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Related Concept Videos

Introduction to Developmental Psychology01:27

Introduction to Developmental Psychology

Developmental psychology explores the changes and continuities in human abilities throughout life, encompassing physical, cognitive, linguistic, and social dimensions. Human development is not restricted to growth, but includes aspects of decline, particularly in physical abilities as individuals age. Developmental psychologists seek to understand how people change as they age and how their mental and social skills evolve.Developmental MilestonesA key concept in developmental psychology is...
Three Developmental Domains01:29

Three Developmental Domains

Human development is typically examined across three main domains: physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional. These domains represent the significant areas of change and continuity throughout the lifespan, from infancy to late adulthood.
Physical Development
Physical processes, also known as maturation, encompass the biological changes that occur across an individual's life. These changes begin with genetic inheritance and continue through various stages, including growth in height and weight,...
Piaget's Stage 1 of Cognitive Development01:14

Piaget's Stage 1 of Cognitive Development

The sensorimotor stage, the initial phase of Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development, spans the first two years of a child's life. During this period, infants actively engage with their surroundings, building cognitive awareness through direct interaction with the world. This interaction is primarily based on sensory perception and motor actions, allowing infants to gradually understand basic physical properties and predict how objects interact within their environment.
Exploration...
Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development from Childhood into Adulthood01:25

Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development from Childhood into Adulthood

Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development emphasizes the role of thinking in a child's learning process, suggesting that children are naturally curious about their environment. His approach to development is discontinuous, proposing that cognitive abilities progress through distinct stages, each with unique characteristics. Central to Piaget's theory is schemata—mental structures that allow individuals to understand and interpret the world.
Schemata: Building Blocks of Knowledge
Schemata...
Gastrulation01:56

Gastrulation

Gastrulation establishes the three primary tissues of an embryo: the ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm. This developmental process relies on a series of intricate cellular movements, which in humans transforms a flat, “bilaminar disc” composed of two cell sheets into a three-tiered structure. In the resulting embryo, the endoderm serves as the bottom layer, and stacked directly above it is the intermediate mesoderm, and then the uppermost ectoderm. Respectively, these tissue strata will form...
Language Development01:22

Language Development

Children master language quickly and with relative ease, supported by both biological predisposition and reinforcement. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement, while Noam Chomsky (1965) argued that language acquisition mechanisms are biologically determined.
The critical period for language acquisition suggests that the ability to acquire language is at its peak early in life. As people age, this proficiency decreases. Language development begins very...

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Related Experiment Video

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Quantifying Learning in Young Infants: Tracking Leg Actions During a Discovery-learning Task
11:18

Quantifying Learning in Young Infants: Tracking Leg Actions During a Discovery-learning Task

Published on: June 1, 2015

Developmental continuity? Crawling, cruising, and walking.

Karen E Adolph1, Sarah E Berger, Andrew J Leo

  • 1Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA. karen.adolph@nyu.edu

Developmental Science
|March 15, 2011
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Cruising, an infant’s sideways movement using furniture, does not prepare them for walking. Weeks of cruising experience do not teach infants about floor support or gap dangers, revealing functional discontinuities in early motor development.

Keywords:
crawlingcruisingdevelopmental continuitylocomotionwalking

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Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Motor Development
  • Infant Locomotion

Background:

  • Cruising (sideways locomotion with support) and walking are upright postural movements.
  • Researchers assumed functional continuity between cruising and walking due to postural similarity.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To examine developmental continuity between infant cruising and walking.
  • To investigate if cruising experience transfers to walking skills, particularly regarding environmental perception.

Main Methods:

  • Study 1: Assessed concurrent crawling, cruising, and walking onset.
  • Study 2: Tested cruising infants' perception of manual support gaps (handrail) versus fall hazards (floor gaps).
  • Study 3: Evaluated new walkers' perception of both manual support and floor gaps.

Main Results:

  • Infants crawl and cruise for weeks before walking.
  • Cruising infants perceive gaps in handrails but ignore floor gaps.
  • New walkers also misperceive floor gaps, indicating a lack of understanding of necessary support.

Conclusions:

  • Cruising does not teach infants the necessity of a floor for support.
  • Temporally close and structurally similar developmental milestones can have functional discontinuities.
  • Early motor skill acquisition may involve learning specific environmental affordances rather than general principles.