Unit 12 Physiological Principles for HSC Assignment Solution

Introduction

Psychology is a science. It is the study of mind and behaviour of an individual or entire human beings. It studies the cause behind the specific behaviour of a person. It helps in understanding the root cause of a problem, the psychological issues and the ailments, building understanding of the ailments and fighting them. Psychology is a very wide term and it involves various sub categories which further help in the understanding of the human behaviour, the patterns of the behaviour etc. Psychology involves the conscious and subconscious elements of an individual’s personality. Psychology is governed by various theories, some involve changes in personality that is gradual or follows a step by step process, some theories say it is a shoot-up i.e. sudden changes occur in the life span of an individual. Some theories say the behaviour is directly influenced by the factors affecting the environment of an individual.

Task 1

1.1 Compare the different theories of life span development

Life span development is the development of the body in regards to various aspects like physical, biological, social and mental. As a person grows and matures various changes in his life can be seen which are due to the development taking place in his body (both physically and mentally).Psychology is the study of the human behaviour, his attitude towards things, responses to situation and the changes in responses due to change in situations. A life span of a human being passes through various stages. It starts from fertilization and passing through the stage of embryo formation, from embryo to formation of fetes and then the birth of a child. The next stage of human life span is infancy which is a period of one year from birth (Brainerd & Reyna, 2015). Then the child enters the stage of childhood where he learns various activities and basic tasks. From the age of 11-13 he enters adolescence which lasts to 19 also known as teenage where the body undergoes changes like attaining puberty. After that a he enters adulthood where the body fully develops (Brainerd & Reyna, 2015). From 30 to later periods is the beginning of old age where skin starts to loosen up, wrinkles on the skin start to develop and sagging of skin takes place.
The life span of an individual can be further seen as:-
Fertilization – The male body produces sperms and the female body eggs. Fertilization is a process where the egg is fertilized by the sperm to produce an embryo.
Embryo – The embryo is formed after the egg gets fertilized and remains in the womb.
Fetes – Then starts the development of the fetes. The embryo starts developing and gets converted into fetes. In this stage the vital organs of the fetes start forming.
Infancy – It is the one year period of the offspring from its birth (Moran, 2013). The infant then performs functions like recognising sounds, teething, toddling etc.
Childhood – The child then enters the stage of childhood, there he starts performing various functions and learning basic tasks like, eating, speaking, understanding and showing emotions and his brain starts developing with a great pace.
Adolescence – Adolescence is the period which can also be known as teenage. This period ranges from the age of 13 to 19. Puberty is reached by this age (Peterson, 2014). In this, various hormonal and physical changes in the body can be seen. Physical changes like, coarsening of voice, growth of hair on body, females experiencing commencement of their menstrual cycle.
Adult- Adulthood starts when a person is fully mature. All the organs in his body are fully formed and developed.
Old age - 30 years of age to later period of his life the ageing process starts. With the commencement of old age, the bones of a person start to become brittle, muscles become weak, skin start to sag, wrinkles develop on the body, vision and hearing problems pop up, Loss of memory can also be observed.
There are various stage theories in human development which predominantly accentuates the qualitative changes in the behaviour regarding changes in growth and stability at various stages of life (Peterson, 2014).

1. Continuity versus discontinuity theory
   The continuity theory believes that the changes in humans occur eventually and gradually as the time passes by. For instance, a child putting on a little weight year by year whereas the discontinuity theory states that a human undergoes a set of steps to bring about changes in the way of functioning completely (Peterson, 2014). For instance, when a boy enters adolescence his height shoots up at once, beard starts to grow up and variation in his voice can be observed
   i.e. voice becomes hoarse.
    
2. Stage versus open ended theory
   The stage theory says that each of the individual passes through same level and stage of maturity and development from the time he is born to death. The future of every individual depends on the path he chooses to move in life and his attitude towards life and his behavioural patterns and reactions and responses and thought forms in particular (Moran, 2013). In the entire life span a human faces a lot of challenges, learns from lessons. The eight stages included in this are Love, Care, Wisdom, Hope, Will, Purpose, Competence and Fidelity.
   Open-ended theories on the other hand works on the principle that each of the individual works differently due to different behaviours which may differ and vary greatly and are influenced by the psychological factors and physiological factors (Moran, 2013). For instance a child who has a good surrounding and caring parents will be a happier child and have positive reactions to things, on the other hand the child whose parents are divorced will have negative attitude towards relationships and might have trust issues also.

