The Environmental Basis of Variability

Question 1

What can genes do?

Answer 1

• Influence health
  
  • Influence behaviour
  • Define upper and lower boundaries for certain domains
  • Interaction with the environment is the second piece to the puzzle of human variability

Question 2

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)

Answer 2

• Teratogen exposure during pregnancy

  * Teratogen = toxin
  * Affects fetal development  * Markedly impaired neurodevelopment
  
  * Effect on cognition, impairs development of brain to grow  * Facial birth defects
  
  * Space between nose and upper lip is bigger  * Neurological damage
  
  * Brain has less wrinkles and is flatter (less neurons) and smaller
  * Dramatic smaller brain, deformed and not very structured, far less complexity
  * Regular has dips and grooves  * Difficulties with learning and memory issues, staying in school and independence issues  * Can be preventable

Question 3

Genie (feral child)

Answer 3

• Severely abused young girl
  
  • Locked up in a basement until age of 13; never got to hear voices or talk
  • Very thin, hunched, grunted and smelled everything like an animal
  • Confined until age 13
    • Discovered by social worker
  • Father thought she had mental impairment
  • Learned that making noise is bad, stayed essentially mute
  • Never learned how to talk
  • Language development
    • Telegraphic speech
    • Lack of language explosion
      • With language explosion, learn words at much faster rate
    • Not exposed to language, does not learn as well
    • Right side of brain doing far more work than it normally does
  • Critical period?
    • Window of development
      • If don’t learn then, you won’t be able to learn it later on (loss of natural ability)
      • Can you ever recover language?