Thursday, September 9, 2010

Intelligence in Nature vs Nurture

The nature vs. nurture debate in psychology is the ideas of how humans intelligence, personality and athletic ability are determined as well as homosexuality or criminal behavior. Intelligence is a very important characteristic of a human individual and their is no complete answer of what the causes of the level of intelligence someone has are as if they are developed because of the environment(nature) or their genetics(nurture). I believe that all of these are caused by both genetics and environment. For example, someone can be intelligent because their parents are too and someone can have a normal level of intelligence as anyone else but being in a great school with a high educational level or also being very intelligence but not having the opportunity to show the world their intelligence or to develop it if they do not receive any good education.


According to the research made, psychologists attribute both nature and nurture to the level of intelligence an individual has. On the genetics side, a great deal of adoptive study has provided evidence of a certain amount of genetic which influence our intelligence. Using studies that involved twins separated at birth, and those separated and adopted, psychologists were now able to get rid with many of the undetermined theories and ideas that had previously caused other studies to fall apart. Studies say that adopted children are more common to have the same or around the same level of intelligence or IQ of his or her biological mother and not of the adoptive mother. This indicates to us that nurture is more involved; this study showed that genes do affect our intelligence and it is not only our environment that measures our level of capacity. Even though studies say to us genes are already a great part of our intelligence, it is still not sure because yet, researchers have not been able to identify which genes are that affect our intelligence; but this also does not mean that they are not their. We can also look to the brain for in relation to our intelligence. Although our intelligence has only a little amount of relation to our brain size, it does affect it. What has been seen also is that certain areas of the brain also influence intelligence. The part of the brain that relates to specific intelligence areas are spatial intelligence or mathematical intelligence, have been shown to affect quite a bit in intelligence. For example in a specific part of Albert Einstein´s brain relating to spatial intelligence was found to be larger and this is attributed to higher intelligence.

In conclusion what it is believed is that both genetics and environment play a roll in an individual´s intelligence, but still we can see from the research made that from what psychologists have found out from the studies made is that genetics is very important in our intelligence but that our environment help us develop that intelligence that we inherit from our parents or any other ancestors of our family tree.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/267545/nature_vs_nurture_and_intelligence.html?cat=25



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http://scienceaid.co.uk/psychology/approaches/images/twins.png

6 comments:

  1. I found really appealing the information you found on intelligence. What interested me the most was the fact that adoptive children have innated the intelligence of their biological parents, and not learned by their adoptive parents.

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  2. The graphs help to have a better understanding of the topic. Good arguments and research.

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  3. According to this blog IQ depends mostly from genetic traits. I found the twin part very interesting.

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  4. VERY INTERESTING:) i strongly agree with your opinion that intelligence come from both genetis and eviroment.

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  5. this is a very interesting topic you talked about.:) i agree with your opinion about intelligence having both nature and nurture. i like the way you contected your thoughst with god examples or quotes. great job adolfo.

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  6. That is a good final thought about intelligence. It is both, but I rather put it more on nurture.

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