Infant Development

11 Key excerpts on "Infant Development"

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  eBook - ePub

  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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  Forensic Psychiatry

  Fundamentals and Clinical Practice

  • Basant Puri, Ian H. Treasaden, Basant Puri, Ian H. Treasaden, Ian Treasaden(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  8

  Developmental psychology

  NATHALIA L. GJERSOE AND CATRIONA HAVARD Introduction Cognitive development Personality Social development Sexual development The child as witness Conclusion References

  INTRODUCTION

  Developmental psychology is a discipline that encapsulates the full spectrum of psychological processes throughout the life span. Theories developed as part of this research have important implications not just for our understanding of children’s behavior and growth but also for how we conceptualize the human mind as a whole. Often there are processes so inextricably interwoven and sophisticated in adults that understanding them requires examination from their inception in the developing brain. This chapter focuses on the age range between infancy and late childhood and summarizes theories of children’s cognitive, personality, social, and sexual development, concluding with an outline of current opinion regarding children’s capacities as eyewitnesses.

  COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

  Even newborns come into the world with a toolkit of basic sensory capacities and biases to attend to specific types of information. This stream of information forms the basis for mental representations—patterns of neuronal activity that refer to aspects of the external world. Developmental cognitive psychology examines mechanisms of change in mental representations throughout the life span. Examining cognitive development in infants and young children requires its own set of methodologies distinct from those used to examine adults. Children have limited communication and -comprehension abilities, disorganized or slow motor responses, and are easily distracted. Traditionally, research into cognitive development utilized naturalistic observation of children’s behavior at different ages and manipulated situations to determine if children’s responses changed in a reliable manner from age to age. This work has revealed a host of cognitive capabilities that all typically developing children seem to attain within a very similar time period—referred to as cognitive milestones

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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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  Child and Adolescent Development in Your Classroom, Chronological Approach

  • Christi Crosby Bergin, David Allen Bergin(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  57 Oksana Kuzmina/Shutterstock.com Cognitive Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood The term cognition refers to mental processes like thinking, problem solving, categorizing, and remembering. Cognitive development means the orderly change across age in these mental processes. In this chapter, we discuss how infants and toddlers learn and think about their world. Because infants cannot express themselves in language, and toddlers are just beginning to master language, developmental scientists must use inferential methods to study cognitive development in very young children. They have discovered that infants and toddlers have amazing insights into how the physical and social worlds work. We start with a discussion of behaviorism. After you read this chapter, you will be able to: 3-1 Apply principles of classical and operant conditioning to change children’s behavior. 3-2 Analyze infants’ and toddlers’ thinking from the perspective of Piaget. 3-3 Analyze infants’ and toddlers’ information-processing abilities, including their ability to remember and reason. 3-4 Promote language and literacy development in infants and toddlers. 3 chapter 3-1 BEHAVIORISM 3-1a Classical Conditioning 3-1b Operant Conditioning BOX 3.1 Theories & Theorists: B. F. Skinner 3-2 PIAGET’S COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY IN INFANCY AND TODDLERHOOD 3-3 INFORMATION PROCESSING IN INFANCY AND TODDLERHOOD 3-3a Components of the Information-Processing Model 3-3b Development of Information Processing 3-3c Individual Diversity in Information Processing 3-3d Memory 3-3e Reasoning and Problem Solving 3-3f Habituation and Core Knowledge 3-4 LANGUAGE DEVELOP-MENT IN INFANCY AND TODDLERHOOD 3-4a Development of Language 3-4b Language Learning Is Remarkable 3-4c Individual Diversity in Language BOX 3.2 Theories & Theorists: Language as Core Knowledge—The Great Debate 3-4d Group Diversity in Language 3-4e Classroom Implications of Language Chapter Summary Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning.

