Infancy

12 Key excerpts on "Infancy"

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  Infancy

  The Basics

  • Marc H. Bornstein, Martha E. Arterberry(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  1 Infancy

  DOI: 10.4324/9781003172802-1

  (Courtesy of M. H. Bornstein).

  Introduction

  By definition, Infancy is the period of life between birth and the emergence of language roughly one and one-half to two years later. Infancy thus encompasses only a small fraction of the average person’s life expectancy, and readers may therefore wonder why we have written a whole book about so brief a period of the lifespan, and why philosophers, psychologists, and physicians have paid so much attention to Infancy. Three broad reasons traditionally answer that curiosity and motivate studying Infancy scientifically: They are philosophical and scientific questions, parental investment, and applied concerns. To them, we add a fourth reason: Infants are fascinating, and we hope you will agree with the value of all four by the time you conclude reading this book.

  Infants rely on others to meet all their survival, mental, social, and emotional needs. The very word Infancy derives from what must be the most salient characteristic of the first year or so of life, infants’ inability to speak (the Latin in+fans, literally means “non-speaker”). Infants cannot even make their state and basic needs (never mind their wishes and dreams) clearly known to their caregivers. Parents are faced moment-to-moment with trying to understand and respond to each cry or vocalization. Is that cry I want to eat, I want to sleep, I want to be held, or I want to play? For parents, meeting their infants’ needs can be exhilarating when they are successful and excruciating when they fail. For their part, infants find themselves wanting something – to eat or sleep, to be held or play – without being able simply to say so. Saving the day, even within this nonverbal period, infants develop many ways to help their parents understand and respond appropriately to their needs.

  In spite of its brevity, development in Infancy is dramatic and

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  Child Development

  Understanding A Cultural Perspective

  • Martin J. Packer(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  [I]t was the lengthening of Infancy which ages ago gradually converted our forefathers from brute creatures into human creatures. It is babyhood that has made man what he is. The simple unaided operation of natural selection could never have resulted in the origination of the human race … In order to bring about that wonderful event, the Creation of Man, natural selection had to call in the aid of other agencies, and the chief of these agencies was the gradual lengthening of babyhood. (Fiske, 1909[1871], p. 1)

  Introduction

  The human newborn leaves the womb and enters an environment that has been shaped and worked over by previous generations of her community. She has inherited the genetic information needed to grow a skilled, agile, relatively graceful body with a big brain and a large cortex. She has also inherited the artifacts created by her predecessors in the community, which are being used in such a manner as to meet her present and future needs. However, she herself has yet to acquire the ability to employ these artifacts appropriately. We saw in the previous chapter that the human newborn leaves the womb completely dependent on other people, and at the same time sensitively attuned to them: to their faces and voices, for example. She is relatively immature compared with the young of other species, and she will take a comparatively long time to grow to adulthood.

  Infancy—from a Latin word meaning one who does not speak—is widely, though not universally, considered a distinct stage of development that extends from birth until approximately 1 year of age. In some cultures, and in some psychological theories of development (such as Piaget’s), Infancy is considered to extend to 2.5 years of age, but I will be describing a transition that occurs towards the end of the first year of life, when the infant begins to walk and talk, as the end of this first developmental stage.

  The proposal that the immaturity and duration of Infancy are related to the qualitative difference between humans and other animals has been around for a long time. For example, the American philosopher John Fiske (1842–1901), whom Charles Darwin called a lucid expositor and thinker about evolution, made precisely this proposal in 1871. Human evolution has arranged human Infancy, said Fiske, so that the child is “born with the germs of many complex capacities which were reserved to be unfolded and enhanced or checked and stifled by the incidents of personal experience in each individual.” He went on to explain, “It is not that our inherited tendencies and aptitudes are not still the main thing. It is only that we have at last acquired great power to modify them by training, so that progress may go on with ever-increasing sureness and rapidity.”

