Test: Human Development- 1

People often think of infants as helpless and malleable. Clearly, in some quite fundamental respects, they are dependent upon others. They are unable to meet their own physical needs (feeding, cleansing, finding shelter) or to move around or engage in discussion. Observations such as these have led to a traditional belief that the child is shaped by experience. However, more recent research by developmental psychologists has radically altered our understanding, and the traditional notion of babies as empty vessels waiting to be filled by experience has now been abandoned.
Indeed, contemporary evidence points towards to the remarkable complexity and competencies of the normal human infant. People experience the world via our senses, and our everyday negotiation of the environment depends upon our skills in exploiting and coordinating the information they provide. But these abilities did not emerge suddenly. We have enjoyed the benefits of sensory equipment since we first came into the world (and maybe before). Babies have a rich array of perceptual and physical capacities, which enable them to engage with the world in more complex ways than was once believed. Some of these capacities seem to be present at birth, some develop rapidly during the first year or so, and some vary according to the opportunities for exercising them.

Development is a lifelong affair, which does not stop when we reach adulthood. Try this thought experiment. Whatever your current age, imagine yourself 10 years from now. It soon becomes clear when we contemplate our own futures that change is inevitable. Although there are many aspects to development during adolescence and adulthood, and wide individual variation in circumstances and achievements, the core issues, psychologically speaking, continue to revolve around physical, cognitive and social themes.

The neonate has several reflexes (automatic physical responses to external stimulation), including:

• the rooting reflex – a tendency to orient the head and mouth towards an object touching the face;
• the sucking reflex – a tendency to suck on objects placed in the mouth;
• the grasping reflex – a response to stimuli (such as a finger) placed in the open palm;
• the Moro reflex – a reaction to sudden loss of support to the neck and head in which the baby thrusts out his arms and legs as if striving for support;
• the stepping reflex – the infant attempts to take ‘steps’ if held upright with feet touching a surface.

Some of these reflexes have important benefits. For example, the rooting and sucking reflexes ensure that the normal infant will respond to contact with the mother’s breast by seeking out the nipple and feeding (Widstrom & Thingstrom, 1993). Although biology provides the reflexes, early experience is important insofar as it can affect their manifestation. In one study, neonates who were separated from the mother during the first hour after birth were less likely to demonstrate correct sucking techniques, and babies who were sedated during the birth did not suck at all during the first two hours (Righard & Alade, 1990).

Physical development during adolescence is not associated with computer skills; however research has documented associations between physical development during adolescence and how young people feel about themselves, their relationships with others, how other people treat them and the emergence of secondary sex characteristics.

The sensorimotor stage is the first stage of cognitive development where the child constructs an elementary understanding of the world and thought is tied closely to physical and sensory activity. Object permanence refers to one of the last achievements of the sensorimotor period in which infants obtain an understanding that an object continues to exist even when it cannot be seen or touched. The operational stage occurs later in development. Infant cognition and sensory information are not terms that refer to Piaget’s stages of cognitive development.

Although most developmental psychologists would agree that adolescent thought reflects important advances beyond childhood, not all agree with Piagetians about the nature of the changes, and not all of the evidence is consistent with the theory. For example, large-scale studies have reported that only small proportions of adolescents perform sufficiently well to meet the criteria for formal operational reasoning (Neimark, 1975; Shayer, Kuchemann & Wylam, 1976).
The comprehensiveness of Piagetian theory is in doubt if it fails to characterize a majority. Contemporary researchers agree with Piaget that cognitive development does proceed during the adolescent years, but they disagree with him about the patterns and processes entailed (Byrnes, 2003; Klaczinski, 2000). During this period, young people show improved abilities in several areas, including deductive and inductive inferences, objective thinking, mathematical operations and decision-making (Byrnes, 2003). But the developmental evidence does not support the Piagetian assumption of domain-general transitions.

Infants’ ability to discriminate among speech sounds appears to be quite general at first. In their first few months of life, infants can discriminate among sounds that are critical in the language of their own community but, interestingly, they can also distinguish sounds in foreign languages that are not used in their own (Hernandez, Aldridge & Bower, 2000; Werker & Tees, 1999). But this capacity does not last, which is why you (depending on your linguistic background) may now experience difficulties with some of the sounds of, say, Cantonese or Estonian. Sometime during the second half of your first year of life, you probably began to lose your sensitivity to phonetic contrasts in languages other than the one(s) you were learning.

