The topic under analysis is fetal alcohol syndrome and its nature, whether it belongs to the innate or instinctive features of a human. The thing is that the basic stem of the discussion is based on the number of controversial arguments and facts that cannot prove or characteristic that might help to determine the side, to which fetal alcohol syndrome belongs. The first is that fetal alcohol syndrome can be determined as innate as people have it as an inseparable feature that will follow a person through all his/her life. Fetal syndrome brings a number of changes into person’s normal life and makes the life different from what it could have been in case a person was born without this syndrome.
As for the instinctive part – fetal alcohol syndrome can also be referred to it with the same number of proofs as innate characteristics. This happens due to the fact that the syndrome as an essential part of a person’s characteristics interferes in his/her acceptance of the world, changes the reaction of a person to everything and to all the situations that happen in his or her everyday life. The reaction can be different from normal variants as well as it also can be slower, more aggressive, and wrong. A person with fetal alcohol syndrome can have a bit wrong visualizing of the world and his or her instincts turn out to be totally different from those of normal people.
As for the question about the relation of this topic to the course material, the topic about fetal alcohol syndrome is a good theme as it presents good and free space for discussion and sets forth the most problematic features that characterize this negative change in a human organism due to the wrong parental behavior. Another thing is that this topic can also be used as a psychological question as it is good for provoking interesting thoughts about possible solutions and may cause a number of useful discussions on the ways of changing the wrong feature and ways of therapies that can help the person to fight negative features that ruin that person’s life due to the presence of fetal alcohol syndrome in his or her life (Armstrong, 2003).
The most important thing to remember during discussion is that fetal alcohol syndrome is the state of health that will be hurting the person through all the life and as opposed to the innate or instinct features it will never help the person know how to act or what to do in this or that life situation. The person with fetal syndrome will know some things about life but this will not make the life easier, on the contrary, the life of such person will be hundreds of times more difficult than of the other person without it.
Children with this syndrome are usually stunted and have disorders with gaining weight. They have characteristic facial features – facial anomalies, besides they may have problems with hearing and vision, which cases a number of problems and some kids can understand basic things worse. They have problems with memory and attention accompanied by learning difficulties at school. They are worse at control of their emotions and their behavior; they may need special education teachers and can be decided to be educated with the help of special teaching in special schools (Perry, Williams, & Mortenson, 2002). Such people are often not aware of the consequences of their actions and thus they can commit antisocial acts and even be in conflict with the law. Often they experience the lifelong need of social protection and medical support. Experts have concluded that during pregnancy, women should completely abstain from alcohol. If a woman takes alcohol during pregnancy, she should stop drinking as soon as possible. Health care workers and other specialists play an important role in educating the public and organizing prevention of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. However, the list of disorders, as well as a chance for every mother to have a healthy child by stopping to have alcoholic drinks, makes the discussion unsupported (O’Malley, 2007). The thing is that if a person can change it, this becomes neither innate nor instinctive feature but the one that can be inherited due to the side actions that cannot be controlled by the future baby but can be prevented by the mother. The thing is that whether it is possible to call the fetal alcohol syndrome as the one that might not be given to a child in case of positive decision of its parents, while any innate or instinctive behavior is given to all representatives of human race (Wolraich, 2003).
The topic has a direct connection with the course of developmental psychology and gives food for discussion. However, it is rather difficult to determine the exact answer to the question whether fetal alcohol syndrome belongs to innate or instinctive features. Moreover, in order to have the most reasonable and reliable answer, there should take place a number of experiments. The most important thing is that experiments have to be directed to determining the percentage of influence of fetal syndrome on the normal reaction of a person on the ordinary life situations and detecting possible deviations from reaction of people that do not have such syndrome. The example of such experiments may include creation of a series of life situations that can be considered ordinary life situations like meeting of different people, solving easy problems that are characteristic for everyday life, finding the best solutions to different cases or finding the right place for the thing in the house. Some of the experiments can include testing and answering to a number of easy questions that are meant to be the test employment questions. The results of the test group actions and their answers can be easily compared to those of a control group that will also be faced with the same set of questions, problems and tests to be solved during the experiment.
Thus, in general, the problem of the fetal alcohol syndrome nature and its characteristic is questionable and can be answered differently from various points of view. No matter what the answer can be – the best solution lies in the set of logical and systematic experiments that can be directed to detection of the nature of the syndrome and its possible variants of influence upon a person. The only thing that can be proved without any experiments is that fetal alcohol syndrome is neither innate nor instinctive as it is a negative feature that causes a lot of inconveniences to a person’s life. At the same time, innate and instinctive features are directed onto making life of humans easier and help them find the best decisions in a maximum shortest period of time. Fetal alcohol syndrome mostly prevents people from doing anything right or correct, as well as it ruins the brain of a person to such extent that it becomes hard to control some actions and people with this syndrome become very slow in the question of making decisions and solving some easy tasks as well as answering easy questions. Practice and scientific attitude to the problem of solving this task will make it possible to find answers to the above questions easier and make them more professional.
References
Armstrong, E. M. (2003). Conceiving risk, bearing responsibility: Fetal alcohol syndrome and the diagnosis of moral disorder. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
O'Malley, K. D. (2007). ADHD and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). New York: Nova Science Publishers.
Perry, C. L., Williams. C. L., & Mortenson, S. V. (2002). Class action: A high school alcohol use prevention curriculum. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (U.S.) Center City, Minn.: Hazelden.
Wolraich, M. (2003). Disorders of development and learning. Hamilton, Ont.: BC Decker Inc.