Example research essay topic: Motor Skills Birth Weight - 1,677 words

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Everyone of us being a child goes through different physiological, cognitive and psychological development and changes. Today, parents await childrens advances the first tooth, the first step, the first word- with bated breath; but it was not always so. Before the nineteenth century, such milestones were scorned or ignored. Children were neither encouraged nor expected to be happy, cheerful, or play. Instead, parents tried to integrate their offspring as quickly as possible into the adult world of hand work and serious pursuits.

Now both the belief that children are worth watching and nurturing and the rise of developmental psychology had happened. Now psychologists agree that there are orderly sequences in the development of all infants but many studies of persons development prove that it is much attributable to nurture and what comes from the external environment. Today, the birth of an infant may take place at home, in a hospital delivery room or birthing room, or on an operation table. It may involve anesthesia, pain-killing drugs, Lamaze training, doctors, family, and friends. And there is no one right way to have a baby. During the first hour or so after birth, babies are usually awake and gaze at mothers face vice verse.

It is believed that the mothers emotional bond to her infant begins at this point, develops slowly over the first there months, and is affected by the infants increasing responsiveness. When an infant is born he / she usually is 20 inches long at birth, or 50. 8 cm average. However, not all babies are born the same length, generally, lengths vary from 18 - 21. 5 inches or 45. 7 - 54. 6 centimeters. The average newborn weighs 7. 5 pounds at birth, or 3. 4 kilograms. Typically, the range is from 5. 75 - 10 pounds or from 2. 6 - 4. 5 kilograms. I need to mention that the head of an infant is very large compared to the rest of their body.

For example, compared to the baby's total length of about 20 inches, the length of the head measures approximately 5 inches which equals one-fourth of the total length. (Bernstein, Roy, Srull, Wickens, 1991) What happens during the first month is extremely important because some infants may have some physical defects such as heart malformations and may also fail one of the four tasks that must be accomplished during the first few hours after birth: breathing, circulation blood and stabilizing blood pressure, controlling body temperature, and ingesting food and excreting waste. Infants grow at a very rapid rate during the first one and a half years of life. Developing not only physically, but mentally, emotionally, and socially as well, this development has been evident in providing a strong background for further development in life. It is noticed that a baby increases in height by 50 % and triples its birth weight in the first year.

This is a very rapid growth rate and it slows down considerably after infancy. Physical development refers to a babys increasing skill at utilizing various body parts. During development, there are three basic developmental rules: Rule one states, that babys develop in the head region first, followed by the upper body, followed by the trunk portion, and lastly the legs and feet. For example, a baby can hold up their heads first before they can grab an object with their hand. Second rule refers to motor skills. Motor skills are the childs ability to control movement.

The 3 rd developmental rule is Brain development. As the brain develops a child responds more and more to sight and sound, which prepares them for further development. (web) At birth an infants vision is quite limited. A very rough estimate is that the newborn has 20: 600 sights; that is, an object 20 feet away looks as clear as it would if it were viewed from 600 feet away by an adult with normal vision. This limitation in what infants can see is the result of im maturities in both the eye and the brain. Only by the end of the first year a babys vision nearly matches that of a grown adult. (John Oates. ) Besides an infant eye movements are very slow and are jerky at times. They are able to see color but prefer the sharper contrast of black and white. (John Oates. ) Newborns actively use their senses from the time that they are born.

Infants are more sensitive to sounds that are in the range of speech than o other sounds. They can hear soft voices as well as loud voices and can also notice differences between different sounds that are made. In is very important that babies attention span is limited when they are very young but in few weeks babies can see and focus on the whole object. and they can. (web) Babies also develop some reflexes like grasping, turning their heads when they are 2 month old and continue to develop more and more during next months and years (sit, crawl, stand, walk, etc. ) The absence of reflexes in a newborn are signals of possible problems in brain development. (Bernstein, Roy, Srull, Wickens, 1991. ) From conception through childhood, childrens bodies and brains increase in size, complexity, and efficiency.

These changes are related to advances in behavior and in cognitive development the development of thinking, knowing, remembering, reasoning and logic of an infant. The fascinating journey of cognitive development, from the simple reflexes of the newborn to the complex understanding of the adult, was charted most carefully by Jean Piaget (Bernstein, Roy, Srull, Wickens, 1991. ) Piaget believed that all childrens thinking progresses through the same stages, in the same order without skipping, or building onto previous stages. According to Piaget's four stages of cognitive development the first 18 months of development is the sensorimotor. In this stage infants develop schemas or basic units of knowledge. During this stage infants can form schemas only of objects that are present. They cannot think about absent objects because they cant act on them.

Only from about 8 - 12 months infants for the first time searches manually for an object that disappears out of their sight and can follow all the visible movements of an object. From 8 - 18 months its at this time they develop a sense of self. They begin to recognize their image in a mirror and start to become more and more independent. Babies at this stage have a wide range of emotional states and become more sensitive to stress. One minute they could be happy and playing and the next minute they could be kicking and screaming (web) Language skills beings to develop within the first week after birth. By 3 months of age babies begin all the gurgles and woos.

Although these may mean nothing to us, however this is their way of communication and their development of vowel sounds. By the age of 5 to 6 months most babies will begin to babble and may even slip out the words ma, or da. Even though they babies may say these words they are unable to attach them to a certain individual. 10 - 15 months toddlers can understand a few more words. Proper names and object words are the most easily understood. At 18 - 24 months their vocabulary has immensely increased and toddlers are most likely to repeat any word they hear. Their vocabulary may include as many as 200 words or more. (Lee Valeriano. ) On the whole a child gets better at looking, listening, thinking, speaking, remembering and developing his / her personality over the months from 6 to 24.

The psychological development of a child is not less important as his / her physiological or cognitive ones. The social and emotional learning is an important concept for parents to be aware of. A nurturing environment can build pathways that encourage emotional stability, while repeated stress may create many problems in further development. Infants learn from the people around them the most (parents, relatives, other children) and this begins from the first four hours after their birth. Infants learn how to handle a situation through what other people are doing. (Cahill, S. P. , Carrigan, M.

H. , & Frueh, B. C. ) During this time babies also develop a sense a trust and bonding which forms the foundation for a lifetime. They need to be disciplined early enough in order to grow up knowing things that are right and wrong. Without all these a baby may have problems communicating with others later on in their development. Often at 5 through 7 months infants also develop a fear or shyness of strangers.

Babies are very sensitive to changes and this is completely natural because it is often a result of the development of object permanence. Infants at this age will sometimes cling to their parents and not want to be touched by people who they see as being unfamiliar (web) Concluding all these I can say that many factors contribute to the development of a child. Pretty much what I wrote about I agree with based on my personal knowledge and study of the normal childs development and aspects that influence and have impact on individuals. Many things that can slow down the development, are low birth weight, prematurity, and drug use. A babys development is very important for a strong healthy life. Without the care and responsibility needed for a child to develop this can effect them for life Bibliography: Bernstein.

D. A. , Roy. E. J. , Srull. T. K. , Wickens.

C. D. (1991) Psychology. 2 nd edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. web John Oates. (2001) ED 209 The Foundations of Child Development, The Open University. Lee Valeriano. Infants Learning: talking, listening, hearing.

Journal of the American Childs study Association, December 29, 2000, p. 10. web web Cahill, S. P. , Carrigan, M. H. , & Frueh, B. C. A critical review of psychological development in infants.

Journal of Child's development. September-October 1999, pp. 12 - 13

Research essay sample on Motor Skills Birth Weight