Nature-Nurture Flashcards
What is nature-nurture debate?
The argument as to whether a person’s development is main,y due to their genes or environmental factors.
What is nature?
When behaviour is the product of innate factors.
What is nurture?
When behaviour is the product of environmental influences.
What is the environment?
Everything that is outside the body.
Give 3 examples of the environment?
People, events and the physical world.
What is heredity?
The process by which traits are passed from parents to offspring.
What is the interactionist approach?
The view that the processes of nature and nurture work together rather than in opposition.
What 2 explanations does the influence of nature refer to?
Genetic and evolutionary
What is an example of nature?
Twin studies concordance rates (genetic) and Bowlby’s monotropic attachment theory being adaptive (evolutionary).
What 2 explanations does the influence of nurture refer to?
Behaviourism and SLT.
What are examples of nurture?
Classical and operant conditioning - they explain behaviour only by stimulus response links
What is the MZ twin concordance rate for schizophrenia?
40%
What is the DZ twin concordance rate for schizophrenia?
7%
What schizophrenic theory lies on the nurture end of the debate?
Double bind theory
What are the 4 AO3 points for the nature-nurture debate?
1) Nature = nurture cannot be separated
2) Alternative explanation
3) Nurture affects nature
4) Epigenetics
What analogy has been given to the attempts to separate nature from nurture?
It is like asking whether width or length is more important when calculating the area of a triangle
What inherited disorder is affected by both nature and nurture?
PKU
What is PKU?
An inherited disorder that prevents the amino acid phenylalanine from being metabolised
If PKU is detected at birth, how can the effects be minimised?
Placed on a diet devoid of phenylalanine
How does PKU suggest that nature and nurture aren’t entirely separate?
As if the inherited disease can be treated via environmental manipulation, is the condition due to nature or nurture
What is the alternative explanation to nature-nurture?
Diathesis stress model
What is a diathesis?
A biological vulnerability
Why don’t all people with predisposing genes develop the disorder?
As expression of the gene is dependent on environmental stressors
Give an example of how nurture affects nature.
Neural plasticity
Whose research supports the concept of nurture affecting nature?
Maguire’s
How does Maguire’s research support the concept on nurture affecting nature?
The taxi drivers’ posterior hippocampi (responsible for spatial memory) were bigger than the controls’
In the animal study that provides support for nurture affecting nature, what animals were studied?
Kittens
In the animal study that provides support for nurture affecting nature, what were placed on the kittens?
Large collars restricting what they could see
In the animal study that provides support for nurture affecting nature, where were the kittens raised?
In a drum with only horizontal or vertical stripes
In the animal study that provides support for nurture affecting nature, what was observed when the kittens were removed from their drums?
They were unable to see the lines of opposite orientation
What is epigenetics?
When different materials in our cells can switch genes ‘on’ and ‘off’
What controls epigenetics?
Life experiences such as diet and stress
How can epigenetics explain why cloning doesn’t always work?
Epigenetic material is inherited from the donor egg cell
