Distinguish between experience-expectant and experience-dependent development. Then explain how "enriched" environments affect each of these developmental patterns

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Experience-expectant development is associated with the universal experiences and activities of a species such as
those involving language functions and hand-eye coordination. In this type of development, extra synapses form
and are later pruned according to the organism's experiences. In other words, the organism's brain is "hardwired" to
expect these experiences to occur at some point during development. In contrast, experience-dependent
development is associated with specific rather than universal experiences and activities. In this type of
development, each member of the species grows individualized circuits of synapses that code or control its own
unique experiences (e.g., playing the bassoon or surfboarding). Experiments with rats indicate that enriched
environments stimulate experience-expectant development in younger rats (i.e., the enriched environment leads to
a decrease in synapses through synaptic pruning) and experience-dependent development in adult rats (i.e., the
enriched environment leads to an increase in synapses).