhood, adolescence, and old age.
• Cognition: Stages in the evaluation of knowledge (Piaget, Kohlberg, Kagan).
• Affective-Relational Field: Oral, anal, phallic, etc.

Core Terminology in Human Development Studies

Basic terminology in the study of human development includes: Development, Human, Growth, Maturation, Adaptation, Environment.

Explanation of Concepts

Development

Changes that humans undergo throughout their lives. It involves the maturation of the organism, its structures, body growth, and the influence of the environment. Human development occurs in close relationship and mutual structuring with the environment. Everything from the outside, intentional or incidental, can influence the process of the individual (affective influences, social, geographic, educational, etc.).

Learning

“Relatively permanent change in the behavior of individuals due to practice or experience” (Ardila, 1981).

Growth

Progressive increase of an organism and its parts. It has connotations of quantity. Observable changes in terms of quantity (Auxology).

Maturation

• Psychology: Reaching the fullness of mental abilities, referring to factors such as heredity versus the environment (Gessel Theory: “Nothing can be achieved if there is no proper maturity”). Maturation indicates the absence of external influences. It indicates change qualitatively.
• Biology: Reaching maturity or completion of development in reference to the general body.

The Heredity and Environment Debate (Nature vs. Nurture)

This historical dispute seeks to clarify whether human beings are predetermined or conversely, born as empty slates (tabula rasa).

• Environmentalist View

  Man is a “tabula rasa.” Watson argued that the future is determined by experiences and stimulating environments. (Humanist, Behavioral, and Environmental perspectives).

• Nativist View

  The human is born with inherent defaults, and the environment plays a meager role compared to internal forces (Ausubel and Sullivan, 1983).

• Current Thought

  The behavior of individuals is a function of the Organism and Environment: C = f (OM).

In humans, metrics such as IQ, age of onset of gait, balance age, etc., have been used to relate data obtained between familiar and unfamiliar individuals. Natural children are correlated more closely with their parents than adopted children.