Are there certain periods in a child′s development when he or she may be more sensitive to specific environmental influences than at earlier or later times? Are preschool teachers equally nurturant to securely attached versus insecurely attached children? Are girls more sensitive than boys to parental maltreatment? Designed to synthesize what we know about the nature of environmental influences (nurture) upon development, Wachs artfully explores whether development depends upon a sole factor--the rearing environment, genetics, nutrition, or individual characteristics-- or, whether the degree of directional consistency combined with the extent of covariance among these factors may have the most developmental impact. Issues such as how individuals respond differently to stress, medical treatment, parenting styles, teaching approaches and daycare centers are all discussed through careful analysis of research and theories from a variety of fields. Researchers, teachers, and intervention specialists of developmental psychology, family studies, social psychology, education, and nursing will find The Nature of Nurture an inspiration to further examine how environmental systems determine variability in developmental outcomes and what can be done to promote optimal outcomes for individual children. USE IN NEXT AD (2/1/94): "In The Nature of Nurture Wachs does precisely what he intends to do. He lays out clearly and thoroughly what we know and do not know about environmental influences on human development, and he builds on the conceptual and empirical work of others to move research on environmental effects forward in productive and exciting ways. . . . [It] should serve as a bible for future research on the environment and development. As such, it is a must read for developmental psychologists from all specialty areas, to graduate students, and to upper level undergraduates. This is an eminently readable and important book." --Contemporary Psychology "The Nature of Nurture provides a thorough and thoughtful review and analysis of state-of-the-art theory, concepts, and evidence pertaining to the effect of the environment on human development. Especially important is the attention the author pays to the multidimensional nature of the environment, to individual differences among children, and to the need to consider both of these domains of complexity for understanding the development of specific aspects of psychological and behavioral functioning." --Jay Belsky, The Pennsylvania State University "The Nature of Nurture provides extended treatments of issues rarely dealt with in detail, including organism-environment covariance and organism-environment interaction. All in all, this is an excellent choice for those interested in studying complex, dynamic interplay of organism and environment. It deals with a number of critical design and theory issues; and it ends with a hybrid ecological developmental model designed to integrate studies of experience and offers a useful discussion of future trends in an emerging area of developmental studies." --Child Development Abstracts & Bibliography

What does it mean to find a gene or set of genes that are associated with ADHD, schizophrenia, or autism? Could we eradicate such diseases from our species through gene therapy? Is it possible to eradicate from our genome the genetic material that predisposes us to be too aggressive, too shy, less intelligent, or not active enough? Who has the political power and/or moral authority to make these decisions? The premise of Nature and Nurture is that the complexity of the transactions between nature and nurture--between genes and the environment from the cellular to the cultural level--make these questions incredibly complex and in need of careful attention by educators, scientists, the public, and policymakers. A product of the conference held at Brown University in 2001, this book suggests that genes and environments work together interactively in a complex and closely intertwined fashion. The contributors to this book--biologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and economists--present knowledge that enables research and application to transcend the traditional question of whatever variance or significance is attributed to genetics versus environment in the development of a particular behavioral trait. This book presents a variety of views on the current status of knowledge about the ways in which dynamic, developmental, mutually interactive systems in the genetic and environmental domains operate. The chapters represent contributions from different perspectives.

How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.

From Michael Gurian, the best-selling author of The Minds of Boys and The Wonder of Girls, comes the next-step book that shows how any parent can tune into a child’s unique core personality, hard wiring, temperament, and genetic predisposition in order to help that child flourish and thrive. Based on the most recent brain research, Nurture the Nature features the Ten Tips for Nurturing the Nature of Your Baby, self-tests, checklists, and many other tools for you to help your kids get exactly the kind of support they need, from infants to adolescents. While offering positive ideas for nurturing your child, Gurian also shows how to avoid the stress, pressures, and excessive competition of what he identifies as social trends parenting. Most parents know instinctively that their child is unique and has special potential, weaknesses, and strengths. No child is a blank slate. Gurian calls on parents to turn away from one-size-fits-all approaches and instead support the individual core nature of a child with effective and customized loving care.

Following his highly praised and bestselling book Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Matt Ridley has written a brilliant and profound book about the roots of human behavior. Nature via Nurture explores the complex and endlessly intriguing question of what makes us who we are. In February 2001 it was announced that the human genome contains not 100,000 genes, as originally postulated, but only 30,000. This startling revision led some scientists to conclude that there are simply not enough human genes to account for all the different ways people behave: we must be made by nurture, not nature. Yet again biology was to be stretched on the Procrustean bed of the nature-nurture debate. Matt Ridley argues that the emerging truth is far more interesting than this myth. Nurture depends on genes, too, and genes need nurture. Genes not only predetermine the broad structure of the brain, they also absorb formative experiences, react to social cues, and even run memory. They are consequences as well as causes of the will. Published fifty years after the discovery of the double helix of DNA, Nature via Nurture chronicles a revolution in our understanding of genes. Ridley recounts the hundred years' war between the partisans of nature and nurture to explain how this paradoxical creature, the human being, can be simultaneously free-willed and motivated by instinct and culture. Nature via Nurture is an enthralling,up-to-the-minute account of how genes build brains to absorb experience.

