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Part A Consider the lifespan development process and describe the following changes in the infant from content supported in your text.
1. Physical changes
During the first two years of life, the body doubles in height and quadruples in weight. As the brain develops neurons grow in increasingly dense connections becoming coated with layers of myelin. This enables messages to be transmitted faster and more efficiently. As the baby has more experiences, the brain “adjusts” to responses to stimulation. Motor skills progress from simple reflexes to coordinated motor abilities. Examples of these are grasping and walking. The senses sharpen and perception abilities rapidly develop.
2. Cognitive changes
The basic structure of language is learned through responsive noise making and baby talk with adults. Communication abilities change from crying followed by cooing and babbling. These continue to progress from speaking a few words by age 1 to the construction of sentences by age 2. The infant becomes more aware of their world through immediate sensorimotor experiences to mental representations of events. Object permanence is a signal that thinking is progressing when a child determines that an object still exists even if it is out of sight or awareness. Category awareness continues with more conceptual categories being added and by age 2 there are numerous definite concepts developing.
3. Nutritional needs/changes
Breastmilk is typically the best supplier of nutrients, fluids and energy for babies up to about six months of age. Therefore, it is recommended that infants be fed exclusively breastmilk up to about six months of age. It is preferred over formula. Mother’s milk also provides many immunological factors which benefit a baby’s development. If it is not possible to breastfeed, then properly prepared formula will provide sufficient water to replace any water losses. Following the introduction of solid food, babies also need supplemental water.
4. Sensory changes
Other changes are the psychosocial changes. These were described by Erikson in stages and involve success and failure. Personality develops in a series of stages built upon the impact of social experiences. The first stage happens during infancy and it is the opportunity for a child to develop trust and feel safe and secure in the world.
Part B Provide an explanation of the nature/nurture controversy as it pertains to each of the following.
1. Prenatal Development
It is easy to see that both nature and nurture are working together during prenatal development. The joining of the parents sex cells (egg and sperm), cell division, would be the nature part while the nurturing part is how well the mother takes care of herself during the pregnancy as well as how well the baby grows inside a healthy mother or an unhealthy mother.
2. Labor
As far as nature and nurture during labor, there is little known about the process which connects directly to nature or nurture. Some siblings are born in a similar amount of time as well as in a similar fashion which another sibling might be a quick birth or a painfully long birth.
3. Birth
While it's clear that physical characteristics are hereditary, the genetic waters get a bit less clearly defined when it comes to an individual's behavior, intelligence, and personality. Many of these traits can be seen at birth, and many develop over the child’s life span. Physical traits (looks like a parent or a sibling) are the traits from nature while tendency to sleep on one side or another may be from nurturing while inside the mother’s womb.
4. Birth Complications
There are so many influences on birth complications that is seems difficult to pin them on any genetic or natural contributions. Some of the complications come from the mother’s nature while others come from the combination of mother and child.
5. Development of the Competent Newborn
There are multiple influences on the development of a competent newborn. Most commonly thought of are the contributions from nature such as genetic contributions. However, at this point the nurturing contributions are more common such as nutritional contributions, environmental contributions and cultural contributions. However it should be noted that rarely do these contributions operate in isolation from each other. We do not yet know how much of what we are is determined by our DNA and how much by our life experience. But we do know that both play a part (Powell, n.d.).
References
Powell, Kimberly (n.d.). Nature vs Nurture. Retrieved from http://genealogy.about.com/cs/geneticgenealogy/a/nature_nurture.htm