Hi! Do you have any information about children psychology? Like how much they understand at certain ages, when they begin to feel guilty about stuff, what is required for them to get attached to something, what might affect them or have a big impact in their lives, etc? Also something about the adequate height and weight according to their ages. I know it's a lot, but I need some help searching. I can't seem to find what I'm looking for. Thanks in advance!
Lucky for you, I’m a completely self-proclaimed psychology expert. No I’m kidding, I just took a class. I’ll be discussing this similarly to the way I formatted my notes, which were based off the textbook and various lessons my teacher attempted to present to us.
I’ve given you a basic outline on what you should know, and you can take from it what you’d like. If you have any other questions about developmental psychology that weren’t answered, just shoot me another message!
001. NEWBORNS’ ABILITIES
After birth, the genetic program regulates how the brain develops. During the first 3 months, the most active areas of the brain are involved in processing sounds, sights, and touches, which helps to prepare the infant for dealing with sensory information from the surrounding environment.
Sensory development:
- Newborns show a preference for their mother’s face over strangers’ faces in the first few days after birth. Newborns first learn to recognize a person’s eyes. At 4 months, infants visually distinguish faces. By 3 or 4 years, their visual abilities are equal to that of an adults.
- 1-month-old infants have keen hearing and can discriminate small sound variations. By 6 months, infants have the ability to make all the sounds necessary to learn language. Newborns are attracted to female voices.
- Newborns have a well-developed sense of touch.
- A 1-day-old infant can discriminate between odors. 6-week-old infants can smell the difference between their mother and someone else. Newborns are born with an innate preference for sweet and salt.
- By 6 months, infants develop depth perception, and would hesitate around the visual cliff.
Motor development:
- Proximodistal principle -> Activities regarding the bottom are mastered before activities using the arms. Infants roll over before they walk.
- Cephalocaudal principle -> Infants lift their heads before they control their bottoms enough to sit up. Infants sit up before they crawl.
- In developing motor skills, most kids go through the same stages. Yet, if one child is given more opportunities to practice their stepping reflex earlier in life, they will began to walk earlier. Development of motor development is heavily influenced by maturation, but timing is affected by experience/learning, or nature.
002. DEVELOPMENTAL NORMS
- Sitting up alone - average 5.5 months (range 4.5-8.0 months)
- Crawling - average 10 months (range 7.0-12.0 months)
- Walking alone - average 12.1 months (range 11.5-14.5 months)
003. ATTACHMENT
Attachment theory dictates that babies form attachments to parents through a gradual process that begins after birth and continues throughout early childhood.
Infants have crying, which elicits care and sympathy. At 4-6 weeks, they begin social smiling, which elicits joy and pleasure. At 6 months, they give parents a happy greeting when they reappear after a short absence. These behaviors contribute to a child expressing needs and understanding their parents’ emotional experiences, which ultimately help to build a parent-child attachment.
Separation anxiety is a clear sign the infant has become attached to one or both parents. By the end of their 1st year, infants usually show close attachment.
Different kinds of attachment occur:
- Secure attachment - infants use their caregiver as a safe home base. [Associated with being more trusting, enjoying relationships more, and dealing better with stress.]
- Insecure attachment - infants show resistance towards their caregiver. [Associated with being dependent, having poor social relationships, and having poor coping skills.]
Attachment is not affected by how long a child is in day care, but by the caregiver’s sensitivity, caring, and responsiveness to needs.
004. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
- Sensorimotor (birth to age 2) -> Infants interact with and learn about their environments by relating their sensory experiences to their motor actions. Children have problems with object permanence.
- Preoperational (age 2 to 7) -> Children learn to use symbols to solve simple problems and to think or talk about things that aren’t present. Limitations during this stage include issues with conservation and egocentric thinking.
- Concrete (age 7 to 11) -> Children can perform a number of logical mental operations on concrete objects. Children learn to sort objects by size and color.
- Formal (age 12 through adulthood) -> Adolescents and adults develop the ability to think about and solve abstract problems in a logical manner. Egocentric thinking reappears in adolescent thinking (imaginary audience and personal fable).
Note that these stages are not as orderly as Piaget imagined. Psychologists have also learned that genetic factors influence many cognitive abilities.
005. SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Freud’s Psychosexual Stages:
- Oral Stage (first 18 months) -> A time when the infant’s pleasure seeking is centered on the mouth. If a child is locked in this stage, they would continue to seek oral satisfaction as an adult (could lead to chewing erasers on pencils, etc).
- Anal Stage (1.5 to 3 years) -> A time when the infant’s pleasure seeking is centered on the anus and its functions of elimination. Fixation at this stage would lead to behaviors focused on either retention or elimination. Retention usually takes the form of being very neat, behaviorally rigid, etc. Elimination can take the form of being messy or generous.
- Phallic Stage (3 or 6 years) -> A time when the infant’s pleasure seeking is centered on the genitals. Children will compete with the parent of the same sex for the affection of the opposite sex. Problems in resolving this stage lead to the Oedipus complex.
- Latency Stage (6 to puberty) -> A time when the child represses sexual thoughts and engages in nonsexual activities.
- Genital Stage (puberty through adulthood) -> A time when the person has renewed sexual desires that they want to fulfill through relationships.
Erikson’s Psychosexual Stages
- Stage 1: Trust versus Mistrust (infancy through first year) -> If parents are responsive, the child develops trust. If parents are neglectful, the child may begin to view their world as uncaring and have difficulties later on.
- Stage 2: Autonomy versus Shame and Doubt (1 to 3 years old) -> If the child is encouraged to explore, they will develop a sense of independence. If their parents disapprove of explorations, the child may feel shame.
- Stage 3: Initiative versus Guilt (3 to 5 years old) -> If the caregivers encourage initiative, the child will learn to plan and initiate new things. If not, the child may feel uncomfortable and develop a feeling of being unable to plan their futures.
- Stage 4: Industry versus Inferiority (5 to 12 years old) -> If the child can direct energy into working at tasks, the child will develop a feeling of industry. If not, they may feel inferior or incompetent.
- Stage 5: Identity versus Role Confusion (adolescence) -> Children need to leave behind the behaviors of childhood and develop the more responsible behaviors of adults.
Psychologists tend to agree with Erikson on the idea that psychosocial conflicts contribute to development and that the first few (particularly 5) years were not a barrier for development. Psychologists also tend to agree with Freud about childhood events being important.
Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory emphasizes the importance of learning through observation, self-reward, and imitation in the development of behaviors. You do not need to perform behaviors or receive external rewards to learn new skills.
006. LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
Noam Chomsky and many other linguists believe that people are born with the ability to learn language.
Four Stages in Acquiring Language:
- Babbling (begins at 6 months) -> Babbling is when an infant begins to make one-syllable sounds, such as “ba-ba-ba.” By 6 months, infants have learned to discriminate between sounds. In deaf children who have only been exposed to sign language, babbling is manual.
- Single Word (about 1 year of age) -> Infants say single words that refer to what they can see, hear, or feel. About half refer to objects (cookie) and the ther half to actions or routines (up, eat, more). Parents usually respond by speaking in parentese (motherese).
- Two-word combinations (about 2 years of age) -> Strings of words that express various actions (”me play”). The new ability to communicate by combining words marks the beginning of learning about grammar. From around age 2, children begin to learn a new word every 2 hours or so. Language development is partly dependent on how responsive the caregiver is.
- Sentences (about 4 years) -> Sentences range from 3 to 8 words and indicate a growing knowledge about grammar. Children’s first sentences differ from adult sentences due to telegraphic speech and overgeneralization.
The critical language period is the time from infancy to adolescence when language is easiest to learn. Both innate and environmental language factors affect our development in language. To learn more about what happens when someone is deprived of language during the critical period, please read up on the cases of Genie and Victor [I encourage you to watch + and + movies for a better understanding of their cases].
