MPhil-I

TERM PAPER
CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY-7106
KEY ISSUES IN LIFE SPAN DEVELOPMENT

By
Name: Mariyam Akram
Roll No.: 0513-7-08
Session: 2008-2010

DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY

GC UNIVERSITY, LAHORE
 2

CONTENT PAGE

Sr. No. Headings Page No.

1 Introduction 3

2 Key issues/Controversies in Human Development 5

3 Nature-Nurture Issue 6

4 Heredity-Environment Issue 11

5 Learning-Maturation Issue 14

6 Continuity-Discontinuity Issue 17

7 Normative-Idiographic Issue 19

8 Active-Passive Learning Issue 21

9 Specificity-Generality Issue 24

10 Conclusion 29

References 33

Introduction
 3

Psychology has been defined as a science of behavior. It has been divided into

subcategories namely: abnormal, evolutionary, clinical, cognitive, educational,

environmental, experimental, humanistic, moral, forensic, neuropsychology,

biopsychology, religion, social, child, positive, industrial, counseling, and developmental

psychology. Developmental psychology is a science of human lifespan development. It

studies how individuals change over time and that processes that create those changes.

Basic importance of development psychology is study of life. Development refers to the

changes over time in the body and in the thinking or other behavior of a person that are

due both to biology and to experience. It studies intra and inter individual changes.

Developmental psychologist study behavior at all phases of the life cycle.

It is the largest branch of psychology, and contains a lot of books, writers,

researchers and practicing psychologists. Human development is commonly described in

terms of periods or stages. The most widely used classification of eight developmental

periods involve the following sequence: prenatal period (conception-birth), infancy

(birth-2years), early childhood (2-6years), middle and late childhood (6-11years),

adolescence (12-18years), early adulthood (19-35years), middle adulthood (36-60years)

and late adulthood/old age (60-death).

Five early scholars John Locke (focuses on child’s environment), Jean-Jacques

Rousseau (focuses on child’s cognitive development), Johann Gottfried von Herder

(focuses on child’s socio-cultural context), Charles Darwin (focuses on evolutionary

origins of behavior) and Stanley Hall (father of child psychology) offered theories of

human behavior that are the direct ancestors of the major theoretical traditions found in

the child psychology today. The belief that the development of the child is related to the
 4

evolution of the species gave birth to the science of developmental psychology. People

considered as the pioneers of child psychology who gave later theories of developmental

psychology are: Sigmund Freud (psychosexual theory of development), Erik Erikson

(psychosocial theory of development), J. B. Watson, B. F. Skinner & Bandura (social

learning), Jean Piaget (Cognitive development), Arnold Gesell (Evolutionary theory),

Lev Vygotsky (socio-cultural cognitive theory), and Urie Bronfenbrenner (ecological

theory).

In addition to the theories, the scientific study of development also involves

research. To obtain information about development psychologists use different methods.

Some of the most important and widely used research methods in developmental

psychology are: observation (laboratory & naturalistic), survey method (interviews &

questionnaires), case studies, standardized tests, life-history records, correlation research,

experimental research, cross-sectional method, longitudinal method and sequential

approach.

Good science requires good scientists. Scientist’s professional competence and

integrity are essential for ensuring high quality science. Each scientist has an ethical

responsibility to seek knowledge and to strive to improve the quality of life.

Psychological research raises many ethical considerations. In developmental research,

informed consent, risk/benefit ratio, minimal risk, privacy, deception, debriefing and

plagiarism are very important.

While describing the views of different pioneers of developmental psychology, a

number of issues arouse repeatedly. These issues in particular have run through scientific
 5

thinking about development almost from the very beginning, and they remain a source of

debate today. These issues revolve around the questions of nature versus nurture,

continuity versus discontinuity, maturation versus learning, heredity versus environment,

active versus passive development, and universal versus context specific.

Key issues/Controversies in Human Development

Controversy is a lengthy discussion of an important question in which opposing

opinions clash, debate and dispute. Controversy or dispute is a commencement of a

conflict between statements of accepted fact and a new or unaccepted proposal that

disagrees with, argues against, or debates the accepted knowledge or opinion.

Controversies can range in scope from private disputes between two individuals to large-

scale disagreements between societies.

There are a number of important issues that have been debated throughout the

history of developmental psychology. In psychology, the controversies arouse from the

different theoretical concepts of different theories that they believed were the major parts

of child development. The major and most widely debated controversies are:

 Nature-Nurture issue

 Heredity-Environment issue

 Continuity-Discontinuity issue

 Learning-Maturation issue

 Normative-Individual development
 6

 Active-Passive learning

 Specificity-Generality

Nature-Nurture Issue

Nature-Nurture is the fundamental question in psychology and involves the debate

that whether development is influenced by nature or nurture. Nature is an organism’s

biological inheritance on development whereas nurture is an organism’s learning through

experience and interaction. Typically developmental psychologists are interested in how

these factors interact, rather than trying to decide which is more important. They are

interested to see to what extent the qualities we possess are inborn and contain biological

factors and to what extent are they acquired as a result of individual socialization?

