FACTORS INFLUENCING CHILD DEVELOPMENT

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

Individual differences

Essential whenever we wish to explain how individuals differ in their behaviour.

Example of individual differences

Environment

Genetics
Behavior Personality Intelligence Learning disabilities / learning disorders Physical factors such as body size, age and gender

CHILD DEVELOPMENT
Aspects of child development
Physical Growth Motor development Cognitive/Intellectual development Social-emotional development Language

Physical Growth

Individual differences in height and weight Influenced by family genetic factors & environmental factors

At some point physical development is strongly influenced by individual differences in reproductive maturation.

 After age 1, a baby's growth in length slows considerably, and by 2 years, growth

in height usually continues at a fairly steady rate of approximately 2 inches (6 centimeters) per year until adolescence.

The head is proportionally large and the legs proportionally short during childhood. At birth the head is one quarter of the length of the body compared with about one sixth in the adult. The legs are about one third the length of the body at birth and one half in the adult. Because the body proportions change this means that not all of the body segments grow by the same amount.

GROWTH OF GIRLS AND BOYS

 At around 10.5 years, girls begin to grow faster and

become taller than boys by over an inch. A boy's growth spurt occurs around 12.5 years and by 13.5 years boys again overtake girls (who have mostly stopped growing taller). Boys continue to grow taller past the age of 15 and average over 5 inches taller than girls by the time they are 18. The characteristic differences between boys and girls occur at puberty in response to changes in hormones produced by the body.

http://www.coachr.org/growth_and_development.htm

Motor Development
Depends in part on the child's weight and build. After the infant period, normal individual differences are

strongly affected by opportunities to practice, observe,

and be instructed on specific movements.

 According to dynamic systems theory, infants assemble

motor skills for perceiving and acting.

To develop motor skills, infants must perceive something

in the environment that motivates them to act and then use perceptions to fine-tune their movements.
Motor skills represent solutions to the infants goals

(Clearfield & others, 2009)

Santrock, J. W. (2011). Child Development. United States: McGraw Hill.

For example
For example, most infants learn to crawl before they learn to walk. Some children learn to walk earlier than their same-age peers, while others may take a bit longer.

Child crawling Child standing

 Babies learn to walk only when maturation of the

nervous system allows them to control certain leg muscles, when their legs have grown enough to support weight, and when they want to move.

Cognitive/Intellectual Development
Definition
The capacity to learn, remember, symbolise information, and to solve problems

Individuals differ in the ages at which they achieve

specific cognitive abilities, but schooling for children in industrialized countries is based on the assumption that these differences are not large.

 The human brain is not fully

developed until late adolescence or in the case of males sometimes early adulthood.

It is important that parents know what to expect

from their child as they develop and to be sure that

the expectations they may have for their child at a

given age are realistic.

Social-emotional Development
The intensity or expressiveness of emotions can vary

greatly from one normal child to another.

Newborn infants do not seem to experience fear or have

preferences for contact with any specific people.

In the first few months they only experience happiness,

sadness, and anger.

Children who are active and angry as infants can be

expected to be active and angry as older children, adolescents and adults.

Atypical development of social-emotional characteristics may be mildly unusual, or may be so extreme as to indicate mental illness.

Language
Slow Expressive Language Development (SELD) a delay in the use of words

coupled with normal understanding, is characteristic of a small proportion of children who later display normal language use. Dyslexia is a significant topic in child development as it affects approximately 5% of the population (in the western world). Essentially it is a disorder whereby children fail to attain the language skills of reading, writing and spelling commensurate with their intellectual abilities. Dyslexic children show a range of differences in their language development, from subtle speech impairments to mispronunciations to word-finding difficulties. The most common phonological difficulties are limitations of verbal short-term memory and phonological awareness. Such children often have difficulties with long-term verbal learning such as months of the year or learning tables. In the late 1980s the phonological deficit hypothesis has become the dominant explanation. The difficulties in early articulation, basic phonological skills and acquiring basic building blocks means that dyslexics have to invest too many resources in just coping with the basics rather than acquiring new information or skills. Early identification enables children to receive help before they fail. Atypically delayed language development may be diagnostic of autism, and regression of language may indicate serious disabilities like Rett syndrome. Poor language development also accompanies general developmental delays such as those found in Down syndrome.

For example
Four-month-old

- Infant's brain has not matured enough to allow the child to talk.
Two years old

- The brain has developed further and with help from others, the

child will have the capacity to say

and understand words.

 Dyslexia is commonly defined as a specific difficulty in

learning to read, despite normal IQ and adequate

educational opportunity.
It is a disorder of development that primarily affects the

acquisition of literacy and the most widely accepted view is that it lies on the continuum of language disorder.

GENETICS

Behavior Genetics: Predicting Individual Differences

Behavior Geneticists study our differences and weigh the relative effects of heredity and environment.

Heritability
Heritability refers to the extent to which the differences among people are attributable to genes.

What percentage of the difference among peoples height can be attributed to their genes?

90%

Chromosomal & Gene Linked Abnormalities

Name Down syndrome Description An extra chromosome causes mild to severe retardation and physical abnormalities Treatment Surgery, early intervention, infant stimulation, and special learning programs

Incidence 1 in 1,900 births at age 20 1 in 300 births at age 35 1 in 30 births at age 45 1 in 600 male births

Klinefelter syndrome (XXY) Fragile X syndrome Turner Syndrome (XO)

An extra X chromosome causes physical abnormalities

Hormone therapy can be effective

An abnormality in the X chromosome Special education, speech can cause mental retardation, learning and language therapy disabilities, or short attention span A missing X chromosome in females can cause mental retardation and sexual underdevelopment Hormone therapy in childhood and puberty No special treatment required

More common in males than in females 1 in 2,500 female births 1 in 1,000 male births

XYY Syndrome An extra Y chromosome can cause above-average height

IQ
Intelligent quotient, IQ, a score derived from one of several

different standardized tests designed to assess intelligence.

Individuals differ from one another in their ability

to understand complex ideas,
to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought.

ENVIRONMENT

LEARNING DISABILITIES / DISORDERS

Learning disabilities are problems that affect the

brain's ability to receive, process, analyze, or store information.

These problems can make it difficult for a student

to learn as quickly as someone who isn't affected by learning disabilities.

 The skills most often affected are:

reading,
writing,

listening,
speaking,

reasoning, and
doing math.