Using your knowledge from all domains of development (physical, cognitive, and socioemotional) acros

One of the enduring issues in the study of developmental psychology is the question of which aspects of human development are global and common to all humanity and which vary as a result of individual characteristics and/or environmental differences. Using your knowledge from all domains of development (physical, cognitive, and socioemotional) across the entire lifespan, compare and contrast three examples of development that are global and three that result in diversity. Make sure you explain how each type of development occurs and why they result in global similarities or not.

ANSWER

Human Development

The aspects of development are many. The most important aspects include physical development, cognitive development, language development, social development, emotional development, moral and gender development.  The first report on human development was introduced in 1990 (Lerner, 2018). The report introduced a new approach to human wellbeing. The human development approach is about enriching the human experience instead of depending on the economy to improve the lives of people; it focuses on people and their opportunities and choices. Physical development refers to the bodily structures and functions of the different body parts. Cognitive development refers to intellectual development, which entails processing information, imagination, memorizing, decision making, and reasoning.  Social development entails the changes in forming social relationships, and emotional refers to the changes in the feelings, causes, and the expression of feelings. The different forms of development sometimes may be common globally, and others might differ depending on the person or their environment.

Physical Development

Physical growth can be said to be global in some aspects. For example, when an infant is born strong and healthy, the child is likely to have the same physical development as the others globally. For example, children at the age of six months are expected to achieve certain milestones such as sitting upright on their own. This is a commonly expected milestone for children globally. They are also expected to start pulling themselves up between the ages of 7 to 1 year and eventually walk before the end of one year (Lerner, 2018). These are the common milestones and physical developments expected in human development. The child is also expected to start forming words, go to school, and go through the other developmental stages, such as adolescence. For boys, the voice is likely to break, they will start getting attracted to the girls, and the opposite applies to the girls. Globally during adolescence, these are the most common changes that are likely to be observed among adolescents.

Physical development is not easily altered by the environment or the characteristics of a person. The only differences that might be observed are maybe delays, but a person’s environment cannot affect their physical development.  If a child’s environment forces them to be delayed from getting into school early with their peers, it does not mean that the child will not experience adolescence at the right time (Arnet et al., 2018). The person is likely to experience adolescence at a lower grade, but they will still undergo the physical changes that adolescents undergo despite the environment. In this case, the people involved are those who have been born healthy without any conditions that could delay their development. In simple terms, an adolescent in America has similarities with an adolescent in Africa or Asia, or any other continent. They are probably going through the same physical changes.

Cognitive Development

Cognitive development can also be said to be global or similar. This is because it involves intellectual development, which largely depends on an individual and their environment. Children construct an understanding of the environment surrounding them. This, therefore, leads to the cognitive abilities of children and their development being different due to the different environments (Arnet et al., 2018). According to Piaget, children cognitively adapt to their environment through assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation involves fitting their reality into their way of understanding. For example, if parents show a child the picture of a dog and tell them that it is a dog, in their minds, they form an idea of a dog as something that looks like the picture. Accommodation is the modification of the schema to their reality. For example, the child might see a goat and refer to it as a dog. This form of cognitive development can be said to be experienced by children globally. Their knowledge and intellect might be different depending on the environment, but their cognitive development follows the same processes of assimilation and accommodation.

Socio-emotional development

Unlike cognitive and physical development, which can be said to be similar globally, the socio-emotional development of a person is highly impacted by the environment of the person. Emotional development refers to the change of emotions or how they remain constant, while social development is a way in which humans learn to interact with one another (Sigelman & Rider, 2021). These largely depend on where a person was brought up, and due to the differences in socio-emotional development, there are people with different temperaments. Emotional self-regulation refers to a child’s ability to regulate their emotional state to match that of others. Environmental risk factors such as living in unsafe communities and low-quality child care and family risk factors such as family violence, substance abuse, and mental illness affect children’s socio-emotional development. Children from stable backgrounds have an easier time forming social relationships compared to those from areas facing the above risk factors. Those from a peaceful environment are also likely to be more emotionally stable, and thus socio-emotional development is not similar globally.

Language Development

Language development is affected by experience and culture, and therefore there are no global similarities. This is because different children are affected differently by different environments and cultures (Sigelman & Rider, 2021). For example, child A lives in a simulated environment with older siblings and also attends daycare two days a week. Child B is an only child whose needs are met, but the mother is depressed and spends most of their time in front of a screen. Child C does not have older siblings and does not attend a daycare but has loving relatives around them and interacts with other children in the neighborhood. These children are of the same age, but due to the difference in the culture of their environments, they will have different experiences in terms of language development. The three children will have no similarities in language development due to their different cultures and interactions. The children who interact with other children and their relatives are likely to develop a language quicker than their counterpart who spends most of the time in the house watching cartoons.

In conclusion, different aspects of human development can be similar or not. They are mostly dependent on the environment of the person. Physical development, for example, is similar because the physical changes experienced cannot be altered by the environment of the person. The physical changes happen despite the risk factors involved, unlike in socio-emotional where the risk factors involved in a child’s development affect their socio-emotional development. It is also important to note that factors such as abusive homes and substance abuse affect children’s development and ensure that children are growing up in safe spaces where they can undergo development appropriately.

References

Arnett, J., Chapin, L., & Brownlow, C. (2018). Human development: A cultural approach. Pearson Australia.

Lerner, R. M. (2018). Concepts and theories of human development. Routledge.

Sigelman, C. K., & Rider, E. A. (2021). Life-span human development. Cengage Learning.