According to the nature advocates, unless treated by the unfriendly environment

the human grow in an orderly manner. By contrast, nurture advocates emphasize the

importance of nurture or environmental experiences. According to them, experiences run

the gamut from the individual’s biological environment (nutrition, medical care, and

physical accidents) to the social environment (family, peer group, school, social

gatherings, media, and culture).

Nature versus nurture controversy importance can be well described in the

example that if a wild boy like child would be found today, probably modern

psychologists cannot cure him. In recent times there have been children who were

rescued after having confined for years in closets and other environments that cut off

from other people (Rymers, 1992). These children find it difficult to interact with others.
 7

These cases highlight the importance of early contacts with other people for normal

human development. They underscore the need to know as much as possible about early

development and what can help or hinder it. And they bear on nature-nurture debate

which is arguably the most salient issue in development (Berstein et al., 1994).

Argument about the nature-nurture issue can be traced back in philosopher’s

statements centuries ago. This debate has existed at least since Locke and Rousseau first

proposed their rather pure environmental and nativistic models of child development. The

nurture view was later taken up by Watson and other learning theorists, whereas the

nature position formed the basis of the theories of Hall and Gessel.

John Locke (1690) argued the dominance of nurture. He proposed that new born

child is like a tabula rasa or blank sheet and what happens during childhood has a

profound and permanent effect on the individual. According to him, adults teach the child

about world and tell him how to behave in this world. Watson (1930) also suggested the

environment as the key to development. From his experience, he inferred it that children

learn everything, from skills to fears. He also claimed that he can train dozen of children

to become any specialist like doctor, lawyer, artist, thief, beggar-man and chef, regardless

of his talents, tendencies, vocations, race of ancestors and penchants. His view stimulated

much debate and much research.

Shortly after the death of John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau gave a different

idea which established a different point of view. He believed that human development

unfolds naturally in positive ways as long as society allows it to do so. He argued that

parents should not shape their children forcibly. He said that children are capable of
 8

discovering how the world operates and how they should behave without instructions of

adults. He argued that children should be allowed to grow as nature dictates, with little

guidance or pressure from parents. The work of Rousseau was followed by Gesell and

made many observations of children of all ages. He demonstrated that motor skills

develop in a fixed sequence of stages in all children. The order of stages and the ages at

which they develop are determined by nature and relatively unaffected by nurture

(Berstein et al., 1994; DeHart, Sroufe, & Cooper, 2004)

Later psychologists did not take strong positions about nature or nurture. Freud

claimed that development was neither the result of nature, as Gesell claimed, nor the

product of environmental experiences alone, as Watson suggested. He said that it is a

merge of both internal as well as external conditions, particularly children’s sexual and

aggressive urges and how parents handle them. This combine contribution of nature-

nurture was more thoroughly explored by Jean Piaget. He suggested that nature and

nurture are inseparable and interactive. He said that children manipulate and explore the

objects around them which are guided by mental images of objects and of their own

actions and these experiences with objects modify these images.

Nature and nurture contribute together in the development of child like if we

consider genes as a roughly defining broad potential range of ability and the environment

as pushing the child up or down within this range. How much nature and nurture

contributes varies from one characteristic to another. Nature shapes our physical size and

appearance which can only be affected by extreme affects of environmental conditions.

Nature shapes the motor skills of child during early childhood according to maturational

timetable, but nurture plays a larger role in children’s motor abilities only after children
 9

have acquired all the basic motor skills. For all individual characteristics, the influence of

nature and nurture are always inextricably intertwined.

This debate shows that the interplay between nature and nurture is a busy two-

way street. The nature vs. nurture debate has produced many research advances in the

area of human development.

I believe that it is not fruitful to keep try in determining which aspect is

more important than other. Both are essential in their affects and the development of

child. The natural processes of children cannot be changed and the effects of person’s

experiences on his development are essential as well. Other issues like heredity-

environment, maturation-learning, specificity-generality, and normative-individual

development, all these questions or debates emerged from the debate of nature-nurture.

Biological development of species is carried out further by the person’s experiences and

interactions in social world and this world teaches a person a lot which is not inborn. So,

I believe that nurture nourishes nature.

 10

Heredity-Environment Issue

Nowadays the issue of biology versus experience is more often cast in the context

of heredity and environment. The focus shifts: we look more specifically at genetic

factors that might underlie and predispose and therefore set the stage for development, in
 11

interaction with specific effects of the individual’s physical and social environment.

