The Developing Child

The video discusses the develop of babies over time. We see that at each stage of infancy, new abilities develop. This is where the nature-nurture debate comes in. Is it nature that determines the development of infants or is it nurture and experience. John Locke believed that a baby is like a blank tablet devoid of any knowledge and skills and that experience determines who they will become. Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that people are born with all the skills and qualities that make them who they are. In 1800 the debate was sharpened by the discovery of a wild 12 year old child, a naked, savage boy who had grown up in the wild alone. He was a child with no experience to human nurturing at all, only nature. A doctor tried to civilize him, and at first it seemed to be working. But after 5 years nothing changed. He died at the age of 40, not able to speak or behave like a normal person. This case seems to favor the nature debate, but others still believed that we are more the products of our environment. So how do heredity and environment affect the development of a child?
Because of the new technology and scientific discoveries, we now know that babies come into the world with much more abilities than we originally thought. Right after birth, a baby can turn in the direction of a voice and reach out its hand. Babies are also born with likes and dislikes. For example, they love the taste of vanilla. They also immediately recognize their mother’s speech.
Something very interesting that I learned from watching this video was that children are born legally blind. The reason is because they do not have enough cone cells in their retina nor are there enough connections among the neurons in the visual cortex. However, both develop VERY rapidly. At three months, a baby can detect differences in facial expressions. All of this shows that babies are actually a lot less helpless than we once thought them to be. In fact, they are meeting the three basic tasks of infancy: getting sustenance, defending against harmful stimulations, and making social contact.
Infants also prefer novelty over familiarity. They will get bored of doing the same thing over and over again. This is an example of habituation. They also prefer complex shapes with various colors. We can study this by taking the baby’s heart rate or examining their visual contact with the object.
Scientists also discovered something called object permanence which was something new I learned. Object permanence is the idea that objects will continue to exist even when hidden. At first babies think that when something is hidden it doesn’t exist anymore. It is not until 3.5 months that a baby will learn that just because the object is hidden doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist anymore.
The video showed a very interesting experiment regarding how children understand symbols. A 2.5 year old child does not understand that the place where the toy is hidden in the small model, is hidden in the same place in the large model. However, a three old would be able to. It’s amazing to see how much children develop in such small increments of time! This also was something new that I learned. Who knew that 2.5 year old would not be able to understand where the toy is hidden in the big model, but only 6 months later, the child can understand the concept and put the pieces together.
We learned that biology nor experience individually are our destinies. Rather, it is both nature and nurture working together. A baby might be born shy, but the environment, such as how his parents raise him can modify that shyness, allowing him to later become one of the most outgoing, lively ones in the class!