1.2 How the psychological theories relate to different life stages in health and social care.

• Behavioural theory – Behavioural theory is the study of changes in human behaviour and the reasons for it which are the external factors. It relates to stages in health and social care. When the factors around and individual changes, for instance if a child is ill treated by his parents, then it will directly impact his health aspects and his behaviour socially (Boyd & Bee, 2011). It will result in developing anger and frustration in the child and he becoming anti- social and health wise it will impact him as he would be stressed most of the times which will further result in the manifestation of various physical ailments in him.
• Cognitive theory – Cognitive theory is a branch of psychology to understand human behaviour by understanding and analysing thought processes. It revolves around how a person receives information, the way he stores it, then the ways and perspective with which the information is processed by the individual. For instance, two good friends haven't seen each other from a long period of time, one day one of the friend sees the other in the public, he says hi to him, but the other friend does not respond as he did not see his friend and also did not hear his voice, thus the
  first friend could think that his friend is angry with him and develop negative thoughts about his friend and distances may come in between them which was primarily due to the information absorbed by the first friend, his reaction to it and further processing in his own terms (Boyd & Bee, 2011).
• Psychodynamic theory – It is that branch of psychology which studies the unconscious desires and the beliefs of a person. It deals with the mind or the psyche. The part of the psyche is the Id, ego and superego. It is concerned with the wishes and fears which even one is not aware of. It is greatly affected by the childhood experiences of a person (Berk, 2010). For instance, a girl who was harassed by a close relative in childhood, unconsciously develop negative feelings and hatred and fear of confronting relatives even when she grows up.
• Humanistic theory – It stresses the good in human behaviour. Humanistic theory helps in building the image or good self image, improving the personality, and self realization. Various approaches to humanistic therapy can be, realizing one’s talent and acting upon it to build career or achieve goals, opting for family therapy to analyse problems within the family, talking about the relationship issues and working towards improving them, other aspect could be analysing the problem areas and finding measures to rectify it and work towards the betterment (Berk, 2010). It helps in making the life better thus improves the quality of life.

Task 2

2.1Explain social and biological factors that influence human behaviour.

Human behaviour is a series of physical actions and the emotions and responses of an individual or the entire clan of human beings. Changes in a human’s behaviour could be consistent or may vary due to changes in the external factors and also emotions in him.
Various factors could be the cause of human behaviour. These factors can be classified as social and biological factors.
Social factors affect the lifestyle of a person. Some of the social factors could be:-

• Religion – Humans react differently when with individuals of different religions. People react differential behaviours many times which could be due to religion. For instance Mohammadens are treated differently in UK and are looked down upon by the Britisher's (Dillard, 2016).
• Education – Education plays a major role in determining the type of behaviour an individual receives or gives to another individual. For instance, an IAS officer will be given special importance in a government office rather than a layman.
• Political parties – Political parties impact behaviour received or given to individuals or mass. For instance, supporters of a political party would be always in favour of it and have happy thoughts about it rather than those in the opposition who would always have negative views about it.
• Location – Location judges the behaviour of an individual. For instance, hospitality given by North Indians is quite warm than those from other parts of India (Dillard, 2016).
• Physical status – Physical status determines the attitude of other people. For instance, when a person is financially stable and rich he will receive more respect and importance from other people and peers.
• Life partners – Life partners behave differently when with each other. A wife gives more importance to her husband rather than any other person.
• Children – Many a times children of same parents are behaved differently by them. It can be seen that mother of three children loves all the three children of hers but has special inclination towards the third child of hers (James, 2010).
• Cultural factors – Culture has a great impact on the behavioural patterns of an individual. Every individual consciously or unconsciously adopts attributes of his culture and behaves accordingly.
• Physical factors – These include the body colour, physique and structure of the body.

Biological factors are the factors that impact the human behaviour in study of psychological behaviour of an individual, such as mental illness. Some of the biological factors are:-

• Genetics – Genes are the heredity elements that are passed on to the offspring from the parent and can be used to determine the characteristics of the produced offspring. Genes are responsible to a great extent in the illness of a person (James, 2010). Many diseases in an individual are passed on to him from his parents.
• Neurological factors – Neurological factors could be problem with the brain or deformity in the brain or nerves or any of the organs not fully developed.