Heredity-oriented theorists assume that there are underlying biological structures, citing

evidence from experiments with animals and statistical procedures with humans to

support their case. They also point out the specific genes underlying development and

behavior have been identified, emphasizing those that are known to cause defects such as

mental retardation, fragile X syndrome and many more. On the other hand,

environmental explanations focus on an individual’s experiences pertaining to thinking

and reasoning, plus environmental factors such as nutrition and health, each of which can

also contribute to mental retardation. Heredity and environment interact, but theorists still

disagree over the relative contributions of each.

Heredity is an organism’s biological inheritance, specifically genetic influences

on development whereas nurture is an organism’s learning through environment. They

were interested to answer the query that to what extent do specific genetic factors set the

stage for development, and to what extent do specific factors in the individual’s

environment such as conditioning and learning affect development?

Heredity is the inborn genetic endowment that people receive from their parents

(Papalia & Olds, 1995). The range of environment can be vast, but the heredity approach

argues that the genetic blueprint produces commonalities in the growth and development.

The heredity proponents acknowledge that extreme environments can depress

development. However, they believe that basic growth tendencies are genetically wired

into humans.
 12

A fundamental challenge facing developmental psychologist is to explain how

and why developmental changes come about. From the broadest perspective,

development depends on three factors; developmental potentials provided by the

organisms genes, the organism developmental history, and current environmental

conditions. The first two factors may be thought of as existing in the organism. Every

human child carries a set of genes that contains the basic guidelines for the unfolding of

development. But which genes are turned on at any given time depend on the particular

points in development a child has reached that is, on the changes that have gone before.

Moreover, the unfolding also depends on current environmental support. Environmental

support includes all the nutrients, sensory inputs, circumstances, and challenges the

developing organism encounters. Understanding just how genes, past development, and

current environmental conditions interact to produce developmental changes is a major

task for the field of developmental psychology.

Today the developmental psychologists have gone beyond this simple dichotomy

to analyze precisely how inheritance and environment influence specific aspects of

development. One way of separating these influences is to do correlation study on twins

with same genetic structure but brought up in different environments as well as

genetically different twins. These studies have demonstrated that heredity-environment

issue contribute jointly to development in two ways:

1. Operate together to make all people alike as human beings.

2. Operate to make each person different.

 13

They make all people alike in this sense that we all experience milestone in motor

development in the same order and at roughly the same rate as nutrition. Heredity and

environment operates to make each person different as the nature of inherited genes and

the environment of widely different family produces differences among individuals in

motor abilities, intelligence, motivation, altruism, personality and many more.

For all individual characteristics, the influence of nature and nurture are always

inextricably intertwined. Heredity and environment interact; the environment encourages

or discourages the expression of an individual’s inherited characteristics while at the

same time, those inherited characteristics to some extent determine that individual’s

environment. Even though evidence proves that there is an interaction between genes and

the environment, people will continue to study the effects of each in development.

We cannot change the genes of a developing child as well as cannot keep child in

solitary to keep him away from environmental effects. Genetic guidelines are important

for development and the environmental support is essential to proceed development.

Emergence of child’s personality and countless other developmental changes are all joint

products of heredity, past development and current environment. So these two poles

cannot be separated but can be explained as interplay of these factors are important for

human development rather than specifying one out of two.

Continuity-Discontinuity Issue

A third long-standing issue in child psychology is whether the development is

connected and constant (continuous) or uneven and disconnected (discontinuous). At the

heart of this debate lies the question of whether the development is solely and evenly
 14

continuous, or whether it is marked by age specific periods. This debate actually has two

components: pattern of development (gradual or abrupt changes) & connectedness of

development. This issue basically addresses to what degree we become older renditions

of our early existence or whether we can develop into someone different than we were at

an earlier point in development. Some developmental changes are clearly gradual and

cumulative, resulting in steadily increasing organization and function. Like, at first child

starts grasping things, waving hands, responding to voices, and afterward the ability of

child to use symbols develops gradually and progresses steadily toward reading,

manipulation of number concepts, and eventually higher-level thinking. Continuity in

development throughout the lifespan is the prevailing view nowadays.

