Child Development1 Essay Example For Students

Child Development1 Essay Physical, Mental, Emotional and Social Development in ChildrenInfants grow at a very rapid rate during the first one and a half years of life. Development is not only physical, but mental, emotional, and social. This development provides a strong background for further development in life. Physical development refers to a babys increasing skill at utilizing various body parts. During development, there are three basic developmental rules: Rule one states, that babys develop in the head region first, followed by the upper body, followed by the trunk portion, and lastly the legs and feet. For example, a baby can hold up their heads first before they can grab an object with their hand. The second rule refers to motor skills. Motor skills are the childs ability to control movement. The two basic classifications in motor skills are large motor skills and fine motor skills. Large motor skills deal with all the large muscles, whereas fine motor skills deal with smaller muscles in the body. The third developmental rule is brain development. As the brain develops a child responds more and more to sight and sound, which prepares them for further development (Langer, 172). At birth an infants vision is limited by the immaturity of the brain, beyond 7-12 inches an infants world is a total blur. Infants eyes unlike ours do not contain a fovea (Langer, 86). A fovea is the area of the retina in which the images are focused. Their eye movements are very slow and are jerky at times. They are able to see color but prefer the sharper contrast of black and white. Although babies cant see small objects that are far away, they can see large objects that are up close. An adults perfect vision is estimated to be 20/20 and infants vision is estimated to be around 20/600 (Langer, 204). By the end of the first year a babys vision nearly matches that of a grown adult (Langer, 204).Newborns actively use their senses from the time that they are born. When they are little, a childs attention span is very limited. In the first two months, they can only focus on an edge of an object, however by the end of the second month they can scan an object as a whole. This is important because it shows that a babys attention span is very limited and they are not able to focus on an object for a long period of time (Cole, 53). At the time of birth newborns can hear soft voices as well as loud voices and can also notice the difference between different sounds that are made. Infants are not able to listen or hear selectively. When babies hear speech they tend to open their eyes wider and look for the speaker. Infants love the sounds of children since their voices are higher in pitch. This is why they like to hear baby talk which is used by most adults all over the world (Baldwin, 121). In the first two weeks after birth, infants have developed some reflexes. Babies begin to explore their grasping reflex where they can hold tightly to an object. Many of these behaviors evolved because they are important for a childs survival, without these a child would not be able to physically develop properly. The absence of reflexes in a newborn are signals of possible problems in brain development (Baldwin, 136). Newborns are brought into this world having some sort of reflexes in order for them to adapt to their surroundings. One of the most basic reflexes is the rooting reflex. This reflex helps an infant turn its head to any object that stimulates a cheek, such as a baby bottle for feeding. A newborn also will have a very strong grasping reflex. If you place your finger in a babys finger, generally anywhere from one-week old and on, a baby will have a very strong grip. Motor skills also allow a baby to sit, crawl, stand, and walk. Some motor skills such as sitting up come a lot earlier than walking. Cognitive development relates to the reasoning and logic of an infant. Jean Piaget among all researchers dedicated his life to a search for the ideas behind cognitive developm ent. He was the first person to chart the journey from the simple reflexes of the newborn to the complex adolescent (Piaget, 47). Piaget believed that all childrens thinking progresses through the same stages, in the same order without skipping, or building onto previous stages. He also believed that the thinking of infants is different from the thinking of children and the thinking of children is different from that of an adolescent (Piaget, 88). To explain how infants move to higher standards of understanding and knowledge, Piaget introduced four stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor (0-18 months), pre-operational (2-7 years), concrete operational (7-11 years), and formal operational (over 11 years) (Piaget, 160). The first 18 months of development is the sensorimotor. In this stage infants develop schemas or basic units of knowledge. During this stage infants can form schemas only of objects that are present. They cannot think about absent objects because they cant act on them. The key to the sensorimotor intelligence is the emergence of what Piaget called the object concept, or the concept of object permanence (Piaget, 78). According to Piaget, a very young infant does not seem to recognize that objects have a permanent existence outside of his or her interaction with it. Early in infancy, from birth to around four months of age, babies will naturally look at a toy, follow it with their eyes and try to grasp it. As soon as the object is out of sight babies mentally think it know longer exists. They do not have the concept of knowing its there, if its out of sight. Infants will begin to develop object permanence at around four months. Also, at this time they are beginning to learn that a disappearing object may still exist. Infants between 4- 8 months not only begin to turn their heads to follow a moving object, but continue to look along its path after it has vanished, however they will not search for it. From about 8-12 months infants for the firs t time will search manually for an object that disappears out of their sight. When children reach this stage they can follow all the visible movements of an object (Cole, 306). The Metamorphosis EssayBaldwin, Alfred L. Behavior and Development in Childhood. NY: Dryden Press, 1955. Cole, M. Cole, S.R. The Development of Children. New York: W.H. Freeman Co, 1989. Cruttenden, A. Language in Infancy and Childhood. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1979. Erikson, E.H. Dimensions of a New Identity. New York: Norton, 1974. Hoffman, Lois W. Hoffman, M. Review of Child Development Research. June 1997, http://www.library.yale.edu/socsci/subjguides/psychology/psyc425.htm, (November 16, 2000). Langer, Jonas. Theories of Development. NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969. Neubauer, Peter. The Process of Child Development. Dec 1992, http://www.ex.ac.uk/Psychology/docs/develop.html., (November 19, 2000). Piaget, J. (1965). The MoralJudgment of the Child. The Free Press: New York, 1965. Power, F.C., Higgins, A. Kohlberg, L. Lawrence Kohlbergs Approach to Moral Education. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989. Sroufe, L.A. ; Cooper, R.G. Child Development, Its Nature and Course. Feb 1995, http://server.bmod.athabascau.ca/html/aupr/developmental.shtml, (November 3, 2000). Westman, Jack C. Individual Differences in Children. NY: John Wiley and Sons, 1973. Bibliography: