Adaptation of the human body to environmental conditions

Adaptation is the adaptation of the body to the circumstances and conditions of the world. Adaptation of a person is carried out through his genetic, physiological, behavioral and personal characteristics. With adaptation, human behavior is regulated according to the parameters of the external environment.

The peculiarities of human adaptation lie in the fact that he must achieve simultaneous balance with environmental conditions, achieve harmony in the “man-environment” relationship, and adapt to other individuals who are also trying to adapt to the environment and its inhabitants.

Adaptation concept. There are two approaches to analyzing the phenomenon of adaptation. According to the first approach, adaptation is a property of a living self-regulating organism, which ensures the constancy of characteristics under the influence of environmental conditions, which is achieved by developed adaptive abilities.

According to the second approach, adaptation is a dynamic formation, the process of an individual getting used to environmental circumstances.

Since man is a biosocial system, the problem of adaptation should be analyzed according to three levels: physiological, psychological and social. All three levels have a connection with each other, influence each other, and establish an integral characteristic of the overall functioning of the body’s systems. Such an integral characteristic manifests itself as a dynamic formation and is defined as the functional state of the organism. Without the term “functional state” it is impossible to talk about the phenomenon of adaptation.

Adaptability in situations in which there are no barriers to success is achieved through constructive mechanisms. These mechanisms include cognitive processes, goal setting, and conformist behavior. When the situation is problematic and saturated with external and internal barriers, the adaptation process occurs through the defense mechanisms of the individual. Thanks to constructive mechanisms, a person can show an adequate response to changes in social life circumstances, taking advantage of the opportunity to assess the situation, analyze, synthesize and predict possible events.

The following mechanisms of human adaptation are distinguished: social intelligence - the ability to discern complex relationships, dependencies between objects of the social environment; social imagination - the ability to understand experience, mentally determine fate, realizing oneself now, one’s resources and capabilities, placing oneself within the framework of the current stage of society; realistic aspiration of consciousness.

Personality adaptation consists of a system of defense mechanisms, thanks to which anxiety is reduced, the unity of the “I-concept” and the stability of self-esteem are ensured, and the correspondence between ideas about the world and about the person himself in particular is maintained.

The following psychological defense mechanisms are distinguished: denial - ignoring unwanted information or traumatic episodes; regression – a person’s manifestation of infantile behavior strategies; formation of a reaction - changing irrational impulses, emotional states to the opposite; repression – “erasing” painful memories from memory and consciousness; suppression is almost the same repression, but more conscious.

The above-described basic protective mechanisms during personality adaptation are still additional, they are considered more mature: projection - attributing to someone qualities and actions that are inherent in the personality itself, but she is not aware of them; identification - identifying oneself with some real or imagined character, attributing to oneself his qualities; rationalization - the desire to explain an action, interpreting events in such a way as to reduce its traumatic impact on the individual; sublimation – transformation of instinctive energy into socially acceptable forms of behavior and activity; humor is the desire to reduce psychological stress by using humorous expressions or stories.

In psychology, there is the concept of an adaptation barrier; it means a kind of boundary in the parameters of the external environment, beyond which personal adaptation will no longer be adequate. The properties of the adaptation barrier are expressed individually. They are influenced by biological environmental factors, constitutional personality type, social factors, individual psychological factors of a person that determine the adaptive capabilities of the individual. Such personal properties are self-esteem, value system, volitional sphere and others.

The success of adaptation is determined by the full functioning of the physiological and mental level of the individual. These systems are located and function in interconnection. There is a component that ensures this relationship between the two levels and carries out the normal functioning of the individual. Such a component may have a dual structure: a mental and physiological element. This component in the regulation of human adaptation is emotions.

Features of modern adaptation

Studying at school, moving from one level to another and admission itself always requires special expenses from the child. But the situation of entering school deserves special consideration, especially since over the past few years it has acquired new features while maintaining established ones.

