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Nature is more important than nurture
Nature vs nurture psychology summary
Why nature is more important than nurture
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Perspective Paper INTRODUCTION Parents and scientists are seeking a more sound way to determine how to raise the children of the up-coming generation. The web article From Neurons to Neighborhoods, describes ten essential concepts needed for the healthy development of human beings. Research and theories from K. S. Berger’s textbook, Developing Person Through the Life Span can be applied to the ten core concepts. This paper will expand upon six of the ten concepts including how a person advances through the nature-nurture phenomenon, cultural influences, self-regulation, building relationships, uniqueness, and vulnerability to risks and influences. The following scientists research and theories will be used to help validate the concepts actuality, they include Pavlov, Skinner, Vygotsky, Piaget, Erikson, Freud and Maslow. HUMAN DEVELOPMENT SHAPED BY BIOLOGY AND EXPERIENCE The first core concept suggested by the web article depicts human development forming from the interplay of an individual’s biology and experience. Early scientists in this particular field created testable hypotheses to understand the dynamic interaction between the nature-nurture phenomenon. Nobel Prize winner Ivan Pavlov’s and North American scientist B.F. Skinner’s research in behaviorism contain principles in classical and operant conditioning which can help further explain this occurrence. Pavlov’s classical conditioning is a learning process in which a substantial stimulus is connected with a common one; therefore, the significance of the common stimuli is heightened (Berger, 2011, 40). There are two necessary parts of classical conditioning which pertain to the first core concept of the nature-nurture development. The first deals with biology. Pavlov... ... middle of paper ... ...fety and respect. The developing individuals remain at risk because the culture takes advantage of their non-physiological needs. CONCLUSION In summary, the human development is not exclusively limited to one formation. The complexity of human biology mixed with varying living and social environments creates a multitude of ways to determine how to raise a child. A child’s mentor must assess what is best for the child as well as listen to the child’s opinions in order to come to a foundation stable enough to learn how to be aware and avoid risks thus allowing more opportunity to flourish. Works Cited Berger, K. S. (2011). The developing person through the life span. (Eighth Edition). Worth Publishers. Shonkoff, J. & Phillips, D. (Eds.). (2001). From neurons to neighborhoods: The science of early childhood development. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Berger, K. (2011). The developing person through the life span. (8th ed., pp. 39-42). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.
Slater, A., and Muir, D., (1998). The Blackwell Reader in Developmental Psychology. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, Ltd.
Crandell, Thomas. Crandell, Corinne Haines. Zanden, James W. Vander. (2009). Human Development. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Berger, K. (2015). The Developing Person: Through the Life Span (9th ed.). New York, NY: Worth.
Ivan Pavlov developed a theory called classical conditioning which proposes that learning process occurs through associations between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus. Classical conditioning involves placing a neutral signal before a naturally occurring reflex like associating the food with the bell in Pavlov experiment. In classical conditioning, behavior is learnt by association where a stimulus that was originally neutral can become a trigger for substance use or cravings due to repeated associations between those stimuli and substance use (Pavlov, 1927).
Lifespan development is essential, as it is the changes that happen to us throughout a person’s lifespan. Our development occurs at ages stages where we develop from infancy till death. This essay will contain my life story to display the domains in 5 age stages in my lifespan development. The domains I will be exploring is in this essay is physical, emotional, cognitive, social, cultural and moral domain. The influence of biological and environmental play a significant role in my development. Development is influenced by nature or nurture and its affect will occur throughout lifespan. The changes that occur during development have stage. Each theorists has stages of development where they display the changes. This essay will explore my development that will support theorist such as Erikson, Vygotsky, Berk, Piaget and other theorist. The age stages of prenatal will display physical and emotional domain, Infancy (0-2) will portray social and emotional domain, young children (2-6) will show cognitive and social domain, middle childhood (6-12) will display socio-cultural and moral domain and adolescence will portray nature vs. nurture and cultural domain. Development is crucial for a healthy wellbeing. As a physiotherapist it is significant to understand development in age stages, as it will aid knowing how young children will react compared to an adolescence who is more development mentally, emotionally, physically, socially and culturally.
