Nature Vs Nurture Debate - Coursework Example

Nature vs Nurture. Name: Date: Affiliation: Introduction. The nature vs nature debate is concerned with the idea of whether human behavior is learnt or inherited. The Nature side of the debate argues that human behavior of human beings is learnt from various influences in the environment once they are born ( Bruna, 2016). On the other side, nature emphasizes that human beings are inherit behavior and characteristics from their parents. The debate on nature vs nature has being existent for quite a long period of time and to date it remains a contentious issue depending on what side a person leans. This essay will look at the various argument surrounding the debate and also look into recent literature that aims to connect both nature and nurture in understanding various human behaviors and characteristics. Those that support the nature side of the debate are known as nativists while those that support the nurture side of the argument are known as empiricists. By 350 BC, philosophers at the time had begun trying to understand human behavior. The main protagonists in this debate were philosophers Aristotle and Plato. Plato believed that human behavior and characteristics were strictly confined to innate factors. According to Plato, human beings are presented with all their knowledge at birth (Chapman, 2000). The environment is an important factor in a human beings life, according to him but human beings have nothing to learn from the environment. What actually happens when people interact with the environment is that it reminds them of the information that they already had. The environment hence provides an opportunity to apply what they already knew according to Plato. These views do not have a lot of popularity today but set ground for investigation into the topic. His close friend Aristotle had different thoughts. According to him, human beings were born with a blank slate which he called tabula rasa. They acquire behaviors and knowledge through interacting with the environment and through experience. Just as Plato’s idea, these views do not have much support but they were important in laying ground for later works on the subject. Centuries later in the 1700 the debate would re-emerge among philosophers John Locke and G.W Leibniz. Leibniz supported an internalist point of view and according to him, the soul contained sources of various doctrines and notions that external objects merely rouse (Cowie, 1999). Leibniz argued that the idea that ideas and knowledge can come to the mind without the operation of specific internal mechanisms was vague and impossible. In his explanation, Leibniz used the metaphor of a rock. When a sculptor is looking for a stone to form a sculpture from, the fissures of a certain rock will predispose it to a given sculpture as opposed to another rock with different fissures. In his explanation, the sculptor releases the sculpture from the rock (Mueller Gathercole, V. C & Hoff, 2008). As such all ideas, knowledge and tendencies are within us just like the sculpture is inside the rock. On the other hand, John Locke had a different approach to the subject matter by supportingempiricism by believing that human being behaviors were shaped by experiences rather than innate factors.John Locke would support his claims by closely examining various processes of human reasoning including reason and logic. The nature vs nurture debate would also find itself in the world of linguistics. According to supporters of nativism, language acquisition is as a result of the innate ability of human beings. The main supporter of this idea is philosopher Noam Chomsky, who supported Plato’s idea about the human nature. According to Chomsky, language acquisition in infants is innate and that children are born with knowledge on language acquisition which is deeply rooted within their brain. Language according to Chomsky and other nativist supporters is genetically encoded in every human being. This allows human beings to be different from other species since they have a unique linguistic ability. Chomsky spent a lot of time in developing his theory of language acquisition in which he proposed the idea of Universal Grammar. According to Chomsky, there is a certain underlying principle among all the different languages in the world. He would further his argument with the idea that all children are born with a Language Acquisition Device (Yusa, N. H., et al. 2011). This device allows a child to acquire the grammatical principles of the language that they are exposed to once they are born. Nativists believe that Universal Grammar is too complex to be picked up from the environment. Nativists use the Darwinian principle of survival for the fittest in explaining the human brain has certain structures that are specific for language acquisition. According to Chomsky, there is a certain genetic basis that allows human beings to construct language since every human culture has its own language. There are also similarities among all human languages such as huge vocabularies of word whose meaning is mediated through a phonological system. They also have a grammatical system which allows words to change over a certain period by either adding new words or losing old ones. This idea is well refuted by empiricists who believe that language acquisition is through interaction by the environment. According to them, a child extracts all linguistic information from the environment that they are exposed to. This idea is closely associated to Aristotle’s views on human behavior. Today this idea is closely associated to psychologist B.F Skinner. Skinner proposed that there is no limit to what a human being can become and that what matters is time and opportunity (Mohamed, 2011). All human beings are capable of understanding any language because they have the time to understand 50,000 words and know how combine them. Skinner and other empiricists believe that language is learnt by association hence infants will pick up language from the environment that they are immediately exposed to. According to this idea, ubiquitous distribution of language is as a result of the beneficial quality of language hence language came to spread across the earth since people came into contact with it and found beneficial effects (Mohamed, 2011). According to Mahoney, a proponent of empiricism in linguistic development, adults help children to develop language. He argues that when adults speak to children slowly and repetitively, children pick up the patterns of speech and experiment them in their speech (Mahoney, 2011). They will utter individual words at first then join them together in expressing themselves. Children and adults learn language differently. Adults can learn to speak a certain language but they cannot be mistaken for a native speaker. This is because during the childhood period, critical elements about the language such as pronunciation are picked up. Various other scientists would make notable contributions to the debate. Among them was John Bowlby who advanced the Attachment Theory in 1967. Bowlby argued that the mother-child bond was an innate process that ensured the survival of the child. This