cognitive development: an advanced textbook - routledge

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CONTENTS

Preface vii

Neural, Physical, Motor, Perceptual, Cognitive, and Language1Development: An Introduction and Overview 1Marc H. Bornstein and Michael E. Lamb

PART I: FOUNDATIONS OF DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE 17

Concepts and Theories of Human Development 192Richard M. Lerner, Selva Lewin-Bizan, and Amy Eva Alberts Warren

Culture in Development 673Michael Cole and Martin Packer

Design, Measurement, and Analysis in Developmental Research 1254Donald P. Hartmann, Kelly E. Pelzel, and Craig B. Abbott

PART II: DEVELOPMENT IN NEUROSCIENCE, MOTOR SKILLS,PERCEPTION, COGNITION, AND LANGUAGE 215

Developmental Neuroscience, Psychophysiology, and Genetics 2175Mark H. Johnson

Physical and Motor Development 2576Karen E. Adolph and Sarah E. Berger

Perceptual Development 3197Marc H. Bornstein, Martha E. Arterberry, and Clay Mash

The Development of Cognitive Abilities 3698Damian P. Birney and Robert J. Sternberg

Language Development 4059Brian MacWhinney

Glossary 441

Author Index 447

Subject Index 465

About the Authors 475



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PREFACE

Cognitive developmental science broadly construed constitutes a unique, comprehensive,and significant domain of intellectual endeavour for three main reasons. First, develop-mental science offers an essential perspective on psychological theory and research in cog-nition. For example, when psychologists conduct experiments in perception or investigatelanguage, they usually concentrate on perception or language in individuals of a particularage—infants, children, adolescents, adults, or the elderly. In so doing, they gain importantknowledge about perception or language. To study psychological phenomena at only onepoint in the life cycle, however, is to limit our knowledge of them by failing to considersuch factors as their stability and continuity through time that are the province of devel-opmental study. Indeed, it could be argued that, when we undertake a comprehensiveanalysis of any psychological phenomenon, we necessarily incorporate a developmentalperspective. The question is, how comprehensively is that perspective addressed? Thechapters in this textbook on substantive areas of cognitive psychology—neuroscience,perception, cognition, and language—all demonstrate that the developmental perspectivetranscends and enriches any narrow focus on particular points in the life span. One purposeof this textbook, then, is to furnish inclusive developmental perspectives on these topicalareas in cognitive psychology, and the substantive chapters included in this edition under-score the dynamic and exciting status that contemporary developmental science brings to thestudy of cognition.

Second, developmental science is a major subdiscipline in its own right. It has its ownhistory and systems, its own perspectives, and its own methodologies and approaches tomeasurement and analysis, as each of the contributions to this textbook illustrates. If study-ing psychology comprehensively involves incorporating a developmental perspective, thenthere are special traditions, approaches, and methodologies to which students of cognitionmust also attend. These traditions, approaches, and methods are masterfully introduced andreviewed in the chapters that follow.

Third, many aspects of developmental science have obvious and immediate relevance toreal-world issues and problems. Each of the chapters in this textbook incorporates the every-day relevance of developmental science through reviews of the history, theory, and substanceof the subdiscipline.

In summary, developmental science provides a perspective that illuminates substantivephenomena in cognitive psychology, applies across the life span, has intrinsic value, andhas manifest relevance to daily life. It is for these reasons that we undertook the study ofdevelopmental science and subsequently prepared this advanced introduction to the field ofcognitive development.

This volume can be used at the advanced undergraduate and introductory graduate levels.It is hardly possible today for any single individual to convey, with proper sensitivity anddepth, the breadth of contemporary cognitive developmental science at this level. For thatreason, we invited experts to prepare comprehensive, and topical treatments of its majorareas. We then organized and edited their contributions, with the cooperation and good

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will of our contributors, into a single coherent volume. All chapters represent faithfully thecurrent status of scholarly efforts in all aspects of developmental science.

Cognitive Development: An Advanced Textbook provides a comprehensive and up-to-dateintroduction to the field for advanced students.

This volume is supported by resources developed by Trey Buchanan of Wheaton College.The password-protected website at http://www.psypress.com/textbook-resources/ featuresmaterial for students and material that is accessible only to instructors. Students will findchapter outlines, topics to think about before reading the chapters, a glossary, and suggestedreadings with active reference links. Instructors will have access to this material as well aselectronic access to all of the text figures and tables, suggestions for classroom assignmentsand/or discussion, and a test bank with multiple-choice, short-answer, and essay questions foreach chapter.

Cognitive Development has many purposes. We hope that readers of this textbook willobtain a new perspective on cognition, a greater appreciation of the varied phenomena thatconstitute cognitive psychology, and a fundamental grounding in developmental science.

We thank many reviewers for thoughtful ideas about this volume: Trey Buchanan(Wheaton College), Annie M. Cardell (Mountain State University), Lisa K. Hill (HamptonUniversity), and Rebecca Wood (Central Connecticut State University). In addition, we aregrateful to Mandy Collison, Andrea Zekus, and Debra Riegert at Psychology Press for theirexcellent editorial and production support.

