The early childhood and late adulthood positives and negatives Essay Example
The early childhood and late adulthood positives and negatives Essay Example

The early childhood and late adulthood positives and negatives Essay Example

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  • Published: April 12, 2022
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The two selected developmental periods in early childhood may also be known as infancy, and the late adulthood i.e. maturity. Early childhood is a developmental stage in the human development that begins from birth to the period of five years. It involves toddlerhood and may also proceed afterward. The playing age is an unspecific designation that lies approximately within the initial childhood scope. Late adulthood is also a stage in the human development and considered to commence at the age of about sixty-five years. There is a suggestion that at this period of human development, it is important for a person to find the meaning as well as life satisfaction other than becoming bitter and disillusioned, that means, resolving the conflict of despair versus integrity.

The primary reason for the selection of these developmental stages is th

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at they are the most crucial and critical stages of the human development. They mark the beginning and the end of life. At infancy, there is the starting of purely new experience, and in maturity, an individual has an experience on all the life aspects and stands a better chance of telling all the information concerning life. They are the extreme ends of life. There is also the reason for the choice of developmental stage of late adulthood to show that there is a difference between what people perceive about the old people and reality. Many people perceive growing old as mental and physical deterioration, but the reality is that numerous older people are happy and involve themselves in a variety of activities.
The infancy developmental stage

At this stage, there is biosocial development. The biosocial development at infancy refers to the

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manner that the social strides of the little ones interact and correspond to his or her biological growth. As an infant grows, he or she stands a better chance of engaging in increased complex social engagements. Some of the biosocial development at this stage includes vision and socialization as well as hearing and social development.

Vision and socialization

There is a blurry vision of baby at birth but appears gaining focus in a few weeks later. Infants have the ability to see objects held around twelve inches away and the vision becomes more focused as the baby prefers looking at the faces that have some interesting looks, for example, smiles, and frowns that makes them far much appealing than just looking at static objects. A two months old child spends most of the time looking at smiling faces than expressionless faces, and at around three months, a baby develops more interests and entertained by facial expressions from adults.

Social and hearing development

Because children are born with the ability of hearing, they turn their heads to sound directions naturally. They have a tendency of crying when alarmed by loud noises. Three weeks old babies may tell the difference between the voices of their parents and may know when there is a strange voice. Children aged four months have the ability of amusing themselves and those around them with babbling and cooing sounds and also becomes aware of the tone of voices and what they imply and at the period of twelve months, the child should have the ability of saying few words and try imitating words in their ongoing need of communicating extra efficiently.

At the infancy development stage, there

is also cognitive development. Cognitive development refers to the child’s development in aspects of processing information, perceptual skills, and conceptual resources, learning the language, aspects of brain development and aspects of cognitive psychology in comparison to the adult's view point.

Copying and crawling

Under the cognitive development, there is the tendency by the child to develop aspects of copying and crawling. The child has a habit of copying what the other people are doing and trying to learn to walk through crawling. Infants also develop a spatial relationship that entails learning in a variety of ways. Such ways include visually tracking objects and people, exploring objects by the use of their mouths, trying to fit objects in openings and viewing of things from varying perspectives. They spent most of their time in exploring spatial and physical environmental aspects that include characteristics and interrelationships among people, physical space and the space surrounding them.

Problem solving

Moreover, concerning cognitive development, the child also has a keen interest in solving problems. Infants display keen interest in solving problems and even the very young ones will tend to work in solving problems by their own. Older children tend to solve problems like the manner of reaching an interesting toy not in reach through trying to roll or gesturing for help from an adult. They have varied ways of solving problems that include acting on objects physically, using the already developed schemes of learning, imitating solutions from the others or even using other people or objects as tools for solving their problems.

The other notable aspect at infant developmental stage is socio-emotional development. The social-emotional development involves the experience of a child, managing emotions, expressions

and the ability to establish rewarding and positive associations with the others. It also encompasses not only the intra but also interpersonal processes. The major concerns under socioeconomic development include crying when upset and in need of love and laughing whenever there is a pleasant occurrence to them. Crying is negative at this evolution stage while laughing is a positive phenomenon to infants at this stage of development. The babies develop the ability to identify and understanding the feelings both for an individual and for the others in an attempt of accurately reading and comprehending emotional status in other people. They may interpret an emotional state in a person that may make them cry if they feel that it is unpleasant or on the opposite show some appreciation by laughing whenever they feel that it is pleasant.

