Introduction
The study of human development asks some of life’s most basic questions
How did your life begin, and how did you grow from a single cell into a complex adult?
How will you influence other people’s lives, and they yours?
How will the various roles in your life shape your development?
How will you deal with death – your own as well as others?
Personal characteristics remain the same, or progress smoothly
What is Continuity?
Human development results from interacting forces.
What is the biopsychosocial framework?
An organized set of ideas that is designed to explain development
What is a theory?
He believed that children create theories about the world and test them out through experience
Who is Jean Piaget?
She experienced many changes in society during her 122-year lifespan and was one of the most important persons to ever live
Who was Jeanne Calment?
Personal characteristics are a series of abrupt shifts
What is discontinuity?
The study of the brain and nervous system, especially in terms of brain–behavior relationships
What is neuroscience?
Development is largely determined by how well people resolve conflicts they face at different ages
What is Psychodynamic Theory?
The idea that human cognition consists of mental hardware (cognitive structures) and mental software (sets of cognitive processes)
What is the information-processing Theory?
Three pairs of fundamental characteristics of human development
What are
Nature and nurture
Continuity and discontinuity
Universal and context-specific development?
The idea that human beings generally develop in the same way
What is universal?
These people use a variety of methods to study brain–behavior relationships, from molecular analyses of individual brain cells to sophisticated brain imaging techniques
What is a neuroscientist?
Learning influences a person’s behavior and experience determines whether a person’s behavior is rewarded or punished
What is Learning Theory?
He believed that every aspect of a child’s development must be considered against the backdrop of culture
Who is Vygotsky?
The idea that genetics determine our behavior and personality
What is nature?
The idea that there are different paths of development
What is content specific?
These are being applied to issues involving memory, reasoning, and emotion
What are Neuroscientific approaches?
People sometimes learn by simply watching those around them, which is known as imitation or observational learning
What is social learning theory?
The idea that people are embedded into four levels of the environment
What is Bronfenbrenner’s theory?
The idea that environment and life experiences Determine behavior and personality
What is nurture?
If you think almost all parents should use spanking
What is universal?
Each person is a unique expression of these forces
What are interactions among biological, psychological, sociocultural, and life-cycle forces?
He proposed that personality development is determined by the interaction of an internal maturational plan and external societal demands, composed of a life cycle of eight stages
Who is Erik Erikson?
The belief that a good match between competence and environmental press is best for development
What is the competence–environmental press theory?