Biography

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is a New Zealand innovation award winner, social entrepreneur and holds a number of company directorships. He has gained success through a variety of ventures, encompassing education, ethnic communications, and international distribution of technology. Travis dropped out of high school, saying a system that measured memory rather than critical thinking and application of knowledge did not work for him. He gained a non-traditional education consisting of mentoring from several of New Zealand’s finest business leaders and learning from a number of the best minds on the planet, including lessons from Peter Drucker, Al Reis, Jack Trout, Richard Branson, Jim Collins, Dale Carnegie, Anthony Robbins, and Jack Welch. Travis was born into poverty in Cannons Creek, Wellington. He experienced considerable hardship during his childhood, including living in an overcrowded house with a couch as a bed, in a benefit-dependant family, having to grow their own food as a result of poverty, and surrounded by a multitude of other social ills. These experiences taught him to be self sufficient through hard work and are why he is motivated to help others.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Preschoolers and Nature vs. Nurture

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With affection and humour, parents, caregivers and childcare experts discuss raising the young jungle animals known as preschoolers.

The topic: Preschoolers and Nature vs. Nurture


Nature endows us with inborn abilities and traits; nurture takes these genetic tendencies and molds them as we learn and mature.

Researchers agree that the link between a gene and a behavior is not the same as cause and effect. While a gene may increase the likelihood that you'll behave in a particular way, it does not make people do things. Which means that we still get to choose who we'll be when we grow up.


Question: What would be your favourite example to illustrate nature via nurture?
Answer: My favourite is a study from Dunedin, New Zealand, conducted between 1972 and 1973. Researcher Terrie Moffitt and her colleagues investigated differences in the promoter (or 'switch') region of the brain's serotonin transporter gene which can affect the way people react to stressful life events – things like divorce or bereavement. (Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, a chemical 'messenger' that allows communication between nerve cells.)
The study found that people with one or two copies of the short version of the serotonin promoter showed more symptoms of depression following at least three stressful life events than people with two copies of the long version. For one or two events there was no difference.
In other words, your genome does not make you depressed, but makes you more susceptible to environmental pressures; in this case it makes you more likely to be depressed when you suffer several external setbacks. And that has to be how things like intelligence are determined. A clever person is not born clever, they're born more able to take in teaching, they're born capable of learning.
So it's not a gene for intelligence, it's a gene for learning. A tennis player or scholar may not have been much better at tennis or study to start with, but was innately drawn to doing a lot of tennis or study and practice that made him or her perfect. So the nature sought out the nurture.

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