Rainbows: Jean Piaget and Human Development Essay

Submitted By rainbowsnbutts
Words: 546
Pages: 3

Human development can be incited by nature, nurture or even both. The problem with deciding whether one has more of an impact on human development have been a real deputation. Before we look into or decide what has affected the early development of humans let’s look into standard stages that mankind goes through regardless of the effect from nurture. Jean Piaget had a concept of four specific stages ; sensorimotor, preparation, concrete operational stage and finally formal operational stage. Erik Erickson had a quite different perspective that consists of over eight stages which are from infancy (18 months) to late adulthood. We, according to Erik, go from putting things in our mouths, to pretending to be different people or things that they see whether on television or in real life, to discovering and rediscovering who we are or think we are, to caring the people we love, to loving and finally giving wisdom words.....and die. Let’s discuss both sides of the argument of what actually determines it ,nurture or nature. Firstly, when people say nurture influences human development the most, they usually means the child can grow up to be anything when they are in and affected by the environment or neighbors. Many psychiatrists and psychologists including John Locke ,who thinks that the mind of an infant is a blank slate. John B Watson and Skinner with their statement “human nature is malleable”. Kogan who asserted that children who are spoken to the most and who are given rewards for speaking, are likely to speak earlier than the children who aren’t getting as much of the attention and finally Zelazo and Kolb when they announced children who aren’t given practice of walking won’t be able to walk at the same time as the children who are, are basing these facts and are obviously determining that nurture plays a bigger part in developing humankind. Secondly, many psychologists think humans need both Nurture and Nature because without either one, let’s say nature, people would not have the standard personal characteristics, eyes , nose , anus, hair, arms, legs etc.., to go through all the motor