Development Stage of Infancy

Running head: DEVELOPMENT STAGE OF INFANCY
DEVELOPMENT STAGE OF INFANCY
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DEVELOPMENT STAGE OF INFANCY
Introduction:
The term infant is applied for young children who are under one year of age. The time
of the child from its birth to that of its first birthday is called infancy (Aslin, 2017). This is
the specific period when infants are seen to bond and form attachments to their caregivers.
This assignment would mainly discuss the various developmental attributes of infants
discussing in details about the cognitive, psychosexual as well as psychosocial developmental
aspects as well.
Discussion:
Developmental milestones:
Within one year, infants are seen to master a number of developmental milestones.
These are sitting without assistance and even getting into hands and knees position. They
start crawling and pulling themselves up for standing. They are seen to start walking by
holding onto furniture and even manage to travel a few steps without support. They are seen
to use the pincer grasp like properly using the thumb and forefinger. They start calling words
like “mama” and “dada” and are often seen to use exclamations like that of “oh-oh”
(Adamson, 2018). They are also seen to be imitating words and responding to “no” as well as
making simple verbal requests. They learn making simple gestures like that of shaking head
to say “no” or waving “bye-bye”. They are seen to try in exploring objects in different
manners like shaking, dropping, throwing as well as banging. They begin utilising objects in
the correct manner like to drink from cups or brush hairs and others. They are able to find
objects easily and they are seen to look at correct pictures when an image is named.

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DEVELOPMENT STAGE OF INFANCY
Cognitive developments:
Children of the stage of infancy are seen to undergo rigorous cognitive developments
and in order to discuss the stage in details, Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development
would be referred. His theory suggests of the fact that children mainly transfer through four
different stages in order to achieve their mental development. The theory mainly helps in
focusing not only on the understanding about the ways that children acquire knowledge but
they also tend to help in understanding the nature of the intelligence. Infants are seen to
mainly belong to the first stage called the sensorimotor stage that extends from birth to that of
two years that include the infancy stage (Kenny, 2018). During this phase, infants are seen to
acquire different knowledge through the sensory experiences as well as manipulation of the
objects. Studies are of the opinion that the entire experience of the children during this stage
occurs through basic forms of senses, reflexes and motor responses. They go through period
of dramatic growth as well as learning where they learn interacting with that of their
environment. They continue making newer discoveries about the working ways of the world
(Carey et al., 2015). The cognitive development of the children of this stage occurs relatively
for a shorter period of time but are also seen to be involving a great deal of growth making
them learn to perform physical actions like crawling and walking and also about language
because of their interaction with other people. They start believing that things continue to
exist even when they cannot be seen or not. They think themselves to be separate beings from
the people and objects around them and start believing that their actions can cause impacts to
happen in the environment around them (Flensborg-Madsen & Mortenson, 2015).
Psychosocial development:
In order to analyse the psychosocial development of infants, Erikson’s theory of
psychosocial development can be referred. The author was of the opinion that personality