All too often, those who study human
development have
focused on the simple. The
tendency to
describe individual
variability in terms of a single class of
influences is exemplified by the infamous "nature versus nurture" controversy. In this text, the author challenges fellow developmentalists and researchers to reconsider simple approaches, arguing that they are unproductive and poor predictors of outcome. Instead, he proposes a view of development in which variability is thought of as the action of linked influences over time, from domains as diverse as evolution, genetics, neurology, nutrition and the child's immediate and wider environment. The book musters an impressive array of evidence from a variety of disciplines to demonstrate that, while influences from a particular domain may be "necessary" to cause a particular outcome, they are rarely "sufficient", in and of themselves. Countering the arguments of those who protest that it is neither realistic nor cost-effective to design research based on multiple influences, Wachs argues that this can and must be done and suggests ways of doing so..
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