ISSUES ON HUMAN

DEVELOPMENT
INTRODUCTION
Each of us has his/her own way of looking at
our own and other people’s development.
These paradigms of human development while
obviously lacking in scholastic vigor, provide us
with a conceptual framework for understanding
ourselves and others. Scholars have come up
with their own models of human development.
Back up by solid research, they take stand on
issues on human development.
THREE ISSUES ON DEVELOPMENT
 Nature versus Nurture
 Continuity versus Discontinuity
 Stability versus Change
NATURE VS NURTURE
The degree to which human
behavior is determined by
genetics/biology (nature) or
learned through interacting with
the environment (nurture)
 NATURE
 Behavior is caused by innate
characteristics :The physiological/biological
characteristics we are born with.
 Behavior is therefore determined by
biology.
 Also a Determinist view suggests all
behavior is determined by hereditary
factors: Inherited characteristics, or
genetic make-up we are born with.
NATURE
 All possible behaviors are said to be
present from conception.
 Genes provide the blueprint for all
behaviors; some present from birth, others
pre-programmed to emerge with age.
 Is a developmental approach:
E.g. Piaget: children’s thought processes
change at predetermined age-related stages
changes in age are related to changes in
behavior.
NURTURE
 An individuals behavior is determined
by the environment- the things people
teach them, the things they observe,
and because of the different situations
they are in.
 Also a determinist view- proposes all
human behavior is the result of
interactions with the environment.
NURTURE
 Behaviorist theories are nurture theories:
- Behavior is shaped by interactions with the
environment.
 Born an empty vessel- waiting to be filled up
by experiences gained from environmental
interaction.
 No limit to what they can achieve:
-Depends on quality of external influences and
NOT genes.
 The quality of the environment is KEY
-You can become anything provided the
environment is right.
 Nature Nurture Interaction
 Behavior is often a result of the interaction
between nature AND nurture.
 An individuals characteristics may elicit
particular responses in other people e.g.
Temperament: how active, responsive or
emotional an infant is influences in part
determines their caregivers responses.
Gender: people tend to react differently to
boys and girls due to expectations of
masculine and feminine characteristics.
 Aggression: Displaying aggressive
behavior create particular responses from
other people.
CONTINUITY VERSUS
DISCONTINUITY
Continuity and discontinuity are two
competing theories in developmental
psychology that attempt to explain how people
change through the course of their lives, where
the continuity theory says that someone
changes throughout their life along a smooth
course while the discontinuity theory instead
contends that people change abruptly. These
changes can be described as a wide variety of
someone's social and behavioral makeup, like
their emotions, traditions, beliefs,
 CONTINUITY VERSUS DISCONTINUITY
 Furthermore, continuity and discontinuity disagree with
one another in how they assess the changes that
someone undergoes throughout the course of their life.
The continuity theory examines the way someone
changes in a quantitative and continuous respect.
Discontinuity theory, on the other hand, looks at these
changes through the lens of a qualitative analysis with an
emphasis on the discontinuous nature of how someone
changes.
 Developmental psychology encompasses a very wide
array of observations related to how people think,
behave and interact with their environment as well as
other people. This field, at first, was focused on how
young children develop but, in recent years, it has
expanded past the pediatric setting to encompass studies
of how people change throughout the course of their
entire lives, up until the point of their death.
IS CHILD DEVELOPMENT
CONTINUOUS OR DISCONTINUOUS?
Not all psychologists, however, agree
that development is a continuous
process. Some view development
as a discontinuous process. They
believe development involves
distinct and separate stages with
different kinds of behavior occurring
in each stage.
WHAT IS A THEORY OF
DEVELOPMENT?

Developmental stage theories are

theories that divide child development
into distinct stages which are characterized by
qualitative differences in behaviour. There are
a number of different views about the way in
which psychological and physical
development proceed throughout the life
span.
STABILITY VS CHANGE

 deals with the issue of

whether or not personality
traits present during infancy
endure throughout the
lifespan.
STABILITY VS CHANGE
 The stability-change debate describes the
developmental psychology discussion about
whether personality traits that are present in
an individual at birth remain constant or
change throughout the life span.
 For example, does a naturally extroverted and
talkative baby remain that way for their entire
life? The stability vs. change debate is one of
the fundamental questions in developmental
psychology along with nature vs. nurture.
Typically cross-sectional and longitudinal
studies are used in research concerning
stability vs. change.
STABILITY VS CHANGE
Change Theorists- argue that personalities
are modified by interactions with family,
experiences at school, and acculturation.
 Studies of children have often revealed
impressive stability over time in aspects of
development such as the attachment to
their parents or in personality.
However, there is evidence which suggests
a contrary view, that change is both possible
and indeed, is likely under appropriate
conditions.
STABILITY VS CHANGE
 Freud was one of the first psychologist
to emphasize the critical nature of our
early experiences for our later
development. He believed that how we
resolve our sexual and aggressive
urges is strongly tied to the nature of
our personality as adults.
Psychoanalysts believe that personality
traits developed in the first 5 years
predict adult personality.
HOW THE FIRST 9 MONTHS
SHAPE THE REST OF YOUR LIFE
 What makes us the way we are? Why
are some people predisposed to be
anxious, overweight or asthmatic?
How is it that some of us are prone to
heart attacks, diabetes or high blood
pressure?
 There's a list of conventional
answers to these questions. We are
the way we are because it's in our
genes. We turn out the way we do
because of our childhood
experiences. Or our health and well-
being stem from the lifestyle
choices we make as adults.
 But there's another powerful source of
influence you may not have considered:
your life as a fetus. The nutrition you
received in the womb; the pollutants,
drugs and infections you were exposed
to during gestation; your mother's
health and state of mind while she was
pregnant with you — all these factors
shaped you as a
 This is the provocative contention of a field
known as fetal origins, whose pioneers assert
that the nine months of gestation constitute the
most consequential period of our lives,
permanently influencing the wiring of the brain
and the functioning of organs such as the heart,
liver and pancreas. In the literature on the
subject, which has exploded over the past 10
years, you can find references to the fetal origins
of cancer, cardiovascular disease, allergies,
asthma, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, mental
illness. At the farthest edge of fetal-origins
research, scientists are exploring the possibility
that intrauterine conditions influence not only our
physical health but also our intelligence,
temperament, even our sanity.
 As a journalist who covers
science, I was intrigued when I
first heard about fetal origins. But
two years ago, when I began to
delve more deeply into the field, I
had a more personal motivation: I
was newly pregnant. If it was true
that my actions over the next nine
months would affect my offspring
for the rest of his life, I needed to
know more.
 Of course, no woman who is pregnant
today can escape hearing the message
that what she does affects her fetus. She
hears it at doctor's appointments, sees it
in the pregnancy guidebooks: Do eat this,
don't drink that, be vigilant but never
stressed. Expectant mothers could be
forgiven for feeling that pregnancy is just
a nine-month slog, full of guilt and devoid
of pleasure, and this research threatened
to add to the burden.
 But the scientists I met weren't full of
dire warnings but of the excitement of
discovery
— and the hope that their discoveries
would
make a positive difference. Research on
fetal origins is prompting a revolutionary
shift in thinking about where human
qualities come from and when they begin
to develop. It's turning pregnancy into a
scientific frontier: the National Institutes of
Health embarked last year on a
multidecade study that will examine its
subjects before they're born.
 And it makes the womb a
promising target for prevention,
raising hopes of conquering
public-health scourges like
obesity and heart disease
through interventions before
birth.