This issue is linked with Paul Baltes’ belief that plasticity or change is an

important life-span issue. According to life-span perspective, plasticity or change are

possible throughout the life-span, although experts such as Baltes argue that older adults

often show less capacity for change than younger adults. An important dimension of this

issue is the extent to which early or later experiences are the key determinants of a result

of heredity-environment interaction, not heredity or environment alone. For the most part,

developmentalists who emphasize nurture usually describe development as a gradual,

continuous process. Those who emphasize nature often describe development as a series

of the distinct stages. In terms of continuity, when a child speaks first word, though

seemingly abrupt, discontinuous event is actually the result of weeks and months of

growth and practice. In contrast, at some point a child moves from not being able to think

abstractly about the world to being able to, is a qualitative change, not quantitative.
 15

Developmentalist’s who advocates the continuous model describe development

as a relatively smooth process, without sharp or distinct stages, through which an

individual must pass. They contend that many of the behaviors and abilities we see in

adolescents and adults can be traced directly back to development early in life.

Meanwhile, supporters of the discontinuous model describe development as a series

of discrete stages, each of which is characterized by at least one task that an

individual must accomplish before progressing to the next stage. They also suggest

that some aspects of development emerge relatively independently of what has come

before and cannot be predicted from child’s previous behavior. As Freud, in his stage

model of psychosexual development, theorized that children systematically move

through oral, anal, phallic, and latency stages before reaching mature adult sexuality

in the genital stage. Proponents of stage theories of development also suggest that

individuals go through critical periods, which are times of increased and favored

sensitivity to particular aspects of development. For example, early childhood (the

first 5 years) is a critical period for language acquisition. Thus, most adults find it

difficult or impossible to master a second language during their adult years while

young children raised in bilingual homes normally learn second languages easily

during childhood.

Most of the debate has centered on the pattern of cognitive change. As the

information-processing theorists came up with the idea of quantitative change. They

based their research on the view that younger children can also perform certain tasks

almost as well as older children if they are helped to break down the tasks into

simpler steps, or if they are taught the required skills before testing. In contrast,
 16

Piaget stage theory consist both quantitative (changes in cognitive skills) as well as

qualitative (changes in thinking and understanding world) views.

Related to the continuity-discontinuity issue is the distinction between

quantitative and qualitative change. Quantitative changes are changes by degree whereas

qualitative changes are changes in kind. The continuity model is often associated with

the belief that human behavior consists of many individual skills that are added one

at a time, usually through learning and experience. As children acquire more and

more skills, they combine and recombine them to produce increasingly complex

abilities. Continuity theorists tend to argue that development is quantitative-simpler

elements are essentially added together to produce more advanced capabilities- and tend

to characterize environmentalists models of development. In contrast, discontinuity

theorists usually hold that development is guided primarily by internal biological factors

and tend to argue that development is qualitative. They suggest that people regularly

undergo dramatic, qualitative changes in their abilities/person. They argue that children

go through uneven development which are relatively stable periods followed by abrupt

changes and reflects discontinuous nature of the changes taking place in the underlying

structures of the body and brain.

In general, the truth seems to lie somewhere in between the extremes of gradual

continuity and abrupt discontinuity. There is little evidence that people make rapid,

abrupt transitions from one stage to the next, even in theories that emphasize stages.

Continuity-discontinuity issue emphasized on the patterns and their connectedness to

development. I advocate both poles of development as our development includes

physical, emotional, psychological, intellectual, and cognitive; these changes take place
 17

in every child’s life and we develop in steady manner, but in some circumstances of life

like traumatic experiences and milestones of life, abrupt changes takes place in us

especially in our emotional, psychological and intellectual which have great impact on

our lives.

Learning-Maturation Issue

Development is not only produced by interplay of biological, cognitive, and social

processes. To grasp the meaning of development more fully, we must understand two

important processes that underlie developmental change. One of these processes is

maturation, which refers to the developmental changes in the body or behavior that result

from the aging process rather than from learning, injury, illness, or other life experiences.

It is programmed - it will happen regardless of the environment. Things that occur

through maturation include reflexes. This issue emphasizes on the impact of timings.

Maturation is the orderly sequence of changes dictated by the genetic blueprint we each

have, and also include behavior that may improve due to ongoing developmental changes

in neuromuscular systems. Maturation is any permanent change in thought or behavior

that occurs through the biological process of aging without regard to environmental

influences. This shows that human grows in an orderly manner according to maturation

view. Maturation approach argues the genetic blueprints that produce commonalities in

our growth and development. Maturation is partly responsible for psychological changes

such as our increasing ability to concentrate, solve problems, and understand another

person’s thoughts or feelings.

 18

A second critical developmental process is learning, which is any relatively

permanent change in thinking or behavior that is a result of one’s practice or experiences.

Learning will only take place when an individual have a particular experience. It is the

way we learn how to live in this world n how to interact with our world by doing some

effort and using our experience. Most of our abilities and habits do not simply unfold as

part of nature’s grand plan, we often learn to feel, think, and behave in new ways from

our observation of an interaction with parents, teachers, and other important people in our

lives, as well as from events that we experience.