Marc H. BornsteinMichael E. Lamb

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NEURAL, PHYSICAL, MOTOR, PERCEPTUAL,COGNITIVE, AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT:

AN INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

Marc H. BornsteinEditor, Parenting: Science and Practice

Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Michael E. LambUniversity of Cambridge

INTRODUCTION

When lay people think of psychology, they tend to focus on the nature and origins of intelli-gence or personality. These concerns have characterized the reflections of men and women ontheir own nature since Aristotle first pondered the nature of mankind and individual diversity.Despite its long history, however, studies of intelligence and personality development are stillmarked in large measure by dissension rather than consensus, by assertion rather than docu-mentation. This state of affairs may reflect both the inadequacies of scientific psychology andthe complexity of the issues that developmentalists confront. Fortunately, recent advances inour understanding of development are transforming these areas of scholarship, as authors inthis book make clear.

Developmental science addresses the full spectrum of human thinking, feeling, andbehavior and how they vary from one culture to another (Bornstein, 2009), and it is concernedwith children’s futures as well as the future of society. In undertaking this privileged burden,developmental science has four related goals: (a) Description—what people are like at differ-ent ages and how they change or stay the same over time; (b) Explanation—the origins ofindividual differences and the causes of development; (c) Prediction—what an individual willbe like at a later point in development based on what is known about the individual’s past andpresent characteristics; and (d) Intervention—how best to use developmental knowledge toimprove well-being.

Development is usually identified with growth and change. In the realm of language devel-opment, for example, growth and change are especially salient. As the toddler emerges out ofthe infant and the child out of the toddler, one of the most readily observable developmentalcharacteristics is growth and change in the child’s language. Although development impliesgrowth and change over time, development is not just any kind of growth and change. Whena child gains weight, his or her body grows bigger, but weight gain is not development.Developmental growth and change are special in three ways; consider language developmentagain. (a) Developmental growth and change constitute better adaptation to the environment.When a child can say how she feels and what she wants, she has developed from being a babywho can only cry to communicate. Developing language enables a child to actively participate

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in her own development as well. (b) Developmental growth and change proceed from simpleand global to complex and specific. In acquiring language, children move from single wordsthat express simple and general thoughts to putting words together to express ever moresophisticated thoughts. (c) Developmental growth and change are relatively enduring.Whereas simple change is transitory, once a child acquires language it is permanent. Devel-opmental growth and change therefore reflect relatively lasting transformations that makean individual better adapted to his or her environment by enhancing the individual’s abilitiesto understand and express more complex behavior, thinking, and emotions.

But the coin in this (as in other realms of) development has two sides. The complement ofgrowth and change in development is continuity and stability. Although development iscommonly identified with growth and change, some features of development are theorized toremain (more or less) consistent over time. In biology, a goal of the organism is to maintaininternal stability and equilibrium or homeostasis.

SOME CENTRAL ISSUES IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE

Norms and Individual Differences

In studying almost every characteristic (construct, structure, function, or process) of develop-ment, developmental scientists consider both norms and individual differences. Normsrepresent average outcomes on some characteristic; normative development is the patternover time that is typical or average. For example, very few adults are either 4 or 7 feet tall;many more stand between 5 and 6 feet. This distribution during the childhood and adolescentyears tells us how height varies in the population and provides guidance for pediatricians todetermine whether a child or adolescent is developing normally.

However, typical development, based on what occurs on average, is only part of thestory because children who are the same age vary within every domain of development. It iscommonly understood that variation among individuals in diverse characteristics appears innormal distributions in the population. So, to continue our example, at virtually every age,children vary in terms of individual differences in their language. On average, children beginto talk and walk at about 1 year of age. But the range of individual differences in bothachievements is considerable. Some children say their first word at 9 months, others not until29 months; some children first walk at 10 months, others at 18 months. It is also the case thatdevelopment can follow many different paths to the same or to different ends. Children maydevelop at different rates, but eventually reach the same height. Others may develop at thesame rate, but stop growing at different heights. And different children may develop at differ-ent rates and reach different heights. All these paths illustrate individual differences. Under-standing development requires an understanding of individual differences—the variationamong individuals on a characteristic—as well as norms or what is typical.

The Constant Interplay of Biology and Experience

All children come into the world with the set of genes they inherit from their parents, but onlya few traits (such as eye color) are genetically determined. All children have experiences in theworld, but only a few experiences are formative by themselves. Rather, the characteristics anindividual develops are the result of interaction between genetic and experiential influencesover time (Gottlieb, Wahlstein, & Lickliter, 2006). A child may inherit a genetic tendency tobe inhibited, for instance, but whether this leads to painful shyness or quiet confidencedepends on the child’s experiences. Likewise, language development is the product of genes

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and experience (Waxman & Lidz, 2006). Adopted children are like both their biological andadoptive parents with respect to their language abilities. Differences in the timing and rate ofpuberty among adolescents growing up in the same general environment result chiefly, but notexclusively, from genetic factors (Dick, Rose, Pulkkinen, & Kaprio, 2001; Mustanski, Viken,Kaprio, Pulkkinen, & Rose, 2004), but puberty occurs earlier among adolescents who arebetter nourished throughout their prenatal, infant, and childhood years.

Development is Dynamic and Reciprocal

Development is not the result of an environment operating on a passive organism; in manyrespects people help to create their own development through their thoughts and actions.People shape their own development by selecting experiences (children choose their friends);by appraising their experiences (children who believe that their parents love them have fewermental health problems); and by affecting their experiences (children engender parents orpeers to behave toward them in certain ways).

