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Psychological Development Across the Lifespan - Infancy

6 important questions on Psychological Development Across the Lifespan - Infancy

What are the major developmental milestones in the first year?

The major milestones in the first year of life include the social smile (two months), laughter (four months), the ability to sufficiently coordinate vision and grasp to play with an object (four months), the ability to eat solid food (eight months), the ability to crawl (seven months), the ability to pull oneself up to a standing position (ten months), the ability to walk independently (twelve months), and the formation of words (twelve months).

What physical and behavioral milestones are typical during the first year of development in a child?

The table below reflects the approximate age when most children show certain developmental milestones. It is important to recognize, however, that children vary in terms of the timing of their development.

2 months - holds head up
2 months - social smile
4 months - reach toward object
6 months - sit up independently
7 months - crawl
8 months - separation anxiety
8 months - stranger anxiety
10 months - pull self up to standing position
12 months - begin to walk
12 months - first words

What does a neonate know?

There is no question that neonates, or newborns, are born without much of the vast psychological tools that adults have at their disposal. In contrast to an older view of infants as helpless, passive blobs, however, a wealth of infancy research has highlighted the skills that newborn infants bring into the world.

For the most part, these skills have to do with their sensory abilities. As this research shows, infants are born with a sensory toolkit that allows them to actively make sense of their world as soon as they are born - and to some extent even before birth.

How do we study infants' visual abilities?

Infants are born with the capacity to perceive and even remember a good deal of visual information. But how do we know what infants are seeing? As they do not speak we cannot ask them.

In the early 1960s a psychologist named Robert Franz started a revolution in infancy research by building a device that could monitor infants' viewing patterns by noting the reflections on their pupils. By determining which object was looked at the longest when two objects were presented simultaneously, Franz was able to infer which object the infant preferred.

What visual skills are infants born with?

Using Franz's method and modifications on it, infancy researchers have shown that infants prefer curving lines to straight lines, patterns to plain surfaces, contrast to sameness, the edges of a shape to the center of a shape, and relatively complex designs to relatively simple designs.

Infants also prefer to look at images of faces rather than scrambled facial features. Finally, infants can only focus about eight to ten inches from their face. All these visual tendencies prepare infants to interact with their mother, specifically to recognize and make sense of her face.

How stable is temperament over time?

Several studies have shown only low to moderate stability of temperament over time. This means that children may change in terms of how they respond to stimulation and how well they can self-soothe or exhibit some form of self-control.

Temperament is least stable in the first two years of life. After the age of two, however, temperament is more stable.