PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT IN INFANCY The Brain’s Development

1. Directions of Physical Growth

2. The Brain
3. Reflexes
4. Gross and Fine Motor Skills
5. Sensation and Perceptual Development

o Physical Growth and Development in Infancy

The cephalocaudal pattern is the order in which physical

growth and feature differentiation gradually move from
top to bottom (shoulders, middle trunk, and so forth),
with the earliest growth always occurring at the top—the
head. The skull exhibits the same trend, with the brain
and eyes growing at a higher rate than the jaw and other
lower body components.

Growth proceeds according to the proximodistal pattern,

which is characterized by growth beginning in the body's
core and moving outward toward the extremities. For
instance, infants utilize their entire hand before they can
manage multiple fingers, and they control the muscles in
their arms and trunk before they can control their hands
and fingers.

HEIGHT AND WEIGHT

Development Average birth weight of a Filipino

newborn is 2.8 to 3 kg (6 to 6.6 lbs)

The head of a baby is somewhat malformed and

frequently has a little point. The fontanelles, a soft area
on the baby's skull, will close by the time they are one or
two years old. The baby's head will eventually resemble
a regular human head when they become older.
The newborn's brain makes up around 25% of its adult
weight at birth. Approximately 75% of an adult's brain
weight is present by the time a child turns two. But
different parts of the brain mature differently.

WEIGHT FOR AGE OF GIRLS

WEIGHT FOR AGE BOYS
Mapping the Brain
1. Frontal lobes are involved in voluntary
movement, thinking, personality, and
intentionality or purpose.

2. Occipital lobes function in vision.

3. Temporal lobes have an active role in hearing,
language processing, and memory.
4. Parietal lobes play important roles in registering
spatial location, attention, and motor control.

Sleep took up more of our time as babies than it does

now. Newborns sleep anywhere from 18 hours a day
on average, however this varies widely. There is a
range of approximately 10 to 21 hours every day.

o Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)

SIDS is a disorder where babies abruptly stop

breathing and die for no obvious reason; this
frequently happens at night. More than 2,000
newborn fatalities are related to SIDS each year,
making it one of the leading causes of infant death in
the US (NICHD, 2018). At two to four months of
age, the risk of SIDS is highest.

REFLEXES

A newborn's reflexes are innate responses to external

stimuli that control their natural, uncontrollable
motions. Reflexes are survival systems inherited via
heredity. They give babies the freedom to react to
their surroundings in an adaptable way before they
have the chance to learn.
 biological development. However, normal
development of color vision also requires
experience.

o Perceptual Constancy
- A few perceptual achievements stand out
in particular because they suggest that an
infant's perception extends beyond what
the senses can form. This is the situation
known as perceptual constancy, in which
the physical world is perceived as constant
even if sensory stimuli changes.

 SENSORY AND PERCEPTUAL

1. SIZE CONSTANCY is the understanding that
DEVELOPMENT
an object stays the same even as the observer
Information interacts with sensory receptors found in the
moves in front of or away from it, causing the
eyes, ears, tongue, nostrils, and skin to produce
object's retinal image to alter.
sensation. When pulsing air waves are gathered by the
2. SHAPE CONSTANCY is the understanding that
outer ear and sent to the auditory nerve via the inner ear
an object's shape stays constant despite changes
bones, the sense of hearing is experienced. As light
in its orientation with respect to the observer.
beams enter the eyes, they focus on the retina and travel
through the optic nerve to the brain's visual centers,
PERSPECTIVE 3: COGNITIVE
giving rise to the feeling of vision.

Perception

-The interpretation of what is sensed

-The air waves that come into touch with the ears could
be perceived as noise or as sounds, like music.
Depending on how it is viewed, the physical energy
delivered to the retina of the eye may be understood as a
specific color, pattern, or shape.

 VISUAL PERCEPTION
Given that faces may be the most significant visual
inputs in a child's social context, it is critical that they
learn fundamental facial recognition skills. Soon after
birth, infants begin to demonstrate an interest in human
faces. Studies reveal that within hours of birth, newborns
gravitate toward faces over other objects and focus more
on attractive faces than unattractive ones.
-baby's ability to see color also gets better.
-Infants 8 weeks old/ even before that: can distinguish
between some hues by the time they are 8 weeks old,
and probably even before that.
-4 months old: kids show color preferences similar to
those of adults, choosing, for example, royal blue over
pale blue, which are intense colors. The alterations in
eyesight that are discussed here are partly the result of
 Assimilation
-Piaget’s term for incorporation of new information into
an existing cognitive structure.
 Accommodation
Piaget’s term for changes in a cognitive structure to
include new information. When the child encounters a
horse, they might assimilate this information and
immediately call the animal a dog. The process of
accommodation then allows the child to adapt the
existing schema to incorporate the knowledge that some
four-legged animals are horses.
1. Microsystem is the everyday environment of home,
school, work, or neighborhood, including face-to-
face relationships with spouse, children, parents,
friends, classmates, teachers, employers, or
colleagues.

2. Mesosystem is the interlocking of various

microsystems. It may include linkages between
home and school (such as parent-teacher
conferences) or between the family and the peer
group (such as relationships that develop among
families of children in a neighborhood play group).

3. Exosystem consists of interactions between a

microsystem and an outside system or institution.
Though the effects are indirect, they can still have a
profound impact on a child. ex. parents workplace

4. Macrosystem consists of overarching cultural

patterns, such as dominant beliefs, ideologies, and
economic and political systems. The education
system, the law systems, the cultural systems, and
the geographic location in which a child is raised.

5. Chronosystem adds the dimension of time: change or

constancy in the person and the environment. One
classic example of this is how divorce, as a major life
transition, may affect not only the couple's relationship
but also their children's behavior.