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  Child, Adolescent and Family Development

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

    (Publisher)

  Historically, researchers’ understanding of the parent–infant socioemotional relationship has undergone considerable transformation in the last century. The major changes that have taken place are: a greater understanding of the extent of the infant’s socioemotional capabilities • the view of the infant as an active participant in the development of their capabilities • a greater appreciation of the individual differences between infants. • Trevarthen ( 2010 , p. 1), having asked the question quoted above, addressed the issue of how a newborn, ‘a being with no meaningful knowledge, no education in the habits of culture and language at all and therefore, it is assumed, incapable of reflective intelligence, [can] be a person?’ This question is considered within the context of oft repeated claims that a newborn, as a reflex-driven organism with a primitive autonomic nervous system requiring external regulation, has few if any emotions. In this chapter consideration will be given to various theoretical views of infant socioemotional development, the nature of emotions, attachment and infant tempera-ment. The family life-cycle: 8 discusses a woman’s preparation for motherhood. The emotional life of the young child is rich indeed. 186 Part 3 Infancy Theoretical foundations As noted by Spangler et al. ( 2005 , p. 345): Infant emotional expression plays an important role for development, because during the first year before the onset of speech and even more during the first months before the up-coming of the first gestures, emotional expression and, most of all, negative emotional expression is the only way for an infant to communicate his/her needs to the caregiver. The study of infant emotion has a long history, with increasing attention being given to understanding the pivotal role it plays in development.

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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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  Psychology and its Bearing on Education

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

    (Publisher)

  General facts as to early development . In considering the stages of development of the child, several general facts and principles must be borne in mind.

  First, there is no definite break between the various periods, say of babyhood, infancy, early childhood, and so on. One merges into the next by almost imperceptible steps. We may describe a certain period by the most prominent and characteristic mental features of that period, but these features will be appearing in a nascent form in the preceding period, and continuing, though possibly in a less marked form, in the succeeding period.

  Second, the great individual differences among children in the rate of development result in one child at 6; o still showing abilities or temperamental traits characteristic of the ‘average’ child of 5; o or even only 4; o, another at 6; o may more resemble the majority at 7; o or 8; o.

  That during the first year or two all children seem to follow substantially the same order or pattern of development, has been emphasized by so great an authority on infancy as Dr Arnold Gesell. He found it to be true even of prematurely born infants, so predominant are the factors of internal self-determination in development, in spite of abnormal environmental changes.1

  It would seem, however, that this regularity of sequence refers only to very fundamental processes occurring in the first year or two, and to the stages within each main type of activity, e.g., linguistic or motor. It leaves room for considerable individual differences in highly specific abilities, especially on a higher level. Furthermore, though the sequence within each series (say motor development) is remarkably regular, the parallel development between different types of activities – say motor and speech – is not so great. Some infants are well behind the average in talking though ahead in walking and vice versa. For example, my little girl Y was ahead of her brother B in all points of linguistic development in the first three years, and far ahead of her brother A. Yet she did not crawl till she was o; 10J, whereas B could crawl at o; 7 and A could crawl backwards at o; 7J and forwards at o; 9.2

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  Psychology Around Us

  • Ronald Comer, Nancy Ogden, Michael Boyes, Elizabeth Gould(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Because of his death at the young age of 37 and the chilly political climate between the former Soviet Union and the West, Vygotsky’s ideas have only become more widely studied in North America in recent years. However, developmental psychologists have found numerous ways to apply Vygotsky’s ideas (Trawick-Smith & Dziurgot, 2011). He has become one of today’s most influential developmental theorists (Eun, 2010). Indeed, the ideas of scaffolding and zones of proximal development are now an important part of educational systems throughout North America (Roth & Jornet, 2017; Moll, 2013). When helping children learn to read, for example, many teachers begin by reading books to them, and then gradually turn over responsibility for various reading skills. The children may first follow along with the pictures as the teacher reads the words, then point to letters. Eventually, they learn to read single words, then sentences, and finally entire books on their own, as the teacher provides less and less scaffolding.

  Social and Emotional Development in Infancy and Childhood

  While we tend to think of young infants as completely helpless, they actually bring a number of behavioural tendencies to their early interactions with their parents.

  As we noted in Chapter 1 , many psychological researchers are interested in trying to determine how much of the way we think and act is influenced by our genetic inheritance, a field of study called behavioural genetics. Developmental psychologists are often in a position to examine the influence of genetics. One of the key areas of focus of both behavioural genetics and developmental psychology, for example, is temperament , defined as a biologically-based tendency to respond to certain situations in similar ways throughout a person’s lifetime (Trofimova & Robbins, 2016; Chess, 2013) (see photo). Although temperament and personality are related, they are not the same thing. Many personality characteristics are learned or acquired, whereas temperamental traits are considered genetic (Zentner & Shiner, 2015; Buss & Plomin, 2014). In a longitudinal study that began in the 1950s, the New York Longitudinal Study

