Lecture 4- The Nature-Nurture Debate

Question 1

What is nativism?

Answer 1

The view that many skills or abilities are hardwired into the brain at birth, as the provide a survival advantage

Question 2

What is empiricism?

Answer 2

The view that humans are not born with built-in “core knowledge”, but gain all their knowledge and skills from learning and experience

Question 3

What is heritability?

Answer 3

How much variation of a particular trait in a particular population is the result of genetics. This is not indicative of how much of a trait in an individual is caused by genetics or environment.

Question 4

What is environmentality?

Answer 4

How much variation in a trait results from environmental factors

Question 5

What are precocial species?

Answer 5

Species where the young are physically mobile from birth or hatching (i.e. ducks can walk from birth)

Question 6

What are altricial species?

Answer 6

Species where the young are more helpless and do not have many independent abilities during early development. They are therefore dependent on the parents for food and safety.

Question 7

What are three features that make human babies altricial?

Answer 7

They are cute to allure people to look after them
They are able to smile from early on, in order to endear others and evoke warm, caregiving reactions
They can make a lot of facial expressions and gestures in order to communicate with caregivers from very early on

Question 8

What are three behaviours of infants that nativists would consider to be innate?

Answer 8

Children will, from a very early age, be able to imitate others
They will look at surprising or unexpected stimuli for longer than expected/normal stimuli, which suggests they develop expectations
They will show early communicative methods, such as facial expressions and caregiver-infant interactions

Question 9

What is face preference (an example of nativism)

Answer 9

The fact that infants prefer to look at faces compared to non-faces). This can increase opportunities for bonding and interaction, so could be said to be good for survival

Question 10

What is one principle that contests face preference?

Answer 10

Infants are known to look around the periphery of objects more, so it has been theorised that babies prefer to look at faces as a lot of the information on them is around the edge of the face.

Question 11

What percentage of genes are polymorphic (they vary between individuals)?

Answer 11

> 1%

Question 12

What factors of environment can affect heritability?

Answer 12

heritability tends to be higher if the environment of the individuals in the sample tends to all be similar, but if the environments of the individual in the sample is more divers, heritability will be estimated to be lower.

Question 13

Why might we contest that IQ is due to heritable characteristics?

Answer 13

Though many believe that IQ is genetically based, there have been no singular genes linked to intelligence

Question 14

How does poverty affect cognitive development and educational attainment (cycle)?

Answer 14

Poverty reduces cognitive capacity, so can affect cognitive development as well as educational attainment. If the child is raised in poverty, they may underperform academically, causing them to struggle to obtain well paying jobs, extending the environment of poverty, and therefore the effects of this poverty on educational attainment , to their children.

Question 15

What is genotype-environment theory?

Answer 15

It suggests that the genotype inherited from your parents influences which environments you encounter and the experiences you have

Question 16

What are the three types of genotype-environment theory?

Answer 16

Passive, Evocative and Active

Question 17

What is passive genotype-environment theory?

Answer 17

It suggests that, as your biological parents provide both your genotype and your environment while growing up, your environment will encourage the traits in your genotype. However, this tends to decrease with age as a child becomes more independent from their parents.

Question 18

What is evocative genotype-environment theory?

Answer 18

We inherit temperaments from our parents that affects other’s responses to us, therefore affecting our environment and what experiences we have. This remains constant over time

Question 19

What is active genotype-environment theory?

Answer 19

Kids seek out an environment that is consistent with our genetics, This increases with age as we become more self assured. For example, children with high IQs are more likely to seek out academic environments.