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  Psychology and its Bearing on Education

  • C.W. Valentine(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter XXXIDevelopment in Infancy

  In the first chapter I contended for some study of general and adult psychology before special studies of educational applications and of child psychology. These latter can most profitably be undertaken when the fundamental capacities and qualities of the mind have been explored qualitatively, and where possible quantitatively. Later on, however, some direct study of the various stages of childhood and adolescence is important for the teacher. Incidentally, the study of Infancy gives opportunities for the elementary mental functions to be observed in their earliest forms, and the ultimate innate impulses in greater isolation than they can be found later.

  Recent emphasis on the importance of Infancy . Several developments in the last few decades have called public attention to the special importance of the study of early childhood. One has been the attempt to diagnose mental deficiency in the earliest months of life.1 Another has been the emphasis of the psychoanalysts and others on the supreme importance of the first years as determinants of future character.2 Here there has been, I think, considerable exaggeration. Thus Freud stated that cthe little human being is frequently a finished product in his fourth or fifth year’.3 Adler went so far as to say that ‘one can determine how a child stands in relation to life a few months after his birth’.4

  It is not my wish to underestimate the importance of the first few years of life, but rather to stress it. No advantage, however, is gained by exaggeration; and we cannot state, on the evidence we have before us, that the first four or five years of life are more important than, say, the years of five to ten, or of adolescence. What exactly is meant by the assertion if it is made? It is rather like saying that the safety of a house-roof depends more upon the foundations than it does on the stability of the walls of the first or second stories. All stages of development, in fact, are important. The Freudians have certainly shown that in many cases the experiences of the earliest years may continue to exert a considerable influence on the life and character of the child when he grows up, though he may have forgotten those experiences. It may also be admitted that if bad social relationships – say with parents – are set up in the first few years, those relations may be fixated so that the parents’ efforts later on to change them may be futile.

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  Companion Encyclopedia of Psychology

  Volume Two

  • Andrew M. Colman(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  8DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY  

  INTRODUCTION

     

  This section cuts across the others inasmuch as it is concerned with the development, across the lifespan from birth to old age, of all aspects of behaviour and mental experience dealt with in the other sections, including biological aspects of behaviour (section 2), sensation and perception (section 3), cognition (section 4), learning and skills (section 5), emotion and motivation (section 6), individual differences and personality (section 7), social behaviour (section 9), and psychopathology (section 10). The crossreferences are too numerous to list exhaustively, because this section is conceptually parasitic on most of the others rather than being concerned with its own class of behavioural or mental phenomena.

  Developmental psychology is strongly influenced by the work of the Swiss psychologist, philosopher, and biologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980). Piaget’s main concern was the development of thinking, but his ideas, though highly controversial, pervade almost all areas of developmental psychology, and aspects of his work are discussed in every chapter in this section. There is no other major branch of psychological research that is so strongly influenced by the writings of a single individual.

  Chapter 8.1 by George Butterworth is on Infancy. Infancy (whose Latin roots mean “not speaking”) is usually taken in developmental psychology to denote the period between birth and the acquisition of language, that is, approximately the first 18 months of life. This often causes confusion, because in everyday usage the word is often used loosely to include pre-school children up to 6 or 7 years of age. Butterworth discusses the development during Infancy — the first 18 months — of perception, skilled behaviour, knowledge of physical objects and people, and language.

  In chapter 8.2

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  21st Century Psychology: A Reference Handbook

