Infant Development

Infant Physical Development

Let's begin by taking a look at infant physical development through the ages.

Infant Physical Development: 1 to 3 Months

Consider the first one to three months of an infant's life. What changes are happening in this small window of time? Here are a few things that can be seen in the early months of infancy:

• Track objects with eyes (in later months, there is less crossing of the eyes)

• Gripping objects in their hands

• Smiling (in the early months, smiling happens randomly but as time continues on there is smiling in response to someone's presence)

• Raising their head as they rest on their stomach

Infant Physical Development: 4 to 6 Months

As the infant ages from four to six months, there is more manipulation of the infant's surroundings.

• Babbling begins as the infant mimics the language spoken in the home

• Laughing

• Rolling over from back to belly and belly to back.

• Sitting up (with support) and ability to control their wobbly head

• Grabbing and reaching for items as well as manipulating toys and objects as they gain more fine motor skills

Fig. 1 Infants will begin reaching for objects that capture their attention.

Infant Physical Development: 7 to 9 Months

An infant who is seven to nine months old begins to understand how to move in different directions rather than just rolling. What will a caregiver notice about an infant in this developmental stage?

• Clapping and playing games (peekaboo being a common game).

• Sit without needing support.

• Can respond to words that they have familiarity with such as their name or small commands such as "no" or "yes".

• Starting to crawl begins. Infants may crawl using hands and knees or may scoot on their bottoms to move around in other directions.

Infant Physical Development: 10 to 12 Months

In the final months of infancy (ten to twelve), there is a window opening toward the next stage of being a toddler. Skills are becoming more refined while new ones are being created just as quickly as they progressed in infancy. What are the skills that may be seen at this stage?

• Will begin pointing at objects usually meaning that they want the thing they are pointing at.

• Begins playing pretend by mostly using objects to mimic behaviors they see in the home (may talk on the phone or put things in a bag to carry).

• The first steps are commonly taken at this stage. There is the need to hold onto furniture for support at first.

• Words are becoming more specific such as names for caregivers ("mama" or "dada").

• Using their hands to feed themselves where they are mastering the "pincher grasp (using the thumb and forefinger to grasp something)" as they pick up small things such as cereal.

Infant Emotional Development

At our earliest moments of life, there are two emotions that are exhibited -- attraction and withdrawal. Almost obviously, infants show an attraction to gratifying situations that bring pleasure and happiness and withdraw from unpleasant situations or stimulation such as physical discomfort.

For infants, emotions are divided into general categories -- basic emotions (primary emotions) and self-conscious emotions (secondary emotions). Basic emotions are seen as fear, anger, happiness, and sadness and are seen first in infant development. As for self-conscious emotions, these look like shame, pride, envy, and embarrassment. These secondary emotions will appear as the infant begins to develop a self-concept.

Infant Intellectual Development

Piaget studied all the mental activities of children including their communication, thinking, and remembering. In the 1920s, Piaget began developing his theories by developing questions for children's intelligence tests. Piaget was most intrigued by the wrong answers that the children may have given during the tests. Wrong answers that were recorded by Piaget were often incredibly similar among children of the same age. He became more interested in how the children would later, perhaps, correct their wrong answers. Piaget saw this as intelligence developing in real-time.

Through these observations, Paiget developed his own theory of cognition. There was a realization that children learned in stages and that our cognition progression is born of the struggle to make sense of the surrounding world. Piaget mentions that because of the need to understand the world around us, we learn in schemas.

Along with the theory of schemas, Piaget theorized two more concepts. We assimilate new experiences meaning that we interpret them by comparing them to our current understandings (schemas).

As we gain new knowledge and interact with our surroundings, our schemas begin to grow like new information being filed away. This is known as assimilation and accommodation.

In Piaget’s view, cognitive development consisted of four major stages—sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.

Sensorimotor Stage

Jean Piaget understood that infants were able to understand the world by interacting with it. Remember, infants are creating schemas as they learn something new, even if the learning is something mundane or easy for older individuals.

In the sensorimotor stage (beginning right away at birth and continuing until age 2), infants are learning through touching, mouthing, holding, hearing, and looking.

Piaget, after observations, saw that infants lived within each moment or within the present. Piaget wanted to test the old adage out of sight, out of mind on infants. In this experiment, Piaget would show an infant a fascinating toy and then would simply place his hat over the toy. Can you guess what happened? The infant acted as if the toy never existed at all. But why? You and I know that there is still a toy that exists but the infant in the experiment assumed differently.

This is because infants lack object permanence. As time goes on and the child ages, there is new knowledge that there is still a toy. By eight months, for example, the child will be able to remember the object and will look for the object even if they are not certain where to look.

Piaget's theories are what lead to understanding aspects of early cognitive development in infancy -- baby math and baby physics.

What is baby math? Researcher Karen Wynn conducted an experiment where she showed five-month-old infants one or two objects. Wyn would hide the objects behind a screen and would visibly add or remove one of the objects.

What happens when Wyn would lift the screen? The infants would only stare longer at the objects, suggesting that they were trying to understand why there was a wrong number of objects being presented to them. This experiment of Wynn's posed a question: Were the infants only responding to the smaller or greater mass of objects or a change in the number of the objects (Myers, 2020)?

Language Development in Infants

Cerebellum Development in Infants

The brain develops quickly in infants as there is a significant amount of learning that is occurring. The cerebellum (meaning little brain) can be found in the back of a baby's brain and beneath the nape of the neck. But what does the cerebellum do?

Fig. 2 The cerebellum helps us manage to move in the world.

The cerebellum's job is to help an infant coordinate their new muscles and keep their balance as they wobble through life. Also, the ability to learn and remember falls under the umbrella of the cerebellum's job. As an infant is learning how to coordinate the world, the cerebellum is in overdrive to help the infant master rolling over, crawling, and eventually, walking.

Our cerebellum help with coordination and creating a link between our senses and our motor skills. So, for infants, the cerebellum that is developing at a fast pace is combining signals from their senses to help the infant understand what they are feeling as they a moving and bobbling about the world.