Physical and Cognitive Development in Infancy - Essay Example

Physical and Cognitive Development in Infancy Physical and Cognitive Development in Infancy Introduction Physical and cognitive development in infancy exerts great influence on an individual. The development occurs at an unimaginable pace in the first two years of life. From the moment of birth, infants are competent individuals who are able to explore the surrounding environment. Once the basic reflexes disappear, they will show intentional and purposeful behavior. As experts point out, infants’ ability to make some simple movements such as crawling and to manipulate objects add to their potential to explore the world. It is also identified that infants have incredible cognitive abilities even when they enter the world and they develop a range of cognitive skills during infancy. This paper will discuss the important phases of physical and cognitive development in infancy. Physical Development in Infancy At birth, an infant lacks many of the physical abilities a matured human being has. A newborn baby’s head will be huge relative to other parts of the body. It is evident that an infant is unable to perform many physical actions except some basic reflexes such as the ability to cry. However, the infant will develop the ability to sit, stand, stoop, climb, and walk over the next 12 months (‘Physical and Cognitive Development in Infancy’). During the second year of birth, the infant’s physical growth slows whereas there is a rapid increase in physical activities like running and climbing. There are mainly two patterns of growth in a newborn baby: cephalocaudal pattern and proximodistal pattern. “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 (shoulders, middle trunk, and so on)” (‘Physical and Cognitive Development in Infancy’). This is the reason why an infant’s head occupies a relatively huge portion of the rest of the body. This same pattern of growth occurs in the head region so that top parts including brain and eyes develop faster than lower parts including jaw and teeth. It is observed that sensory and motor development also follows the cephalocaudal growth pattern. To illustrate, infants can make use of their hands long before they are able to crawl or walk. However, some recent studies indicate that this growth pattern is not so rigid in all cases. According to a study conducted by Galloway and Thelen, infants moved to toys on their feet four weeks earlier than they moved to them with their hands (as cited in ‘Physical and Cognitive Development in Infancy’). The proximodistal pattern is another development sequence where growth starts at the center of the body and extend toward the extremities (‘Physical and Cognitive Development in Infancy’). To illustrate, infants are able to use their hands before they can use one or two of their fingers. Data indicate that an average North American newborn has a height of 20 inches and a weight of 7.5 pounds (cueFlash, n.d.). Generally, it is observed that over 90 percent of full-term newborns have a height of 18-22 inches and a weight of 5.5-10 pounds; and most of the infants lose nearly 5-7 percent of their body weight in the first few days of their life before they adapt to breast feeding and digesting (cueFlash, n.d). Once newborns adjust to breast feeding, they grow rapidly, gaining a body weight of approximately 5-6 ounces/week over the first month. Infants double their body weight at birth by the end of 4 months and triple it by the end of 12 months; and during the first 12 months, infants’ height increases by 1 inch a month, attaining nearly 1.5 times their birth height by the end of 12 months (cueFlash, n.d). After their first birthday, infants’ growth slows significantly over the next 12 months. By the end of the second years, newborns will be roughly 26-32 pounds in body weight. Similarly, a normal infant will be 32-35 inches tall at 2 years of age (cueFlash). Cognitive Development in Infancy In addition to developing motor and perceptual skills, an infant also develops cognitive skills. Piaget’s theory gives a detailed understanding on how infants develop cognitive skills. This theory says that infants build mental structures to adapt to their surrounding environment in the same way they develop their physical bodies to adapt to the world. The essence of the Piaget’s theory is that infants develop their own cognitive worlds but not that the environment pours information into their minds (‘Physical and Cognitive Development in Infancy’). When an infant tries to build an understanding of the world, the developing brain creates schemes -which can be referred to actions or mental representations that sequentially arrange knowledge. According to the Piaget’s theory, infants create behavioral schemes. As described in Fodor (2009), the theorist introduces two concepts, namely assimilation and accommodation, to illustrate how infants use their schemes. The theorist says that assimilation happens when the infant uses his existing schemes to form an understanding of new information and experiences. In contrast, accommodation is the process of adjusting their schemes by the infant to comprehend new information and experiences (p. 52). For instance, when an infant learns the word ‘car’ to identify his father’s car, he calls all the vehicles on roads ‘cars’. However, he soon realizes that two wheelers and buses are not cars and hence he restructures the category to exclude two wheelers and buses. In order to explain how the infant organizes his experiences cognitively, Piaget introduces another term organization. It is the “grouping of isolated behaviors and thoughts into a higher-order system” (Physical and…). Continuous restricting of this organization is an integral part of the development. The theorist says that the infant will inevitably experience cognitive conflict or disequilibrium in his attempt to understand the world. More precisely, the infant is constantly confused with counterexamples and inconsistencies to his existing schemes. In order to resolve this cognitive conflict, there will be an internal search for equilibrium, which in turn will create the motivation for change. As a result, the infant assimilates and accommodates, restructuring old schemes, creating new schemes, and organizing and reorganizing both the new and old schemes. Evidently, the organization will be basically different from the old one and the change identified becomes a new way of thinking. This shift of children from one phase of thought to the next is called equilibrium, according to Piaget’s theory. Some researchers argue that cognitive development in infants does not occur through a stagelike process as Piaget’s theory claims. A few of them argue that infants’ learning process can be linked to operant conditioning, which states that probability of a behavior’s occurrence is depended on the consequences of that particular behavior. For instance, if an infant’s behavior is fostered by a rewarding stimulus, it is likely to occur again and again. Researchers opine that an individual’s attention is closely associated with novelty and dishabituation. Studies show that when an object becomes familiar to infants, they pay less attention to that object and this condition makes infants more prone to distraction. Some other researchers reflect that infants have the ability to imitate a facial expression even when they are 2-3 days old. However, infants’ imitative abilities should not be misinterpreted as their hardwired response but it just reflects their flexibility and adaptability. Referring to a study conducted by Rovee-Collier and Barr, an infant (2-6 months old) can remember some experiences up to 1.5 to 2 years of age (as cited in Physical and…). However, some critics argue that it represents only implicit memory (a memory without conscious recollection). Conclusion From the above summary, it is clear that an infant lacks most of the physical abilities at the time of birth. However, the infant develops abilities including sitting, standing, stooping, climbing, and walking by his first birthday. The Piaget’s theory well explains different phases of cognitive development during infancy. References cueFlash. Glossary of CD- Physical Development in Infancy. Retrieved from http://cueflash.com/decks/CD-_Physical_Development_in_Infancy Fodor, M. (2009). Self-expansion - redefining key psychology terms with system theory. Psychology 2.0 Books. Physical and Cognitive Development in Infancy. Stories of Life-Span Development: Newborn Babies in Ghana and Nigeria. Retrieved from http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/dl/free/0073405515/519572/Santrock_Ch3.pdf Read More