Human adaptation to climatic conditions and the environment

The ability to adapt to the conditions of the natural environment is called adaptation. It is a complex social and biological process. Dramatic changes occur in the functionality and systems of the human body. In some cases, it is necessary to change behavior and habits. Finding himself in new circumstances, a person adapts and adapts to the changed environment. Adaptation can occur at the molecular or biocentric level. The ability to adapt is influenced by various factors. Depending on the complexity of natural conditions, the period of adaptation of the organism changes.

Human adaptation to the environment: what relates to natural conditions

Each country has certain natural conditions. The African continent is fundamentally different from European countries. Asia is the complete opposite of the countries of South or North America. Existing natural conditions include:

• Features of the geographical location;
• Climatic conditions;
• The nature of inland waters;
• Type of soil and terrain;
• Vegetation;
• Representatives of the animal world.

The body undergoes two-way adaptation. He adapts to the environment on his own, while at the same time trying to make new conditions comfortable for his body. A person arranges a home, studies the population, and selects a suitable product. He can build a house that is familiar to him or purchase transport to move around a new area.

The process of adaptation of the body to weather and climatic conditions in a new area is called acclimatization. The main difference between acclimatization and adaptation is the absence of genetically fixed new properties in the body. This is a temporary process that occurs in the body forcibly and does not leave its mark on later life. After returning from a country where the weather conditions differed from the natural conditions at home, the acquired skills are gradually forgotten. The next time you travel to another continent, you will go through the acclimatization process again.

The essence of the concept of “adaptation”

Adaptation of a person to certain conditions cannot be carried out in isolation from the external environment, which influences the person and determines the conditions for the implementation of his activities.
Very often this impact is negative. The human body can function under very limited conditions. For example, when body temperature rises by just one degree, a person begins to feel uncomfortable. With an increase of 5-6 degrees, irreversible processes may begin. The human body can function normally only under such environmental parameters that have an insignificant range of changes in characteristics.

The factors that determine human survival, on the one hand, are associated with the body’s ability to regulate the parameters of the internal environment, and on the other hand, are associated with the ability of a person to indirectly reflect the surrounding reality. This ability exists thanks to the nervous system and psyche, which determine the possibility of survival of a person as a species and ensure the process of its adaptation.

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Note 1

Adaptation in the “person-environment” system helps to achieve optimal functioning and balance of all body systems.

The problem of the functioning of a living organism as an integral system was one of the first to study by the French physiologist C. Bernard. He suggested that the condition for the existence of any living organism is the ability to constantly maintain favorable parameters of the internal environment. This can happen because all systems and processes occurring in the body are in an equilibrium state.

The body lives and acts as long as balance is maintained and, according to C. Bernard, this is a condition for free life. This idea of ​​Bernard was later supported and developed by the American physiologist W. Cannon and was called homeostasis by him.

The modern idea of ​​adaptation is based on the works of domestic scientists I.P. Pavlova, I.M. Sechenova, P.K. Anokhin and others. Of the variety of definitions of the phenomenon of adaptation, several of the most common can be named. The concept of the term “adaptation” is defined as follows:

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• Adaptation is a property of an organism;
• Adaptation is the process of adapting to changing environmental conditions. The essence of the process is that at the same time a balance is achieved between the environment and the organism;
• Adaptation is the result of interaction in the “person-environment” system;
• Adaptation is the goal that the body strives for.

Figure 1. Adaptation and its types. Author24 - online exchange of student work

What are complex natural conditions: human adaptation to climatic conditions

Difficult weather conditions are those that differ sharply from the standard climate. Let's look at a few examples:

1. Southern countries with a hot climate. Body temperature turns out to be lower than air temperature. This condition is difficult for an unaccustomed body to tolerate. Heat transfer is complicated, metabolism changes, breathing and blood circulation are disrupted. The person becomes apathetic and feels constant fatigue. The higher the humidity in the air, the faster the body adapts. An unaccustomed person goes through the longest period of adaptation when he finds himself in a tropical forest area. There is no wind, high levels of humidity and heat can trigger heat cramps, exhaustion, and stroke. Water and salt regimes, suitable clothing, and room cooling help speed up adaptation.
2. Mountain climate. The natural type of climate is characterized by a number of features. Low atmospheric pressure and temperature, intense solar radiation, high level of ionization. The mountain air is filled with oxygen. Hemoglobin increases in the body, the hematopoietic system is irritated, and the minute volume of the heart muscle increases. Hyperventilation occurs. Possible development of altitude sickness. It is extremely difficult for older people to endure the difficult natural conditions of a mountain climate. It will take at least a week to adapt.
3. Subarctic and arctic climate. The development of light starvation, magnetic disturbance, and magnetic storms may predominate here. From a medical point of view, these natural conditions are the most difficult. It can take more than one year for a healthy body to fully acclimatize.

