Infancy: Physical, Cognitive, and Social/ Emotional Development

Introduction

When babies arrive in the world, they are tiny and helpless and depend entirely on adults to take care of all
their needs and wants. The first 2 years of their lives is an amazing time of growth and change. They develop in
many ways at the same time. While physical growth and maturity are the most obvious signs that development
is occurring, children also develop cognitively (mentally), emotionally, and socially. Over the years, people who
study children have created theories to explain how children develop. While these theorists realize that every
child is special and grows in his or her unique way, they also have recognized that there are general patterns
children tend to follow as they grow up.

Schematic Diagram

Infancy
( 1 month to 18 months)

Physical
Cognitive Social/ Emotional
* Senses
* Piaget’s * Emotions
* Reflexes
Sensorimotor Stage *Temperament
* Gross and Fine Motor Skills
* Language * Attachment

PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT

Sensory Development

Infants learn about their world by interacting with it through their senses. They don't understand their
environment very well at first, but are born exquisitely prepared to explore and learn. They learn how to make
purposeful movements, how to make sense of things, how to speak, and how to perform other skills. All of
these developments require babies to use all their senses: touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight.

1. Sense of touch – Babies can feel and respond to pain and touch from birth, and this is an important
first connection between infants and caregivers. They can feel hot and cold, hunger and satisfaction,
soft and rough textures, pain and comfort, and cuddling and abandonment. This is why babies can
often be soothed at birth by their caregivers' warm hugs or a warm bottle.

2. Sense of taste/ smell - As infants grow, they begin to touch objects in their environment with their
hands, feet, and mouths to learn about them. When babies put toys and other things in their mouths,
they are not trying to taste them as much as they are trying to feel the texture and structure. It is
important for caregivers to keep babies' environments clear of dangerous objects such as small
objects or poisonous substances.
 3. Sense of taste - While babies learn about their environment through feeling things with their mouths,
they also learn by tasting. The senses of taste and smell senses are intertwined. When infants are born,
they have the ability to distinguish sweet, sour, and bitter tastes, but they will prefer sweet tastes and
aromas, such as breast milk. In fact, a baby's ability to taste is so specific that he or she can tell the
difference between her own mothers' breast milk and that of another woman.

4. Sense of hearing - Babies can hear at birth, and doctors can test infants for hearing problems right
after birth. As infants grow, their mental ability to process and use information they hear improves. As
babies begin to mature, between ages 1 and 6 months, they are able to locate where sounds come
from in their environment and to compile sounds into more complex chunks, such as musical phrases.

5. Sense of sight - While some senses are fully developed at birth, others require time to mature before
they become refined. Unlike their abilities to smell or hear, babies are not able to see as well as adults
do. They develop their acuity, color perception, and ability to focus as they mature in the first months.
By about 9 months, they also develop depth perception, or the ability to see and understand that
different objects are different distances away.

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Piaget’s Cognitive- Developmental theory

Jean Piaget believes that children are motivated explorers whose thinking develops as they act directly on the
environment .Children “think” with their eyes, ears, hands, and other sensory equipment. Furthermore,
children possess mental structures called schemes that allow processing and organizing of information.

Schemes
- are organized ways of making sense of the world/ specific psychological structures. They change as we age
through:

a. Adaptation= building schemes through direct interaction with the environment (assimilation and
accommodation)
b. Organization= children learn schemes, rearrange them, linking them with other schemes to create a
strongly interconnected cognitive system (process takes place internally, apart from the direct contact
of the environment)
-e.g. dropping objects in a fairly rigid way to becoming deliberate, creative and varied.

In Piaget’s theory, children move through different stages. The first stage, the Sensorimotor stage, spans the
two years of life. In this stage, infants learn about their world by interacting with it through their senses. They
don't understand their environment very well at first, but are born exquisitely prepared to explore and learn.

