An interesting question was brought up in my psychology class today. Is the trait of intelligence attributed to "nature," meaning that it is inherited, or "nurture," meaning that it is brought about by external events? My opinion is that the potential for intelligence is inherited, and that potential can be fufilled by cultivating the right environment. What do you guys have to say on the matter?
Heavens, to get to this, I think we need to get around to talking about what "intelligence" involves. The very discussion of this is by definition cultural in nature.
true, but if you leave it up to nature, theyd never learn anything. So i guess its both then, cause SOME things can be learned by instinct, like you need food, but people arent food.
Okay, let's see if we can go with this...how is intelligence measured? What tasks does intelligence relate to, and how effective is is the IQ test? (Stanford-Binet, or any of the other variants, for that matter).
Do we really need to operationalize this in order to talk about it theoretically? I would like to suggest an alternative definition of intelligence, though, perhaps - a person's capacity to intake, synthesize, and retain new information. Again, I don't want to get into operationalism. I would have to say that at least "nature" we can show plays a significant part - if a person is born mentally retarded, then their IQ is under 80 (I think - on the Stanford-Binet). Their capacity to learn is not going to be as high as a regular person's. As far as "nurture" goes, it's really quite hard to prove one way or the other.
I think that throughout the years, this debate has changed from Nature v. Nurture to Nature/Nurture. I noticed in textbooks they speak of it differently now than when I was in high school learning about this.
>.< I didnt hit enter (or didnt mean to) after that last post (Why cant we EDIT?!?) but I digress.
I would never side completely with one or the other. There is a definite necessity for both. For example:
There have been many cases of feral "Wild" children... kind of like Jungle Book, but not so Disney. There have been children in many countries who exist solely in the wild world, being raised by dogs (as strange as that may sound). There have also been children who have been locked in their rooms for years upon years, throughout their entire developmental years. It has been proven that if a child does not learn the necessities during the first few years of their life, that ability to learn will be stunted, if not shut off completely. These children who have been raised in the wild or locked away for years, upon being found, have been taught how to live like a 'normal' human and failed at adapting. THerefore, there is an obvious necessity for nurture in the early, developmental years of life.
Likewise, it has been proven, or at least strongly speculated and had a lot of strong evidence pointing towards, IQ is strongly related to the inhereted traits, or Nature. Full siblings show a strong similarity in IQ, whereas adopted siblings show no more of a similarity in IQ than complete strangers.
I got most of my information from my studies in Child Development, a few documentaries Ive seen on Wild Children, and this website: [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture]
I know that at least with language, during the earliest years of life our capacity to acquire language is greater and more profound then it will be any time in the future, so if you lack the influence of nurture, you are kinda screwed for language acquisition (it's not impossible, just SUPER difficult). That's also why kids in bilingual households are able to master both languages so well, while the average 9th grader struggles somewhat through a Spanish class (yes, I know you are really good at Spanish, but not everyone is like you)
So the 'both' category seems more acceptable to me.
