Impact of Adversity on Early Life Development

Impact of Adversity on Early Life Development

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Adversity during childhood can help someone build persistence and self-control a new study suggests, with implications for nature vs. nurture arguments. Researchers at the University of Toronto found that an interaction between biology and life experience work to alter human development. They published the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

“Biologists used to think that our differences are pre-programmed in our genes, while psychologists argued that babies are born with a blank slate and their experience writes on it to shape them into the adults they become.” Instead, the important question to be asking is, ‘How is our experience in early life getting embedded in our biology?'” said Marla Sokolowski of the University of Toronto.