Preview

Nature and Nurture

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
566 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Nature and Nurture
nature and nurture

Today most people believe that nature and nurture influence human development together. Newborn infants enter the world with all sensory systems functioning and are well prepared to learn about their new environment. Newborn infants have some innate abilities when they were born. But these abilities are not enough to adapt a new environment. So they have to learn many skills and capacities about their environment. This essay will discuss nature and nurture which stronger influences early human development.
Nature plays important role in early human development. A remarkable number of personal characteristics are already determined by the genetic structure of the fertilized ovum. Our genes program our growing cells so that we develop into a person rather than a fish or chimpanzee. They decide our sex, the color of our skin, eyes, and hair and general body size, among other things. These genetic determinants are expressed in development through the process of maturation-innately determined sequences of growth and change that are relatively independent of environmental events. (Text 2-1, lines 50-60) For example, the infants may be born congenital heart disease or color-blindness, these diseases will company with their life, and it is hard to change after they were born. Newborn infants can distinguish sounds of the human voice from other kinds of sounds, and they can distinguish between some speech sounds better than adults. Newborn infants also can discriminate differences in taste and among odors shortly after birth. All of these are nature, the nature includes many things, such as intelligence, age at which children begin to talk, your ethnicity, when children start to walk.
However, the nurture is stronger than nature in early human development. The mind of a newborn infant is a 'blank slate'. What gets written on this slate is what the baby experiences – what he or she sees, hears, tastes, smells and feels. During they grown up,

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    “Human nature is a vexing issue: some argue that we are born as blank slates and our 
natures are defined by upbringing, experience, culture and the ideas of our time. Others 
believe that human nature is innate and pre-destined, regardless of time and…

    • 323 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Genes and the environment affect every characteristic (Beal, 2010). Nature always affects nurture, and nurture always affects nature. In development, nature refers to the traits, capacities, and limitations that each individual inherits genetically from his or her parents at the moment of conception (Beal, 2010). Nature includes serotonin in the brain and physiological maturation that can affect development. Biological and environmental issues can affect critical and sensitive periods of development. Poor maternal nutrition can permit normal infant development, delaying or damaging motor skills (Beal,…

    • 1181 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Week 1 Quiz

    • 2432 Words
    • 16 Pages

    Many developmental theorists are interested in the influence of “nature versus nurture” in child development. The term nurture refers to:…

    • 2432 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    nature vs nurture

    • 6737 Words
    • 27 Pages

    Some say that people of great achievement are born that way. Others claim that anyone who applies the right attitude and effort can be moulded into someone great.…

    • 6737 Words
    • 27 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    For decades, nature versus nurture debate has been an ongoing argument among experts studying life span development. Those who believe that nature is the determining factor of development argue that genes determine an individual 's personality, attitudes, and behavior. The other side of the debate among experts is that nurture or experiences and environment have the most influence on development. Santrock states, "nature refers to an organism 's biological inheritance, nurture to its environmental experiences" (Santrock, 2007, p. 17). This paper will take the debate a little further by examining whether nature or nurture has more of an influence on children raised…

    • 928 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A significant part of the nurture responsibility for development comes from the tendency of a child to observe the world and react to the environment. From the moment of birth, newborns spend a lot of time ‘actively looking around’ and ‘pausing with their eyes when they encounter an object or some change in the visual field’. The same applies to hearing and smelling (Hillier 1992, Ashmead et al. 1991 in Atkinson et al. 1999). This tells us that a child is programmed to learn from the environment from the moment they enter into the world. This serves as a very important base for a child’s growth, as it kickstarts the learning of certain crucial life-saving skills such as self-preservation: ‘the ability to distinguish among smells has a clear adoptive value: it helps infants avoid noxious substances, thereby increasing their likelihood of survival’…