Adaptation as a social phenomenon

Social adaptation is not only a state of the individual, but also a process in which a social organism acquires balance and resistance to the influence and influence of the social environment. Social adaptation becomes especially relevant at critical stages of a person’s life and during periods of radical economic and social reforms.

Social adaptation is understood as the process of a person’s active adaptation to new social conditions of life. In the process of adaptation, a person acts as an object of influence from the social environment and as an active subject aware of the influence of this environment.

The adaptation process represents a wide polyphony of assimilation of social values ​​through socialization mechanisms. Man, as an active subject, studies and uses in his life the products of human civilization, which include managerial, economic, psychological, educational technologies and methods of developing social space. In fact, all elements of human culture are involved in the formation of personality through the mechanism of adaptation, which is an integral part and a necessary dominant of social development. Sociality is an important aspect of a person, his qualitative characteristic. The only exceptions are mentally ill people or those who have not gone through the stages of socialization since childhood (“Mowgli effect “1”).

The immediate impetus for the beginning of the process of social adaptation is usually the realization by a person or a social group that the behavioral stereotypes learned in previous social activities no longer ensure success and that it becomes important to rebuild behavior in accordance with the requirements of new social conditions or a new social environment for the adapting person .

As a rule, there are four stages of a person’s adaptation to a new social environment: 1) The initial stage, when an individual or group realizes how they should behave in a new social environment, but are not yet ready to recognize and accept the value system of the new environment and tend to adhere to the previous system values; 2) The stage of tolerance, when the individual or group and the new environment are mutually tolerant of each other’s value systems and behavioral patterns; 3) Accommodation, i.e. recognition and acceptance by the individual of the basic elements of the value system of the new environment, with simultaneous recognition by the new social environment of part of the values ​​of the individual, group 4) Assimilation, i.e. full coordination of the value systems of the individual, group and environment.

The intensity of adaptation processes in society largely depends on the stage of its development. In times of serious social changes, and even more so in times of social catastrophes, adaptation processes acquire particular intensity and affect almost all layers of society. The example of post-Soviet society clearly shows that almost every person must solve the problem of adapting to new social conditions, defining and recognizing a new position in society, and this process is not always equally successful. In addition, it should be noted that with the acceleration of social development, the intensity of adaptation processes in society as a whole increases. This leads to the fact that the processes of social adaptation become almost continuous in an evolutionarily developing society, and the ability to adapt to changes becomes vital not only for young people, but also for older generations. Readiness for change becomes one of the main conditions for a person’s success in life. As a result, the role of purposeful activities of state and public organizations, the role of education and applied science in the implementation of social adaptation processes in modern society is significantly increasing. Society, through a system of institutions and targeted programs, pays special attention to facilitating the processes of social adaptation of its members, whose ability to independently adapt to changes is limited. Thus, in many countries, programs for the social adaptation of disabled people, retired military personnel in the event of massive reductions in the army, migrants, released prisoners, etc. are being developed and implemented. Programs to promote the social adaptation of youth are no less important in a modern transitional society.

A distinction should be made between adaptation as a process and adaptability as a result of the process of social adaptation. There are subjective and objective adjustment criteria. Objective is the degree to which a person implements the norms and rules of life accepted in a particular social group. The subject is satisfaction with belonging to a certain social group, the conditions that are provided for the satisfaction and development of basic social needs.

Examples of human adaptation to climatic conditions

All people are dependent on climatic conditions. During life, the body gets used to a certain environment, so even in the hottest or frostiest countries, the population lives as usual. A few examples of how people adapt to harsh climates:

• Peoples living in countries with bright sunshine and hot climates are black or dark-skinned. Residents of cold regions have fair skin;
• Characteristic clothing helps protect the body from difficult weather conditions. Many of them become traditional - the national costume of the inhabitants of the north or the outfits of Africans;
• Flared nostrils in people with dark skin;
• Asian eye shape.

