How do genetics and environment interact to influence development nature versus nurture? Continuous development views development as a cumulative process, gradually improving on existing skills. With this type of development, there is gradual change. In contrast, theorists who view development as discontinuous believe that development takes place in unique stages: It occurs at specific times or ages.
The concept of continuous development can be visualized as a smooth slope of progression, whereas discontinuous development sees growth in more discrete stages. Is development essentially the same, or universal, for all children i.
Do people across the world share more similarities or more differences in their development? Stage theories hold that the sequence of development is universal. Infants in all cultures coo before they babble. They begin babbling at about the same age and utter their first word around 12 months old. Yet we live in diverse contexts that have a unique effect on each of us.
For example, researchers once believed that motor development follows one course for all children regardless of culture. They spend a significant amount of time foraging in forests. Consequently, their children walk much later: They walk around 23—25 months old, in comparison to infants in Western cultures who begin to walk around 12 months old. As you can see, our development is influenced by multiple contexts, so the timing of basic motor functions may vary across cultures.
However, the functions themselves are present in all societies. All children across the world love to play. Whether in a Florida or b South Africa, children enjoy exploring sand, sunshine, and the sea. Are we who we are because of nature biology and genetics , or are we who we are because of nurture our environment and culture?
This longstanding question is known in psychology as the nature versus nurture debate. It seeks to understand how our personalities and traits are the product of our genetic makeup and biological factors, and how they are shaped by our environment, including our parents, peers, and culture.
For instance, why do biological children sometimes act like their parents—is it because of genetics or because of early childhood environment and what the child has learned from the parents?
What about children who are adopted—are they more like their biological families or more like their adoptive families? And how can siblings from the same family be so different? We are all born with specific genetic traits inherited from our parents, such as eye color, height, and certain personality traits. Beyond our basic genotype, however, there is a deep interaction between our genes and our environment: Our unique experiences in our environment influence whether and how particular traits are expressed, and at the same time, our genes influence how we interact with our environment Diamond, ; Lobo, This chapter will show that there is a reciprocal interaction between nature and nurture as they both shape who we become, but the debate continues as to the relative contributions of each.
Lifespan development explores how we change and grow from conception to death. This field of psychology is studied by developmental psychologists. They view development as a lifelong process that can be studied scientifically across three developmental domains: physical, cognitive development, and psychosocial.
There are several theories of development that focus on the following issues: whether development is continuous or discontinuous, whether development follows one course or many, and the relative influence of nature versus nurture on development.
In he published a short paper detailing the development of innate forms of communication based on scientific observations of his infant son, Doddy. However, the emergence of developmental psychology as a specific discipline can be traced back to when Wilhelm Preyer a German physiologist published a book entitled The Mind of the Child.
In the book, Preyer describes the development of his own daughter from birth to two and a half years. Importantly, Preyer used rigorous scientific procedures throughout studying the many abilities of his daughter. In Preyer's publication was translated into English, by which time developmental psychology as a discipline was fully established with a further 47 empirical studies from Europe, North America and Britain also published to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge in the field.
During the s three key figures have dominated the field with their extensive theories of human development, namely Jean Piaget , Lev Vygotsky and John Bowlby Indeed, much of the current research continues to be influenced by these three theorists. McLeod, S. Developmental psychology.
Simply Psychology. Baltes, P. Darwin, C. A Biographical Sketch of an Infant. Mind , 2, Preyer, W. Grieben, Leipzig,. The soul of the child: observations on the mental development of man in the first years of life. Rutter, M. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 22 4 , Toggle navigation.
Developmental Questions Developmental Questions. Some of the types of changes that comprise development are emergent changes. These are changes in what exists rather than in how much of something exists. Something new comes about in development, and because it is new— because it is qualitatively different from what went before—it cannot be reduced to what went before.
Hence, if at time 1 we can be represented by 10 oranges and at time 2 we can be represented by a motorcycle, we cannot reduce our time 2 motorcycle status to our time 1 orange status.
To take another example, before puberty a person may be characterized as being in part composed of several drives—for example, a hunger drive, a thirst drive, a drive to avoid pain, and perhaps a curiosity drive. With puberty, however, a new drive emerges or, at least, emerges in a mature form —the sex drive. With this emergence the adolescent begins to have new feelings, new thoughts, and even new behaviors which, according to Anna Freud, may be interpreted as being a consequence of this new drive.
The emergence of this new drive is an instance of qualitative discontinuity. The sex drive cannot be reduced to hunger and thirst drives, for instance. Hence, qualitative changes are by their very nature discontinuous. A qualitative, emergent, epigenetic change is always an instance of discontinuity. Moreover, not only is an emergent change an irreducible change, but it is a change characterized by gappiness. As indicated above, developmental gappiness occurs when there is a lack of an intermediate level between earlier and later levels of development.
It should be clear that gappiness must also be a part of an emergent change. The presence of an intermediate step between what exists at time 1 and the new quality that emerges at time 2 would suggest that the new quality at time 2 could be reduced through reference to the intermediate step. Since we have just seen that an emergent change is defined in terms of its developmental irreducibility to what went before, it is clear that gappiness must also be a characteristic of any emergence.
The characteristics of emergence and gappiness are needed to describe qualitatively discontinuous changes in development; on the other hand, the characteristic of gappiness abruptness alone seems to suffice for characterizing quantitatively discontinuous changes.
Thus, to quote Heinz Werner:. Quantitative discontinuity on the other hand, appears to be sufficiently defined by the second characteristic.
What Werner has provided us with, then, is a clarification of the concepts involved in appropriately considering the continuity-discontinuity issue.
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