![]() ![]() ![]() We are even born with the innate ability to understand simple arithmetic. This hard-wiring includes the emergence of memory systems that allow us to retain and recall information necessary for survival, or simply hold onto an infinite amount of far less useful information, such as a word by word recitation of our favourite Monty Python sketch.īut these innate structures also include language systems, structures that allow us to perceive animate and inanimate objects and human faces, and ones that appear to encourage us to differentiate between pro-social and anti-social responses to situations (who we perceive to be good or helpful and bad or harmful). We are, after all, the result of years of evolution and adaptation, including the development of certain hard-wired systems that interact with the environment and allow learning to happen. We often describe this debate as nature versus nurture, although we now have a greater understanding of their interaction with each other ( nature and nurture). In one or his most famous quotes, he declared, “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.” He did, however, admit to some over-reaching, concluding that, “I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years.” History has, however, proven Watson wrong on many counts, and with the shift from behaviourism to a more cognitive psychology, along with advances in brain science and computer modelling, it’s become increasingly obvious that the blank slate approach is woefully misleading. Watson viewed humans as being born tabula rasa, a blank slate, devoid of innate mental content. ![]() They are then fine-tuned as the infant interacts with the world.Īmerican behaviourist John B.These systems include those related to object recognition, language, numbers and intentions of others.From birth, humans already have in place the systems required for rapid learning.Blank Slate (Tabula Rasa) views of human development erroneously claim that we are born devoid of innate mental content. ![]()
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