FOXP2 And Language Development

It is neither nature or nurture but instead a blank piece of paper getting written as time passes. An example of this is in the novel is in the quote”....without ever leaving the room at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. ”(Miller, Page 81) Willy made the decision in his life to make Dave Singleman, someone who worked his whole life and without any friends and family, his idol. With the “blank slate ideal”, Willy made the wrong decision making Dave Singleman his idol and it hampered him for the rest of his life. In conclusion, Thomas Hobbes and Jean Jacques Rousseau aren't the only ones whose ideals correlate with Willy’s nature.

In the reading, “Are You “A Natural”? by Bouchard and Lykken was a study of the current and continuing essential changes in the way psychologists interpret an individual’s nature in its range of open-minded logic. The debate is whether which is more dominate nature or nurture when it comes to why or how an individual is the way they are. Is it the genes or the environmental factor that influences an individual to behave and reason the way they do? The proposition was to hypothetically take monozygotic twins, identical twins that have the same hereditary complex. Locate sets of twins who were detached at an early stage in their life, grown apart for most of their lives and then united as adults. Once these twins were located they were tested to confirm that they were certainly monozygotic

“Trying to separate out nature and nurture as explanations for behavior, as in classic genetic studies of twins and families, is now said to be both impossible and unproductive” (Levitt, 1). Social scientists have declared the nature-nurture debate to be unnecessary. Similarly, scientists feel that such debate is not only unhelpful, but also outdated. From geneticists’ perspective, nurture and nature interact to influence

One of the most enduring debates in the field of psychology is the controversial idea of nature vs. nurture. Throughout the endless history of the debate, no clear conclusion has been met, only hypotheses have been formed. At the center of the debate, human behaviors, ideas, and feelings are being determined, whether they are learned or inherited. Determining physical traits, such as eye color or hair color, are simple because they are hereditary traits. The idea of having a certain personality, intelligence, or ability is under discussion because scientists cannot determine if these traits are learned, or predetermined by genes.

Nature and nurture both play a significant role in language development. Language development refers to how children understand, organise, speak and use words in order to communicate at an effective, age-appropriate level (Karen Kearns, 2013, P.105). For centuries, theorists have been debating the roles of nature versus nurture. Although, each child’s language will develop at their own pace and there will be many individual differences based on culture, ethnicity, health and ability. As well as physical, social, emotional and cognitive development in which will contribute to a child’s language development.

The concept of nature vs nurture is easily one of the oldest and most controversial arguments of modern times. Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker is notably known in the world of psychology and the social sciences for his book “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.” In his book, Pinker addresses this exact argument and reasons that human behavior is mostly and at its roots is formed by evolutionary psychological adaptations. In 2003, Steven Pinker gave a Ted Talk regarding his book and the idea that human behavior is predisposed, rather than formed by socialization, interactions between people and the exposure to culture. Pinker discusses the reasoning behind his stance on nature over nurture using five key discussion points, these points being, human universals, neurology and DNA, political reasoning, the arts and parenting. During his Ted Talk, Pinker begins by stating that there are human universals, concepts, behaviors and traits that are carried and found, with many similarities, throughout every human civilization, he then explains that a common example of this is with twins separated at birth, and can be proven through neurological studies. Another concept that Pinker address to further solidify his stance is the idea that the argument that humans are ‘blank slates’ and human behavior is developed through nurture rather than nature is the political reasoning behind the benefits of everyone being ‘blank slates’. Two critical points he made however

In an attempt to understand human behavior, professionals for centuries have looked at the nature vs. nurture theory. While it is known that the physical traits such of eye or hair color have to do with nature, some strongly believe that the way people behave such as in personality and intelligence, have to do with genetic makeup and some believe that people behave a certain way solely due to their environment. Professor Jerome Kagan, from Harvard opened up a brand new world and offers hope for those who behave a certain way. He pointed out that two year old Marjorie unlike other children her age started out shy, a tendency he believed she inherited and while it is true that Marjorie cannot change the fact that she is a girl there are

There are many factors which can aid language development, particularly through writing (Watts et al., 2013). Jones and Coffey (2013) identified that writing should be developed procedurally through copying, initially at word level- to learn spellings and develop familiarisation with vocabulary and individual letters. Before then progressing to phrase-level and on to sentences. It is thought that through copying the children are beginning to memorise the vocabulary and can help them to engrain key sentence structures, as they pay close attention to the individual words and spellings. Macaro (2006) has also identified that copy-writing is often used as a way of remembering spellings for new target vocabulary. Hurrell (1999) criticises the motion of copy-writing: as it gives the children too many things to focus on.

In August 2011, Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist and a Professor and head of the Evolutionary Biology Group at the University of Reading, gave his “How Language Transformed Humanity”

Anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals both have the FOXP2 gene that allows for speech (Smithsonian). Neanderthals and Homo-sapiens both share two mutations in the FOXP2 gene compared to the sequence in Chimpanzees. Chimpanzees are unable to speak, however, the variant that anatomically modern humans have allows us to speak: Neanderthals also had the FOXP2 variant that allows for speech. It is possible that the gene could have been passed between species through gene flow. However, it is more likely that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals have a common ancestor that had the

Who a person’s parents or relatives are is already predetermined at conception. The traits that a child’s family have are going to be his/her traits simply because of genetics. According to the above study done on Croatian twins, genetic factors account for “stability in personality” from seventy-five to one hundred percent (Bratko and Butkovic 155). The researchers used genetic models to look into the differences between twins. They broke genetics into two sources in this study: additive genetic influences and nonadditive genetic influences. Bratko and Butkovic insinuated that, based on the findings of this project, heredity was mostly attributed to the steadiness of personality in the pairs of twins. In the novel Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience, & What Makes Us Human by Matt Ridley, a quote was attributed to Ralph Greenspan from his research on romance between fruit flies. He likened personality to this

*meaney M. (2004) the nature of nurture: maternal effects and chromatin remodeling, in essays in social neuroscience. Meaney discusses the relative importance of an individual’s innate qualities, nature vs personal experience, nurture. For example, he mentions far-fetched contention that a Jesus or a Hitler could be recreated through genetic cloning.

In society, not one person is alike. By saying this, many people believe that they strongly take after their parents. Meaning they think Nature is a big part in their life and why they are who they are. The genes in each cell in us humans determine the different traits that we have, more dominantly on the physical connections like eye color, hair color, ear size, height, and other traits. However, it is still not known whether the more abstract attributes like personality, intelligence, sexual orientation, likes and dislikes are gene-coded in our DNA. The nurture theory has experiments showing a child’s behavior with the environment as to adult behavior. In the Nature Vs Nurture debate, everyone has their own thoughts and ideas on each

The nature versus nurture debate is one of the oldest issues in psychology. The debate centers on the relative contributions ofgenetic inheritance and environmental factors to human development. Some philosophers such as Plato and Descartes suggested that certain things are inborn, or that they simply occur naturally regardless of environmental influences. Other well-known thinkers such as John Locke believed in what is known as tabula rasa, which suggests that the mind begins as a blank slate. According to this notion, everything that we are and all of our knowledge is determined by our experience.

Some psychological models assert that a proportion of our personality is inborn and permanent (Hollander, 1971), that a psychological core at the center of our personality gives us enduring, inner characteristics. Hans Eysenck (1965) suggests that our motivation and emotion are related to biological differences in brain function and proposed that 75% of our personality is based on genetic influence and 25% on environmental influence. Research by Peter Whybrow (1999) on identical twins separated at birth examined how their different environments shaped their personalities. He found that around 40% of personality should be credited to genetics, with 60% determined by outside factors.