INFANT GROWTH AND

DEVELOPMENT
INFANT GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

Human growth and development

both refers to dynamic process.
Growth and development are
interdependent and interrelated
process. Growth usually takes
place during the first 20 years of
life while development takes
place after that.
INFANT GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
 Growth refers to an increase in some quantity over time. The
quantity can be physical (e.g., growth in height, growth in an
amount of money) or abstract (e.g., a system becoming more
complex, an organism becoming more mature).
 Development is The capacity to learn, remember, and
symbolize information, and to solve problems, exists at a
simple level in young infants, who can perform cognitive
tasks such as discriminating animate and inanimate beings or
recognizing small numbers of objects. During childhood,
learning and information-processing increase in speed,
memory becomes increasingly longer, and symbol use and the
capacity for abstraction develop until a near-adult level is
reached by adolescence.
INFANT GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
 Growth versus development
 Growth and development are not the same thing. To grow is
to increase of size in number. To develop is to increase one’s
ability and desire to satisfy one’s own needs and legitimate
desires and those of others.
 Growth can be measured in centimeter or inches for height
and kilograms or pounds for weight (quantitative change).
 Development is not measurable. It is an increase in mental,
social and emotional abilities of a child.
INFANT GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT