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Compose a 1250 words assignment on technological changes in the methods used to study child development

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Compose a 1250 words assignment on technological changes in the methods used to study child development. Needs to be plagiarism free! The theory of evolution has been a very good tool for studying child development. When microscopy evolved and improved in the 19th century, embryology developed as a scientific field and thus assisted the process of studying child development (Harris and Butterworth, 2002: 5). Two theories prevailed in that period. One was preformationism, which said that an embryo was a miniature human being which became bigger in due course (Sapp, 2003: 39). The other was recapitulationism which declared that “in the embryonic period, organisms pass through the adult form of all species from which they have evolved” (Harris and Butterworth, 2002: 5).

It was only after the 1950s that molecular biology and developmental biology evolved as a highly technically perfect research field, which in turn, revealed the DNA structure of the specie (Sapp, 2003: 187). From this period onwards, embryology entered a new phase of precision, which helped child development researchers to shed their preconceived wrong notions and base their studies on pure scientific evidence. Genetics thus became a highly contributing field to child development research and molecular technology and biotechnology started to reveal the hitherto unknown connection between human development and the genes.

The notion of “genotype-environment interaction” in child development was a result of the growth of genetics (Plomin, 1986: 108). For example, it has been found that the majority of children having musically inclined parents show the same inclination towards music (Plomin, 1986: 108). But whether this can be attributed to the genotype or the environment is a matter of debate as musically inclined parents usually provide their children with an atmosphere of exposure to music (Plomin, 1986: 109). This slowly led to another concept called genotype-environment correlation which was supported by genetic research also (Plomin, 1986: 109).