Parents/Peers/Culture

How can experience modify the brain? Embryos receive different nutrition and varying exposure to toxic agents Normal stimulation in early years is critical for optimal brain development

maturation Biological growth process that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience –Ex: a flower unfolds due to its genetic instructions, we do the same through maturation Humans sit up, then crawl, then stand up, then walk

Maturation sets the basic course, but experience adjusts the direction After brain maturation provides humans with abundance of neural connections, experience preserves our activated connections and unused connections degenerate –Called pruning

What roles do parents play in development?

What roles do our peers play in development?

How’d you do? Parents –Education –Discipline –Responsibility –Orderliness –Charitableness –Interacting with authority figures Peers –Cooperation –Finding road to popularity –Inventing styles of interaction among people of same age

Conclusion Parents can influence the culture that shapes the peer group by helping select children’s neighborhood and schools, thus providing the peer group for the children to interact with.

Cultural Influences Culture: behaviors, attitudes, values and traditions shared by a group of people transmitted from one generation to the next

Norms Rules that govern the culture’s members’ behaviors –sometimes oppressive, but they help progress society –Vary in personal space, expressiveness, and pace of life –Colliding cultures make differing norms interaction uncomfortable – why?

Effects of Time Culture changes faster than genetics’ abilities to keep up –What kind of issues can this cause? Women and abusive relationships Increased rights for minorities Rates of divorce, delinquency and depression

Individualist vs. Collectivist Individualist –Value personal achievement and fulfillment –Individual rights and liberties –Define identity in personal traits –Strive for personal control in life Collectivist –Value group goals and solidarity –Relationships tend to be closer and enduring –Maintaining social harmony is important –Identity is derived from belonging

Conclusions Individualist cultures encourage ________________ in their children, while collectivist cultures focus on __________________________ Children in collectivist grow up with a stronger sense of family self