PSY 3290 - The Biology of Stress and Development

How do exposures to stress impact our development? In this course we examine how environmental information in general, and early life stress in particular, “gets under the skin” to shape human development. The course begins with an overview of basic evolutionary-developmental principles as a foundation for understanding how the developing person adapts their physiology and behavior to different social and physical conditions (what is called developmental programming). To illustrate this process, we will examine fetal and infant development as a case study—to demonstrate how the child employs environmental information early in life to guide different developmental pathways. An evolutionary-developmental approach—the application of the basic principles of evolutionary theory, and particularly life history theory, to explain contemporary human development and its variations—will provide an integrative theoretical framework for drawing together the different course topics.