The Processes by Which Genes and Environment Operate Together to Influence Development

The Processes by Which Genes and Environment Operate Together to Influence 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 t...

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...( 1989) ‘Direct and indirect IQ

heritability estimates: a puzzle’, Behaviour Genetics, 19, pp. 331 –

42. cited in Ken Richardson ‘Interactions in Development’Chpt 6 p225 –

227.

John Bowlby (1959) John Oates ‘First Relationships, Chap 7, in Oates,

J (ed) The Foundation of Developent, Oxford Blackwell, The Open

University.

The British National Child

Developmnent Study Ken Richardson, (1994)

Interactions in Development Chapter 6 p 233, in Oates, J (ed) The

Foundation of Development, Oxford, Blackwell, The Open University

Web Sites

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761557692_6/Child_Development.html

http://www.newfoundations.com/GALLERY/Piaget.html

http://psychology.about.com/sitesearch.htm?terms=Vygotsky&SUName=psychology&TopNode=4911&Action.x=11&Action.y=6