The key issues regarding the nature and nurture debate is whether human culture, personality and behavior are caused by nature or nurture. In this debate nature is portrayed as the genetic or the hormone based behavior and nurture is defined as the environmental exposure and experience.
Nature vs. nurture argument is one of the oldest arguments in the history of psychology. Each of the side supports some good points and it is really difficult to conclude whether the cognitive development of a child depends upon the gene or on the environment he is being exposed to. The physical features may be identical to the parents like the eye color, hair and some more but the environment obviously have an impact on the behavior of a certain person.
The different traits present in the human beings like the color of the eye, height, ear size, hair color, baldness are dependent upon the expression of the genes located in the chromosomes, however it is still unknown whether certain factors like the intelligence, personality, sexual orientation, behavior are also coded in the DNA (Powell, K., 2012).
One of the controversial issue against the nature theory is the presence of the ‘gay gene ’ that explains that gays are born in that way, although there are no strong evidences in support of this fact. Another issue is that, the various criminal acts can be justified by the presence of the ‘behavioral genes’ once the scientific world have proven the authenticity of the fact.
On the other hand, the existence of the behavioral genes can be evident if we look at the fraternal twins (Powell, K., 2012). In some cases if the fraternal twins are brought up separately, they often show the same characteristics and responses as if they have been brought up together. This is how the nature theory goes.
The nurture theory supports that genes might be responsible for the presence of the abstract trait, but environment plays the real roles when it comes to the behaviors (Powell, K., 2012). This involves the use of the training in order to induce a new behavior in a child. As said by the famous psychologist John Watson, the environmental factors take a stronger side in the Nature Vs Nurture debate. According to him a baby randomly chosen can be trained to become any type of specialist, which depends on the training. He said that he would be able to train him regardless of his potential, race and talents. It can be true that fraternal twins show similar behaviors even when raised apart, but changes in the behavior would always exist depending upon the environmental exposure (Powell, K., 2012).
Thus in the end, one is still left with open end questions and confusions and the debate would just continue forever unless any such valid evidences are available.
Cognitive developmental theory proposed by Jean Piaget(Baldwin. 1967)
Cognitive study is the scientific study of the mental function, which includes the learning, reasoning, memory, attention, perception and decision making. The modern concept of cognition rests on the foundation that brain can be assessed as a complex computing system. Piaget has proposed 4 stages of cognitive development. They are as follows-
The sensorimotor stage, the pre operational stage, concrete operational stage and the formal operational stage.
According to Piaget, cognitive development can be defined as a progressive reorganization of the different mental processes that might occur due to biological maturation or environmental experience.
Kohlberg discovered that children are confronted with several moral issues, and the dilemma faced by them whether to act positively and negatively depends on certain factors. Kohlberg proposed different levels and the stages of Moral development (Mooney 2013).
Level 1. Preconventional morality
Stage 1. Orientation of Punishment-Obedience
Stage 2. Orientation of Instrumental Relativist
Level 2. Conventional morality
Stage 3. Good boy –nice girl Orientation
Stage 4. Orientation of Law and order
Level 3 Post conventional Morality
Stage 5. Orientation of social contact
Stage 6. Orientation of universal ethical principles.
According to Erikson, personality develops in a series of stages in young children. Social experiences impact on the life of a human being across his whole life span. There are 8 stages that show the development of a child. They are as follows-
Bandura’s social learning theory depicts that people learn from each other by imitation, observation and modeling (Crain 2015). This theory is often considered as a bridge between the cognitive and the behaviorist learning theories as it includes memory, attention and motivation. This theory explains behavior of human being in terms of reciprocal interaction between the behavioral, cognitive and environmental factors. Bandura proposed ‘reciprocal determinism’, which implies that behavior of a person both influences and is influenced by social environment (Cherry. 2012).
This theory concerns regarding the relationships between cognitions. It refers to situations which involves conflicting attitudes and behaviors. This can produce unpleasant feeling which can lead to an alteration in the attitude of a person to reduce the feeling of discomfort (Cherry. 2012). For example, when a person smokes (behavior) and he knows well that it can cause cancer (cognition). According to Festinger, every person develops an inner drive to hold the attitudes and beliefs in concord and avoid discord (or dissonance) (Crain 2015).
This report focuses on a psychological dilemma (Mooney 2013). For example, if a person steals a drug. In Europe, a woman was gradually dying out of a special kind of undiscovered cancer. The drug for this type of cancer was not available except that a scientist in town has discovered a drug. The scientist was charging ten times than the original cost. The husband of the dying woman was poor and hence cannot afford. So, the man broke into the laboratory of the scientist to steal the drug for his wife. Now the dilemma is, should the husband have done that?
According to Kohlberg, there were 6 stages (Thompson 2012)–
Stage 1. Obedience and punishment orientation- It explains that a Child might say that what the husband did was wrong, as it is against the law. This is because a child does what elders say.
Stage 2 Individualism and Exchange.
