Lifespan Development

Birth and Infancy

 Growth and Development

Growth refers to physical changes. Development refers to functional or

behavioral changes. Growth is biological. Development is social, emotional,
cognitive, moral, and other domains of function.
Growth is generally associated with quantitative changes whereas development
is associated with qualitative change.
Growth is just 'getting bigger', whereas development is improvement.
Growth is quantitative i.e., expansion in size, shape, height, weight etc. while
development is qualitative i.e., expansion in strength, stamina, efficiency etc.
Growth stops with maturity, while development continues throughout the life.
 The Stages of Childbirth
It is not surprising that childbirth is often referred to as labor. It is the hardest physical work a woman may ever do. A
complex series of hormonal changes between mother and fetus initiates the process, which naturally divides into three
stages (see Figure 3.4):

1. Dilation and effacement of the cervix. This is the longest stage of labor, lasting an average of 12 to 14 hours with a
first birth and 4 to 6 hours with later births. Contractions of the uterus gradually become more frequent and powerful,
causing the cervix, or uterine opening, to widen and thin to nothing, forming a clear channel from the uterus into the
birth canal, or vagina.

2. Delivery of the baby. This stage is much shorter, lasting about 50 minutes for a first birth and 20 minutes in later
births. Strong contractions of the uterus continue, but the mother also feels a natural urge to squeeze and push with her
abdominal muscles. As she does so with each contraction, she forces the baby down and out.

3. Delivery of the placenta. Labor comes to an end with a few final contractions and pushes. These cause the placenta
to separate from the wall of the uterus and be delivered in about 5 to 10 minutes.
 The Baby’s Adaptation to Labor and Delivery
At first glance, labor and delivery seem like a dangerous ordeal for the baby. The strong contractions
exposed baby’s head to a great deal of pressure, and they squeezed the placenta and the umbilical cord
repeatedly. Each time, baby’s supply of oxygen was temporarily reduced.

Healthy babies are well‐equipped to withstand these traumas. The force of the contractions causes the infant
to produce high levels of stress hormones. Unlike during pregnancy, when excessive stress endangers the
fetus, during childbirth high levels of infant cortisol and other stress hormones help the baby withstand
oxygen deprivation by sending a rich supply of blood to the brain and heart.

In addition, stress hormones prepare the baby to breathe by causing the lungs to absorb any remaining
fluid and by expanding the bronchial tubes (passages leading to the lungs).

Finally, stress hormones arouse the newborn into alertness- born wide awake, ready to interact with the
surrounding world.
 The Newborn Baby’s Capacities

● Reflexes are the newborn baby’s most obvious organized patterns of behavior. Some have
survival value, others provide the foundation for voluntary motor skills, and still others help
parents and infants establish gratifying interaction.

● Newborns move in and out of five states of arousal but spend most of their time asleep.
Newborns spend about 50 percent of sleep time in REM sleep, which provides them with
stimulation essential for central nervous system development.

● A crying baby stimulates strong feelings of discomfort in nearby adults. The intensity of the
cry and the experiences that led up to it help parents identify what is wrong. Once feeding and
diaper changing have been tried, a highly effective soothing technique is lifting the baby to the
shoulder and rocking and walking.
 Newborn baby’s sensory capacities

● The senses of touch, taste, smell, and sound are well ‐developed at birth. Newborns
use touch to investigate their world, are sensitive to pain, prefer sweet tastes and
smells, and orient toward the odor of their own mother’s lactating breast.

● Newborns can distinguish a variety of sound patterns and prefer complex

sounds. They are especially responsive to human speech, can detect the sounds of
any human language, and prefer their mother’s voice.

● Vision is the least developed of the newborn’s senses. At birth, focusing ability and
visual acuity are limited. In exploring the visual field, newborn babies are attracted
to bright objects but have difficulty discriminating colors.
 Preterm infants

Preterm infants are those born three weeks or more before the pregnancy has reached its full term
—in other words, before the completion of 37 weeks of gestation (the time between fertilization and
birth).

