Genetics And Evolution Of Behavior - 1317 Words

GENETICS AND EVOLUTION OF BEHAVIOR All of our cells contain a nucleus, which includes chromosomes. Sections along each chromosome called genes control the chemical reactions that control development. Genes that are homozygous are the same, and genes that are heterozygous are different. A single copy of a dominant gene is sufficient to produce its effect, and a recessive gene only appears if the dominant gene is absent. A cohort effect is when a person tries to compare people from different generations. It must be considered because you cannot really compare people born 50 years apart; the results would be too messed up. Heritability is a guess of the variance within a population that is due to heredity. Researches compare heritability†¦show more content†¦Although ones lead to the other, it is an indirect influence. During prenatal development a human stats as a zygote, a fertilized egg. By 6 weeks, the brain is mature enough to produce the first movements. By 8 weeks after conception, the baby is a fetus. By the 36th week, the baby can turn his or her head and eyes in response to sounds and can alternate between walking and sleeping. Mothers who don’t eat well and/or use alcohol and drugs tend to have low birth weight and later problems. The lower the birth rate, the less cognitive ability the baby will have when its older this correlates with brain development. Piaget said that a child’s development is not an accumulation of experience or maturational unfolding. It’s when the child constructs new A schema is an organized way of interacting with objects in the world. Assimilation is applying old schemata to new objects or problems while accommodation is modifying old schemata to fit new objects or problems. The four stages according to Piaget are the sensorimotor stage (from birth to almost 2 years old), the preoperational stage (from just before 2 years to almost 7 years), the concrete operations stage (from 7 to 11 years), and the formal operations stage (11 years onward). The first stage is the sensorimotor stage because at this age behavior is mostly simple motor responses to sensory stimuli. Infants respond only to what they see and hear at