For a psychobiological approach to human development

Abstract

In order to understand human development, psychologists must take into account both functional and evolutionary biology. In the realm of functional biology, the study of development examines how functionning is in the end converted into functional exchange or specific behavior. An evolutionary perspective in the developmental studies forces us to see infancy as a period uhich has its own history parallel to the species as whole. Neoteny has been particularly important as a "matrix of evolutionary change" and thereby it is supposed that it has played a major role is shaping our species.
The main conceptual tool of evolutionary thought is adaptation. We must include it in our analysis of infant and child behavior as developmental psychologists, not only because it is important in its own right but also because adaptation is the ((meetingpoinin between functional biology and evolutionary biology.