Homework Option #7
Human Development

Assignment requirements: Complete any one of the following activities in as much detail as possible using specific examples and definitions. Be sure to justify your responses with information from class or from the text. Please be sure your answer is no less than 1 full page and no more than 2 full pages of type-written text. If you choose to complete this assignment it must be emailed to me before the beginning of class on April 14th.

1. Read the Society for Neuroscience Brain Briefing entitled: Neuron Migration and Brain Disorders to understand how the brain is intially formed and how this delicate process can be altered. Be sure to summarize the article but also to discuss what you thought was most interesting or applicable to your life.

2. Read the Society for Neuroscience Brain Briefing entitled: Parental Care and the Brain to understand how the brain responds to different types of parental care and attachment. Be sure to summarize the article but also to discuss what you thought was most interesting or applicable to your life.

3. What stage of Erikson's theory of development do you think you are currently in? How do you see characteristics of this stage in your day-to-day existence, the choices you make, the people you spend time with? When do you foresee yourself moving to the next stage? What environmental influences might speed up or slow that process?

4. Read the following article Social Whirl May Help Keep the Mind Dancing, from the New York TImes by Eric Nagourney. This article discusses the impact of social activities on cognitive funciton in old age. Discuss how these issues of keeping your mind young impact your life, or you could make them impact your life in the future. Think about a few elderly people that you know, possibly grandparents, and discuss how their life activities and cognitive function support or refute the article.

5. Interested in how temperment determined during the first 2 years of life can influence later relationships? Then read the article Shy Brains. Here is a short summary: Some of us would never go up and talk to strangers at a party, while others may prefer to work the room. As this ScienCentral News video reports, psychologists could see the signature of shyness imprinted in the brain, from toddlers to twenty-year-olds. Read the article and watch the video. Then using what you learned write a summary and relate the information to that covered in class, how it relates to you or your friend's personalities or simply what you found most interesting about it.