Piaget divided the Sensorimotor Stage into 6 Sub stages:

1. Reflexive schemes
- Reflexes: building blocks of sensorimotor intelligence
-e.g. a 2 week old baby sucks, grasps, looks much in the same way no matter what experiences they encounter

2. Primary circular reactions

- start to gain voluntary control over their actions by repeating chance behaviors.
- Largely motivated by basic needs
-vary their behavior in response to environmental demands
- E.g. baby opens his mouth differently for a nipple than for a spoon
- baby awoke from his nap, cried out with hunger but stops crying the moment the mother enters the room;
knew that feeding time is near

3. Secondary circular reactions

- Infant sits up and become skilled at reaching for and manipulating objects
-e.g. baby accidentally knocked a toy producing a fascinating swinging motion. Over the next three days, the
baby tries to repeat the effect, gradually forming a new” hitting” scheme
-improved control over their behavior but cannot adapt flexibly and quickly enough to imitate novel behaviors
-e.g. enjoys an adult demonstrate a game but are not able to participate yet.

4. Coordination of secondary circular reactions (8-12)

- combine schemes into new, more complex action sequences.
- Actions no longer have the hit-or- miss quality
- engage in intentional, or goal directed behavior, coordinately deliberately to solve simple problems
- e.g. object hiding task- infants can find the object by coordinating two schemes- “pushing” aside the obstacle
and “ grasping” the toy.
- Infants begin to master object permanence (understanding that objects continue to exist when they are out
of sight)
- Infants who can better anticipate events sometimes used their capacity for intentional behavior to try to
change events.
- E.g. baby crawled after the mother when she put on her coat, whimpering to keep her from leaving

5. Tertiary circular reactions

- Babies repeat behaviors with variations/ take deliberately experimental approach to problem solving
-e.g. to fit a shape through a hole in a container by turning and twisting it until it fell through
- To use a stick to get toys that were out of reach

6. Mental representation
- Ability to create mental representations= internal depictions of information that the mind can manipulate

Language Development

Improvements in perception and cognition during infancy pave way for an extraordinary human achievement-
language.

Theories of Language Development:

1. Behaviorist perspective ( Skinner)

Language, like any other behavior, is acquired through operant conditioning.
Imitation and reinforcement contribute to early language development
Emphasizes environmental influences

2. Nativist ( Chomsky)
Child’s amazing language skill as a uniquely human accomplishment, etched into the structure of the
brain
LAD (Language Acquisition Device) , an innate system that contains a universal grammar, or set of
rules common to all languages. It enables children, no matter which language they hear to understand
and speak in a rule- oriented fashion as soon as they pick up enough words.
Deliberate training by parents as unnecessary

3. Interactionist
Language development emphasizes interactions between inner capacities and environmental
influences.
Language Milestones

6-8 weeks cooing( repetition of vowel- like noises like “oo” and “aa”)
2-6 months laughs and squeals
7-9 months babbling (repetition of meaningless language sounds like “babababa”)
10 months Repeat certain syllables (ma-ma), make use of holophrases (one word
12 months understands and says some words (holophrases: a single word that expresses a complete
idea e.g. “stop” “eat”)
18 months can produce up to 50 words (telegraphic: Two word utterances that communicate a single
idea like “mommy shoe” “want cookie”)

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Beyond physical, thinking and language tasks, babies are learning about social and emotional tasks. Early
research led experts to believe that emotions are learned through human interaction, though newer research
suggests that some emotions are naturally occurring and instinctual from birth.

The path to understanding children’s emotional processes and their development is the investigation of early
facial expressions as they cannot verbally articulate how they feel.

Ages when emotions emerge

Birth Crying

6 weeks Social smile

- Smiling elicited by social stimuli such a seeing a parent’s face

3 mos. Laughter
4 mos. Full responsive smiles
Anger

9-14 mos. Fear of social events such as stranger anxiety and separation anxiety. They show more
attachments to familiar caregivers, and show more anxiety with strangers.

18 mos. Pride
Shame
Embarrassment

Temperament

Another important aspect of emotional development, temperament, has to do with babies' general emotional
and social state. Temperament refers to babies' innate personality; the general pattern of how babies will react
to and interact with their environment which is present from birth.

