MS1

Child Development
Module 1 – Lesson 3: Issues on Human Development
Group 1
Liway Merjudio
Fatima Nasayao
Angeline Tapic
Jayvee Edrad
Jasoel Joshua Marino

Professor:
Ma’am Kathrine Pelagio
 The interaction of heredity and
environment is so extensive that
to ask which is more important,
nature or nurture, is like asking
which is more important to a
rectangle, height or width.

William Greenough
Nature
Vs.
Nurture
1.
Which has a more
significant influence on
human development?
Nature or Nurture?
Nature
Vs.
Nurture While nature refers to an individual’s biological inheritance
and nurture refers to environmental experiences,
development is not all nature or all nurture. Both nature
and nurture characterize our life-span development. The
key to development is the interaction of nature and
nurture rather than either factor alone. In other words, it is
a matter of “both-and” not “either-or”.
Go back to the quote beneath the title of this lesson and
the message gets crystal clear.
If heredity and environment interact, which one has a
greater influence or contribution, heredity or environment?
The relative contributions of heredity and environment are
not additive. So we can’t say 50% is a contribution of
heredity and 50% of environment.
Nature
Vs.
Nurture
https://
smccd.instructure.com/courses/25084/pa
ges/chapter-notes-module-2
 2. Does development involve gradual,
cumulative change or
Think about how children become adults. Is there a
predictable pattern they follow regarding thought distinct changes?
and language and social development? Do children
go through gradual changes or are they abrupt
changes?
Normative development is typically viewed as a continual and cumulative
process. The continuity view says that change is gradual. Children
become more skillful in thinking, talking or acting much the same way as
they get taller. The discontinuity view sees development as more abrupt-
a succession of changes that produce different behaviors in different
age-specific life periods called stages.
.Biological changes provide the potential for these changes.
We often hear people talking about children going through “stages” in life
(i.e. “sensorimotor stage”).
https://www.simplypsychology.org/developmental-psychology.html
Continuity Vs. Discontinuity
 2. Does development involve gradual,
cumulative change or
. These are called developmental stages-periods
of life initiated by distinct transitions in physical distinct changes?
or psychological functioning. Psychologists of
the discontinuity view believe that people go
through the same stages, in the same order, but
not necessarily at the same rate.

Continuity Vs. Discontinuity

 Stability
Vs. 3. Is development best described
as involving change?
Change
Stability implies personality traits
present during infancy endure
throughout the lifespan.
In contrast, change theorists
argue that personalities are
modified by interactions
with family, experiences at
school, and acculturation. This capacity for change is called plasticity. For example, Rutter (1981)
discovered than somber babies living in understaffed orphanages often become cheerful and affectionate
when placed in socially stimulating adoptive homes.

An important aspect of the debate on stability versus change has to do with the degree to which early
experiences play a formative role in our later development. Freud was one of the first psychologists to
emphasize the critical nature of our early experiences for our later development. In Freud's view, how we
resolve our sexual and aggressive urges is strongly tied to the nature of our personality as adults.
 Stability 3. Is development best described
Vs. as involving change?
Change
Similarly, Erik Erikson (1963)
believed that how we dealt
with key issues such as the
development of a warm, caring
relationship with our parents or
the ability to think and act
autonomously were important
determinants of later developments (although unlike Freud, Erikson made a greater allowance for the
different contexts in which children develop). These early theories of human development as well as a
great deal of later research suggest that there is a highly stable quality to our development and that early
experience is crucial to this stability.

https://www.simplypsychology.org/developmental-psychology.html
 Discuss the implications of this statement:
“The frightening part about heredity
and environment is that we, parents,
provide both”.
https://www.tribuneindia.com/2001/20010909/spectrum/main4.htm

Since genes account for about half of personality variations among people, parent’s contribution in the
nature part is obvious. What about the nurture part? The accepted wisdom is that parents mould the
personality of their children by doing all the right things. They provide them with every lesson and every
experience , buy them right toys and say the right words and help them in work and games, and do not
spank or publicly scold them. The nurture assumption places the credit and blame squarely on parents. In
the process it turns modern parenthood into a high-responsibility, high-anxiety undertaking. Those who fail
to measure up to the strictest standards of supposedly optimal parenting often labour under a sense of
guilt. "The frightening thing about heredity and environment is that parents provide both," is quipped.
5. Read the paragraph on p. 45 of the “The Child and Adolescents Learners and Learning Principles
book” entitled “How the First Nine Months Shape the Rest of Your Life”. Does the article agree that
heredity, environment and individual’s choice are the factors that contribute to what a person may
become?
As I’ve read the article, I must say that, yes, the article somehow agreed upon that
those are factors that affects one’s child or a person may become as they grow up. As
what genetic characteristics our parents’ genes have can really reflect to the child’s
future attributes. If the genes of the parents results to a good mental and physical
quality of the child, then it’s because it was naturally developed through heredity or
what we call ‘nature’. The other factor is the environment what we had during
pregnancy and after birth, it depends on what kind of nurture our parent’s had when we
were still in our mother’s womb. Some tend to be sickly after birth and it only means
that our mother were somehow irresponsible in taking care of us during their
pregnancy. And if the word ‘individual’ from ‘individual’s choice pertains to the parents
or to the mother of the child, I must say that I agreed. It is also mother’s
choice/decisions that gives an impact to child’s future characteristics. If the mother
chooses to be caring and irresponsible as a parent, it will surely result to the child’s
quality, unless their genes or the nature contradicts the betterment of the children.
 Conclusion
Neither is correct to say that full genetic expression
happens once, around conception or birth, after
which we take our genetic legacy into the world to
see how far it gets to us. Genes produce proteins
throughout the life span, depending on how harsh or
nourishing those environments are. (Santrock, 2002)
THANK YOU
谢谢
☻