Thursday, April 9, 2009

Physical Development Stages

Humans must learn to crawl before they can walk and walk before they can run. This is the basic lesson taught by the path of human development. It speaks to a step-by-step process that must occur to get from one point to another.


The Facts


Human beings pass through several different stages of development within the average lifetime. These stages carry a person through infancy, childhood, adulthood, their senior years and, ultimately, death. As humans develop, they normally grow bigger, stronger and better able to communicate with each other. Humans share this pattern with almost every other living creature of this planet.


Significance


The classification of social position and status is often determined by a person's level of development. The physical development of an individual is used to help people guide their behavior toward one another. This is one of the most important components in human social interaction.








Types


In infancy, humans experience about 10 observable stages of physical development that mainly revolve around recognition of sounds and language, eating habits and motor ability (crawling and walking). These stages run from birth to about the age of five. In childhood or prepubescence and into adolescence years, these abilities are strengthened and are accompanied by varying increase in body size and proportion. At around the age of 25, the human body has reached its maturity.


Time Frame


The average human lifetime is customarily mapped over a hundred year period; with the average life expectancies in developed nations at around 77.7 years (according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). And, as aforementioned, the majority of physical development takes place between birth and the age of 25.


Identification








There are several classifications for the physical development of humans, but all track the growth of a person through their child stage (which includes birth, infancy, toddler and preadolescence), adolescence and puberty stages, adult stage (which includes early adulthood, middle adulthood and advanced adulthood or senior years) and death (which depending on the type of analysis may include physical decomposition). Each stage has each own list of physical characteristics and mainly revolve around differences in sensory recognition and motor skills.

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