Continuity vs Discontinuity

5 Key excerpts on "Continuity vs Discontinuity"

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  eBook - ePub

  Key Concepts in Developmental Psychology

  • H Rudolph Schaffer(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  One of the major issues in developmental psychology is the extent to which individual characteristics remain constant across age, as opposed to becoming transformed in the course of development. No one can doubt that both trends occur: there must be continuity in some sense, for intuitively at least we feel basically as though we are the same individuals from childhood to old age; at the same time the very notion of development implies that there is change.

  Continuity may be defined as –  

  the preservation of individual characteristics over age.

  Let us note, however, that this does not necessarily mean phenomenological sameness: an individual may remain highly aggressive from early childhood to adulthood, yet express aggression in very different ways at older than at younger ages. Continuity is thus not a matter of identical behaviour but rather of the kinds of connections that exist among age points: are these such that we can predict later characteristics from early ones? Prediction is at the core of continuity; if psychological attributes in some sense remain the same over time, expressing identical processes even though in different overt form, it should be possible to foretell the nature of future development, with considerable implications for intervention and help.

  ORIGINS

  The issue of continuity and change has been of long-standing interest, but in the past was debated more on the basis of dogma than empirical evidence. On the whole a strong belief existed in continuity, based on one of two assumptions. The first was that we are born with certain characteristics fixed once and for all by our genetic endowment: whatever experiences we encounter will not affect what has been handed down to us by our inheritance. This argument was mostly applied to intelligence, which was viewed as an attribute constant over time so that, in theory at least, one should be able to use IQs obtained in infancy to predict intellectual performance in adulthood. Evidence to the contrary was for a long time simply disregarded, and it was only in the middle of the last century, on the basis of a large body of findings, that it was accepted that fluctuations in measured intelligence do occur and that prediction over age is therefore not the simple matter it was formerly thought to be (Hunt, 1961).

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  Concepts and Theories of Human Development

  • Richard M. Lerner(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  When the continuity–discontinuity issue is raised in regard to development across the human life span, it raises a concern with descriptions, explanations, and the identification of quantitative versus qualitative constancy or change. In addition, issues of plasticity, of constraints on development, and of the nature–nurture controversy are raised. However, just as the continuity–discontinuity issue is related to the nature–nurture issue, another key issue of development is closely linked to that of continuity–discontinuity: the issue of stability–instability. I consider this issue next.

  THE STABILITY–INSTABILITY ISSUE

  The study of continuity and discontinuity in an individual’s development is really an appraisal of how descriptions and/or explanations of change may apply across ontogeny. Such appraisals necessarily involve consideration of what happens to a person as a function of the variables affecting his or her development. In other words, consideration of the continuity–discontinuity issue is, in effect, an assessment of how the character of the variables influencing development results in quantitative and/or qualitative differences within a person over the course of his or her life. Simply, the continuity–discontinuity issue is one of intraindividual (within-person) change.

  However, not all people undergo intraindividual change in precisely the same way. There are differences between people in how they change intraindividually. Thus, in addition to asking questions about within-person change, a developmental scientist may also ask what happens to a person relative to other people, as the relations among the variables that affect development change or remain the same.

  People may obviously be placed in reference groups such as sex, age, race, ethnicity, or religion (see Chapter 5 , and the discussion of the differential approach). What happens to the person’s position in a reference group as the variables affecting the person function?

  For example, the most common reference group in developmental science is an age group. Suppose that a developmental scientist measured the IQ of every member of a 5-year-old age group. The developmental scientist would expect that different people would get different IQ scores. In fact, he or she could rank every member of the age group from high to low, and any given person would, therefore, have a position in the age group. What happens to this person when the variables that affect behavior function? The person’s position could change, or it could remain the same, relative to the other people in the age group.

