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Psyc333 Thought Paper1
Psyc333 Thought Paper1
Both nature and nurture shape the individuals we become. With sufficient nutrition and
activities in an uncontaminated environment, human beings could lead a healthy life, learn new things,
and develop new skills throughout their lifespans. Because of the unpredictable potential and
astonishing resilience children have, every moment, person, and experience in their lives is important,
but not critical. The first few months or years should not be the only time to attribute all the blame or
credit for any failure or success which may occur in our later lives. People should not be anxious or
worry too much about their earlier experiences causing irreparable consequence in their later life. I
believe our early experience of life is not so critical for determining later development according to our
biological, cognitive, language, personality, and intelligence development tendencies expressed below.
First, our biological development takes place across different periods of time. Gross and fine
motor skills, sensory cortex maturation, axon myelination, body coordination, body growing, sexual
maturation, or dendrites pruning do not happen only in the first few months or years. Concern for wellbeing, physical exercise, and sufficient nutrition are needed no matter whether you are young or old.
Disease, stress, disorders, disabilities, or death can occur at any time in our lives. Your good health at
this moment could be just the result of intensive exercise and abundant fruits and vegetables for two
months. Your cancer right now might not be caused only by the malnutrition in the first few years of
early life.
Second, our cognitive development could be found even in the seniors. Neither Piagets stage
of cognitive development, nor Vygotskys social learning focuses exclusively on the first few months
or years. Children cannot understand transitive inference, logic, or deductive reasoning until school age,
even puberty. A new baby will have no understanding while you are talking about self-control with
him/her. The wisdom, and life philosophy I have found in adults and seniors does not exist in little
children. We gain all these through our life long experiences, not in our first few months or years.
Third, language development bursts in our first few years, but continually expands in school
years, even later in our life. From using holophrases, two-word sentences, to being able to perform
metaphors and abstractions while talking, it takes many years of exposure to the language. School