Workshop: Exploring the Concept of Homology in Developmental Psychology

Pitzer College, Claremont CA

Investigators

Abstract

Homology is the word evolutionary biologists use to refer to similarity due to common ancestry. For example, human hands, bat wings, and the flippers of seals appear quite different, but are homologous because they all evolved from the feet of a common ancestor with four limbs. The notion of homology has been enormously helpful to biologists as they have worked to organize their observations of biological traits across species. Like evolutionary biologists, who are concerned with the origins and subsequent alterations of traits across generations, developmental psychologists are concerned with the origins and subsequent alterations of psychological traits across individuals' lifetimes. Given the similar concerns in these two fields, the idea of homology should be as useful to developmental psychologists as it has been to evolutionary biologists. Nonetheless, this idea has not been used extensively in developmental psychology. The current project will be an interdisciplinary workshop that will bring together an international group of evolutionary-developmental biologists, developmental psychobiologists, philosophers of science, and traditional child developmentalists to explore how the concept of homology might aid in understanding psychological and behavioral development. There has never been a meeting devoted to work on the potential utility of the homology concept for the field of developmental psychology, and the time is right for such a meeting; recent scientific advances have created a climate in which an interdisciplinary collection of scientist-theorists will be able to make progress that will advance this field. The workshop will foster interactions that would otherwise never occur, facilitate mutual understanding of the concepts under discussion, and promote future collaborations. All of our psychological and behavioral characteristics emerge as we develop, so understanding traits as diverse as aggressive behavior, mathematical competence, altruism, or linguistic skills requires studying the development of these traits. The entire field of developmental psychology is devoted to understanding how and why it is that each of us develops our adaptive and maladaptive behaviors and mental states. Unfortunately, developmental psychologists still have no generally accepted coherent theory for understanding how such traits emerge and change across time. This workshop will take a concept that has been productively used by biologists and import it into developmental psychology, thereby contributing to a theoretical advance in the field that is likely to have wide-ranging implications. Specifically, the workshop will facilitate developmental psychologists' formulation of novel, empirical research questions that will enhance understanding of both normal and abnormal development in a variety of psychological domains. Because the ideas generated and discussed in the workshop will be widely disseminated in a scholarly journal as well as on the internet, progress made by the workshop participants will have positive effects on the thinking and practice of students and professionals in academic disciplines as well as those in the mental health professions. Furthermore, because the origins of our psychological characteristics are of great interest to the lay public and bear on aspects of public policy such as education and our understanding of developmental disorders, this workshop will contribute to our knowledge about human development and ultimately could promote real changes in institutional practices as well.