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  Personality and Life-Style of Young Male Managers

  A Logical Learning Theory Analysis

  • Joseph F. Rychlak(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  3 The Concept of Development We come now to an important question that is bound to arise when-ever we conduct longitudinal research in personality. This has to do with what it means to say that a development is underway over the period studied, or, more generally, over the life span itself. There can be no doubt but that as the person matures through life we witness a growth and expansion of physical capacities. Learning takes place, com-petencies increase, something besides just a change in the person's behavior seems to be occurring. Terms like growth, maturation, and above all, development begin to enter the description of personality. More importantly, the concept of a development or developing process begins to take on theoretical significance that may outweigh all else in the description of personality. Saying that the personality developed into this or that pattern of behavior is then assumed to be some form of principle of explanation. Analogies are drawn to the predictable course of biological maturation, such as the sequencing of eye-hand coordination and the like, suggesting that everyone must be described in personality terms that are nestled within an unfolding, necessary series of preformed stages. Ignoring these stages is tantamount to violat-ing the canons of accurate personality description. The emphasis in such theorizing is consequently on some form of assumed, underlying material-efficient cause progression in physical (and mental?) stature that enables the growing organism to function differentially over the life span. There is no quarrel with such develop-mental theory, so long as it is limited strictly to what the organism's biophysical capacities may be at any one point over the lifetime. Howev-er, when the suggestion is conveyed that no explanation of personality 31 32 3. The Concept of Development (behavior, etc) is legitimate that fails to take development into account, problems arise for the mechanist and teleologist alike.

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  Development

  The History of a Psychological Concept

  • Christopher Goodey(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Later chapters explain these transitions in more detail, and meanwhile some introductory remarks about both these suggestions may be useful. Psychological Development and Historical Contingency One major historical overview of developmental psychology from within the discipline opens with the appropriate metaphor: ‘A scientific field comes of age when it begins to acknowledge its history. If so, then this volume marks the growth of developmental psychology beyond its adolescence.’ 1 The 1 (Eds.) Georg Eckardt and Wolfgang Bringmann, Contributions to a History of Developmental Psychology: International William T. Preyer Symposium (Berlin: Mouton, 1985). See also Willem Koops and 12 1 Development and the Origin of Psychological Concepts implication is that its adolescence began with the onset of the formal discipline at the start of the twentieth century, and that it has now reached its maturity. But it had a childhood too, which had been going on for the previous nineteen centuries. As for its birth, one rarely comes across the acknowledgement that the developmental idea was ‘born’ at all. Is it not obvious? We seem to see psychological development around us, especially in children, in whom it is conceptualized by analogy with physical development. However, there is a problem in comparing interior development with the development of bodies. Bodily development is a natural kind, a stable aspect of nature. If psychological development were likewise a natural kind, what exactly would be its definition? A definition of intangibles – cognition, emotions, moral thinking, for example – can only be in the head of the observer; unlike the child’s body, it depends on who is doing the defining. Of course, it is self- evident that an individual personality changes over the lifespan, but less evident why change has to be cast in the role of development as distinct from something else.

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  Lifespan Development, 5th Australasian Edition, P-eBK

  • Michele Hoffnung, Robert J. Hoffnung, Kelvin L. Seifert, Abi Brooker, Sonja Ellis, Damien Riggs, Wayne Warburton, Elyse Warner(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  There are some language processes that are universal and based on maturational developments, and there are some language developments that are dependent on opportunities within the child’s family, community and culture. Neither of these experiences on their own are sufficient for understanding children’s development of language. Process and stage Developmental theories differ about whether developmental change is a continuous process, consisting of many small, incremental changes, or a discontinuous process, composed of a smaller number of distinct steps or stages. Theorists such as Erik Erikson and Jean Piaget assume developmental change occurs in distinct, discontinuous stages. All individuals follow the same sequence, or order. Each successive stage is qualitatively unique from all other stages, is increasingly complex, and integrates the developmental changes and accomplishments of earlier stages. We discuss both of these theories later in the chapter. Agency and passivity Developmental theories also differ in the extent to which they consider that individuals actively contribute to their own development, and the extent to which they see individuals as passive recipients of their environments. For instance, behavioural learning theorists emphasise passivity. They propose that events Pdf_Folio:40 40 PART 1 Beginnings in the environment stimulate individuals to respond, resulting in the learnt changes in their behaviour that make up their development. Theorists who are interested in how thinking and problem-solving abilities develop, such as Piaget, emphasise agency. They propose that such changes depend on the person’s active efforts to master new intellectual problems of increasing difficulty. Likewise, Erikson’s theory of identity development proposes that an individual’s personality and sense of identity are strongly influenced by their active efforts to master the psychological and social conflicts of everyday life.

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