Introduction
The research reappraises the characteristics that are evinced in small children between the ages of 6- 9 months, during growth and development of both behavioral and cognitive skills. In line with this, the research also elaborates on the different goals that children have, based on their visual epitome they tend to display on the onset of goal awareness. Therefore, this paper recaps the validity of the findings elaborated in the research, and in tandem to this, it also provides all the rationales to the immense popularity and attraction of the research in the media vessels and stations.
Research Summary and Findings
The research described children between six and nine months as infants who could assort and give a clear cut distinction between goals, withal, similar action patterns. In addition to this, the infants were attracted to a plethora of agents that acted intentionally, and they usually commenced at birth. They paid heed to voices, eyes, body movements and faces, and they partially engrossed in imitative games. Further, the research related the relation between the visual habitation and appreciation of goals that occur during the first year of child’s growth.
Development of awareness, goal attribution and communication responses, were also taken into consideration, factoring in all the possible behavioral measures. An experiment was carried out in a small rectangle room involving 46 children, to clarify and ascertain this issue. The infants were set in the room at half a circle, engaged in some task, and their behaviors were recorded after every interval. Measurable aspects that were taken into consideration included; arm gestures, gaze aversion, and affective behavior. The infants showed systematic secernment between unwilling and unable conditions across a number of behavioral measures.
Discussion
The issues addressed in the research are extremely indispensable, and they depict infants as creatures with potential to know their goals and what they may or may not want in life just like any other human being, thence making the research a unique inquiry, worth a massive attention of the media. Besides, the research also tries to answer or solve some mysteries that do occur in infants while they undergo growth and development. For years, parents have been facing difficulties in explaining the growth process in infants in relation to memory development. From the research, children have been portrayed as people with a developing memory, and they can recognize objects of their preference, through gaze aversion. This is analogous to Shaffer and Kipp (2007) assertion that babies remember things attributed to the difference of stimuli set before their eyes.
Similarly, the child’s visual behavior is evinced as a powerful aspect that connects the child to the outside world. This is highly illustrated in the experiment, and it clearly indicates how the child learns to relate with objects, and other people, and this corresponds to LEGO group (2004) affirmation that, through visual behavior, babies at 8 months become attached to people they frequently see and, by the same relic, tend to fear strangers. Further, the infants also tend to have predictions on whether they are to achieve or not to achieve their goals, and it agrees with Young’s (2011), ideology, which explains that, between the age of 6 and 10 months, the cognitive performance and emotional response of an infant may be high in relation to individual difference.
In line with this, Goswami (2011) also attests that children between the age of 6 and 18 months possess an early visual perception of space and potential of coding location spaces, which in turn assists in the organization of spatial locations and identification of objects. This is well illustrated in the research as the infants try to reach the toys. Moreover, the ideology tries to correct the fallacy that infants are oblivious to their perpetual spatial world, characterized by confusion and less intelligence.
Conclusion
Concisely, the research contains varied illustrations of uniqueness, clearly expressed through cognitive and behavioral skills of infants. Children are portrayed as intelligent just like other human beings, with full visual and associative behavior, hence making the research noteworthy and fascinating to read. Furthermore, the research was carried out using absolute and accessible materials that parents use on a daily basis, thus making it compelling and meriting the media attention.
References
Goswami, U. (2011). The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Childhood Cognitive Development. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
LEGO Group (2004). The Whole Child Development Guide (1st Ed.). Retrieved from http://cache.lego.com/upload/contentTemplating/ParentsChildDevelopment/otherfiles/1033/download59111B7E85BB5D8AF9F177B904EE5E43.pdf
Marsh, L. H., Stavropoulos, J., Nienhuis, T. and Legerstee, M. (2008). Discrimination of Unwilling versus Unable Partners: Six- and Nine- Month-Old Infants Discriminate Between Goals despite Similar Action Patterns. Retrieved from http://www.psych.yorku.ca/legerstee/documents/MarshetalInfancyinpress-1.pdf
Shaffer, R. D. &Kipp, K. (2007). Developmental Psychology: Childhood and Adolescence (7th Ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning, Inc.
Young, G. (2011). Development and Causality: Neo-Piagetian Perspectives. New York, NY: Springer Science +Business Media.
