Infancy and Early Childhood: Physical and Social

Development

HDF 501: Lifespan Development

Wheelock College

Boston, MA

The First Three Months

• Physical Growth

• Brain Development

• Sensing the Environment

• Organizing Behavior

• Coordination with the World

Social Development

• Emotions and Facial Expressions• Infant-Caregiver Relationship• Communication• Autonomy• Identity Development• Moral/Pro-social Behavior• Self-Regulation

Physical Development

• Brain Development– Exuberant Synaptogenesis– Long-term Implications

• Motor Development– Developmental Sequence– Grasping– Locomotion

Four Questions of Developmental Science

Continuity

Sources of Development

Plasticity

Individual Differences

Development in Infancy and Early Childhood

Physical Social Emotional Language Cognitive

Prenatal

Early Infancy

Later Infancy

Early Childhood

Middle Childhood

Adolescence

Adulthood

Development in Infancy and Early Childhood

Physical Social Emotional

Early Infancy

Body, skull growth

Brain development

Reflexes to coordinated action

Sensorimotor stage

Sensory input

Hearing narrows

Perception of faces

Coordination w/social world

Temperament

Sleeping/feeding/crying

Later Infancy

Changes in proportion

Ossification of bones

Muscle toning

Fine motor/gross motor skills develop

Caregiver attachment

Patterns of attachment

Social referencing

Communication

Emotion regulation

Sense of self

Development of trust

Becoming more autonomous

Early Childhood

Significant motor development

Brain development

Social learning

Moral development

Effortful control, self-regulation

Socio-dramatic play

Identity development

Regulate emtions

Expressing feelings appropriately

Pro-social behaviors

Activities for this Session

• Create an “Instruction Manual” for parents of children aged birth-5 years old.

• Reflect on the central questions of development science in relation to these stages of development.

• Observe your Focus Child’s physical development.

“The child begins life as a pleasure-seeking animal; his infantile personality is organized around his own appetites and his own body. In the course of his rearing the goal of exclusive pleasure seeking must be modified drastically, the fundamental urges must be subject to the dictates of conscience and society, urges must be capable of postponement and in some instances of renunciation completely.” – Selma Fraiberg