Psychology 3228A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Developmental Psychology, Developmental Disorder, Heritability

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 3228A/B
• Professor: K. MacPherson

Document Summary

Nature vs. nurture: one of the central debates of developmental psychology, question of nature vs. nurture has a long history as far back as ancient greek philosophers. Watson (1930: taken alone, this statement suggests that innate mental capacities don"t exist, and play no role in individual differences. Where does modern evolutionary psychology stand: draws a distinction between, 1. The claim that difference btw individuals are innate: 2. The claim that similarities btw individuals are innate: these 2 arguments are logically independent i. e. human hand with 5 digits, genetics result in similarity, most of us have 5, differences usually due to environment. I. e. might lose a digit in an accident. Mental modules: gained prominence in the 1990s, brain has specialized processing units that are domain specific. Including modules for (among others): language, physics, faces, number, time, space, mental states, modules present bc they were engineered by natural selection. Importantly, these modules do not necessarily map onto specific brain structures.