Some children might think that the person ‘might’ be right in choosing her wife’s life over social punishment. In this stage it can be said that they are speaking as isolated individual rather than as a member of the society.
Stage 4. Some might think that the husband is absolutely right in stealing the drug. Here morality and rights take some priority over particular laws and the society.
So the dilemma has been discussed in the light of Kohlberg’s theory.
Cognitive development refers to how a child understands, memorizes, and learns as he grows gradually. A child might face from cognitive and developmental delay due to many reasons.
Some form of stress like the first day at the school without an adult support can have a negative impact on child brain (Crain 2015). According to researches, stressful difficulties may come from exposure to violence, parent substance abuse, economic hardship in the family, emotional or physical abuse, negligence from family, chronic diseases (Bjorklund 2013). A child living in a stressful environment would weaken the brain activity of the child and expose him to the risk of cognitive impairment.
Child living in a single parent home can suffer from cognitive issues in comparison to the ones living in the two parent’s home. Therefore care should be taken to provide a healthy environment to the child to cater to its cognitive growth. A positive adult child relationship is necessary to promote cognitive development in a child (Carr. 2015). Parents can foster development in the child by creating a daily routine, social interaction.
A child coming from an economically challenged background is more likely to develop cognitive and developmental problems. A child then will not get access to nutritious food, proper health care services, and support from the caregivers and a healthy, positive environment (Krebs et al. 2013). In relation to this the primary schools can give the provisions of nutritive food to the children that would provoke them to attend school and have good food.
Diseases like cystic fibrosis can lead to cognitive impairment in the child. In such cases proper treatment regimen and planned care can help to improve the cognitive status of the child (Liliyard et al. 2013).
It has been reported that every individual posses at least 50 genetic abnormalities that can incline him to any health problem (Mitchell and Black 2016). According to some researches if a cognitive disorder runs in the family genetically and a child gets the trait, a chance remains that early detection and interventions can help to counteract the deficiencies.
Hence it can be said that proper psychological approaches can bring about reduction in the cognitive and the developmental issues faced by the child.
There are several models to determine the cognitive behavioral model of the anxiety disorder in children. Researchers say that anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorders found in children (Essau and Ollendick. 2013). According to Shaffer, D.R. and Kipp. 2013, violence exposure and the development of the school related functioning have an effect in the mental health, learning and neurorecognition in children. According to Barett et al. 1998. If proper skills for managing the anxiety and disorder are given to the families then the cognitive impairment can be prevented. According to, Crain, there are different developmental delays that are found in children and infants or example language or speech, vision, movement or the motor skills, social and the emotional skills, thinking and the cognitive skills. If a child experiences a delay in the cognitive development, it is advisable that early treatment is the best way to help him to catch up with the other children (Peterson 2013).
References
Baldwin, A.L., 1967. Theories of child development.
Bjorklund, D.F. ed., 2013. Children’s strategies: Contemporary views of cognitive development. Psychology Press.
Carr, A., 2015. The handbook of child and adolescent clinical psychology: A contextual approach. Routledge.
Cherry, K., 2012. Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development psychosocial development in infancy and early childhood. The New York Times Company. https://psychology. about. com/od/psychosocialtheories/a/psychosocial. htm [26 May 2012].[Links].
Crain, W., 2015. Theories of development: Concepts and applications. Psychology Press.
Krebs, D.L., Vermeulen, S., Carpendale, J. and Denton, K., 2014. Structural and situational influences on moral judgment: The interaction between stage and dilemma. en: WM Kurtines et JL Gewirtz (eds.): Handbook of moral behavior and development, 1, pp.139-169.
Lillard, A.S., Lerner, M.D., Hopkins, E.J., Dore, R.A., Smith, E.D. and Palmquist, C.M., 2013. The impact of pretend play on children’s development: A review of the evidence. Psychological bulletin, 139(1), p.1.
McLeod, S., 2013. Erik Erikson. Retrieved August, 9, p.2013.
Mitchell, S.A. and Black, M., 2016. Freud and beyond: A history of modern psychoanalytic thought. Basic Books.
Mooney, C.G., 2013. Theories of Childhood: An Introduction to Dewey, Montessori, Erikson, Piaget & Vygotsky. Redleaf Press.
Peterson, C.C., 2013. Looking forward through the lifespan: developmental psychology. Pearson Higher Education AU.
Powell, K., 2012. Nature vs. Nurture: Are We Really Born That Way.
Rosenthal, T.L. and Zimmerman, B.J., 2014. Social learning and cognition. Academic Press.
Santrock, J., 2012. LIFESPAN DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY. Psychology.
Shaffer, D.R. and Kipp, K., 2013. Developmental psychology: Childhood and adolescence. Cengage Learning.
Spencer, J.P., Austin, A. and Schutte, A.R., 2012. Contributions of dynamic systems theory to cognitive development. Cognitive Development, 27(4), pp.401-418.
Thompson, R.A., 2012. Whither the preconventional child? Toward a life?span moral development theory. Child Development Perspectives, 6(4), pp.423-429.
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