Human Growth and Development Across the Lifespan

Applications for Counselors

David Capuzzi, Mark D. Stauffer, David Capuzzi, Mark D. Stauffer

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781118984741
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Entwicklungspsychologie

A practically focused guide to effective counseling of all clients

Human Development Across the Life Span is a practical guide to human growth and development, moving beyond theory to include real-world applications for counselors who work with clients. Written by recognized authorities in mental health counseling and counselor education, this book is fully aligned with the American Counseling Association's accreditation standards and includes contributions by well-known and respected academics and practitioners. Based on an extensive review of course syllabi across CACREP-accredited programs, this book is organized to follow the way courses are typically taught and follows a consistent structure including pedagogical elements that help students learn. After a thorough examination of essential concepts and theories of life span development, the book moves through each stage of human growth and development to provide expert insight, short case studies, and practical applications to counseling. The full Instructor's package provides a useful set of tools, including a Respondus test bank, PowerPoint slides, and an Instructor's Manual.

This book is the only text on human growth and development that emphasizes the key implications and applications for counselors, providing useful information and the insights of real experts in each subject area.

• Understand the developmental milestones at each life stage
• Appreciate clients' perspectives to better facilitate appropriate interventions
• Work more effectively with clients of any age, from toddlers to seniors
• Tailor your approach to meet the unique needs and abilities of each life stage

As a counselor, you cannot approach a child's therapy the same way you approach an adult's. Even within each major category, each developmental stage includes a nuanced set of characteristics that, considered appropriately, will inform a more effective treatment plan. Human Development Across the Life Span is a comprehensive guide to understanding all of your clients, and providing the type of counseling that facilitates more positive outcomes.

Part 1
Essential Concepts

Chapter 1
Human Development: Counseling the Ever-Changing Person in Context

Mark D. Stauffer and David Capuzzi

In reflecting on one's own life, readers may recognize many examples of physical, psychological, social, and cognitive development that are shared by nearly all. The facts of birth and death and constant change are central to the processes of human development. Without constant change, how could one develop? To develop, something must leave a current form and transition to a new one, even if the change is imperceptibly small. Ask yourself, how different from my present form was I at the time of my first explicit memory? Explicit memories are long-term recallable images and words from earlier periods in life. How have your physical body, mental capabilities, or identity changed since that time?

Both context and time are important to developmental change. If one examined deeply to find a way in which a person has developed without dependence on anything else, there would be no evidence. From a simplistic view we are reliant on air, water, and the many influencing physical systems of life. But if we are not isolated, meaning we are not in some type of developmental vacuum, then an individual is who he is because of the context he is embedded in. Because the world is different as a totality at each moment, each of us is also unique at each given time because of this embedded quality. For example, what changes do you notice in yourself and your context from 1 hour ago, 1 day ago, 1 month ago, 1 year ago? The greater gap between two comparative times makes it easier to recognize the differences accumulated by change, the differences that have cascaded from one time of life to another.

Each time period of a person's life is unique, and, at the same time, one can notice commonalities shared with other time periods. As this chapter will also explore, some changes are unique and personal, whereas others are shared as a result of sociocultural, historical, hereditary, and environmental influences. There are also certain qualities or characteristics about development itself as a change process. This chapter will explore how development is continuous, discontinuous, multidimensional, multidirectional, and plastic. In addition to examining growth, maturation, and learning as critical developmental processes, this chapter will examine key points for how counselors can approach human development across the lifespan.

Orientation Toward the Study of Human Development for Counselors

As a convenient definition, human development is the physical, cognitive, emotional, and social changes that occur in a person's life. Readers should note three important ways that human development occurs. First, what aspects of development are universal in nature? Another way to word this question is what aspects of human development can be generalized across humanity with some level of accuracy and consistency? Counselors must understand universal aspects of development. Because of the high similarity of genetic makeup between humans and other species, some of those universal aspects can be understood as part of the web of life.

