To understand the pattern of development, certain fundamental and predictable facts must be taken into consideration. Each of these facts has important implications, which are explained in the following pages.
Early Foundations Are Critical
The first significant fact about development is that early foundations are critical. Attitudes, habits, and patterns of behaviour established during the early years determine to a large extent how successfully individuals will adjust to life as they grow older.
Because early foundations are likely to be persistent, it is important that they be of the kind that will lead to good personal and social adjustments as the individual grows older. As James warned many years ago, “Could the young but realize how quickly they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while still in the plastic state”. Much the same point of view was expressed by Bijou: “Many child psychologists have said that the preschool years, from about two to five, are among the most important, if not the most important, of all the stages of development, and a functional analysis of that stage strongly points to the same conclusion. It is unquestionably the period during which the foundation is laid for the complex behaviour structures that are built in a child’s lifetime”.
White contends that the foundations laid during the first two years of life are the most critical. According to him, the origins of human competence are to be found in a critical period of time between eight and eighteen months. He goes on further to explain that the child’s experiences during this time span do more to determine future competence than at any time before or after. Erikson claims that babyhood is the period when individuals learn general attitudes of trust or mistrust, depending on how parents gratify their child’s needs for food, attention, and love. These attitudes, he maintains, remain more or less persistent throughout life and color the individual’s perception of people and situation.
Early patterns do tend to persist, but they are not unchangeable. There are three conditions under which change is likely to occur. First, change may come about when the individual receives help and guidance in making the change. Some parents, for example, may succeed in training a child to use the right hand in preference to the left.
Second, change is likely to occur when significant people treat individuals in new and different ways. Children who have been trained to believe that they should be “seen but not heard” can be encouraged to express themselves more freely by a teacher who makes them feel that they have something to contribute to the group.
A third condition that can lead to change exists when there is a strong motivation on the part of individuals themselves to make the change. When behaviors is rewarded by social approval, there is little motivation to make a change. When, on the other hand, behaviour meets with social disapproval, there will be a strong motivation to change.
Knowing that early foundations tend to persist enables one to predict with a fair degree of accuracy what a child’s future development is likely to be. A quiet, introverted child, for example, is not likely to develop into an extrovert, and a child who has little or no interest in school or school activities is not likely to develop into a scholar or a good school citizen.
Environmentalists believe that an optimum environment will result in maximum expression of genetic factors. However, it is difficult to provide an optimum environment during the preschool years when development is taking place especially rapidly.
Roles of Maturation and Learning in Development
The second significant fact about development is that maturation and learning play important roles in development. Maturation is the unfolding of the individual’s inherent traits. In phylogenetic functions – functions which are common to the human race, such as creeping, sitting, and walking – development comes from maturation. Learning, in the form of training, is of little advantage, although controlling the environment to reduce opportunities for practice may retard development. Maturation provides the raw material for learning and determines the more general patterns and sequences of behaviour.
Learning is development that comes from exercise and effort on the individual’s part. In ontogenetic functions – those that are specific to the individual, such as writing, driving a car, or swimming – learning in the form of training is essential. Without it, development would not take place.
Three important facts emerge from our present knowledge of the interrelationship of maturation and learning as the cause of development. First, because human beings are capable of learning, variation is possible. Individual differences in personality, attitudes, interests, and patterns of behaviour come not from maturation alone but from maturation and learning. The individual cannot learn until ready. “Developmental readiness,” or readiness to learn, determines the moment when learning can and should take place. Harris has emphasized the importance of providing an opportunity to learn when the individual is ready: “It is possible, indeed likely, that a person who comes late to his training will never realize the full measure of his potential”.
Development Follows a Definite and Predictable Pattern
The third significant fact about development is that it follows a definite and predictable pattern. There are orderly patterns of physical, motor, speech, and intellectual development.
Unless environmental conditions prevent it, development will follow a pattern similar for all. Babies creep and crawl, for example, before they walk, and interest in the opposite sex appears only when pubertal changes have taken place. There is no evidence that individuals have their own individual patterns of development, though there is evidence that the rate of development varies from individual to individual.
The importance of this is that is makes it possible to predict what people will do at a given age and to plan their education and training to fit into this pattern. If development were not predictable, it would be impossible to plan ahead for any period in the life span. The middle-aged, for example, would not have the foresight to plan for failing health and reduced income as they grow older, and parents would not be able to plan for the training their children will need to fit into adult life.
