Growth And Development

Growth And Development

Growth and Development
Psy/280

Growth and Development            
The term growth and development both characterize an active process.   Often used in place of each other, these words have different meanings.   Growth is the physical change of the body that increases in size.   This active process can be measured in quantity and include height, weight, bone size, and dentition.   Growth starts at the time of conception and generally takes place during the first 20 years of life.   Development is an increase in the complexity of function and skill progression.   It is the capacity and skill of a person to adapt to the environment.   Development is the behavioral aspect of growth.   This process begins at birth and ends at death.

The life span perspective of human development charts out the way we function to correspond to the growth and break down of our bodies.   This process begins from day of conception and ends on the day of death.   Many people in history and even today try to comprehend what exactly makes us do what we do.   They try to figure out when our minds go through different stages in development.   We will look at three men’s theories that have influenced the way we think today about the development of the human mind and how it corresponds to age.

Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development Theory
Eric Erikson is known for his theory on social development of human beings.   He may be most famous for coining the phrase identity crisis.   Although Erikson did not even have a bachelor's degree, he served as a professor of well-known high class institutions such as Harvard and Yale.   Erikson, who developed his lifespan theory of psychosocial development in the 1950s, was one of the first to delineate physical and psychological developmental stages over the entire life span (SPANO, KOENIG, HUDSON, & LEISTE, 2010).
Erikson’s theory was broken into eight...