2.2Analyse the importance of social roles in the context of health and social care settings

The importance of social roles are discussed below such as: -

• Psychological health – Jemma’s psychological environment and elements affecting her health must be considered by the doctors as the child whose speech gets delayed is likely to suffer from mental illness when he attains maturity (Järvinen & Bellugi, 2013). Hence, her overall environment affecting her peace of mind and happiness must be looked into.
• Testing self esteem – Self esteem of Jemma must be looked into as it is quite likely that she might be undergoing problems of low self esteem or loss of self esteem due to inability to speak when all kids of her age have started speaking.
• Other diseases or ailments – Due to delay in speech it is quite likely that Jemma might be suffering from other problems like loss of sound or deafness or there could be problems with her hearing or she could be suffering from craniofacial malfunctions (Järvinen & Bellugi, 2013).
• Caregiver attitude – Jemma’s caretaker’s attitude must be taken into account. It should be seen that she not experiencing any molestation or harassment.
• Environment at school – It must be seen that Jemma is treated properly in school. Teachers and caretakers are not harsh on her and her childhood is protected.
• Self behaviour – The behaviour of Jemma must be taken into account. If she is aggressive or over aggressive at times or likes isolation and is anti social.
• Premature – It must be taken into account if Jemma is a premature child. As premature child might develop various ailments likes hearing loss or deformed organs (Viner, et. al., 2012).
• Infections – Jemma must be tested for all the possible infections in her body which can lead to problems in her speech.

Task 3A

3.1 Analyze the application of psychological theories to individuals experiencing elevated levels of stress.

Stress is scenario in the person life in which due to extreme tension and sufferance it may suffer this problem. Stress affects the individual in many aspects in his life like on behaviour, health as well as on wellbeing. Level of stress also affects the person in many ways and is also depended on the age of the person. Old age people who suffer stress causes a damage to their health on the long term basis and is also more affective to these people as compared to the people of the young age group. In this particular case study Pat is a young boy who is 8 years old and lives in the family in which his father is not the part and is also unable to concentrate on his studies that leads to the poor performance at school (Grimshaw, et. al., 2011). Apart from that he is also involved in the misbehaviour with the school teacher due to swear problem as extra involvement with the televisions and online games. There are various theories in relation to psychology that relates to the individual experiencing elevated level of stress such as stressors in childhood as well as in adolescence is due to various reasons like violence, abuse and divorce or the conflicts in martial manner. Those children who are connected with it are either introduce with the change in behaviour of provocation or excessive anger or suffers problems of intimacy with the people. Children with
the problems of sexual problems has the difficulty on trusting the people as well has problems of personality disorders along with the general distress. Apart from that these children who has undergone with sexual abuse suffer problems in studies and other activities that disturb the regular and normal growth of the child. Apart from that divorce of their parents also become a factor that affects the child’s life to the great extent. As these children suffer from the anxiety, depression and anti- social behaviour with their pupils and friends. As well as in various research it was also analyzed that these children are also suffered with loss of friendship as well as conflicts with the family. In relation to the case, Pat suffer the problems of anxiety along with the depression and anti-social behaviour which leads to the problems in studies as well as solving mathematical problems with it (Grimshaw, et. al., 2011). It also affects the behaviour with the other peoples.

3.2 Analyze how psychological theories relate to behaviour disturbances.

Behaviour of the individual is affected due to various reasons that affects its performance as well as the success of the individual in many aspects. Person behaviour depicts the nature of the individual that helps the person to involve itself in many social gathering as well as social groups. If the behaviour of the person is not satisfactory then there are chances that person may not be able to sustain in the society that ultimately affects its overall personality (Bonetti, et. al., 2010). Behaviour disturbances are described by various theorist one such description states that there are subjective distress as well as functional disability in the environment. Behaviour disturbances causes provocations of environment as well as intrinsic neurobiological aspects. As per the theory related with it psychologist prefer learning theory in relation to the behaviour of the human beings in all aspects. Depression has emerged as a basic issue in which a person suffer many psychological changes in its behaviour due to the disturbances associated with many factors.
According to (Bonetti, et. al., 2010), the person suffer stress due to the lack of the skills required by the persons as well as environment in which a person lives and perform all the activity. People will always prefer to adapt all those behaviours and system in its life that are reinforce on them by any means. On the other hand depressed individuals are those who are not happy with the reinforcements provided to them that leads to the problems of reinforcement. These people are the over analyzing person who self-criticize themselves multiple times that ultimately affects there working as well as excluding themselves from the gatherings which involves socialization. Apart from that some family members many times pity on the depressed person due to which it fell more
emotionally vulnerable that at last affects the person in many levels. In the modern era expectations, values, attitudes and many other aspects affects the people as they are the emotional matters that affects the internal aspects of the persons (Bonetti, et. al., 2010). In the case study, Pat is a young boy who has suffer emotional turmoil due to its parents maternal conflicts that has affected its behaviour and has also leads the boy to the early symptoms of the depression. At this young age there is scope that he can recover from this turmoil with proper love, care and support from all the close people associated with him.

