Human growth and developement Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Human growth and developement - Essay Example 1. Development proceeds from the head downward. This is called the Cephalocaudle principle. This principle describes the direction of growth and development. According to this principle, the child gains control of the head first, then the arms, and then the legs. Infants develop control of the head and face movements within the first two months after birth. In the next few months, they are able to lift themselves up by using their arms. By 6 to 12 months of age, infants start to gain leg control and may be able to crawl, stand, or walk. Coordination of arms always precedes coordination of legs. 2. Development proceeds from the center of the body outward. This is the principle of Proximodistal development that also describes the direction of development. This means that the spinal cord develops before outer parts of the body. The child's arms develop before the hands and the hands and feet develop before the fingers and toes. Finger and toe muscles are the last to develop in physical development. 3. Development depends on maturation and learning. Maturation refers to the sequential characteristic of biological growth and development. ... Finger and toe muscles are the last to develop in physical development. 3. Development depends on maturation and learning. Maturation refers to the sequential characteristic of biological growth and development. The biological changes occur in sequential order and give children new abilities. Changes in the brain and nervous system account largely for maturation. These changes in the brain and nervous system help children to improve in thinking or cognitive and motor or physical skills. 4. Development proceeds from the simple to the more complex. Children use their cognitive and language skills to reason and solve problems. For example, learning relationships between things, or classification, is an important ability in cognitive development. The cognitive process of learning how an apple and orange are alike begins with the most simplistic or concrete thought of describing the two. Seeing no relationship, a preschool child will describe the objects according to some property of the object, such as color. Such a response would be, "An apple is red or green and an orange is orange." The first level of thinking about how objects are alike is to give a description or functional relationship between the two objects. "An apple and orange are round" and "An apple and orange are alike because you eat them" are typical responses of three, four and five year olds. As children develop further in cognitive skills, they are able to understand a higher and more complex relations hip between objects and things; that is, that an apple and orange exist in a class called fruit. The child cognitively is then capable of classification. 5. Growth and development is a continuous process. As a child develops, he or she adds to the skills already acquired and the new skills