The Role of Constructs in Human Development

There is a tendency to view dichotomous constructs of development such as nature/nurture or continuity/discontinuity as either-or explanations for development and behavior. For example, consider the following question related to nature vs. nurture: "Is bullying behavior the result of genetics or environment?" This is not an adequate question because it implies that either nature or nurture is the result. Pinker (2004) suggests that bothnature and nurture influence human development. Distinguishing the role each plays should be the focus of investigation (Pinker, 2004).

Some theoretical approaches have described development as occurring in discontinuous stages in which there are qualitative changes in thinking, feeling, or behaving. For example, discontinuous growth could be considered that "Aha!" moment you sometimes get when trying to solve a problem. Your "Aha!" is when you gain a flash of insight and the solution suddenly comes to you. You see the problem in a completely different way than before, and you may not even be able to see it in the same way you did before the "Aha!" moment. In contrast, a continuous development approach posits that growth is a gradual building upon basic skills.

For instance, learning to drive a car is more or less a continuous process. You build on the basic skills such as steering and signaling. More complex skills, such as knowing how much force to use with your foot on the accelerator or the right timing for using the brake pedal, are skills you keep practicing until you feel comfortable and confident behind the wheel. When you combine the basic skills of steering and signaling with the more complex skills such as accurately using the accelerator and brake, you learn the process of driving a car. Just as the nature/nurture dichotomy is not simply one or the other, development is neither completely discontinuous nor completely continuous, but a combination of both.

For this Discussion, select a famous person-contemporary or historical, real or fictional (not the person you plan to use for your Final Project). As you conjecture how psychological constructs, such as nature/nurture and continuity/discontinuity, contributed to the development of this individual, consider the following: How did biological and genetic influences affect behavior, and to what extent did the environment have an impact?

With these thoughts in mind:  Give a brief description of the famous person you selected. Then evaluate how the psychological constructs of continuity/discontinuity and nature/nurture have manifested in this person's development, making sure to consider all constructs. Be specific and provide examples.