THE

NATURE
VERSUS
NURTURE
DEBATE
Nature vs. nurture
Gender development

 The nature-nurture debate is a debate about the

extent to which our behaviour is governed by the
forces of biology and experiences/environment
Nurture
  principles of conditioning, including association,
imitation, and reinforcement.

Nature
•  principles of hereditary.
Nature Nurture

Informal Formal
· Parents & Society · Teachers
· Experiences · Syllabus

Environment Classroom
· Exposure · Systematic
· Acquisition · Learning
 NATURE
What is it?: In the "nature vs nurture"
debate, nature refers to an
individual's innate qualities
(nativism).
Example: Nature is your genes. The
physical and personality
traits determined by your
genes stay the same
irrespective of where you
were born and raised.
Factors: Biological and family
factors
NURTURE
In the "nature vs nurture"
debate, nurture refers to
personal experiences (i.e.
empiricism or
behaviorism).
Nurture refers to your
childhood, or how you were
brought up. Someone could
be born with genes to give
them a normal height, but
be malnourished in
childhood, resulting in
stunted growth and a failure
to develop as expected.
Social and environmental
factors
Nature

 The extreme nature view would suggest that

gender-related behaviour is entirely controlled by
hormonal and genetic factors - gender differences
result from innate differences between female and
male.
 This view assumes that women are biologically
programmed to be nurturers and carers, while men
are biologically programmed to be providers and
protectors.
Nature - evaluation
 This view is deterministic, stating that our gender
development is mostly influenced by our biology.
 This means it ignores important factors such as our
social development, which can be seen in the
changing roles men and women have in society.
 The extreme nature side of the debate is unable to
fully explain our gender development.
Nature - evaluation
 The nature position is supported by some strong
evidence from lots of studies. The Batista boys show
that even if brought up a girl, if the biology is male
this will be stronger.
 The Batista boys were born with female genitals but
at puberty hormonal changes caused their genitals to
change and they became boys and went on to live
happily as men.
 This shows that our biology has the greatest influence
on our gender development.
Nurture
 The extreme nurture view would suggest that
gender related behaviour is entirely determined by
social and cultural factors – our experiences and
the environment in which we live. Gender
differences result from the different experiences
that females and males have as they develop
(learning from family, peers, society)
Nurture - evaluation
 Social learning theory shows how with a mixture of
our environment and our mediating cognitive
factors we have some choice in our gender
development.
 For example we can choose who our role models
are and if we wish to model our own behaviour on
them
 This means it recognises the role the individual
plays in their own gender development.
Nurture - evaluation
 The nurture debate is also reductionist as it ignores
the role our biology takes in our gender
development.
 For example attempts to bring Brian/Brenda up as a
girl failed as his biology was stronger than the
social environment that he was brought up in.
 The nurture debate is too narrow a view to explain
all our gender development.
 language is innate to humans

Chomsky says that humans are 'programmed'

to talk.

Their brains are incredibly large for an animal, yet they

still cannot talk. Scientists experimented with a chimp by
raising it as a child and attempting to teach it to talk in the
same way we do to children, but the experiment failed,
proving not even chimps can speak the way humans do.
B. F. Skinner
 language is acquired through principles of
conditioning, including association, imitation, and
reinforcement.

 children learn words by associating sounds with

objects, actions, and events.
 Nature Nurture
Anatomy  our bodies being slightly more developed  humans just copy what others
than other animals. do in their environment

Brain sections in the brain dedicated to Animal’s brains aren't

language.  advanced enough to think, just
as their brains aren't advanced
the left side of the brain is for language; enough for speech, like ours
the back of the brain for understanding are.
speech; the front of the brain for speaking
and word retrieval. They communicate their
basic needs through either body
language or basic sound.

Genes Gene FoxP2, discovered some years ago,

was found to control speech and around the
mouth area on the face.
 IMPORTANCE OF BOTH NATURE AND
NURTURE IN LANGUAGE 

 Humans do have an innate capacity for acquiring the

rules of language.

 Children develop language skills through interaction

with others rather than acquire the knowledge
automatically.
Thanks