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  Empowerment Series: Understanding Human Behavior and the Social Environment

  • Charles Zastrow, Karen Kirst-Ashman, Sarah Hessenauer, , Charles Zastrow, Karen Kirst-Ashman, Sarah Hessenauer(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  (p. 480) EP 2a EP 2c Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Psychological Development in Infancy and Childhood 131 Kail & Cavanaugh, 2016; Steinberg et al., 2011a). They include the following stages: Stage 1: “Preattachment.” During the first two months of life, infants learn to distinguish between people and things. Subsequently, they respond increasingly more to people in general by smiling and vocalizing. Stage 2: “Attachment in the making.” From age 2 to 8 months, infants learn to distinguish between primary caregivers and strangers. They respond more positively to caregivers and display enthusiasm and excitement during their interactions. They also demonstrate upset when the caregiver leaves. The complex process of emotional attachment develops as the infant and caregiver learn how to respond to each other. Stage 3: “True attachment.” From age 8 to 18 months, infants search out their caregivers and try to stay close to them. As crawling and mobility increase, infants maintain periodic eye contact with their caregiver as they explore their environment. They begin paying closer attention to the caregivers’ reactions to their behavior and often respond accordingly. For example, an infant might smile if the caregiver is near and giving the child close attention. Or the infant might quickly return to the caregiver if he or she perceives that the caregiver is too far away. Infants continue to develop a more detailed internal picture of the caregiver, his or her behavior, and his or her expectations.

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  Family Systems and Life-span Development

  • Kurt Kreppner, Richard M. Lerner(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  3 Linking Infant Development-in-Context Research to the Investigation of Life-Span Family Development Kurt Kreppner

  Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education

  Introduction

  During the last 15 years, results from studies dealing with mother–child and father–child interactions have fundamentally changed our knowledge about infants’ needs, abilities, and social skills. In particular, meticulous observations of parent–child interactions and fine-grained analyses have deepened our knowledge about the complex interplay between caregiver and infant. In general, it has been recognized that the context in which the individual child grows up cannot be sufficiently characterized by an aggregation of ecological variables that are supposed to exert a one-directional influence on the individual. Instead, the context of the developing individual has been conceptualized as a complex ecosystem with many multidirectional influences (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Consequently, the family constituting a highly relevant relational context more and more has become an interesting topic for students of the developing child.

  As developmental psychology has expanded from infancy and childhood into adolescence and old age, it claimed that developmental changes do not end after adolescence but rather continue during the entire life-span. At the same time, dynamic relational contexts believed to be highly relevant for these enduring developmental processes were not included in developmental research. Concepts of contexts remained static and were taken as mere aggregations of single variables. The context “family” was represented either by “ecological variables” or by the mother-child dyad. Although family research has a long tradition in sociology, a lack of systematic bonds between this field and developmental psychology still exists.

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  Human Behavior in the Social Environment

  Perspectives on Development and the Life Course

  • Anissa Taun Rogers, Anissa Rogers(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  This chapter explores just some of the developmental milestones that occur in infants and young children up until five or six years of age. Although the pace at which infants and children develop varies greatly, this discussion offers some basic guidelines and benchmarks that will help you in your work with clients. For social workers in situations like Sam’s, understanding basic developmental milestones in infants and young children will help them make an accurate biopsychosocial assessment, which will then help to inform them whether intervention is, indeed, necessary.

  Developmental Milestones in Infants and Young Children

  Many parents and caregivers are amazed (and sometimes disheartened!) to see how quickly their children develop motor, language, cognitive, and other skills. Young children rapidly become assertive individuals who verbalize their needs and wishes. While cultural dynamics and environmental conditions affect child development, timelines in the following areas are perhaps best understood through medical and similar models.

  Language Acquisition

  For most parents, hearing a child’s first words can be one of the most exciting events of parenthood. From the day their child is born, most parents spout a near-constant stream of words, sounds, and phrases in hopes that the child will offer a verbal response. After all, language is a crucial aspect of human interactions. It is the way we communicate in written, verbal, or nonverbal forms. Even though infants cannot communicate through spoken language, they can communicate in other ways that ensure that their needs will be met until they are able to articulate their needs through spoken words.

  Right after birth, infants interact by using vocalizations that convey different messages to their caregivers. Generally, these vocalizations begin with basic sounds and progress to more complex verbalizations (Sigelman & Rider, 2005 ). Exhibit 7.1

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