Neuroscience has made phenomenal advances over the past 50 years and the pace of discovery continues to accelerate. On June 25, 2008, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Forum on Neuroscience and Nervous System Disorders hosted more than 70 of the leading neuroscientists in the world, for a workshop titled "From Molecules to Minds: Challenges for the 21st Century." The objective of the workshop was to explore a set of common goals or "Grand Challenges" posed by participants that could inspire and rally both the scientific community and the public to consider the possibilities for neuroscience in the 21st century. The progress of the past in combination with new tools and techniques, such as neuroimaging and molecular biology, has positioned neuroscience on the cusp of even greater transformational progress in our understanding of the brain and how its inner workings result in mental activity. This workshop summary highlights the important issues and challenges facing the field of neuroscience as presented to those in attendance at the workshop, as well as the subsequent discussion that resulted. As a result, three overarching Grand Challenges emerged: How does the brain work and produce mental activity? How does physical activity in the brain give rise to thought, emotion, and behavior? How does the interplay of biology and experience shape our brains and make us who we are today? How do we keep our brains healthy? How do we protect, restore, or enhance the functioning of our brains as we age?

The Exposome: A Primer is the first book dedicated to exposomics, detailing the purpose and scope of this emerging field of study, its practical applications and how it complements a broad range of disciplines. Genetic causes account for up to a third of all complex diseases. (As genomic approaches improve, this is likely to rise.) Environmental factors also influence human disease but, unlike with genetics, there is no standard or systematic way to measure the influence of environmental exposures. The exposome is an emerging concept that hopes to address this, measuring the effects of life-long environmental exposures on health and how these exposures can influence disease. This systematic introduction considers topics of managing and integrating exposome data (including maps, models, computation, and systems biology), "-omics"-based technologies, and more. Both students and scientists in disciplines including toxicology, environmental health, epidemiology, and public health will benefit from this rigorous yet readable overview.

In this powerful critique, the esteemed historian and philosopher of science Evelyn Fox Keller addresses the nature-nurture debates, including the persistent disputes regarding the roles played by genes and the environment in determining individual traits and behavior. Keller is interested in both how an oppositional “versus” came to be inserted between nature and nurture, and how the distinction on which that opposition depends, the idea that nature and nurture are separable, came to be taken for granted. How, she asks, did the illusion of a space between nature and nurture become entrenched in our thinking, and why is it so tenacious? Keller reveals that the assumption that the influences of nature and nurture can be separated is neither timeless nor universal, but rather a notion that emerged in Anglo-American culture in the late nineteenth century. She shows that the seemingly clear-cut nature-nurture debate is riddled with incoherence. It encompasses many disparate questions knitted together into an indissoluble tangle, and it is marked by a chronic ambiguity in language. There is little consensus about the meanings of terms such as nature, nurture, gene, and environment. Keller suggests that contemporary genetics can provide a more appropriate, precise, and useful vocabulary, one that might help put an end to the confusion surrounding the nature-nurture controversy.

This engaging text presents the latest scientific findings on gender differences, similarities, and variations--in sexuality, cognitive abilities, occupational preferences, personality, and social behaviors. The impact of nature and nurture on gender is examined from the perspectives of genetics, molecular biology, evolutionary theory, neuroanatomy, sociology, and psychology. The result is a balanced, fair-minded synthesis of diverse points of view. Dr. Lippa's text sympathetically summarizes each side of the nature-nurture debate, and in a witty imagined conversation between a personified "nature" and "nurture," he identifies weaknesses in the arguments offered by both sides. His review defines gender, summarizes research on gender differences, examines the nature of masculinity and femininity, describes theories of gender, and presents a "cascade model," which argues that nature and nurture weave together to form the complex tapestry known as gender. Gender, Nature, and Nurture, Second Edition features: *new research on sex differences in personality, moral thought, coping styles, sexual and antisocial behavior, and psychological adjustment; *the results of a new meta-analysis of sex differences in real-life measures of aggression; *new sections on non-hormonal direct genetic effects on sexual differentiation; hormones and maternal behavior; and on gender, work, and pay; and *expanded accounts of sex differences in children's play and activity levels; social learning theories of gender, and social constructionist views of gender. This lively "primer" is an ideal book for courses on gender studies, the psychology of women, or of men, and gender roles. Its wealth of updated information will stimulate the professional reader, and its accessible style will captivate the student and general reader.

For developmental scientists, the nature versus nurture debate has been settled for some time. Neither nature nor nurture alone provides the answer. It is nature and nurture in concert that shape developmental pathways and outcomes, from health to behavior to competence. This insight has moved far beyond the assertion that both nature and nurture matter, progressing into the fascinating terrain of how they interact over the course of development. In this volume, students, practitioners, policy analysts, and others with a serious interest in human development will learn what is transpiring in this new paradigm from the developmental scientists working at the cutting edge, from neural mechanisms to population studies, and from basic laboratory science to clinical and community interventions. Early childhood development is the critical focus of this volume, because many of the important nature-nurture interactions occur then, with significant influences on lifelong developmental trajectories.