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Class 11 Human Development: cheat sheet
CBSE Psychology. Growth, development and maturation, the life-span perspective, Bronfenbrenner’s systems, Piaget’s four stages, moral reasoning and identity in adolescence.
Key ideas
- Development is the orderly, lifelong pattern of change; growth is the measurable increase in size; maturation follows the genetic blueprint.
- The life-span view: development is lifelong, multi-directional (gains and losses), plastic, and shaped by history and context.
- Heredity sets a range of possibilities (genotype) and the environment decides how they show (phenotype).
- Motor development runs head to foot (cephalocaudal) and centre outward (proximodistal).
- Piaget’s children pass through four stages, from learning by senses and actions to abstract, logical thought.
- Moral reasoning moves from reward and punishment to approval of others and then to a personal moral code (Kohlberg).
- The main task of adolescence is forming an identity; the imaginary audience and personal fable show adolescent egocentrism.
Remember
| Piaget’s stages | sensorimotor 0–2; preoperational 2–7; concrete operational 7–11; formal operational 11–15 years |
| Stage features | object permanence (sensorimotor); egocentrism, animism, centration (preoperational); conservation (concrete) |
| Bronfenbrenner | microsystem → mesosystem → exosystem → macrosystem (culture) → chronosystem (life events over time) |
| Sinha’s ecological model | upper visible layer (home, school, peers) over a lower layer (e.g. overcrowding, poverty) |
| Erikson, first year | trust versus mistrust |
| Teratogens | environmental agents that harm the baby before birth |
Watch out
- Using growth and development as the same word: growth is only the measurable part.
- Putting the stage boundary on the wrong side: a 7-year-old has just entered the concrete operational stage.
- Mixing up the mesosystem (links between a child’s settings) and the exosystem (settings that affect the child indirectly).
Worked example
Two siblings are 9 and 5 years old. How many years apart are they, and which of Piaget’s stages is each in?
Working: 9 − 5
Answer: 4 years; concrete operational (9) and preoperational (5)
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