Please write 4 pages for each question. Please write answers that are coherent, well-organized, data driven, and clearly articulated. There is an answer for each of these questions, and even a correct answer for some of them! However, there would not be perfect agreement among all developmental psychologists on many of these questions. Thus, your task is to build your case carefully using the most relevant arguments and data from your reading and from class discussion. Be sure to consider the quality of the empirical evidence you discuss, which involves considering sampling, measurement and design issues. Remember that the best essays assume a naïve, intelligent reader and contain an introduction, body and conclusion. Also, keep in mind that a “laundry list” approach to essay responses is rarely the best strategy. Finally, complete responses require synthesis/analysis/evaluation of all the relevant literature we read on a particular topic.
Please make sure to use appropriate style, grammar, sentence construction and punctuation in your writing. Avoid incomplete sentences, misspelled words, and typographical errors. Reference to any of the articles should include the authors’ names and date using APA format. (No reference page is necessary.) If you use the words of the authors, those words must be in quotation marks & include page number. AVOID DIRECT QUOTATION WHENEVER POSSIBLE, HOWEVER.
* Please use all available relevant reading list resources to answer the questions, but ONLY USE THE SOURCES that are sent with this order and chapter 1 from Cole, M. (2005). Culture in development. In M. H. Bornstein & M.E. Lamb (Eds.)Developmentalscience: An advanced textbook (5th ed., pp. 3-43). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
*When providing examples and illustrating arguments with studies, please use the empirical studies sent, if possible, rather than examples provided in chapters.
*Citations must be in APA format. When describing a study based on a secondary source, indicate the authors and date of the original study followed by “as cited in …” to identify your source.
* Appropriately credit the sources of ideas, concepts, etc.
* Don’t paste the question at the top of the essay – use the page allotment for content.
* DO NOT take a specific stance, provide argument for both sides
QUESTIONS TO ANSWER: (4 pages max each)
1. How we view the “big issues” in developmental psychology influences what we study and how we study it. Describe your perspective on development. Justify and discuss your inclusion or exclusion of the following considerations as part of your approach: the role of theory, the roles of nature and nurture, plasticity and the role of early experience, and qualitative (discontinuity) and quantitative (continuity) change. Use empirical evidence to support your perspective where appropriate.
2. At its heart, developmental psychology is the study of how nature and nurture work together to produce the systematic changes and stabilities that characterize development across the lifespan. Describe the nature/nurture issue. Do you see this issue as controversial? Explain your answer. Using empirical evidence to illustrate your points, describe very specifically how nature interacts with nurture, how nurture interacts with nature, and how nature and nurture correlate.
There are faxes for this order.