© San Mateo Municipal College All Rights Reserved

Module 7
Babyhood

PSY04
DEVELOPMENTAL
PSYCHOLOGY

I. MODULE OVERVIEW

This module discusses the characteristics of the period of

babyhood as well as the developmental tasks that the social
groups expect them to master. We will also explore the
different development that baby undergoes in terms of
physical, motor, speech, emotional, social and moral and
cognitive aspect.

COLLEGE OF ARTS II. MODULE SCHEDULE

AND SCIENCES 3 Units Course
BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN Synchronous Meeting : 1. 5 hours per week
PSYCHOLOGY Asynchronous Meeting : 1.5 hours per week

Date: November 28-December 3, 2022

III. LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the end of the module, you are expected to:

1. Define the labels “baby” and “toddler” and understand the

characteristics of the babyhood period.
2. List the developmental tasks of babyhood and recognize
the seriousness of not mastering these tasks when the
social group expects them to be mastered;
3. Describe the physical, motor, speech, emotional, social,
moral and cognitive development during babyhood.

MARICEL L. ABAYA, LPT, RGC

abaya.smmc2021@gmail.com
09569917040
Part-time Instructor
San Mateo Municipal College
Gen. Luna St. Guitnang Bayan I, San Mateo, Rizal
Tel. No. (02) 997-9070 No part of this module may be reproduced or used in any manner
www.smmc.edu.ph without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of
quotations in a review

San Mateo Municipal College DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

Bachelor of Science in Psychology Maricel L. Abaya, LPT, RGC
 © San Mateo Municipal College All Rights Reserved

IV. INPUT INFORMATION

I. BABYHOOD

Babyhood occupies the first two years of life following the brief two-week period of infancy. Because “baby”
suggests to many people a helpless individual, it is becoming increasingly common to apply the label toddler to the
individual during the second year of babyhood. A toddler is a baby who has achieved enough body control to be relatively
independent. The word is derived from "to toddle", which means to walk unsteadily, like a child of this age.

CHARACTERISTICS OF BABYHOOD

1. Babyhood is the True Foundation Age

Babyhood is the true foundation period of life because, at this time, many behavior patterns, attitudes,
and patterns of emotional expression are being established.
There are four reasons why foundations laid during the babyhood years are important.
1. Contrary to tradition, children do not outgrow undesirable traits as they grow older. Instead, patterns
established early in life persist regardless of whether they are good or bad, harmful or beneficial.
2. If an undesirable pattern of behavior or unfavorable beliefs and attitudes have started to develop, the
sooner they can be corrected the easier it will be for the child.
3. Because early foundations quickly develop into habits through repetition, they will have a lifelong
influence on a child’s personal and social adjustments.
4. Because learning and experience play dominant roles in development, they can be directed and
controlled so that the development will be along lines that will make good personal and social adjustments
possible.

2. Babyhood is an Age of Rapid Growth and Change

Babies grow rapidly, both physically and psychologically. With this rapid growth comes a change not only
in appearance but also in capacities. Their limbs develop in better proportion to the large head. Changes in body
proportions are accompanied by growth in height and weight. Intellectual growth and change parallel physical
growth and change. Before babyhood has come to an end, babies are able to understand many things and can
communicate their needs and wants in ways that others can understand.

3. Babyhood is an Age of Decreasing Dependency

This results from the rapid development of body control which enables baby to sit, stand, walk and to
manipulate objects. Independence also increases as babies become able to communicate their needs to others.
With decreased dependency comes a rebellion against “babied”. Babies are no longer willing to let others
do things for them that they can or believe they can do for themselves. If they are not permitted to try to be
independent when they want to be they protest. This protest takes the form of angry outbursts and crying and
soon develops into negativism-one of the outstanding characteristics of the closing months of babyhood.

4. Babyhood is the Age of Increased Individuality

Individuality is shown in appearance and in patterns of behavior. Even identical multiple births show
individuality.
As individuality increases so does the necessity for treating each baby as individual. Babies can no longer
be expected to thrive on the same food or the same schedules for eating and sleeping. Nor can the same child-
training techniques be expected to work equally well for all babies

5. Babyhood is the beginning of Socialization

Babies show their desire to become a part of the social group by putting up protest when they are left
alone for any length of time and by trying to win the attention of others in any way. Attachment behavior is one
way in which babies show their interest in becoming a part of the social group. Because they can count on the
attention and affection of their mother, they develop strong emotional ties with their mothers long before babyhood
comes to a close. It is from the satisfaction of this attachment behavior that the desire to establish warm and
lasting relationships with others develops.

San Mateo Municipal College DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

Bachelor of Science in Psychology Maricel L. Abaya, LPT, RGC
 © San Mateo Municipal College All Rights Reserved

6. Babyhood is the beginning of Sex-Role Typing

Almost from the moment of birth, boys are treated as boys and girls as girls.
Example:
➢ Boys are dressed in blue clothes, covered with blue blankets, and live in a room that lacks the frills
and ruffles of a girl’s room.
➢ Toys are selected that are appropriate for boys, and they are told stories about boys and activities

The same sex-identifying traditions apply to girls. While sex-role typing is part of a girl’s early training, the
pressure on her to be sex-appropriate even as a baby is not as strong as they are on a boy. However, indirectly
girls are sex-role typed in babyhood by being permitted to cry and show other signs of “female weakness” which
are discouraged in boy babies.

7. Babyhood is an Appealing Age

Even though all babies are disproportionate, they are appealing because of their big heads, protruding
abdomens, small thin limbs, and tiny hands and feet. When they are dressed in baby clothes and wrapped in baby
blankets, they become even more appealing.
Older children as well as adults find small babies appealing because of their helplessness and dependency.

8. Babyhood is the beginning of Creativity

In these early months of life, they are learning to develop interests and attitudes that will lay the foundations
for later creativity or for conformity to patterns set by others. And this will be largely determined by the
treatment they received they receive from others, especially their parents.

9. Babyhood is a Hazardous Age

While there are hazards at every age during the lifespan, certain hazards are more common during
babyhood than at other ages. Some of these are physical and some psychological.
Physical hazards – illnesses and accidents may lead to permanent disabilities or death.
Psychological hazards – can result if poor foundations are laid at this time since behavior patterns, interests,
and attitudes are established during babyhood.

DEVELOPMENTAL TASKS OF BABYHOOD

It is possible to set up standards of social expectations in the form of developmental tasks because the
pattern of development is predictable even though different babies reach important landmarks in this pattern at slightly
different ages.
All babies are expected to:
✓ Learn to walk
✓ Take solid foods
✓ Have their organs of elimination under partial control
✓ Achieve reasonable physiological stability (especially in hunger rhythm and sleep)
✓ Learn the foundation of speech
✓ Relate emotionally to their parents and siblings to some extent instead of being completely self-
bound as they were at birth

Most of these developmental tasks will not be completely mastered when babyhood draws to a close, but
the foundations for them should be laid.
These are the factors which makes it possible for babies to master the developmental tasks of babyhood:
• Rapid development of the nervous system
• Ossification of the bones
• Strengthening of muscles

Babies who lag behind their age-mates in mastering the developmental tasks of babyhood will be
handicapped when they reached the early childhood years and are expected to master the developmental
tasks for these years.

San Mateo Municipal College DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

Bachelor of Science in Psychology Maricel L. Abaya, LPT, RGC
 © San Mateo Municipal College All Rights Reserved
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
Babyhood is one of the two periods of rapid growth during the life span; the other comes at puberty.
Physical growth and development occur at gradual decelerated rates throughout babyhood while
development of the physiological functions occurs at a rapid rate.

PATTERN OF PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT DURING BABYHOOD

Height
During babyhood, changes in the over-all size of the child’s body are more rapid than any other time after birth. The baby
measures between 23 and 24 inches at four months, by the end of one year the baby measures between 28 and 30 inches and
between 32 and 34 inches at two years.

Weight
During the first year, weight changes are more than height changes. At four months the baby’s weight will double their birth
weight and triple it at 1 year. At one year, babies weigh, on the average, three times as much as they did at birth, or approximately
10 kilograms. Increase in weight during babyhood comes mainly from an increase in fat tissue.

Physical Proportions
Growth of the head slows down in babyhood while the trunk and limb growth increases. Thus, the baby gradually becomes
less top-heavy and appears more slender and less chubby by the end of babyhood.

Bones
The number of bones increases during babyhood. Ossification begins in the early part of the first year but is not completed
until puberty. The fontanel, which is the soft spot on the skull, has closed in approximately 50 percent of all babies by the age
of 18 months, and in almost all babies by the age of two years.

Muscles and Fat

Muscle fibers are present at birth but in very under developed forms. They grow slowly during babyhood and are weak.
The fat tissue develops rapidly during babyhood due partly to the high fat content of milk.

Body Builds
Babies begin to show tendencies toward characteristic body builds during their second year of life as body proportions
change. The three most common forms of body build are ectomorphic, which tends to be long and slender, endomorphic,
which tends to be round and fat, and mesomorphic which tends to be heavy, hard and rectangular.

Teeth
By the end of one year the baby has four to six temporary teeth and sixteen by the age of two. The teeth present in the
front will emerge first and the molars which are situated at the back appear last. The last four of the temporary teeth usually
erupt during the first year of early childhood.

Nervous System
The brain weight is one-eighth of the baby’s total weight at birth. During the first 2 years, brain weight is gained and this
leads to the baby’s top-heavy appearance. The cerebellum and the cerebrum triple its weight during the first year of postnatal
life. Immature cells, present at birth, continue to develop after birth but relatively few new cells are formed.

Sense Organ Development

By three months, the eye muscles are well developed and babies can see things clearly. They can also see colors. Hearing
develops rapidly during this stage. Smell and taste, which are well developed at birth, continue to improve during babyhood.
Babies are highly responsive to all skin stimuli because of the thin texture of their skin and because all sense organs relating to
touch, pressure, pain, and temperature are present in well-developed forms.

San Mateo Municipal College DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

Bachelor of Science in Psychology Maricel L. Abaya, LPT, RGC
 © San Mateo Municipal College All Rights Reserved
Physiological Function

Babyhood is the time when the fundamental physiological patterns of eating, sleeping and elimination should be established,
even though the habit formation may not be completed when babyhood ends.

Motor Skills Development during Babyhood.

After the fast growth spurt in infancy, the growth rate of the baby is slow. Motor development means the ability to control
movement of several parts of the body through coordinated movement of muscles and limb. The sequences of postural control
and locomotion among babies as reported by Schiamberg. In this sequence of development it can noted that the development
proceeds from head to foot

Speech development
Speech is a tool for communication. Both aspects of communication - comprehension of what others are trying to
communicate and the ability to communicate one's thought and feelings to others in terms they can understand (speak) -
are difficult and not mastered quickly. Foundation for both is laid during babyhood years though the ability to comprehend is
generally greater when babyhood comes to a close than is the ability to speak. The speaker's facial expression, tone of voice &
gesture help babies to understand what is being said to them. It has been found out that pleasure, anger, and fear can be
comprehend as early as third month of life.

Pre-speech form of communication

The four pre speech forms which normally appear in the developmental pattern of learning to talk are:
⚫ Crying - the most frequently used pre speech form during the early months of life. It is one of the first ways in
which the baby is able to communicate with the world at large.
⚫ Babbling - real speech eventually develops from it that is why it is the most important pre speech form. It begins
during the second or third month, and then gradually gives way to real speech. Babbling includes repeating
consonant-vowel sounds such as “ma-ma”, “da-da” and “na-na”.
⚫ Gesturing - Babies use gestures as a substitute for speech, not as a supplement to speech.
⚫ Emotional expressions - Emotional expression is one of the most effective pres peech forms of communication.
Babies use facial gestures to communicate their emotional states to others.

San Mateo Municipal College DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

Bachelor of Science in Psychology Maricel L. Abaya, LPT, RGC
 © San Mateo Municipal College All Rights Reserved
Emotional expressions are a useful pre speech form of communication for two reasons:
1. Because babies have not yet learned to control their emotions, it is easy for others to know what
emotions they are experiencing by their facial and bodily expressions.
2. Babies find it easier to understand what others are trying to communicate to them by their facial
expressions than from their words.

Emotional behavior
Babyhood emotions differ from those of other age groups. They are brief in duration, though intense while they last.
They appear frequently but give way to other emotions when baby's attention is distracted. Emotions are more easily conditioned
during babyhood than at later age. This is because their intellectual abilities are limited.

There are certain emotional patterns that are commonly found among babies such as anger, fear, curiosity joy and
affection. But since the babies’ emotions are susceptible to conditioning, there are variations in these patterns as well as in the
stimuli that evoke them. Different babies respond emotionally to different stimuli, depending to a certain extent upon their past
experiences.
Babies who experience dominance of the pleasant emotions are laying the foundations for good personal and social
adjustments and for patterns of behavior that will lead to happinesss.

Development in Socialization
Early social experiences play a dominant role in developing the baby's future social relationships and patterns of
behavior towards others. Social foundations laid in babyhood are important because first, the type of behavior babies show in
social situations affects their personal and social adjustments and, second, once established, these patterns tend to persist as
children grow older
Foundation for later social behavior and attitudes is laid in the home.
During the first year of babyhood babies are in a state of equilibrium which makes them friendly, easy to handle and
pleasant to be with. Around the middle of the second year, equilibrium gives way to disequilibrium and they become fussy,
noncooperative and difficult to handle. Before babyhood is over, equilibrium is restored and babies exhibit pleasant social
behavior again.

Beginnings of Morality
Babies have no scale of values and no conscience. They are therefore neither moral nor immoral but nonmoral in the
sense that their behavior is not guided by moral standards. Babies judge the rightness or wrongness of an act in terms of
pleasures or pain it brings them rather than in terms of its god and harmful effects on others because of their limited intelligence.
They have no sense of guilt because they lack definite standards of right and wrong. They do not feel guilty when they take
things that belong to others because they have no concept of personal property rights.
During babyhood, emphasis should be on the educational aspect of discipline - teaching babies what is right and what
is wrong - and on rewarding them with approval and affection when they do what is right rather than on punishment when they
do what is wrong.

Personality Development
Babyhood is often referred to as a 'critical period' in the development of personality because at this time the foundations
are laid upon which the adult personality structure will be built. Factors like constant companion to the child (mother quite often),
unfavorable occurrence in the environment (over protection), sex differences, will influence the personality development.

Cognitive Development

Six Approaches to the study of Cognitive Development - all of these help us understand how cognition develops.

1. Behaviorist approach - studies the basic mechanics of learning. Behaviorists are concerned with how behavior
changes in response to experience. The two-learning process that behaviorists study are the classical conditioning and
operant conditioning.
Classical Conditioning enables babies to anticipate an event before it happens by forming associations between
stimuli that regularly occur together. Classically conditioned learning will become extinct, or fade if it is not reinforced by
repeated association.
Baby’s blinking at the sight of the camera is an example of classical conditioning, in which a person learns to
make a reflex, or involuntary response (blinking), to a stimulus (the camera) that originally did not bring about the
response.

In classical conditioning, the learner is passive, absorbing and automatically reacting to stimulus, in operant
San Mateo Municipal College DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Bachelor of Science in Psychology Maricel L. Abaya, LPT, RGC
 © San Mateo Municipal College All Rights Reserved
conditioning, the learner acts, or operates, on the environment. The baby learns to make a certain response to an
environmental stimulus (babbling at the sight of his/her parents) in order to produce a particular effect/consequence
(parental attention)

2. Psychometric approach - measures quantitative differences in abilities that make up intelligence by using tests that
indicate or predict these abilities.
Intelligent behavior is goal oriented and adaptive and is directed at adjusting to the circumstances and conditions
of life. Intelligence enables people to acquire, remember, and use knowledge, to understand concepts and relationships
and to solve everyday problems.
The modern intelligence testing movement began in the early twentieth century, when school administrators in
Paris asked the psychologist Alfred Binet to devise a way to identify children who could not handle academic work and
needed special instruction. The that Binet and his colleague, Theodore Simon, developed was the forerunner of
Psychometric tests that score intelligence by numbers.
The goals of psychometric testing are to measure quantitatively the factors that are thought to make up
intelligence (such as comprehension and reasoning) and, from the results of that measurement, to predict future
performance (such as school achievements).
IQ (Intelligence Quotient) Tests - consist of questions or tasks that are supposed to show how much of the
measured abilities a person has, by comparing that person’s performance with norms established by a large group of test-
takers who were in the standardization sample.
Developmental tests compare a baby’s performance on a series of tasks with norms established on the basis of
observation of what large numbers of infants and toddlers can do at particular ages.
Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development is a widely used developmental test designed to assess
children from 1 month to 31/2 years. Scores on the bayley-III indicate the child’s strengths, weakness and competencies
in each of the five developmental areas: cognitive, language, motor, social-emotional, and adaptive behavior.

3. Piagetian approach - looks at changes, or stages, in the quality of cognitive functioning. It is concerned with how the
mind structures its activities and adapts to the environment.
The first of Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development is the sensorimotor stage. During this stage (birth to
approximately age 2), infants learn about themselves and their world through their developing sensory and motor activity.
Babies change from creatures who respond primarily through reflexes and random behavior into goal oriented toddlers.

4. Information-processing approach - focuses on perception, learning, memory and problem solving. It aims to
discover how children process information from the time they encounter it until they use it.
Habituation - a type of learning in which repeated or continuous exposure to a stimulus reduces attention to that
stimulus.
Dishabituation - increase in responsiveness after presentation of a new stimulus.
Researchers gauge the efficiency of infant’s information processing by measuring how quickly babies habituate
to familiar stimuli, how fast their attention recovers when they are exposed to new stimuli, and how much time they spend
looking at the new and the old.

5. Cognitive neuroscience approach - examines the hardware of the central nervous system. It seeks to identify what
brain structures are involved in specific aspects of cognition.
Brain scans provide physical evidence of the location of two separate long term memory systems - implicit and
explicit- that acquire and store different kinds of information.

Implicit Memory
➢ Refers to remembering that occurs without effort or even conscious awareness (unconscious recall)
➢ It pertains to habits and skills
➢ Also called procedural memory
Explicit Memory
➢ Conscious or intentional recollection, usually of facts, names, events or other things that can be stated or
declared
➢ Also called declarative memory

Prefrontal cortex
➢ the large portion of the frontal lobe directly behind the forehead
San Mateo Municipal College DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Bachelor of Science in Psychology Maricel L. Abaya, LPT, RGC
 © San Mateo Municipal College All Rights Reserved
➢ It is believed to control many aspects of cognition
➢ This part of the brain develops more slowly than any other part
➢ This develops the capacity for working memory during the second half of the first year

Working Memory - short-term storage of information the brain is actively processing, or working on.
➢ It is in working memory that mental representations are prepared for or recalled from,stored.
➢ Working memory emerges between 6 and 12
Hippocampus
➢ a structure deep in the temporal lobes
➢ Make longer lasting memory possible

6. Social-contextual approach - examines the efforts of environmental aspect of the learning process, particularly the
role of parents and other caregivers.
Guided participation (Vygotsky’s view of learning as a collaborative process)
- refers to mutual interactions with adults that help structure children’s activities and bridge the gap between child’s
understanding and an adult’s.
- often occurs in shared play an in ordinary, everyday activities in which children learn informally the skills,
knowledge, and values important in their culture.
V. LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Instructions: Do the following activity using Microsoft word format and submit it to our google classroom.

Based on the discussion in the module, do you agree that Babyhood is a True Foundation
Age? Explain your answer.

VI. ASSESSMENT/ EVALUATION

Online quiz will be given during asynchronous learning session.

VII. ASSIGNMENT
Instructions: Do the activity using Microsoft word format and submit it to our google classroom.

List and describe the Six Substages of Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage of Cognitive
Development.

VIII. LEARNING RESOURCES

Textbooks:
Gines, Adelaida G., et.al. (2004). Developmental Psychology. Quezon City,
Philippines: Rex Printing Company Inc.
Hurlock, Elizabeth, B. (1982). Developmental Psychology: A Lifespan Approach (5 th
ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Papalia, Diane E. and Feldman, Ruth Duskin (2012). Experience Human Development.
New York: McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.
Online Resources:
https://www.pdfdrive.com/search?q=developmental%20psychology&pagecount=&pub
year=&searchin=&page=4

San Mateo Municipal College DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

Bachelor of Science in Psychology Maricel L. Abaya, LPT, RGC
© San Mateo Municipal College All Rights Reserved

San Mateo Municipal College DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

Bachelor of Science in Psychology Maricel L. Abaya, LPT, RGC
© San Mateo Municipal College All Rights Reserved

San Mateo Municipal College DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

Bachelor of Science in Psychology Maricel L. Abaya, LPT, RGC