CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT

Child and Adolescent Development

Child and Adolescent Development

Introduction

It is important to understand that children have to grow and develop in many different areas in order to become healthy, happy, productive members of adult society. There are four main areas or channels in which children grow physical, psychological and cognitive, social and emotional, and sexuality and gender identity. The physical channel is most obvious. Children's bodies grow in height and weight over the years and change the appearance during puberty. Children also develop certain physical abilities during their progression towards adulthood, including crawling, walking, running and (possibly) writing or shooting a basketball.

Child and adolescent development is the study of the different processes assumed to influence human growth and development from birth through adolescence. Development takes place within multiple domains (e.g., cognitive, physical, socio-emotional). Yet the processes underlying development can be common across the different domains of development.Types of Processes That Influence Child and Adolescence DevelopmentIn-wired Development although human beings grow and develop at different paces, there is some aspects of development that are consistent for most, if not all, human beings. This consistency suggests that mortal bodies are designed to grow and develop in a relatively sequential and orderly fashion because the mechanisms responsible for these changes are in-wired. That is these mechanisms are present at birth and are essentially time-released through adolescence and beyond. For example, an infant will exhibit a grasping reflex when his or her palm is touched. At a later stage, that same infant will develop greater strength and more finely tuned motor skills, such as the ability to pick up and manipulate an amusing toy.Development through Acting Upon the EnvironmentChildren are born with sense systems (i.e., vision, smell, hearing, taste, and touch) that allow them to explore and act upon people and objects in their environments. Children may throw different things to see if they bounce or make interesting sounds (e.g., balls, cups, keys). They may place different things in their mouths (e.g., their mother's fingers, rattles) to see if they are hard or soft or can fit in their mouths. Children may perceive certain smells and associate them with different experiences. It is through active exploration that children begin to learn the properties of different things and relate them to other things that they “know.”Development through Passive Reactions to the EnvironmentChildren's development can also be stimulated by their exposure to the activities that take place in the contexts in which they live and function. Researchers have found critical periods in early infant development whereby simple exposure to everyday conversation helps children develop the ability to produce certain phonemes (speech sounds) specific to a language.

Different Domains Of Child And Adolescent DevelopmentChild and adolescent development researchers seek to identify and understand age-related developmental changes and abilities and how outside influences such as context (e.g., Urie Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory) and culture (e.g., A. Wade Boykin's triarchic theory of minority child development) affect developmental outcomes. Below are brief descriptions of the different domains in which development can take ...