1. Psychology of Infancy
Infant Development
Daniel Messinger, Ph.D.

2. Today
Introducing infancy
Introducing the course
Introducing ourselves

3. Human infancy From 0 to 2 or 3 years of age
Most rapid, profound change in the lifecycle
In multiple areas of functioning
Produce a new individual

4. Multiple areas of infant development
Motor
jerky hand movements to walking
Communication
crying to talking
Social
No sense of self/other to complex relationships
Emotional
crying to laughing and the beginnings of pride
Cognitive
‘Where’s that breast’ to make-believe

5. Infancy in its own terms
Nature wants children to be children before they are men. If we deliberately depart from this order, we shall get premature fruits which are neither ripe nor well flavored and which soon decay. We shall have youthful sages and grown up children. Childhood has ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling, peculiar to itself; nothing can be more foolish than to substitute our ways for them.
Jean Jacques Rousseau (quoted in Bjorklund)

6. Developmental canalization
which developmental trajectories are becoming more fixed (canals are becoming deeper); said another way, the probability distributions of potential outcomes are becoming more peaked (likely outcomes are ever more likely).
(Waddington)
Messinger

7. Children over developmental time
Teddy 0-1 and 1-2 (smiley; 2 mins each) (
Indigo (1st year; 6 mins)
Time lapse of a baby playing with his toys. 9 months
Stages of Walking (Newbie to Pro in 90 Seconds)