Youth Studies: an Interdisciplinary Approach (YSIA)
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Extensive summary of all the articles of the course: Youth Studies: an Interdisciplinary Approach (exam 1)
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Course
Youth Studies: an Interdisciplinary Approach (YSIA)
Institution
Universiteit Utrecht (UU)
Extensive summary of all the articles for exam 1 of Youth Studies: an Interdisciplinary Approach (YSIA). The following articles are summarized:
- Sameroff
- Schoon et al.
- Twenge & Park
- Mackenbach
- Patton et al.
- Stevens & Vollebergh
- Letters to the Editor (2x)
- Macleod et al.
- Mof...
Youth Studies: an Interdisciplinary Approach (YSIA)
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Summary Youth studies: an interdisciplinary
approach
Week 1: Introduction & Methodological issues: Age, period,
cohort effects (15,5)
Sameroff: A unified theory of development: A dialectic integration of nature and nurture (6)
Studying development of children is needed to understand and prevent behavioral problems that are
costly to society. Nowadays conceptual reorientations are made as earlier unidirectional views
(biological or social circumstance controlled individual behavior) are becoming multidirectional
perspectives where individual behavior reciprocally changes both biological and social circumstance.
The models we use to understand how individuals change over time have increased in complexity
from linear to interactive to transactive to multilevel dynamic systems.
Contemporary developmentalists are quite competent at short-term predictions of cognitive or
emotional constructs but much worse at the prediction of long-term successful life adaptations
starting from initial conditions.
A Rough History of the Nature Versus Nurture Question
The history of developmental psychology has been characterized by swings between opinions that
determinants of an individual’s behavior could be found either in their irreducible fundamental units
or in their irreducible fundamental experiences (nature or nurture). The growth process between
babyhood and adulthood could be explained either by appeals to intrinsic properties of the child
(nature) or to extrinsic properties of experience (nurture). The nature–nurture question has been a
central content of developmental research.
Do nature and nurture interact deterministically so that the proportions attributable to each can be
decomposed or do they transact probabilistically so that the contribution of each can only be an
abstraction from the activity of dynamic systems?
How this question has been answered in history shows how developmental science has evolved
and gives a perspective on how the question will be answered in the future.
1880-1940s: Nature inherited differences + instincts
Galton investigated the nature vs. nurture phrase. In his view inherited characteristics (heritability)
were the origins of human nature.
1920-1950s: Nurture reinforcement theory + psychoanalytic theory
Watson propounded a new approach: behaviourism, extending Pavlov’s conditioning processes to
explain human individual differences. The learning theory dominated human development research
for almost 50 years strengthened by the operant paradigms promoted by Skinner.
1960-1970s: Nature ethology (species differences) + behavioral genetics + cognitive revolution
Tilt toward nurture began to shift under assault from three directions: ethology, behavioral genetics
and the cognitive revolution. Ethologists were demonstrating that many complex behaviors did not
seem to need any reinforcement. S-R contingencies that worked in one species did not work in
another (rats can learn to push a lever to avoid a shock, but pigeons cannot). Ethologists argued that
the nature of the species put large restrictions on the effects of nurture such that certain prepared
responses were impervious to experience. Data of twins showed that the effects of genes and
environments could be separated, and that many behavioral differences could be explained by
genetic differences. The cognitive revolution (Piaget) stated that experience was necessary for the
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, child to construct the world but this did not play a role in individual differences. The source of
development was in the mind of the child.
1980-1990s: Nurture poverty + social ecology + cultural deconstruction
The nurturist shift was driven by three advances in social science: the war on poverty, the concept of
a social ecology, and cultural deconstruction. Economic circumstance was a major constraint on the
availability of reinforcements, such that the developmental environments of the poor were deprived
in contrast with those of the affluent. Similar individuals in different social classes would have quite
different developmental outcomes. Bronfenbrenner in his vision of the social ecology offered a more
differentiated model than provided by economics alone. He identified the distal influences of family,
school, work, and culture on the availability of reinforcements to the child, providing a more
comprehensive empirical model for predicting individual differences in development. Due to the
cultural deconstruction meaning rather than behavior became dominant through demonstrations
that the same child behaviors could be given different meaning in different societies leading to
different developmental consequences. Moreover, different behaviors could be given the same
meaning leading to the same consequences.
2000-2010s: Nature molecular biology + neuroscience
Neuroscience and molecular biology have been making major contributions to our understanding of
development with new technologies for imaging the brain and manipulating the genome. But the
more recent swings between nature and nurture have been getting shorter and their intermingling
(vermenging) has been increasing.
Nonlinear Models of Development
Dialectics have been directly or indirectly emphasized for studying development and especially
relationships. An initial approach to dialectics is best captured by consideration of the Taoist diagram
of the dark yin and the light yang (Figure 1) that emphasizes that opposites are in a mutually
constituting relationship. They were created together and remain bound to each other. In the
dialectical yin–yang there is a unity of opposites and an interpenetration of opposites. The unity is
indicated by the mutual embrace of the yin and the yang, as seen in the figure, but yin and yang also
interpenetrate each other as depicted by the small black spot of yin within the yang and small white
spot of yang within the yin.
There is a unity of opposites between one’s cognitions and the world that is being cognized. Without
the world there would be nothing to cognize, and without the cognizer there would be no cognitions.
But there is also an interpenetration of opposites. One’s cognition leads to one’s action which
becomes part of the world (the small black dot in the white area), and then the changed world
becomes a part of one’s cognition (the small white dot in the black area) in a continuing dialectical
progression.
The dialectical perspective on nature and nurture is that they mutually constitute each other. There
is a unity of opposites in that development will not occur without both, and there is an
interpenetration of opposites in that one’s nature changes one’s nurture and conversely one’s
nurture changes one’s nature, as captured in current transactional models. Moreover, without the
one, the other would not exist.
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