Maturation-learning issue basically deals with the question: “How does

maturation, which is biologically based, interact with learning, which is experiential, to

shape development?” The maturationists believe that extreme environments can depress

development, but basic growth tendencies are genetically wired into the human. For

example, how does skeletal/muscular development, which is biological based, interact

with practice, which is experiential? Similar question arises with cognitive and

personality development, in which neurological and hormonal maturation interacts with

experience. The question of maturation versus learning is an age old debate - but today

most psychologists believe that maturation and learning influence cognitive ability.

We change in response to our environment particularly in response to the actions

and reactions of the people around us. Of course, most developmental changes are the

product of both maturation and learning. As when we get older we become more mature,

our height and weight increases, skeleton develops, many puberty changes occurs in us as

it is a natural process and it is involuntary in nature. But we learn many things as time

passes like obedience to authority, altruistic behavior, moral reasoning, social norms and
 19

values, cultural customs, manners and they are not biological but are learnt by

experience.

Normative-Individual development

In pursuing the goal of description, human developmentalists carefully observe

the behavior of people of different ages, seeking to specify how human beings change

over time. Though there are typical pathways of development that virtually all people

follow, researchers have discovered that no two persons are exactly alike. Even when

raised in same home, children often display very different interests, values, abilities, and

behaviors. Thus to adequately describe development, it is necessary to focus both on

typical patterns of change (normative development) and on individual variations

(ideographic development), seeking to identify the important ways that developing

humans resemble each other and how they are likely to differ as they proceed through

life.

Normative development includes developmental changes that characterize most of

all members of species; typical patterns of development that are same for all individuals

of same species. It refers to the similarities that are followed by almost all the members

of species which become norm of that species. It means what children have in common or

how development is similar for all children. It is the general change and reorganization in

behavior that virtually all children share as they grow older. It is a typical or average

behavior of all children during development.

Other focuses on ideographic development, which includes individual variations

in the rate, extent, or direction of development. It means that differences occur in one
 20

child to the next. Individual development has two meanings. First, it refers to individual

variation around the normative course of development. Second, individual development

refers to continuity within each child’s individual developmental pathway over time.

Even when dramatic changes in individual personality do take place, logical reasons can

generally be found. Just as normative developments is coherent and predictable, so too is

individual development.

Normative research focuses on the average child, with the primary goal of

identifying and describing how normal development proceeds from step to step. A related

issue involves the search for universals of development, behaviors or patterns of

development that characterize all children everywhere. Idiographic research, in contrast,

centers n the individual child and the factors that produce human diversity.

Research on language development illustrates these two approaches. Researchers

interested in normative development search for common patterns of linguistic

development both in children who speak the same language and in children who speak

different languages. Theorists who an idiographic perspective are more concerned with

identifying ad explaining the individual differences that are evident as children master

language. Such differences might result from differences in experiences, such as type of

speech, adults use when talking with children, or from biological factors, such as brain

trauma or inheritance of a particular genetic disorder. Historically, the normative

approach was associated with biological theories of development, such as Gesell’s,

whereas the idiographic approach was associated with researchers who emphasized

environmental and experiential processes.

 21

This issue adequately tries to give descriptions that provide us with the facts about

development, but it is only the starting point. Ultimately, developmentalists seek to

explain the changes they have observed. In pursuing this goal of explanation, researchers

hope to determine why humans developed as they typically do and why some individuals

turn out differently from others. It is a natural thing that no person is similar to other.

Every person contains specific traits but they differ in every person in intensity, and

duration. We are similar to people around us like the stages we go through during

development, altruistic behavior, stereotypes, identity formation, and many more, and

different in the way that the cultures of countries differ not only their religion but there

are many differences within the religion of different countries. Like in Pakistan the

culture and art and craft of its four provinces are different from each other. Dress,

language, marriage ceremonies, education systems and many other things differ and they

are part of their society or province.

Active-Passive Learning Issue

Active-Passive learning issue is a debate among developmental theorists about

whether children are active contributors to their own development or, rather, passive

recipients of environmental influences. It basically tries to answer the question that “Do

individuals actively seek knowledge and self-understanding, or do they passively react to

what they experience and are taught?” Active learners are those who play active role in

determining their own developmental outcomes, while passive learners are those whose

developmental outcomes largely reflect the influences of other people and circumstances

beyond their control.

 22

Theorists who emphasize active development often refer to as organismic

theorists and they argue that we are active participants in our own development.

Organismic model views children as active entities whose developmental paths are

primarily determined by forces within themselves. This model compares humans to their

living organisms by viewing them as whole beings that cannot be understood as a simple

collection of parts and active in the developmental process, changing under the guidance

of internal forces and evolving through distinct stages as they mature. Individuals seek to

interact with other individuals as well as with events, and they are changed in the process.

