AP PSYCHOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Ontogeny (also ontogenesis) is the origination and development of an organism (both physical and psychological, e.g., moral development), usually from the time of fertilization of the egg to adult. The term can also be used to refer to the study of the entirety of an organism’s lifespan.

Detailed explanation-2: -Examples of ontogenetic adaptations are provided from the prenatal (e.g., placenta in mammals), infancy (e.g., nursing and rooting reflex; neonatal imitation), and childhood (e.g., overestimation of one’s abilities, egocentricity) periods.

Detailed explanation-3: -A number of researchers have tried to detect these correlations in various ways but failed to successfully provide any proper association. Like human beings, the Wistar rats go through the ontogenetic developmental stages «Prenatal → Birth → Infancy → Childhood → Adolescence → Adulthood → Death».

Detailed explanation-4: -The ontogenesis of each individual person is the realisation of three ontologically distinct though interacting forms of existence: the genotype, the culture and the social situation, and therefore of three distinct developmental processes: phylogenesis, ethnogenesis and sociogenesis.

Detailed explanation-5: -As part of this account we hypothesize how each of the main stages of human ontogeny (infancy, childhood, adolescence) was transformed during evolution both by infants’ cooperative skills “migrating up” in age and by adults’ cooperative skills “migrating down” in age.