Now the world becomes one of learning and testing new academic skills and assessing one’s abilities and accomplishments by making comparisons between self and others.

Without visual input, blind humans have demonstrated that tactile and auditory functions still fully develop and they can use tactile and auditory cues to perceive the world around them.Think about the lifespan and make a list of what you would consider the basic periods of development. Consequently, their children walk much later: They walk around 23–25 months old, in comparison to infants in Western cultures who begin to walk around 12 months old. For instance, it helps us to understand what’s happening with the 16-year old by knowing about development in the infant, toddler, early childhood, and middle childhood years. He developed a stage model of development in which the libido, or sexual energy, of the child, focuses on different “zones” or areas of the body as the child grows to adulthood. Baltes’ lifespan perspective emphasizes that development is lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic, contextual, and multidisciplinary.

Late teens, twenties, and thirties are often thought of as early adulthood (students who are in their mid to late 30s may love to hear that they are young adults!Watson was the founder of the field of behaviorism, which emphasized the role of nurture, or the environment, in human development. But we may not realize that physical development also involves brain development, which not only enables childhood motor coordination but also greater coordination between emotions and planning in adulthood, as our brains are not done developing in infancy or childhood. Key Issues in Human Development There are many different theoretical approaches regarding human development.

In sum, a child’s experiences are shaped by larger forces such as the family, school, religion, and culture. With this type of development, the change is more sudden, such as an infant’s ability to demonstrate awareness of object permanence (which is a cognitive skill that develops toward the end of infancy, according to Piaget’s cognitive theory—more on that theory in the next module). It is based on the idea that humans process the information they receive, rather than merely respond to stimuli. Some developmental theories focus on the formation of a particular quality, such as Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.

Palliative care is an approach to maintain dying individuals’ comfort level, and hospice is a movement and practice that involves professional and volunteer care and loved ones.

What about children who are adopted—are they more like their biological families or more like their adoptive families? Additionally, it was more difficult to compare the cognitive development of the child with the adult because the material was presented by ages and not in close proximity. It is also a time of cognitive change as the adolescent begins to think of new possibilities and to consider abstract concepts such as love, fear, and freedom. The most important aspect of contextualism as a paradigm is that the three systems of influence work together to affect development. The study involved individuals of four different adolescent age groups who all showed significant personality development in the same direction (a tendency to occupy themselves with ethical, moral, and political issues rather than cognitive achievement).

Early childhood, or the preschool years, around ages 2-6, is filled with incredible amounts of growth and change. Adolescents may also be forced to sacrifice their fast reaction times toward processing stimuli in favor of being able to fully consider the consequences of their actions.