http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/792053146

Training and growth in the development of children a study of the relative influence of learning and maturation

"The primary concern of any practitioner who deals with children is to understand the factors that determine the development of children. These factors can be divided into those which are inherent in the organic make-up of the individual and those which surround but are outside him. The interaction of these two, heredity and environment, constitute the determiners of individual development. Scientific study in all areas is constantly at work endeavoring to understand how this interaction takes place and how much each group of factors (inherited or environmental) determine development. Thus, medicine studies physiological functioning and disease; nutritionists study food composition and metabolism; the psychologist and educator study learning and maturation. The series of studies reported in this monograph were undertaken in an effort to contribute to our understanding of the role of training or practice in relation to maturation in determining the ability of children. The peculiar merits of the studies in this monograph lie in the fact that seven different performances were studied under similar experimental conditions with more than two hundred children, ranging in age from two to eleven years. This similarity of procedure has made possible comparisons of the relative influence of training and maturation on such widely differing performances as color naming, tapping, and singing. They indicate types of activities wherein training and guidance are effective at certain ages and other types of activity where training seems ineffective"--Foreword. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

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