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Infancy and Childhood Development: Nature, Nurture, and Key Milestones

Explore the study of infancy and childhood development, including the roles of nature and nurture, critical periods, stages vs. continuity debate, physical development, motor development, reflexes, and perceptual development.

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Infancy and Childhood Development: Nature, Nurture, and Key Milestones

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  1. Agenda • To Get: • Handout for guided notes • To Do: • Turn in questions from last class (if not already completed) • Lecture – Infancy and Childhood development • Video – Human Spark

  2. Opener • At what age is most of the ground work set for a child’s future development? • What two things greatly influence a person’s ability to be happy, healthy and successful later in life? • Name something you can do to make yourself happy/healthy regardless of upbringing…

  3. Infancy and ChildhoodStudy of Development • Developmental Psychology – study of how people grow and change throughout the life span – from conception, through infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and until death -experiences affect people as adolescents and adults -learn what causes and how to treat developmental problems -study stages as well as types of development (physical, social and/or cognitive) -longitudinal or cross-section -how heredity and environmental factors affect development -study if development is gradual or in stages

  4. Roles of Nature and Nurture -Behavior is biologically programmed as long as a child receives adequate nutrition and social experience Maturation – automatic and sequential process of development that results from genetic signals Critical Period – point in development during which a person or animal is best suited to learn a particular skill or behavior pattern (language acquisition) Key to physical and motor development

  5. Stages Versus Continuity Debate Stages – developing in distinct levels (stairs) with noticeable and dramatic changes – walking vs. crawling Continuity – development is gradual (incline) can occur unnoticed – addition of new words to a child’s vocabulary

  6. Physical Development • Height and weight increase with time and nourishment • Reflex– involuntary reaction/responses to stimuli– fade with growth or are retained, like swallowing and breathing, others are lost or replaced by motor and perceptual development

  7. Height and Weight – greatest period of growth is in utero – nearly microscopic to 20 inches, a growth rate of about a billion times in 9 months! Infancy– double birth weight in 5 months, triple in a year, add 10 inches to height Childhood– 2-adolescence – add 2-3 inches and 4-6 pounds each year.

  8. Motor Development • Newborn’s random movements replaced by purposeful motor activity • Varies among infants and cultures • American babies – more time in cribs (walk at 12 months) • Ugandan babies – more time vertical with parent (walk at 10 months)

  9. Reflexes • Essential to survival for infants – sucking, rooting, swallowing to get nourishment right after birth • React to pain, loud noises (startle reflex), elimination of waste (keep that covered up!) • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz6rFxfkgfM • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jKUfFUuSfA

  10. Perceptual Development Months in warm, wet, dark environment – suddenly all senses get stimulated at once Perceptual development creates understanding of outside world – stimulates brain activity and development (occipital lobe) • Visual Perception - Infants preprogrammed to prefer complex patterns (5-10 weeks) then as they age, human faces (15-20 weeks) – combination of nature/nurture Question: What was the Visual Cliff Experiment originally created to study? What do researchers now think it is a better test of? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WanGt1G6ScA • Hearing is much better developed early on…

  11. The Human Spark Viewing Questions • https://ket.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/hs11.living.gen.birth.lpdevelchild/the-developing-child/ • Scroll down on page to get video links for questions • Language Error and Brain Activity • https://ket.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/hs11.sci.life.stru.brainact/the-brain-in-action/

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