PSY210H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: The Technique, Longitudinal Study, Cost Accounting
Document Summary
Better information about child development can help society protect and advance the well-being of children, and can also be used to shape social policy on behalf of children. Part one: themes of development: origins of behaviour: biological versus environmental influences. Arnold gesell believed that the course of development was largely predetermined by biological factors: he focused on maturation (a genetically determined process of growth that unfolds naturally over a period of time) John b. watson assumed that biological factors placed no restrictions on the ways that the environment can shape the course of a child"s development. Today, modern developmentalists explore how biological and environmental factors, or nature and nurture, interact to produce developmental variations in different children: pattern of developmental change: continuity versus discontinuity. Discontinuous process: (microscopic) abrupt step-like change each qualitatively different from the one that precedes it in development: involves stages and qualitative in nature, forces that affect developmental change: individual characteristics versus contextual and.
