Psychology

Studies concerning human development are plagued by a number of key issues and one of these is the investigation of the relative contributions of environmental factors and biological conditions to the development of the human being. Prior to the availability of modern experimental methods and innovative conceptual frameworks, psychologists used to believe that human development is a function of either of the two features a persons biological properties or by his or her experiential aspects. However, current methods imply that interplay of the two factors exists. Thus, this event bring forth the intensification of the nature-nurture debate, which was seen to persist across all human development studies, disregarding cultural, social, and age-related boundaries. In order to further investigate the nature-nurture debate, a critical analysis of the other concepts of human developmental can be explored.  

Inborn biases and internal models of experience constitute the first area of nature-nurture investigation. The former describes the nature aspect because it explains the genetically programmed preferences of a child while the latter describes the nurture aspect by defining that the effect of certain experiences is not a function of the objective properties of the experience but by the persons interpretation. By analysis, these factors provide a clear overview of the unique features of the nature and nurture property of development but are not yet sufficient to properly discern the degree of influence of the two.

Second area of scrutiny of the debate is the exploration of the three types of change normative age-graded changes, history-graded changes, and non-normative changes. The first type of change comprise the genetically dictated properties of human beings while the second is composed of the changes that are dependent on the experiences a specific group of people were exposed to during growth years. The third, on the other hand, characterizes the changes that have resulted from the interplay of the biological properties and experience through a lifetime. It is believed that the third type of change perception is the most appropriate because changes across life span are indeed products of the interplay of nature and nurture. This concept is further supported by the other concepts of human development such as delinquency, and vulnerability and resilience.

Delinquency explains that the poor disciplinary methods and insufficient parent monitoring result to non-compliant child which in turn results to negative behavioral patterns of the child. Nature-nurture interplay is revealed in delinquency by the fact that innate properties of the child derived from the genetic lineage of an unsupportive family is aggravated by the interactions to rejecting peers and difficult school system. Vulnerability and resilience, on the other hand, state that children are born with specific vulnerabilities and the combination of these vulnerabilities (eg. including emotional irritability and physical abnormalities) to protective factors, such as confidence and physical strength, make a person resilient to the obstacles that he or she will experience in life. In general, it was revealed from the book that the influence of nature and nurture to human development cannot be taken independent of the other. This is because of the fact that as a person grows his or her biological properties are affected by the factors that are present in the environment. The abovementioned psychological concepts provide substantial information on the interplay of nature and nurture to human development.