PROFESSIONAL LEARNING CELL

1. NATURE OR NURTURE
Presenter:
Matsy B. Tumacdang
23 February 2016

2. Overview
• A significant issue in
developmental psychology is the
relationship between innateness
and environmental influence in
regard to any particular aspect of
development. This is often referred
to as "nature vs. nurture" or
nativism versus empiricism.

3. The NATURE versus NURTURE
debate continues as one of the
oldest, controversial yet
interesting issues in the field of
psychology. The battle of the
mind centers on the relative
contributions of heredity (nature)
versus environment (nurture) to
human development.

4. WHAT IS NATURE /NURTURE?
Nature refers to
all of the genes
and hereditary
factors that
influence who we
are – from our
physical
appearance to our
personality
characteristics.
Nurture refers to all
the environmental
variables that impact
who we are,
including our early
childhood
experiences, how
we were raised, our
social relationships,
and our surrounding
culture.

5. Quoting from the blog of
anonymous someone about the
above issue, he says that;
“Personality is nature while
behavior is nurture. The
combination of characteristics or
qualities that form an individual's
distinctive character is the what
the dictionary define as personality.
Personality therefore is a
characteristic or an individual's

6. Everyone is unique and it is
the personality that either
defines or defies the
person. The way in which
one acts or conducts
oneself, especially toward
others is what Webster
defines as behavior.

7. You may be the cheapest person in
the world as it is in your blood
and your personality, but you could
behave yourself in a certain way to
display to others that you are quite
generous. You may a kind-
hearted person deep down inside,
but you display yourself in a
certain way that might seems mean
to other people.

8. To say the least, personality
(nature) is something that
defy who you are as you are
born with it, but the way you
act might not display your
full personality and that is
when behavior (nurture)
plays a role.”

9. WHAT ARE THE ISSUES?
• A nativist
account of
development
would argue that
the processes in
question are
innate, that is,
they are specified
by the organism's
genes.
An empiricist
perspective
would argue that
those processes
are acquired in
interaction with
the environment.

10. Timeline
• Today developmental psychologists
investigate, among many other
things, the relationship between
innate and environmental
influences. One of the ways this
relationship has been explored in
recent years is through the
emerging field of evolutionary
developmental psychology.

11. TIMELINE
• Today, the majority of experts
believe that both NATURE and
NURTURE influence behavior and
development. However, the issue
still rages on in many areas such
as in the debate on the origins of
homosexuality and influences on
intelligence.

12. While few people take the
extreme nativist or radical
empiricist approach,
researchers and experts
still debate the degree to
which biology and
environment influence
behavior.

13. • According to the recent
social survey, at least
around 74% believe that
NURTURE has a greater
influence. Only 26% believe
that NATURE has a greater
influence in human
development.

14. OPPOSING SIDES
• One area where this innateness
debate has been prominently
portrayed is in research on
language acquisition. A major
question in this area is whether or
not certain properties of human
language are specified genetically
or can be acquired through
learning

15. OPPOSING VIEWS
• The empiricist position on the issue of
language acquisition suggests that the
language input provides the necessary
information required for learning the
structure of language and that infants
acquire language through a process of
statistical learning. From this
perspective, language can be acquired
via general learning methods that also
apply to other aspects of development,
such as perceptual learning.

16. DEVELOP YOUR POSITION
• The nativist position argues that the
input from language is too
impoverished for infants and children
to acquire the structure of language.
Linguist Noam Chomsky asserts that,
evidenced by the lack of sufficient
information in the language input, there
is a universal grammar that applies to
all human languages and is pre-
specified

17. DEVELOP YOUR POSITION
• This has led to the idea that there
is a special cognitive module
suited for learning language, often
called the language acquisition
device. Chomsky's critique of the
behaviorist model of language
acquisition is regarded by many as
a key turning point in the decline in
the prominence of the theory of
behaviorism generally.

18. DEVELOP YOUR POSITION
• But Skinner's conception
of "Verbal Behavior" has
not died, perhaps in part
because it has generated
successful practical
applications.

19. PERSONAL POSITION
As for me, I would agree to
the recent survey that
they are both influential
with a higher degree to
NURTURE or environment.
Peer pressure has a
greater bait indeed.

20. QUESTIONS FOR THE
PARTICIPANTS
• QUESTION #1. What about your
position on the above current
debate on NATURE
(Heredity/Personality) versus
NURTURE
(Environment/Behavior)?

21. QUESTION # 2
Aware of the result of
the social survey, what
is the implication of it in
relation to classroom
management?

22. QUESTION # 3
FOR THE PARTICIPANTS
Does the result of the
survey imply that
teachers (nurture) have
more influence to the
students than their
parents (nature)?

23. QUESTION # 4
Is my own way of
handling
the students on target to the
attainment of the DepEd
mission for quality education
and global competitiveness?

24. ABOUT THE PRESENTER

26. Matsy’s rich engagement in
classroom teaching and
actual involvement in language
conferences within and out of the
country being both as a participant
and as a presenter has provided her
the necessary tool to adapt and
to put ablazed the gist of a “Whole
Langauge Approach” of which the
DepEd K-12 curriculum patronizes.

28. With the Director
of Wesleyan
World Missions
Rev. Don Bray & Mrs. Joy
Bray
1993 visit to
Indonesia

29. Photo taken during the World Relief
church Christmas cantata entitled
“Everlasting Light” shared to the
Subic church for military U.S.
troops, 1990.
With the Director of World
Relief Philippines,
Mr. & Mrs. Vern/ Marge Porter

32. Thank you
classmates for
watching the
introduction!!!