bond was known as monotropy and he argued that if a child failed to receive this kind of affection, there would be serious negative consequences such as depression, heightened aggression, delinquency and reduced intelligence. Another scientist who supported the idea that human behavior was innate is Sigmund Freud. According to Freud’s theory of aggression, he asserted that aggression was innate. Sigmund argued that human behavior is motivated by instinctive and sexual drives that are known as the libido. Libido according to Sigmund, is energy that comes from the Eros or life instinct (Bruna, 2016). The theory advanced by Sigmund Freud was refuted by the Social Learning Theory advanced by Albert Bandura (1977). According to the theory, aggression is learnt through environmental interactions such as imitation and observation. According to Bandura, children learn by observing the people that are around them. This was successfully tested by his Bobo doll experiment. Bandura argued that in life children observed people around them (models) such as parents, siblings, T.V characters and teachers. Children will pay attention to the behavior of their models and encode this behavior. Later on, they will imitate this behavior whether it is appropriate in their gender or not. He however stated that children will mostly imitate behavior of similar sex since they imitate behavior of people similar to them. Further child behavior is reacted to with either punishment or reinforcement. If a child imitates wrong behavior they will be punished and not repeat. Owing to the various arguments on whether child development is influenced by nature or nature, there has been the issue of how much either contributes to the development of the child. This is owing to the fact that it is quite evident from the various arguments and theories that both nature and nature contribute to the development of human beings (Yusa, N. H., et al. 2011). One of the first scientists to look into how much of nature or nature is involved was Francis Galton a relative of Charles Darwin. According to Galton, intellectual ability in families was heavily based on inheritance. According to him natural superiority was the result of “genius” running in the family. The theory advanced by Galton found support in American psychologist Arthur Jenson who published an article supporting Galton in 1969. Jenson did an IQ test in black and white children. His findings were that black children had a lower IQ compared to white children. He argued that his study found that the reasons why black children had lower IQ compared to white children was the fact that intelligence is inherited. According to him, as much as 80% of the human intelligence was genetically inherited (Bruna, 2016). His conclusions would be faced by too much controversy and debate owing to social and political implications of the study suggesting that inequalities between groups occurred naturally. This was during a time when people were actively fighting for equality of all races evident in the active civil rights movement. Later on environmentalists would refute the findings of Jenson by arguing that the methods used to test the IQ of the children suffered from bias since their inception. According to them, the differences found between the intellectual capacities of black and white children were due to social inequities between the two racial groups that had ensured that black children are unable to access equal opportunities and material resources as white children. They argued that for a fair examination, both groups would have to be predisposed to the same environment and opportunity. As such the nature vs nature debate has always been hotly contested throughout history owing to the fact that the debate often develops into political disputes analyzing power and distributive justice in society (Bruna, 2016). Today development psychologists use the biopsychosocial theory that incorporates both nature and nurture in understanding human development.According to the biopsychosocial model, people are born with certain inheritance from their parents such as the color of their eyes, their hair, height at times and various personality traits. This inheritance is through genes. However, beyond what we inherit from our parents or family line there is definitely a huge interaction between ourselves and the environment. As such, owing to our interaction with the environment, there are various behaviors or characteristics that we adopt owing to our interaction with the environment. One such theory that tries to explain this is the Diathesis Stress model. This model tries to explain the behavior of human beings as a result of vulnerability or disposition to certain genetic, biological, situational or environmental factors. According to the theory, diathesis (vulnerability or predisposition) interacts with stress response systems of a person (Boundless, 2016). Stress in the theory is events that interrupt psychological equilibrium hence causing a disorder. This theory explores the interaction between genetic (diathesis) and environmental (stressors) factors in human beings. Conclusion. Nature vs Nurture has been an issue that has been widely contested. However, according to the various theories that have been analyzed and identified in this study, there is reason to agree to the fact that these two factors directly influence the development of an individual. Just as we cannot escape genetic factors, we cannot escape environmental influences in both behavior and language acquisition. The arguments are however important in understanding the depth into how much each of the factors is able to influence the development of a human being. References Bandura, A (1977). Social Learning Theory. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Bruna, F (2016). The Nature versus Nurture Debate: The Effect of Changing Environments on Siblings, Sociology Seniors. Retrieved on 2016, May 09 from www.sociologyseniors.wordpress.com Chapman, R (2000). Children’s Language Learning: An Interactionist Perspective, Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry & Allied Disciplines, 41 (1), 33-54 Cherry, K (2016, April 15) What is Nature vs Nurture?, Very Well. Retrieved on 2016, May 9 from www.verywell.com Chomsky, N (1988). Language and Problems of Knowledge. Cambridge: MIT Press. Mahoney, N. (2011) Language Learning. Retrieved on 2016, May 10 from www.nsf.gov Mohammed, S (2011). Nature vs Nurture Debate in Language Acquisition. Bangladesh: North South University. Mueller Gathercole, V. C & Hoff, E. (2008). Input and the acquisition of language: Three questions (Chapter 6). In Erika Hoff & Marilyn Shatz (eds), Blackwell Handbook of Language Development. [ebook (http://reader.eblib.com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/%28S%285ezovckgbl0pt3fxfyhidzc1%29%2 9/Reader.aspx?p=284247&o= McLeod, S (2007) Nature vs Nurture in Psychology, Simply Psychology. Retrieved on 2016, May 09 from www.simplypsychology.com Yusa, N. H., et al. (2011). Second-language Instinct and Instruction Effects: Nature and Nurture in Second-language Acquisition. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23(10), 2716-2730 Read More

