This essay will discuss the Nature versus Nurture debate, and how twin and adoption studies have influenced this debate. This essay will explain how, over time, adoption and twinning studies have helped shift this debate toward understanding the impact of nature and nurture on development. Adoption studies have played a vital role in the hereditary (nature) aspect of this debate and the twin studies will show how environment (nurture) still plays an important role in development. Further discussion on how nature and nurture together play a vital role in human development. The nature versus nurture debate, also called heredity versus environment or nativism versus empiricism, is one of the most fundamental and oldest theoretical questions in psychology (Bee, 2000). . Nature is understood as the hereditary information established by parents at the time of conception – biological data (Berk, 2010) and nurture can be defined as “the complex forces of the physical and social world that influence our biological makeup and our psychological experiences. before and after birth (Berk, 2010 p.7). The main question is essentially whether a child's development is directed by a model constructed at birth or whether it is formed by experiences after birth. Historically, this debate was called Nature or Culture, represented by Plato and René Descartes, who both asserted that thoughts and development are innate (Bee, 2000). Opposing this argument was the philosopher John Locke, who insisted that at birth the mind is simply a blank slate – Latin for “a blank slate” waiting to be written by experience. Locke therefore argued that, given different experiences, humans would have different characters (Hayes). , 2011). S...... middle of paper ......te in which these factors were once rivals. This essay provided evidence that now nature and nurture are powerful contributing factors to a person's development. This notion has been supported by the use of both adoption studies and twin studies. Through adoption studies, it was found that the child's IQ scores helped determine that genetics played an important role in intelligence, and through twin studies, it was found that Asthma, although a genetically inherited environment, still plays an important role in the development of asthma. These two studies have contributed greatly to the debate between nature and nurture, because they demonstrate that genetics and environment play an important role. This further allows researchers to focus on the extent to which genetics and/or environment are involved in development, rather than purely debating nature or nurture..