    • 536 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Nature vs. Nurture is the controversial debate among Social Scientists about which one has a greater influence over the development of a human. Nature is the influence of inherited biological characteristics on human behavior as well as the influence of our genes. Our genes design an orderly sequence of biological growth processes called maturation. At one time, it was believed that people behaved in certain ways because they inherited behaviors from their parents. Nurture on the other hand is the process of training and influencing a child through learning. It is the influence of our environment and experiences and how they shape us. “Nell” is a story which clearly supports the nurture argument. Nell shows several examples of how her behavior has been influenced by her environment and experiences.…

    • 781 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Nature is the influence behavioral development such as fetal environment, nutrition, stress, and sensory stimulation that has come very influential as exampled by the textbook.…

    • 173 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Babies begin to develop and learn while in their mother’s womb, and the last three months of Pre-Birth are crucial for their development. When they are born they can recognize familiar sounds and have developed some taste buds. The brain continues to grow until the age of three, this is when the hard-wiring in the brain is almost complete. Babies develop better when they have the best learning experiences from an early age, this is important as it helps their brain to develop, and shape them into the people they will become later in life. The environment a child is exposed to, and other factors before birth and in the very early years, will have a massive impact on how they develop holistically.…

    • 544 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    He discussed, “The source of these social disparities have often framed for public discourse in terms of the nature-nurture polarity.” (Keating, 2011). The behavior genetic findings of substantial heritability of a range of characteristics and newer technologies, and nurture have pointed to be strong regularities of social patterns as well as to the indeterminacy of genetic influence. Nurture refers to all the environmental variables that impact who we are including early childhood experiences, social relationships and surrounding beliefs. Both components play a vital part in all lives. Nature is responsible for producing healthy, well developed babies. However, nurture plays an important role in the early stages of human development. Researcher believes that early human development focused due to nurture as it builds up on the talents provided by…

    • 1653 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    1. Lifespan Developmental Psychology - Branch of psychology concerned with the systematic physical, cognitive, and psychosocial processes that lead to these changes that occur throughout life…

    • 1618 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Nature v nurture

    • 361 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Innate behaviour is inborn, inherited in our genes, unchangeable behaviour such as a reflex; a uncontrollable, involuntary movement. For example when an eyelid will automatically close when a puff of wind is blown into it or the palmer grasp, a baby will automatically close its hand and hold any object that stimulates its palm. Babies are born with numerous innate reflexes. These primitive reflexes include, The rooting reflex – when the corner of a babies mouth is stroked it will turn toward the stimulus in order to find the food it needs and will begin to suckle if milk is found. Also there is the Moro reflex - this is when a baby is startled either by sound or motion, its arms will quickly extend out to the side and then will close in back towards the body. Both of these reflexes will disappear by the age of one. Other bodily reflexes such as quickly moving a body part away from the cause of pain or wind blown into an eye and eyelid closing instantly will remain throughout life in order to protect life. A more complex innate instinct behaviour would be; the nesting instinct that a pregnant woman feels, the strong urge to build a perfect clean tidy home for her newborn. Our bodies incorporate such reflexes to protect us- for example a child who may have a piece of food stuck in its windpipe will automatically cough in order to dislodge the food to prevent choking, thus saving life.…

    • 361 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    However, a British philosopher John Locke argued human development is determined entirely by experience. He suggested that the mind of a newborn infant begins as a “blank slate”, which is what the infant sees, hears, tastes, and smells. In addition, some behaviorists such as John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner believed that newborn babies can be trained into any kind of adult, and the human development can be easily changed or influenced (John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner,…

    • 542 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In conclusion, I think that both nature and nurture play an equal role in an infant’s intellectual development as it can be both inherited and develop as a process of their education and upbringing.…

    • 964 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Early human development plays such an important role in children's stage of growth. Refer to several discussions surround by different interactions and views to human development issue, it not yet acknowledges between the effects of nature which infants are already provided from their birth compare to what nurture can be influenced through its environment circumstances or having knowledge by training. Thus, this essay will describe the comparison between nurture and nature, to balance its ability in human development.…

    • 560 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays