Through the evaluation and integration of developmental theories, this volume proposes a new structural/behavioral model of development. Dr. Horowitz's model helps account for both the behavioral development of children (with extensions across the life-span) and for the universal and non-universal characteristics in human behavioral development. Exploring Developmental Theories also sheds a new and different light on the nature- nurture or heredity-environment controversy and on the topic of continuity and discontinuity in development.
Exploring Developmental Theories:
*examines the concepts of stage, structure, and systems; organismic theory; and general system theory;
*analyzes open and closed systems as well as organismic and mechanistic world views;
*integrates the concepts associated with organismic and mechanist world views;
*examines learning mechanisms and processes that foster the acquisition of behavior, and
*discusses the strengths and weaknesses of Gessel, Piaget, and behaviorism in accounting for behavioral development.
"This book is a fine and bold attempt to build a model of development. Few try it, and Horowitz is to be commended for both the effort and its results ... Horowitz's model is important precisely because she has attempted to overcome what others have considered unbridgeable."—Human Development
