The persistence of dichotomies in the study of behavioral development

Abstract

The inadequacies of dichotomous views of behavioral development that oppose learned and innate behavior, or genetic and environmental determinants of behavior, have long been recognized. However, they continue to exert a powerful influence on current thinking about development, often by way of metaphors that simply recast these old ideas in a more modern technical vocabulary. The idea that the information for behavior can be attributed to either genetic or environmental sources was originated by Lorenz and provides the basis for many current dichotomous accounts of behavioral development. Lorenz's "sources of information" metaphor for development is fundamentally flawed, however, as are those more recent accounts that are based on it. The alternative interactionist account of development, most clearly articulated by Lehrman, is a far more powerful and coherent theoretical framework for development, but it has not been broadly assimilated into psychology and continues to be widely misunderstood. In particular, the interactionist account does not involve a radical environmentalism, does not attribute all behavior to the effects of learning, and does not interpret development as a gene-environment interaction. The attractive simplicity of dichotomous thinking encourages its continued application to the study of development despite the fact that it is clearly inadequate to the complexities of developmental analysis.

Genes, interactions, and the development of behavior.

“…Our analysis extends ideas proposed in earlier articles (Johnston, 1987(Johnston, , 1988 and builds on work done by other developmental theorists working within a framework usually identified as interactionism or developmental systems theory. From this perspective, genes appear as one among many contributors to a complex network of interactions, involving molecular, cellular, physiological, behavioral, and environmental components (Bateson & Martin, 2000;Gottlieb, 1996).…”

“…Any account of genetic influences on behavior must include an analysis of the different "causal pathway[s] through which the gene influences the phenotype" (McClearn, et al, 1991, p. 223). Although the techniques of behavioral genetic analysis permit the identification of individual genes with significant effects on behavior (Wahlsten, 1999), understanding how genes influence behavior requires an analysis of the various processes underlying behavioral changes (Gottlieb, 1995).Our analysis extends ideas proposed in earlier articles (Johnston, 1987(Johnston, , 1988 and builds on work done by other developmental theorists working within a framework usually identified as interactionism or developmental systems theory. From this perspective, genes appear as one among many contributors to a complex network of interactions, involving molecular, cellular, physiological, behavioral, and environmental components (Bateson & Martin, 2000;Gottlieb, 1996).…”

“…This point is very important because the model must recognize that genes are biologically active molecules, not mysterious carriers of information or repositories of plans and blueprints. As pointed out by Johnston (1987) and Nijhout (1990), among others, such metaphorical discussion about genes has not provided much understanding of their contributions to development (see also Keller, 1994;Oyama, 2000;Pfaff, 1997). Figure 2 shows a first stage in this unpacking, indicating that gene activity directly and reciprocally affects protein synthesis and that sensory stimulation directly and reciprocally affects patterned neural activity.…”

Three Myths from the Language Acquisition Literature

“…More recently, the partitioning of nature and nurture has been eschewed and, in its place, interactionism has become the doctrine professed by many developmentalists (e.g., Anastasi, 1958;Johnston, 1987Johnston, , 1988Johnston, , 2002Moore, 2001) within the life sciences. According to Anastasi, efforts to determine the relative contributions of nature and nurture have not been successful.…”

“…Differing, often competing, definitions of this term have been offered (for discussion, see Johnston, 1987;Moore, 2001;Oyama, 1985Oyama, , 2001), but one widely held view is that interactionism connotes at least two principal claims. First is the claim that ''all traits reflect the necessary contributions of both genetic and environmental factors'' (Moore,p.…”