In turn, they act on those objects and events, and change them too, all while thinking

about what they experience and trying to figure it out and understand it for themselves.

Curiosity and the desire to acquire knowledge and understanding our central to

development.

Theorists who advocates passive process are often referred to as mechanistic

theorists, they see human as passively reacting to events in their environment. The

mechanistic model views children as passive entities whose developmental paths are

primarily determined by external influence. This model likens human beings to machines

by viewing them as a collection of behaviors that can be decomposed; passive, changing

mostly in response to outside influences; and changing gradually or continuously as their

parts are added or subtracted. From this perspective, we are driven primarily by our

internal drives and motivations in conjunction with the external incentives provided by

others and the environment in general. Development is determined largely by rewards

and punishments, which shape and mold us. The word determine here also implies that

everything we know or do is a function of past or present conditions.

 23

Clearly, learning theories such as Watson and Skinner favored the mechanistic

world view, for they see human beings as passively shaped by environmental events and

they analyze human behavior response by response. Bandura’s social learning theory

primarily mechanistic, yet it reflects the important organismic assumption that human

beings are active creatures who both influence and are influenced by their environment.

By contrast, psychoanalytic theorists, such as Freud and Erikson and cognitive

developmentalists from the Piagetian traditions all base their theories primarily on the

organismic model. Finally ethologists also portray humans as active, holistic beings with

biological predispositions that channel or guide development. However, they are less

inclined then other organismic theorists to view the codes of development as

discontinuous.

According to psychoanalytic perspective, children are active learner as they are

driven by inborn instincts that are channeled into socially desirable outlets. Cognitive

theory of Piaget also emphasize that children actively construct more sophisticated

understanding of the self, others, and the environment to which they adapt. According to

information-processing perspective children actively process environmental information

to answer questions, solve problems, or otherwise master challenges. Socio-cultural view

of Vygotsky studied children as active learner and they processes information that others

provide to guide their learning and thinking. However, the perspective of ecological

system advocates both, organismic and mechanistic models, which suggests that humans

actively influence the environmental contexts that influence their development.

But the fact is that much of the time we actively approach the world in all its

complexity, and we construct our own view of it to guide us, yet we often has little
 24

choice except should react towards the physical and social world serves up for us. In

other words, our active human minds interact with the forces of society and nature, and

that interaction determines what we do and what we become.

Many developmentalists who worked on to the learning process of children and

tried to investigate that are children active or passive learner. But as the human actively

influence the environmental contexts that influence their development, so the passive or

experienced ways of learning do. They both are important in many contexts as if we want

to learn the arts or how to play any instrument we should be a passive as well as active

learner. Passive in a sense that we are driven primarily by our internal drives and

motivations in conjunction with the external incentives provided by others and the

environment in general, it is related to reward and punishment (appreciation or good

grades) and it mold our personality. Active in a sense that curiosity and the desire to

acquire knowledge and understanding our central to development.

Specificity-Generality Issue

This issue consists of two separate questions. The first question is one of domain

specificity - are developmental processes specific to particular knowledge or skill

domains or do they apply more generally to a broad range of abilities? This question has

implications for how broad the scope of developmental theories can be. The second

question is one of the cultural specificity - are developmental processes specific to

particular social or cultural contexts or is they socially and culturally universal? This

issue has implications for developmental theories applicability across social settings and

cultures. Extreme Domain Specificity argues that people are effective thinkers only in
 25

contexts which they have directly experienced, or in which evolution has equipped them

with effective solutions. The role of general cognitive abilities is ignored, or denied

altogether. Basically this issue operates with specificity and generality of developmental

process by answering these questions: “Does everyone go through the same

developmental processes/stages/aspects or does development vary across people, and

culture?, and To what extent can developmental psychology identify developmental

changes that occur to everyone throughout the world and to what extent should it take

specific human and cultural contexts into account?”

To Piagetians, domain specific knowledge grows out of numerous interactions

between the organism’s biologically based domain general abilities (such as assimilation

and accommodation), and the environmental context. Underscoring these tenets is the

postulation that organisms develop in a discontinuous rather than continuous fashion.

Discontinuous development refers to the theory that development occurs in relatively

abrupt changes of domain general function over a brief time span, which leads to

different, more long-term functional patterns. Continuous development refers to the

notion that domain general processes evolve slowly over time and are more domains

specific.

The issue of domain specificity has been raised most often in connection with

cognitive development, where the question is whether a theory attempts to explain

cognitive development in general or focuses instead on processes specific to particular

domains. Piaget theory was intended as an explanation of cognitive development in

general, proposing fundamental cognitive structures and abilities that cut across domains,

such as mental representation and logical operations. On the other hand, information
 26

processing theory focuses on more specific skills and strategies and takes into

consideration children’s knowledge in particular domains, such as chess and dinosaurs.