Second, at a more differentiated level than the universal level, counselors must examine what elements vary by culture, race, and ethnicity. Do people in Papua New Guinea vary from one another because of difference in ethnicity (i.e., there are many variations in culture in Papua New Guinea)? How might they vary from those in Chile across the Pacific Ocean? Because humans are highly social and place a lot of awareness and attention on social cues and conditions, the assumption might be that there is a great difference between cultures. However this may seem, modern research efforts, such as the Human Genome Project from 1990 to 2003, have suggested that cultural differences, though important in making us unique, represent fractional differences between groups (Chial, 2008). “Chimpanzees and humans share 99.0% of the same genes, and humans share 99.9% of the same genes with each other” (Berninger, 2015, p. 173).

Genetic variation demonstrates fractional differences between different world ethnic groups. “Modern humans (Homo sapiens) are a recently appearing and homogenous species regardless of ancestral geographic origins. Admixture, even among and between highly isolated populations, has resulted in widespread, worldwide distribution of genes and thus human variation” (American Anthropological Society, 1997, p. 1). There are just as great, if not greater, differences within as between groups; for example, there is greater genetic variation found within all women than between men and women. Furthermore, “the proportion of human genetic variation due to differences between populations is modest, and individuals from different populations can be genetically more similar than individuals from the same population” (Witherspoon et al., 2007, p. 352).

Third, counselors must understand development that is unique and personal to the individual. As this chapter will examine, development of the individual is marked by nonnormative influences. The way that each person traverses through life creates a unique footprint. The following box better illustrates the connection between what is person specific, what is cultural, and what is universal.

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Box 1.1: The Hand as an Illustration of Development

The hand provides an illustration of the different levels of development. The hand is universal. Universal does not mean that all people have hands, however; it is our genetic inheritance. Looking at various hands, one can see different sizes as a result of genetic variation and stages of growth (e.g., the size of an infant's hands compared with an adult's) and different skin pigmentations reflecting diversity of genetics. Some hands will reveal sociocultural variation because of wedding bands, decorative nails, or jewelry, suggesting some type of status. The hand has nonnormative features, such as scars, which signify the wear and tear from hard work. Fingers and fingertips are universally part of the hand, but each fingerprint is unique to the person. Finally, you get to determine what to do with those hands.

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At its most basic level, the study of human development across the lifespan must first help the practitioner more accurately describe human development. In addition to being able to take inventory and name phenomena through description, it is important for a counselor to consider the context of human development. Part of being able to explain human development, or why X phenomena happen, is to explain human development from a systemic perspective. Counselors need to be able to move beyond Cartesian or linear understandings of development to systemic understanding of human development. As the field gains greater understanding of human development in general, and as the counselor works with a client and gains an understanding of the client as embedded in a context, the clinician can help modify development trajectories and improve subjective and objective outcomes through various modalities of learning. Counselors can also help clients adapt and transition through the ever-changing landscape of life. For example, a client at any age will process grief and loss due to the death of a close person, but the counselor will understand how development has impacted cognitive and behavioral understandings and responses to grief and loss. Finally, as a profession, our study of human development includes research to help better predict human development.

Conceptualizing Human Development

This chapter covers some of the fundamental concepts about human development and describes key themes about the nature of human development. Many of the concepts for deliberation show up in how clients come to examine their own problems and life experiences. Some of the concepts will promote the integration of theoretical concepts discussed later in the text.

Continuity Versus Discontinuity

The continuity or discontinuity of development has been a longstanding field debate. Continuity refers to successive lifespan development, where development in childhood and adolescence are formative and relate to outcomes in later life (Schulenberg & Zarrett, 2006, p. 150). Consider how the forming of bones, healthy parental attachment, or progression from gross to fine motor skills early in life emergee in a relatively predictable trajectory toward long-term skeletal strength, a host of biopsychosocial benefits from stable attachments, and better coordination in adulthood. Theorists who focus on continuity in child development point to research focused on the impact of early environmental enrichment with later life outcomes.

Discontinuity refers to significant shifts in development. Early developmental scientists suggested that development was discontinuous because sudden shifts in development would vault an individual out of a period of relative stability, such as at puberty. From this perspective, some shifts might come in noticeable stages that one may or may not mature through—for example, the stages re...