A. Perspectives on Nature and Nurture

• Human Development


  Focuses on the scientific study of the systematic processes of change and stability in people
• Life-Span Development


  Concept of human development as lifelong process, which can be studied scientifically
• Life-Span Perspective


  Views development as lifelong, multidimensional, multidirectional, plastic, multidisciplinary, and contextual, and as a process that involves growth, maintenance, and regulation of loss
• Domains of Development


  • Physical Development
  • Cognitive Development
  • Psychosocial Development
• Social Construction


  A concept or practice that is an invention of a particular culture or society
• Stability-Change Issue


  Degree to which early traits and characteristics persists through life or change
• Continuity-Discontinuity


  Degree to which development involves either gradual, cumulative change (continuity) or distinct stages (discontinuity)
• Growth


  Physical changes, quantitative
• Maturation


  Transitional state that tells a person is fully functional, the unfolding of natural sequence of physical change and behavior patterns
• Development


  Functional changes, encompasses physical, mental, and social aspects, progressive
• Learning


  How a person adapt to the environment
• Behavioral Genetics


  Scientific study of the extent to which genetic and environmental differences among people and animals are responsible for differences in their traits
• Heritability


  Proportion of all the variability in the trait within a large sample of people that can be linked to genetic differences among those individuals
• Gregor Mendel studied the heredity in plants
• Selective Breeding


  Involves attempting to breed animals for a particular trait to determine whether the trait is heritable
• Genes contribute to such attributes as activity level, emotionality, aggressiveness, and sex drive in rats mice, and chickens
• Methods to study heredity

  • Twin Studies
  • Adoption Studies
  • Family Studies
• Concordance Rate


  The percentage of pairs of people studied in which if one member of a pair displays the trait, the other does too
• Reaction Range


  Wide range of possibility that it might exhibit differently
• Canalized Range


  Limited possible changes of changing (fixed), e.g., motor and language development
• Genes turn on and off in patterned ways throughout the lifespan (Epigenetics)
• Gene-Environment Interaction


  The effects of genes depend on what kind of environment we experiences, and how we respond to the environment depends on what genes we gave
• Intelligence is strongly influenced by heredity, but also affected by parental stimulation, education, peer influence, and others
• Factors that contribute to individual differences in emotionality

  • Genes
  • Shared Environmental Influences
  • Nonshared Environmental Influences
• 3 kinds of Gene-Environment Correlations

  • Passive Gene-Environment
  • Evocative Gene-Environment
  • Active Gene-Environment
• Heredity


  Consists of inborn traits and characteristics provided by the child's parents (Nature)
• Environment


  Influences stems from the outside body, starting from conception throughout life (Nurture)
• Individual Differences


  People differ in gender, height, weight, and body build; in health and energy level, etc.
• Context of Development

  • Family
  • Socioeconomic Status
  • Culture
  • Gender
  • History
• Normative Influences


  Biological or environmental events that affect many or most people in a society in a similar ways and events that touch only certain individuals
• Types of Normative Influences

  • Normative Age-Graded Influences
  • Normative History-Graded Influences
• Historical Generation


  Group of people who experience the event at a formative time in their lives
• Age Cohort


  Group of people born at about the same time
• Nonnormative


  Unusual events that have major impact on individual lives because they disturb the expected sequence of the life cycle
• Imprinting


  Instinctively follow the first moving object they see
• Critical Period


  Specific time when a given event, or its absence, has a specific impact on development
• Sensitive Periods


  When developing person is especially responsive to certain kind of experience
• Plasticity


  Modifiability of performance
• Theory


  Set of logically related concepts or statements that seek to describe and explain development and to predict the kinds of behavior that might occur under certain conditions
• Hypothesis


  Explanations or predications that can be tested by further research