PSY270H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Midlife Crisis, John Bowlby, Menopause
Document Summary
Developmental psychology is concerned with the course and causes of developmental changes over a person"s entire lifetime. What does genetic influence mean: historical perspective, british empiricist philosopher john locke in the 1690s argued that childhood experiences (nurture) permanently affect people. Empiricists saw the newborn as a blank slate or tabula rasa on which experience writes. The term development encompasses not only maturation but also the behavioral and mental processes that are influenced by learning: behaviorist john b. watson in the 1910s claimed that all development is due to learning. Swiss psychologist jean piaget saw nature and nurture as inseparable and interactive in cognitive development: understanding genetic influence, behavioral genetics is the study of how genes affect behavior. This research demonstrated that nature and nurture jointly contribute to development in two ways: nature and nurture operate together to make all people similar in some respects.
