Developmental Psychology Issues

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Issues in Developmental Psychology

Psychology is defined as a science of behavior. Developmental psychology is a science of human lifespan development. Developmental psychology studies how individuals change over time and the process that create those changes. Human development is generally described in terms of periods or stages. The most widely used classification of eight developmental periods are in the following order: prenatal period (conception-birth), infancy (birth-2 years), early childhood (2-6), middle and late childhood (6-11), adolescence (12-18), early adulthood (19-35), middle adulthood (36-60), and late adulthood (60-death). To test developmental psychology theorists have to ask themselves certain questions. Is development …show more content…

Some theorists (Plato and Descartes) believed that some ideas are inborn in a person. While other theorist, such as John Locke, believed that the mind is a blank page when a person is born. An example of nature vs nurture is if a wild boy was to be found in the woods today, modern psychologists probably wouldn’t be able to cure him. Today most psychologists believe that it is an interaction between the two that causes development. For example: some development such as puberty is biological, but can be affected by environmental factors such as diet and …show more content…

This will only take place when a person has a certain experience. We learn to feel, think, and behave in new ways from the observation of people in our lives and from events we experience. So how does maturation interact with learning to shape development? Maturationists believe that extreme environments can reduce development, but basic growth are genetically wired into the human. People change in response to their environment and also to the actions and reactions of the people around us. As we get older we become more mature, we grow in height and weight, puberty changes many things in our bodies. It is natural and also involuntary. But we learn many things as we get older like obedience, moral reasoning and manners. They are not biological but are learned through

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