Virtual Child Paper: Nature Vs. Nurture

Virtual Child Paper: Nature vs. Nurture

I have always held the belief that Nature v Nurture is not a zero-sum game. To steal a line from T.S. Elliot’s The Hollow Men, I believe humans are born into this world a “shape without form.” That shape, of course, is our nature; the sum of our genetic make-up and natural tendencies based on some combination of predisposition and innate sense of self. The form, then, necessarily reflects our experiences and the way those have restructured our ‘self.’ The nurture of our mind, particularly at a young age, is instrumental in providing depth and context to our natural shape. Both aspects of our ‘self’ are complimentary. Just like we are unable to understand shape without the context of form, we are similarly unable to understand humans without an understanding in the dynamic of both nature and nurture expressed through our behavior, desires, and interactions. Raising a virtual
Multiple early childhood development specialist assessed Chase and they determined that he was at a higher level in language development than his fellow peers. Some of their notes included statements like, “Chase's language skills are developing rapidly” and “he scored in the above average range on tests of language comprehension and production, and provided unusually complete and grammatically mature sentences “he seems to know an unusual number of names for things.” Chase’s language development can be characterized by a psychological study called, Multiple Theories of Language Development. The combination of the Interactionist Theory and Behaviorist Theory combine the following influences on language development: inner capacities, the environment, and social context. Therefore, I can conclude that Chase’s advanced language development is a result of influences from both, nature (inner capacities), and nurture (environmental &