In any case, each person goes through a certain adaptation period, moving temporarily or for permanent residence to another region. Depending on the conditions, there are different adaptation methods:

• In the Arctic, special fur overalls are used to protect against the cold;
• In temperate climates, people build houses from wood to avoid cold winters and hot summers;
• In tropical regions with sandstorms, people wear long capes made of light fabrics. Nomads use goat skins to build housing;
• In areas with an equatorial climate, people live in huts built from branches and leaves. This protects from the scorching sun.

Mental adaptation

Adaptation mechanisms are of a mental nature, therefore mental adaptation is a significant component of the successful adaptation of a person as a whole.

Figure 2. Psychological adaptation of the individual. Author24 - online exchange of student work

Adapted mental activity, according to domestic psychiatrist Yu.A. Alexandrovsky, is the most important factor that provides a person with a state of health. We can talk about the “norm” when the level of mental adaptation corresponds to the necessary level for active life.

Mental adaptation is a kind of result of the activity of an integral self-governing system. The combination of individual components ensures its activity, and their interaction gives rise to new integrative qualities. The state of mental adaptation will be the result of the functioning of the entire system. It makes it possible to most optimally not only resist natural and social factors, but also actively and purposefully influence them.

According to R.M. Baevsky, adaptation processes maintain balance within the organism, as well as between the organism and the environment, and as control processes they are associated with the choice of a functional strategy that ensures the fulfillment of the main goal.

In general, the entire system of mental adaptation is always ready to perform its characteristic functions. She returns to the initial state of operational rest after she has adequately responded to the environmental factor that influenced her.

Psychological adaptation is characterized by two concepts - adaptability and non-adaptation and is expressed in the coordination of goals and results.

The possible adaptive orientation of a person has different options:

1. Homeostatic option. The goal of an adaptive outcome is to achieve equilibrium;
2. Hedonic option. The adaptive outcome is to obtain pleasure and avoid pain;
3. The pragmatic option is practical benefit, success. Human mental adaptation differs from all other self-governing systems by the presence of mechanisms of conscious self-regulation.

Adaptation and correction as categories of special psychology

Adaptation in a broader sense in psychology is the adaptation of a person to his environment.

Adjustment is a person’s adaptive actions, which represent internal changes in a person and are aimed at restoring the disturbed balance between a person and the environment, as a result of changes occurring in the environment.

Human adaptation has two aspects:

1. Biological (adaptation of the body);
2. Psychological - adaptation of a person as an individual to existence in society (micro- and macrosocial environment) in accordance with the needs of society and one’s own needs, motives and interests.

The specificity of adaptation processes in developmental disorders is characterized by:

• Deficiency of certain functional systems due to organic damage to the analyzers or the central nervous system;
• manifestations of some general patterns of impaired mental development - the greatest influence on the adaptation process is exerted by:

a) difficulties in interacting with people in the environment; And

b) slower rates of assimilation and processing of information.

• Features of adaptation of sensory organs whose functions are partially impaired.

Adaptation processes in children with developmental disorders proceed more slowly, and the state of maladaptation occurs more easily than in normally developed children.

Reducing adaptation difficulties and bringing the mental development of abnormal children closer to a normal state (normalization) is achieved through correction and compensation of developmental disorders.

Correction in the modern sense is overcoming or mitigating deficiencies in mental and physical development through various psychological and educational influences.

Amendments are measures aimed at correcting violations of various aspects of mental function.

In Russian defectology, the term “correction” (pedagogical correction) was first used by V.P. Kashchenko in relation to children with behavioral disorders. It was then extended to mentally retarded children. Today, the correctional orientation of pedagogy is considered one of the basic principles of work in all special educational institutions.

Psychologists and teachers (Italian teacher M. Montessori (1870-1952), Belgian teacher Decroli (1871-1933), Russian teacher A.N. Grabarov (1885-1949), G.M. Dulnev) developed systems of therapeutic and pedagogical work with developmentally delayed and mentally ill children.

Including programs:

1) Sensorimotor correction:

• Sensory development (enrichment of sensory experience);
• Motor development

2) studying the native language and mastering speech;

3) study of general education subjects;

4) special lessons on instilling a culture of behavior,

5) scientific work, 6) games, 7) drawing, singing, 9) movements, Þ formation of sensory culture; Þ formation of a culture of action 10) Development of memory processes

11) Formation of mental activity (sensorimotor, speech, general education subjects, etc. contribute to the development of thinking);

As noted by L.S. Vygotsky, correction is most successful in relation to secondary deficits, while primary deficits can only be slightly reduced due to corrective (psychological and pedagogical) influences.