The healthy social-emotional development by the toddlers and infants unfolds in interpersonal context i.e. active ongoing associations with familiar and nurturing adults. There is a particular attuning of young children to emotional and social stimulation. There is also a habit by even the newborn of appearing to attend substantially to stimuli that resemble faces. There is also the preference of their mother’s voices to other voices from other women. At some times, the infants have no ability to control their emotions, and this leads them to cry as a way of controlling it. They also engage in laughing as a positive way of controlling the emotion that indicates they are in a pleasant mood. From the research, there is a reveal that emotions and cognition are processes profoundly interrelated. They work together and jointly informing the impressions of a

child concerning conditions and influencing behaviors.

The late adulthood human developmental stage

The primary concerns looked at this stage of human development include biosocial development, cognitive development and socio-emotional development. There is a difference between these concerns at infancy and adult development stages.

Biosocial development

The body

The older a person becomes, the older the body becomes. There is a change in appearance in an older adult as there is an appearance of wrinkles, as well as the skin becoming less elastic and thin. There is a breaking of small blood vessels beneath the skin surface, skin tags and warts and there are also age spots that may form on the person’s body. The hair turns gray and becomes thin, decreases in melanin. The standard of aging applies to both men and women who are at older adulthood just as it happens to the middle adulthood. Aged men may still appear as distinguished while the senior women often regarded as grandmotherly are past the life prime.

Height

In comparison to their height when they were in their early adulthood, the majority of the older adults appear shorter. Perhaps, their height lessens by one or two inches since there is a decrease in the bone density. The other reason for the older adults appearing shorter is due to the changes occurring in their body. There is a breaking of blood vessels beneath the body surface, and most of the cells cease functioning contributing to the overall appearance of small nature in the older adults.

In addition, at the late adulthood, there is a tendency of senses beginning to become dull. With age, the eye lenses discolor and become rigid creating interference with color perception

and distance and also the reading ability. In the absence of corrective glasses, almost half of the elderly population becomes legally blind. There is also diminishing of hearing ability especially the capability to detect high-speed sounds. The resultant effect is that the old can develop suspiciousness or even may have some mild forms of paranoia i.e. unfolded distressfulness in responding to having the inability of hearing well.

Cognitive development

The major concerns under this evolution are intelligence and proneness to diseases. In the overall, as the people ages, memory fades, and there are remarkable differences at every decade i.e. the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Due to memory fade, the older adults slowly by slowly experiences reduction in intelligence due to memory loss and fade. The kind of memory most likely to decline as age increases is the short term memory and the working memory. Working memory stores incoming information temporarily and processes it by the use of advanced skills of reasoning. Those at later adulthood have less ability to assimilate multiple kinds of data at once and also perform advanced analysis at the same time.

Disease prone

Among the central concerns as a person ages is dementia. It is a condition that includes various syndromes and diseases, for example, multiple sclerosis, and vascular dementia caused by stroke and Huntington. The individuals with dementia suffer from memory or cognitive impairments but remain alert and conscious. The impairment might lead to loss of memory, difficulty in using or understanding words, an inability of carrying motor activities despite the adequate function by a motor, confusion and also the impossibility of recognizing objects. In simplicity, the aged have the failure of resisting even

the minor ailments and become more prone to attack by the diseases.

Socio-emotional development

Under this stage of development, some of the issues experienced in late adulthood include regret and loneliness. Stability and emotions vary widely at late adulthood. There is a definition of the last stage of life as being tension between despair and integrity. The individuals may either come to acceptance of their lives like having integrity and meaning, or they may contemplate it as being unfulfilling and unproductive leading to the feeling of despair. In case an individual feels that his or her life was sterile, the result is regrets by that person. It is also evident that almost all people fall into a particular place between the two extremes.

