PSYC 2450 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Philosophical Perspectives, Social Skills, Tabula Rasa

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 2450
• Professor: Anneke Olthof

Document Summary

Three major goals: describe, explain, optimize development, description; behaviour of people of different ages, specify how people change over time. Explain; why people develop as they do and why some people develop differently than others. Explanation centres both on normative changes within individuals and on variations in development between individuals: easier to describe development that to conclusively explain how it happens. 2: optimize; development by applying what has been learned in attempts to help people develop positive directions. First five periods of life: prenatal development, infancy and toddlerhood, preschool, middle childhood, adolescence. Holistic process: divide developmentalists into three camps, physical growth (bodily changes, sequencing of motor skills, cognitive aspects (perception, language, learning and thinking, psychosocial aspects (emotions, personality, growth of interpersonal relationships) Indeed fortunate that human development is so plastic for children who have horrible starts, they can often be helped to overcome their deficiencies. Each generation develops own way and changes the world for succeeding generations.