• Technological progress and the informatization of society, as well as the introduction of educational standards, complicate the adaptation process.
• Federal state educational standards require serious expenses (physical, moral, psychological) from first-graders. In addition to the usual educational knowledge, skills and abilities, the child needs to achieve subject, meta-subject and personal results, to correspond to the portrait of a primary school graduate.
• Overnight, the first grader finds himself in a new status and role, environment, system of responsibilities and rights. The child receives an endless stream of new information.

Adaptation to school is a kind of difficult life situation for the child and parents. At the same time, it is the primary adaptation to school that influences the entire further educational, professional and personal path of the individual.

Biological mechanisms of adaptive coloration

This coloration is formed due to random, useful for certain environmental conditions, mutations during the existence of the population.

The appearance of butterflies with wing colors that are very similar to the background of their habitat makes it possible to remain unnoticed, reproduce and transmit this trait to the genus.

Randomly occurring mutation processes ensure that creatures unable to sting are similar to poisonous species.

What is adaptation to school

The problem of school adaptation is at the intersection of a number of sciences (psychology, pedagogy, sociology, medicine). Speaking about school adaptation, we will consider it as a psychological and pedagogical phenomenon.

• The very concept of adaptation relates to biology and means the adaptation of an organism to changing environmental conditions. According to V.I. Dolgova’s definition, adaptation is the process and result of internal changes, external active adaptation and self-change of the individual to new conditions of existence.
• For a person, this is a process of assimilation of norms and values, changing conditions, responsibilities and requirements.

School adaptation is the process of a child’s acceptance and assimilation of the social situation of schooling, his new status (school student) and new systems of interaction (“child – teacher”, “child – peer”); developing new means of behavior.

From a psychological point of view, school adaptation can be characterized by 4 specific criteria:

• The child’s mastery of a new social situation in the unity of its components.
• Acceptance of a new social position and status, reflected in the internal position of the student.
• Mastering new forms and means of social interaction in the emerging systems “student - teacher”, “student - student”.
• Differentiation of the “child – adult” relationship, purposeful restructuring of the child’s entire lifestyle (the initiator and manager is the adult).

The period of adaptation to school can last from 2-3 months to a year. Therefore, the first class is considered the most difficult and important.

Structure and types of adaptation

Adaptation to school is a systemic process. It is divided into social, physiological and psychological adaptation, each of which goes through:

• orientation phase (2-3 weeks);
• unstable adaptation (2-3 weeks);
• relatively stable adaptation (from 5-6 weeks to a year).

In the first phase, all systems of the body are tensed, in the second – the body is looking for optimal solutions, in the third – the tension subsides, the body’s systems return to normal, and stable forms of behavior are developed.

Social adaptation

Requires the ability to:

• listen;
• respond to the teacher;
• complete tasks independently;
• organize and analyze their implementation.

At the same time, it is important to be able to establish contacts with peers and adequately evaluate oneself and others.

Physiological adaptation

It assumes that the body is tense due to heavy loads. Regardless of what kind of activity a child is engaged in at school, his body works to the limit. This is dangerous due to overwork.

Psychological adaptation

Depends on the child's readiness for school. Assumes:

• desire to learn and complete tasks;
• the desire for their successful implementation and understanding.

A developed ability to remember and process information is important. You can read more about this element in the article “Is the child ready for school: ways to check, recommendations for parents.”

Impact of adaptation

From the above it follows that school adaptation affects the entire body and personality as a whole. We can distinguish 3 main areas and characteristic changes in them during dysfunctional adaptation:

1. Mental (cognitive component). When problems arise, internal tension (anxiety) and stress arise.
2. Psychophysiological (emotional component). When problems occur, emotional maladjustment and physical manifestations of stress occur.
3. Psychosocial (behavioral component). In case of problems, it is noted that it is impossible to form new communication connections.

This can be tracked (table below).

Criteria and indicators of a child’s adaptation to school (according to V.V. Gagai)

Signs of successful adaptation to school

1. The child’s satisfaction with the learning process, mastery of learning skills.
2. Independent organization of educational activities and homework; appropriate behavior.
3. Satisfaction with relationships with teachers and classmates; established contact.

