I am taking a high school psychology class and we are studying human development. I need to come up with a visual aide for a project on social development. I am specifically looking for some kind of graph showing the stages of social development and I am having a lot of trouble locating one on the internet. Is it possible for you to send me a graph or even a web-site where I can find this? If you would I would be very grateful. Sincerly, Kami

-- Kami Klingler (soft_pink_devil@yahoo.com), May 07, 2001

Answers

Hi Kami, I don't know of a graph you can down load for your class project, but if you can't find one, it would be easy enough to make one. One way to look at the stages of social development is as ever expanding larger and larger circles of friends and envolvement with organizations. So you begin by finding a picture of a baby and mother, then you find a picture of an older toddler with mother and father and brother or sister. Next find a picture of a child sitting at a table with extended family. Then find a picture of a child sitting in a classroom. Then find a picture of a young person fulfilling somekind of job, something with responsiblity. You can extend this theme of larger circles of social envolvement along the lines of skills too. For instance you can show a picture of someone feeding a baby, then a child feeding him/herself. Writing with crayons and then writing with a pen, get the idea. Then you can scan all of the above in to your power point or photoshop, put lables on them, and you have your psychological developmental chart. And with a digital cam, you can put your friends in it as the finished product of a long chain of development from a baby dependent upon mother up through ever increasing levels of self care and communication skills to the fully evolved social animals you hang out with now. You won't find a "set" of stages agreed upon by all psychologists, so depending upon your teacher's point of view you can rely on your common sense, or I'm sure your text book will provide some suggestions as to what defines a "stage" of development. If you are near a college library, your best bet is asking the reference librarian if they could help you find a developmental psychology textbook for teachers; often teachers have the best developmental texts, so specify for a developmental text for education. There will be graphs and illustrations in there, but it may not be worth the additional effort. Good luck, David

-- david clark (doclark@yorku.ca), May 08, 2001.