Human Growth and Development / Unit 18 HGD 2560 review, 2 to 3 minutes

Stages Against Evidence

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The idea

Across the course, stage theories met the same test. Unit one defined them, entry 0010, as bursts of change between stretches of stability. Piaget's stages held up in sequence but not in timing: children show concrete operations before seven, entry 0917, and formal operations are not universal, entry 1243. Arnett's emerging adulthood, entry 1508, describes a period many young people in affluent societies pass through, not a universal stage. The adult stage theories of Vaillant and Levinson drew largely on men, small samples and single cohorts, entry 1661, and the midlife crisis is not typical: fewer than a quarter of Midlife in the United States respondents reported one, entry 1961. At life's end, Kübler-Ross's five themes, entry 2437, were never tested as a sequence before the Yale study, and the dual-process model, entry 2440, replaced stages with oscillation between loss and restoration.

In practice

Four stage claims on one page, Piaget's ages, emerging adulthood, the midlife crisis, and five stages of grief, each set beside the evidence that qualified it.

Where people slip

The misconception to avoid is either extreme: that stages are fixed timetables, or that they are useless. The course's recurring finding is that stage theories describe typical sequences and common tasks, which is why exam items still name them, while real development is more continuous, more variable and more shaped by culture and cohort than the stages imply. The question entry 0009 raised, continuous or discontinuous, has no single answer: the same change can show both patterns. For the exam, know each stage theory's claims and its main criticism, and recognize that the criticisms concern timing, universality and sequence rather than the value of the descriptions.

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