Small for date infants (also called small for gestational age infants ) are those whose birth weight is
below normal when the length of the pregnancy is considered. They weigh less than 90 percent of
all babies of the same gestational age. Small for date infants may be preterm or full term. One study
found that small for date infants had more than a fourfold risk of death.
Infancy

the physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development during the first two
years.

Researchers have given this part of the lifespan more attention than any other
period, perhaps because changes during this time are so dramatic and so
noticeable.

We have also assumed that what happens during these years provides a
foundation for one’s life to come.
 Physical Growth and Development in Infancy
:

Infants’ physical development in the first two years of life is extensive. Newborns’ heads are quite large when compared with the
rest of their bodies. They have little strength in their necks and cannot hold their heads up, but they have some basic reflexes.

In the span of 12 months, infants become capable of sitting anywhere, standing, stooping, climbing, and usually walking.

During the second year, growth decelerates, but rapid increases in such activities as running and climbing take place.

The cephalocaudal pattern is the sequence in which the earliest growth always occurs at the top— the head—with physical growth
and differentiation of features gradually working their way down from top to bottom (for example, shoulders, middle trunk, and so
on). This same pattern occurs in the head area, because the top parts of the head—the eyes and brain—grow faster than the lower
parts, such as the jaw.

For motor development, example, infants see objects before they can control their torso, and they can use their hands long before they
can crawl or walk.

Growth also follows the proximodistal pattern, the sequence in which growth starts at the center of the body and moves toward
the extremities. For example, infants control the muscles of their trunk and arms before they control their hands and fingers, and they
use their whole hands before they can control several fingers.
Height and weight

The average newborn in the United States weighs about 7.5 pounds (between 5 and 10 pounds) and is
about 20 inches in length.

For the first few days of life, infants typically lose about 5 percent of their body weight as they
eliminate waste and get used to feeding.

This weight loss is temporary, however, and is followed by a rapid period of growth.

By the time an infant is 4 months old, it usually doubles in weight and by one year has tripled the
birth weight.

By age 2, the weight has quadrupled, so we can expect that a 2-year-old should weigh between 20 and
40 pounds.

The average height at one year is about 29.5 inches and at two years it is around 32 to 35 inches.
 The Brain in the First Two Years
Some of the most dramatic physical change that occurs during this period is in the brain.

We are born with most of the brain cells that is, about 100 billion neurons whose function is to
store and transmit information.

While most of the brain’s neurons are present at birth, they are not fully mature.

During the next several years dendrites, or branching extensions that collect information from
other neurons, will undergo a period of exuberance.

Because of this by age two a single neuron might have thousands of dendrites.

The formation of connections between neurons, continues from the prenatal period forming
thousands of new connections during infancy and toddlerhood. This period of rapid neural growth
is referred to as synaptic blooming.
The Brain’s Development At birth, the newborn’s brain is about 25 percent of its adult
weight.
By the second birthday, the brain is about 75 percent of its adult weight. However, the
brain’s areas do not mature uniformly.
The portion farthest from the spinal cord known as the forebrain, which includes the
cerebral cortex and several structures beneath it. The cerebral cortex covers the
forebrain like a wrinkled cap. It has two halves, or hemispheres. Scientists distinguish
four main areas, called lobes, in each hemisphere. Although the lobes usually work
together, each has a somewhat different primary function.
• Frontal lobes
• Occipital lobes
• Temporal lobes
• Parietal lobes
• Frontal lobes are involved in voluntary
movement, thinking, personality, and
intentionality or purpose.

• Occipital lobes function in vision.

• Temporal lobes have an active role in

hearing, language processing, and memory.

• Parietal lobes play important roles in

registering spatial location, attention, and
motor control.
left or right hemisphere have different functions.

Speech and grammar, depend on activity in the left hemisphere; humor and the use of
metaphors depends on activity in the right hemisphere. This specialization of function in
one hemisphere of the cerebral cortex or the other is called lateralization.

However, most neuroscientists agree that complex functions such as reading or performing
music involve both hemispheres . Complex thinking in normal people is the outcome of
communication between both hemispheres of the brain.

