Maturation

Maturation is an autonomous process of somatic, psychological and mental differentiation and integration. The process is spread over stages concerning which there are no universally agreed precise boundary limits; new-born baby, baby, infant, child, juvenile or adolescent, young adult, mature adult, old adult. It is through the interaction and combination of the different phases of this process that the individual's growth is completed and consolidated, permitting him to adapt to life. Maturation is therefore a process of unfolding of the potential of the human organism, a ripening of the physical equipment coupled with a change in the organism's capacity to perform. There is considerable difficulty in ascribing distinct definitions to concepts such as growth, development, maturation and learning, since they are all closely intertwined. Distinction is usually made however between those changes that take place as a consequence of learning and those produced by growth and maturation.

In psychological usage, maturation describes that part of development that takes place in the absence of learning (including specific experience or practice), whether the process is viewed as a ripening of the individual's capacity or the growth of some neuroanatomical structure permitting a performance impossible before that time. In the first case the nervous system as a whole ripens in its capacity for the retention of experience and for intelligent adaptation to new situations. Similarly, certain intellectual capacities (talents for art, music, mathematics, etc) undergo this kind of maturation. In the second case, there is the unlearned ripening of motor coordinations and capacities such as creeping, walking, climbing and vocalization. Some psychologists hold that maturation involves much more than simple physical readiness and that development in such areas as language and the acquisition of syntax proceeds through predetermined, unlearned, emergent and developmental sequences.

Maturation contributes to the development of personality by bringing out every inherited feature, including physical structure, temperament, talent, capacity for intelligent modification of behaviour, peculiarities of physical growth and decay, latent sexual functions, and numerous specific locomotor and vocal patterns. Maturation presents the individual with new internal situations to which he must adjust but, except at a rudimentary motor level, it does not provide him with ready-made instruments with which to do so.

In education or training, and the management of the learning process, the idea of maturation has as its counterpart the notion of readiness to perform. This is seen as the point in time of human development when the presentation of adequate stimuli will result in a reasonable gain in capacity to perform In order to learn a new response, the child must be physically and neurologically mature enough to attend, discriminate, and respond to relevant cues in his environment.

The most usual assumption of educators is that maturation is primarily a genetic process which triggers off in due time a capacity of the child to profit from the educational experience. Maturation is therefore most often judged by the chronological age of the child.

The process of maturation and that of learning or education should blend harmoniously. Maturation which is too rapid or too slow can be the cause of disharmony in physical, mental and spiritual development as well as affecting the processes of social adaptation. On the other hand, periods of dependence and dysharmony may be favourable to psychophysical humanization, language acquisition and socialization.

Although physical maturity is being reached earlier than previously, emotional development or maturity is said to be reached more slowly than before. This is ascribed, at least in part, to the decrease both in the number of adults with whom a child or young person has contact, and in the time spent with those adults. It is suggested that higher education should take this factor into consideration.