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Human growth and development in childhood
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An individuals' nature or behavior is not predetermined as one’s mind will grow with age and experience which will then cause ones personality to change over time. Human personality and behavior is based on the environment they grew up in, the company one kept and the experiences one has faced throughout their life. A lack of human interaction, as seen in feral or isolate children, will cause the child to not develop as other humans would, and would cause a lack of knowledge in typical human behavior. Moreover, learning theorists claim that human behavior is controlled in an individual’s childhood and youth when its cognitive thinking starts to develop. Feral children are individuals who are isolated from human interaction and are deprived of their basic human rights like, an education, lingual and common society behavior type. A great example of this in history is the wild child Genie, who had been a prisoner in her own home from infancy. “Although the girl was thirteen years old, she was unable to talk or walk, wore diapers, and did not know the most basic life skills (like chewing)” (Benzaquen, 2006, …show more content…
Nevertheless, since genie was raised in a confinement with an childhood long abuse, she never developed language acquisition required for humans to communicate to one another. They put genie in the hands of special language instructors and put her under observation to determine the rate at which her brain was funcitiong and how fast it grasped the knowledge presented to her.“Genie, like other isolated and wild children, was “in a retarded stage of development,” they wanted to know “whether a child so deprived can catch up wholly or in part”(Benzaquen, 2006, 247). Learning theorists/scientists made Genie a precious subject of research to figure out whether or not humans have the capability of language development beyond a certain critical
A girl named ,Oxana Malaya, was abandoned by her alcoholic parents when she was born. She grew up around dogs. She was seven years old when she was found, by then, she didn't have the ability to talk and she had no social skills. She would only act like a dog, barking, sleeping, and even cleaning herself like a dog. The environment a person is raised in will develope how a person acts, responds, and even thinks. There are three main ideas on how the environment shapes a person's behavior. The abandoned children funds says “Shockingly, there are over 20 million homeless or abandoned children in the world today - a majority of them are orphans.”The first is your own experiences can change your neuron's response. Connectomes
On November 4, 1970 in Los Angeles, California Genie’s condition was brought to attention by a social worker. The worker discovered the 13-year old girl in a small, dimly lit, confined bedroom. An investigation by authorities exposed that the child had spent most of her life in this room and typically was tied to a potty chair. Genie was found in diapers because she was not potty trained. Her case is an example of extreme isolation from human contact, society, sunlight, and any other environments besides her room. The deprivation of attachment showed when she was timid to humans, almost afraid. Someone whose life was a developmental nightmare could not possibly be expected to have the basic trust that the world is trustworthy and predictable. The life she lived was incredibly horrifying as morals, and psychology portray just how severe the consequences were on Genie.
A child’s development and learning commences from the earliest days of their lives. The unique identity of each individual stems from the relationships with people who provide love, care and emotional support. These relationships can be within the home environment, school playground or with extended family members and friends. Children respond to stimuli which in turn form the ‘internal working model’ (K101, Unit 5). This can be described as how we view ourselves and others within society; it influences what we expect and how we respond to situations.
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.
When children are born they have no concept of what a mother and father are, but they understand who they are and as the grow older they are able to connect those words mother and father to a person. Many behaviors and characteristics are resulted from learning. Albert Bandura tested a social experiment where a child watched another person act aggressively, they child then mimicked this aggressive behavior. This conditioning all leads to nurturing. Nurturing a person and conditioning them through actions and language can lead them to be anything, even if they have a genetic nature. Genie, through careful study and teaching was able to learn certain words and know the difference between the color black and white. She could use simple signs to get people to understand what she wanted. Prior to her teaching, she knew nothing of how to communicate, but due to a nurturing environment she was able to connect to the people around her. The critical period of a person's life comes when they are at infancy. This is the time when children learn the simple words of whatever language they are being taught. Studies have shown that if you want your child to be bilingual, the best way to teach them is when they are young, because at this point they are in the early stages of learning a language, and they are able to adapt much more quickly to this language then when they get older. The critical period of a child again falls under nurture, as it is up to the parents to nurture their child by teaching them the language they need to know to be successful. Language doesn't come in a your genetic nature, it comes from your parents teaching. While many believe that one can only learn a language in the critical period, it is disproven in A Genie and millions of other. Genie was able to form words and half decent
and behavior of the child. In fact, the more we understand about development and behavior, the better. the more obvious it becomes that nature and nurture are similarly influences. rather than determinants, not only singly but also in combination. Here below, I will endeavour to expose the leading theories dealing with the question of nature.
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.
