Question

How do genetics and environment affect people at different stages of development?

Identify a typical developmental milestone for a person at a specific stage and explain how achievement of this milestone might be impacted by genetics and environment.

Answer 1

We know, a person is an evolution of their forefathers, genetics help us to know the history of human being and procedure of human evolution. In the field of developmental psychology, we can see various factors that affects human development process.

Role of Genetics- Genes are the medium to transfer physical as well as mental characteristics from one generation to next, so that some psychologists believes that a human get most of their qualities genotype. Chid genes always affects their process of development.

For example, if a child did not get appropriate characteristics from their parents, he/she will face many problems during physical, psychological and social problems while a child with good qualities will experience different condition. Some psychologist also believe that IQ also belong to hereditary characteristics rather than environmental effects.

Role of Environment- The famous behaviourist, J B Watson emphasize, environment is a main factor of human development because a child develops by environment. We can categories environment in two ways, one is physical environment and another is social environment. The physical environment belong to geographical conditions, atmosphere, foods, and nutrition while social environment belong to social support, family etc.

            Both environment help a child to develop in social structure and continuous effects every dimension of development.

Effects of Environment and Genetic- The child is like a small plant and environment effects the quality, size etc. but we cannot decide the types of fruits because they come from genes of plant, I mean to say that environment and genetics both create a person and help to grow and develop fast.