Two theorists, Thomas and Chess, extensively researched child temperament in the late 1970s. According to
their theory, each infant is different and unique in how they react to their environment, and this pattern of
reacting is innate, unlearned, and present from birth. As well, every parent is unique in his or her own
personality. Often, the goodness of fit, or compatibility, between babies' temperaments and caregivers' own
personalities will affect the quality of child - caregiver relationships. Caregivers who educate themselves about
how babies' temperaments can affect the relationship between themselves and their babies gain the insight
necessary to modify infants' environments so as to better fit their natural temperaments, in the process,
making life easier for everyone.

According to Thomas and Chess, there are three general types of temperaments in children:

1. Easy - generally happy, active, adjust easily to new situations

2. Slow-to-warm - generally mellow, less active, have some difficulty adjusting to new situations

3. Difficult - have irregular habits and biological routines, have difficulty adjusting to new
situations, express negative moods intensely

Nine Dimensions that help indicate temperament:

• Activity level: more active than others

• Rhythmicity: Some babies eat, sleep, defecate on schedule while others are unpredictable
• Approach-withdrawal: Some babies delight in new situations, others withdraw
• Adaptability: Some babies adjust quickly and happily to new experiences, others do not
• Intensity of reaction: Some babies howl when they cry and chortle when they laugh, others
merely whimper or smile.
• Threshold of responsiveness: Some babies sense every sight, sound and touch and react to it,
usually with distress; others are oblivious.
• Quality of mood: Some babies seem happy all the time, while others are always irritable.
• Distractibility: Some babies are easily distracted while others cannot be sidetracked.
• Attention span: Some babies play happily with one toy for a long time while others flit from
one thing to another

By looking at the dimensions, caregivers can not only determine what their babies’ temperaments are like, by
they can also identify ways of interaction and dealing with certain aspects of their temperament in order to
foster a nurturing environment for the child and prevent any complication before they arise.

Social Development

Closely related to infants' emotional development is their social development; it's through relationships with
caregivers and other people that children learn how to apply and use their emotions, expressions, and
emotional understanding. During infancy, healthy social growth is mostly about creating attachments with
caregivers.

Babies in Erickson's trust versus mistrust stage (usually occurring between ages 0 to 12 months) will develop
trust and love for their caregivers because they are given adequate love and nurturing from their environment
or will develop mistrust and indifference for people and the world because they aren't given those resources.
There are degrees of trust and mistrust, however. These degrees of attachment have been further refined in
other theories, including most centrally, John Bowlby's Attachment Theory.

John Bowlby’s Attachment theory suggests that children come into the world biologically pre-programmed to
form attachments with others, because this will help them to survive. According to Bowlby, there are four
phases of attachment during infancy:

1. Pre- attachment (birth- 6 weeks)

Babies’ automatic reflexes such as grasping, rooting, crying will cause caregivers to want to attach to babies.

2. Attachment-in-making (6 weeks-8 months)

Babies begin to react differently and more quickly to primary caregivers than strangers.

3. Clear-cut attachment (8-18- 24 mos.)

Babies become solidly attached to their caregivers and separation anxiety emerges.

4. Formation of Reciprocal relationship (18-24 mos.)

Babies start negotiating with caregivers to meet their needs and to keep them feeling safe and attached.

Conclusion

Infancy is a time of intense development. Newborns arrive with an innate ability to learn and built-in reflexes
that aid their survival. Beyond physical, thinking, and language tasks, babies also learn about social and
emotional tasks. Furthermore, infancy is a hazardous period. Since children progress towards milestones
through interaction with their physical environment, with parents and with the larger world, any favorable or
unfavorable circumstances can greatly influence a child’s well being. However, understanding the rapid
changes a child goes through helps prepare parents and caregivers build a nurturing and caring environment
that can facilitate children’s learning.

References:
Berk, L., Infants, Children and Adolescents: Pearson 2011
http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/center_index.php?cn=461
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2836746/