Child Development

The process of human development from conception to 18 years of

age, usually seen as involving the domains of physical, cognitive,
social and emotional development.
 GROWTH

Focuses on physical change such as change in the size of body

parts; examples: height and weight measurements of body parts.
DEVELOPMENT

Focuses on maturation or ability to perform

 P ME N T
E V EL O
S OF D
PE R I OD

Prenatal Period 9 months

Infancy and Toddlerhood Birth to 2 years
Early Childhood 2 to 6 years
Middle Childhood 6 to 11 years
Adolescence 11 to 18 years
DOMAINS OF
DEVELOPMENT
• Physical Development
-includes motor development and physical health and illness
• Cognitive Development
-includes thinking and reasoning skills and language development
• Social and Emotional Development
-includes changes in emotion, self concepts and interpersonal
relationships
 Nature VS Nurture
-inherited characteristics of the - the characteristics of a
person person’s environment that
affect development

L O PM
H IL D D EV E
E S IN C
THE M
 PM EN T
E V E LO
IN C H ILD D
HE M E S
T

Continuity VS Discontinuity
-changes are gradual and occur -changes are sudden and
little by little, over time qualitative rather than gradual
and quantitative
 Universality
-the sequence of development
as being the same everywhere,
all around the world
VS Diversity
-there are connections between
development and the contexts
or cultures in which it takes
place

E LO P M
D DEV
N C H I L
ME S I
THE
DEVELOPMENT
THEORIES
Why use theories in the study of growth and
development?
Theories using assumptions help us understand the complex changes
associated with development
 Psychoanalytic Theory
Sigmund Freud

Behaviour is driven by unconscious motives, especially those of

sensual nature.

Treatment: Psychoanalysis.
 DEVELOPMENTA
L STAGES
Oral Stage Anal Stage

• First Year • 1-3 years old

-Pleasure centered on the -Pleasure centered on the
mouth anal regions
 DEVELOPMENTA
L STAGES
Phallic Stage Latency

• 3-6 years old • Middle Childhood

-Pleasure centered on the -Psychosexual needs subside
genitals -Focus: activities outside of
the body
 DEVELOPMENTA
L STAGES

Genital Stage

• Adolescence
-Pleasure centered on the
genitals
 s o n a l i t y
j o r P e r n e n t s
Ma e C o m p o
r u c t u r Id
St • Contains unconscious motives
Ego and desires
• Conscious overseer of daily
activities
• Seat of awareness
• Mediates between the demands Superego
of the id and the superego • Contains the moral and ethical
sense
• “conscience”
 Psychosocial Theory
Erik Erikson

• Assumptions
-Similar to Freud’s

-Early childhood experiences influence later development

-At each age fundamental conflicts emerge between the needs of

the individual and the support from the environment
 Infancy Toddler Period

• Trust VS Mistrust • Autonomy VS Shame and Doubt

-infants either learn or do not -toddlers either succeed or fail in
learn that people can be trusted gaining a sense of themselves as
and that the world is safe independent actors

S TA
M E N TAL
VE LO P
DE
Learning Theories

External conditions affect the way we behave and view the world.
 Classic Conditioning
Theory
Ivan Pavlov

The process of learning through which a neutral stimulus becomes

associated with a meaningful stimulus so that the organism comes
to respond to the former as though it were the latter.
Behaviourism Theory
John Watson

Infants and children are highly malleable and the conditions in

which children were reared as having an indelible effect on
children’s development.
Operant Conditioning Theory
B. F. Skinner

The process of learning has the tendency to perform a particular

behaviour is gradually strengthened through its association with
reinforcement.

Reinforcement – a stimulus that follows a particular behaviour and

increases the probability of repetition of that behaviour; for
example, candy might be used to reward children for correct
behaviour.
 Social Learning Theory
Albert Bandura

Later Known as Social Cognitive Theory to out emphasis on self-efficacy.

Human behaviour is malleable through learning, learning through

observation of the behaviour of others.
Cognitive Theory
Jean Piaget

Children are active learners and construct their own understanding

of the world.
 TAG E S
TAL S
P ME N
E V E LO
TI V E D
G N I
CO
SENSORIMOTOR (Birth to 2 years old) PREOPERATIONAL (2 – 7 years old)

• Encounters with world through • Development of language,

sensorimotor experience, by symbolic representation and
using the mouth, hands, eyes, pretend play. Children’s thought
and ears. still lacks the logical coherence it
will achieve in later stages.
CONCRETE OPERATIONAL FORMAL
(7 – 11 years old) (11 years and up)

• Development of ability to reason • Attainment of the capacity for

logically about concrete objects
that are within view. Children’s
thought still lacks appreciation
of abstract concepts.
T IV E D
GN I
CO
abstract and scientific thought;
use of logical systems such as
higher mathematics.
Development of formal
operational abilities can be a
lifelong process.
TAL S
PME N
E VE L O
 Information
Processing Theory
Juan Pascual-Leone

Children’s cognitive abilities are limited by the amount of working

memory that they have available. Working memory corresponds to
the number of items (ex. words, numbers) that a child can hold in
short-term memory at one time.
Information Processing
Theory
Robbie Case

Cognitive performances is limited not by capacity, but by cognitive

processing efficiency.
 Contextual Theories

Child development is shaped by the settings (physical and cultural)

in which it takes place
 Sociocultural Theory
Lev Vygotsky

Children are active in constructing in their understanding of the

world as influenced by the culture or social group.
Biological Systems Theory
Urie Bronfenbrenner

Child development is a process that unfolds within a complex

system of relationships occurring in multiple environments.
Biological Theories
 Ethology
Konrad Lorenz

Natural selection shapes the adaptive behaviour of different animal

species.
Ethologically Oriented
Theory
John Bowlby

Growth of mother-infant relationships during the first years of life.

 Dynamic Systems Theory
Esther Thelen

Development is a process of self-organization of multiple components

where different pathways arrive at the same outcome.
Prenatal Development
Genetics and Heredity
Human Body

Millions of Cells

123 Pairs of chromosomes

Genetic Materials Inherited

Characteristic
Process of Conception
Stages of Prenatal Development
Prenatal Brain Development
1. Maternal Nutrition
2. Maternal Stress
3. Prescription and Nonprescription Drugs

n c es o n
l I n f l u e
n m en t a t
E nv i r o lo p m e n
a l D e v e
Pre n a t
 e a r s
n d To ddler Y
in g I nf ancy a
e nt D ur
lopm
Deve
I. Physical Growth
• Patterns of growth
• Changes in body’s size and proportion
• Development of bones, teeth, and brain
• Directionality: Growth has intrinsic direction
• Cephalocaudal: Growth proceeds from top of the body to the bottom
(head to tail)
• Proximodistal: Growth begin from the of the body to the extremities
• Independence of Systems: Different body systems grow on different
schedules
• Canalization: If growth is disturbed or deflected, it returns to an
expected path

G ro w t h
s i c al
p l e s o f Phy
in c i
A. Pr
B. Changes in Body Size
and Proportion
C. Growth of Bones
and Teeth

D. Brain Development
II. Motor Development
• Motor skills are developed because of changes in muscle strength
and coordination

1. Decline of Newborn Reflexes

- from involuntary to voluntary movements
- due to maturation of the cerebral cortex

2. Head Control and Learning to Sit

3. Learning to Reach for Objects

4. Learning to Crawl

5. Learning to Walk
 o pm en t
l De v e l
e p tu a
ry a n d Perc
S e n s o
III.
A. Vision
- Visual Acuity: clarity of vision, the ability to distinguish fine details
- Object Segregation: the ability to identify objects in the world to tell
where one object begins and another ends
B. Hearing
- Babies can hear well, even before they are born
- Evidence of hearing during infancy – newborns alter their rate of
sucking in order to hear music rather than noise
- Early influences from parents with musical talents
C. Speech Perception
- Shaped by experience
- Prefers for sounds of human voice
- Prefers sounds of human conversation than non human sounds
D. Perception and Action
- Newborns are capable of multimodal perception, the
integration of input from all the senses
- Perception and action are limbed
IV. Basic Needs
A. Nutrition:
B. Sleep:
-Infants sleep 9 – 10 hrs. a night plus daytime naps, a total of 11 ½
to 13 hrs. per daily

