In chapter 8 (pg 131), Shenk describes how human babies are special. He said that what makes us special is that we are born not so intelligent but we are designed to change our minds when faced with data. He says that intelligence is not fixed but waiting to be develped and same for athletic prowess and musical ability. If human babies have ability to develop their intelligent, how come some people that good at developing their intelligent eventhough they are in same environment?
Kitae Seong (skt07071994@hotmail.com)
Human intelligence is special because of our ability to change and make choices in our development. However, environmental factors do play a huge role in deciding whether someone develops a certain skill or talent. But no matter what there is no way that two people in the same environment will develop the same level of talents and intelligence. We can see this through various twin studies. On page 83 in The Genius in All of Us we see wide variety in personality and even in physical appearance between sets of twins who grew up in the same household and obviously have the same genetic code. Then why does one twin become better at a certain activity than the other? Why does one twin do better at school than the other? Shouldn’t they be similar because they share the same cultural, financial, and social background? However, that is not the case. Slight differences in environmental factors can affect an individual enormously. The people you hang out with and the things you are exposed to in early developmental stages of life play a huge role in what you become. Epigenetics plays a role in this as well. Certain outside aspects trigger epigenomes to activate and modify and mutate DNA genetic coding. (Campbell, 359) Because of this, the slightest difference in environments can cause one twin to express a motivation for academic pursuit over the other.
ReplyDeleteUltimate obtaining intelligence is a process. The key of becoming smarter is to work hard and practice. Even if you are in the same environment and have the same genetic code, you still develop different personalities. These personality differences would affect your motivation to work at some skill or activity. That is why twins have different interests and strengths and personalities. They hang out with different people and their epigenomes might respond to the same environmental cues very differently, causing them to have great differences in behavior. All human babies are able to develop their intelligence, but remember there are many different types of intelligence and each person has a unique way of developing unique to themselves. There is also much research that shows that the early stages of life and how you are raised and brought up in those early days play a huge difference in differentiating twins as well. That also applies to the rest of us, meaning that how are parents raise us and nurture us in the beginning determines our IQ scores more than what is given to us genetically.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/848859
Ellen Zhou (ellenzhou2006@gmail.com)