The Developing Child

The video begins with the discussion between nature and nurture. This has always been a question over time. However, as we learned, nature and nurture work together.

-children are born with certain senses that allow them to get what they need. Although they cannot really see when they are born, their eyes and bodies will shift in the direction of a woman's voice, preferably that of the infant's mother.

-Watson saw infants as "flesh with few responses." This proves that babies are born with certain senses.

-William James saw babies as a great blooming, buzzing confusion.

-babies are born with dislikes as well as certain hearing functions, so they can hear their mother's voices

- interestingly, babies will also fall asleep to the sound of a heartbeat. (This is probably because they are more comfortable being close to their mother's body.)

-I also found it interesting that when babies are born they are legally blind!

-at birth, neural connections are not formed, but they form rapidly as the child gets older.

- we can tell the babies' preferences by what they look at the longest and even by their heart rate.

-habituation is when the child becomes used to the same thing (they might lose interest quickly.) but when they encounter something new, they are able to understand that it is new to them. This is known as dishabituation.

-Piaget used demonstrations to show that a child's mind is different than that of an adults, which was not known before his time. He looked at their perception of change and discovered unsuspected differences between them.

- In other research it was found that infants, as young as three months old, will understand that when an object "disappears" it is not actually gone.

- studies were also done on children and how they understand symbols. A child of two and a half will not easily be able to find a large model of a toy snoopy after being shown the same toy in a smaller version being placed in the exact same spot, but a child a little bit older will be able to do so.

- It was also found that when babies begin to crawl they have a fear of heights.

- We learned that children are born with certain biological character traits, such as shyness, which can be changed over time due to learning and environment. This brings us back to the debate of nature vs. nurture and how they are intertwined.

I found it very interesting how quickly children grow and change over the course of a few months and years. They develop so much from the time they are born to the time they are seven etc! It is also very cool to me that babies are born with certain senses and abilities that we do not even notice because all we think they do is cry. However, we learn that this is what helps them get what they need to grow and develop.