Overview of Development Stages
Development is commonly described in terms of periods or stages. We must have observed that our younger brother or sister, or parents, and even us, all behave in different ways.
This variation is partly because everyone is in a different stage of life. Human life proceeds through different stages.
During a particular stage, individual progresses towards an assumed goal - a state or ability that s/he must achieve in the same order as other persons before progressing to the next stage in the sequence. Of course, individuals do vary with respect to the time or rate of development from one stage to another. It may be noted that certain patterns of behaviour and certain skills are learned more easily and successfully during certain stages. These accomplishments of a person become the social expectations of that stage of development. They are known as developmental tasks.
1. Prenatal Stage:
The period from conception to birth is known as the prenatal period. Typically, it lasts for about 40 weeks. We know already that the genetic blueprint guides our development during the prenatal period and after birth. Both genetic and environmental factors affect our development during different periods of prenatal stage.
Prenatal development is also affected by maternal characteristics, which include mother’s age, nutrition, and emotional state. Disease or infection carried by the mother can adversely affect prenatal development. For example, rubella (German measles), genital herpes, and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) are believed to cause genetic problems in the newborn.
Another source of threat to prenatal development is teratogens - environmental agents that cause deviations in normal development that can lead to serious abnormalities or death. Common teratogens include drugs, infections, radiations, and pollution. Intake of drugs (marijuana, heroin, cocaine, etc.), alcohol, tobacco, etc. by women during pregnancy may have harmful effects on the foetus and increase the frequency of congenital abnormalities. Radiations (such as X-rays), and certain chemicals near industrial areas can cause permanent change in the genes. Environmental pollutants and toxic wastes like carbon monoxide, mercury and lead are also sources of danger to the unborn child.
2. Infancy (0-2 Years):
The brain develops at an amazing rate before and after birth. Just before birth the newborns have most but not all brain cells. The neural connections among these cells develop at a rapid rate.
The newborn is not as helpless as we might think. The activities needed to sustain life functions are present in the newborn — it breathes, sucks, swallows, and discharges the bodily wastes. The newborns in their first week of life are able to indicate what direction a sound is coming from, can distinguish their mother’s voice from the voices of other women, and can imitate simple gestures like tongue protrusion and mouth opening.
2.1. Motor Development :
The newborn’s movements are governed by reflexes — which are automatic, built-in responses to stimuli. They are genetically-carried survival mechanisms, and are the building blocks for subsequent motor development.
Some reflexes present in the newborn — coughing, blinking, and yawning persist throughout their lives. Others disappear as the brain functions mature and voluntary control over behaviour starts developing.
As the brain is developing, physical development also progresses. The sequence of physical (motor) development is universal, with minor exceptions.
2.2. Sensory Abilities :
Newborns prefer to look at some stimuli rather than others such as faces, although these preferences change over the first few months of life. The newborn’s vision is estimated to be lower than the adult vision. By 6 months it improves and by about the first year, vision is almost the same as that of an adult (20/20).
The current consensus is that they might be able to distinguish between red and white colours but in general they are colour deficient and full colour vision develops by 3 months of age.
Infants can hear immediately after birth. As the infant develops, proficiency at localising sound improves. Newborns respond to touch and they can even feel pain. Both smell and taste capacities are also present in the newborn.
2.3. Cognitive Development :
Jean Piaget stressed that children actively construct their understanding of the world. Information does not simply enter their minds from the environment. As children grow, additional information is acquired and they adapt their thinking to include new ideas, as this improves their understanding of the world.
Piaget believed that a child’s mind passes through a series of stages of thought from infancy to adolescence.
Each stage is characterised by a distinct way of thinking and is age related. The child during infancy, i.e. the first two years of life, experiences the world through senses and interactions with objects — through looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, and grasping. The newborn lives in the present. According to Piaget, children at this stage do not go beyond their immediate sensory experience, i.e. lack object permanence — the awareness that the objects continue to exist when not perceived.
The basis of verbal communication seems to be present in infants. Vocalisation begins with the infant’s babbling, sometime between 3 to 6 months of age.
2.4. Socio-emotional Development :
Babies from birth are social creatures. An infant starts preferring familiar faces and responds to parent’s presence by cooing and gurgling. The close emotional bond of affection that develop between infants and their parents (caregivers) is called attachment.
In a classic study by Harlow and Harlow (1962), baby monkeys were separated from their mothers approximately 8 hours after birth. The baby monkeys were placed in experimental chambers and reared for 6 months by surrogate (substitute) “mothers”, one made of wire and the other of cloth. Half the baby monkeys were fed by the wire mother, half by the cloth mother. Regardless of whether they were fed by the wire or the cloth mother the baby monkeys showed a preference for the cloth mother and spent a lot more time with her.
This study clearly demonstrates that providing nourishment or feeding was not crucial for attachment and contact-comfort is important. Human babies also form an attachment with their parents or caregivers who consistently and appropriately reciprocate to their signals of love and affection.
According to Erik Erikson (1968), the first year of life is the key time for the development of attachment.
- It represents the stage of developing trust or mistrust.
- A sense of trust is built on a feeling of physical comfort which builds an expectation of the world as a secure and good place.
- An infant’s sense of trust is developed by responsive and sensitive parenting. If the parents are sensitive, affectionate, and accepting, it provides the infant a strong base to explore the environment. Such infants are likely to develop a secure attachment.
- On the other hand, if parents are insensitive and show dissatisfaction and find fault with the child, it can lead to creating feelings of self-doubt in the child.
A close interactive relationship with warm and affectionate adults is a child’s first step towards healthy development.
3. Childhood (2-11 Years)
The child’s growth slows down during early childhood as compared to infancy. The child develops physically, gains height and weight, learns to walk, runs, jumps, and plays with a ball. The child also begins to acquire the concepts of good and bad, i.e. develops a sense of morality. The increasing maturation of the brain along with opportunities to experience the world, contribute to development of children’s cognitive abilities.
3.1. Physical Development :
Early development follows two principles :
- Development proceeds cephalocaudally, i.e. 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. This is why the infant’s head is proportionately larger than her/his body during early infancy or if we see an infant crawling, s/he will use the arms first and then shift to using the legs,
- Growth proceeds from the centre of body and moves towards the extremities or more distal regions — the proximodistal trend, i.e. children gain control over their torso before their extremities.
Initially infants reach for objects by turning their entire body, gradually they extend their arms to reach for things. These changes are the result of a maturing nervous system and not because of any limitation since even visually impaired children show the same sequence.
As children grow older, they look slimmer as the trunk part of their bodies lengthens and body fat decreases. The brain and the head grow more rapidly than any other part of the body.
During middle and late childhood years, children increase significantly in size and strength; increase in weight is mainly due to increase in the size of the skeletal and muscular systems, as well as size of some body organs.
3.2. Motor Development :
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. Fine motor skills — finger dexterity and eye-hand coordination — improve substantially during early childhood. During these years the child’s preference for left or right hand also develops.
3.3. Cognitive Development :
Cognitive development in early childhood focuses on Piaget’s stage of preoperational thought. The child gains the ability to mentally represent an object that is not physically present. This ability of the child to engage in symbolic thought helps to expand her/his mental world. The progress in symbolic thought continues.
- A salient feature of preoperational thought is egocentrism (selffocus), i.e. children see the world only in terms of their own selves and are not able to appreciate others’ point of view.
- Children because of egocentrism, engage in animism - thinking that all things are living, like oneself.They attribute life-like qualities to inanimate objects. For example, if a child while running slips on the road, s/he might show animism by saying “road hurt me”.
- As children grow and are approximately between 4 and 7 years of age they want answers to all their questions like: Why is the sky blue? How do trees grow? and so on. Such questions help the child to know why things are as they are. Piaget called this the stage of intuitive thought.
- Another feature of thought during preoperational stage is characterised by children having a tendency for centration, i.e. focusing on a single characteristic or feature for understanding an event. For example, 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.
- As the child grows and is approximately between 7 and 11 years of age (the period of middle and late childhood) intuitive thought is replaced by logical thought. This is the stage of concrete operational thought, which 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. Thinking becomes more flexible, and children can think about alternatives when solving problems, or mentally retrace their steps if required.
- The growing cognitive abilities of children facilitate the acquisition of language.
3.4. Socio-emotional Development :
The important dimensions of children’s socio-emotional development are the self, gender and moral development. The child due to socialisation develops a sense of who s/he is and whom s/he wants to be identified with. The developing sense of independence makes children do things in their own way.
According to Erikson,
- the way parents respond to their self-initiated activities leads to developing a sense of initiative or sense of guilt.
- Self-understanding in early childhood is limited to defining oneself through physical characteristics: I am tall, she has black hair, I am a girl, etc. During middle and late childhood, the child is likely to define oneself through internal characteristics such as, “I am smart and I am popular” or “I feel proud when teachers assign me responsibility in school”.
- In addition to defining oneself through psychological characteristics, children’s self descriptions also include social aspects of self, such as references to social groups like being a member of school’s music club, environment club, or any religious group.
- Children’s self understanding also includes social comparison. Children are likely to think about what they can do or cannot do in comparison with others. For example, “I got more marks than Atul” or “I can run faster than others in the class”. This developmental shift leads to establishing one’s differences from others as an individual.
3.5. Moral Development :
Another important aspect of the child’s development is learning to differentiate between the rightness or wrongness of human acts. The way children come to distinguish right from wrong, to feel guilty, to put themselves in other people’s position, and to help others when they are in trouble, are all components of moral development.
Just as children pass through the various stages of cognitive development, according to Lawrence Kohlberg, they pass through the various stages of moral development, which are age related.
Kohlberg interviewed children in which they were presented with stories in which the characters face moral dilemmas. Children were asked what the characters in the dilemma should do, and why.
According to him, children approach thinking about right and wrong differently at different ages. The young child, i.e. before 9 years of age, thinks in terms of external authority. According to her/him, actions are wrong because s/he is punished, and right because s/he is rewarded. As the child grows, i.e. by early adolescence, s/he develops moral reasoning through set of rules of others, such as parents or laws of the society. These rules are accepted by the children as their own. These are “internalised” in order to be virtuous and to win approval from others (not to avoid punishment).
Children view rules as absolute guidelines, which should be followed. Moral thinking at this stage is relatively inflexible. As they grow, they gradually develop a personal moral code.by the end of childhood a more gradual growth rate enables the child to develop skills of coordination and balance.
Language develops and the child can reason logically. Socially the child has become more involved in social systems, such as family and peer group.
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