8 Part 1 Foundations of Human Development
During adulthood, muscle and fat tissue continue to redistribute. The body
begins aging rather than regenerating or growing. Arteries harden and eyesight
changes. Hair and skin change. Sleep patterns change. As a person reaches older
adulthood, the physical body slows both in function and activity level.
With these changes in height, body size, and chemical change also come
differences in physical abilities. Individually, people differ in balance, strength,
coordination, and energy levels to perform both gross- and fine-motor skills.
Gross-motor skills involve large muscle movements such as crawling, walking,
and jumping. Fine-motor skills involve small muscle movements such as cutting
with scissors, typing on a keyboard, and writing with a pen or pencil. You will
learn about both gross- and fine-motor skills throughout the life stages as you
study human development.
Cognitive Development
As humans, you think. You perceive, sense, organize, memorize, recall,
reason, problem solve, and imagine. All of these actions or processes involving
thinking and knowing are called cognition. The way people change and grow in
how they think over the stages of life is called cognitive development. In each
stage of life, mental abilities change. These changes are due to both social interac-
tion and brain development.
Think about when you were in kindergarten. As a 5-year-old, you approached
a problem differently from the way you do today. Your ways of learning changed
significantly, and as a result, teachers present information in a much different
manner. Their expectations of your involvement in learning change, too, 1-3.
Part of cognitive development is the advance and expansion of the use of lan-
guage. Babies progress from babbling and cooing to speaking words and sentences.
Throughout childhood, children learn new words daily. By the teen years, they can
articulate complex thoughts as language progresses throughout the stages of life.
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1-3
Your ability to learn new subjects has significantly changed since childhood.