4. Nature Nurture Debate Flashcards
What is the idea of nature?
- genes determine our behaviour
- our personality traits, preferences and abilities are in our inherent nature
- we genetically inherit physical traits, intelligence and preferences from our parents
What is the idea of nurture?
- our environment, upbringing and life experiences determine our behaviour
- we are nurtured to behave in certain ways
- e.g the culture we are brought up in
What is nativism?
- linked to nature
- the view that many skills or abilities are native/hardwired into the brain at birth
- such knowledge that is inherited is an advantage to survival
What is empiricism?
- linked to nurture
- humans are not born with built in core knowledge/mental context
- all knowledge results from learning and experience
- tabula rasa: we are born as a blank state
What is heritability?
- how much the variation of a specific trait in a particular population is the result of genetic variation among individuals in that population
What is environmentality?
- how much variation of a specific trait in a particular population is the result of environmental factors
What is a phenotype?
- the interaction of genes and environmental factors in a persons physical appearance, traits and behaviour
What is the nature-nurture debate in developmental psychology?
- it is easy to think of development as an unfolding maturation
- however, when things go wrong in nurture the role of the environment becomes evident: e.g we see deficits/delays
- we therefore must find a balance when explaining such behaviour
What is a prosocial species?
- the young are physically mobile from birth/hatching
- e.g a giraffe can stand up
What is an altricial species?
- the young are more helpless and are not mobile from birth/hatching
- they are dependant on their parents for food and safety
- e.g a human baby
What perceptual and cognitive skills do infants have in early development?
- can imitate e.g sticking tongue out
- look longer at surprising events: paying attention
- show early communicative behaviours e.g facial expressions
What does research on nativism show about face preference?
- very young infants prefer to look at faces compared to non faces
- they looked for longer
How is variation in genes used as a genetic study of nature-nurture debate?
- our genes consist of A, G, C and T
- they stand for different nucleotide bases in our DNA
- most of the sequence is the same for all humans
- researchers can test how variations of this correlate with traits
What is heritability?
- describes the proportion of variation in the population that is accounted for by genes, for a given trait
How is family resemblance used to assess the influence of genetics?
- compare individuals who are closely related (e.g identical twins) to unrelated individuals (strangers)
- more closely related family members should be more similar if a particular trait is influence by genes
What do family resemblance studies show about IQ?
What does it show about monozygotic twins raised apart?
- unrelated pairs have zero correlation whereas identical twins have 0.87
- this shows IQ is driven by genetic similarity
- also those brought up apart had a correlation of 0.75 showing heritability is high
What effect has poverty been shown to have on development?
What is the problem with poverty?
- poverty and malnutrition has a huge impact of development
- therefore nurture plays a role
- the longer a child lives in poverty, the worse their educational attainment is leading to stunted development
What does the genotype-environmental theory propose?
- your genotype and your parents genotype influence which environments you encounter and the types of experiences you have
- genes drive experience
What are the three types of gene-environment effects?
- passive: biological parents provide both genes and environment for the child
- evocative: temperamental characteristics of the child evoke responses from others
- active: children seek out environments consistent with their genotypes
What does the genotype-environment theory suggest about cognitive development?
- the parents environmental influence should be the greatest early in development
- parents influence will decrease with age as children start seeking out own environments/experiences as they grow up
What are the strengths of the genotype-environment theory?
- model is comprehensive and plausible: examines how both genetic and environmental influences interact to produce traits and behaviour
- model considers developmental effects: not seen as a constant, but as dynamic factors
What can we apply the genotype-environment theory to?
- antisocial behaviour
- development of emotions
- cognitive development: particularly intelligence and problem solving
