and become more complex and peer group memberships become more important.
Adolescence (11 to 18 Years)
With puberty, adolescents become physically and sexually mature. Adolescents’ thinking becomes more complex and abstract. Adolescents spend more time with peers and friendships become more important. They are driven to learn about themselves, become independent from their parents, and define their values and goals. Whether adolescence ends at age 18 is debated by developmental scientists. Some argue that adolescence persists through the college years, ending at about age 21. Others propose an additional period of development called emerging adulthood, extending from the completion of secondary education at about age 18 to the adoption of adult roles at about age 25 (Arnett, 2000).
Domains of Development
Consider the many changes that mark each period of development and it is apparent that development is multidimensional. That is, development includes changes in multiple domains of development. Perhaps the most obvious set of changes includes physical development, body maturation, and growth, such as body size, proportion, appearance, health, and perceptual abilities. Cognitive development refers to the maturation of thought processes and the tools that we use to obtain knowledge, become aware of the world around us, and solve problems. Socioemotional development includes changes in emotions, social abilities, self-understanding, and interpersonal relationships with family and friends. These domains of development overlap and interact. For example, the onset of walking precedes advances in language development in infants in the United States and China (He, Walle, & Campos, 2015; Walle & Campos, 2013). Babies who walk tend to spend more time interacting with caregivers; they can initiate interactions with caregivers, such as by bringing objects to them (Clearfield, 2011). They also evoke more verbal responses and warnings from caregivers as they interact with items and explore their environment. Therefore, walking (motor development) is associated with language and social development. Figure 1.1 illustrates how the three domains of development interact, a central principle of development.
Figure 1.1 Domains of Development
Advances in physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development interact, permitting children to play sports, learn more efficiently, and develop close friendships.
iStock/Essentials; iStock/Signature; Jupiter/Pixland/Thinkstock
Contexts of Development
Where did you grow up? Describe your childhood neighborhood. Did you play in a park or on a playground? Did you ride your bike outside? What was your elementary school like? Did you have access to technology such as tablets and computers? Did you learn to type in school? How large is your family? What were some of your family traditions? What holidays did you celebrate? Did you share family meals often? Your responses to these questions reveal aspects of your context.
Context refers to where and when a person develops. Context encompasses many aspects of the physical and social environment, such as family, neighborhood, country, and historical time period. It includes intangible factors, characteristics that are not visible to the naked eye, such as values, customs, ideals, and culture. In order to understand a given individual’s development, we must look to his or her context, including the subtle, less easily viewed, factors. For example, were you encouraged to be assertive and actively question the adults around you, or were you expected to be quiet and avoid confrontation? How large a part was spirituality or religion in your family’s life? How did religious values shape your parent’s childrearing practices and your own values? How did your family’s economic status affect your development? These questions examine a critical context for our development, home and family. However, we are embedded in many more contexts that influence us, and that we influence, such as our peer group, school, neighborhood or community, and culture (see the Lives in Context feature). Our development plays out within the contexts in which we live, a theme that we will return to throughout this book.
Thinking in Context 1.1
1 Consider the multidimensional nature of your development. Provide personal examples of physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development. What changes have you experienced in each of these areas over your childhood? How have these abilities influenced one another?
2 Describe the multiple contexts in which you were raised. How might these have influenced your physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development? Provide examples.
3 In what ways might your physical, cognitive, or socioemotional development have influenced aspects of your context?
Lives in Context: Cultural Context
Defining Culture
Cultural influences on development include the many ethnic communities that comprise most U.S. cities, and the unique foods, customs, and values that accompany each community.
Reuters/Lucy Nicholson
One broad aspect of context is culture. Culture refers to a set of customs, knowledge, attitudes, and values that are shared by members of a group and are learned early in life through interactions with group members (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Early studies of culture and human development took the form of cross-cultural research, comparing individuals and groups from different cultures to examine how these universal processes worked in different contexts (Mistry & Dutta, 2015).
Most classic theories and research on human development are based on Western samples, and developmental researchers once believed that the processes of human development were universal. More recent observations suggest that development varies dramatically with context (Keller, 2017). For example, consider milestones, such as the average age that infants begin to walk. In Uganda, infants begin to walk at about 10 months of age, in France at about 15 months, and in the United States at about 12 months. These differences are influenced by parenting practices that vary by culture. African parents tend to handle infants in ways that stimulate walking, by playing games that allow infants to practice jumping and walking skills (Hopkins & Westra, 1989; Super, 1981). The cultural context in which individuals live influences the timing and expression of many aspects of development, even physical developments long thought to be influenced only by biological maturation (Mistry, 2013). Some scientists argue that applying principles of development derived from Western samples to children of other cultures is unscientific and even unethical because it may yield misleading conclusions about children’s capacities (Keller, 2017).
There is a growing trend favoring cultural research, which examines how culture itself influences development, over cross-cultural research, which simply examines differences across cultures (Cole & Packer, 2015). Cultural research examines development and culture as fused entities that mutually interact, with culture inherent in all domains of development and a contributor to the context in which we are embedded, transmitting values, attitudes, and beliefs that shape our thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors (Mistry & Dutta, 2015). The shift toward cultural research permits the examination
