Adding to the complexity of the nature-nurture interaction, children's genes lead to their eliciting different treatment from other people, which influences their cognitive development. Children's contributions to their own cognitive development grow larger as they grow older (Scarr & McCartney, 1983). The cognitive approach takes an interactionist view of the debate as it argues that our behavior is influenced by learning and experience (nurture), but also by some of our brains' innate capacities as information processors e.g. language acquisition (nature). Nature is what we think of as pre-wiring and is influenced by genetic inheritance and other biological factors. Nurture is generally taken as the influence of external factors after conception, e.g., the product of exposure, life experiences and learning on an individual.
One's personality is shaped by a combination of nature (genetic) and nurture (environmental) influences. Recent studies conducted among birds have demonstrated that environment plays a bigger role in forming personality than genetics, but obviously there are differences when translating these results to humans. They found that foster parents have a greater influence on the personalities of fostered offspring than the genes inherited from birth parents. The nature-nurture debate is concerned with the relative contribution that both influences make to human behavior, such as personality, cognitive traits, temperament and psychopathology.
