Chapter 12 Reflections and Connections

This chapter has run the life course, from birth to death. As you review it, you might organize your thinking around the following two themes:

1. Development as a product of evolution The universal characteristics of human beings at each life phase are evolved adaptations that promote survival and reproduction, either immediately within that phase or through helping the individual prepare for challenges ahead (Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 2002). In your review, think about how this idea might apply to (a) the nature of infants’ attachments to caregivers; (b) the characteristics of toddlers that influence their sharing, helping, and comforting; (c) the nature of children’s play, including differences between girls’ play and boys’ play; (d) the tendency of children to attend to gender differences and to exaggerate them; (e) the heightened risk taking and, sometimes, aggressiveness of adolescence and youth; (f) the differences between young men and young women in courtship style; (g) the attachment bonds that form between adults in love; and (h) the changes in priorities that arise in old age.

As you think about each of these topics, you may well decide that the evolutionary accounts offered for some are more complete or compelling than those offered for others. You may think of alternative explanations, either founded in evolutionary theory or not.

2. Development as adaptation to the specifics of one’s social environment Evolution has endowed us not with rigid instincts but with tendencies, drives, and alternative strategies that are facilitated, inhibited, selected, or redirected in accordance with our experiences in our social environments. Researchers have found many reliable correlations between aspects of a person’s social environment and the person’s development. How might these correlations be understood as adaptive changes that help the person to meet the specific social conditions of his or her life?

Think about this question as it might apply to behavioral changes or differences associated with (a) caregiver responsiveness or unresponsiveness to infants’ signs of distress; (b) cultural and individual differences in sleeping arrangements for infants and young children; (c) differing styles of parental discipline of children; (d) age-mixed compared with age-segregated play environments; (e) cultural differences in the degree to which children witness violence among adults; (f) social-class differences that alter the chance of adolescents’ achieving status through non-risky means; (g) good parental models for moral development in adolescence; (h) conditions that may alter sexual strategy toward either promiscuity or restraint; and (i) occupational self-direction in adulthood.

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As you review, you may find that some of the explanations just called for are lacking or incomplete, or you may decide that the correlational evidence does not warrant the cause-effect inference implied. In such cases, how might future research fill the gaps and establish causal relationships?