Lecture 7. Basic and special laws of psychological development of the child.

Psychological development, the development of human beings’ cognitive, emotional, intellectual, and social capabilities and functioning over the course of the life span, from infancy through old age. It is the subject matter of the discipline known as developmental psychology. Child psychology was the traditional focus of research, but since the mid-20th century much has been learned about infancy andadulthood as well. A brief treatment of psychological development follows. For full treatment, see human behaviour.

Infancy

Infancy is the period between birth and the acquisition of language one to two years later. Besides a set of inherited reflexes that help them obtain nourishment and react to danger, newborns are equipped with a predilection for certain visual patterns, including that of the human face, and for certain sounds, including that of the human voice. Within a few months they are able to identify their mother by sight, and they show a striking sensitivity to the tones, rhythmic flow, and individual sounds that make up human speech. Even young infants are capable of complex perceptual judgments involving distance, shape, direction, and depth, and they are soon able to organize their experience by creating categories for objects and events (e.g., people, furniture, food, animals) in the same way older people do.

Infants make rapid advances in both recognition and recall memory, and this in turn increases their ability to understand and anticipate events in their environment. A fundamental advance at this time is the recognition of object permanence—i.e., the awareness that external objects exist independently of the infant’s perception of them. The infant’s physical interactions with his environment progress from simple uncoordinated reflex movements to more coordinated actions that are intentionally repeated because they are interesting or because they can be used to obtain an external goal. About 18 months of age, the child starts trying to solve physical problems by mentally imagining certain events and outcomes rather than through simple trial-and-error experimentation.

Three-month-old infants already display behavioral reactions suggestive of such emotional states as surprise, distress, relaxation, and excitement. New emotional states, including anger, sadness, and fear, all appear by the first year. Infants’ emotional life is centred on the attachments they form toward the mother or other primary caregiver, and through these mutual interactions infants learn to love, trust, and depend on other human beings. Babies begin to smile at other people beginning about two months, and by six months they have developed an attachment to their mother or other caregiver. These attachments form the basis for healthy emotional and social development throughout childhood.

Childhood

The second major phase in human development, childhood, extends from one or two years of age until the onset of adolescence at age 12 or 13. The early years of childhood are marked by enormous strides in the understanding and use of language. Children begin to comprehend words some months before they themselves actually speak. The average infant speaks his first words by 12–14 months, and by the 18th month he has a speaking vocabulary of about 50 words. The child begins to use two- and then three-word combinations and progresses from simple noun-verb combinations to more grammatically complex sequences, using conjunctions, prepositions, articles, and tenses with growing fluency and accuracy. By the fourth year most children can speak in adultlike sentences and have begun to master the more complex rules of grammar and meaning.

In their cognitive abilities, children make a transition from relying solely on concrete, tangible reality to performing logical operations on abstract and symbolic material. Even a two-year-old child behaves as though the external world is a permanent place, independent of his perceptions; and he exhibits experimental or goal-directed behaviour that may be creatively and spontaneously adapted for new purposes. During the period from two to seven years, the child begins to manipulate the environment by means of symbolic thought and language; he becomes capable of solving new types of logical problems and begins to use mental operations that are flexible and fully reversible in thought. Between the ages of 7 and 12, the beginnings of logic appear in the form of classifications of ideas, an understanding of time and number, and a greater appreciation of seriation and other hierarchical relationships.

Emotionally, children develop in the direction of greater self-awareness—i.e., awareness of their own emotional states, characteristics, and potential for action—and they become increasingly able to discern and interpret the emotions of other people as well. This contributes to empathy, or the ability to appreciate the feelings and perceptions of others and understand their point of view. These new abilities contribute to the child’s moral development, which typically begins in early childhood as concern over and avoidance of acts that attract pain and punishment and progresses to a more general regulation of conduct so as to maintain parental regard and approval. A further shift in moral reasoning to one based on the avoidance of internal guilt and self-recrimination marks the passage from childhood and adolescence to adulthood. All of these emotional advances enhance the child’s social skills and functioning.

Adolescence

Physically, adolescence begins with the onset of puberty at 12 or 13 and culminates at age 19 or 20 in adulthood. Intellectually, adolescence is the period when the individual becomes able to systematically formulate hypotheses or propositions, test them, and make rational evaluations. The formal thinking of adolescents and adults tends to be self-consciously deductive, rational, and systematic. Emotionally, adolescence is the time when the individual learns to control and direct his sex urges and begins to establish his own sexual role and relationships. The second decade of life is also a time when the individual lessens his emotional (if not physical) dependence on his parents and develops a mature set of values and responsible self-direction. Physical separation and the establishment of material independence from parents mark the adolescent’s transition to adulthood.

Adulthood

Adulthood is a period of optimum mental functioning when the individual’s intellectual, emotional, and social capabilities are at their peak to meet the demands of career, marriage, and children. Some psychologists delineate various periods and transitions in early to middle adulthood that involve crises or reassessments of one’s life and result in decisions regarding new commitments or goals. During the middle 30s people develop a sense of time limitation, and previous behaviour patterns or beliefs may be given up in favour of new ones.

Middle age is a period of adjustment between the potentialities of the past and the limitations of the future. An emotional rebellion has been observed in some persons, sometimes referred to as a mid-life crisis, engendered by the recognition that less time remains to be lived than has been lived already. In women, dramatic shifts in hormone production lead to the onset of menopause. Often women whose children have grown or have left home experience the “empty-nest syndrome”—feeling unwanted or unneeded. During late middle age individuals become more aware of ill health and thus may consciously or unconsciously alter the patterns of their lives. Individuals accept the limits of their accomplishments and either take satisfaction in them or despair and become anxious over unobtained objectives. During old age sensory and perceptual skills, muscular strength, and memory tend to diminish, though intelligence does not. These changes, together with retirement from active employment, tend to make the elderly more dependent on their children or other younger people, both emotionally and physically.