1. Physical growth is rapid in the first two years as body size increases dramatically and brain development occurs at an astounding pace, though children vary in their physical maturity. 2. Motor skills, perception, cognition, language, emotion, temperament, attachment, and self-awareness all develop remarkably during this time through complex interactions between genetic and environmental factors. 3. Caregiving practices and early stimulation are crucial for promoting healthy physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional development in infancy and toddlerhood.

1. Module 2 Human Development Discussion
Module 2 Human Development Discussion ON Module 2 Human Development
DiscussionWhat factors explain stability in attachment pattern for some children and
change for others? How might these factors be involved in the link between attachment in
infancy and later development?Guideline: 400 Words / use 1 book cite and external
citeOverviewDuring the first 2 years, body size increases dramatically—faster than at any
other time after birth. Rather than steady gains, infants and toddlers grow in little spurts.
Body fat is laid down quickly in the first 9 months, whereas muscle development is slow and
gradual. As with all aspects of development, children vary in body size and muscle–fat
makeup. The best way to estimate a child’s physical maturity is by using skeletal age. Two
growth patterns—cephalocaudal and proximodistal trends—describe changes in the child’s
body proportions. Module 2 Human Development DiscussionAt birth, the brain is nearer
than any other physical structure to its adult size, and it continues to develop at an
astounding pace throughout infancy and toddlerhood. Neurons, or nerve cells, that store
and transmit information, develop and form an elaborate communication system in the
brain. As neurons form connections, stimulation becomes necessary for their survival. The
cerebral cortex is the largest, most complex brain structure—accounting for 85 percent of
the brain’s weight, containing the greatest number of neurons and synapses, and
responsible for the unique intelligence of our species. At birth, the two hemispheres of the
cerebral cortex have already begun to specialize, a process called lateralization. However,
the brain is more plastic during the first few years than it will ever be again. Animal
research and natural experiments with children who were victims of deprived early
environments provide evidence for sensitive periods in brain development. Appropriate
stimulation is key to promoting experience-expectant brain growth—the young brain’s
rapidly developing organization, which depends on ordinary experiences. Experience-
dependent brain growth, in contrast, occurs throughout our lives as a result of specific
learning experiences. Rapid brain growth means that the organization of sleep and
wakefulness changes substantially between birth and 2 years, but the social environment
also plays a role.Physical growth, like other aspects of development, results from the
continuous and complex interplay between genetic and environmental factors. Heredity,
nutrition, and emotional well-being all affect early physical growth. Dietary diseases caused
by malnutrition affect many children in developing countries. If allowed to continue, body
growth and brain development can be permanently stunted. Breastfeeding provides many
benefits to infants, especially for those in the developing world where safe, nutritious

2. alternatives are not widely available. Breastfeeding also helps protect against later obesity.
Babies who do not receive affection and stimulation may suffer from nonorganic failure to
thrive, which has symptoms resembling those of malnutrition but has no physical
cause.Babies come into the world with built-in learning capacities that permit them to profit
from experience immediately. Classical and operant conditioning, habituation and recovery,
and imitation are all important mechanisms through which infants learn about their
physical and social worlds.Like physical development, motor development follows the
cephalocaudal and proximodistal trends. Babies’ motor achievements have a powerful effect
on their social relationships. According to the dynamic systems theory of motor
development, each new motor skill is a joint product of central nervous system
development, movement capacities of the body, the child’s goals, and environmental s for
the skill. Cultural differences in infant-rearing practices affect the timing of motor
development.Perception changes remarkably over the first year of life. Hearing and vision
undergo major advances during the first 2 years as infants organize stimuli into complex
patterns, improve their perception of depth and objects, and combine information across
sensory modalities. From extensive everyday experience, babies gradually figure out how to
use depth cues to detect the danger of falling. According to Eleanor and James Gibson’s
differentiation theory, perceptual development is a matter of detecting invariant features in
a constantly changing perceptual world.According to Piaget, by acting directly on the
environment, children move through four stages of cognitive development in which
psychological structures, or schemes, achieve a better fit with external reality. The first
stage, called the sensorimotor stage, spans the first two years of life and is divided into six
substages. In this stage, infants make strides in intentional behavior and understanding of
object permanence until, by the end of the second year, they become capable of mental
representation, as seen in their sudden solutions to sensorimotor problems, mastery of
object permanence, deferred imitation, and make-believe play. Recent research suggests
that some infants display certain understandings earlier than Piaget believed, raising
questions about the accuracy of his account of sensorimotor development.Information-
processing theorists, using computer-like flowcharts to describe the human cognitive
system, focus on many aspects of thinking, from attention, memory, and categorization
skills to complex problem solving. With age, infants attend to more aspects of the
environment and take information in more rapidly. In the second year, as children become
increasingly capable of intentional behavior, attention to novelty declines and sustained
attention improves. As infants get older, they remember experiences longer and group
stimuli into increasingly complex categories. Also, categorization shifts from a perceptual to
conceptual basis. Information processing has contributed greatly to our view of young
babies as sophisticated cognitive beings. However, its greatest drawback stems from its
central strength—by analyzing cognition into its components, information processing has
had difficulty putting them back together into a broad, comprehensive theory.Vygotsky
believed that complex mental activities have their origins in social interaction. Through
joint activities with more mature members of their society, children come to master
activities and think in ways that have meaning in their culture. Module 2 Human
Development DiscussionInfant intelligence tests primarily measure perceptual and motor

3. responses and predict later intelligence poorly. Speed of habituation and recovery to visual
stimuli, basic information-processing measures, are better predictors of future
performance. Home and child-care environments, as well as early intervention for at-risk
infants and toddlers, exert powerful influences on mental development.As perception and
cognition improve during infancy, they pave the way for an extraordinary human
achievement: language. The behaviorist perspective regards language development as
entirely due to environmental influences, whereas nativism assumes that children are
prewired with an innate language acquisition device to master the intricate rules of their
language. The interactionist perspective maintains that language development results from
interactions between inner capacities and environmental influences.Babies begin cooing
around 2 months, followed by babbling, which gradually reflects the sound and intonation
patterns of the child’s language community. First words appear around 12 months, and two-
word utterances between 18 and 24 months. However, substantial individual differences
exist in the rate and style of early language progress. As toddlers learn words, they may
apply them too narrowly (underextension) or too broadly (overextension), in part because
their language comprehension develops ahead of their ability to produce language. Adults in
many cultures speak to young children using child-directed speech, a simplified form of
language that is well-suited to their learning needs. Deaf parents use a similar style of
communication when signing to their deaf babies. Conversational give-and-take between
adults and toddlers is one of the best predictors of early language development and
academic success during the school years.Although Freud’s psychoanalytic theory is no
longer in the mainstream of human development research, his emphasis on the importance
of the parent–child relationship was accepted and elaborated on by other theorists, notably
Erik Erikson. Erikson believed that the psychological conflict of the first year of life is basic
trust versus mistrust, and that a healthy outcome depends on the quality of the parent–child
relationship. During toddlerhood, the conflict of autonomy versus shame and doubt is
resolved favorably when parents provide appropriate guidance and reasonable choices. If
children emerge from the first few years without sufficient trust and autonomy, the seeds
are sown for adjustment problems.All humans and other primates experience basic
emotions—happiness, interest, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust—that have an
evolutionary history of promoting survival. Emotions play powerful roles in organizing
social relationships, exploration of the environment, and discovery of the self. Cognitive and
motor development, caregiver–infant communication, and cultural factors all affect the
development and expression of emotions.Infants’ emotional expressions are closely tied to
their ability to interpret the emotional cues of others. As toddlers become aware of the self
as a separate, unique individual, self-conscious emotions—guilt, shame, embarrassment,
envy, and pride—appear. Toddlers also begin to use emotional self-regulation strategies to
manage their emotions. Rapid development of the cerebral cortex, sensitive caregiving, and
growth in representation and language contribute to the development of effortful control,
which is necessary for self-regulation.Infants vary widely in temperament, including both
reactivity (quickness and intensity of emotional arousal, attention, and motor activity) and
self-regulation (strategies for modifying reactivity). Research findings have inspired a
growing body of research on temperament, examining its stability, biological roots, and

4. interaction with child-rearing experiences. The goodness-of-fit model explains how
temperament and environment can together produce favorable outcomes when child-
rearing practices match each child’s temperament while encouraging more adaptive
functioning.Attachment refers to the strong affectionate tie we have with special people in
our lives that leads us to feel pleasure when we interact with them and to be comforted by
their nearness in times of stress. By the second half of the first year, infants have become
attached to familiar people who have responded to their needs. Today, the ethological
theory of attachment, which recognizes the infant’s emotional tie to the caregiver as an
evolved response that promotes survival, is the most widely accepted view. By the end of
the second year, children develop an enduring affectionate tie to the caregiver that serves as
an internal working model, a guide for future close relationships. Attachment security is
influenced by opportunity for attachment, quality of caregiving, infant characteristics, and
family circumstances. Babies form attachments to a variety of familiar people in addition to
mothers—fathers, siblings, grandparents, and professional caregivers. Mounting evidence
indicates that continuity of caregiving is the crucial factor that determines whether
attachment security in early life is linked to later development. Children can recover from
an insecure attachment history if caregiving improves.During the first two years, knowledge
of the self as a separate, permanent identity emerges, beginning with self-recognition—
identification of the self as a physically unique being. Self-awareness is associated with the
beginnings of empathy—the ability to feel with another person. Self-awareness also
contributes to effortful control—the extent to which children can inhibit impulses, manage
negative emotion, and behave in socially acceptable ways. Self-control allows toddlers to
become compliant and acquire the ability to delay
gratification.Resourceshttps://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9780134419893/cfi/6
/96!/4/2/2/2/2@0:0(nursesloany@gmail.com/Tutorhelp4ever!Youtube: https://www.yo
utube.com/watch?v=3_1Dbg2555AModule 2 Human Development Discussion