Whereas some four year olds could draw a person with five fingers on each hand and a full set of facial features, others could barely hold a pencil. Some sat quietly in a small group, intently listening to and understanding a story, while others wiggled, fidgeted, and couldn't focus their attention. In those days, before the explosion of…

This article is based on a talk that was given by the author at the Institute of Historical Research on 3 February 2011, on the Victorian polymath Francis Galton and the malign legacy of his eugenic theories. It pays tribute to the pioneering work of the late Brian Simon in challenging the whole idea of "fixed innate intelligence" and in…

This article traces the personal as well as the intellectual and scientific relationship between Charles Darwin and his younger half-cousin Francis Galton. Although they had been on friendly terms as young men, and Darwin had in some ways been a role model for Galton, the two did not share major scientific interests until after the publication of…

In this paper we argue that moral behaviour is largely situation-specific. Genetic make-up, neurobiological factors, attachment security and rearing experiences have only limited influence on individual differences in moral performance. Moral behaviour does not develop in a linear and cumulative fashion and individual morality is not stable across…

The connection that critics make between medical genetics and eugenics is historically fallacious. Activists on the political right are as mistaken as activists on the political left: Genetic screening was not eugenics in the past, is not eugenics in the present, and, unless its technological systems become radically transformed, will not be…

In this paper we assess the presence of assortative mating, gene-environment interaction and the heritability of intelligence in childhood using a twin family design with twins, their siblings and parents from 112 families. We evaluate two competing hypotheses about the cause of assortative mating in intelligence: social homogamy and phenotypic…

Objective: To explain the differential course of anxiety and depression in individuals from childhood to adulthood by examining age-related changes in the genetic and environmental etiology of anxious and depressive symptoms. Method: A sample of 1470, 1839, and 2023 Dutch twins aged 12, 14, and 16 years reported on symptoms of anxious depression…

The classical twin study provides a useful resource for testing hypotheses about how the family environment influences children's development, including how genes can influence sensitivity to environmental effects. However, existing statistical models do not account for the possibility that children can inherit exposure to family environments…

Gilbert Gottlieb's theory of probabilistic epigenesis is a fertile ground for further theoretical construction in developmental science. It fills the gap in the domineering empiricism and honoring of inductive generalization that dominates psychology in the beginning of the 21st century, by offering a basic deductive framework for guiding the…

Comments on the article by E. Diener, R. E. Lucas, and C. N. Scollon (see record 2006-05893-003) which cited a study by Tellegen et al. in which the Well-Being scale of the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ), administered to 44 pairs of monozygotic reared-apart (MZA) twins, yielded a within-pair correlation of 0.48. I contend that,…

The aim of Developmental Science is to understand the complex interacting biopsychosocial mechanisms in the development of living organisms. Thus, Developmental Science has roots in both the biological and social disciplines and can bee seen as a meta-theory rooted in developmental principles to guide work and thinking on biology and social…

Environmental or genetic influences, or both could account for the increased risk of divorce among the offspring of separated parents. Previous studies have used covariates to statistically control for confounds, but the present research is the first genetically informed study of the topic. The investigation used the Children of Twins Design with…

We examined the genetic and environmental contribution to the stability and instability of reading outcomes in early elementary school using a sample of 283 twin pairs drawn from the Western Reserve Reading Project. Twins were assessed across two measurement occasions. In Wave 1, children were either in kindergarten or first grade. Wave 2…

Physical environments are a major contributor to human health, cognitive development, and social wellbeing but, until recently, these roles have largely been ignored. Historically the nature-nurture dichotomy divided understandings of human growth, learning and behaviour but the recent epigenetic research and the emergence of gene-environment…

The main argument of this article is that human living systems are open, dynamic, intentional systems and, therefore, are capable of building ever more complex behaviors through self-organization and self-direction. This principle underlying general human development is also applicable to the development of gifted and talented behaviors. These…