The Meaning of Development

Abstract

Abstract Schneirla’s approach to developmental phenomena is described including the constructs of Phyletic Levels and Functional Levels/Orders of organization. Phyletic Levels notes the extensive variety of organization among species and requires the researcher to incorporate an understanding of these differences in their causal explanations of behavioral development. Functional Levels or Orders notes that any individual consists of many units (levels) of organization (systems) from the characteristics of single cells, groups of cells operating as tissue, etc. to those characteristics involving the relationship of the individual to its social and physical environment. The general task of the developmental psychobiologist is to examine the ontogenetic history of these various levels of functional organization during the individual’s development from conception to death using a natural history orientation and an historical stance (examining the development from previous phases rather than development to some commonly defined outcome.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 0 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.