The general recent trend in developmental psychology, especially among researchers who

study cognitive development, has been away from theories that attempt to account for

development in general and toward theories that focus more narrowly on development in

specific domains.

The cultural specificity issue is relevant to theories in all areas of development.

Many theories were formulated in Europe and North America, and all of them reflect the

assumptions and concerns of the cultures from which they come. Only socio-cultural

approach by Vygotsky explicitly addresses social and cultural context in explaining

development. Piaget, Erikson and Freud assumed that their theories were describing

culturally universal structures and processes, but a large body of cross-cultural research

suggests that only some aspects of their theories apply across Western and non-Western

cultures.

Piaget stimulated a generation of research by postulating qualitative shifts in the

developmental abilities of human organisms. Courage and Howe (2002) refer to this view

as epigenetic constructivism, or the belief that infants are born without domain specific

knowledge, but acquire such knowledge as a function of domain general processes. They

define domain specific knowledge as “specific to a single cognitive domain under the

control of more specific brain-mind functions” like processing speed and memory

capacity. They further define domain general abilities as “cognitive abilities that

influence performance across a wide range of situations or domains” like facial

recognition.
 27

Piaget description of infant’s sensorimotor period holds up well across a wide

range of cultures, but his assumption that abstract, scientific reasoning is the ultimate

outcome of cognitive development does not transfer to cultures in which formal

schooling is rare (Dasen & Heron, 1981). Frued’s and Erikson’s emphasis on autonomy

in toddlerhood makes sense in most European and North American cultural settings, but

not in cultures in which dependency is encouraged. Bowlby’s adaption theory, with its

evolutionary roots, was also intended to be culturally universal. The tendency of infants

to form attachments to caregivers and the biological adaptiveness of infant-caregiver

attachments do seem to be universal, but the ways attachment is manifested appear to be

culture-specific.

According to Plucker (2007), content general or content specific is one of the

most controversial issues in contemporary creativity research. Recent studies provide

support for both positions, but the results of these investigations may be influenced by

several factors, including the presence of a method effect (i.e., psychometric vs.

alternative assessment). This study investigates the method effect by analyzing quantity

(psychometric) and quality (alternative assessment) of creative achievement

simultaneously using structural equation modeling. Although people seem to develop

abilities at approximately the same age this view has been called too simplistic. Cultural

differences, as well as family differences, may influence development.

Development may be much more multifaceted. As the theorists of different

countries defined the same processes of development, the worldwide developmental

processes. Although the differences in cultures and norms also make the development of

children different from other religion. As in western countries, when a child is 18 years
 28

old he lives separate from his family, he is free from the authority of parents and is in the

process to form their identity and make their own decisions, but in eastern countries child

is not given permission to live separately, they have to take care of their parents their

whole life and their family setups also create changes in their development. As a child

who is given permission to make his own decision would differ from the person who

depends on his parent’s support. I believe that we cannot generalize all western theories

of development on to eastern children; we should be more specific in what we want to

explain and in what context.

Most developmentalists recognize that it is unwise to take an extreme position on

the issues of nature and nurture, continuity and discontinuity, heredity and environment,

maturation and learning, idiographic and normative development, active-passive learning,

and specificity-generality. They all characterize development through the human life

span. Although the developmentalists do not take extreme positions on these important

issues, this consensus has not meant the absence of spirited debate about how strongly

development is influenced by each of these factors. The answers to these questions also

have a bearing on social policy decisions about children and adolescents, and

consequently on each of our lives.

Conclusion

As psychology is a science of a behavior and developmental psychology is the

largest and widely spread branch of psychology which deals with the life span

developmental changes that take place throughout the life of an organism / human beings.

The human development has been divided into eight periods through which every
 29

individual go. Different theorists gave their definitions of human development and are

known as the pioneers of developmental psychology. Many researchers uses different

research method to conduct studies on the development of different factors of children.

Some developmental processes, such as growth during the prenatal period or the

onset of puberty, are primarily biological. Others depend mainly on experience.

Acquiring the speech patterns and accents of the neighborhood you grow up in or

learning a new language while in another country are the developmental procedures

which are primarily influenced by personal experience.

However, most development throughout the life span is a result of interaction

between biology and experience. Most development cannot be neatly categorized as

either by logical or experiential; instead, it involves an ongoing, dynamic interplay

between the two basic sets of causes. Your present personality is also a function of your

interaction with other people, the self concept you began to develop in infancy, the social

and the cultural contacts you grew up in, and much more. The days have gone when

theorists focused on single aspects of development to the exclusion of everything else.

