Child Language Development Report

Chapter four focuses on body growth, brain development, and influences on physical growth. During the time, a child goes from an infant to a toddler they grow uncontrollably. By the time an infant is six months they have doubled from their birthweight. Instead of growing steady overtime infants experience times where they do not grow at all and times where they grow a lot over a day. The child body begins to proportion and different parts of the body grow at different rates.

What is the evidence that early childhood is a sensitive time for learning language? Social interaction, myelination, brain maturation, and scaffolding are evidence that early childhood is a sensitive time for learning language. In addition, children in early childhood are considered “language sponges” because they absorb every bit of language they hear or read. How does fast-mapping aid the language explosion?

Likewise, Pinker (1994) postulates a similar perspective to the “creative aspect of a language” theory proposed by Chomsky stating that children are biologically predisposed to acquire a language. From an innate perspective, Pinker affirms that children are gifted with a sixth sense called “speech perception”. Through this sense, they are able to distinguish the phonemes of a language, thus strengthening their linguistic system. At last, he alleges that up to the age of six a kid has an assured language acquisition process. Still, the child could manage to obtain satisfactory results all the way to puberty.

During this developmental interview, I chose to conduct an observation/interview study with my one of my cousin’s child. This child is a 4 year old girl and will be identified as “child K” in relation to her first name. Her parents had no problem letting me interview her, but I had them stay in the same room as us. The purpose of this interview was to observe the child’s physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development. I observed her behavior and gave her several tests to show how well she has progressed.

-Describe how atypical development may impact on areas of development. The different aspects of children's development are interlinked and co-dependent, so they will each be important to the child's holistic development. Children's overall development and educational needs will be affected by the way in which they develop in key areas. As children grow and pass different milestones or key points, they will gradually become more independent and less reliant on those around them in preparation for the future.

There are many factors that can affect a child’s language and communication. Some of these factors can be positive; however, some can be negative. A cultural factor affecting emergent literacy could be children who have English as an additional language (EAL) this is because they know more of their native language than they do English and can be difficult to grasp another language at such a young age. Also some EAL children may have the knowledge of the English language and can speak the language however; their self-esteem, self-confidence and shyness could play a part in this and therefore may not be willing to use the English language. Also, EAL children may find it difficult to grasp the English alphabet.

Child development is an area of significant interest to professionals who deal with children on a daily basis. It is through child development theorists and their theories that we begin to form an understanding of how children develop emotionally and socially to become fully grown adults in society with a moral and emotional compass/. Teachers need to study child development in order to provide developmentally appropriate educational experiences for children. Health professionals also need to understand this area to support children in their physical, social, emotional and cognitive journey to becoming functioning adults in society. Childhood is a concept that is affected by social context and also by history. Here in the West childhood was not always considered to be a fundamental developmental phase in life with children in Victorian times working from as early as the age of four.

In the contemporary times, great importance is given to the significance of early years of a child’s life. It is widely acknowledged now-a-days that the early childhood years are a predominantly receptive phase in the developmental process. This stage is responsible to lay a foundation in early days and later years for cognitive functioning, learning process, physical wellbeing, and self-regulatory capacities in both personal and social lives. In simple words, “the period from birth to age 5 is one of opportunity and vulnerability for healthy physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development” (Karoly, Kilburn & Cannon, 2005). However, it is also a fact that many children go through several stressors during their developmental years due to which their healthy development may be impaired.

Toddler Learning and Development Introduction Unlike adolescents and adults, growth and development is different in infants and toddlers. Observations from the physical, cognitive and perceptual development show that toddlers and infants grow and develop at a faster rate than adults. The physical, cognitive and motor development in infants and toddlers is higher than the same development in adults. This paper is an analysis and interpretation of an observation conducted with an aim to understand the growth and development of toddlers and infants. It explains an observation of an infant boy named Taylor who is 8 months old.

Many theorists discuss ways in which children are developing. Physically, emotionally, socially and language progressions. Within the early childhood sector, the study of children's development is vividly important as teachers learn to observe the children's individual learning patterns and habits. The practical knowledge of how to develop a child further will assist in utilising the children's skills and holistic development to their fullest potential, however, knowing how to practically aid children in the separate developmental domains is also key as individual kids need more help in some areas than others.

From the earlier stages of development, children learn to understand other people by tone, facial expressions, and gestures. Although these are important aspects to communication if a child is only using gestures to communicate and not words, then there might be a difficulty in language development. On average “Children will typically be able to say 50 words by the time they reach 2 years. At this age, they will start to put short two-word sentences together. Language learning increases dramatically and by three years children are using three to four-word sentences and can be easily understood by familiar adults.

and it begins with the sensorimotor stage, a child from birth to the age of 2 years old learns and thinks by doing and figuring out how something works. The second stage is the preoperational stage and in this stage children from ages 2 through 7 years are developing their language and they do pretend play (Berk, 2005, p.20). Concrete operational is the third stage and children ages 7 to 11 years old lack abstract but have more logic than they did when they were younger. The last stage is formal

This is a theory that suggests humans acquire language substantially easier during a critical period of biological development, which is from infancy to puberty. (Hoff,2005). One case study carried out focused on a girl named Genie. Genie was locked in isolation in her home and was not discovered by authorities until she was at the age of 14. Throughout her life of confinement, Genie was not exposed to a substantial amount of language.

DEVELOPMENT PSYCHOLOGY: REFLECTIVE ESSAY In life of an individual there are several developmental changes or events which occur as continuity of span of life. Some of life developmental stages include infantile, adolescence, maturity, and adulthood. These phases have biological, social, psychological and physiognomic reasons to which an individual completed the course of life. Psychological analysis upon the developmental stages include the focus on characterization, demarcation and the social interaction of individual’s life (Baltes & Schaie, 2013).

The development of literacy and language is a continual progress within a person. This development is one that starts from the moment a child is born (Hurst and Joseph, 2000). This development is promoted within the home environment and is extended within the early years’ classroom domain. Literacy and language development is comprised of four strands, which are listening, speaking, reading & writing. These four factors are in constant interaction together and are constantly developing within the person (Saffran, Senghas and Trueswell, 2001).