PSYB20H3 Chap.2 Themes in Development and Good Theories
Themes in Development and Good Theories
Four questions behind every theory
The second lecture of PSYB20H3 organises developmental psychology around four overarching themes. Continuity and discontinuity asks whether development is gradual or happens in stages. Nature and nurture asks whether genes and biology or the environment matter more. Active versus passive children asks how much children shape their own development.
The holistic theme asks whether areas of development are interdependent. Every theory in the course takes a position on these questions, and many multiple-choice items present a short story and ask which theme it shows.
Continuity in two senses
Continuous development is additive, gradual and quantitative, while discontinuous development is a series of qualitatively different stages.
The lecture adds a distinction that is easy to miss: absolute stability concerns the amount of a trait, while positional stability concerns a person's rank among peers. A child can keep the same rank in a class while the underlying ability keeps growing, which is positional stability without absolute stability.
Review items test this with races, test scores and rankings.
Nature, nurture and their interaction
The slide places an interaction of biology and environment between the two poles, and the review session stresses that even traits that look biological are influenced by nurture to some extent. Answer options that describe a trait as completely determined by nature are therefore suspect.
Questions sometimes pair two parents with different beliefs, one stressing talent and one stressing training, and ask you to label each view.
Active children and holistic development
In the active view, children choose and seek out experiences that drive their development; in the passive view, the environment acts on them.
Holistic development means that emotional, cognitive, social and physical change interact, so stress at home can show up as difficulty at school. When a vignette contains more than one theme, the question usually names the feature it wants, such as who initiated the change, so read the stem closely.
Judging a theory
A theory describes or explains patterns of behaviour.
The course judges theories by three criteria: parsimonious, explaining a broad range of phenomena concisely; falsifiable, meaning evidence could confirm or overturn it; and heuristic, building on earlier knowledge and opening the way for new research. Distractors redefine heuristic as guaranteed to give the right answer, or describe a good theory as immutable, and both are wrong.
The study guide also asks about an eclectic orientation, drawing on several theories to explain development.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Continuity and discontinuity
- 02
Absolute and positional stability
- 03
Nature, nurture and interaction
- 04
Active and passive children
- 05
Holistic development
- 06
Parsimonious, falsifiable and heuristic theories
- 07
Eclectic orientation
Worked example · free
Sort two descriptions of the same skill by theme
- 1A adds small amounts over time, so it is continuous, quantitative change.
- 1B is a new kind of thinking appearing at once, so it is discontinuous, qualitative change.
Key terms
- Positional Stability
- Positional stability is the persistence of a person's rank relative to peers even when the person's absolute level changes.
- Falsifiability
- Falsifiability is the property of a theory that allows data to support or disconfirm it.
- Heuristic Theory
- A heuristic theory builds on previous knowledge and generates new studies.
Themes in Development and Good Theories FAQ
What are the four overarching themes in developmental psychology?
The course names continuity and discontinuity, nature and nurture, active versus passive children, and the holistic nature of development. Each theme poses a question about how development works, and every major theory in the course can be placed on each one, which makes the themes a useful frame for comparison questions.
What is the difference between absolute and positional stability?
Absolute stability concerns how much of a trait a person has, while positional stability concerns where the person ranks among peers. A runner who always finishes second while her times change shows positional stability. Exam options often swap the two terms, so check whether a scenario describes an amount or a rank.
What makes a developmental theory a good one?
The course uses three criteria. A good theory is parsimonious, explaining many phenomena concisely; falsifiable, open to support or disconfirmation by data; and heuristic, building on previous knowledge while generating new research. Being popular, unchangeable or guaranteed to produce correct answers is not among the criteria.
Exam move
For each theme, invent two short scenarios, one for each pole, and swap them with a classmate. Then take every theory you meet in later chapters and record its position on continuity and on nature and nurture in a single table you revise before each test.
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