Kids developing are originally shaped by their environment, which includes how their parents raised them to act along
Someone can physically look like their parents, siblings or even ancestors from the third generation. When a baby is born, it is common to learn in a natural way. No one teaches a baby how to crawl or how to react when he and she is hungry. However, talents, qualities and personalities are developed through experiences. The environment in which people grew up can have a lasting effect or influence on the way they talk, behave and respond to things around. According to Steven Pinker, Behavioral genetics has shown that temperament emerges early in life and remains fairly constant throughout the life span, that much of the variation among people within a culture comes from differences in genes, and that in some cases particular genes can be tied to aspects of cognition, language, and personality (2). Researchers believe that the origin of behaviors occur in genes in the DNA or even animal instincts which this concept is known as nature of human behavior. Other researchers believe that people are they were they are because they are taught to do so. This concept is well known as nurture in human behavior. In society, there will always be the doubt between Do we born in this way or do we behave according to life experiences? I strongly believe that nurture plays an important role in the upbringing of a child and the decisions that one makes in the future. Firstly, humans learn from their environment and other’s behaviors. Secondly, culture is a huge remark in people’s life. Finally,
From birth, a child owns not much knowledge in his brain for the lacking of experiences. As time goes by, he would gradually learn to produce sound, to talk, to play, and to do certain things from his parents and the surrounding people. Also, his personality is influenced by the environment until he reaches his mature age. This is the time when he develops his own conscience and full awareness of the impact of the negativity and the goodness on his life. People say that a child is a product of the parents’ guidance for those reasons.
Written by Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action, introduces the concept that would allow the “human fitness to survive” as it “requires the ability to talk, write, listen, and read in ways that increase the chance for you and fellow members of the species to survive together.” Contradictory to Hayakawa’s opinion, it is merely a helpful stepping stone, and in some cases, language in the literal sense, isn’t even needed for humans to survive as shown in the multiple cases of feral children. Feral children, in most cases, develop the ability to survive as animals survive, but in the vast majority of the known cases of capture, these children have never learned to speak and have either retained their animal-like tendencies or have exhibited
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.
...Pines, 1997). After being trained, when she tried to convey her messages to the experimenters, she used basic one-word or two-word structures, such as “stop it”, “no more”, and “jump”, when she wanted to jump as opposed to saying “I want to jump” or “I like to jump” or “Jumping is fun”. Experts have tried to teach Genie to learn language at a higher level, but she was not able to do so because she missed the critical period. During a child’s development, there are series of time periods in which a child can best learn or refine a particular ability, such as speech. After this time period is over it becomes much more difficult, sometimes impossible, for the child to learn the same thing just as in Genie’s case. With this in mind, it is important for researchers to continue to observe and learn about language acquisition. Where it starts (the womb) to what critical periods an infant or child will have the greatest window of opportunity is very important if we are going to overcome some of the language disabilities that we have. In a world where babies are born prematurely and mothers are having drug exposed and positive toxic babies, it is imperative that the research continues.
Wilder Penfield and Lamar Roberts first introduced the idea that there is a “critical period” for learning language in 1959. This critical period is a biologically determined period referring to a period of time when learning/acquiring a language is relatively easy and typically meets with a high degree of success. German linguist Eric Lenneberg further highlights Roberts and Penfield’s findings and postulated the Critical Period Hypothesis in 1967. According to the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH), certain biological events related to language development can only happen in the critical period. During this time, the brain possesses a degree of flexibility (ability and ease of learning a language) and becomes lateralized (assignment of language functions becomes concrete – either in the left or right hemisphere) (Marinova-Todd, S; Marshall, D & Snow, C. 2000 9-10). This critical period lasts from childhood through the onset of puberty (usually at around 12 years of age). Once this period is over, it is more difficult to learn a language because language functions in the brain have become concrete. This hypothesis can be seen with the case of Genie, a woman who was isolated from human interaction and language up to the age of 13. By the time she was rescued, she was well after the critical period for language acquisition, and as such, she did not have a full command of the English language. Had she been rescued before the age of 13, she may have had more linguistic capability. However, this accounts for firs...
All the various experiments were most likely overwhelming and stressful for Genie, and could have been the major reason why she was never able to learn how to make sentences. I believe Genie was never really loved since she was always transferred to different foster homes. I also believe that if Genie stayed in one foster home, she could have been less overwhelmed and more capable of learning how to speak. Genie’s mother also viewed the experimentations on Genie as unethical and eventually sued children’s hospital for doing scientific research rather than providing therapy to rehabilitate her. Genie’s mother won the case, and further experimentations on Genie were no longer allowed. When experimentations were over, Genie went to her first foster home. At her fist foster home, she was intensely punished for vomiting. The experience of her getting punished was so traumatizing, that Genie needed to go back to Children 's