Name two developmental factors characteristic of preschool children, middle childhood, adolescents, and older adults

Answer 1

• Answers regarding developmental factors characteristic of preschool children could include enjoying a creative and fanciful cognitive world, beginning to think symbolically, learn by exploring the environment, and beginning to understand cause and effect.
• Answers regarding developmental factors characteristic of middle childhood could include major cognitive, social, and physical factors. They are eager to understand the world in which they live and are capable of thinking causally and theorizing why things happen. They are likely to accept adult viewpoints and have a desire for autonomy.
• Answers regarding developmental factors characteristic of adolescents could include physical, cognitive, and psychosocial changes. Three stages of development have been defined. Early adolescence is characterized by respect for adult authority, discomfort with the physical changes of puberty, lack of future time perspective, and concrete, or "black and white," reasoning skills. The next stage is characterized by recurrent challenges to family or parental authority and belief systems, reliance on peers for standards in appearance and behavior, increasing capacity for abstract reasoning, and experimentation in dating and sexual behavior. During the last stage of adolescence, there is greater confidence in their own internalized values and fewer challenges to adult authority, less reliance on peer standards, and increased capacity to solve complex life problems.
• Answers regarding developmental factors characteristic of older adults could include economic concerns, major health issues, and reduced physiological processes on a number of levels due to the aging process. Generally older adults desire to learn about health behaviors to improve health rather than to improve body image.