Describe the processes by which genes and environment operate together to influence development. Discuss the significance of these process for our understanding of child development.

Authors Avatar

Andrea K Lait                                                        V0049493

TMA 02

Option 2

Describe the processes by which genes and environment operate together to influence development.  Discuss the significance of these process for our understanding of child development.

Psychologists have argued for centuries over which has played the larger role in child development, heredity or environment. The British philosopher John Locke (1632 –1704) proposed one of the first theories in the seventeenth century.  Locke believed that a child was born with an empty mind, tabula rasa (meaning “blank slate”) and that everything the child learns comes from experience, nothing is established beforehand.   Years later, Charles Darwin (1809 –82)  brought forth his theory of evolution, which argued that human behaviour is best understood through knowledge of its origins – in both the evolution of the species and the early development of individuals.   His emphasis was on the survival behaviour of different species and his interest was in observing children to identify the various ways that they adapt to things, and in learning about the inheritance of human behaviour,. which led to a return of the hereditarianism viewpoint. With the twentieth century, however, came the rise of behaviourism.  Behaviourists, like  B.F. Skinner (19043 – 90), argued that a child can agree that both nature (genes) and nurture (environment) play an important role, not independently, but as they interact together to be made into any kind of person, regardless of their heredity.  My essay will describe the way in which genes and environment operate together to influence development with significance to the differing view of the constructivist theory of Piaget and the Social Constructivism of Vygotsy.

The epigenetic model (Chapt 2 ) is one that proposes that development is the result of the complex transaction between the individual and the environment.  Development includes division as well as growth and the characteristic of gradual changes from an initial constant state to a later highly diverse state.  The epigenetic approach, which has been influenced largely by evolutionary theory centres on linking non-obvious environmental experience in influencing development rather than in born

Andrea K Lait                                                        V0049493

Join now!

programming. Within the epigenetic view, development cannot be simply determined by genes or by the environment, but both genes (nature) and environment (nurture) play a role in the development of the individual’s mental capacity.

The nature side of the debate argues that a person maintains their mental ability only based on what they are born with genetically.  This would mean that the environment in which this person is bought up in plays no role in determining their mental aptitude. There are some substantial reasons for humans to be persuaded that genetics play a large part in a person’s ...

This is a preview of the whole essay