"Nature via Nurture" - Printable Version +- Teach the Brain Forums (https://www.teach-the-brain.org/forums) +-- Forum: Teach-the-Brain (https://www.teach-the-brain.org/forums/Forum-Teach-the-Brain) +--- Forum: How the Brain Learns (https://www.teach-the-brain.org/forums/Forum-How-the-Brain-Learns) +--- Thread: "Nature via Nurture" (/Thread-Nature-via-Nurture)

"Nature via Nurture" - Christina - 26-09-2005 "Greater understanding of the nature of this interactive process renders moot such questions as how much depends on genes and how much on environment. As various developmental researchers have suggested, this question is much like asking which contributes most to the area of a rectangle, its height or its width (Eisenberg, 1995)?" I would like to invite you to take a look at this very accessible chapter, which discusses the brain’s plasticity and underscores the theme that genetics and the environment work via an interactive processes: http://www.nap.edu/html/howpeople1/ch5.html All the best, Christina "Nature via Nurture" - segarama - 28-09-2005 Hi, I am wondering as per "Nature via Nurture" if the osteocytes clean up after the synapses. Something must keep the cleanliness up to par or the functioning of the synapses would be subject to disease... Just wondering..... Best, Rob P.S. That is a great book...I use it for my masters class. "Nature via Nurture" - John Nicholson - 28-09-2005 drawing down from your recomended reading. WHICH I BELIVE UNDERLINES MY HYPOTHESIS CONCERNING ESSENTIAL LAYERS OF KNOWLEDGE (essential mental arithmetic awareness built up by regular use of the abacus) Older views that young children are incapable of complex reasoning have been replaced by evidence that children are capable of sophisticated levels of thinking and reasoning when they have the knowledge necessary to support these activities (see Chapter 4). An impressive body of research shows the potential benefit of early access by students to important conceptual ideas. In classrooms using a form of "cognitively guided" instruction in geometry, second-grade children's skills for representing and visualizing three-dimensional forms exceeded those of comparison groups of undergraduate students at a leading university (Lehrer and Chazan, 1998). Young children have also demonstrated powerful forms of early algebraic generalization (Lehrer and Chazan, 1998). Forms of generalization in science, such as experimentation, can be introduced before the secondary school years through a developmental approach to important mathematical and scientific ideas (Schauble et al., 1995; Warren and Rosebery, 1996). Such an approach entails becoming cognizant of the early origins of students' thinking and then identifying how those ideas can be fostered and elaborated (Brown and Campione, 1994). at least half a million years of genetic development have gone into the brain of every newborn child. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO CHANGE THE STARTING POINT. Yes we can study what the starting piont is and it may helpfull but in the end we have to take the philosophical view. "WHAT IS WRONG WITH CONSIDERING THE MIND OF A BABY AS A BLANK SHEET OF PAPER"