Transcript *Parenting is the number one influence on a child*s success or

“Parenting is the number one influence
on a child’s success or failure in life.”
Nurture… like a boss.
Caitlyn Farnum
Sasha Dierdorff
The Nurture Theory
The influences and experiences we have
growing up impact who we are more than the
genes we are born with.
Tabula Rasa
“The mind begins as a blank slate”
–John Locke
• Everything we are and all of our knowledge is
determined by the experiences we have.
The Orphan Albert
“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed,
and my own specified world to bring them up in
and I'll guarantee to take any one at random
and train him to become any type of specialist I
might select...regardless of his talents,
penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and
race of his ancestors.”
-John Watson
• American psychologist John Watson
demonstrated that phobias are acquired
through our experiences, not genetics.
• We can learn things our parents have never
done.
B.F Skinner and the dancing pigeons
Harvard psychologist, B.F. Skinner developed an
experiment on pigeons…
He successfully taught pigeons to dance, do
figure eights and to play tennis.
Feral Children
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PyUfG9uP4
• About 100 known in the world
• Raised by animals
• Not raised by humans, don’t act human
Think of a baby…
• Attachments are formed in response to the
love and attention one receives.
– Oxana: love and attention from dogs= attachment
to dogs
• Language is learned as an imitation of the
speech of others.
-Oxana: dogs barked or howled, she learned to
mimic them
Why nurture?
• The link between a gene and a behavior is not
the same as cause and effect.
• While a gene may increase the likelihood of
someone behaving in a particular way, it does
not make people do things….
• We still get to choose who we'll be when we
grow up.
• http://psychology.about.com/od/nindex/g/naturenurture.htm
• McLeod, S. A. (2007). Nature Nurture in Psychology. Retrieved
from http://www.simplypsychology.org/naturevsnurture.html
• http://genealogy.about.com/cs/geneticgenealogy/a/nature_n
urture.htm
• Video-“Feral Child- Oxana Malaya raised by dogs”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PyUfG9u-P4