Developmental Psychology

One of the most common problems among infants is macronutrient malnutrition . This occurs when there isn’t enough calorie intake for the child to do well and develop properly. The term that is used to describe extreme macronutrient malnutrition is marasmus . Marasmus is where an infant will only weigh approximately 60 percent of his or her recommended weight. Also, the infant will not grow and develop, and the chance of death increases greatly, and becomes more probable. Kwashiorkor is another type of nutrient deficiency. The human nervous system develops rapidly, and with kwashiorkor’s, damage to one neurological systemwill occur. Kwashiorkor is one of the world’s most leading causes of infant deaths. This also occurs more in developed countries. Infants are more commonly known to deal with micronutrient malnutrition than protein malnutrition. Infants are known to deal with iron and calcium deficiencies. 4.6 Cognitive Development Jean Piaget believes that infants go through the sensorimotor stage for most of infancy. Piaget said that a developing child may perform a series of tasks that will trigger their sensory and motor systems. This is called Sensorimotor intelligence, and it begins with the learning of reflexes such as listening to sounds, grasping objects put into the hand, and suckling. When a child grows and continues to develop, sensorimotor intelligence begins to become more complex. Tasks will become more involved and will include more objects and people, other than the infant him/herself. Infants will start learning patterns and the characteristics of objects that they encounter. When a child turns approximately a year of age, they are able to engage in goal-directed behaviors. Goal-ended behaviors include things such as grabbing a toy or crawling from one side of the room to the other. How do children accomplish goal-directed behaviors? This question was answered by Jean Piaget, and he believed that they accomplished this by using schema . This is defined as the way infants are able to create mental models that will help them learn. According to Piaget, there are 2 different ways an infant can learn. • Assimilation : Infants incorporated newly established information into information that is already established. • Accommodation : Infants modify schemas that will include new information. One of the most important things about schema’s is object permanence. This is the involvement of awareness the existence of an object. This can occur even if the object is not in eyesight. Object permanence occurs around 8 months of age. Reversal is also an important schema, which is an action that can be undone if needed. Perceptual constancy is another known skill that children will eventually gain. This skill allows the child to understand that objects will remain the same shape and remain the same size even if the object is far away or close by. Before this skill is acquired, a child will believe that the shape and size of an object will change when they move close to it or move away from it. The categorization and pattern recognition will begin during infancy. Babies who are younger than 6 months old are able to categorize items that are based the shape, size, number, angle, and density of an object. Therefore, some people believe that children at this particular age are able to understand and have the ability to discriminate between objects that are similar.

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