Bottom line

A person is always forced to adapt at different levels of his life. First, a person adapts physiologically, getting used to control of his body, then to the surrounding nature. Social adaptation begins at the moment when parents begin raising a child. At the same time, psychological adaptation occurs when a person develops character traits that will help him feel harmonious in existing conditions.

Adaptation does not always imply exclusively effective and successful, acceptable behavior. You can adapt by developing an illness or bad behavior, which also helps you achieve your goals more quickly under existing conditions.

Levels of adaptation

A. L. Wenger identified 3 levels of school adaptation (low, medium, high) and the following components of school adaptation: attitude towards school, interest in educational activities, behavior, position in the class (see table below).

Levels of school adaptation (A. L. Wenger)

From the table it can be stated that a low level indicates the student’s maladjustment, a medium level indicates mild manifestations of maladjustment and risks, a high level indicates the successful adaptation of a first-grader.

Training: what is it like?

A classic example of adaptation is learning through trial and error. It is common in both human society and animals. The object, when encountering an obstacle for the first time, tries to cope with it. Ineffective actions are discarded, and sooner or later the optimal solution is identified.

Forming a reaction is to some extent training. This adaptation involves a reward for an adequate response. The reward can be physical or emotional. Some psychologists are firmly convinced that children's adaptation is most effective in this way. As soon as the baby learns to pronounce sounds, those around him are delighted with his babble. This is especially pronounced in the mother, who thinks that the child is calling her.

Observation is another way of learning. Social human activity is largely organized in this way - the individual observes how those around them behave. By imitating them, a person learns. The peculiarity is that understanding the meaning of actions and their sequences is not assumed.

Adaptation Success Factors

The success of adaptation to school depends on a number of factors. External and internal factors of school adaptation are distinguished.

• External ones include relationships with the class, teacher and family.
• Internal ones include educational motivation, readiness for school, health and stress resistance of the child.

External and internal factors are interconnected. There is no consensus on what is secondary and determines the rest. This issue has not been fully studied. But many psychologists and teachers (S. N. Vereykina, G. F. Ushamirskaya, S. I. Samygin, T. S. Koposova, M. S. Golub, V. I. Dolgova) agree that the family is paramount. The child’s health (physical, psychological and mental), preparation for school, educational motivation and the ability to establish social contacts depend on the child-parent relationship.

Impact of climate

An important factor is temperature and its effect on the body. Population densities around the world vary depending on air temperature. Due to thermoregulation of the body, a person adapts to seasonal temperature changes. Therefore, the smaller the difference in seasonal temperature changes, the more favorable the living conditions and the population growth.

Solar activity affects a person’s performance and health; orientation in space also depends on sunlight and increases brain activity. Due to a lack of vitamin D, diseases such as rickets develop.

Adaptive types of humans in different climatic zones differ in skin color and muscles.

Atmospheric pressure also affects physiological parameters. In the north of Eurasia, Canada, and Alaska there is a cold zone. The growing season lasts no more than two months. Low temperatures prevent active farming.

In the latitudes of Eurasia there is a cool zone, as well as in the north and south of America, in the Andes. The warm regions of this belt are distinguished by the development of agriculture.

On the territory of Europe there is a temperate zone, not including the southern islands, the Russian Plain, Kazakhstan, Southern Siberia and the East, Mongolia, Tibet, Northeast China, the southern part of Canada, and the northern regions of the USA.

The warm zone occupies the Eurasian Mediterranean, southern China, most of the USA and Mexico, Chile and Argentina, southern Africa and Australia.

The hot-type belt occupies the predominant area of ​​Africa, South America, South Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and Central America. Also, agroclimatic zoning of the world is carried out depending on the degree of moisture.

