ive minds and take in whatever we can give them (Baby, 1999). The debate over whether nature or nurture is more important - whether a baby's innate capacity to learn is more important than the home environment - hasn't been settled, but Hirsh-Pasek believes strongly that the child is ready to make sense of many different kind was of stimulation and the more parents and caregivers interact with the infant, the better. Very young children are easily able to learn two or three languages when they can do little else for themselves. It depends on the interaction they have with others: their nurturing.
One example which underscores the importance of nurturing is that of feral children (The Nature, 2005). Feral children cannot walk, talk or socialize. They cannot show empathy for others, and have no sense of property or possessions. They are unaware of the needs and desires of others. They don't even identify themselves as human. Feral children strongly suggest that our nurturing is entirely responsible for the development of language and other human traits such as a sense of morality, feelings of empathy, the concept of possessions, and even the identity of being human. This suggests that what happens in early childhood has profound effects on the neurological development of the brain.
This is reinforced by Canadian studies with rats which have demonstrated that nurturing enhances neural connections in the brain and improves both memory and learning of certain tasks (Tracey, 2000). Rats were divided into two groups: one group received a high level of care from their mothers, such as stroking and grooming, while the other group received less attentive care from their mothers. The offspring which received the most attention were better at performing tasks such as finding a platform in a swimming maze.
Research Michael Meaney says, "Activity of the genes is always influenced by the environment...and the most important...