Unit-II: DEVELOPMENT DURING INFANCY

1. Characteristics of Infancy

• Rapid Physical Growth: The infant grows faster during the first year of life than at any other time. Weight often triples and height doubles.
• Dependency: The infant is completely dependent on caregivers (parents) for all basic needs: food, warmth, safety, and comfort.
• Motor Development: This period sees the development of basic motor skills, from reflexes to grasping, rolling over, sitting, crawling, and finally walking.
• Sensory Development: The infant learns about the world through their senses (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell).
• Cognitive Development: According to Piaget, this is the Sensorimotor Stage. The infant understands the world by coordinating sensory experiences (seeing, hearing) with motor actions (grasping, sucking). A key achievement is Object Permanence (knowing an object exists even when hidden).
• Beginning of Socialization: The infant forms their first and most crucial social bond, known as attachment, usually with the primary caregiver.

2. Emotional, Social and Motor Development

Emotional Development

• Nature of Infant Emotions: At birth, emotions are very general (e.g., excitement, distress).
• Differentiation: These general emotions quickly differentiate into more specific ones like joy, anger, fear, and affection.
• Characteristics: Infant emotions are intense, short-lived, and expressed openly through crying, smiling, and bodily movements.
• Key Emotion: Affection. The infant's first social-emotional bond is 'attachment'. A secure attachment, built on trust and responsiveness from the caregiver, is vital for future emotional and social health.

Social Development

• The First Social Response: The social smile (smiling in response to a human face, around 2 months) is the first true sign of social behavior.
• Attachment: As mentioned, forming a secure attachment is the central task of social development in infancy.
• Stranger Anxiety: Around 6-8 months, infants often show fear or wariness of unfamiliar people. This is a normal sign that they can distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar faces.
• Imitation: Infants begin to imitate the facial expressions and actions of others, which is a key way they learn social behaviors.

Motor Development

This follows the principles from Unit 1 (Cephalocaudal and Proximodistal).

Typical Sequence of Motor Development in Infancy

Approximate Age	Gross Motor Skill	Fine Motor Skill
Birth - 2 months	Reflexes (sucking, grasping)	Holds hand in a fist
2 - 4 months	Lifts head and chest when on stomach	Hands begin to open, swipes at objects
5 - 7 months	Rolls over (both ways), Sits without support	Reaches for and grasps objects
8 - 10 months	Crawls, Pulls self up to stand	Uses "pincer grasp" (thumb and forefinger)
11 - 15 months	Stands alone, Walks	Can build a tower of 2 blocks

3. Language Development

Language development is one of the most remarkable achievements of infancy. It progresses from simple sounds to complex sentences.

Stages of Language Development (Pre-Linguistic)

This is the stage before the child speaks their first meaningful word.

1. Crying: (Birth onwards) The infant's first form of communication, used to signal distress, hunger, or pain.
2. Cooing: (Around 2-4 months) Infants begin to make vowel-like sounds (e.g., "ooooh", "aaaaah"), usually to express pleasure.
3. Babbling: (Around 6 months) The infant starts to produce consonant-vowel combinations in long strings (e.g., "ba-ba-ba", "ma-ma-ma"). This is a crucial stage of speech practice.
4. Lallation: This is a form of "self-imitation" where the infant repeats sounds or syllables they have just produced.
5. Echolalia: (Around 9-12 months) This is the "imitation of others." The infant consciously imitates the sounds, words, and intonations they hear from adults, even without understanding the meaning.

Linguistic (Speech) Stage

• First Word / Holophrastic Stage: (Around 10-14 months) The infant speaks their first recognizable word (e.g., "Mama", "Dada", "ball"). Often, one word is used to convey a whole sentence of meaning (e.g., "Ball?" might mean "Where is the ball?" or "I want the ball").
• Telegraphic Speech: (Around 18-24 months) The child begins to string two words together (e.g., "Want milk", "Go car"). This speech is like a telegram—it leaves out non-essential words but gets the meaning across.

4. Emotional and Speech Development

This section links the two areas of development and examines the factors that influence them.

Patterns of Emotions and Speech

• Patterns of Emotions: As noted, emotions go from general (distress) to specific (fear, anger, joy). They are intense, frequent, but temporary.
• Patterns of Speech: As noted, speech progresses from Crying -> Cooing -> Babbling -> First Words -> Telegraphic Speech.

Factors Influencing Emotional and Speech Development

Factors Influencing Emotional Development:

1. Health and Physical Condition: A healthy, well-rested child is generally happier. Sickness or fatigue can lead to irritability.
2. Parent-Child Relationship (Attachment): This is the most important factor. A secure, loving, and responsive relationship fosters emotional security, trust, and happiness.
3. Family Atmosphere: A home filled with conflict and stress will lead to more negative emotions (like fear, anxiety) in the infant. A peaceful home fosters security.
4. Caregiver's Emotions: Infants are very sensitive and can "catch" emotions from their caregivers (a process called emotional contagion).

Factors Influencing Speech Development:

1. Physical Maturation: The brain (especially Broca's and Wernicke's areas) and the vocal cords must be mature enough.
2. Intelligence: Brighter children often begin speaking earlier and have larger vocabularies.
3. Social Environment (Stimulation): This is crucial. Children who are spoken to, read to, and interacted with regularly develop language much faster.
   • Parentese: The high-pitched, slow, "baby talk" that adults use with infants actually helps the baby learn the sounds and structure of language.
4. Health: Hearing impairments (like ear infections) can severely delay speech development, as the child cannot hear the language to imitate it.
5. Gender: On average, girls tend to speak slightly earlier and have a faster vocabulary growth rate than boys in the early years.