All of these research findings challenge the myth that adolescents are dominated by peer pressure; and in fact, suggest that parental pressure may be stronger than peer pressure during adolescence.

The development of the two aspects of social selectivity – attachment and wariness of strangers – are closely related in onset and developmental significance (Schaffer, 1996; Schaffer & Emerson, 1966. Many social developmentalists believe that the formation of attachments is a vital aspect of early relations. Through attachment, the infant maximizes opportunities for nurturing and protection, establishing a secure base from which to explore the rest of the world (Bowlby, 1988).
According to Bowlby (a British psychiatrist who developed an influential theory of attachment and its consequences) through the course of the first attachment (i.e. to the principal caregiver) the infant also begins to formulate an internal working model of what a relationship involves. If this is correct, early attachment could be the most important relationship that the child ever forms. In fact, a great deal of research by attachment researchers indicates that the type of attachment formed during this first relationship has long-term implications.

According to Kramer, the stage of relativist reasoning includes awareness of alternative perspectives on issues and the importance of context when finding answers to questions. This stage is said to be facilitated by experiences during undergraduate training. Kramer’s other two stages, absolutist and dialectical, occur before and after the relativist stage, respectively. On the average, young adults enter university with absolutist reasoning abilities, and most people do not develop dialectical reasoning abilities until late adulthood. Postformal reasoning and inductive reasoning are not stages in Kramer’s theory of cognitive development in early adulthood.

By the end of their second year, the child’s perceptual abilities have developed considerably. In many respects, they are now on a par with those of an adult. But there is still a long way to go in terms of motor skills and coordination, and substantial progress will take place over the next few years. By the age of 2, many children have begun to walk unaided and can manipulate objects independently, but their gait is unsteady and their manual dexterity is limited. Over the next couple of years, they gain competence in these respects, becoming more certain of their control over their bodies.
A 3-year-old is likely to be quite mobile (e.g. able to run), but may find it difficult to respond to a need to change direction or stop – leading to mishaps with inconveniently placed furniture or walls – and may have difficulties with balance (Grasso et al., 1998). A 4-year-old is more agile and beginning to develop skills such as throwing and catching, jumping and hopping. And a 5-year-old is quite competent in basic movements. Motor development during these years reflects an interaction between biological maturation, experience and cognition (Thelen, 2000).

Adults with an avoidant attachment style find it difficult to trust others, and are reluctant to commit to intimate relationships. Securely attached adults find intimate relationships comfortable and rewarding. Anxiously attached adults experience uncertainty in relationships and fear that their partner does not love them enough. Insecure attachment is more specific to infant attachment styles, but would be a blend of anxious and avoidant.

Probably the best-known example of centration is Piaget’s famous conservation test. A pre-operational child is presented with two beakers of the same shape and size. The equivalent amount of water is poured into each beaker, and the child is asked whether the amount in each is the same. Once this is agreed, a new beaker, taller and thinner than the original, is produced. The liquid from one of the original beakers is transferred to the third. The child is asked again whether the amount is the same. Pre-operational children often insist that the amount has changed.
They might see it as more than before, or less than before, but certainly not the same. Although the amount of liquid is actually unchanged, the child’s perceptual experience indicates otherwise – it looks taller – and this tends to dominate the child’s judgement. The child appears to have centred on one aspect of the transformation in the liquid (the increase in height) but has failed to take account of the other (the decrease in width).

Generativity – the process of making a contribution to the next generation – can be realized in a variety of ways through personal (family) or career attainments that provide a basis for others to progress. A ‘link between the generations’, maintained Erikson, is ‘as indispensable for the renewal of the adult generation’s own life as it is for the next generation’ (1980). Stagnation is the opposing feeling of having achieved relatively little and of having little to offer to the next generation. Some people in mid-life, for example, conclude that they have not met the family or occupational goals that once motivated them.
Some respond to this sense of ‘standing still’ with a period of self-absorption, and an acute awareness that time is limited. Individuals are likely to experience both types of feeling – generativity and stagnation – and the core developmental process of mid-life, according to Erikson, is the resolution of this conflict. Those who resolve it successfully attain a sense of care (about both the present and the future), and those who fail to do so develop a sense of rejectivity (i.e. they turn away from society and have little interest in contributing to it).

Chomsky argues that children’s language acquisition is incredibly complex and learning theories cannot account for the phenomenon. He argues that knowledge of language is innate and that language grows and matures, but it is already there at birth. Answers A, B, and D refer to learning theories and are not consistent with an innate explanation of language acquisition.