Nature versus nurture is an argument in psychology over whether a person’s innate qualities and behaviors are caused from their environment or if they’re born with it. Vygotsky places more emphasis on the social factors that contribute to cognitive development, in other words he is in favor of the nurture argument. He believes that everyone learns from their culture, environment, and social interactions. He talks about a few of his theories like the zone of proximal development, and a more knowledgeable other. He also expresses his thoughts on developmental tools and the importance of language to cognitive development. All of these factors together support his idea that children’s behavior is learned.
The strength of classical conditioning is that it can help to explain all aspects of human behavior. Any of behavior can broke down into stimulus-response association, so that according to the classical conditioning, conditioned stimulus will lead conditioned response to occur, then the scientist can observe and determine the behavior (McLeod, 2014). In the case of Pavlovian conditioning, he found that when the conditioned stimulus (bell) was paired with an unconditioned stimulus (food) was presented to the dog, it would start to salivate. After a number of repeated this procedures, Pavlov tried to ring his bell by its own...
Berk, L. (2010). Development Through the Lifespan (5th ed.). (J. Mosher, Ed.) Boston, Massachusetts: Allyn & Bacon.
The theory of behaviorism was later advanced by JB Watson who argued that any behavior can be instilled in a child. Watson argued that any child can be classically conditioned to become anything or to acquire any behavior. The study off classical conditioning involves presenting to an animal or organism to a conditioned stimulus. There is no connection between the conditioned stimulus and the organism. The organism is then exposed to an unconditional stimulus which is then followed repetitively with the exposition of the conditioned stimulus over a certain number of times until the organism learns to associate the conditioned stimulus with the unconditioned stimulus to produce a conditioned response even at the absence of an unconditioned response. In the process the organism was found to elicit an unconditional response at the exposure to the conditioned stimulus.
Undoubtedly, humans are unique and intricate creatures and their development is a complex process. It is this process that leads people to question, is a child’s development influenced by genetics or their environment? This long debate has been at the forefront of psychology for countless decades now and is better known as “Nature versus Nurture”. The continuous controversy over whether or not children develop their psychological attributes based on genetics (nature) or the way in which they have been raised (nurture) has occupied the minds of psychologists for years. Through thorough reading of experiments, studies, and discussions however, it is easy to be convinced that nurture does play a far more important in the development of a human than nature.
Papalia, D E, Olds, S W & Feldman, R D (1998). Human Development. 7th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Psychology is the science of behavior. Psychology is not the science of the mind. Behavior can be described and explained without making reference to mental events or to internal psychological processes. The sources of behavior are external (in the environment), not internal (in the mind). Behaviorism is a doctrine, or a set of doctrines, about human and nonhuman animal behavior. An important component of many psychological theories in the late nineteenth century were introspection, the study of the mind by analysis of one's own thought processes. It was in reaction to this trend that behaviorism arose, claiming that the causes of behavior need not be sought in the depths of the mind but could be observed in the immediate environment, in stimuli that elicited, reinforced, and punished certain responses. The explanation, in other words, lay in learning, the process whereby behavior changes in response to the environment. It wasn’t until the twentieth century that the scientist began to uncover the actual mechanism of learning, thereby laying the theoretical foundation for behaviorism. The contributions of four particular scientists are Ivan Pavlov, John B. Watson, Edward Lee Thorndike, and B.F. Skinner.
Child growth and development is a process that consists of some building blocks, which are components that combine in an infinite number of ways (Cherry, n.d.). As a result of the variations of building blocks in a child’s development, educators, psychologists, and philosophers have been constantly engaged in the debate of nature versus nurture debate. Many researchers agree that child development is a complex interaction between his/her genetic background (nature) and his/her environment (nurture). In essence, some developmental aspects are strongly affected by biology whereas other aspects are influenced by environmental factors. From the onset of an individu...
Developmental Psychology is an area which studies how we as humans change over the period of our life span. The majority of the focus is broken into three categories: cognitive, physical and social change. The creation of who we are today comes down to the everlasting debate of nature versus nurture. This ongoing debate of what makes us who we are and which one is the driving force in development may be so simple that it’s complex. Rather than it being a conflict of nature “versus” nurture, it is very well possible both play an equal part in the development of us as humans. In the beginning, we start off as single cell in the form of a zygote. In that moment, where the DNA begin to form and the first seconds of life take place, the zygote is already experiencing interaction with the womb. In the process of determining why we are who are it is better to look more at the interactions of nature and nurture, analyzing how both have shaped us.