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Nature Vs. Nurture Argument

800 Words4 Pages

Since the dawn of psychology, the nature vs. nurture argument has been outstandingly prevalent in the study humankind, and the study other animals. The phrase nature vs nurture relates to the relative importance of an individual 's innate qualities, compared to an individual 's personal experiences and how either of these affect individual differences, especially in behavioral traits. Project Nim was an experiment conducted on a chimpanzee to discover whether he could learn and comprehend human sign language. Started on November 19th, 1973, the experiment was led by Herbert S. Terrace of Columbia University. The Experiment lasted nearly 4 years, however, even though Nim learned 125 signs, a plethora of violent incidents and particularly one final incident in 1977 concluded the experiment. Nonetheless, Nim’s ability to understand and use information, and even his violence are far more related to his nurture, not his nature. Nim was not born violent, or able to understand signs. It was his upbringing that caused act as he did. Stephanie LaFarge was the first assigned to care for Nim. Though she treated him like a human child, she completely and utterly spoiled him. When Nim was an infant she barely taught him signs or proper behavior. Stephanie never even recorded data for the experiment. Of the many poor …show more content…

This is clear because around the same time, 1974 to be exact, another ape experiment of the same nature was conducted. A Stanford student named Penny Patterson took on the task of teaching a Koko the gorilla sign language. Penny has been Koko’s caretaker to this date, a total 41 years, and over that time Koko has never harmed anyone. Koko also knows over 1,000 signs in American sign language. Penny never abandoned Koko and brought her up very well. Contrary to Nim, Koko was nurtured well. If Nim has been treated the same way as Koko, perhaps he wouldn’t have been so aggressive, angry and

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