At birth, the hemispheres of the cerebral cortex already have started to specialize: Newborns
show greater electrical brain activity in the left hemisphere than the right hemisphere
when they are listening to speech sounds.
Children who grow up in a deprived environment may have depressed brain
activity.

A child who grew up in the unresponsive and unstimulating environment of an

orphanage showed considerably depressed brain activity compared with a normal
child.

The effects of deprived environments are reversible. The brain demonstrates both
flexibility and resilience. Neuroscientists believe that what wires the brain—or rewires
it, —is repeated experience. The infant’s brain depends on experiences to determine
how connections are made. Before birth, it appears that genes mainly direct basic
wiring patterns.

After birth, the inflowing stream of sights, sounds, smells, touches,language, and eye
contact help shape the brain’s neural connections.
Infant’s Sleep

A newborn typically sleeps approximately 16.5 hours per 24-hour period.

The infant is averaging 15 hours per 24-hour period by one month, and 14
hours by 6 months.

By the time children turn 2 years old, they are averaging closer to 10 hours
per 24 hours.
 Motor Development
The new behavior is the result of many converging factors: the development of the nervous system,
the body’s physical properties and its possibilities for movement, the goal the child is motivated to
reach, and the environmental support for the skill.

For eg, babies learn to walk only when maturation of the nervous system allows them to control
certain leg muscles, when their legs have grown enough to support their weight, and when they
want to move.

The first step occurs when the infant is motivated by a new challenge-such as the desire to cross a
room-& takes a couple of stumbling steps. Then, the infant “tunes” these movements to make them
smoother & more effective.

In Motor development, nature & nurture, the infant & the environment, are all working together as
part of an ever-changing system.
REFLEXES
Reflexes are built-in reactions to stimuli; they govern the newborn’s movements, which are
automatic and beyond the newborn’s control.
Reflexes are genetically carried survival mechanisms. They allow infants to respond adaptively to
their environment before they have had the opportunity to learn.
The rooting and sucking reflexes are important examples. Both have survival value for newborn
mammals, who must find a mother’s breast to obtain nourishment.
The rooting reflex occurs when the infant’s cheek is stroked or the side of the mouth is touched.
In response, the infant turns its head toward the side that was touched in an apparent effort to find
something to suck. The sucking reflex occurs when newborns automatically suck an object
placed in their mouth.
Some reflexes—coughing, sneezing, blinking, shivering, and yawning, for example—persist
throughout life. They are as important for the adult as they are for the infant.
Other reflexes, like moro and rooting disappear several months following birth, as the infant’s brain
matures, and voluntary control over many behaviors develops.
GROSS MOTOR SKILLS and FINE
MOTOR SKILLS
Motor Skills refer to our ability to move our bodies and manipulate objects.

Fine motor skills focus on the muscles in our fingers, toes, and eyes, and enable coordination of small
actions (e.g., grasping a toy, writing with a pencil, and using a spoon).

Newborns cannot grasp objects voluntarily but do wave their arms toward objects of interest.

At about 4 months of age, the infant is able to reach for an object, first with both arms and within a few
weeks, with only one arm. At this age grasping an object involves the use of the fingers and palm, but no
thumbs. This is known as the Palmer Grasp.

The use of the thumb comes at about 9 months of age when the infant is able to grasp an object using the
forefinger and thumb. Now the infant uses a Pincer Grasp, and this ability greatly enhances the ability to
control and manipulate an object and spend hours picking up small objects from the floor and placing them
in containers. By 9 months, an infant can also watch a moving object, reach for it as it approaches, and grab
it.
Gross motor skills focus on large muscle groups that control our head, torso,
arms and legs and involve larger movements (e.g., balancing, running, and
jumping).

Examples include moving to bring the chin up when lying on the stomach,
moving the chest up, and rocking back and forth on hands and knees.

But it also includes exploring an object with one’s feet as many babies do as
early as 8 weeks of age if seated in a carrier or other device that frees the hips.

