By PresenterMedia.com

Nature and Nurture

Stage 1: Womb – 12 months• Motor Functions and security

Stage 2: 6 months – 2 years old• Mobility and emotion

Stage 3: 18 months – 4 years old• Will and action

Stage 4: 4 – 7 years old• Social Identity

Stage 5: 7 – 12 years old• Social contract

Stage 6: Adolescence• Reconstitution

Stage 7: Early Adulthood and Beyond• Self-knowledge

Stage 7: Self-knowledge

Transpersonal Psychology: The movement of self from exclusively individual identities (unique and single organisms) toward a universal commonality.

• Individuality is transformed and absorbed into the Universal.

• Individual personality is seen as part of a unified and integrated whole

Adult Development• Development will only occur with

conscious intent.• Many people will stay in programmed

instinctual patterns (dependency, powerlessness)

• Adult may never discover their potential as it involves challenge and anxiety

• Potentially adults go through a similar set of developmental stages

Adult Development

• Developmental stages are not the same for everyone and are rarely experienced in the same order.

• Unresolved childhood conflict may arrest adult development

• Assessment is through understanding of the whole person (rather than isolation of particular incidents).

Adult Development

1. Survival, place to live, caring for oneself, independent income, self-sufficiency2. Sexual relationships – awareness of other becomes more acute, partnership may be of primary importance. Emotional frustration may be projected onto partner which may sabotage early relationships

Adult Development3. Individuality under our own power and will. Separation from having to conform to expectations of culture, family, etc.

• Dependency, powerlessness, obedience creation of our own path

• Relationships defined by needs of the other, Enslavement in meaningless jobs personal career, skill-building, sense of control, affinity with others in political or psychological groupings

• Power over others Power with others

Adult Development4. Individuation: Re-evaluation of

behaviour towards others• Empathy and altruism, substantial

relationships• Emphasis on family dynamics• Balance between inner masculine and feminine

5. Creativity: Contribution to community (e.g. midlife)

• Creating a business, writing a book/thesis, building a house, pursuing artistic hobby, public service

Adult Development6. Reflection and study of patterns of behaviour (e.g. children are grown)

• Introversion and exploration of mythology, philosophy

• Travelling or renewal of past study

7. Wisdom and teaching. May involve leaving previous lifestyle or dropping material possessions

Developmental Stages: Summary

Stage 1: Motor Functions• Foundation of security that enables self-

preservation and forms the physical identity

Stage 2: Emotions• Emotional identity interested in self-

gratification

Stage 3: Language• Ego identity develops inner authority

and freedom

Developmental Stages: SummaryStage 4: Social relationships

• Social Identity formed to establish wider relationship models and self-acceptance

Stage 5: Creativity• Career/Self expression forms creative identity

Stage 6: Self-reflection• Archetypal identity ascends from egoic

personality

Stage 7: Knowledge• Self-knowledge forms a universal identity,

learning and teaching

Stage 8: Adult Development

Nature and Nurture

How are individuals different?

• Naturally occurring differences reveal the structure of psychological function

• Organisms may only differ in the efficency of specific mechanisms and the frequency of use of different mechanisms

Environment

What is environment?Non-genetic influencesAll non-heritable factors including any

pre/post-natal illnesses and biological events

• Shared and non-shared environments• Family• Peers• Individual life events• Chance

Quantitative Genetics

History• Francis Galton (1822-1911)Founder of psychometrics (measuring

mental faculties)Pioneer of eugenics, evolution,

fingerprintingHeredity is the passing of traits to

offspring (from its parent or ancestors)

Quantitative Genetics

Merriman (1924) – First twin studies• Monozygotic (identical, MZ) twins

share 100% of genes• Dizygotic (fraternal, DZ) twins

share 50% of genesNazi war crimes associated with

eugenicsEmergence of behaviourism

genetic research blocked

Genetics

Watson & Crick (1953): Deoxyribonucleic acid (1966): Guanine, Thymine, Cytosine, Adonine