The nature vs nurture debate would also find itself in the world of linguistics. According to supporters of nativism, language acquisition is as a result of the innate ability of human beings. The main supporter of this idea is philosopher Noam Chomsky, who supported Plato’s idea about the human nature. According to Chomsky, language acquisition in infants is innate and that children are born with knowledge on language acquisition which is deeply rooted within their brain. Language according to Chomsky and other nativist supporters is genetically encoded in every human being.

This allows human beings to be different from other species since they have a unique linguistic ability. Chomsky spent a lot of time in developing his theory of language acquisition in which he proposed the idea of Universal Grammar. According to Chomsky, there is a certain underlying principle among all the different languages in the world. He would further his argument with the idea that all children are born with a Language Acquisition Device (Yusa, N. H., et al. 2011). This device allows a child to acquire the grammatical principles of the language that they are exposed to once they are born.

Nativists believe that Universal Grammar is too complex to be picked up from the environment. Nativists use the Darwinian principle of survival for the fittest in explaining the human brain has certain structures that are specific for language acquisition. According to Chomsky, there is a certain genetic basis that allows human beings to construct language since every human culture has its own language. There are also similarities among all human languages such as huge vocabularies of word whose meaning is mediated through a phonological system.

They also have a grammatical system which allows words to change over a certain period by either adding new words or losing old ones. This idea is well refuted by empiricists who believe that language acquisition is through interaction by the environment. According to them, a child extracts all linguistic information from the environment that they are exposed to. This idea is closely associated to Aristotle’s views on human behavior. Today this idea is closely associated to psychologist B.F Skinner.

Skinner proposed that there is no limit to what a human being can become and that what matters is time and opportunity (Mohamed, 2011). All human beings are capable of understanding any language because they have the time to understand 50,000 words and know how combine them. Skinner and other empiricists believe that language is learnt by association hence infants will pick up language from the environment that they are immediately exposed to. According to this idea, ubiquitous distribution of language is as a result of the beneficial quality of language hence language came to spread across the earth since people came into contact with it and found beneficial effects (Mohamed, 2011).

According to Mahoney, a proponent of empiricism in linguistic development, adults help children to develop language. He argues that when adults speak to children slowly and repetitively, children pick up the patterns of speech and experiment them in their speech (Mahoney, 2011). They will utter individual words at first then join them together in expressing themselves. Children and adults learn language differently. Adults can learn to speak a certain language but they cannot be mistaken for a native speaker.

This is because during the childhood period, critical elements about the language such as pronunciation are picked up. Various other scientists would make notable contributions to the debate. Among them was John Bowlby who advanced the Attachment Theory in 1967. Bowlby argued that the mother-child bond was an innate process that ensured the survival of the child. This bond was known as monotropy and he argued that if a child failed to receive this kind of affection, there would be serious negative consequences such as depression, heightened aggression, delinquency and reduced intelligence.

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