The Psychological Characteristics Of Breast Cancer

In this writing it will be discussing childhood development, as well as some vital issues that might come along during those stages of development. Child development consist of the stage where the child is developing physically, cognitively, socially and spiritually. During these stages of development a child is maturing from infancy to becoming a young adult. For many years theorist such as Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson, and Lev Vygotsky’s have researched how children mature from infants to adulthood. Each of the theorist have profound facts to how children develop, but which of the three men are correct on their findings?

There are numerous debates in regards to developmental psychology. One of the main debates to begin with is nature vs nurture; some individuals believe that we are products of our environment while others regards us while others believe that we are products of our genetics. John Locke believes that when we are born we are a “tabula rasa” a blank slate

How does an infant develop into an adult? The answer is not as obvious as it seems. There are a variety of factors that contribute to human development. A person not only grows physically but also cognitively and socio-emotionally. This paper will explain two theories; one cognitive and one socio-emotional; about human development. The two theories will be described, compared, contrasted and individually evaluated based on the strong points and limitations.

The old and popular debate between ‘nature vs. nurture’ has generated a lot of interest in newborns, who were previously thought to be ‘blank slates’, and has contributed a lot to developmental psychology, a field of psychology focusing on studying infants. It is now generally accepted that both nature and nurture make equal contribution to the infant’s development.

There is also a combination of the two above influences. The combination can be seen as genetic environmental correlations.

Maturation can be defended as genetically programmed development. Stages of development ‘switch on' at fairly predictable time during childhood. The changes occur quiet rapidly, and allow a similar pattern in almost all children.

The idea of attachment theory is that infants become attached to adults who are sensitive and responsive in social relationships with them, and who remain consistent caregivers for some months during the period of early six months to two/three years of age.

Prior to the early 20th century little interest was paid to how a child developed; indeed most early research appears to be based on abnormal childhood behaviour (Oates et al. 2005). However, over time researchers began to acknowledge that both genetics and environment factors impacted on the way a child developed. Although there are many theories of child development, in particular constructivism, behaviourism, social constructivism and social learning have influenced developmental psychology enormously (Oates et al. 2005).

For many years psychologists have been researching behaviour patterns from birth. This is where the ‘Nature’ vs ‘Nurture’ debate begins. Nativists believe that humans are born with various skills needed to survive, where as Empircist believe that humans acquire all or almost of all their behavioural traits from "nurture".

Theories have been defined with terms such as stages, incremental, multidimensional. Each theory has its’ contributions to and impact on the understanding of human

Physical development of the human begins at conception when the egg is fertilized by the sperm. Once the ovum is fertilized, the process of mitosis begins, allowing the cells to split and form the human being. Through this process, each parent contributes 23 chromosomes, which are present in every cell of our bodies, and are made up of DNA and genes (Broderick & Blewitt, 2015). The genes that we inherit from our parents determine our physical features, such as hair and eye color, and height. Furthermore, the combination of various genes within the body at the time of conception may result in the individual carrying unexpected traits and illnesses (Broderick & Blewitt, 2015).

The “Baby Face” activity was an activity that required a coin toss to determine what appearance a baby face was going to have. This activity helped us learn about the genetics, traits and characteristics that go ‘behind the scenes’ to determine the appearance of an organism. A characteristic is a feature that has a different form in a population, like hair color or eye color. A trait however, is the different forms of a characteristic, like brown hair and blue eyes. In the activity, a coin toss determined what the baby face appearance would look like in the end, and also in the activity, the coin toss determined the genotype of the baby which affects the phenotype. Genotype, is the combination of genes, while a phenotype is the actual physical

Offspring differ somewhat from their parents and from one another. Instructions for development are passed from parents to offspring in thousands of discrete genes, each of which is now known to be a segment of a molecule of DNA. This essay will explore some of the reasons behind how and why these differences in appearance arise, from the base sequence of DNA through to the observed phenotype.

It is easy to see that there is some differences from one person to the next. These differences can be hair color, eye color, skin color, facial structure, eye structure, etc. These different characteristics are polygenetic traits: hair color, eye color and skin color. Polygenetic trait is multiple genes mixing with each other to create the characteristics like blue eyes. The eye color is controlled through the genes from both parents that are passed through to their child. Scientist have found that there is multiple genes that decide what color the eye needs to be or will be. The color of the eye is often slightly or way different from one person to the next. The color of the eye has the function of controlling how much light enters the eye.

Genes build the phenotype of humans as well as the underlying genotype. Competition between cultural genes leads to varied success of genetic determinism. It can therefore be said that learnt traits such as those espoused within a specific culture, can produce what may seem to be the genetic genotype of an individual. Genes are not always advantageous in the