BRAIN DEVELOPMENT

IN INFANTS AND
CHILDREN
HANNAH GLASS

BRAIN DEVELOPMENT
Our brain is a complex structure in the body.
There are many stages that we go through in
our lifetime. According to Paula Wiggins at the
University of Texas, by age six, the brain is
95% its adult weight and peak of energy
consumption. With many crucial parts of the
brain developing in the infancy stage as well
as early childhood development stage.

INFANCY

Infancy is a time where there are so many things are

happening developmentally in the brain. An infant is
considered to be 0 to 18 months of age.
An infant's motor skills start to develop as well as their
intellectual development increases. What comes naturally to
an infant is reflexes, there are four important reflexes that
include the rooting reflex, Babinski reflex, sucking reflex, and
the stepping reflex.

INFANCY STAGES AND DEVELOPMENT

Jean Piaget is a French phycologist that is known for his work

on child development. Infants motors skills obey the two
general rules the cephalocaudal rule and the proximodistal
rule.
The cephalocaudal rule refers to The top-to-bottom standard
that describes the tendency for motor skills to emerge in
sequence from the head to the feet
The first stage is the sensorimotor stage from birth until
around the age of 2 years old. The next stage is the
preoperational stage is from about 2 to around 7. Once a child
reaches 7 to 11, they are considered to be in the concrete
operational stage according to Piaget

INFANCY
Piaget suggested that infants lack some very basic
understandings of the physical world and therefore must
acquire them through experiences.
Infant have not yet developed their object permanence, a
belief that objects exist even when they are not visible. A good
example of this would be the game peek-a-boo. This is a go to
game to entertain babies, the moment you put your hands
over your eye the infant think you disappeared. An older child
understands that you did not disappear, however, to a baby
you did, that part of the brain is not fully developed.

EARLY CHILDHOOD
After the infancy, the stage of development the next stage of
life is known as early childhood. This phase starts about ages
18 to about 24 months and can last until about 11 to 14 year
of age.
When a child reaches childhood, they also enter the
Preoperational stage and begin to understand the physical
world around them. Their object permanence is much more
developed than an infants.

VIDEO EXAMPLE OF OBJECT PERMANENCE

In the video below shows Piagets experiment with children's
object permanence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnArvcWaH6I

CHILDREN DEVELOPMENT OF RIGHT AND

WRONG
Children start to develop a sense of what is right and was is
wrong. Piaget noticed that a childs moral thinking usually
shifts from realism to relativism.
Children do not realize that what is right and wrong, this can
vary depending on culture. As children get older and start to
mature, they come to see that rules are an expression of more
general principles, such as fairness and equity.

CONCLUSION
During infancy and early childhood development, there are a
lot of things going on in the human brain. Infancy is a time
where motor skills start to develop as well an essential reflex
an infant need to survive. As the developmental stage begins
to grow children begin to understand object permanence.
Learning what is culturally consider right and wrong to a child
grows as they learn from experiences. With time the sense of
morality is developed by parents, culture, and teachers.
There are many great milestones that infants and children
evolve in the first few year of life, and are an essential part of
life. Understanding this in children can help with
communicating with children.

REFERENCE
Schacter, Daniel L.; Gilbert, Daniel T.; Wegner, Daniel M.; Nock, Matthew K.. Psychology (Page
434). Worth Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Wiggins, Paula. "Infant Brain Development."INFANT BRAIN DEVELOPMENT(2000): 1-7.
National Child Care Information Center, 4 May 2006. Web.
Reiss, Allan L. "Brain Development, Gender and IQ in Children."Brain119.5 (1999): 1763-774.
Web.
Giedd, Jay J., and B.J Casey. "Structural and Functional Brain Development and Its Relation to
Cognitive Development."Structural and Functional Brain Development and Its Relation to
Cognitive Development. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2016