AP PSYCHOLOGY UNIT 9 CORNELL NOTES

Main Ideas Notes
Developing Person
Nature Vs Nurture
Continuity And Discontinuity
• Focuses on:
• Thinking
• Feeling
• Behavior changes throughout a person’s life
• Looks at three debates:
• Nature v.s. Nurture
• Continuity v.s. Discontinuity
• Stability v.s. Change
• Development
• A sequence of age-related changes that occur as a person progresses froconception to death
• Nature v.s. Nurture Issue
• It involves two big questions about heredity and the environment
• How much weight does each wield?
• How do they interact?
• Nature refers to the effects of heredity
• Nurture to the influence of the environment
• There are two effective ways to study nature-nurture
• Twin-studies
• Identical twins have the same genotype
• Fraternal twins have an average of 50% of their genes in comm• Adoption studies
• Similarities with the biological family support nature, while
similarities with the adoptive family support nurture
• Continuity v.s. Discontinuity
• Is human development a gradual and continuous process in which individuals buon previously acquired knowledge and skills?
• Is it a discontinuous process, involving a series of discrete stages in which new
knowledge and behaviors emerge abruptly?
• Continuity View
• The continuity view says that change is gradual
• Children become more skillful in thinking, talking, or acting
much the same way as they get taller
• We know that skilled behaviors often happen in this way as with the triand error method of learning to walk or eat with a spoon
• Discontinuity View
• Sees development as:
• More abrupt-a succession of changes produces different
behaviors in different age-specific life periods called stages
• In order to advance, an individual must reach a behavioral goaorder to proceed
• This is evident in beginning readers who suddenly
discover the connection between letters and sounds
• We often hear people talking about children going through “stages” in • Developmental stages-periods of life initiated by distinct
transitions in physical or psychological functioning
• People go through the same stages in the same order but not at the samrate
• However, if a person misses a stage, it can have lasting