The feeling of loneliness is the other evident feature in socio-emotional development at late adulthood. In case an individual feels that his or her live was unproductive, there is the feeling of loneliness and isolation. For example, in case his or her age-mates were successful in their lives and the person did not succeed, there is a higher feeling of loneliness and failure to recognize the need of life. The person views that there is a little contribution to his or her generation and therefore feels that they do not accept and acknowledge that person hence the feeling of loneliness.

The impacts of specific concepts on the individual developmental history

Basing on the personal understanding of concepts from the textbook and also in class activities, the specific concepts have both positive and negative impacts on the individual developmental history.

Positive impacts

The majority of positive effects emanate from the infancy developmental stage in the human development. For examples, the

concept of vision and socialization aids in the attainment of focus by the person towards the future life. At infancy, there is the creation of an image that acts as guidance to the rest of the personal life. A person also gains the skills and knowledge used in daily live.

The other positive impact experienced is that of trying to solve the problem individually. The stage positively affects the individual by learning ways to solve problems, for example, the use of objects in addressing difficult situations and use of other people during poor conditions. The concept of cognitive development also positively impacts by developing ways of processing the information, the aspects of cognitive psychology, learning the language that plays a greater role in personal future life and psychological resources.

The negative impacts

The majority of negatives results mostly come at the late adulthood whereby there is a reduction of intelligence in a person. There is negative impairment of short-term memory and working memory. Moreover, the other negative impact involves being much prone to diseases by an adult. At this point, there is a high affinity of an adult to contract dementia. The other negative impacts include regret in case an individual does not meet the targets in his or her life and the feeling of loneliness by the person who failed to succeed in a personal life.

The contribution of the concepts to shaping of the present person

The particular idea especially those of the infancy play a critical role on the framing of different people at the present moment. The infancy life of a child initiates the long process of mutual adaptation among the infant and the wider social

environment. The patterns of interactions and associations created during infancy serve as the prototype of numerous interactions in the later life and have long lasting effects. The present person came from the early life of that individual.

At the very young age, there is also an aspect of vision and socialization. By creating a vision at the young age, the individual works towards attaining that vision hence attaining the professionalism occupied in the future life. Socialization acts as a means of accomplishing the vision created because due to socialization, there is a chance of advancing towards achieving the set vision by a person. Human beings are also born having limited capacities to self-regulate. Therefore, they learn and depend on attachment relationships with their caregivers to offer them the context through which the adults will attain great life tendencies of regulating stimulus arousal and reactions that will result due to stimulus.

The results in the life

After the intersection of all the concepts, there are some results in the human life. One of the major results is an evaluation of the achievements in personal life, recognition of the variance and taking the necessary direction. At the early childhood, there is the development of needed skills by a person, setting the vision for the life and drawing of strategies for future life. In the early childhood, there is the fixing of a personal life. At the late adulthood, the person can evaluate whether he or she attained the targets in their lifetime and from the evaluation, there may be setting up of alternatives to remedy the situation.

The other result emanating from intersecting of the concept including either appreciation of the

life lived or feeling of both loneliness and isolation. Individuals may come to appreciate the lives they lived if they succeeded in their lives or may have a feeling of regret, loneliness, and isolation in case they fail to accomplish in their lives. The sense of being useless after failing to attain the targets may also act as a way of advising the other individuals in life to overcome similar experiences.

Conclusion

There are numerous positives and negatives concerning the early childhood and late adulthood. However, most of the positives occur during the early childhood while most of the negatives appear at the later adulthood. At early childhood, there is a realization of many positive things that include the acquisition of the knowledge to process information, developing a vision and socialization, developing socially and also hearing development. At this stage, there are few negatives and many positives unlike at late adulthood where there is majority of negatives and few positives. For example, at late adulthood, there is a decline in the intelligence of a person whereby there is fading of working and short-term memory. The individual also becomes prone to dementia as well as attaining some deformities in the body posture of a person. There is the development of wrinkles on the body and breaking of nerves beneath the skin.

However, despite the occurrence of negatives and positives in both early childhood and late adulthood, the intersection of the specific concepts in that two life developmental stages may lead to good things coming to an end eventually. At the early stage, there is a development of necessary skills and acquisition of needed developmental aspects that an individual applies

in attaining their profession. In other words, the infancy stage determines the future life. In the late adulthood stage, a person evaluates his or her life and accepts it since there was the attainment of the life expectations.

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