Development is Cumulative

To understand an individual at a given point in the life span, it is helpful to look at earlierperiods (Lamb, Freund, & Lerner, 2010; Overton & Lerner, 2010). The quality of the infant’srelationships at home lays the groundwork for the relationships the child forms with schoolfriends, which in turn shape relationships the adolescent develops with intimate friends andlovers, and so on. The pathway that connects the past with the present and the future is a“developmental trajectory” (Nagin & Tremblay, 2005). A child who has poor early relation-ships is not destined to have bad relationships throughout life, but the child who is launchedon a healthy trajectory clearly has an advantage.

Development Occurs Throughout the Lifespan

Development is a lifelong process, and individuals have the potential for continuing growthand change. This view contrasts with the notion that individual trajectories are determined byearly experiences. Early experiences are, of course, important because they lay the foundationfor later development, but their impact can be overridden by later experiences. No one periodof development prevails over all others. Development continues from birth to death, andchange is almost always possible, in infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age(Baltes, Lindenberger, & Staudinger, 2006; Elder & Shanahan, 2006).

Systems in Development

Dynamic systems theory looks at the many facets of development as part of a single,dynamic, constantly changing system. Thus, development in one area of life influences others.Children’s motor achievements affect other, sometimes surprising, aspects of their psycho-logical growth (Howe & Lewis, 2005; Thelen & Smith, 2006; van Geert & Steenbeek, 2005).For example, infants perceive depth (the ability to correctly judge distances) at 2 months, butthey do not show fear of heights until they are able to crawl on their own, regardless of theage at which they begin to crawl. Crawling (motor development) allows the infant to estimatedistances more accurately than before (cognitive development), which later translates intofear (emotional development). Exercise affects brain development and learning; being morephysically fit is related to higher scores on standardized math and reading tests (Castelli, 2005;Castelli, Hillman, Buck, & Erwin, 2007). Obesity presents a social and emotional hazard.Boys and girls who are overweight are subject to teasing and are more likely to be excluded

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from friendship groups; tend to have less confidence in their athletic competency, social skills,and appearance; and have lower opinions of their overall self-worth (Bradley et al., 2008;O’Brien et al., 2007). They score lower than normal-weight children on measures of qualityof life (Schwimmer, Burwinkle, & Varni, 2003).

Consider another example of the interface between physical and psychological develop-ment. Hearing problems affect about half of those aged 75 and older (Pleis & Lethbridge-Çejku, 2006). Hearing problems are a deficit in themselves, but they can make it difficult forolder adults to follow conversations, interfere with social interactions, frustrate others, or leadthem to view the older person as confused or incompetent, reactions that can undermine theolder person’s confidence or feelings of self-worth (Kampfe & Smith, 1998) and so causesome older adults to become hesitant when interacting with others or to avoid interactionaltogether (Desai, Pratt, Lentzner, & Robinson, 2001).

PRINCIPAL THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT

Scientific theories are ideas or principles based on empirical findings that explain sets ofrelated phenomena. Members of the scientific community accept a theory because it standsup under empirical testing and fits the known facts. Theories help scientists to organize theirthinking, decide which phenomena are significant, and generate new questions and hypoth-eses. Developmental science covers a vast array of topics. Without theories, developmentalscientists would be lost. But theories are not permanent; the history of science consists ofwidely accepted theories being replaced by new approaches. Theories are refined in responseto new scientific discoveries.

Through most of the twentieth century, the study of development was guided by “classicaltheories” or overarching visions that sought to explain every aspect of development frombirth to adulthood. Although less influential now than before, classical theories laidthe foundation for today’s science of development. Perhaps the most prominent and endur-ing theoretical orientation to development is the belief that development results fromthe predominance or the interplay of nature and nurture. The contemporary view of thenature–nurture debate emphasizes interaction and transaction, and their mutual influencethrough time.

Nature–Nurture

One perennial issue in discussions of intelligence or personality development can be summar-ized in three words: “heredity or experience?”. Although it is common to attribute the earliestsalvos to the European empiricists and nativists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,the dispute over the relative importance of innate biological influences (“heredity”) versus therole of the environment (“experience”) in individual development was initiated by Aristotleand his contemporaries much earlier (Brett, 1912–1921).

The heredity–experience dichotomy crudely labels the two principal points of view onthe origins of the individuality and uniqueness of each person. Extreme hereditariansproposed that individual differences could be attributed to constitutional and genetic factors.Just as biology determines the characteristics that make all humans similar, they argued, sobiological factors account for the features that make each member of the species recognizablyunique. In contrast, the extreme empiricists argued that the experiences inherent in livingdetermined both the course of development and the uniqueness of the individual. Men andwomen develop particular attitudes and behavioral styles because they have been trained tobehave, think, or feel in such fashions. In the language of the scientific empiricists, differential

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reinforcement—both positive and negative—accounted for the strengthening of somebehavior patterns and the elimination of others. Individuality consequently resulted from aunique history of experiences, just as species-specific similarities may result from uniformitiesin patterns of reinforcement.

In the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin (1859) initiated movements that were destined toengender the scientific study of psychology. The psychologists succeeding Darwinemphasized the biological aspects of development at the expense of the experiential. WhenSigmund Freud subsequently formulated his psychoanalytical explanation of personalitydevelopment, for example, he did so largely within this biological framework. Althoughcritical formative experiences (such as the Oedipus complex) in the life of each person weredescribed, Freud made clear that these events need not be concretely experienced; rather,many of the conflicts and “experiences” were believed to be inevitably (that is, biologically)predetermined (Freud, 1916/1917).

Scientists and philosophers stressing the importance of innate or biological determinantsof intelligence and personality became known as nativists, and their dominance was rudelyshattered in 1924 with John B. Watson’s publication of a Behaviorist Manifesto. Watson’sbehaviorism was greeted enthusiastically by psychologists, and behaviorists’ subsequentrelentless emphasis on the observable and the tangible, and their rejection of any explanatoryconcept that rested on unobservable biological bases, transformed psychology. Watson’sbehaviorist theory was no less speculative than the theories against which he railed; thereinforcement histories, the experiences, and the training he identified were postulated, notobserved. The strength of the behaviorist doctrine lay in its apparent precision and the extentto which it seemed open to refutation or confirmation.

For the next half-century the behaviorists dominated developmental science. Studiesof intelligence and personality development drew on behaviorist notions, and official publica-tions aimed at lay persons and parents paraphrased behaviorist pronouncements. However,psychoanalytic theory remained the predominant point of view among those working withdisturbed children in clinical settings and continued to provide many of the concepts and toidentify many of the phenomena with which other theories dealt. Psychoanalytic theoryfocuses on the inner self and how emotions determine the way we interpret our experiencesand therefore how we act. Learning theory stresses the role of external influences on behavior.In 1950, Dollard and Miller attempted to translate psychoanalytic theory into behavioristterms with the aim of making it both precise and scientific. Throughout this book the readerwill encounter references to critical or formative experiences.

Unfortunately, the brash promise of the behaviorists was never fulfilled. Although Watsonand his students published some experimental studies substantiating behaviorist notionsthat behavioral patterns could be established by reward and extinguished by punishment,their successors were less empirical. In their zeal to explain intellectual or personality devel-opment with a “scientific” theory, they were rather less careful about the manner in whichthey conducted research. Instead of observing the function of stimulus–response contingen-cies in the development of specific children, for example, they attempted to answer questionsposed more generally (for example, do “smarter” parents have “smarter” children? or do“hostile” parents have “aggressive” children?”) and they relied almost exclusively onretrospective accounts of the behavior of both children and adults. Alas, a half-century ofdogmatic pronouncements yielded a peculiarly inconclusive set of findings: Few clear associ-ations between styles of parenting and styles among children emerged.

During the decades that the behaviorists dominated American psychology, they werevehemently criticized by the maturationist Arnold Gesell (1925), who deserves recognition asthe most ardent and vociferous proponent of the nativist position. Gesell and his colleaguesspent years carefully documenting the emergence of cognitive, motor, and social skills in




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infants and young children. Ironically, while Watson and his behaviorist colleagues wererailing against the psychoanalysts for postulating unobservable and therefore unverifiableprocesses, it was the maturationists who actually observed children, although their conclu-sions were no more acceptable to Watson and other behaviorists than were those of Freud.According to Gesell, children become increasingly skillful for the same reason that they growtaller and heavier—because they mature. Two-year-olds behave as they do because they are inthe “two-year-old” phase. Unfortunately, the vigor with which Gesell expounded “matura-tionism” led others in the field to discount his theory and his behavioral observations as wellas his insistence that genetic and constitutional factors must be given more than tokenattention.

Interaction and Transaction

In 1958 Ann Anastasi published a seminal paper in which she denounced the excesses ofboth the extreme nativists and the radical behaviorists. Clearly, she argued, the biological andgenetic heritage of young children influences intelligence and personality, just as children’sexperiences influence the manner in which they develop. However, it is essential to recognizethat both experience and heredity are important determinants of development and thatthese determinants interact in children. Different experiences may yield similar or differentoutcomes when they interact with different genetic propensities.

Anastasi’s interactionist position was widely perceived as superior to either of the extremepositions she criticized, and after 1958 most authors and almost all popular textbooksdeclared their commitment to an interactionist perspective, usually appending admonitionsthat further discussion of the nature–nurture controversy is pointless. Nevertheless, with theexception of a few studies it was only in the 1970s that developmental scientists undertookinvestigations that seriously considered constitutional and experiential factors together. Moreimportantly, it was only with the revolutionary transformation of molecular genetics inthe past two decades that researchers began documenting interactionism, rather thanproclaiming it. For example, a longitudinal study in New Zealand showed that children weredifferentially affected by exposure to maltreatment, with some showing profound con-sequences in later life but others apparently unaffected by maltreatment (Caspi et al., 2003).Importantly, a specific genetic allele appeared to distinguish between those children who wereand those who were not adversely affected.

Interaction is sometimes more than and different from the combination of nature andnurture. A teaspoon of vinegar and a teaspoon of baking soda are, by themselves, inert,but mixed together they fizz and bubble. Thus, the result of their interaction is somethingqualitatively different from the initial ingredients. So it is with development. Measuringgenetic and experiential influences fails to account for development; the key to development ishow genes and experiences interact through time.

Take physical development. What factors contribute to growth? Heredity is certainly a vitalingredient. Studies that have contrasted growth in identical twins (monozygotes who share100% of their genes) and fraternal twins (dizygotes who share, on average, 50% of their genes)find that about two-thirds of the variation in height and weight can be attributed to geneticinheritance (Plomin, 2007). But heredity is only part of the story. Changes in nutritioncan increase height and weight, as they have done in the past 100 years in most parts of theworld (Hoppa & Garlie, 1998; Magkos, Manios, Christakis, & Kafatos, 2005; Zhen-Wang &Cheng-Ye, 2005).

In modern times, classical broad-brush theories have given way to more specializedperspectives. Cognitive-developmental theory is concerned with development of thinking;ecological theory asserts that context is key to understanding development; the sociocultural

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perspective stresses that development constitutes adaptation to specific cultural demands;behavioral genetics studies inherited bases of behavior; and the evolutionary perspectivelooks at development in light of the evolution of the human species.

Multiple Sources of Influence

Children are profoundly affected by their interpersonal relationships, the social institutionsthat touch their lives, their culture, and the historical period in which they are developing(Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). The prevailing way developmental scientists think abouthow experiences influence child development is in terms of an ecological perspective. Devel-opmental characteristics in children are influenced by some forces that are close at hand(parents, extended family, peers); other forces that are somewhat removed (their neighbor-hood, their parents’ workplaces); and still other forces that are quite removed, although stillinfluential (social class, culture). Closer influences are called “proximal,” and more remoteinfluences are called “distal.” Generally speaking, distal forces influence child developmentthrough proximal forces. For example, low socioeconomic status (a distal influence) is linkedto poor intellectual development in children through, say, parenting (a proximal influence)(Bornstein, 2002; McLoyd, Aikens, & Burton, 2006).

Most developmental characteristics have multiple distal and proximal determinants. Thatis, the development of intelligence and personality alike is influenced in many different ways.It is necessary to consider all the likely sources of influence before it is possible to explain howand why an individual thinks or feels in specific ways. Caspi and colleagues (2003) focused ona specific gene that affects susceptibility to adverse influences on development, but researchershave identified a number of specific genes that appear to make children more vulnerable so itis likely both that children can be vulnerable for different reasons and that some children maybe especially vulnerable, because they have more than one source of vulnerability. No singleprocess is sufficient to explain any aspect of development fully.

Moreover, no single process appears to be necessary to explain any given characteristic ofdevelopment. Most important aspects of intelligence and personality are over-determined,which means that there are many ways of assuring the same outcome. This implies that thefailure or absence of any single experience need not have a profound impact on the child.Consider the child’s adoption of a gender role, for example. Various studies implicatehormonal and biological status, maternal behavior, paternal behavior, imitation of parents,imitation of siblings, societal expectations, the media, and peer pressure as influences ongender-role adoption (Hines, 2010). None of these sources of influence necessarily plays arole in every individual case, and none on its own is sufficient to ensure that the child developsa secure and appropriate gender role. This determination holds not only for gender-roledevelopment but also for every other aspect of development.

Although the concept of over-determination complicates explanation and understanding,it makes good sense from an evolutionary perspective. The survival of a species as character-istically social as ours would be seriously jeopardized if the appropriate acculturation andsocialization of each member of the species depended on the occurrence of a large numberof complex, narrowly defined experiences. Survival would be facilitated if, as we find isindeed the case, there were many experiential and genetic determinants of intelligenceand personality development. That there is considerable plasticity ensures the potentialfor further adaption to changing environments; that there are multiple determination andover-determination delimits the likelihood of radical changes in behavior that might beinimical to a species’ adaption to the environment. One unfortunate consequence, however,is that the task of those seeking to understand and explain intelligence and personalitydevelopment is rendered vastly more challenging.




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Stability and Instability; Continuity and Discontinuity

In developmental science time is a fundamental consideration, and so the field is centrallyconcerned with the consistency or inconsistency of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors throughtime. Consistency can be measured at the level of the individual or the group. Stabilitydescribes consistency in the relative standing of individuals on some characteristic throughtime. Stability in language development, for example, characterizes development when somechildren display a relatively high level of language at one point in time vis-à-vis their peersand continue to display a high level at a later point in time, where other children displayconsistently lower levels at both times. Instability in language occurs when individualsdo not maintain their relative rank order through time. The other side of development isgroup average performance through time, the so-called developmental function. Continuitydescribes group mean level consistency; change in the developmental trajectory of a charac-teristic in its mean level signals discontinuity.

The study of developmental stability and continuity is important for several reasons. Onereason is that findings of consistency tell us about the overall developmental course of a givencharacteristic. Whether individuals maintain rank order on some characteristic through timenot only informs about individual variation, but contributes to understanding the possiblenature, future, and origins of the characteristic as well. Past performance is often the bestpredictor of future performance. So, in language, it is believed that the major predictor ofdevelopmental status at a given age is language at an earlier age. Two additional reasonsknowledge about developmental stability and continuity are essential are that child character-istics—especially consistent ones—signal developmental status to others and affect the child’senvironment. For example, children’s vocalizations and words used during social interactionshave been employed to quantify how children socialize with others. Furthermore, interactantsoften adjust to match consistent characteristics in an individual. For example, adults modifytheir language to harmonize with the language of children. Thus, mothers fine-tune thecontents of their utterances in concert with their children’s level of understanding.

In a nutshell, developmentalists are broadly interested in how characteristics manifestthemselves and in their individual and group developmental course—their stability andcontinuity through time. From this perspective the developmental trajectory of a psycho-logical characteristic may consist of any of the four possible combinations of individualstability/instability and group continuity/discontinuity. If all children increase in theirvocabulary as they grow (as they do), then vocabulary will be discontinuous. If, within thegroup, children who have more vocabulary when they are young tend also to have morevocabulary when they are older, then vocabulary will be stable. As a whole, vocabulary will bestable and discontinuous. Stability in individuals and continuity in the group are independentof one another. A considerable amount of developmental scholarship focuses on identify-ing factors that promote stability or continuity over time as well as factors that resultin instability or discontinuity, both when they are desirable (e.g., potential for effectiveintervention) and undesirable (e.g., impact of traumatic life events).

CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE

The fields that are embraced by broad labels such as “cognitive and intellectual develop-ment” or “social and personality development” have been energized by a variety of theor-etical perspectives; researchers have adopted various techniques with which to explore theunderlying processes. Theoretical frameworks and methodologies, such as are detailed inChapters 2 and 4 of this volume by Lerner and colleagues and Hartmann and colleagues,

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must be considered together, because they are closely intertwined and because theoreticalframeworks can confirm or disprove hypotheses only to the extent permitted by the researchmethod adopted. Progress in our understanding of development consequently depends onsophistication of methodology as much as on precision in theory. This is an important pointto bear in mind when moving from the foundations chapters in the first part this book to thesubstantive areas of developmental science in the second part.

The usefulness of developmental research has been enhanced by the increased sophistica-tion of many researchers and the parallel awareness that, because the processes involved inintelligence and personality development are extraordinarily complex, traditional simplistichypotheses are inadequate. With appreciation that both environmental and constitutionalfactors influence the course and outcomes of these processes through time, there is promisethat current and future research will advance our understanding of development more thaninvestigations of the past.

Processes of development exert their influences on the human organism from the timeof conception until long past the stage when the individual begins to play a role in thesocialization of others. In fact, if we talk not of socialization—a term that implies a consciouseffort to influence the behavior of another through the exercise of power or control—butof formative social interaction, even fetuses can be said to exert influence, albeit unwittingly,on their parents. From the time of birth, infants enter into reciprocal interaction withsignificant others in their social world. This interaction, as this book makes clear, is thesource of socializing input to young children, but it is also the medium by which children—genetically unique individuals with specific behavioral predispositions—contribute tothe development of their parents, siblings, and others around them. The facts that thesepatterns of influence are reciprocal, the sources of influence multiple, and the productsdiverse combine to make the study of intelligence and personality development complex,challenging—and resistant to simplistic interpretations and explanations of either process oroutcome.

There are, or course, a number of ways in which a person’s genetic heritage contributes tothe development of his or her intelligence and personality. Genetic factors may mediatepredispositions characteristic of the species that interact with environmental factors in affect-ing individual development. For example, ethologically oriented theorists argue that infantsare born with behavioral propensities shaped by evolution; these propensities are realizedonly through association with specific adult behaviors. If the appropriate adult behaviors donot occur, developmental deviations (and hence differences in intelligence and personality)are to be expected.

For the most part, however, discussions of genetic determinants refer to the effects of theindividual’s inherited tendencies on their behavioral development. There are multiple ways inwhich these effects can be mediated. Not the least important are the relatively rare cases inwhich a severe pathological condition is directly attributable to gene effects or chromosomaldamage (e.g., Down’s syndrome).

There are also cases in which genetically mediated abnormalities establish predispositionsthat will be followed unless a particularly benign environment is encountered. For example,most scientists now recognize that schizophrenia, the most commonly diagnosed psychoticcondition, occurs among only a portion of the individuals who are genetically predisposedtoward it. Individuals whose environments are unusually supportive (including those in whichthe individual is never subject to severe stress) retain the genetic predisposition and may passit along to their children, but they themselves avoid psychotic breakdowns. Similarly, Caspi etal.’s research showed that children with the “susceptibility” gene develop normally providedthey are not exposed to maltreatment, but will be especially harshly affected (relative to peerswithout that gene) when exposed to such experiences.




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Another illustration of genetic predisposition interacting with the environment occurs inthe case of a syndrome called phenylketonuria (PKU), which causes profound mental retard-ation. Geneticists have determined that the individual’s inability to metabolize the amino acidphenylalanine is to blame. Toxins such as phenylpyruvic acid build up and cause functionalbrain damage. If the disorder is diagnosed at birth, however, and the child is placed on aspecial diet that excludes phenylalanine, injury to the nervous system is avoided and thechild develops with a normal intellect. Furthermore, the diet can be terminated in middlechildhood, after the period of rapid brain development during which the nervous system ismaximally sensitive to injury.

The predisposition to PKU is determined by a single recessive gene, so it is fairly simpleto determine the cause of the syndrome. Unfortunately, most aspects of intelligence andpersonality that are subject to genetic influence are mediated not by single genes but by manygenes acting concurrently. This has two important implications. First, it means that thereare many different types and degrees of predisposition toward a particular intellectual orpersonality trait. Each will require association with a different type of environment for thetrait to be expressed. Second, it means that most traits will not be bimodal, with a personbeing either X or non-X. Instead there will be a range of possible outcomes. For example,environmental conditions will not simply determine whether or not a person who ispredisposed to be introverted will actually become introverted; they will also determinehow much or how little introverted he or she will become.

Intelligence and personality are neither innate nor fixed in early life. Certainly genescontribute to general intellectual or personality development, but experience in the worldis a major contributing factor to all psychological functions, including intelligence and per-sonality, and to be inherited does not mean to be immutable or nonchangeable. Longitudinalstudies show that individuals definitely change over time. Even heritable traits depend onlearning for their expression, and they are subject to environmental effects (Lerner, Fisher,& Gianinno, 2006). So, in the social context perspective development is assisted and guidedby others.

