nature vs nurture
...onsidering the enormous result of a human’s surroundings and environment on his life, an in depth investigation should be taken examining this notion. The amount of nourishment an individual receives has been proven to play a very large part in a person’s mental ability. This is especially true concerning infants and young children. The human brain critically needs nutritious food and antitoxins to function properly, particularly in early years of development. Starving people across the globe show why lack of nutrients in human bodies can stunt mental evolution as well as physical growth. “What a premature infant eats in the first month of life can have lasting intellectual impact…a new study finds” (Raloff). A study done in Great Britain in the late 1980s shows that nutrition plays a very large role in a person’s development. Adolescents aged twelve to thirteen were given vitamin and mineral supplements for eight months. These subjects were then administered intelligence tests. Test scores were recorded before the test and after the test. These scores were also compared to other adolescents who were not given the supplements. The scores showed that the students who had taken the supplements scored higher on the tests after taking the supplements (Herrnstein and Murray 292). A person’s environment also plays an important role on his development from early on. Much research shows that people flourish from early stimulation. In an experiment done by H.M. Skeels using orphans, he proved this conception. Skeels studied mentally retarded orphans. Once these children were placed with families to live, were treated well, and were encouragingly nurtured, their IQs increased remarkably (Hamer and Copeland 221). Kagan and Haverman define operant conditioning as the process by which, through learning, free operant behavior becomes attached to a specific stimulus (578). John Watson conducted a substantial experiment in 1913 concerning behaviorism. He has become well- known as the psychologist who played a large role in the research of behaviorism, which is a division of operant conditioning. Watson used an 11-month-old boy to prove that a person could be conditioned to be afraid of something by which he was not previously affected. The baby used, Albert, was put into a room with no other human and no other distracters present. Watson placed a white rat in the room. Albert seemed to like the rat; he even showed affection towards it. Some time later, Watson would produce a very loud and displeasing noise every time Albert would reach out to touch the rat. As a result, the baby became terrified of every white and furry object in which he came in contact. This distinguished investigation became known as the “Albert experiment” (Kagan and Havemann 94). This established that humans could be taught certain feelings and fears through their environment, with which they were not born (Morris and Maisto 15). Experiments such as these ones prove that a person’s environment can have a crucial effect on him and on his manner of thinking. Much research followed experiments like Watson’s. Psychologists have always been enticed by factors, namely environment, that affect humans. Adoption studies have also somewhat shown that a person’s environment plays an important role in his mental ability. For example, a study done with adoptive children raised in the same house had very similar IQs. Granted this does not seem like considerable evidence; however, these children were in no way related genetically. Their environment growing up provided them with similar aptitudes for learning and for retaining information (Kagan and Havemann 39). “Fraternal twins (who share approximately half of their genes) present an informative contrast… (B)ecause they are raised in the same environment but are not genetically identical, they help us to see the influence of environmental factors” (Segal 69). These factors are valuable to this argument. Although certain twin studies are not completely clear in their findings, one specific study indicates that some children’s environments have had significant influence on them. Much current research examines influences on intelligence. (Researchers) examine the extent to which children’s surroundings influence their intellect. In a prior study, they found that children adopted before age 1 into high-income families displayed particularly large IQ gains by adolescence. The new(er) stud(ies) expanded on that (conception) (Bower 54- 55). One study that was conducted proves that an individual's environment can have an extraordinary affect on a person. The subject of the investigation was called the “Wild Boy of Aveyron” (Herrnstein and Murray 410). He was discovered in France around 1799, which was soon after the French Revolution. The 12- or 13-year old boy had been found running naked in the woods, mute, wild, and evidently out of contact with humanity for most of his life…(He) seem(ed) to be unable to become fully human despite heroic efforts to restore (his) society (after the Revolution)…From (this) rare case, we can draw a hopeful conclusion: If the ordinary human environment is so essential for bestowing human intelligence, we should be able to create extraordinary environments to raise it further (Herrnstein and Murray 410). Though exceptional, this incident shows that environment can have an extremely drastic influence on a person. Considering the evidence stated previously in this paper, it would be a result of ignorance to believe that one sole factor, either genetics or environment, determines a person’s m...