PSYC 2110 Lecture 3: PSYC 2110 Lecture 3 Notes
30 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
PSYC 2110 Lecture 3 Notes
Introduction
Reasonably Proficient
• Although a certain degree of physical maturation is necessary before an elementary
school child can become reasonably proficient at dribbling a basketball, careful
instruction and many, many hours of practice are essential if this child is ever to
approximate the ball-handling skills of a professional basketball player.
• Many of our abilities and habits do not simply unfold as part of maturation
• We often learn to feel, think, and behave in new ways from our observations of and
from events that we experience.
• This means that we change in response to our environments
• 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.
• And as we will see throughout, some of the more lively debates about human
development are arguments about which of these processes contribute most to
particular developmental changes.
• What Goals Do Developmentalists Pursue?
• Three major goals of the developmental sciences are to describe, to explain, and to
optimize development (Baltes, Reese, & Lipsitt, 1980).
• In pursuing the goal of description, human developmentalists carefully observe the
behaviour of people of different ages, seeking to specify how people change over time.
• Although there are typical pathways of development that virtually all people follow, no
two persons are exactly alike.
• Even when raised in the same home, children often display very different interests,
values, abilities, and behaviours.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
