Child Development

IDENTIFY WHAT YOU CONSIDER TO BE KEY FEATURES DEVELOPMENT OF INFANTS,AND EXPLORE THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORIES OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT.

INTRODUCTION

When infants are born they want to be loved and cared in what ever relationships they are with their caregivers, so that they could survive and could feel sense of security and warmth , which without a caregiver is impossible ,talking about caregivers ,mother would be the primary source of forming an infant's first relationship by whom the baby would take his first leap towards his growth and development and would keep continuing making his advances further in many domains of psychological development , whether social or cognitive. Some key features which play an important role in his early psychological development are meshing, imitation, and scaffolding .

But which theoretical approach of development would imply in infant's early psychological development , will it be behaviorism, nativism, constructivism or social constructivism or will they over lap with one another in their implication thus it would be analyzed and explored during the mother and infant interaction and behaviour in different processes like imitation, scaffolding etc but what are these processes? And how they influence and play an important role in types of psychological development (social, cognitive, and in language development)

KEY FEATURES OF INFANT FIRST RELATIONSHIP

Meshing is one of the key features of relationship in mother -infant interaction. Behaviour of both an infant and mother are meshed together.

The common situation of meshing is witnessed when a smooth conversation between two people is going on and each person waits for his turn taking either to speak or to listen, this indicates mutual action happening simultaneously.

Trevarthen(1993) called it as "co-regulation" the aspects of turn taking and synchronizing, furthermore he described them through speech and non verbal behaviour, such as nods, eye contacts and body movements, moreover he puts in by saying neither a caregiver nor the baby needs to be skilled at the management of these kind of interactions.

So this could mean that in early mother-infant interaction the infant share true dialogues with his mother which are named as pseudo-dialogues and further give the baby an effective role in his interaction to experience relatedness. Therefore the infant begins to form representation of others and consequently gets to know about his own behaviour in response to others.

As a result the pseudo dialogue becomes the proto- dialogue by which the infant begins to respond effectively because the caregiver plays a dominant role in allowing the baby to feel and interact in the relationship.

Breast feeding or bottle feeding is one of the area of interaction between the mother and infant which has taken the attention of developmental psychologists regarding the rhythmic nature of the infant's behaviour shown while he takes his feed from his mother, in between when the baby pauses for his feed and mother play an active role in interacting with him but despite the fact that infant role is not that active still makes his response if he is being shaken or jiggled during the period of pause.

Kaye and Brazetton (1971) supported this study when they carried out their observation that what happens when mothers jiggle , to their surprise jiggling seems to lengthen the pauses and in doing so when the jiggling is stopped by the mother ,the sucking would begin which in result would prove that mutual action is taking place between mother -infant interaction even though mother 's part is more active as compared to the baby but still he shows positive signs of responsiveness. Moreover interaction between mother and baby is very conversation like.

Role of meshing in the early psychological development of an infant

IMITATION

Imitations can be viewed as a further advancement in building up psedo-dialogues by the infant imitating the facial gestures made by his care givers.

This advanced unit of psedo -dialogues could consist of tongue protrusion, mouth opening , lip widening and pouting. These actions done by the infant could be a sign of his cognitive abilities.

A study carried out by Pawlby (1977) by imitative sequences between mothers and their infants , was found out that between the ages of four months to ten months ,mother imitated their babies more than babies imitating their mothers, furthermore during this age period it was also found out that imitative responses by using hand movements and sounds were taking place too, but by eight months imitative actions were dominated with objects like rattles etc

This indicates that a mother could know before how to interact and respond back to the imitative experience she undergoes with her baby at some level without a particular stimuli during the process of their interaction .for a mother, baby's behaviour towards her imitative responses can be considered a sign of communication between them which later can be effective in the early pseduo-dialogues , moreover predictable responses by the mother would help him the baby to associate and represent her mother as a source of relatedness which was discussed before.

Trevarthen used the term primary "inter subjectivity" to describe this type of interaction between a mother and her baby and moreover highlighted a belief that these primary interpersonal events in mother-infant interaction as units of imitation occur due to the development of sensitivity in the baby and the mother towards each other subjective experience.

But when objects like toys are involved between the mother -infant interaction , a new development shows up and allows the mother and her infant to take joint venture in experiencing and sharing a joint action and attention by introducing objects in their interaction.

This advanced step in development Trevarthen described as "secondary intersubjectvity."

SCAFFOLDING:

In the process of scaffolding the mother can begin to teach the baby by sharing the experience of doing things together with other objects. The baby can now become more active within his relationship .

Jerome Bruner has described the term scaffolding as a specific way of interaction by mothers with their infants to allow the babies to progress and achieve