The role of family in adaptation

V.I. Dolgova calls the child-parent relationship the main factor in a child’s adaptation. The author, in her study to identify the influence of family education style on school adaptation, relied on 2 indicators of adaptation success: anxiety and educational motivation. The results of the study showed the following:

• in families with the “symbiosis” type, children experience increased anxiety;
• high parental control contributes to a decrease in the child’s educational motivation;
• The “cooperation” style and the ability of parents to accept the child’s failures contribute to the reduction of anxiety.

The best position (style) in the family when adapting a first-grader is recognizing the child as an active subject of family relations; adequate control in the form of emotional acceptance of the child and voluminous, clear, feasible, consistent requirements.

Children from such families adapt well to school. They:

• active (socially, physically and communicatively);
• are proactive;
• independent;
• empathic and friendly.

However, what really prevails in most families is the subject-object attitude of parents towards the child. This causes problems with the child’s adaptation and socialization.

Classification, types and types

What types of adaptation are there? If we consider adaptation at the natural level, we can distinguish three main categories:

• biological (the process of adaptation within the framework of evolution),
• physical (the process of adaptation of a particular organism to changes in the external environment through regulation of the functioning of organs),
• psychological (the process of changing the depth of psychological involvement in certain social processes).

Psychological adaptation extends to areas:

1. social,
2. socio-psychological,
3. professional,
4. environmental.

Types of adaptation based on sensory characteristics:

1. Positive . Increasing the sensitivity of analyzers as a response to a weak stimulus signal.
2. Negative . Reduced sensitivity of analyzers and dulling of sensations as a response to intense and prolonged action of the stimulus.

Afterword

School adaptation is a crisis situation, since the child finds himself in new conditions without the appropriate “tools” and experience of similar situations. Studying in the first grade coincides with the 7-year crisis. This makes the adaptation process even more difficult. The period of school adaptation can be called a contradictory period of transformation of a preschooler into a schoolchild.

If the child is ready for school and has the support of the family and teacher, school adaptation can take place in 2-3 months. Otherwise, the process may last for a year and be accompanied by problems or result in maladaptation (the child’s inability to psychologically and physically accept a new way of life).

The democratic style of education has a beneficial effect on the development of the child and his adaptation to any conditions. Child-parent relationships in which each family member acts as an active subject, is interested in the affairs of others, supports, is involved in everything that happens and expects the same from others.

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The concept of adaptation (from the Latin word adapto-adapt) arose in biology and is considered in it as the adaptation of the structures and functions of the body, its organs and cells to environmental conditions. Social adaptation is considered as an individual’s adaptation to the conditions of the social environment; it is one of the main socio-psychological mechanisms of personality socialization, which includes the individual’s acceptance of a social role.

Social adaptation includes:

1. adequate perception of the surrounding reality and oneself;
2. successful communication and adequate relationships with others;
3. ability to work, study and organize leisure and recreation;
4. ability for self-service and self-organization;
5. variability of behavior in accordance with role expectations.

The importance of social adaptation increases in conditions of a radical change in a person’s activity and social environment. For students in first, fifth, and tenth grades, their social environment (new class composition and/or teachers) and system of activity (content of the new level of education) changes. The situation of novelty is always alarming to one degree or another for a person. In such conditions, the child experiences emotional discomfort due to the uncertainty of ideas about the requirements of teachers, the characteristics and conditions of education, the values ​​and norms of behavior in the class team, etc. This state is often accompanied by internal tension, which sometimes makes it difficult to make both intellectual and personal decisions . Sufficiently long-term mental stress can result in school maladaptation and the child then becomes undisciplined, inattentive, irresponsible, lags behind in studies, gets tired quickly and no longer wants to go to school. Somatically weakened children (and their number is increasing) are the most susceptible to maladjustment.

Of course, a child’s adequate perception of his school environment and successful establishment of relationships with classmates and new teachers are very difficult if he has a high level of personal and school anxiety. Thus, the learning process itself becomes more complicated, and productive work in the classroom becomes problematic. Even a potential excellent student can turn into a struggling student.

