In human beings' lives, developmental psychology describes and explains changes that happen in different psychological processes. Some of the things that help psychologists understand different stages include developmental challenges, emotional development, language acquisition, personal development, and cultural and social influences. Notably, developmental psychologists use several theories to help them think about different aspects of human development. For instance, while studying a child, Piaget's cognitive development theory outlines key stages children go through as they learn. Additionally, while studying children, Bowlby's attachment theory helps understand the relationship between caregivers and children. The paper discusses cognitive, emotional, social, and developmental changes in childhood.
Physical changes
The development of infants is one of the fun ages to understand how developmental psychology happens. children are always curious and usually learn everything new such as smiling, crawling, waving, cooing, and saying simple words like bye-bye. Notably, every developmental stage is significant for infant’s growth. Some of the stages in child development include emotional, physical, social, and cognitive. According to Hojat et al. (2016), the first six months help to determine children’s health. Some of the notable changes in infants include birth weight, height, and length. All these changes are significant since the baby brain largely depends on it, and most children are prewired for both adaptive and survival purposes.
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If these physical changes fail to happen, some factors such as developmental delay, birth defect play a significant role. However, an early assessment should be carried out, like how the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) expands their children's services from birth and the family receives intervention services. The primary purpose of early intervention for toddlers and infants is to prevent developmental delays (Conatser, 2013). Physical activity for an infant is significant for early brain development since movements usually strengthen neuronal development. The physical stage is also crucial as it helps to understand how children learn to crawl before walking. In early childhood, kids continue to expand their physical skills, adding those they had already mastered during infancy. Notably, in physical development, girls tend to develop fast compared to boys.
Cognitive Changes
In infant development, the cognitive stage deals with processing information using language and senses. Some of the notable changes are related to the development of thinking, language, intelligence, and learning. For instance, a child hears the biological mother without necessarily seeing her and then starts smiling. It demonstrates that the kid has already processed in his or her mind the presence of the mother. Cognitive theory helps understands how people think and the impact of their behaviors. Piaget's theory posits that there are four stages of infant cognitive development.
The first stage in cognitive development, according to Piaget, is the sensorimotor stage. Here, infants tend to know the world using senses and movements. Kids understand the world by using basic actions like looking, listening, sucking, and grasping. Additionally, infants learn that things can continue to exist, although they cannot be seen ( Bormanaki & Khoshhal, 2017). In this stage, infants learn how to separate people and objects around them. Moreover, in this stage, children go through a period of dramatic learning and growth. As they continue to interact with the situation, they come up with discoveries on how the world looks like.
In the next phase of cognitive development, children start to think allegorically and learn to use word and pictures to signify objects. Notably, kids during this stage are self-centered and usually struggle to see things from other individual perspectives. As they continue to get better at thinking and developing language, they also think about things in concrete terms. Additionally, in this stage, kids also learn to play, although through pretending but simultaneously scuffle with logic and taking people. They struggle to understand the idea of constancy. The third stage is the tangible operational stage, where children begin to think critically about factual events. From this point, they understand the concept of conservation, and their thinking tends to become organized and logical.
Emotional Changes
Emotional and social changes in infant development are all about how they respond to listening, touching smiles, and pleasure in response to social stimulation. Additionally, emotional development helps to understand how infants handle both stimuli and expression. It is during this time infant starts to develop strong relationships with surrounding them. Notably, an individual's presence becomes so stimulating to the child between the age of 15 to 18 months, and their interests towards them are subordinated for the time being. For example, if the kid's attention continues to get attention to the older ones, they act against the compelling force of having the desire to shout and bang.
Expression of emotions during childhood usually promotes that transition from dependency to autonomy. Throughout the infant years, temper tantrums are common, and they tend to have swift mood swings. While child sentiments may be considered to be intense, the outlooks are also short-lived, and someone may wonder why a kid starts screaming hysterically on a toy and at the same time sit comfortably and starts to watch the television. During this age, children are very possessive and find it hard to share. Emotional changes in children begin to develop at the age of three months old with feelings of distress, and the delight emerges the pain and start crying, and when he is happy smiles. Notably, children’s emotions are short–lived and changed quickly.
From six months, kids start to develop fear when they hear loud sounds or see strange people. Additionally, kids are scared of darkness, loneliness, new places, and bad experiences. However, they learn some of the emotions through imitation. For example, if their mother is scared of something, the child also starts fearing, and different kids have da other expressions of fear. At eighteen months, the baby experiences the emotion of jealousy, and this is witnessed with the arrival of younger siblings due to the center of attraction by their parents. At the age of six to eight months, the child develops conscious feelings due to unfamiliar things and faces. For example, if the mothers change the hairstyles or start wearing spectacles, they try to avoid them.
During childhood, observation usually plays a significant role in how young kids learn new ways of doing things. For example, suppose the child sees the mother sharing, helping, or expressing gratitude. In that case, it is the beginning of developing a solid understanding of interacting with other individuals outside their homes. Although most toddlers can perceive the impacts of self-action in the physical setting, social interactions usually provide a principal context for kids to notice the concerns of their behaviors. According to Bigelow & Power (2016), infants notice the effects of their actions and develop expectations for the partner's reactions. T.
Social Changes
Everyday experiences with their parents are significant for a child to develop social skills. Parents usually provide the very first opportunities for children to build a relationship, communicate and interact with other people. During the first two years of infants and toddlers, there are several social changes. First, the infants will always smile and react in positive ways to their mothers are other caregivers. Second, these kids usually develop attachment of luxury with an object such as animal and blanket and show anxiety to children around them. However, just as the child develops social skills by copying what the parents or siblings behave.