  • Stephen F. Davis, William Buskist, Stephen F. Davis, William F. Buskist(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  Although aspects of temperament may be altered by experiences, temperamental characteristics like-wise influence the transactions one has with other humans and one’s larger society. Finally, it is during Infancy that a seemingly asocial being bonds with his or her caregivers and purportedly develops subconscious representations of human relationships. The emergence of these cognitive models for human social interaction is hardly gradual. Although such representations are changeable during this initial life phase, they become increasingly inflexible, with the result having a potentially lasting influence, for better or worse, on one’s social functioning. In total, the scope and rate of transformations—physical, cognitive, psychosocial—that occur during the prenatal period and Infancy are often astounding to caregivers and researchers alike. Nonetheless, the full array of abilities, changes, and associated issues and aberrations during each of these episodes of human life is not wholly documented. Likewise, the underlying mechanisms of change, as well as the alterations to change due to experience, are not pre-cisely understood, nor are the degree and means to which these first months and years of human life ultimately influ-ence the future functioning of the individual as a child and adult. Thus, despite our sizable knowledge base, investi-gators fascinated with young humans still have plenty of questions that inspire continued research. REFERENCES AND FURTHER READINGS Aguiar, A., & Baillargeon, R. (1998). Eight-and-a-half-month-old infants’ reasoning about containment events. Child Development, 69, 66–65. Ainsworth, M. D. S. (197). Attachment and dependency: A comparison. In J. L. Gewirtz (Ed.), Attachment and depen-dency. Washington, DC: V. H. Winston and Sons. Ainsworth, M. D. S. (197). The development of infant-mother attachment. In B. M. Caldwell & H. N. Ricciuti (Eds.), Review of child development research (Vol. ).

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  The Infant’s World

  • Philippe Rochat, Philippe ROCHAT(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Harvard University Press

    (Publisher)

  1 f a c t s o f i n f a n c y Our understanding of the infant world is rapidly emerg-ing from prolonged darkness. After centuries of oversight and ne-glect in the study of modern psychology, infants are finally being considered a major source of scientific enlightenment regarding the origins of the human mind. Infants are now systematically scruti-nized for the way they develop, perceive, act, think, feel, and know. But this is only a recent fact. The Long Neglect of Infancy When modern psychology emerged in the late nineteenth century as a specialized discipline in which the scientific method was used to study how the mind works, pioneer psychologists did not consider children, particularly infants, as deserving much scientific attention. Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), who established the first experi-mental psychology laboratory in Leipzig, Germany, considered that infants could not help in the understanding of the adult mind be-cause of the unpredictable, erratic nature of their behavior. In his 1897 Outlines of Psychology he wrote, “The results of experiments which have been tried on very young children must be regarded as purely chance results, wholly untrustworthy on account of the great number of sources of error. For this reason, it is an error to hold, as is sometimes held, that the mental life of adults can never be fully understood except through the analysis of the child’s mind” (Eng. trans. 1907, cited by Kessen 1965). Experimental psychologists like Wundt believed infant study to be irrelevant because the experimental method that they used (sys-tematic introspection) could not work with young children, who cannot report and reflect on their own experiences. It took decades for developmental psychology and in particular Infancy research to gain recognition in mainstream experimental psychology. As a case in point, the first specialized scientific journal on the subject, Infant Behavior and Development, was founded by Lewis P.

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  Child, Adolescent and Family Development

  • Phillip T. Slee, Marilyn Campbell, Barbara Spears(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  There is a lack of any scientific evidence to support Freudian notions of the impact of early childhood experiences on later development in a simple, direct, causal way. The emergence of a lifespan perspective in human development now casts real doubts on the idea of the first three years being a ‘critical period’. It is better under-stood that we grow and develop all of our lives. At certain times in our lives across the lifespan we face important developmental tasks. For example, in Infancy acquiring a language is one such task; in early childhood learning to read and write is important; during adolescence it can be developing a sense of who one is; while in early adult-hood the emergence of a vocation and perhaps finding a partner is an important task, and so on. During these life stages, certain conditions promote optimal development. For example, in the early years good maternal and infant health, sound nourishment, love and care contribute to later development. Certainly there is scientific evidence that for some children particular problems in early life continue into later years. However, other children are quite resilient in the face of adversity. What this suggests is that a combination of childhood experiences, parenting practices and individual child char-acteristics probably best accounts for optimal development. As Schaffer ( 2000 ) has noted, common folk sayings such as ‘As the twig is bent the tree’s inclined’ express the belief that children at the beginning of life are more malleable than at any period later on, that initially they can absorb whatever experiences they are exposed to and retain their effects indefinitely, and that the clues to later personality formation are therefore to be found primarily in those first encounters of the child with his/her environment (p. 5).

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  Developmental Research Methods

  • Scott A. Miller(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 12 Infancy

  In the final four chapters we turn from general principles of research to specific research topics in developmental psychology. The organization is partly chronological and partly topical. The section begins with a chapter on Infancy and concludes with a chapter on aging. In between are chapters devoted to cognitive development and social development. Untidy though this chronological-topical division may seem, it is in fact typical of the field. Some developmental psychologists identify themselves primarily in terms of age group studied, and others identify themselves primarily in terms of topic. Similarly, some methodological issues are peculiar to the study of particular age groups, and others are more closely linked to particular topics.

  The discussion of Infancy is divided into two broad sections. We begin by considering some of the general issues involved in doing research with babies. For the most part these issues consist of specific applications of points discussed in the opening chapters of the book. As we will see, however, some methodological challenges are especially acute for the researcher who decides to study infants. One text on Infancy provides a succinct summary of the challenges:

  Infants are notoriously uncooperative, are not motivated to perform for researchers, may be unable either to understand or to answer questions unambiguously and reliably, have limited attention spans and limited response repertoires, and show variability in most measures of performance. (Lamb, Bornstein, & Teti, 2002, p. 88)

  The second section is devoted to particular kinds of Infancy research. The coverage of topics is necessarily selective, as indeed it is throughout the next four chapters. It is possible, however, to highlight some of the most important kinds of infant study.

  General Issues

  Sampling

  We begin with one of the basic steps in research identified in Chapter 1 : getting research participants. It was suggested in Chapter 1

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  Human Growth and Development Across the Lifespan

  Applications for Counselors

  • David Capuzzi, Mark D. Stauffer, David Capuzzi, Mark D. Stauffer(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Part 2 Birth and Infancy Passage contains an image

  Chapter 5 Birth and Infancy: Physical and Cognitive Development

  Christie Jenkins, Kerrie R. Fineran, and Amber Lange

  Introduction

  For the past 6 years, I have watched my twin daughters grow and develop at a rapid pace. It is fascinating to watch both of them achieve milestones at different paces in completely different ways. How can two children split from the same egg be so different? As the information progresses through the chapter, it will become clear how multiple factors impact the physical and cognitive development of children.

  This chapter begins by exploring physical growth and advancements in motor dexterity. It is important to look at not only the genetic components of growth but also the environmental factors that can help or hinder progress. The intricacies of language development in early childhood will be explored. The next step is to investigate early childhood cognition through the lens of Piaget and Vygotsky. The chapter ends by looking at how information is stored and processed. This will happen through the unique perspective of a counselor.

  Physical Development

  Physical development refers to the organic changes that occur in children as they mature. Some of the imperative characteristics that establish optimal physical development during birth and Infancy are changes in physical and brain growth, motor skills, health issues, and learning skills.

  During the first 2 years of development, children are growing and changing at an exponential rate. Each year, a child can grow 2 to 3 inches in height and put on an additional 5 pounds in weight. Girls tend to be smaller than boys on average. Girls continue to retain body fat as they age while boys tend to be more muscular. As their bodies continue to grow and change, better motor coordination develops.

  Skeletal Development

  The skeletal system is made of cartilage and bone. It is the framework of the body and determines movement while protecting vital organs. The ages from 2 to 6 years bring a large boost in skeletal changes. Growth centers (epiphyses) are hard at work changing cartilage into bone. These are found throughout the skeletal system. Doctors often use these growth centers to predict and diagnose growth disorders in children.

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  The Development of Children and Adolescents