The process of adaptation of students becomes no less important for teachers who, knowing little about their students, may make mistakes in assessing their capabilities, successful individualization and differentiation of learning. Therefore, teachers need to timely adjust their own pedagogical position regarding the class and individual students.

InterpretationTranslation LEVEL OF ADAPTATION Neutral position in the sensory continuum; in special usage: the level to which the sense organ has adapted. Based on this concept, Harry Helson developed a whole theory of sensory-contextual influences. This theory states that neutral stimuli to which the subject has already adapted provide the background against which new stimuli are perceived. Thus, for example, cool water may feel warm if the subject has previously adapted to fairly cold water. Although the theory was developed in relation to sensory processes, it has been widely used in areas far from the sensory continuum, especially in the study of attitudes and changes in attitudes.

Explanatory dictionary of psychology. 2013.

Other books on request “ADAPTATION LEVEL” >>Sources used:

• https://studwood.ru/675093/psihologiya/urovni_vidy_protsessa_adaptatsii
• https://psychologist.tips/849-psihologicheskie-osobennosti-adaptatsii-rebenka-k-shkole-vidy-i-urovni-adaptatsii.html
• https://studopedia.ru/9_221824_ponyatie-i-osobennosti-adaptatsii.html
• https://psychology_dictionary.academic.ru/8614/adaptation_level

Relative nature of fitness

Signs are determined by specific environmental conditions. So, on land, fish are not capable of breathing, since there is no oxygen supply to the gills. The green color of insects serves as salvation from birds and animals only when they are on the green parts of the plant.

The underdeveloped legs and elongated wings of the swallow, although they greatly help it in flight, will be a significant disadvantage when the bird moves on the ground.

Adaptations that protect against one species cannot protect against another.

For example, the shell of a steppe tortoise saves it from many predators, but will not protect it from some birds of prey that drop the animal from any height. A hedgehog's spines will not be able to save it from predators if they throw it into the water. Poisonous snakes are defenseless against mongooses.

The ptarmigan, which is difficult to spot on the white snow, will help reveal the shadow. Organisms with new traits operating in a specific time period can easily die if they go out of range. Only individuals that have adapted to the changed environment through natural selection continue to live.

Let's summarize

Onboarding should not be viewed as a process of learning a new job. It involves immersing an employee in a new environment, understanding the rules of behavior, interacting in a team, accepting corporate norms, and establishing relationships with colleagues and partners.

The adaptation process is mutual: the organization evaluates the employee, and the employee evaluates the organization. A lot of time is spent searching for a suitable specialist, especially a highly qualified one, so every employer is interested in ensuring that the employee starts working with maximum efficiency and benefit as quickly as possible.

Adaptation of new employees can go in different ways: somewhere a newcomer is thrown into the thick of things, hoping that he will figure it out on his own; somewhere they are treated with care so that the stress experienced by the employee is minimal.

It is important to understand that the duration of adaptation does not coincide with the duration of the probationary period; it can take up to four months or more. A developed adaptation plan, the assignment of a mentor, and a system of training and corporate education will help speed it up.

...And practice

It so happens that in our country adaptation is often equated to a probationary period, but in fact these concepts are different. Adaptation for an employee lasts 1-6 months. The probationary period is a quarter of a year. An adaptation period is necessary for any person, but a test for employment is not always necessary.

During the test, special attention is paid to the professionalism of the employee and his ability to fulfill obligations. Adaptation consists of two components: professionalization and inclusion in the microsociety.

Although adaptation and probation are not identical concepts, they cannot be called incompatible either. If, during employment, the contract stipulates the need for a probationary period, testing and adaptation overlap each other.

Coming to a new workplace, a person tries to enter into internal relationships characteristic of the company. At the same time, he has to take different positions, which have characteristic rules of behavior. A new employee is a colleague, a subordinate, for some, perhaps a leader, as well as a participant in a public formation. It is necessary to be able to behave as required by a specific position. At the same time, the new employee must follow his own goals and take into account the admissibility of this or that behavior from the point of view of personal priorities. We can talk about the relationship between adaptation, working conditions, and motivation.