Human development is essentially stratified into eight different stages and defined and elucidated by Erikson. Life span theory contends that people continue to develop throughout the duration of their lives, as certain notions of plasticity and contextual theory contend. This theory combines with aspects of hereditary and environment to account for individuality in people.
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Human development is a particularly fascinating area of study, for the simple fact that it cross references and influences a variety of disciplines such as psychology, biology, sociology, and many others. One of the most interesting aspects of this area of study is the lifespan perspective, which deals with the continuing growth and changes that a person experiences from the time of earliest childhood to the old age. There are several theories of life span development that are instrumental in correctly interpreting the overall journey that is human development. Two of the more salient of these are known as plasticity and contextual theory. Both individually and collectively, these two theories help to explain how diverse factors such as heredity and environment are able to account for profound changes in individuals, which helps to form the very notion of individualism itself. All of these facets of human development help to make the journeys that people go through during their lives both similar and unique.
The life span perspective of human development revolves around the central notion that human beings are in a constant state of change. There is virtually no level of stasis for people once they begin life; they are constantly passing from one stage into another. One of the truly interesting facets about this aspect of the life span perspective is that these phases encompass a wide variety of realms including cognition, physiology, and sociology. These three domains are an excellent starting point for stratifying the variety of changes people are bound to go through during their lives; although there are certainly other domains, these three help to account for the most profound differences in the varying stages. The many different experiences that people go through, which inevitably shape their own development, are usually related either to their physical, social, or cognitive development.
Additionally, it is important to understand that there are a variety of stages that people go through that are part of human development. These stages begin with birth, are measured by the aforementioned domains, and endure until late periods of adulthood. There are eight stages in all with the vast majority of these occurring during childhood. Essentially, there is an awakening process that an infant/child goes through to form his or her own identity, which is usually full formed at the conclusion of adolescence during the fifth of what are Erikson's eight stages of development (Davis & Clifton, 1995). This stage is critical since it is when a person is able to fully assert his or her own values, perspectives and identities from the world around him or her. The general progression of these stages of life span development is to go from an individual preoccupation with the self to that of others, quite often one's family and close friends. During the final stage, people come to accept what they have learned and come to terms with it.
One of the more valuable theories of lifespan development is plasticity, which posits the viewpoint that people are mutable and can adapt to their circumstances in a myriad of ways. It is this degree of variability of behavior that actually helps to foster individualism. A central notion to plasticity is the influence that one's surroundings and experiences have on one. Plasticity contends that people adapt to these circumstances in a variety of ways, which ultimately shape their personalities, who they are, and how they both respond to and assert themselves against the vicissitudes of life. Plasticity can take place throughout any individual's entire life (Boyd & Bee, 2006, p. 6)
These vicissitudes and the individual situations and circumstances that determine them are of prime importance in the contextual theory of life development. This theory advances the concept that a multitude of external factors are influential to a person's development. Interestingly enough, these factors are not just social, cognitive, or physiological, but also temporal (since time influences these factors) and, to a certain extent, even genetic.
The genetic component of human development is one of the chief factors used to explain differences in individuals, especially those that exist between people who live in the same environment. The genetic component is generally referred to as heredity, which readily interacts with environmental factors to account for individuality and variation in people (Belsky and Pluess, 2009, p. 345). However, these two factors function in different ways. Heredity is the notion that one's progeny and one's immediate family shares behavioral traits and tendencies that exist throughout all three principle domains of human development. Environmental factors provide the external surroundings -- physical, cognitive, social, and even temporal -- that heredity exists and operates in. Essentially then, these two factors function together by providing the genetic material and the external circumstances that the field of human development attributes to individual differences.
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