  An Applied Perspective

  • Penny Hauser-Cram, J. Kevin Nugent, Kathleen Thies, John F. Travers(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Emotional Development. Learning to regulate emotion is undoubtedly the greatest psychosocial challenge facing infants and toddlers. What do infants and toddlers need to learn to regulate their emotions? 4. The Emerging Sense of Self. As children develop a conscious sense of self, they become better able to notice and respond to the needs of others. Do you think infants and toddlers are capable of empathy? Can they tell right from wrong? What research supports your point of view? 5. Environment, Temperament, and Psychosocial Develop- ment. How does child care provided outside the home compare with parenting at home? Discuss how to determine what is in the best interests of the child and the family in choosing child care. 6. Cultural Perspectives. In many communities, children are socialized to interdependence rather than to the individuality stressed in the European-American middle class. In these com- munities, where people are constantly present, infants seldom sit alone and play with objects or engage in one-to-one interaction. They spend most of their time oriented to the group and ob- serving what is happening around them. Although they are in close physical contact with a caregiver, either held or carried on the back or hips, they do not face the caregiver but instead face outward, ready to engage with the group. Are these child-rearing practices better or worse for children’s psychosocial development than western child-rearing practices, or are both equally appro- priate within their cultural settings? Discuss your answer fully. Psychosocial Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood 269 In this module, Tia Wagner is considering enrolling her son Brandon in a “Mommy and Me” class in her neighbor- hood. Offered in various locations across the United States, classes provide structured and unstructured play for spe- cific age groups. As you know, children’s social skills change in various ways during the first two years.

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  Human Development

  A Life-Span View

  • Robert Kail, John Cavanaugh(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  We first encountered Erikson’s theory in Chapter 1; he describes development as a series of eight stages, each with a unique crisis for psychosocial growth. When a crisis is resolved successfully, an area of psychosocial strength is established. When the crisis is not resolved, that aspect of psychosocial development is stunted, often limit-ing the individual’s ability to resolve future crises. In Erikson’s theory, Infancy and the preschool years are represented by three stages, shown in ◗ Table 5.1. Let’s take a closer look at each stage. Basic Trust Versus Mistrust Erikson argues that trust in oneself and others is the foundation of human development. Newborns leave the warmth and security of the uterus for an unfamiliar world. When parents respond to their infant’s needs consistently, the infant comes to trust and feel secure in the world. Of course, the world is not always pleasant and is sometimes danger-ous. Parents may not always reach a falling baby in time, or they may accidentally feed an infant food that is too hot. Erikson sees value in these experiences because infants learn mistrust. With a proper balance of trust and mistrust, infants can acquire hope , an open-ness to new experience tempered by wariness that discomfort or danger may arise. hope According to Erikson, openness to new experience tempered by wariness that occurs when trust and mistrust are in balance. LEARNING OBJECTIVES ● ● What are Erikson’s first three stages of psychosocial development? ● ● How do infants become emotionally attached to mother, father, and other significant people in their lives? ● ● What are the different kinds of attachment relationships, how do they arise, and what are their consequences? ● ● Is attachment jeopardized when parents of infants and young children are employed outside the home? 5.1 Beginnings: Trust and Attachment Table 5.1 Erikson’s First Three Stages AGE CRISIS STRENGTH Infancy Basic trust vs.

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  Contemporary Constructions of the Child

  Essays in Honor of William Kessen

  • Frank S. Kessel, Marc H. Bornstein, Arnold J. Sameroff(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Two central themes of life-span research are emphasized and, as such, dictate the organization of the chapter: increased attention to variability—interindividual and intercohort; and the importance of context—historical and ecological. Throughout the chapter, I offer social cognition as a reasonable focus from which to explore these themes in Infancy because people are such a sizable and important aspect of babies’ natural lives and are a vehicle for conveying the variability associated with different contexts and historical periods.

  TABLE 4.1

  A Profile of Infant Social Cognitive Milestones

  Age	Competency	Social/Cognitive Milestone	Social Milestone
  Newborn	Visually scans borders and contours	Some tendency to imitate and differentiate live faces
  Limited visual contrast sensitivity	Some auditory and visual tendency to differentiate familiar and unfamiliar voices and faces
  Some visual preference for facial form
  Limited focal range	Visual and auditory qualities of people facilitate attention
  Some tendency to differentiate and imitate facial expressions such as happy and sad
  Olfactory recognition of maternal breast pads in nursing babies and preference for breast pad odors in all babies
  Some recognition of kinesthetic behaviors of familiar figures
  2-3 months	Visually scans more globally	Visually attends to internal features of faces	Eye contact occurs between baby and other
  Improved visual acuity	Definite visual preference for regular facial form in stimulus presentations such as photos	Social smiling begins
  Expanded and flexible focal range

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