Nurture

For the Porter Robinson album, see Nurture (album). For the webtoon storyline, see Nurture (Live with Yourself!).

For the debate, see Nature versus nurture.

Nurture is usually defined as the process of caring for an organism, as it grows, usually a human. It is often used in debates as the opposite of "nature", whereby nurture means the process of replicating learned cultural information from one mind to another, and nature means the replication of genetic non-learned behavior.. It broadly encompasses early-year socialisation practices, learning environments, culture and occupation.

Nurture is important in the nature versus nurture debate as some people see either nature or nurture as the final outcome of the origins of most of humanity's behaviours. There are many agents of socialization that are responsible, in some respects the outcome of a child's personality, behaviour, thoughts, social and emotional skills, feelings, and mental priorities.

Attachment and Socioemotional Development

Nurture contributes to our attachment and socioemotional development via bonding, interactions with caregivers, who are responsible for early-year socialisation, and environmental experiences, which can have long-term consequences across the life course.

Bowlby’s attachment theory explores the lasting effects of early caregiver relationships, whereby parental nurture not only affects bonding with infants, but how infants respond to uncertain environments and interact with others. This is developed in Ainsworth’s Strange Situation study, which assigned various attachment styles, such as secure, anxious-avoidant and ambivalent, according to the behaviour observed when infants were separated from and then reunited with their mothers. These can profoundly influence adult personality and life outcomes. For instance, those with an insecure attachment style may struggle to develop social skills and experience anxiety at a greater frequency than their securely attached peers. The role of nurture is also reflected in different parental styles which may correspond with attachment, such as authoritative parents, who offer emotional support, and more favourable behavioural outcomes in children than with authoritarian or intrusive parents, who are more punishing.

Secure attachment during infancy highlights the importance of early nurturing environments in our middle childhood emotional operations, as evidence indicates these children express stronger emotional stability as measured by reduced emotional change when switching from distressing to positive discussions. It is thought that this difference arises due to secure attachment promoting enhanced appraisal of volatile situations, leading to behavioural responses considered more appropriate. Additionally, children’s experiences of trauma, for instance neglect or abuse, may have detrimental impacts on their development, representing a lack of nurture. This trauma can increase later vulnerability to post traumatic stress disorder, which may be mediated by emotional dysregulation, manifesting as challenges in coordinating goal-directed behaviour and putting them at a greater risk of substance abuse disorders or self-injury.

However, the solely environmental perspective has been criticised by some who address the substantial genetic component governing the development of relationships in early-attachment. Children’s variable susceptibility to the socialisation, such as parenting approaches, is evidenced by the complex interplay between gene-environment interaction effects, such as monoamine transmission.

Cognitive Development and Learning

The behaviorist approach, as initially discussed by Skinner, explores the role of operant conditioning, whereby actions are passively learnt and subsequently reinforced by imitating others. Behaviours associated with rewards, such as praise when repeating the correct words when learning how to speak, have a greater likelihood of being positively reinforced than those generating punishment (negative reinforcement). He discusses four major reinforcement schedules: variable ratio, variable interval, fixed ratio and fixed interval, which govern the speed at which behaviours are learnt and their respective persistence and risk of extinction. This model refutes the view that higher-order cognitive functions are biologically programmed and are instead contextually conditioned.

The social interactionist model of learning, as posited by Vygotsky, affirms the role of nurture in our cognitive development through education systems providing supportive learning environments rather than purely through reinforcement stimuli. Children actively learn through engaging with their peers and teachers, considered more knowledgeable others, who scaffold information so that learners are eventually able to grasp information and complete tasks in which they previously lacked the capacity. This is supported by the zone of proximal development, referring to the cluster of skills and information which the learner has almost understood and can subsequently achieve independently through social interaction, highlighting the importance of external guidance in nurturing development through learning. The Vygotskian intelligence hypothesis further explains that intelligence, rather than existing as an individual trait, is influenced by sociocultural contexts. Education facilitates social cognition through providing cooperative and cultural interactions, where we communicate with others, which result in potent cognitive representations unique to our species, chiefly perspective-taking.

Language, acquired through school and home environments, acts as a cognitive tool directed by social context. As is consistent with the Whorfian hypothesis of linguistic relativity, the languages we speak influence our interpretations and perceptions of the world, signifying nurture. For instance, Russian speakers display stronger colour discrimination abilities than English speakers due to their vocabulary distinguishing between light and dark shades of blue, so this repeated colour differentiation resulted in quicker categorisations in colour perception tasks, showing the influence of nurture in cognitive processes.

Cultural Neuroscience

Cultural neuroscience investigates how cultural environments affect brain function and development, demonstrating the psychological impact of nurture in various societies. Normative peer influence is particularly salient in the adolescent years, in which they are most sensitive to social scrutiny and acceptance, so must gauge who to use social information from. The resulting reward-oriented social behaviour demonstrates that locally adaptive traits can shape our trajectories.

These cultural differences can manifest through emotional expression, which can contribute to variation in our experiences of emotion. Evidence from a sample of young adults from China and the United States revealed a cultural difference in that the Americans showed greater magnitudes of emotional expression, which correlated to differential activation of neural mechanisms in the construction of emotions.

Cultural nurture also categories our styles of thinking, which vary across societies. Individualist societies, which tend to be Western democracies, stress personal achievement, independence and self-expression, whereas collectivist cultures, which are typically Eastern, highlight the importance of community and obedience. Evidence during the COVID-19 pandemic showed those with a vertical collectivist orientation, which emphasises group harmony, expressed a greater willingness to comply with lockdown restrictions, alluding to the role of nurture from wider society in shaping our psychology.

Epigenetics and Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity refers to the ability of the brain in reorganizing and forming novel neuronal connections following environmental changes. Notable examples include London taxi drivers, who are expected to learn detailed maps of London roads, seeing an increase in the size of their posterior hippocampi, which are utilised in spatial memory, correlating to time spent in this occupation. This evidences a capacity for the brain to remould itself based on demand, in this case navigation, showing the importance of nurture.

A growing body of research speaking to the cross-pollination of environmental factors and cognitive processes, has studied the role of epigenetics in demonstrating how nurture can affect our behaviour and development. This refers to the mechanisms by which various life experiences can contribute to heritable alterations in the expression of genes while preserving DNA sequences, contributing to our understanding of psychopathology. Research has explored the role of epigenetics in long-term psychological resilience, in which protective environmental factors, such as parental care, and positive factors, like diet and exercise, may all promote better responses to experienced adversities.