Infant Development

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Infants aged birth to four months developmental tasks are completely different to infants aged eight to twelve months. The physical, cognitive, language, social and emotional developmental tasks are much more advanced. Infants between eight and twelve months learn how to walk independently, skills are more developed being able to do more things physically, cognitively with words being much more recognizable.
The physical development of this age, eight to twelve months, has much more rapidly developed. They learn to sit alone, crawl, stand with or without support and even walk with or without help. The physical development of walking falls into four different stages. (1) An early period of stepping, in which slight forward progress is made
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They have short attention spans which forces them to move rapidly from one activity to the next. The infants are starting to take in and process more information on a daily basis and the process of assimilation and accommodation help them make sense of new information to store it for future reference. They begin to combine different aspects of their stored knowledge to develop cause and effect. “ The establishment of object permanence is a major development during this age range, even though according to Piaget the process will not be complete till late” ( Swim, 301). With object permanence, infants start to search for people and objects that are no longer visible. In order for infants to imitate people and things that are no longer present, they have established deferred imitation. That requires sufficient cognitive skills to remember and reproduce things the infants have seen and heard in the past. In order for the cognitive development to grow, caregivers must implement strategies such as playing hiding games, or introducing new copying …show more content…
They will also start to be able to imitate many of the gestures they see adults make while talking. This nonverbal communication is only a temporary measure, however, while they learns how to phrase their messages in words. During this age of eight to twelve months, it is very important that the caregiver is being well involved with the infant. “Reading aloud to infants facilitates responsiveness to their oral communication, results in joint attention, reinforces basic concepts, stimulates imagination, and develops and enhances language development and listening skills (Zeece & Churchill, 2001)” (Swim, 303). After reading to the infants, adults should follow the children’s lead by following “CAR”. (C) comment and wait, (A) ask questions and wait, (R) responde by adding a little more. During the reading process, the caregivers can help acquire receptive language and help them reproduce expressive language. The interaction a book can have with an infant helps develop the language more in more ways than one. Strategies that can help maximize language development are making conversations with the infants, point and touch objects to help connect words to it and always respond with