Creates 3 letter wordsCodes 20 amino acids

Amino acids build proteins

Human Genome Project (2001)Sequence of 3 billion letters

Quantitative Genetics

Identifying specific DNA sequences responsible for genetic influence on common behavioural disorders, such as mental illnessStudies complex behavioural dimensions such as personality

Quantitative Genetics

• Many DNA variants of small effect size

• QTL (Quantitative Trait Loci)QTL set – multiple QTLs in a set can be used as a genetic risk index (like environmental risk index)

Twin and Adoption studiesShows genetic influence in nearly every area of behaviour that has been studied

• Mental Illness• Personality & Intelligence• Self-esteem• Interest• Attitudes• School achievement• Drug use and abuse• Physical abuse

Genetics in Culture90% of parents and teachers reported genetics as being at least as important as the environment for mental illness, personality, learning difficulties and intelligenceConcordance: The presence of the same trait in both members of a pair of twins

Schizophrenia: • Until 1960s, believed to be environmental• Twin studies showed 45% concordance for

schiz• DZ twins show 17% concordance

Adoption studies

1. Comparison of Monozygotic twins reared in different environments studies how alike the children become through development and into adulthood

2. Genetically unrelated children growing up in an adoptive family scarcely resemble each other for personality, psychopathology and cognitive abilities after adolescence

3. Risk of schizophrenia is just as great when children are adopted away from their schizophrenic parents at birth as when they are reared by them

Twin & Adoption studies

Genetic influences

Shared environment (makes siblings similar)

Nonshared environment

Non-shared environment

The most effective environmental influences are those that make children in the same family different, not similar

So how does the environment work to influence behaviour?

The Nature of NurtureGenotype-environment Correlation:

Differential exposure to experience

Genotype-environment Interaction:Differential sensitivity to experience

Genotype: Genetic constitutionPhenotype: Observable characteristics

e.g. physiological properties, development, behaviour, environmental variation and epigenetic factors

Nature of NurtureEpigenetics: Changes in phenotype or gene expression caused by non-genetic influences

Environment can be considered as an extended phenotype

e.g. differences in parenting could be the genetic result of child psychopathology, rather than the cause

Extended PhenotypeGenetic factors substantially influence how we measure environments such as parenting, stress or social support

The environment represents a direct response to genetically influenced characteristics

Individuals select, modify and construct (in memory) their own experience of the world

Developmental Change and Continuity

Genetic effects at one age differ from genetic effects at another age

• Behavioural markers for schizophrenia are difficult to find in children who later become schizophrenic

• Genes may only express hallucinatory or paranoid effects after adolescent brain development enables highly symbolic processing

Developmental Change and Continuity

Magnitude of Genetic influence on general cognitive ability (intelligence) increases steadily from infancy to adulthood

A) more genes may come into play during developmentB) Same genes have greater effects

Multivariate Heterogeneity and Comorbidity

Heterogeneity: multiple origins causing the same disorder in different individuals Comorbidity: the effect of all other diseases a person might have other than the primary diagnosis

Genetic overlap across learning, language, reading and mathematics disabilitiesSame genes largely effect verbal, spatial and memory abilities

Multivariate Heterogeneity and Comorbidity

Correlation between traits is considered above individual traits

Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD)• Diagnosis requires deficits in both social and

non-social behaviours• Different genes affect social and non-social

traits• Multivariate genetic analysis will change

diagnosis and also treatment and prevention

Phenotypic behaviour does change brain structure and function (stimulating environments)

Genes do change behaviour

Behaviour does not change genes

Behavioural Genetics

Rare single-gene disorders are treatable by gene identification

Complex traits (multi-gene + multi-environment) are influenced by many genes with small effect size

The Postgenomic Era

QTL sets are being identified to account for a useful proportion of variance in complex behaviour

This will force reorganisation of diagnosis, education, legal systems and hospitals