PSY 2114 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Epigenome, Menarche, Human Behavior

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 2114
• Professor: Wendy Lee

Document Summary

Nature: our biological endowment, genes we inherited. Nurture: the physical, social, and cultural environment. Biology and environment interact to shape development. Important things to consider: timing (e. g. sensitive or critical periods, what counts as environment , see bronfenbrenner"s model, the active child/adult. Children shape their own development: e. g. , influenced by genetic/biological predispositions (active gene- environment association) Infancy: selective attention, eliciting care, interaction from others. Toddler/preschooler: playing, language (asking for objects names, babbling) Adolescence: chooses own friends, romantic partners, selects own school courses, extracurricular activites. Children"s role in directing their own development increases with age. Development as continuous change occurs gradually in a cumulative fashion with small incremental or quantitative changes. Development as discontinuous change occurs with sudden or dramatic qualitative shifts from one stage of development to another. Stages involve: qualitative changes, simultaneous changes in many domains of development, transitions between stages is rapid, changes occurs in logical and coherent patterns.