Explain the difference between human development theories that view the course of development as continuous and those that see it as discontinuous
What will be an ideal response?
Answer: If development is continuous—a process of gradually augmenting the same types of skills that were there to begin with—then infants and children respond to the world in much the same way as adults do. The difference between the immature and mature being is simply one of amount or complexity. If development is discontinuous—a process in which new ways of understanding and responding to the world emerge at specific times—then infants and children have unique ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving, ones quite different from those of adults. Theories that accept the discontinuous perspective regard development as taking place in stages—qualitative changes in thinking, feeling, and behaving that characterize specific periods of development. In stage theories, development is like climbing a staircase, with each step corresponding to a more mature, reorganized way of functioning. The stage concept also assumes that people undergo periods of rapid transformation as they step up from one stage to the next. In other words, change is fairly sudden rather than gradual and ongoing.
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Randomizing a variable such as participant gender guarantees that it will not become a confounding variable
a. True b. False Indicate whether the statement is true or false
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