The arguments rose over whether aspects of cognition and personality are either a

function of biology or a function of experience has ended. We also saw interaction in the

relationship between inherited physical characteristics such as body type, skin color, or

height, and a person’s self concept and social acceptance. Behavior may also be

influenced by expectations based on stereotypes, such as the fat people are jolly,

adolescence are awkward etc. Theorists still disagree about how much a given

characteristic or behavior is a result of biology versus experience. So the controversies of

the past aren’t entirely dead.

 30

There are a number of important issues that have been debated throughout the history of

developmental psychology. In psychology, the controversies arouse from the different

theoretical concepts of different theories that they believed were the major parts of child

development.

• Nature-Nurture is the fundamental question in psychology and involves the

debate that whether development is influenced by nature or nurture. How much

nature and nurture contributes varies from one characteristic to another. This

debate shows that the interplay between nature and nurture is a busy two-way

street. The nature vs. nurture debate has produced many research advances in the

area of human development.

• Heredity and environment interact; the environment encourages or discourages

the expression of an individual’s inherited characteristics while at the same time,

those inherited characteristics to some extent determine that individual’s

environment. Even though evidence proves that there is an interaction between

genes and the environment, people will continue to study the effects of each in

development.

• Long-standing issue in child psychology is whether the development is connected

and constant (continuous) or uneven and disconnected (discontinuous). At the

heart of this debate lies the question of whether the development is solely and

evenly continuous, or whether it is marked by age specific periods. Related to the

continuity-discontinuity issue is the distinction between quantitative and

 31

qualitative change. Quantitative changes are changes by degree whereas

qualitative changes are changes in kind.

• Maturation-learning issue basically deals with the question: “How does

maturation, which is biologically based, interact with learning, which is

experiential, to shape development?” The maturationists believe that extreme

environments can depress development, but basic growth tendencies are

genetically wired into the human. The question of maturation versus learning is an

age old debate - but today most psychologists believe that maturation and learning

influence cognitive ability.

• Normative-Idiographic issue adequately tries to give descriptions that provide us

with the facts about development, but it is only the starting point. Ultimately,

developmentalists seek to explain the changes they have observed. In pursuing

this goal of explanation, researchers hope to determine why humans developed as

they typically do and why some individuals turn out differently from others.

• Active-Passive learning issue is a debate among developmental theorists about

whether children are active contributors to their own development or, rather,

passive recipients of environmental influences. But the fact is that much of the

time we actively approach the world in all its complexity, and we construct our

own view of it to guide us, yet we often has little choice except should react

towards the physical and social world serves up for us.

• The issue of domain specificity-generality has been raised most often in

connection with cognitive development, where the question is whether a theory

 32

attempts to explain cognitive development in general or focuses instead on

processes specific to particular domains.

References
Berger, K. S. (2000). The developing person: Through childhood and adolescence (5th

ed.). USA: Worth publishers.

Bernstein, D. A., Clarke-Stewart, A., Roy, E. J., Srull, T. K., & Wickens, C. D. (1994).

Psychology (3rd ed.). USA: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Cole, M., & Cole, S. R. (1996). The development of children (3rd ed.). New York: W. H.

Freeman & company.

Courage, M. L., & Howe, M. L. (2002). From infant to child: The dynamics of cognitive

change in the second year of life. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 250-277.

 33

Dasen, P. R., & Heron, A. (1981). Cross-cultural tests of Piaget’s theory. In Triandis, H.,

& Heron, A. (Eds.), Cross-cultural contributions to psychology (pp. 94-104).

Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger.

DeHart, G. B., Sroufe, L. A., & Cooper, R. G. (2004). Child development: Its nature &

course (5th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill companies, Inc.

Kail, R.V., &Cavanaugh, J. C. (2000). Human development: A lifespan view (2nd ed.).

USA: Thomson Learning.

Papalia, D. E., & Olds, S. W. (1995). Human development (6th ed.). USA: McGraw-Hill,

Inc.

Pinel, P. J. (2000). Biopsychology (4th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Plucker, J. A. (2007). Generalization of creativity across domains: Examination of the

modern effect hypothesis. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 38(1), 1-12.

Rymers, R. (1992). A silent childhood. The New Yorker, 41-81.

Santrock, J. W. (2002). Life-span development (8th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill

Companies.

Santrock, J. W. (2005). Children (8th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Companies.

Shaffer, D. R. (2002). Developmental psychology: Childhood and adolescence (6th ed.).

USA: Thomson Learning.

Varta, R., & Miller, S. A. (2005). Child psychology (4th ed.). New York: John Wiley &

Sons, Inc.
 34

Weiten, W. & Lloyd, M. A. (2003). Psychology applied to modern life: Adjustment in the

21st century (7th ed.). Canada: Thomson Learning, Inc.