Evolutionary developmental psychology (EDP) is a research paradigm that applies the basic principles of evolution by natural selection, to understand the development of human behavior and cognition.
[1] EDP considers both the reliably developing, species-typical features of ontogeny (developmental adaptations), as well as individual differences in behavior, from an evolutionary perspective.
While evolutionary views tend to regard most individual differences as the result of either random genetic noise (evolutionary byproducts)[2] and/or idiosyncrasies (for example, peer groups, education, neighborhoods, and chance encounters)[3] rather than products of natural selection, EDP asserts that natural selection can favor the emergence of individual differences via "adaptive developmental plasticity.
[1] EDP is closely linked to the theoretical framework of evolutionary psychology (EP), but is also distinct from EP in several domains, including: research emphasis (EDP focuses on adaptations of ontogeny, as opposed to adaptations of adulthood); consideration of proximate ontogenetic; environmental factors (i.e., how development happens) in addition to more ultimate factors (i.e., why development happens).
[12] Wilhelm T. Preyer, a pioneer of child psychology, was heavily inspired by Darwin's work and approached the mental development of children from an evolutionary perspective.
[14] However, evolutionary theory has had a limited impact on developmental psychology as a whole,[5] and some authors argue that even its early influence was minimal.
[5][17] One group of developmental psychologists who have embraced evolutionary perspectives are nativists, who argue than infants possess innate cognitive mechanisms (or modules) which allow them to acquire crucial information, such as language (for a prominent example, see universal grammar).
Developmental systems theorists such as Robert Lickliter point out that the products of development are both genetic and epigenetic, and have questioned the strictly gene-centric view of evolution.
Pioneers of EDP contrast their work with that of mainstream evolutionary psychologists, who they argue focus primarily on adults, especially on behaviors related to socializing and mating.
These adaptations allow organisms to implement alternative and contingent life history strategies, depending on environmental factors.
[33][36] Developmentally-oriented researchers have proposed that over-imitation of behavioral models facilitates cultural learning,[37] a phenomenon which emerges in children by age three[38] and is seemingly absent in chimpanzees.
[1][4] Related to this is the idea of a life history strategy, which can be conceptualized as a chain of resource-allocation decisions (e.g., allocating resources towards growth or towards reproduction) that an organism makes.
[1] Biologists have used life history theory to characterize between-species variation in resource-allocation in terms of a fast-slow continuum (see r/K selection theory),[44] and, more recently, some anthropologists and psychologists have applied this continuum to understand within-species variation in trade-offs between reproductive and somatic effort.
[47][48] Factors such as exposure to violence, harsh child-rearing, and environmental unpredictability (e.g., frequent moving, unstable family composition) have been shown to correlate with the proposed behavioral indicators of "fast" life history strategies[49] (e.g., early sexual maturation, unstable couple relationships, impulsivity, and reduced cooperation), where current reproduction is prioritized over future reproduction.