Developmental Psychology

Developmental psychology is that which seeks to understand how people come to distinguish, perceive, and act within the world and how these processes vary throughout life as they age. The general focuses include intellectual, cognitive, neural, social, and/or moral development. As well as studying children, developmental psychologists also study aging and processes throughout the duration of life, especially at times when rapid change may occur (such as adolescence and old age). Many psychology researchers are in agreement that heredity and environment both contribute significantly to the development of various human traits. However, researchers may be undecided on the extent to which heredity and environment combined, contribute to the development
Traits are sometimes passed from generation to generation, meaning people inherit traits from their parents, and then pass those traits onto their own children. Non-genetic (environmental) influences in people’s lives are just as important in shaping traits, and can sometimes even change them. An environmental trait is basically an attribute that is solely influenced by an individual’s surroundings. Just as there are very few genes which are the only influence to some behaviour or another, there are limited traits that are considered to only be environmental. An example is mother tongue, however, no human baby can learn a single language better than another; it’s just whatever language they are exposed to first that they tend to pick up. While not disregarding that genetic tendencies may exist, supporters of the nurture theory believe they ultimately don’t matter and that one’s behavioural aspects originate only from the environmental factors of their upbringing. Sure, it is fair to say someone got their red hair from their mother and their blue eyes from their father, but where did they obtain their ‘thrill-seeking personality’ and openness? A parent’s interests aren’t generally passed on through generation, so for one to have that ‘openness’ (inventive, emotion, appreciation for art) trait they would have been exposed to particular
Among the theories they supported were that homosexual males particularly come from families with domineering mothers and no masculine father-like figures, that poor academic performances were a result from lack of intellectual stimulation in early childhood, and that autism begins from poor parenting skills. People still often continue to believe (to some extent) that proper environments can prevent and "cure" these ‘abnormal’ characteristics, not realizing that heredity might actually play significant roles in the development of these traits. However it is important to repeat that individual differences, compared to group differences, in genetic predispositions are clear in the development of most emotional, behavioural, and cognitive traits. With this in mind, it is also important to realize that focusing on optimizing environmental influences while ignoring heredity influences could potentially lead to the neglect of the developmental needs of some individuals, and it may be just as harmful in some cases if one was to only focus exclusively on heredity influences, especially as there is a nearly unlimited amount of possible traits that could be used to describe a personality. A journalist once asked psychologist Donald Hebb “which, nature or nurture, contributes