Transcript The Environment (Nurture) How much does it affect us? Percentages of Influence    Genetic Influences constitute 40 to 50% of our individual variations in our.

The Environment
(Nurture)
How much does it affect us?
Percentages of Influence
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Genetic Influences constitute 40 to 50% of
our individual variations in our personality
traits.
Parental Influence and the community
constitute whatever is leftover.
Siblings who grow up in a shared
environment share typically 10% of
personality traits, but they do share far more
beliefs and values.
Prenatal Environment
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“Nurture” begins in the womb.
Some identical twins share the same
placenta, and thus share a more
similar prenatal environment.
Twins who develop different placentas
are exposed to different prenatal
environments and are somewhat less
similar in their psychological traits.
The Importance of the Prenatal
Environment
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Remember: It is all about the placenta
(nutrition), blood flow, and avoiding toxins.
Researchers suggest that our prenatal
environment is the most influential to our
physical and psychological development.
“The influence upon our intelligence of events
that happen in the womb is three times as great
as anything our parents did to us after birth.”
Genome by Matt Ridley
Experience and Brain Development
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Experience helps our brain develop neural
connections.
A stimulating and enriched environment
usually leads to a heavier and thicker brain
cortex ( Rosenzweig, Bennet, and Diamond).
Infants that are touched, massaged, hugged,
etc. (“handled”) gain weight more rapidly and
develop faster neurologically (Harlow).
Experience and Brain Development
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During childhood the brain establishes and provides
an abundance of neural connections.
Experience makes new neural connections and
preserves already activated ones.
Unused connections degenerate.
By the time an animal reaches puberty there has
been a massive loss of unemployed connections.
For the Mature Brain: Use it or lose it!
Experience and Brain Development
Analogy
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The neural connections in the brain are like
pathways to through a forest. The less traveled paths
gradually disappear, and popular paths are broadened
and become easier to travel on.
The inspiration you should take from this analogy:
You can pick your path and walk down it. No matter
how hard it is the first time, every time after that will
be easier.
Experience nurtures nature. (Long Term
Potentiation)
Peer Influence
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Experiences with peers powerfully socialize children
and youth.
Part of the similarity to peers may result from a
“selection effect.” Kids seek out peers with similar
attitudes and interests.
In the long run we are destined to play with, work
with, and mate with peers.
If your child is intertwined into a toxic environment,
that climate- not just the child- needs reforming.
Parental Influence
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Parental nurture is like
nutrition.
It is not as important how
the parent chooses to raise
us, it is more important
knowing that there is
someone we belong to
who cares about us.
Remember: Kids choose
their friends, but parents
choose the neighborhoods
and schools that supply the
peers.
Parents are more
likely to
influence…
Education
Discipline
Responsibility
Charitableness
Treatment of
Authority Figures
Peers are more
likely to
influence…
Cooperation
Popularity
Social
Interaction
Style
Culture
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Culture is the behaviors, ideas, and attitudes,
and traditions shared by a large group of
people and transmitted from one generation to
the next.
The most amazing gift we have as humans,
creatures of Earth, is our ability to learn and
adapt.
Cultural Analogy
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“Riding along with a unified culture is like
riding a bike with the wind. As it carries us
along, we hardly notice it is there. When we
try riding against the wind we feel its force.
Face to face with another culture, we become
aware of the strength of cultural winds.
 What are some norms and memes for the
world? US? Georgia? Atlanta? Alpharetta?
AHS?
Norms
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Norms are the rules for accepted and
expected behavior.
These norms can feel stifling and confining,
but at the same time can free us from selfpreoccupation.
Norms preclude awkward situations by letting
one know exactly what to do in a given
situation.
Personal Space and Memes
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Personal Space is the portable buffer zone we like to
maintain around our bodies.
Memes are self-replicating ideas, fashions, and innovations
passed from person to person.
The term meme, coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins, refers
to a unit of cultural information transferable from one mind to
another. Dawkins said, Examples of memes are tunes, catchphrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building
arches.
Proponents of memes suggest that memes evolve via natural
selection. For example, while one idea may become extinct,
other ideas will survive, spread and mutate — for better or for
worse — through modification.
Environmental Influence
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Experience affects brain development
(Rosenzweig, Bennet, and Diamond )
Impoverished
environment
Rat brain
cell
Enriched
environment
Rat brain
cell
Environmental Influence
 A trained
brain (long term potentiation)