Heredity and the Environment Interact in Human Development Essay.

Heredity refers to the innate characteristics that an offspring inherits genetically from its parents. As a child develops, the environment in which it grows influences the expression of the inherited characteristics or trait in a profound way (Kinder, n.d.). For instance, as much as intelligence is inherited it requires an intellectually stimulating environment to be expressed. A child that is borne of intelligent parents but who is not taken to school and given intellectual tasks to complete will not demonstrate intelligence.Heredity and the Environment Interact in Human Development Essay.

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This means that heredity and the environment must interact closely for human development to be smooth and complete. Another piece of evidence comes from the fact that when a child is born and for some reason grows away from human civilization (like in the forest with animals), they will not be able to talk or reason like humans. All they do will be related to what they were seeing in their immediate environment as they were growing; a result of the interaction between heredity and the environment. Instead of talking they will produce sounds similar to the animals they grew around. This means they have the gene for oral expression, but the environment is needed to have it phenotypically expressed in a particular way. Heredity and the Environment Interact in Human Development Essay.

The influence of the environment in child development has been extensively studied among children who have been legally adopted and separated from their biological parents. These studies have focused on patterns of social behavior that appear to mimic those of the adoptive parents as opposed to those of the biological parents (Bohman, 1981).Heredity and the Environment Interact in Human Development Essay. This lends credence to the assertion that heredity only determines what a child may be. It does not however solely determine exactly what a child will be. That determination is made by the close interaction between the environment and heredity. Inherited traits in the absence of a conducive environment for expression will not be demonstrated. Heredity and the Environment Interact in Human Development Essay.