Sometimes an infant will try to move toward an object while crawling and
surprisingly move backward because of the greater amount of strength in the
arms than in the legs.
Sensory Capacities

Throughout much of history, the newborn was considered a passive, disorganized

being who possessed minimal abilities.

William James, an early psychologist, had described the newborn’s world as “a

blooming, buzzing confusion,”.

However, current research techniques have demonstrated just how developed the
newborn is with especially organized sensory and perceptual abilities.
VISUAL PERCEPTION

At birth, the nerves and muscles and lens of the eye are still
developing, and newborns cannot see small things that are far away.

An object 20 feet away is only as clear to the newborn as it would be

if it were 240 feet away from an adult with normal vision.

Infants show an interest in human faces soon after birth.

Hearing

During the last two months of pregnancy, as the fetus nestles in its mother’s
womb, it can hear sounds such as the mother’s voice, music, and so on.

The fetus can also recognize the mother’s voice,

Immediately after birth, infants cannot hear soft sounds quite as well as adults can;
a stimulus must be louder to be heard by a newborn than by an adult.

Even newborns can determine the general location from where a sound is coming,
but by 6 months of age, they are more proficient.
Touch and Pain

Newborns do respond to touch.

A touch to the cheek produces a turning of the

head; a touch to the lips produces sucking
movements.

Newborns can also feel pain.

Smell

Newborns can differentiate odors.

The expressions on their faces seem to indicate that they like the way
vanilla and strawberry smell but do not like the way rotten eggs and
fish smell
Taste

Sensitivity to taste might be present even before birth.

In one study, even at only 2 hours of age, babies made
different facial expressions when they tasted sweet, sour, and
bitter solutions.
 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN
INFANCY
A process in which a child learns to reason, identify objects, solve problems, and think
logically. It includes the acquisition and consolidation of knowledge.
This is the stage when the child shows a great interest in the environment around him or
her.
Parents can boost the child’s cognitive development by providing him or her safe
ground by incorporating simple activities to their daily routine.
Cognitive development proceeds as a result of the dynamic and reciprocal transaction of
internal and external factors; it is constructed within a social context and involves both
stability and plasticity over time.
 Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget, the famous Swiss psychologist, was a meticulous observer of his three children
as infants..

He was particularly concerned with the way thinking develops in children from birth till they
become young adults.

He researched on how they explored new toys, solved simple problems that he prepared for
them, and generally came to understand themselves and their world.

Later, Piaget studied larger samples of children through what became known as the
clinical method, a flexible question-and answer technique he used to discover how
children of different ages solve various problems and thought about everyday issues.
According to Piaget, children are born with a very basic mental structure (genetically inherited and
evolved) on which all subsequent learning and knowledge is based.

According to him, cognition develops through the refinement and transformation of mental
structures, or schemes.

Schemes are unobservable mental systems that underlie intelligence.

A scheme is a pattern of thought or action and is most simply viewed as some enduring knowledge base
by which children interpret their world.

Schemes, in effect, are representations of reality. Children know their world through their schemes.
Schemes are the means by which children interpret and organize experience.

For Piaget, cognitive development is the development of schemes, or structures.

Children enter the world with some reflexes by which they interpret their surroundings, and what
underlies these reflexes are schemes. When a child's existing schemas are capable of explaining what it
can perceive around it, it is said to be in a state of equilibrium, i.e. a state of cognitive (i.e. mental)
balance.
Piaget believed that humans also adapt to their physical and social
environments in which they live. The process of adaptation begins since birth.
Piaget saw this adaptation in terms of two basic processes:

Assimilation: It refers to the process by which new objects and events are
grasped or incorporated within the scope of existing schemas or structures.

Accommodation: It is the process through which the existing schemes or

structure is modified to meet the resistance to straightforward grasping or
assimilation of a new object or event.

Piaget believed that assimilation and accommodation work together to

promote cognitive growth.
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Piaget identified four major periods, or stages, of cognitive development:

the sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years),

the preoperational stage (2 to 7 years),

the stage of concrete operations (7 to 11 years)

the stage of formal operations (11 years and beyond

The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 Years)

During this period, infants coordinate their sensory inputs and motor capabilities,
forming behavioral schemas that permit them to “act on” and to get to “know” their
environment.

In this stage, infants are only aware of what is immediately in front of them.

They focus on what they see, what they are doing, and physical interactions with their
immediate environment.

Because they don't yet know how things react, they're constantly experimenting with
activities such as shaking or throwing things, putting things in their mouths, and learning
about the world through trial and error.
At about age 7 to 9 months, infants begin to realize that an object
exists (object permanence) even if it can no longer be seen.
It is a sign that memory is developing.
After infants start crawling, standing, and walking, their increased
physical mobility leads to increased cognitive development.
Near the end of the sensorimotor stage, infants reach another important
milestone, early language development, a sign that they are developing
some symbolic abilities.
Socio-Emotional Development

Emotional development refers to the ability to recognize, express, and

manage feelings at different stages of life and to have empathy for the
feelings of others.

The development of these emotions, which include both positive and negative
emotions, is largely affected by relationships with parents, siblings, and peers.
Infants experience, express, and perceive emotions before they fully understand them.

In learning to recognize, label, manage, and communicate their emotions and to perceive and
attempt to understand the emotions of others, children build skills that connect them with
family, peers, teachers, and the community.

These growing capacities help young children to become competent in negotiating

increasingly complex social interactions, to participate effectively in relationships and group
activities, and to reap the benefits of social support crucial to healthy human development
and functioning.

Healthy social emotional development for infants and toddlers unfolds in an interpersonal
context, namely that of positive on-going relationships with familiar, nurturing adults. Young
children are particularly attuned to social and emotional stimulation. Even newborn appear
to attend more to stimuli that resemble faces. They also prefer their mothers’ voices to the
voices of other women.
Responsive caregiving supports infants in beginning to regulate their emotions and to
develop a sense of predictability, safety, and responsiveness in their social environments.

Early relationships are so important to developing infants that research experts have
broadly concluded that, in the early years, “nurturing, stable and consistent relationships are
the key to healthy growth, development and learning”.

Experiences with family members and teachers provide an opportunity for young children
to learn about social relationships and emotions through exploration and predictable
interactions.

Professionals working in child care settings can support the social-emotional development
of infants and toddlers in various ways, including interacting directly with young children,
communicating with families, arranging the physical space in the care environment, and
planning and implementing curriculum.
While the display of emotions is somewhat limited in the early days after birth,
infants soon become dynamic in the way they use emotions.

Primary emotions emerge during the first 6 months of life and are considered to
have a biological basis; these include emotions such as joy, anger, sadness, fear,
surprise, interest and disgust.

On the other hand, self-conscious emotions such as embarrassment, pride, shame,

empathy, jealousy and guilt emerge halfway through the second year and onwards.
 Language Development
Linguist Noam Chomsky (1957) proposed that humans are biologically prewired to learn language at a certain
time and in a certain way.

He said that children are born into the world with a language acquisition device (LAD), a biological
endowment that enables the child to detect certain features and rules of language, including phonology, syntax,
and semantics.

Children are prepared by nature with the ability to detect the sounds of language, and follow rules such as how
to form plurals and ask questions.

Chomsky’s LAD is a theoretical construct, not a physical part of the brain.

Supporters of the LAD concept cite the uniformity of language milestones across languages and cultures,
evidence that children create language even in the absence of well-formed input, and biological substrates
of language. But, critics argue that even if infants have something like a LAD, it cannot explain the whole story
of language acquisition.
On the other hand, the interactionist perspective posits that language development is a product of the
interaction between people’s inner capacities as well as environmental differences.

Parents and caregivers also play a crucial role in providing stimulating opportunities and facilitating these
processes.

In the initial days, infants attempt to communicate mainly by crying.

At two months, infants make cooing and vowel sounds, while babbling appears around 6 months.

Between 8 to 12 months, infants become capable of joint attention, participate in turntalking and exhibit
gestures.

Their first word appears mostly around 12 months (holophrastic speech); gradually two-word sentences
(also called telegraphic speech) become evident by 18 - 24 months.