Task 3B

3.3 analyse how psychological theories informs understanding of mental disorders.

Psychology helps in understanding the sync of the mind and the body i.e. as to  how the body and the mind work together. It helps in the analysis of mental disorder in a person.
Behavioural theory helps in understanding and determination of mental illness in a person.

• Aggression – Aggression in a person’s personality and when it becomes a primary emotion of a person is a clear indicator of some sort of stress (Rice, 2012). This stress could lead to some mental illness if aggravated.
• Isolation – If a person likes to be isolated and remain in his own shell, it could mean that he wants to cut himself from the society and prefers to be lonely. This increased loneliness can lead to piling up of his thoughts and internal building of a lot of stress which could manifest in a psychological ailment.
• Bad mood – If a person is found to be usually in a bad mood then there are chances he is in depression or might be suffering from some sort of mental illness (Rice, 2012).
• Lethargy and fatigue – When a person experiences fatigue and lethargy most often along with other symptoms then there are high chances that he might be suffering from some psychological ailment.
  Psychology helps in the understanding of various problems in day to day life regarding human behaviour and problems (Rice, 2012).

3.4 Application of psychological principles affecting behaviour change in health and social care setting.

• Stimulation -  When a person is stimulated, he becomes cautious, aware and alert, he is more productive.
• Socialization – Socialization is a very important aspect. It creates the sense of belonging. Belongingness can be known by hearing sounds of people, being surrounded by people and sitting close to people (Barkham, et. al., 2010).
• Identity – Identity is an aspect which is demanded by every individual. People want to be identified for their work and presence.
• Similarity – As it is said “birds of a feather flock together”. Hence leading to like attracting like, people with same choices and tastes bonding together.
• What’s beautiful must be good – It is a general belief that whatever has beauty must be good and of the best quality (Barkham, et. al., 2010).

3.5 analyse how psychological theories can enhance understanding of relationships in health and social care.

Psychological theories help understand the relationshipsand principles of health and social care.

• Attachment theory – Attachment is the bond that gets developed between the infant and the child. The attachment and its quality varies and keeps on changing with the passage of time as the child grows and matures depending upon the behaviour of the caregiver, his state of mind and the need of the child (Kislov, et. al., 2011). Thus attachment theory helps in understanding the bond the child has developed with the caregiver and his upbringing and the environment in which he was raised, therefore if proper care and attention is provided to a child during his infancy, adolescence and his teenage a lot of problems can be overruled.
• Psychosocial theory – It helps in a health promotion of a person. It comprises of eight aspects a person passes from childhood to adulthood. These are Hope, Will, Love, Wisdom, Care, Competence, Fidelity and Purpose. As a person ages he learns these aspects (Kislov, et. al., 2011). Psychosocial theory enables the positive building of the environment, building competitive environment, healthy competition, increasing the love and care aspect of an individual.
• Piaget’s Cognitive development theory – As per this theory, children build an understanding of their environment on the basis of what they see and observe, analyse the variation between what they believed and the actual thing and then adjust their beliefs, understanding and ideas accordingly (Kislov, et. al., 2011). This theory can help in understanding the mental level of a child, understanding his environment and finding measures to give up better upbringing.

Conclusion:

Psychology is useful in day to day life. It helps in understanding of an individual, his behavioural patterns and the environment and other social and psychological factors affecting him. Psychology when applied based on the theories help determine the pattern of behaviour, the stages of changes in the behaviour of an individual, why the changes are occurring and how the unwanted changes can be eliminated in a person. Id, ego and superego combine to form the part of a personality. Ego revolves between the wants, wishes and desires of the Id and superego. Superego has the resistance i.e. it can stop from doing what Id may want to do. Stress is the major cause of any of the psychological problems. It is due to stress that the psychological problems or mental illness develops. The behaviour of an individual depends entirely on the psychological aspects governing him, the changes in his environment and emotions. Thus many of the psychological ailments can be dealt with by developing an understanding of the psychological theories and its application in social and health care.

References

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