Essay on Infant Sensory Development

New Born babies use their senses from the moment they are born, they can already recognise their mothers voice and smell and they have natural reflexes for example the Walking and standing reflex which

According to Annie Murphy Paul’s research (2011), one of the first things babies learn before they are born are the sounds of their surroundings, and most important, the sound of their mother’s voice—her voice is the clearest to the baby so it is the most soothing and calming. Babies also learn smells and tastes in utero, once the olfactory receptors and taste buds are developed. This teaches the baby what is and is not safe to consume. Overall, babies learn about the culture they are going to enter—they learn their mother’s accent and the variety of food available.

When I went to go observe the preschool lab I saw right around thirteen kids and two teachers that were in the room with them at that time. The reason why I believe it is important to have more kids than teachers is that it allows the kids to interact with each other which will allow them to develop better socially with kids their age. Having a few teachers also allows them to have an authority figurehead that they answer to and listen to. It is important to only have a few though because I feel like if you had a ton of different teachers it would confuse the kids who to listen to because there are multiple authority figures who may be saying different things.

Infants are usually breast-fed on demand up to the age of two. Attempts to introduce bottle feedings have often met with sad results: sterilization of bottles and formula were poorly understood, formulas were diluted to last longer, and with the abandonment of breast-feeding, intercourse was resumed earlier than usual with a resultant increase in children who could be ill afforded. Bota is a thin gruel for babies, fed by pouring into the mother's hand and gently easing into the infant's mouth. Some foods and medicinal herbs if deemed necessary are pre-chewed by the mother then given to the infant.

The costs of this expansion will mostly go toward labor, as labor is the single largest component of costs for early infant and toddler care centers (Marshall et al., 2004). For teachers to stay invested in the children they teach and care for, they must be fairly compensated to maintain the high quality of care. According to a study in Massachusetts, 72 percent of typical full-time, full-year center expenditures go toward labor (Marshall, et al., 2004). In dollar amounts, “average expenditures per child care hour were $4.42 for centers serving infants and $4.28 for centers serving toddlers. These correspond to full-time care expenditures of $10,343 and $10,015 for the two groups of centers [infants and toddlers, respectively]”

At 6 weeks infants develop a social smile, at 3 month laughter and curiosity develop, at 4 months full responsive smiles emerge, from 4-8 months they develop anger, from 9014 months they develop a fear of social events, at 12 months the are fearful of unexpected sights and sounds, and at 18 months they are self-aware, feel pride, shame, and embarrassment. In the first two years, infants develop from reactive pain and pleasure to complex patterns of social awareness. Emotions in infants are produced from their body as opposed to their thoughts. Therefore fast and uncensored reactions are common in infants. During their toddler years, the strength of their emotions will increase.

Some of the senses that are vital during the growth of the child are: hearing, vision, smelling and tasting, ability to speak and feeling pain; they are the basic improvements in the child’s mental growth, they help the child in the perception of the general occurrences in the world around the child. After the child have developed the basic senses to the major aspects of life that is when they will be able to develop permanent images of objects even if they are not there at the moment. The sensorimotor nerves of a child develops as the child make primitive movements, these improves the reflex response of a child (Piaget, & Inhelder, 2010).

How do we know infants can see at birth? They can’t tell us. For this we depend on clues such as eye movement, light sensitivity and the appearance of the eye. Though an infant 's vision is present at birth the strength of their vision is far from mature. However, vision develops rapidly in infants, going from only being able to focus on images 4 to 30 inches away to a rapid ability to see details and shape (Berger, 2014). By 3 months these same infants with immature ability can see patterns color and motion. Surveys and medical research are regularly used to develop a better understanding of infant development.

and exercise. Whilst early on vision is best at 25cm they can gradually focus on objects further away. • Intellectual Development: Baby explores its environment by putting objects in its mouth. They become aware of different smells and can recognise familiar faces and voices. Baby can focus on moving objects and responds to brightly coloured bold images. Baby is egocentric. • Communication and Language Development: Baby will turn head towards sounds and recognises familiar voices – will stop crying when it hears them. Baby responds to smiles when not upset, pauses to listen and makes noises as well as crying to gain

Infant learning and brain development is fragile and contingent upon numerous intrinsic and extrinsic factors. The most critical time frame for infant brain development is from the second trimester to the first three months of life (Marshall, 2011). During this time, neural pathways are forming, areas of the brain are maturing, and brain development is rapid. From infancy until the age of 3 years, neural pathways are still being formed in response to stimulation and for this reason, it is extremely important for caregivers and parents to be aware of the many factors that can influence brain development in infants (Marshall, 2011).

This stage lasts from birth to twelve months. In this stage, infants gain knowledge about their surrounding by using their senses. (Clarke-Stewart, Gruber, & Fitzgerald, 2007, p. 154). They recognize the faces of their caregivers and may respond to smiles. At these stage infants are generally attracted to bright colors, and show response to sound by turning towards the direction of the sound. Studies have indicated that infants between the ages of three and seven weeks have the ability to recognize shapes and pictures of human faces (Goswami, 1994, p. 376).

Habituation is applied in discovering the perceptual systems which indicates that children advance earlier in developing perception compared to the acquiring the idea of the permanence of objects. Vision, hearing, smell and taste, language, touch, and pain are the early infant sensorimotor perceptual improvement in the infants’ mental growth. Motor development, required for the child to create relationships between vision, touch and

Each child is a unique individual whose heredity and environment shape the course of his or her life. Woven into the daily life are aspects of food and nutrition. What childhood memories of food do you have? Are these memories healthy or unhealthy?

Although infant perception differs in terms of acuity, infant perception on size and shape constancy requires less development. Adults understand that objects have a constant shape and size, regardless of their distance, and the angle of perception. The developmental question lies on whether size and shape principles guide infant perception, or whether constancies are developed through experience. This argument is one of many in exploring whether infants learn through cognitive adaptations, or whether they learn through experience and what the environment offers them. Previous assumptions by Piaget, state that these principles were not present at birth, but developed towards the end of the first year. This

Sensation and perception are tested in infants through the senses sight, sound, taste, smell, touch and pain.