Education Hour

From Empty Vessel to Active Agent: Evolving Views of Child Development

What shapes a child’s personality? The ancient Greek physician Galen stated that children take on their personalities from humors and bile. Today, we have swapped in the words neurotransmitters and hormones in the long-running debate of “nature versus nurture.” In this interactive discussion, we will look at different personalities and social behaviors in children and explore the forces that shape the child, even prior to their first gasps of air (you knit me together in my mother’s womb). Although the nurture vs. nature dispute is usually answered with “It’s Both”, there is still a lively debate about how and when an individual child is shaped by the traits he or she carries and the environment that is there to greet them.

Koraly Pérez-Edgar is a Liberal Arts Professor at Penn State University. Her research examines the interplay between temperament and the environment on socioemotional development, focusing on neural and attention mechanisms. She has attended St. Andrew’s since 2011.