Child Development: Brain and Motor Skills

Brain and Nervous System Development

• Infants are born with all the neurons they will ever have.
• Brain development occurs due to both nature and nurture.
  • Nature: Maturation, myelination and differentiation.
  • Nurture: Sensory stimulation and motor activity.
• As a child matures:
  • Axons grow in length.
  • Dendrites and axon terminals multiply, creating more complex networks.
  • Myelination occurs around axons, allowing impulses to transmit quickly. This process continues until around age 25.

Motor Development

• Motor development changes significantly from birth to age 2, encompassing both gross and fine motor skills.
• Examples of motor development milestones:
  • 3.2 months: Rolling over
  • 3.3 months: Grasping a rattle.
  • 5.9 months: Sitting without support.
  • 7.2 months: Standing while holding on.
  • 8.2 months: Grasping with thumb and finger.
  • 11.5 months: Standing alone well.
  • 12.3 months: Walking well.
  • 14.8 months: Building a tower of 2 cubes.
  • 16.6 months: Walking up steps.
  • 23.8 months: Jumping in place.
• Motor development is influenced by both nature and nurture.
  • Nature: Maturation (myelination and differentiation), motivation.
  • Nurture: Experience (experimentation, training).

Growth and Nutrition

• Newborns should be fed breast milk or formula.
• Solid foods should be introduced around 6 months of age.
• Whole cow's milk can be introduced at 12 months.
• Breastfeeding has pros and cons:
  • Pros: Benefits for both mother and child.
  • Cons: Can be influenced by factors like health, attitudes about bonding, fear of pain, work arrangements, and social support.

Cognitive Development

• Infants develop cognitive abilities from birth to age 3.
• Sensory development:
  • Hearing: Begins in utero and infants recognize their mother's voice at birth.
  • Smell: Well developed at birth; infants recognize familiar odors.
  • Taste: Sensitive to different tastes and prefer sweet because of breastmilk.
  • Touch: Enjoy being cuddled, rocked, and stroked.
  • Visual: Nearsighted early on, infants prefer faces.
  • Convergence: Not until 7 or 8 weeks.
  • Depth: Develops with crawling at 6 months.
  • Perceptual: Develops around 4 months.

Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory

• Piaget believed that cognitive development occurs through specific stages.
• His theory focuses on schemes, assimilation, and accommodation:
  • Schemes: Concepts or ways to organize knowledge.
  • Assimilation: Fitting new ideas into existing schemes.
  • Accommodation: Modifying schemes to accept new ideas.
• Piaget's 1st Stage of Development (Sensorimotor Period):
  • Substage 1: Birth - 1 month (simple reflexes).
    • Infants' responses are based on reflexes.
    • Examples: Sucking, grasping, modifying reflexes based on experience.
  • Substage 2: 1 - 4 months (primary circular reactions).
    • Focus on infants' own body.
    • Circular: Repeated behaviors.
  • Substage 3: 4 - 8 months (secondary circular reactions).
    • Focus on objects or events.
  • Substage 4: 8 - 12 months (coordination of secondary schemes),
    • Coordinate schemes to attain specific goals.
    • Beginning of intentionality.
  • Substage 5: 12 - 18 months (tertiary circular reactions).
    • Deliberate trial and error behaviors.
    • "Little scientist" stage.
  • Substage 6: 18 - 24 months (beginning of thought).
    • Mental exploration.
    • Begin to think before doing.
    • Deferred imitation.
• Piaget's theory has pros and cons:
  • Pros: Comprehensive, research-supported, sequence appears cross-culturally.
  • Cons: Stages may be more gradual than discontinuous, may underestimate infants' competence, generalizability.

Language Development

• Language develops from birth to age 3.
• Milestones:
  • Birth: Perceives speech, cries, responds to sound.
  • 1 ½ - 2 years: Coos and laughs.
  • 3 years: Plays with speech sounds.
• Language development is influenced by both nature and nurture.
  • Nativism (Chomsky): The human brain is inherently designed for language.
  • Learning Theory (Skinner): Operant conditioning; parents reinforce sounds made by children.

Attachment

• Attachment is an emotional bond or trust between individuals.
• There's not a critical period, but a sensitive period for attachment during the first six months of life.
• Harlow's research showed that attachment is not only based on food provision but also on comfort and close bodily contact.
• Types of Attachment:
  • Secure: Explores with mother, distressed when she leaves, happy she returns.
  • Insecure-Avoidant: Explores without mother, little distress when she leaves, avoids her upon return.
  • Insecure-Ambivalent: Clings to mother, high distress when she leaves, ambivalent upon her return.
  • Insecure-Disorganized: Confused, little distress when mother leaves, confused upon her return.
• Attachment style is influenced by both biological and environmental factors.

Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development

• Erikson's first two stages describe personality development in infancy.
  • Trust vs. Mistrust: (Birth - 1 year) Develops trust in people and their surroundings.
  • Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt: (1 - 3 years) Develops independence and self-sufficiency.

Emotions

• Emotions have basic components such as facial expressions, physiological arousal, and subjective feelings.
• Theories about the origin of emotions:
  • Biologically Based Theories:
    • Temperament: Early-appearing biologically based tendency to respond to the environment in predictable ways.
    • Ekman: Emotional expressions are similar across cultures, suggesting a genetic basis.
    • Izard: Theory of emotion identified ten primary and discrete emotions (fear, anger, shame, contempt, disgust, guilt, distress, interest, surprise, and joy).
  • Cognitive-Socialization Theories:
    • Children learn to process information and make meaning from their experiences.
    • Emotional development is influenced by the environment.
    • Complex emotions unfold from simpler ones.