Genetic differences affect the way people are influenced by their experiences, and inborntendencies shape the way people behave and partially determine what types of treatment theyelicit from others. Thus, children’s experiences modify their behavior, which leads to changesin the parents’ behavior. The final outcome is the result of a long and complex transactionbetween experiential conditions and genetically determined tendencies.

A specific example may be helpful. Babies differ from birth in the extent to which theyenjoy close physical contact or cuddling. Consider what effects a baby’s lack of enthusiasmfor cuddling may have on new parents, most of whom are eager to hold their baby. Many willinterpret the baby’s apparent rejection of their attempts as a personal rebuff, to which theyrespond with hostility or withdrawal of affection. These attitudes may influence theirbehavior and thus the baby’s development. Innate differences in irritability, distractibility,and adaptability may have similar long-term effects. In the case of these characteristics, thebaby’s temperament may elicit parental practices that interact with the baby’s enduring pro-pensities. For example, infants with different degrees of adaptability will respond differentlyto attempts by parents to discipline or guide them, and they will elicit different types ofparental behaviors and differential sensitivity in children to socializing pressures.

To say only that biological factors are important is to gloss over the complexity of geneticinfluences. Hereditary factors do not merely “cause” variation in intelligence and personality.They do not simply set up predispositions that will be translated into undesirable or desirabletraits depending on the environment. They are of greatest interest to students of intelligenceand personality development because they establish predispositions that affect the types oftreatment individuals will experience and modulate the impact of socializing stimuli.

BORNSTEIN AND LAMB10



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Environmental influences are also complex, as developmentalists have elucidated a numberof significant processes that mediate the impact of the environment. The simplest of these arethe processes elaborated by learning psychologists—classical and operant conditioning. Thepopularity of strict learning models is probably attributable to their evident simplicity, to thefact that parents and other socializing agents do attempt to alter the behavior of children bygiving rewards and administering punishment, and to the fact that parents’ efforts often havethe desired effects. Learning theorists have shown that partial reinforcement is usually mosteffective in securing long-term effects, that prompt punishment and reward are ideal, and thatthe demands made and the reinforcements applied should be consistent. Theorists have alsostressed observational learning. Children imitate behavior of models even when they are notrewarded for doing so. Furthermore, the immediate activity may be only an unobservableprocess called acquisition, with performance of the newly acquired behavior deferred until amore auspicious occasion.

Real or anticipated rewards greatly affect the performance of behaviors that have beenacquired through observational learning, however, showing that these two modes of learningare best viewed as complementary rather than mutually exclusive. Furthermore, under theinfluence of cognitively oriented theorists, social learning theorists have increasinglyemphasized the role of individual cognitive and motivational factors influencing the impactof observational learning. For example, children not only come to know their gender andrealize that this characteristic affects others’ expectations; thereafter, children pay attention tosame-gender models (see sex-role models in the glossary) and try to imitate their behaviorwhile ignoring or trying not to imitate opposite-gender models. Similarly, children who feelespecially fond of a parent may be motivated to emulate that parent’s behavior and values inways that children in strained relationships do not. Such motivational and cognitive factorsare very important because there are of course myriad models that children could emulate,and it is increasingly obvious that they play crucial roles in choosing models. In sum, then, wesee that the different processes by which the environment influences the development of theyoung organism cannot be viewed as mutually exclusive. All processes are probably impli-cated in all but the most elementary types of socialization.

OUTLINE OF THIS BOOK

This book is divided into two parts. The next three chapters in Part I introduce the intellectualhistory of developmental science, review the cultural orientation to thinking about humandevelopment, and introduce the manner in which empirical research on development isconducted. Unlike chapters in the second part of the book, these three chapters do not focusmuch on substantive areas in development, such as intelligence and personality, but on issuesthat are of central importance to all areas of developmental science. The chapters that followthem, in Part II, move to cover development of the brain and body, motor skills, perception,cognition, and language. It is well to remember in considering these separate substantivetopics—as well as the separation of cognitive and socioemotional development—that we dothis as a way of organizing information. In the real world, all domains of development areclosely linked.

In Chapter 2, Lerner, Lewin-Bizan, and Alberts Warren describe the philosophical originsand history of systems in developmental science, with special emphasis on the contextualsystems view of contemporary developmental study that Lerner and his colleagues have longembraced and advocated. As these authors explain, there have been shifts over time inthe definitions of development proposed by competing theorists and in the manner inwhich central issues in development (e.g., nature versus nurture, stability versus instability,




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continuity versus discontinuity) are portrayed. Lerner and his colleagues end their chapterwith a discussion of the interface between “pure theory” and application in the real world.Developmental theories embody principles based on empirical findings that explaindevelopmentally related phenomena. Without theories, developmental scientists would belost. However, the history of developmental science is one of widely accepted theories beingreplaced by new approaches.

In Chapter 3, Cole and Packer provide a sweeping account of the deeper understandinggained when scholars adopt a cultural perspective on development. These authors discuss theimplications of alternative definitions of culture before describing several specific examples ofinterrelations between culture and development. As Cole and Packer show convincingly,culture infuses virtually every facet of human growth, and all developmental scientists mustthus be sensitive to its pervasive and diverse influences. For example, infant sleep states areaffected by culture. Among the Kipsigis people in East Africa, infants sleep with theirmothers and are permitted to nurse on demand. During the day they are strapped to theirmothers’ backs, accompanying them on their daily rounds of farming, household chores,and social activities. They often nap while their mothers go about their work, and so they donot begin to sleep through the night until many months later than US children who follow amuch different course of developmental experiences. No one ever died of wrinkles, gray hair,or baldness, but in some societies they signal the passing of a generation to the next; in otherparts of the world, however, these outward signs of aging are associated with maturity,wisdom, and nurturance.

Like all good science, developmental science relies on good methods, design, and analysis.These factors set limits on understanding. For example, developmentalists agree that Piagetseriously underestimated infants’ perceptual and cognitive capacities, in some measurebecause of limitations on his methods. In the last of the foundational chapters in Part I(Chapter 4), Hartmann, Pelzel, and Abbott discuss the diverse ways in which scientistsgather, analyze, and interpret developmental evidence. Developmental scientists are meth-odologically eclectic and rely on experiments, observations, and interviews and question-naires to obtain their data. They then marshal an array of descriptive and inferentialstatistical techniques to analyze those data and reach conclusions. The authors discuss thesequantitative issues and also offer a unique review of qualitative approaches to data gather-ing and analysis. Because most studies conducted by developmentalists involve children, aspecial set of ethical issues attends developmental research, and these too are discussed inthis chapter.

The chapters in Part II of this book examine diverse areas of physical and mental devel-opment. The brain contains approximately 100 billion cells, a number equal to all the stars inour galaxy. In Chapter 5, Mark H. Johnson introduces new and exciting developments thatconnect contemporary neuroscience and genetics with developmental science. The nervoussystem—which consists of the brain, the spine, and nerves that fan out to all parts of thebody—is responsible for integrating information received from the senses, muscles, and organsystems and for sending commands that regulate functions throughout the body. The nervoussystem controls many bodily functions outside of our awareness (e.g., respiration and diges-tion), but it is also the site of all conscious thoughts, emotions, and responses. Johnson firstdescribes the major features of brain development (from prenatal to postnatal) and thenrelates them to developments in action, perception, cognition, language, and behavior. In sodoing, he describes the methods and fundamental assumptions of developmental neurosci-ence using examples drawn from several domains of study to elucidate the underlying neuralsystems. None of these many achievements in development would be possible without theinternal wiring of the brain and nervous system. The brain displays remarkable specificity offunction, but at the same time has evolved the capacity and flexibility to adjust to the




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environment. An active interplay between maturation and experience transpires during thedevelopment of single cells and the brain as a whole.

Karen E. Adolph and Sarah E. Berger begin Chapter 6 on physical and motor skillsdevelopment by addressing the question “why study movement?” They then take the balanceof their chapter to demonstrate just how integral physical and motor development are to theunfolding of the psychology of the individual. Adolph and Berger take us on a tour as theycarefully trace growth and functional development from fetus to newborn to child. Theyrecount how contact with the environment makes possible multifaceted discoveries aboutthe developing human. Physical and motor skills development also have implications fordevelopment in many other psychological domains such as cognitive and socioemotionaldevelopment.

In Chapter 7, Marc H. Bornstein, Martha E. Arterberry, and Clay Mash review thecontroversies and issues that continue to make the study of perceptual functioning centralto our understanding of psychological development. Perceptual development has long beenthe forum for debates between nativists and empiricists. Now, however, sophisticated experi-mental techniques have supplanted introspection and speculation, enabling researchers toaddress questions concerning the origins, status, and development of perception empiricallyrather than theoretically. Bornstein and colleagues embed a review of methodology whileexplaining the ontogeny of perception via the five senses.

In Chapter 8, Damian P. Birney and Robert J. Sternberg shift the reader’s focus from theregistration and initial evaluation of sensory information to its interpretation and use. Birneyand Sternberg summarize a succession of scholarly attempts to explain the transformation ofinformation into understanding, emphasizing prominent perspectives on cognitive develop-ment—notably those of Piaget, neo-Piagetians, and recent cognitive theorists. Such theoriesemphasize developmental changes in the modes of understanding reality, rather than thegradual accretion of information. Several alternative perspectives on cognitive developmentand mental functioning currently coexist and compete for prominence. Birney and Sternbergdiscuss information-processing theories of cognitive development and conclude with anoverview of intelligence and more traditional psychometric concerns regarding individualdifferences in cognitive abilities, including wisdom.

In Chapter 9, Brian MacWhinney describes the acquisition of language. Of all the hurdlesfaced by the young child, cracking the linguistic code is perhaps the most impressive in theeyes of parents and other observers. One cannot help but marvel at the speed and seemingease with which preverbal infants learn how to articulate meaningful statements and under-stand the speech of others. Because language is purely symbolic, its acquisition serves as thebasis for advanced and abstract problem solving and cognition. MacWhinney reviewsand integrates developmental research on both the production and comprehension oflanguage, moving over six major components of language, beginning with auditory andarticulatory development, then turning to lexical and grammatical issues, and culminating incommunication and literacy.

CONCLUSIONS

Contemporary developmental science is positioned to have a powerful impact on how peoplemature and how society functions. It can do so through its associations and impacts withall those involved in human development. Developmental science provides parents withinformation on what behavior is typical or atypical at a given age and what effects differentapproaches to parenting have on children. Knowledge about development allows teachers todevelop age-appropriate curricula. Knowing what is developmentally typical and atypical




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helps healthcare professionals diagnose problems and design more effective treatments.Government officials write and enforce laws regarding children and decide which programsshould be supported. All of these people have a stake in the success of developmental science.

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