Individual Differences

1. Discuss to which these factors and socio cultural experiences influence individual differences. Your discussion should relate to theories of child development.

1.0 Introduction of individual differences

Individual differences mean the ways in which people differ from each other. Individuals have different abilities, personalities, learning experiences and attitudes. Different child have different factors and socio cultural experiences that will influence the individual differences. In this world, there are no two persons are born exactly alike. Each of us must be differs from the other especially in terms of thinking, feeling and behavior.

1.1 Factors affected individual differences

Individual differences occur due to interaction of genetic and environmental factors.

1.1.1 Genetic

When we were born, we  inherit certain characteristics from our parents through genetic codes. We share similarities with our parents in many aspects of physical attributes like height, color of eyes, shape of nose and others. Other than that, we also inherit certain cognitive, emotional and other characteristics from our parents such as intellectual competence, love for sport, and creativity. However, four main characteristic of genetic aspects that affected child development are:

• Physical- including hair colour, skin colour, type of blood and the colour of eyes. For example, a blonde coloured hair mommy will have blonde coloured hair babies too.
• Physiology- level of the child’s health. It means that a healthy parents will have healthy children. However, in some cases, there are disease like diabetes and high blood pressure from         the parents can affected the child’s level of health.
• Manners- the introvert and extrovert attitude of the child. Extrovert personality refers to the attitude of an active, aggressive and socialized individual, whereas the introvert personality refers to one who is passive, emotional, quiet, shy and less socialized.
• Mental- intelligent of an individual. An intelligent mommy can give birth to an intelligent child. The intelligent genetic from the mother goes to her child.

1.1.2 Environment

Environment is an outside force that can affected an individual’s attitude. It refers to experiences of the child when he or she interacts with other individual at home, school or society. The environment is responsible as how we are grown, the way our parents treat us, the type of education that we get, what we learn from people around us, books, cultural practices, peers, teachers and media. All these aspects refer to environment which help in developing our potentials. Environment, by providing models and other opportunities, helps us to develop many traits and skills. Our inheritance alone cannot decide what we become but our environment also contributes. Surrounding environment differ from one person to another person. It sets limits or defines a range by offering different opportunities. That is why the pattern of development of each of us is different from others.

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