C. Toilet Training:
-Between 18 and 36 months
-Rapid among girls than boys
D. Expressions of Emotion
Crying and Smiling
- Newborn infant smiles do not signify pleasure, but are due mainly
to input from lower brain structure
- Newborn smiles occur during sleep
- Older infants and early toddlers begin to smile in response to
stimulation
- Crying shows developmental patterns
- In early infancy, babies cry in response to pain, hunger, and
discomfort
V. Health and Safety
1. Illness and immunization
- Most vaccinations should be given before a child’s second
birthday
- Polio, measles, mumps, chicken pox, rubella (German measles),
pertussis (whooping cough), diphtheria, tetanus, and hepatitis B
2. Accidental Injuries

3. Exposure to TV and other Media

-Issues in children’s tv and media exposure
VI. Cognitive Development
• 1. Sensorimotor Stages
• Object Permanence – believe that children in late infancy and
toddler perceive that objects continue to exist in time and space
even if we cannot see, hear, or touch them
VII. Language Development

A. The beginning of language

12 months .. Learn first words
2 or 3 word sentences
Thousand of words… age 05
• Behaviorist Theories:
- Influenced by Shinner
- Children learn language in the same way they learn other behaviors
• Nativists Theories:
- Noam Chomskey (1957)
- “We are born with an understanding of the fundamental structure of
language” due to our inheritance, especially the human brain.

l op m e n
e De v e
a n g u a g
ri e s o f L
1. T he o
• (LAD) Language Acquisition Device
- Term used by Chomskey to support
that hypothetical innate mental structure
allows language learning to the place in
all humans
• Social Interactional Theories:
- View language development as a social skill for use in
communication and social interaction
2. Communication before Language
• Cooing – vocal behavior if infants that involves the repetition
vowel sounds, such as /aaaaa/, /ooooo/, and /eeeee/
• Babbling – vocal behavior of infants that involves the repetition of
consonant – vowel combinations, such as /bababa/ and /dedede/
3. First Words and the Growth
of Vocabulary
 n t e n c es
o rd S e
h re e– W
– an d T
4 . Tw o
5. Support for Language Acquisition
- Adults talking to infants and toddlers
- Reading aloud to toddlers
- Responsiveness of adults around the child
 VIII. Social and Emotional Development
• Infants emotional lives normally expand to include new
emotions, like fear and anger, as well as interest and
pleasure

• Infants discuss other people, and they establish emotional

bonds with their parents and other important caregivers
and eventually learn about the world and their place in it
The sense of self, and the desire for autonomy, takes center stage
during the toddler years
A. Infants and Toddlers Expression of
Emotions
1. Erickson’s Theory of Resolving Conflicts:
- At each stage of life, fundamental conflicts emerge between the
needs of the individual and the ability to satisfy those needs within
the individual’s environment; Erickson focused on social influences
on the individual
- Resolving conflicts result to
• Development of emotion
• Sense of self
• Social relationship
Development of Emotion

• Birth – emotional reactions range between the positive and the

negative
• First few months – differentiated into basic emotions such as
Happiness
Anger
Sadness
Fear
Surprise
Disgust
Interest
• Smile – first clear sign of happiness:
- Smiling during sleep
- Social smile: smiling when seeing a human face (2 -3 months)
• Laughter
- 3 – 4 months
- At 12 months laugh at parent clowning
• Distress
- Newborns – negative emotions not differentiated
- 6 months: expression of anger more common
• Sadness
- Appear most often in response to the absence of warm and
involved caregivers
• Fear
- Absent among newborns
- Appear during 7 to 9 months elicited mostly by loud noise,
unfamiliar objects, etc
- Fear of strangers occur towards the end of the 1st year
- Fear promotes danger avoidance
- 2 years – new emotions emerge: pride, guilt, shame,
embarrassment (self – conscious emotions)
- Infants during the 1st year of life can perceive emotions in facial
expression
- End of 2nd year – children become expert at interpreting as well as
expressing emotions
 al S el f -
Emo t i o n
me n t o f
ev e lo p
3. D n
a t io
Regul
• Emotional Self – Regulation: the ability to modulate the intensity of
one’s own emotional reactions to people and events
- Infants – few independent strategies for emotional self – regulation,
rely on adults
• Early Months – able to tolerate longer and intense period of
stimulation
• Two year old – increased attention span and can engage with a toy
or a playmate for longer periods of time
- Learning language often avenues for emotional self - regulation
• Temperament: in – built individual differences among infants and
children in how they respond to the world
- Stable individual differences in attention, activity level, and emotional
reactions

a m e n t
e m p e r
dd l e r T
d To
In fa n ts a n
1. Organization and Patterning of Temperament
1. Organization and Patterning of Temperament
- Categories of child temperament
(Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess, 1977)
Easy (40%) – an infant who is generally happy, who easily
establishes routines, and who adapts quickly to change
- Difficult (10%) – an infant who shows intense negative reactions
finds it difficult to adjust to family routines, and who is resistant to
change
- Slow to warm up (15%) – an infant who is relatively inactive,
negative in mood, and who adjusts slowly to change
5. Development of Attachment Relationship
• The close emotional bonds that infants form with their parents
during the 1st year of life are central to human development
A. Early Theories of Parent – Infant Relationships
- S. Freud – the qualities of parent – infant relationship set the tone
for the infant’s relationships throughout life
- Robert Seors (Behavioral Theory) – infant’s development of love for
mothers depended on their mother’s association with being fed
- Harry Harlow – disproved by the Behaviorist was incorrect and that a
different approach to understanding the development of parent –
infant relationships was needed
- John Bowlby (Attachment Theory) – the emotional bonds that
infants form with their parents are not based on feeding but are
essential to survival
- The infants inclination to form an emotional bond with the parent
encourages the maintenance of proximity to parents and in this
way keeps babies from harm
- Human infants are born with innate signaling abilities, like crying,
that draw adult caregivers to them
- Attachment Relationship – the development of emotional bonds
in the parent – infant interactions over the course I infancy
 Security Attachment Theory
Mary Ainsworth

Extending Erikson’s ideas about trust, Ainsworth proposed that differences

in the security of attachment are crucial to the understanding of
personality, both in infancy and beyond.
 Self-Awareness and Autonomy
Infants and toddlers with secure attachments to parents are more
advanced in self-understanding than their insecurely attached peers
(Sandra Pipp, 1992).

Self Concept – the attributes that people believe characterize themselves.

At 2 years old, toddlers become increasingly aware of themselves and of

their bodies.
Child Maltreatment
•Physical •Sexual
•Spiritual •Neglect
Effects of Child Maltreatment
Adjustment Problems like:
• Academic Difficulties
• Problems with peers
• Low Self-concept
Development During the Early
Childhood Period
• The preschool years are a time of visible physical growth and
development.

• Most children are prone to sustain broken bones because children

are still developing and are not as strong as those of adults.
Growth of the Body
• Body becomes taller, leaner
• Lose some of the body fat
Sleep Patterns

• Decreasing number of hours per day

• Average of ten hours at age 6 or 7
Brain Development
• Decrease of grey matter (synaptic pruning)
• Complex pattern of neural connections that is turned to the specific
features of a child’s environment.
• Cerebral cortex matures and cognitive abilities improve
Brain Development

• Frontal lobes are involved in performances of higher cognitive functions,

such as planning and organizing tasks.
• Myelination – neural axons coated with fatty sheaths of myelin.
Myelin - provides insulation for the axon and enables more rapid
transmission on neural impulses.
Brain Development
• Brain Lateralization
-cortex is made up of 2 different halves, called hemispheres
-Left Hemisphere – controls verbal and linguistic functioning.
-Right Hemisphere – spatial reasoning
-electrical activity of the hemispheres is more consistent
throughout childhood
-handedness (left or right) results form specialization of different
functions of the hemispheres.
Motor Development
• Motor skills show enormous growth during the early childhood
years
• Gross Motor Skills – use of large muscles such as running,
jumping and skipping
• Fine Motor Skills – use of small muscles in fastening buttons,
using scissors and eating with a spoon
Motor Development
• Encouraging motor development
- providing opportunities to practice
- providing appropriate play materials
- allowing to practice daily routines such as dressing and
undressing, bringing food and silverwares to the table for meals,
feeding themselves, cleaning dishes from the table after meals.
Health and Wellness
• Pace of normal physical development among young children vary
• Nutritional needs are different because preschoolers grow more
slowly than infants or toddlers
• Eating less and have food preferences
Health and Wellness
• Childhood Illnesses
- measles, polio, diphtheria, etc – prevented through immunization
• Abuse and Neglect:

•Physical •Emotional
•Sexual •Neglect
Cognitive Development
During Early Childhood
• There are advances as well as limitations of children’s thinking
during early childhood

• Egocentrism – tendency of young children to believe that natural

phenomena are centered on them, and the inability to take
perspectives other than their own.
 Theories
Piaget
Preoperational Stage
representational thoughts, but limited reasoning ability

Evidence of preoperational representative

thoughts Cognitive difficulties at the age
• Drawings • Egocentrism
• Pretend Play • Inability to solve conservation
problems
• Failures of logical inference
• Brain takes in information
• Brain acts on information to achieve desired ends
• Capacity to make memories
• Awareness of their own mental activities
• Make assumptions about the world and about other people in it
• Demonstrate preliteracy and rudimentary mathematical skills

Theories
Information Processing Theory
Theories
Vygotsky

• Children are actively involved in making sure of their world.

• Emphasized the role of context in which learning takes place.

• Milestones of Cognitive and Language Development

• Preschool Environment
Social and Emotional Development
During Early Childhood
 Development of Self-Understanding
1. Self Concept
• At 3-5 years – self concept focus on appearances, e.g. ‘to have
black hair’, etc.
• Older Preschooler – focus on their emotional state, e.g.. ‘I feel
happy when my Grandma visits’.
Development of Self-Understanding
1. Self Concept
• 6 years – describe emotional experiences, describe themselves
in relation to social groups, and describe their skills in relation to
those of others, e.g.. ‘I’m a great runner’.
– during early childhood, self-concepts are also
constructed through personal storytelling
– Young Children are likely to be very optimistic about
themselves and about their own abilities
Development of Self-Understanding
2. Emotional Self-Regulation
• Impressive growth of emotional self-regulation
• 2 years – tantrums are common
• 6 years – tantrums disappear, and most children have become
much better able to regulate their emotional states.
Development of Self-Understanding
3. Gender and the Self
• Gender Identity – a person’s fundamental sense of self as male
or female
– 2 ½ years old children can label their own sex
and the sex of adults.
• Freud – young children learns about gender because they look
up to the parent of the same gender and want to be like that
parent.
Development of Self-Understanding
3. Gender and the Self
• Laurence Kohlberg – “Cognitive Theory of Gender
Development” – once children label themselves according to
gender, and once they understand
Development of Self-Understanding
4. Parent-Child Relationships
• Children’s developing of self occurs in the context of ongoing
relationships with parents.
• Secure attachment to parents during childhood is correlated
with positive adjustments
Development of Self-Understanding
5. Parenting Styles
Development of Self-Understanding
6. Peer and Sibling Relationships
• Contacts with children in the neighborhood
• They learn how to interact with them, and make friends
• Develop skills for social interaction and gain in social
competence
Development of Self-Understanding
6. Peer and Sibling Relationships
• Stages of Play (Mildred Parten, 1932)
– Solitary Play – playing alone acting as though others are
unaware of any other children in the vicinity.
– Onlooker Play – one child watches the activities of another
child or of a group of children.
Development of Self-Understanding
6. Peer and Sibling Relationships
• Stages of Play (Mildred Parten, 1932)
– Parallel Play – two children play with similar objects or toys,
often next to each other, but without interacting
– Associative Play – the child plays and shares with others
– Cooperative Play – older preschoolers participate in joint
activities, taking turns with toys, playing games together, or
developing a joint fantasy in their play
Development During Middle
Childhood
I. Growth of the body
• Grow taller, heavier, and stronger
• Brain continues to develop
• Sleep patterns change
• Brain reach 95% of its full adult size, but its
development is far from complete

• Sleep decline with age, would average 8 and 11

hours per night
II. Motor Development
• Continue to improve
• Major gains in running (gross motor) and writing (fine
motor)
• Gender differences begin to emerge in choice of
activities
III. Cognitive Development
• Changes in information processing
• Growth of intelligence
• Changes in language
• Role of schooling in cognitive development
Piaget’s Theory
• 7 – 11 years – concrete operational stage
• New level of cognitive development
• Think in a more logical way
• Think in a more logical way, reverse mental operations, work in a
more flexible manner toward solution of cognitive problems
• Abstract reasoning not yet developed – refuted by Trabasso, et al
claiming that cognitive developments attributed by Piaget to middle
childhood are actually mastered at earlier points in development
Information Processing Theory
• The child is seen as a computer - a centralized system for
receiving and processing information
• Critical skills at selective attention, cognitive processing speed,
and ability to keep information in mind
• What is learned depends on the information available, and so it
may vary from time to time and from place to place
Information Processing Theory
• Gardener’s Multiple Intelligence Theory
IV. Language Development
• Children begin to understand that words can have multiple meanings
• Begin to enjoy jokes and riddles
• Cognitive development and growth of language are intertwined

V. Schooling and Cognitive Development

• Children’s cognitive growth benefits from school attendance
VI. Social and Emotional Development
• Steps out into the world outside the family
• Meets important social and emotional challenges
• Increasing complex self – concepts as children begin to think about
themselves as separate in some ways from their families and from
their peers
• Begin to think of themselves as having a psychological as well as
physical self
• Self – concepts grow to reflect their competence with peers, their
physical appearance, athletic competence, and behavioral conduct
• Self esteem, children’s evaluations of their self – work remain central
Development During Adolescence
Development During Adolescence
• Adolescence – the period of life between childhood and
adulthood, roughly 12 to 18 years of age, during which a child
matures into an adult
I. Physical Development
• Puberty – the physical changes of adolescence, through which
children mature into adults
I. Physical Development
• Brain changes are no less than momentous than changes in a
youngster’s overall size and shape
• Pruning of synaptic connections in the brain continues in
throughout adolescence
• With sexual maturation, sexuality is a central pre – occupation for
many teenagers
II. Cognitive Development
• Piaget: stage of formal operational thought – ability to think
about abstract ideas

• Information Processing Theory: cognitive development

progresses because of cognitive processing and size of working
memory
III. Moral Development
• Lawrence Kohlbergi Theory (table 14 – 1, p.520)
III. Moral Development

• Carol Gilligani Theory - moral reasoning that emphasizes

compassion and care for others; the ideal of morality is not justice
or fairness for all, but attention and responsiveness not only to
one’s own needs, but also to the needs of others; the ethics of
companion and care
IV. Social and Emotional Development
• Self concept changes – acknowledges contradictions and
inconsistencies in their personalities and behavior
• Self – esteem
- Teenagers develop differentiated views of themselves within
domains
- Romantic appeal and occupational interests begin to be
important