Social changes during childhood are connected to emotional and cognitive changes. All the three combined help create the basis for children to develop relations with other people and; coping with stress, at the age of three to four years, the child starts to create a sense of confidence and learns to participate in several activities like interacting with other people without being assisted. Some of the social skills developed by kids include taking turns, following simple games rules, demonstrating independence, and sometimes showing attachment to particular friend. Between ages four and five, the kids begin to gain great awareness about their individuality. In this stage, most children start to develop friendships with other children and adults, start comparing themselves with other kids and adults, understand different individual feelings and thoughts, and listens while other people are speaking.
At the age between eight and ten, children spend a lot of their time with the peer. Additionally, during this period, children learn how to cooperate in group settings and games and usually dislike playing alone. They also develop long-term friendships and learn ways to handle peer pressure. Children demonstrate independence levels that result in concerns with rules leading to bossiness and negotiating problem-solving and compromising skills with peers.
The developmental disruptions result to set-backs for infant and damaging thus leave them to cope with damaging costs. Some of the social aspects include situations like when children are raised in poor backgrounds, associated with extreme poverty which affects physical activities and behaviors. Other contributing factors include nutrition and exposure to toxins. Breastfeeding is also a protective factor in child development. Studies indicate that detectable breastfeeding impacts kids' cognition with more significant implications for babies with low birth weight (Ford & Stein, 2016). Moreover, insufficient stimulation and few chances for learning are linked with poor cognitive development outcomes.
According to Piaget's theory, children develop their own knowledge through experiences and usually learn new things with the influence of their peers and adults. Additionally, children are inspired to learn through nature, and they do not necessarily require rewards as part of the motivation (Bormanaki & Khoshhal, 2017) In the sensorimotor stage, between birth and two years children use non-actual objects during play activities and explain the routine for young children. In the preoperational stage, children usually learn best by doing. In the concrete operation stage, between the age of seven and eleven children represent their ideas more logically. According to Piaget, children can manage tangible objects, but they cannot think methodically about representations of these objects ( Bormanaki & Khoshhal, 2017) For example, children may implement a rule, and the application of this rule helps the children solve simple tasks in the classroom. In the formal operation stage, children can reason about abstract ideas.
One of Piaget's theory criticisms is on the operation stage since it did not address scientific problem-solving in education settings. However, this is not the case since most kids do not come across this in their daily lives. This indicates that a lot of research needs to be carried out on developing youth and children's interactive and personal issues. To further understand what this meant in this stage, the study about children’s development, should focus more on the day-to-day activities.
Piaget's theory underestimated the age at which kids could perform and do things. He failed to distinguish between performance and competence. The theory only tested the child's performance and makes assumptions that the child who failed lacks the underlying cognitive features that he believed were significant to succeed on the tasks. According to research, a kid may have competencies contrary to what Piaget suggested. Nonetheless, focusing on the age limit the critical point ( Bormanaki & Khoshhal, 2017). Piaget's theory cannot answer how children should solve their problems on scientific experiments and observations. This kind of question according to Piaget's theory can only be answered using assumptions. Therefore, to understand child development using Piaget's theory, it is significant to investigate his claims and assumptions about the child of different ages.
While researching child development, some of the ethical issues should include having informed consent. Getting consent from parents and guardians should the central matter to have the capability to express views in the right ways. The primary purpose of getting consent is to get sufficient information for the participants and helps the researcher make good decisions. Another ethical consideration in child development research should be privacy and confidentiality for the participating children. This involves the type of personal information required and methods of collecting these data. Lastly, in child development research, it is fundamental to note that the child's behaviors, reactions, and conversations may not align with the expectations.
Conclusion
Developmental psychology describes and explains changes that happen in different psychological processes. In child development, several changes occur ranging from physical to social. Some of the physical changes include birth weight, height, and length. All these changes are significant since the baby brain capacity largely rest on it, and most babies are prewired for both adaptive and survival purposes. The cognitive stages include thinking, language, intelligence, and learning. Some of the social skills developed by kids include sharing toys and taking turns, following simple games, demonstrating independence, and sometimes showing attachment to one friend. According to Piaget, children can manage concrete objects, but they cannot think methodically about representations of these objects.
References
Bigelow, A. E., & Power, M. (2016). Effect of maternal responsiveness on young infants' social bidding-like behavior during the still face task. infant & child development https:// /doi/abs/10.1002/icd.1974
Bormanaki, H. B., & Khoshhal, Y. (2017). The role of equilibration in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and its implication for receptive skills: A theoretical study. Journal of Language Teaching and Research , 8 (5), 996. https://doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0805.22 .
Conatser, P., James, E., & Ledingham, C. (2013). Early intervention developmental screening ssessment. palaestra https://js.sagamorepub.com/palaestra/article/view/5063
Ford, N. D., & Stein, A. D. (2016). Risk factors affecting child cognitive development: A summary of nutrition, environment, and maternal-child interaction indicators for sub-Saharan Africa. Journal of developmental origins of health and disease , 7 (2), 197. doi: 10.1017/S2040174415001427
Hojat, M., Mogarab, V., & Jahromi, H. K. (2016). The study of growth differences of infants less than 6 months which have used breast milk and infant formula along with breast milk. International Journal of Pharmaceutical Research & Allied Sciences , 5 (4). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312197410
