Factors Influencing Child

Development
 Areas of Development

Physical
- physical changes in the size, structure &
proportion of the parts of the body that take
place from the moment of conception

Motor
- Development of the control of the body
movement
- Increasing the coordination between various
parts of the body, child acquire many abilities
 Areas of Development

Language
- Changes that make it possible for an infant,
who in the early months use crying for
communication, to learn words & later
sentence to converse fluently

Cognitive
- Emergence of thinking capabilities in the
individual
 Areas of Development
Social
- Development of those abilities that enable the
individual to behave in accordance with the
expectation of the society
- Child relationships with people & her ways of
interaction with them

Emotional
- Emergences of emotion like anger, joy, delight,
happiness, fear, anxiety & sorrow and the
socially excepted ways of expressing them
Nature
 Nature

• Inherited (genetic) characters

• Heredity: the inborn genetic endowment from

the biological parents

• The integrated nature of growth & maturation is

largely maintained by a constant interaction of
genes, hormones, nutrients & other factors
 Nature
• Heredity is powerful, but it has limits

• Effects of heredity depends very much on child

developmental level, health, activity & exposure to
environmental substances.

• Hereditary instructions carried by the

chromosomes influence development throughout
life by affecting the sequence of growth, the timing
of puberty, and the course of aging (maturation).
 Nature

• It underlies maturation & the orderly sequence of

motor development.

• considerable influence over body size & shape,

height, intelligence, athletic potential, personality
traits, eye color, skin color, and the susceptibility
to some diseases, temperaments

• Genes are the determinants of heredity, and

each individual carries genes from the mother
and the father.
 Nature

• Nucleus of every cell of human body consists

of 46 chromosomes

• Chromosomes transmit coded instructions of

hereditary behavior. We receive one-half of our
chromosomes (and genes) from each parent.

• Genes are scattered on each chromosome-

smaller areas on chromosomes.
 Nature

• Genes determine eye color, skin color, sex.

• Each gene carries instructions that affect a

particular process of personal characteristic.

• There are at least 100,000 genes in every

human cell, and perhaps more.

• Genes are made up of DNA.

 Nature

• Hormones are growth promoting substances

• Most of the hormones are secreted by

endocrine glands & play vital role in regulating
patterns of growth & development

• Somatotrophin: growth of bones & increase

height of a person
• Thyroid: metabolic rate
• Steroid: estrogen
Nature
Nature
Nature
Nature
Nature
Nature
Nurture
 Nurture
• Environmental condition

• Effect physical development through nutrition &

activities

• Intellectually through informal experiences &

formal instruction

• Socially through adult role model & peer

relationship
 Nurture

• Best environments cannot overpower the

defective gene

• Condition of nurture are not always nurturing

• Environmental forces continue to modify inborn

potentials with each passing year.
 Prenatal Environment Influences

• Prescription drugs & • Pollution

non-prescription • Maternal disease:
drugs rubella
• Illegal drugs • Exercise
• Tobacco • Nutrition
• Alcohol • Emotional stress
• Hormones • Maternal age &
• Radiation previous birth
 Postnatal Environment Influences

• After the prenatal & the perinatal environment,

we experience the postnatal environment for
lifetime
Postnatal Environment Influences
Socialization
Socialization is the process by which individual
acquire belief, values & behavior judge
important in their society

- society control the young undesirable

behavior, prepare them to adapt and function
in the environment & carry on the cultural
transmission
 Postnatal Environment Influences
Socialization

- Begin at birth

- Parents, teachers, elders, extended family &

peer control their behavior

- Media, day-care centers, peer group. School

 Postnatal Environment Influences

Cultural

- Physical growth of the body follow some

adaptations in different geographical areas
- Impact: belief, attitudes, identity, values

- Parenting styles

- Religion: some religion taboos (related food

stuff) effects growth & development
 Postnatal Environment Influences
Nutrition
- Critical in infancy

- Adequate supply of calories is essential for

normal growth & development

- Zinc: protein synthesis & enzymes

- Iodine: manufacture of thyroid hormones
- Vitamin
 Postnatal Environment Influences
Socioeconomic
- Children from upper group always advanced in
the process of maturity & development
- Neighborhood

- Impact in:
 nutrition
 Habits of meals, sleep, exercise, point of view
 Home condition
 Size of the family
 Number of children in the family
Postnatal Environment Influences

• Physical surrounding
• Infections & infestations
• Trauma
• Climate
• Emotional factors
• Chronic disease
• Ordinal position in the family
• Growth potentials
Nurture
Nurture
Nurture
Nurture
Nurture
Nurture
Nurture
Nurture
 Nature & Nurture
• ''Nature makes the boy toward, nurture
sees him forward,'' (Richard Mulcaster,
1582)

• Nature and nurture cannot exist separately

from each other

• Different aspects of development are

influenced differently by nature and nurture
•
 Nature & Nurture
• A human being (or other organism) cannot
exist without genetic material, which must be
there to shape the growth and differentiation
of cells even before conception. Neither can
any being exist in a vacuum, where no
environmental factor would be present to
shape development.
 Nature & Nurture

• Biological versus Environmental Influences

– John Watson, early 20th century:
Environment is everything.

– Arnold Gesell in the 1930s: Development

determined by an 'inner timetable which is
produced by genes.

• Gesell is a Maturationist
 Nature & Nurture

• Maturation = Genetically determined process

of growth at unfolds naturally over
development. Think of cognitive ability as
growing just like children grow in height.

• since 1980, more emphasis on nature, but a

great deal of controversy.