title: Agrippina the Younger

text: The next day, Nero received word of her survival after the boat sank from her freedman Agermus. Panicking, Nero ordered a guard to "surreptitiously" drop a blade behind Agermus and Nero immediately had him arrested on account of attempted murder. Nero ordered the assassination of Agrippina. He made it look as if Agrippina had committed suicide after her plot to kill Nero had been uncovered.


title: Agrippina the Younger

text: Suetonius says that after Agrippina's death, Nero examined Agrippina's corpse and discussed her good and bad points. Nero also believed Agrippina to haunt him after her death.


title: Agrippina the Younger

text: The tale of Cassius Dio is also somewhat different. It starts again with Poppaea as the motive behind the murder. Nero designed a ship that would open at the bottom while at sea. Agrippina was put aboard and after the bottom of the ship opened up, she fell into the water. Agrippina swam to shore so Nero sent an assassin to kill her. Nero then claimed Agrippina had plotted to kill him and committed suicide. Her reputed last words, uttered as the assassin was about to strike, were "Smite my womb", the implication here being she wished to be destroyed first in that part of her body that had given birth to so "abominable a son."


title: Agrippina the Younger

text: After Agrippina's death, Nero viewed her corpse and commented how beautiful she was, according to some. Her body was cremated that night on a dining couch. At his mother's funeral, Nero was witless, speechless and rather scared. When the news spread that Agrippina had died, the Roman army, senate and various people sent him letters of congratulations that he had been saved from his mother's plots.


title: Agrippina the Younger

text: During the remainder of Nero's reign, Agrippina's grave was not covered or enclosed. Her household later on gave her a modest tomb in Misenum. Nero would have his mother's death on his conscience. He felt so guilty he would sometimes have nightmares about his mother. He even saw his mother's ghost and got Persian magicians to ask her for forgiveness. Years before she died, Agrippina had visited astrologers to ask about her son's future. The astrologers had rather accurately predicted that her son would become emperor and would kill her. She replied, "Let him kill me, provided he becomes emperor," according to Tacitus.


title: Agrippina the Younger

text: She is remembered in "De Mulieribus Claris", a collection of biographies of historical and mythological women by the Florentine author Giovanni Boccaccio, composed in 136162. It is notable as the first collection devoted exclusively to biographies of women in western literature.


title: Agrippina the Younger

text: Most ancient Roman sources are quite critical of Agrippina the Younger. Tacitus considered her vicious and had a strong disposition against her. Other sources are Suetonius and Cassius Dio.


title: Shrek (character)

text: Shrek is a fictional ogre character created by American author William Steig. Shrek is the protagonist of the book of the same name, a series of films by DreamWorks Animation, as well as a musical. The name "Shrek" is derived from the German word "Schreck", meaning "fright" or "terror". In the films, Shrek was voiced by Mike Myers, and in the musical, he was played principally by Brian d'Arcy James.


title: Shrek (character)

text: On May 21, 2010, Shrek received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles. In June 2010, "Entertainment Weekly" named him one of the "100 Greatest Characters of the Last 20 Years", placing 15th.


title: Shrek (character)

text: Shrek is a large, green-skinned, physically intimidating ogre with a Scottish accent. In "Shrek Forever After", however, it is revealed that he is much smaller than the average ogre. Even though his background is something of a mystery, according to "Shrek The Musical", it is revealed that on his seventh birthday, Shrek was sent away by his parents, because it was an ogre tradition. (The original book also has his parents evicting him from their swamp.) He is seen traveling alone, being either screamed at or teased by passers-by. The only time he receives a pleasant greeting is a wave from a young Fiona, who is promptly led away by her parents. In the book, his parents threw him into a dark hole that leads to the real world.


title: Shrek (character)

text: After scaring away an angry mob, he arrives at his swamp, enters an outhouse, and literally breaks out as the adult Shrek. Though surly, dangerous, cynical, misanthropic, and venomously cranky, Shrek is peaceful and does not care to hurt anyone, but just wants to live in solitude and be left alone. Shrek is accompanied by Donkey, an excitable and hyperactive talking donkey. When Shrek is first seen, he successfully scares off villagers by roaring at them, but it later becomes obvious that they were only attacking him because he is an ogre, rather than because he has done anything wrong.


title: Shrek (character)

text: In "Shrek", during a conversation with Donkey, he laments that he is constantly judged by the outside world the minute people meet him, and is thus better off alone ("Look, I'm not the one with the problem, okay? It's the world that seems to have a problem with me. People take one look at me and go 'Aah! Help! Run! A big stupid ugly ogre!' They judge me before they even know me. That's why I'm better off alone."). This implies that he became a recluse after trying and failing to find acceptance among others. Another factor causing lack of acceptance can be found in "Shrek the Third", where it is revealed that Shrek's father tried to eat him ("I guess I should have seen it coming. He used to bathe me in barbecue sauce and put me to bed with an apple in my mouth.").


title: Shrek (character)

text: When he finds squatters where he lives, he attempts to evict them, only to learn he has no legal recourse against them, for he does not own the swamp. Shrek is hired by Lord Farquaad to rescue Princess Fiona in exchange for the deed to the swamp, with which he can legally banish the squatters. However, during the course of the mission, Shrek falls deeply in love with Fiona, and eventually stops her wedding with Farquaad and marries her himself.


title: Shrek (character)

text: Being an ogre, Shrek has considerable physical strength, being able to break wood and metal constructions, defeat armored humans in combat, and lift or turn objects that are too heavy for a human being, such as a gigantic vat of magic potion against the maximum security of the Fairy Godmother in "Shrek 2".


title: Shrek (character)

text: In "Shrek in the Swamp Karaoke Dance Party!", Shrek sings "Just the Way You Are". In Far Far Away Idol, he sang "What I Like About You" by The Romantics with Fiona. Shrek has difficulty socializing due to the fact that people think he is a mean ugly ogre, even though his appearance is remarkably humanoid, with a few cosmetic exceptions. In the process, Shrek is said to have sociophobia.


title: Shrek (character)

text: However, from "Shrek the Third" onward, Shrek has become a well-liked celebrity, at least in Far Far Away. In the fourth movie, people manage to realize that Shrek is not dangerous, and lose their fear and prejudice against him. However, to Shrek's dismay, they also come to regard him as a folk hero, and visit him with even more frequency than before, disturbing him. Despite this, after the experiences of the movie, Shrek comes to appreciate his life more than ever.


title: Shrek (character)

text: When Steven Spielberg purchased the book rights in 1991, he had planned for Bill Murray to play Shrek. Nicolas Cage was offered the role of Shrek at one point, but turned it down. In 1996, DreamWorks hired Chris Farley to do the voice.


title: Shrek (character)

text: Farley had recorded 80 to 90% of the dialogue for the character, but died in December 1997, before completing the project. This would result in development of the film being scrapped, such as storyboards and recording sessions, which cost $34 million alone. "Shrek" screenwriter Terry Rossio describes Farley's vocal performance as being "extraordinary". In August 2015, footage of Farley voicing the character, originally from 1997, was leaked across the Internet.


title: Shrek (character)

text: In August 1998, DreamWorks then re-cast the role with Mike Myers, who insisted on a complete script rewrite, to leave no traces of Farley's version of Shrek. Myers stated that the reason he was interested in voicing the character was remembrances of his mother acting out fairy tales:


title: Shrek (character)

text: In February 2000, after Myers had completed providing the voice for the character, and after a rough cut of the film, he requested to re-record all of his lines in a Scottish accent, similar to the one his mother had used when she told him bedtime stories, and also used in previous films he was in such as "So I Married an Axe Murderer" (1993) and "" (1999).


title: Shrek (character)

text: Myers explained his decision, "There is a class struggle in "Shrek" between the fairytale kings and queens and the common people. I always thought that Shrek was raised working class. And since Lord Farquaad (the villain) was played English, I thought of Scottish". After hearing the alternative, Katzenberg agreed to redo scenes in the film, saying, "It was so good we took $4m worth of animation out and did it again."


title: Shrek (character)

text: Myers later reported: "I got a letter from Spielberg thanking me so much for caring about the character... And he said the Scottish accent had improved the movie."


title: Shrek (character)

text: Some early sketches of Shrek's house were done in 1996 and 1997 using Photoshop, with the sketches showing Shrek first living in a garbage dump near a human village called Wart Creek. At one point, he was to live with his parents and keep rotting fish in his bedroom. Art Director Douglas Rogers visited a magnolia plantation in Charleston, South Carolina for inspiration for Shrek's swamp.


title: Shrek (character)

text: Shrek appears in the stage musical version of the 2001 film, which debuted in 2008. The role was originated by Broadway actor Brian d'Arcy James, who earned a Tony nomination for it. The character has remained virtually unchanged in the musical, as does the plot. However, various minor details differ between the musical and the film. Other actors to play the role include Ben Crawford (Broadway), Eric Petersen (National Tour), Jacob Ming-Trent (Broadway understudy), Brian Gonzales (Broadway/National Tour understudy), David Foley Jr. (National Tour understudy), and from 2011 – Nigel Lindsay (West End).


title: Shrek (character)

text: In video games, Shrek appeared as an unlockable player in "Tony Hawk's Underground 2", and as a playable character in both "Madagascar Kartz" and "DreamWorks Super Star Kartz".


title: Shrek (character)

text: On social media sites, Shrek is portrayed in a variety of Internet memes. Shrek's popularity is attributed to "ShrekChan", an imageboard that existed between 2012 to 2014. Fans of Shrek on the imageboard were known as "brogres", a play off of "" that refers to members of the "My Little Pony" fandom, and memes often involved graphic material including sex, drugs, and violence for their shock value. Most infamous was the "Shrek is love, Shrek is life" meme, an animated video made through Source Filmmaker where Shrek engages in anal sex with a young boy who worships the ogre. "The Atlantic" writer David Sims compared this phenomenon to the "Shrek" franchise, saying: "it's symbolic of so many things we briefly loved before quickly realizing their emptiness."


title: Eric Church

text: Kenneth Eric Church (born May 3, 1977) is an American country music singer-songwriter. He has released nine studio albums through Capitol Nashville since 2005. His debut album, 2006's "Sinners Like Me", produced three singles on the "Billboard" country charts including the top 20 hits "How 'Bout You", "Two Pink Lines", and "Guys Like Me".


title: Eric Church

text: His second album, 2009's "Carolina", produced three more singles: "Smoke a Little Smoke" and his first top 10 hits, "Love Your Love the Most" and "Hell on the Heart". 2011's "Chief", his first No. 1 album, gave him his first two No. 1 singles, "Drink in My Hand" and "Springsteen", and the hits "Homeboy", "Creepin'", and "Like Jesus Does". His third No. 1 single was "The Only Way I Know", which he, Jason Aldean, and Luke Bryan recorded for Aldean's album "Night Train".


title: Eric Church

text: A fourth album, "The Outsiders", was released in February 2014. It produced five new singles between 2013 and 2015 with the title track, "Give Me Back My Hometown", "Cold One", "Talladega" and "Like a Wrecking Ball". "Talladega" and "Give Me Back My Hometown" each reached number one on the Country Airplay chart. Eric Church got his sixth No. 1 hit with Keith Urban in May 2015 with the single "Raise 'Em Up". His fifth studio album, "Mr. Misunderstood", was released in November 2015 and went on to produce two number one singles with "Record Year" and "Round Here Buzz". On July 13, 2018, Church released the first single and title track of his album "Desperate Man", which was released in October 2018. In April 2021, Church released the triple album set "Heart & Soul".


title: Eric Church

text: Church was born on May 3, 1977, in Granite Falls, North Carolina (Dudley Shoals area), to Ken and Rita Church. Church worked with his father at Clayton Marcus, a furniture upholstery company where his father was president. At 13, he bought a guitar and began writing songs of his own. By his senior year of high school, he had found a gig at a local bar, which occupied most of his time. He played many Jimmy Buffett cover songs and a few of his own original songs in some dive bars. Some of these places were so rough that he got into a few altercations from the stage. For a few years, the band played often in bars and restaurants throughout North Carolina. The band "Mountain Boys" consisted of his college roommate, brother, and a fellow guitarist.


title: Eric Church

text: Before moving to Nashville, Eric graduated from South Caldwell High School and then Appalachian State University with a degree in marketing. Upon graduation, Church became engaged to a Spanish teacher in the town of Lenoir, North Carolina. The future bride's father attempted to persuade Church into a corporate career, which he rejected as an aspiring musician (and later referenced in his song "What I Almost Was" from his debut album). She broke the engagement and he headed to Nashville with his father's financial backing. His father also provided the opportunity to make contacts, and more importantly, time to focus on developing his songwriting ability.


title: Eric Church

text: Church co-wrote Terri Clark's 2005 single "The World Needs a Drink", and the track "Whiskey Wings" on Dean Miller's 2005 album "Platinum".


title: Eric Church

text: He started recording with different producers. Capitol Nashville showed an interest and watched him perform but they were yet to be convinced enough to offer a recording contract. Autumn House-Tallant told HitQuarters that they did not think his music was "interesting" enough. The record company's attitude changed after he started working with producer Jay Joyce. Doyle states, "Eric scored a meeting with Nashville heavyweight Arthur Buenahora, a publisher at Sony Music who also signed Taylor Swift and Miranda Lambert. Church played him "Lightning", a ballad he wrote after watching the movie "The Green Mile"". (p. 5) The strong sound and direction the two forged together finally convinced Capitol Nashville that he was ready. His first single, "How 'Bout You" peaked at No. 14 on Hot Country Songs and led off his debut album "Sinners Like Me". In April 2006, he performed on the Grand Ole Opry for the first time.


title: Eric Church

text: The album's other two singles, "Two Pink Lines" and "Guys Like Me", both reached the Top 20 as well. The fourth single, the title track, peaked at No. 51. An additional track from the album, "Lightning", was made into a music video despite not being released as a single. Church wrote the song shortly after moving to Nashville, inspired by the movie "The Green Mile". Following the album's success, Church toured with Brad Paisley and Rascal Flatts. Church was fired from opening for Rascal Flatts after repeatedly performing for longer than his allotted time, despite repeated warnings. He was replaced by Taylor Swift, who was just starting her career. Before Swift started the tour, Church and Swift spoke, where he told Swift that she would thrive on the tour and joked that she should give him her first gold record as a thanks. Swift later did give him her first gold record with an attached note that said "Thanks for playing too long and too loud on the Flatts tour. I sincerely appreciate it. Taylor".


title: Eric Church

text: In 2008, Church released a fifth single, "His Kind of Money (My Kind of Love)" to country radio. It debuted on the "Billboard" Hot Country Songs chart at No. 55 in early 2008, and reached its peak of No. 46 in August. Originally slated as the lead single to an upcoming second album, "His Kind of Money" was instead included as a bonus track on albums sold at Best Buy.


title: Eric Church

text: Following this song was "Love Your Love the Most", which debuted in early 2009 and was the first single from his second album "Carolina", released in stores on March 24, 2009. The night before the official release, Church and Capitol Records distributed copies of the album on the campus of Church's alma mater, Appalachian State University, during a "release party" concert. As with his debut album, "Carolina" was produced by Jay Joyce, and is entirely composed of songs that he co-wrote. "Love Your Love the Most" brought Church to the top 10 for the very first time, peaking at No. 10 in September 2009. The album's second single, "Hell on the Heart", debuted in October 2009 and would also hit the top 10 in May 2010. The third single from "Carolina" was "Smoke a Little Smoke".


title: Eric Church

text: In June 2010, Church moved to Capitol Nashville's new imprint EMI Records Nashville, becoming their second artist. On January 14, 2011, he released a four-song EP entitled "Caldwell County".


title: Eric Church

text: Church released "Homeboy" to country radio in early 2011. The album "Chief", produced by Jay Joyce, was released July 26, 2011, debuting at No. 1 on both Top Country Albums and the "Billboard" 200. The album sold 145,000 copies in its first week. On November 30, 2011, "Chief" was announced as a nominee for the 2012 Grammy Awards for Best Country Album. In January 2012 "Drink in My Hand" became his first No. 1 single. In February 2012, "Springsteen" was released as the third single from "Chief". In an interview with American Songwriter, Church stated that the song was about "a love affair that takes place in an amphitheater between two people. It didn't happen with Springsteen, ironically, it happened with another artist." The song went on to become a No. 1 country hit, as well as his first Top 20 single on the "Billboard" Hot 100. The album's fourth single, "Creepin'", was released to country radio on July 16, 2012. Church lent his vocals for a song titled, "The Only Way I Know", with Jason Aldean along Luke Bryan. This song appears on Aldean's album "Night Train", from which it was released as the second single. The fifth single from "Chief", "Like Jesus Does", was released in January 2013 and peaked at number six on Country Airplay chart in June 2013.


title: Eric Church

text: In September 2012, Church announced that he planned to release his first live album in 2013, containing recordings of performances at the Tivoli Theatre in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on October 8 and 9, 2012. On February 8, the live album's title was announced as "Caught in the Act", with a release date set for April 9. Church has stated he plans to take some time off from music in 2013 to focus on his songwriting and musical direction. At the 2012 CMA Awards in November, Church's album "Chief" won Album of the Year. In November it was announced that Church would co-headline Kenny Chesney's No Shoes Nation Tour alongside Chesney, Zac Brown Band, and Eli Young Band. In December, Eric was honored as one of the CMT Artists of the Year Awards. His award was presented by Kid Rock and he received a video message of congratulations from Metallica's James Hetfield.


title: Eric Church

text: On October 22, 2013, Church released a new single titled "The Outsiders". His fourth studio album, also titled "The Outsiders", was released on February 11, 2014. This album, as with Church's previous three, was produced by Jay Joyce and released on the EMI Records Nashville label. It was followed in January 2014 by "Give Me Back My Hometown". This single reached number one on the Country Airplay chart, becoming his fourth overall. The third single, "Cold One", was released in June 2014, followed by "Talladega" in September. The latter reached number one on the Country Airplay chart in February 2015. The fifth single, "Like a Wrecking Ball", was released to country radio on March 9, 2015.


title: Eric Church

text: On November 3, 2015, Church's new surprise album, "Mr. Misunderstood", arrived in the mailboxes of his church choir members. The album became available to the public on iTunes the following day. The album was released as a surprise with no fanfare and no promotional advertisements. It was produced by Jay Joyce and executive producer Arturo Buenahora, Jr. The first single, the title track, was released to radio on November 9, 2015. The first live performance and debut of the track was at the 2015 CMA Awards. The song peaked at No. 15 on the airplay chart on February 6, 2016. "Record Year" is the album's second single. The album's final track, "Three Year Old", pays tribute to all the lessons Church has learned from his three-year-old son, who was also credited with naming Church's guitar "ButterBean". Church used "ButterBean" for the creation of the album. "Mr. Misunderstood" was nominated for Album of the Year at the 2016 ACM Awards and the title track was nominated for Video of the Year. "Mr. Misunderstood" features ten self-written and co-written tracks and features themes of independence, lessons learned, and loyalty. The album was recorded by Jason Hall at St. Charles in Nashville. In March 2016, "Record Year" was released to radio; it reached No. 1 on the Country Airplay in August 2016. The album's third single, "Kill a Word" released to country radio on August 29, 2016. Church was selected as one of 30 artists to perform on "Forever Country", a mash-up track of "Take Me Home, Country Roads", "On the Road Again" and "I Will Always Love You" which celebrates 50 years of the CMA Awards.


title: Eric Church

text: Church played his biggest solo tour to date with his Holdin' My Own Tour that featured 62 shows in 61 cities from January through May 2017. The tour was capped off by two sold-out shows at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena, with the Friday night show breaking the arena's capacity record before being one-upped by the Saturday night show which set of record of 19,020 attendees.


title: Eric Church

text: On October 4, 2017, Church debuted a song he had written for Sonny Melton, who died in the Las Vegas shooting tragedy. The song, called "Why Not Me", was performed at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.


title: Eric Church

text: In November 2017 Church released a limited run vinyl box set titled "61 Days in Church" that would be released in monthly stages through 2018. The collection includes 124 tracks all of which were recorded live at the 61 shows of his 2017 Holdin' My Own Tour. The set includes two songs from each concert of the tour with the exception of the final two Nashville shows, which feature three songs from each night. He had already began releasing the album in stages for free on digital streaming services in September 2017.


title: Eric Church

text: On July 12, 2018, Church announced via social media that he would release his sixth album, "Desperate Man", on October 5, 2018. He released the album's first single and title track the following day.


title: Eric Church

text: On November 11, 2020, Church won the Entertainer of the Year award at the 54th Annual Country Music Association Awards.


title: Eric Church

text: On April 16, 2021, Church released the album "Heart", followed by the album "Soul]]", And |&" on April 20, on April 23. The triple-album release contains 24 songs in total, including the singles Heart On Fire and "Hell of a View".


title: Eric Church

text: In October 2021, after two of his bandmates tested positive for COVID-19, Church performed two solo concerts on his The Gather Again Tour. The solo shows were in Pittsburgh on October 8 and Philadelphia on October 9. On February 22, 2022, Church was announced to perform at the 57th Academy of Country Music Awards on March 7, 2022.


title: Eric Church

text: On January 8, 2008, Church married music publisher Katherine Blasingame at West Glow Resort in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. At the wedding, Church performed "You Make It Look So Easy", a song he wrote for Blasingame. On October 3, 2011, their first son, Boone McCoy Church, was born; he is the subject of Church's song "Three Year Old". On February 15, 2015, their second son, Tennessee Hawkins "Hawk" Church was born. Their home (along with Church's "man cave"), located in Nashville, was featured in an episode of CMT's "Cribs".


title: Eric Church

text: The Chief Cares Fund is a foundation organized by Eric and Katherine Church in 2013. The non-profit organization has been used to help underprivileged families in Tennessee, North Carolina, and even as far as helping orphans in Nepal receive clothing, proper bedding, and schooling. The foundation has also delivered Bibles to Haiti and helps fund Humane Society no-kill animal shelters. People can donate to the foundation on Eric Church's website by simply donating or by purchasing exclusive Chief Cares Platinum Tickets to his concerts where money from the tickets go to the Chief Cares Fund.


title: Eric Church

text: In November 2022, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper awarded Church the North Carolina Award, the state's highest civilian honor.


title: Eric Church

text: Church wears his signature aviator sunglasses as a result of wearing contact lenses. When his career was getting started, he was forced to deal with the heat from the stage lights drying out his contacts. As he began performing in larger venues, his aviators and Von Dutch denim trucker hat became his trademark.


title: Eric Church

text: Church has become an avid advocate for the use of cannabis, reflected in songs such as "Smoke a Little Smoke"; at the time of that song's release, Church's record label urged him not to release the song, though it had minor success as a single. Church has also referenced marijuana use in other songs like "The Joint" and "I'm Gettin' Stoned", and has even been the subject of a marijuana joke at the 49th ACM Awards where Blake Shelton and Luke Bryan referred to Eric Church as the Willie Nelson for the new-country generation and compared Eric Church's dressing room to a cannabis dispensary.


title: Eric Church

text: In March 2022, Church was heavily criticized by fans for cancelling a then-upcoming April concert in San Antonio, Texas in order to watch the North Carolina Tar Heels play Duke in the NCAA Championship Final Four. In response to the criticism, Church announced a makeup concert in New Braunfels, Texas, for the date of September 2, and justified the cancellation in a follow-up interview stating, in part, "To win that, it was a wild week or two. It was just something I had to be there, and had to take my boys ... I can’t recreate Duke and Carolina Final Four."


title: Eric Church

text: Church's style has been described as country rock, outlaw country, and southern rock. Church's influences include Hank Williams Jr., Merle Haggard, Little Feat, The Band, Kris Kristofferson, The Grateful Dead, Ray Wylie Hubbard and Waylon Jennings. Church has also said that many hard rock and heavy metal bands influenced his music, including Metallica, Pantera, and AC/DC.


title: Child development

text: Child development involves the biological, psychological and emotional changes that occur in human beings between birth and the conclusion of adolescence. Childhood is divided into 3 stages of life which include early childhood, middle childhood, and late childhood (preadolescence). Early childhood typically ranges from infancy to the age of 6 years old. During this period, development is significant, as many of life's milestones happen during this time period such as first words, learning to crawl, and learning to walk. There is speculation that middle childhood/preadolescence or ages 6–12 are the most crucial years of a child's life. Adolescence is the stage of life that typically starts around the major onset of puberty, with markers such as menarche and spermarche, typically occurring at 12–13 years of age. It has been defined as ages 10 to 19 by the World Health Organization. In the course of development, the individual human progresses from dependency to increasing autonomy. It is a continuous process with a predictable sequence, yet has a unique course for every child. It does not progress at the same rate and each stage is affected by the preceding developmental experiences. Because genetic factors and events during prenatal life may strongly influence developmental changes, genetics and prenatal development usually form a part of the study of child development. Related terms include developmental psychology, referring to development throughout the lifespan, and pediatrics, the branch of medicine relating to the care of children.


title: Child development

text: Developmental change may occur as a result of genetically controlled processes known as maturation, or as a result of environmental factors and learning, but most commonly involves an interaction between the two. It may also occur as a result of human nature and of human ability to learn from the environment.


title: Child development

text: There are various definitions of periods in a child's development, since each period is a continuum with individual differences regarding starting and ending. Some age-related development periods and examples of defined intervals include: newborn (ages 0–4 weeks); infant (ages 1 month–1 year); toddler (ages 1–2 years); preschooler (ages 2–6 years); school-aged child (ages 6–12 years); adolescent (ages 12–18 years).


title: Child development

text: Promoting child development through parental training, among other factors, promotes excellent rates of child development.


title: Child development

text: Parents play a large role in a child's activities, socialization, and development. Having multiple parents can add stability to a child's life and therefore encourage healthy development. Another influential factor in children's development is the quality of their care. Child-care programs may be beneficial for childhood development such as learning capabilities and social skills.


title: Child development

text: The optimal development of children is considered vital to society and it is important to understand the social, cognitive, emotional, and educational development of children. Increased research and interest in this field has resulted in new theories and strategies, with specific regard to practice that promotes development within the school system. Some theories seek to describe a sequence of states that compose child development.


title: Child development

text: Also called "development in context" or "human ecology" theory, ecological systems theory, originally formulated by Urie Bronfenbrenner specifies four types of nested environmental systems, with bi-directional influences within and between the systems. The four systems are microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem. Each system contains roles, norms, and rules that can powerfully shape development. Since its publication in 1979, Bronfenbrenner's major statement of this theory, "The Ecology of Human Development" has had widespread influence on the way psychologists and others approach the study of human beings and their environments. As a result of this influential conceptualization of development, these environments — from the family to economic and political structures — have come to be viewed as part of the life course from childhood through adulthood.


title: Child development

text: Jean Piaget was a Swiss scholar who began his studies in intellectual development in the 1920s. Piaget's first interests were those that dealt with the ways in which animals adapt to their environments and his first scientific article about this subject was published when he was 10 years old. This eventually led him to pursue a Ph.D. in zoology, which then led him to his second interest in epistemology. Epistemology branches off from philosophy and deals with the origin of knowledge. Piaget believed the origin of knowledge came from Psychology, so he travelled to Paris and began working on the first "standardized intelligence test" at Alfred Binet laboratories; this influenced his career greatly. As he carried out this intelligence testing he began developing a profound interest in the way children's intellectualism works. As a result, he developed his own laboratory and spent years recording children's intellectual growth and attempted to find out how children develop through various stages of thinking. This led Piaget to develop four important stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2), preoperational stage (age 2 to 7), concrete-operational stage (ages 7 to 12), and formal-operational stage (ages 11 to 12, and thereafter). Piaget concluded that adaption to an environment (behaviour) is managed through schemes and adaption occurs through "assimilation" and "accommodation".


title: Child development

text: This is the first stage in Piaget's theory, where infants have the following basic senses: vision, hearing, and motor skills. In this stage, knowledge of the world is limited but is constantly developing due to the child's experiences and interactions. According to Piaget, when an infant reaches about 7–9 months of age they begin to develop what he called object permanence, this means the child now has the ability to understand that objects keep existing even when they cannot be seen. An example of this would be hiding the child's favorite toy under a blanket, although the child cannot physically see it they still know to look under the blanket.


title: Child development

text: During this stage of development, young children begin analyzing their environment using mental symbols. These symbols often include words and images and the child will begin to apply these various symbols in their everyday lives as they come across different objects, events, and situations. However, Piaget's main focus on this stage and the reason why he named it "preoperational" is because children at this point are not able to apply specific cognitive operations, such as mental math. In addition to symbolism, children start to engage in pretend play in which they pretend to be people they are not (teachers, superheroes). In addition, they sometimes use different props to make this pretend play more real. Some deficiencies in this stage of development are that children who are about 3–4 years old often display what is called egocentrism, which means the child is not able to see someone else's point of view, they feel as if every other person is experiencing the same events and feelings that they are experiencing. However, at about 7, thought processes of children are no longer egocentric and are more intuitive, meaning they now think about the way something looks instead of rational thinking.


title: Child development

text: During this stage, children between the age of 7 and 11 use appropriate logic to develop cognitive operations and begin applying this new thinking to different events they may encounter. Children in this stage incorporate inductive reasoning, which involves drawing conclusions from other observations in order to make a generalization. Unlike the preoperational stage, children can now change and rearrange mental images and symbols to form a logical thought, an example of this is reversibility in which the child now has the ability to reverse an action just by doing the opposite.


title: Child development

text: The final stage of Piaget's cognitive development defines a child as now having the ability to "think more rationally and systematically about abstract concepts and hypothetical events". Some positive aspects during this time is that child or adolescent begins forming their identity and begin understanding why people behave the way they behave. However, there are also some negative aspects which include the child or adolescent developing some egocentric thoughts which include the imaginary audience and the personal fable. An imaginary audience is when an adolescent feels that the world is just as concerned and judgemental of anything the adolescent does as they are; an adolescent may feel as if they are "on stage" and everyone is a critic and they are the ones being critiqued. A personal fable is when the adolescent feels that he or she is a unique person and everything they do is unique. They feel as if they are the only ones that have ever experienced what they are experiencing and that they are invincible and nothing bad will happen to them, it will only happen to others.


title: Child development

text: Vygotsky was a Russian theorist, who proposed the sociocultural theory. During the 1920s–1930s while Piaget was developing his own theory, Vygotsky was an active scholar and at that time his theory was said to be "recent" because it was translated out of Russian language and began influencing Western thinking. He posited that children learn through hands-on experience, as Piaget suggested. However, unlike Piaget, he claimed that timely and sensitive intervention by adults when a child is on the edge of learning a new task (called the zone of proximal development) could help children learn new tasks. This technique is called "scaffolding," because it builds upon knowledge children already have with new knowledge that adults can help the child learn. An example of this might be when a parent "helps" an infant clap or roll her hands to the pat-a-cake rhyme, until she can clap and roll her hands herself.


title: Child development

text: Vygotsky was strongly focused on the role of culture in determining the child's pattern of development. He argued that "Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals."


title: Child development

text: Vygotsky felt that development was a process and saw periods of crisis in child development during which there was a qualitative transformation in the child's mental functioning.


title: Child development

text: Attachment theory, originating in the work of John Bowlby and developed by Mary Ainsworth, is a psychological, evolutionary and ethological theory that provides a descriptive and explanatory framework for understanding interpersonal relationships between human beings. Bowlby's observations of close attachments led him to believe that close emotional bonds or "attachments" between an infant and their primary caregiver is an important requirement that is necessary to form "normal social and emotional development".


title: Child development

text: Erikson, a follower of Freud's, synthesized both Freud's and his own theories to create what is known as the "psychosocial" stages of human development, which span from birth to death, and focuses on "tasks" at each stage that must be accomplished to successfully navigate life's challenges.


title: Child development

text: John B. Watson's behaviorism theory forms the foundation of the behavioral model of development 1925. Watson was able to explain the aspects of human psychology through the process of classical conditioning. With this process, Watson believed that all individual differences in behavior were due to different learning experiences. He wrote extensively on child development and conducted research (see Little Albert experiment). This experiment had shown that phobia could be created by classical conditioning. Watson was instrumental in the modification of William James' stream of consciousness approach to construct a stream of behavior theory. Watson also helped bring a natural science perspective to child psychology by introducing objective research methods based on observable and measurable behavior. Following Watson's lead, B.F. Skinner further extended this model to cover operant conditioning and verbal behavior. Skinner used the operant chamber, or Skinner box, to observe the behavior of small organisms in a controlled situation and proved that organisms' behaviors are influenced by the environment. Furthermore, he used reinforcement and punishment to shape in desired behavior.


title: Child development

text: In accordance with his view that the sexual drive is a basic human motivation, Sigmund Freud developed a psychosexual theory of human development from infancy onward, divided into five stages. Each stage centered around the gratification of the libido within a particular area, or erogenous zone, of the body. He also argued that as humans develop, they become fixated on different and specific objects through their stages of development. Each stage contains conflict which requires resolution to enable the child to develop.


title: Child development

text: The use of dynamical systems theory as a framework for the consideration of development began in the early 1990s and has continued into the present century. Dynamic systems theory stresses nonlinear connections (e.g., between earlier and later social assertiveness) and the capacity of a system to reorganize as a phase shift that is stage-like in nature. Another useful concept for developmentalists is the attractor state, a condition (such as teething or stranger anxiety) that helps to determine apparently unrelated behaviors as well as related ones. Dynamic systems theory has been applied extensively to the study of motor development; the theory also has strong associations with some of Bowlby's views about attachment systems. Dynamic systems theory also relates to the concept of the transactional process, a mutually interactive process in which children and parents simultaneously influence each other, producing developmental change in both over time.


title: Child development

text: The "core knowledge perspective" is an evolutionary theory in child development that proposes "infants begin life with innate, special-purpose knowledge systems referred to as core domains of thought" There are five core domains of thought, each of which is crucial for survival, which simultaneously prepare us to develop key aspects of early cognition; they are: physical, numerical, linguistic, psychological, and biological.


title: Child development

text: Although the identification of developmental milestones is of interest to researchers and to children's caregivers, many aspects of developmental change are continuous and do not display noticeable milestones of change. Continuous developmental changes, like growth in stature, involve fairly gradual and predictable progress toward adult characteristics. When developmental change is discontinuous, however, researchers may identify not only milestones of development, but related age periods often called stages. A stage is a period of time, often associated with a known chronological age range, during which a behavior or physical characteristic is qualitatively different from what it is at other ages. When an age period is referred to as a stage, the term implies not only this qualitative difference, but also a predictable sequence of developmental events, such that each stage is both preceded and followed by specific other periods associated with characteristic behavioral or physical qualities.


title: Child development

text: Stages of development may overlap or be associated with specific other aspects of development, such as speech or movement. Even within a particular developmental area, transition into a stage may not mean that the previous stage is completely finished. For example, in Erikson's discussion of stages of personality, this theorist suggests that a lifetime is spent in reworking issues that were originally characteristic of a childhood stage. Similarly, the theorist of cognitive development, Piaget, described situations in which children could solve one type of problem using mature thinking skills, but could not accomplish this for less familiar problems, a phenomenon he called horizontal decalage.


title: Child development

text: Although developmental change runs parallel with chronological age, age itself cannot cause development. The basic mechanisms or causes of developmental change are genetic factors and environmental factors. Genetic factors are responsible for cellular changes like overall growth, changes in proportion of body and brain parts, and the maturation of aspects of function such as vision and dietary needs. Because genes can be "turned off" and "turned on", the individual's initial genotype may change in function over time, giving rise to further developmental change. Environmental factors affecting development may include both diet and disease exposure, as well as social, emotional, and cognitive experiences. However, examination of environmental factors also shows that young human beings can survive within a fairly broad range of environmental experiences.


title: Child development

text: Rather than acting as independent mechanisms, genetic and environmental factors often interact to cause developmental change. Some aspects of child development are notable for their plasticity, or the extent to which the direction of development is guided by environmental factors as well as initiated by genetic factors. When an aspect of development is strongly affected by early experience, it is said to show a high degree of plasticity; when the genetic make-up is the primary cause of development, plasticity is said to be low. Plasticity may involve guidance by endogenous factors like hormones as well as by exogenous factors like infection.


title: Child development

text: One kind of environmental guidance of development has been described as experience-dependent plasticity, in which behavior is altered as a result of learning from the environment. Plasticity of this type can occur throughout the lifespan and may involve many kinds of behavior, including some emotional reactions. A second type of plasticity, experience-expectant plasticity, involves the strong effect of specific experiences during limited sensitive periods of development. For example, the coordinated use of the two eyes, and the experience of a single three-dimensional image rather than the two-dimensional images created by light in each eye, depend on experiences with vision during the second half of the first year of life. Experience-expectant plasticity works to fine-tune aspects of development that cannot proceed to optimum outcomes as a result of genetic factors working alone.


title: Child development

text: In addition to the existence of plasticity in some aspects of development, genetic-environmental correlations may function in several ways to determine the mature characteristics of the individual. Genetic-environmental correlations are circumstances in which genetic factors make certain experiences more likely to occur. For example, in passive genetic-environmental correlation, a child is likely to experience a particular environment because his or her parents' genetic make-up makes them likely to choose or create such an environment. In evocative genetic-environmental correlation, the child's genetically caused characteristics cause other people to respond in certain ways, providing a different environment than might occur for a genetically different child; for instance, a child with Down syndrome may be treated more protectively and less challengingly than a non-Down child. Finally, an active genetic-environmental correlation is one in which the child chooses experiences that in turn have their effect; for instance, a muscular, active child may choose after-school sports experiences that create increased athletic skills, but perhaps preclude music lessons. In all of these cases, it becomes difficult to know whether child characteristics were shaped by genetic factors, by experiences, or by a combination of the two.


title: Child development

text: Asynchronous development occurs in cases when a child's cognitive, physical, and/or emotional development occur at different rates. Asynchronous development is common for gifted children when their cognitive development outpaces their physical and/or emotional maturity, such as when a child is academically advanced and skipping school grade levels yet still cries over childish matters and/or still looks his or her age. Asynchronous development presents challenges for schools, parents, siblings, peers, and the children themselves, such as making it hard for the child to fit in or frustrating adults who have become accustomed to the child's advancement in other areas.


title: Child development

text: Empirical research that attempts to answer these questions may follow a number of patterns. Initially, observational research in naturalistic conditions may be needed to develop a narrative describing and defining an aspect of developmental change, such as changes in reflex reactions in the first year. This type of work may be followed by correlational studies, collecting information about chronological age and some type of development such as vocabulary growth; correlational statistics can be used to state change. Such studies examine the characteristics of children at different ages. These methods may involve longitudinal studies, in which a group of children is re-examined on a number of occasions as they get older, or cross-sectional studies, in which groups of children of different ages are tested once and compared with each other, or there may be a combination of these approaches. Some child development studies examine the effects of experience or heredity by comparing characteristics of different groups of children in a necessarily non-randomized design. Other studies can use randomized designs to compare outcomes for groups of children who receive different interventions or educational treatments.


title: Child development

text: When conducting psychological research on infants and children, there are certain key aspects of infants that need to be considered before embarking on research. Five key challenges to conducting research with infants are that infants cannot talk, have a limited behavioral repertoire, cannot follow instructions, have a short attention span, and develop rapidly (so methods need to be updated at different ages and developmental stages).


title: Child development

text: High-amplitude sucking technique (HAS) is one common way to explore infants' preferences. HAS is appropriate for infants from the time that they are born until they are four months old since it takes advantage of infants' sucking reflex. When this is a measure of interest, researchers will code a baseline sucking rate for each baby before exposing them to the item of interest. A common finding of HAS shows a relaxed, natural sucking rate when exposed to something the infant is familiar with, like their mother's voice, compared to an increased sucking rate around novel stimuli.


title: Child development

text: The preferential-looking techique was a breakthrough made by Robert L. Fantz in 1961. In his experiments, he would show the infants in his study two different stimuli. If an infant looks at one image longer than the other, there are two things that can be inferred: the infant can see that they are two different images and that the infant is showing preference to one image in some capacity. Depending on the goal of the experiment, infants may prefer to look at the novel and more interesting stimulus or they may look at the more comforting and familiar image.


title: Child development

text: Eye tracking is a straightforward way of looking at infants' preferences. One example of eye tracking, using an eye tracking software, it is possible to see if infants understand commonly used nouns by tracking their eyes after they are cued with the target word.


title: Child development

text: Another unique way to study infants' cognition is through habituation, which is the process of repeatedly showing a stimulus to an infant until they give no response. Then, when infants are presented with a novel stimulus, they show a response. This violation of expectation reveals patterns of cognition and perception. Using this study method, many different cognitive and perceptual ideas can be studied. Looking time is a common measure of habituation. Looking time is studied by recording how long an infant looks at a stimulus until they are habituated to that stimulus. Then, researchers record if an infant becomes dishabituated to a novel stimulus. This method can be used to measure preferences infants, including aesthetic preferences for certain colors. Additionally, other discriminatory tasks can be studied, including auditory discrimination between different musical excerpts.


title: Child development

text: Another way that children are studied is through brain imaging technology. One example used a lot in child development studies is Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). These machines can be used to track brain activity, growth, and connectivity in children Brain development can be tracked from when a child is a fetus with this new technology. Another common type of brain imaging can be collected with electroencephalography (EEG). This technology can be used to diagnose seizures and encephalopathy, but considering conceptual age of the infant is important for analyzing the results.


title: Child development

text: Most of the ethical challenges that exist in studies with adults exist within children. However, there are some notable differences in ethical research that should be addressed when designing studies for children. An important consideration is that children should give their consent to participate in research. Because of the inherent power structure in most research settings, researchers must consider study designs that protect children from feeling coerced. Children are not allowed to give consent, so parents must give their informed consent for children to participate in research. Children can give their assent, which should be reliably checked by both verbal and nonverbal cues throughout their participation.


title: Child development

text: Milestones are changes in specific physical and mental abilities (such as walking and understanding language) that mark the end of one developmental period and the beginning of another. For stage theories, milestones indicate a stage transition. Studies of the accomplishment of many developmental tasks have established typical chronological ages associated with developmental milestones. However, there is considerable variation in the achievement of milestones, even between children with developmental trajectories within the typical range. Some milestones are more variable than others; for example, receptive speech indicators do not show much variation among children with typical hearing, but expressive speech milestones can be quite variable.


title: Child development

text: A common concern in child development is developmental delay involving a delay in an age-specific ability for important developmental milestones. Prevention of and early intervention in developmental delay are significant topics in the study of child development. Developmental delays should be diagnosed by comparison with characteristic variability of a milestone, not with respect to average age at achievement. An example of a milestone would be eye-hand coordination, which includes a child's increasing ability to manipulate objects in a coordinated manner.


title: Child development

text: There is a phenomenal growth or exponential increase of child development from the age of 4 to 15 years old especially during the age of 4 to 7 years old based on the Yamana chart ). The Heckman's chart shows that the highest return of investment in education is maximum during the early years (age 1 to 3 years old) and decreases to a plateau during the school-aged years and adolescence. There are various child development tables or charts e.g. the PILES table where PILES stands for Physical, Intellectual, Language, Emotional and Social development aspects.


title: Child development

text: Child development is not a matter of a single topic, but progresses somewhat differently for different aspects of the individual. Here are descriptions of the development of a number of physical and mental characteristics.


title: Child development

text: Physical growth in stature and weight occurs over the 15–20 years following birth, as the individual changes from the average weight of 3.5 kg and length of 50 cm at full term birth to full adult size. As stature and weight increase, the individual's proportions also change, from the relatively large head and small torso and limbs of the neonate, to the adult's relatively small head and long torso and limbs. The child's pattern of growth is in a head-to-toe direction, or cephalocaudal, and in an inward to outward pattern (center of the body to the peripheral) called proximodistal.


title: Child development

text: The speed of physical growth is rapid in the months after birth, then slows, so birth weight is doubled in the first four months, tripled by age 12 months, but not quadrupled until 24 months. Growth then proceeds at a slow rate until shortly before puberty (between


title: Child development

text: Growth is not uniform in rate and timing across all body parts. At birth, head size is already relatively near to that of an adult, but the lower parts of the body are much smaller than adult size. In the course of development, then, the head grows relatively little, and torso and limbs undergo a great deal of growth.


title: Child development

text: Genetic factors play a major role in determining the growth rate, and particularly the changes in proportion characteristic of early human development. However, genetic factors can produce maximum growth only if environmental conditions are adequate. Poor nutrition and frequent injury and disease can reduce the individual's adult stature, but the best environment cannot cause growth to a greater stature than is determined by heredity.


title: Child development

text: Individual differences in height and weight during childhood are considerable. Some of these differences are due to family genetic factors, others to environmental factors, but at some points in development they may be strongly influenced by individual differences in reproductive maturation.


title: Child development

text: The American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists defines short stature as height more than 2 standard deviations below the mean for age and gender, which corresponds to the shortest 2.3% of individuals. In contrast, failure to thrive is usually defined in terms of weight, and can be evaluated either by a low weight for the child's age, or by a low rate of increase in the weight. A similar term, stunted growth, generally refers to reduced growth rate as a manifestation of malnutrition in early childhood.


title: Child development

text: Abilities for physical movement change through childhood from the largely reflexive (unlearned, involuntary) movement patterns of the young infant to the highly skilled voluntary movements characteristic of later childhood and adolescence.


title: Child development

text: Motor skills can be divided into two categories: first as basic skills necessary for everyday life and secondly, as recreational skills such as skills for employment or certain specialties based on interest.


title: Child development

text: The speed of motor development is rapid in early life, as many of the reflexes of the newborn alter or disappear within the first year, and slow later. Like physical growth, motor development shows predictable patterns of cephalocaudal (head to foot) and proximodistal (torso to extremities) development, with movements at the head and in the more central areas coming under control before those of the lower part of the body or the hands and feet. Types of movement develop in stage-like sequences; for example, locomotion at 6–8 months involves creeping on all fours, then proceeds to pulling to stand, "cruising" while holding on to an object, walking while holding an adult's hand, and finally walking independently. By middle childhood and adolescence, new motor skills are acquired by instruction or observation rather than in a predictable sequence. There are executive functions of the brain (working memory, timing measure of inhibition and switching) which are important to motor skills. Critiques to the order of Executive Functioning leads to Motor Skills, suggesting Motor Skills can support Executive Functioning in the brain.


title: Child development

text: The mechanisms involved in motor development involve some genetic components that determine the physical size of body parts at a given age, as well as aspects of muscle and bone strength. The main areas of the brain involved in motor skills are the frontal cortex, parietal cortex and basal ganglia. The dorsolateral frontal cortex is responsible for strategic processing. The parietal cortex is important in controlling perceptual-motor integration and the basal ganglia and supplementary motor cortex are responsible for motor sequences.


title: Child development

text: According to a study showing the different relationships between limbs of the body and coordination in infants, genetic components have a huge impact on motor development (Piek, Gasson, Barrett, & Case (2002)). Intra-limb correlations, like the strong relationship and distance between hip and knee joints, were studied and proved to affect the way an infant will walk. There are also bigger genetic factors like the tendency to use the left or right side of the body more, predicting the dominant hand early. Sample t-tests proved that there was a significant difference between both sides at 18 weeks for girls and the right side was considered to be more dominant (Piek et al. (2002)). Some factors, like the fact that boys tend to have larger and longer arms are biological constraints that we cannot control, yet have an influence for example, on when an infant will reach


title: Child development

text: sufficiently. Overall, there are sociological factors and genetic factors that influence motor development.


title: Child development

text: Nutrition and exercise also determine strength and therefore the ease and accuracy with which a body part can be moved. Flexibility is also affected by nutrition and exercise as well. It has also been shown that the frontal lobe develops posterio-anteriorally (from back to front). This is significant in motor development because the hind portion of the frontal lobe is known to control motor functions. This form of development is known as "Portional Development" and explains why motor functions develop relatively quickly during typical childhood development, while logic, which is controlled by the middle and front portions of the frontal lobe, usually will not develop until late childhood and early adolescence. Opportunities to carry out movements help establish the abilities to flex (move toward the trunk) and extend body parts, both capacities are necessary for good motor ability. Skilled voluntary movements such as passing objects from hand to hand develop as a result of practice and learning. Mastery Climate is a suggested successful learning environment for children to promote motor skills by their own motivation. This promotes participation and active learning in children, which according to Piaget's theory of cognitive development is extremely important in early childhood rule.


title: Child development

text: Typical individual differences in motor ability are common and depend in part on the child's weight and build. Infants with smaller, slimmer, and more maturely proportionated builds tended to belly crawl and crawl earlier than the infants with larger builds. Infants with more motor experience have been shown to belly crawl and crawl sooner. Not all infants go through the stages of belly crawling. However, those who skip the stage of belly crawling are not as proficient in their ability to crawl on their hands and knees. After the infant period, typical individual differences are strongly affected by opportunities to practice, observe, and be instructed on specific movements. Atypical motor development such as persistent primitive reflexis beyond 4–6 months or delayed walking may be an indication of developmental delays or conditions such as autism, cerebral palsy, or down syndrome . Lower motor coordination results in difficulties with speed accuracy and trade-off in complex tasks.


title: Child development

text: Children with Down syndrome or Developmental coordination disorder are late to reach major motor skills milestones. A few examples of these milestones are sucking, grasping, rolling, sitting up and walking, talking. Children with Down syndrome sometimes have heart problems, frequent ear infections, hypotonia, or undeveloped muscle mass. This syndrome is caused by atypical chromosomal development. Along with Down syndrome, children can also be diagnosed with a learning disability. Learning Disabilities include disabilities in any of the areas related to language, reading, and mathematics. Basic reading skills is the most common learning disability in children, which, like other disabilities, focuses on the difference between a child's academic achievement and his or her apparent capacity to learn.


title: Child development

text: Regardless of the culture a baby is born into, they are born with a few core domains of knowledge. These principals allow him or her to make sense of their environment and learn upon previous experience by using motor skills such as grasping or crawling. There are some population differences in motor development, with girls showing some advantages in small muscle usage, including articulation of sounds with lips and tongue. Ethnic differences in reflex movements of newborn infants have been reported, suggesting that some biological factor is at work. Cultural differences may encourage learning of motor skills like using the left hand only for sanitary purposes and the right hand for all other uses, producing a population difference. Cultural factors are also seen at work in practiced voluntary movements such as the use of the foot to dribble a soccer ball or the hand to dribble a basketball.


title: Child development

text: Cognitive development is primarily concerned with ways in which young children acquire, develop, and use internal mental capabilities such as problem-solving, memory, and language.


title: Child development

text: Cognitive development has genetic and other biological mechanisms, as is seen in the many genetic causes of intellectual disability. Environmental factors including food and nutrition, the responsiveness of parents, daily experiences, physical activity and love can influence early brain development of children. However, although it is assumed that brain functions cause cognitive events, it has not been possible to measure specific brain changes and show that they cause cognitive change. Developmental advances in cognition are also related to experience and learning, and this is particularly the case for higher-level abilities like abstraction, which depend to a considerable extent on formal education.


title: Child development

text: The ability to learn temporal patterns in sequenced actions was investigated in elementary-school-age children. Temporal learning depends upon a process of integrating timing patterns with action sequences. Children ages 6–13 and young adults performed a serial response time task in which a response and a timing sequence were presented repeatedly in a phase-matched manner, allowing for integrative learning. The degree of integrative learning was measured as the slowing in performance that resulted when phase-shifting the sequences. Learning was similar for the children and adults on average but increased with age for the children. Executive function measured by Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) performance as well as a measure of response speed also improved with age. Finally, WCST performance and response speed predicted temporal learning. Taken together, the results indicate that temporal learning continues to develop in pre-adolescents and that maturing executive function or processing speed may play an important role in acquiring temporal patterns in sequenced actions and the development of this ability.


title: Child development

text: There are typical individual differences in the ages at which specific cognitive abilities are achieved, but schooling for children in industrialized countries is based on the assumption that these differences are not large. Atypical delays in cognitive development are problematic for children in cultures that demand advanced cognitive skills for work and for independent living.


title: Child development

text: There are few population differences in cognitive development. Boys and girls show some differences in their skills and preferences, but there is a great deal of overlap between the groups. Differences in cognitive achievement of different ethnic groups appears to result from cultural or other environmental factors.


title: Child development

text: Newborn infants do not seem to experience fear or have preferences for contact with any specific people. In the first few months they only experience happiness, sadness, and anger. A baby's first smile usually occurs between 6 and 10 weeks. It is called a 'social smile' because it usually occurs during social interactions. By about 8–12 months, they go through a fairly rapid change and become fearful of perceived threats; they also begin to prefer familiar people and show anxiety and distress when separated from them or approached by strangers.


title: Child development

text: Separation anxiety is a typical stage of development to an extent. Kicking, screaming, and throwing temper tantrums are perfectly typical symptoms for separation anxiety. Depending on the level of intensity, one may determine whether or not a child has separation anxiety disorder. This is when a child constantly refuses to separate from the parent, but in an intense manner. This can be given special treatment but the parent usually cannot do anything about the situation.


title: Child development

text: The capacity for empathy and the understanding of social rules begin in the preschool period and continue to develop into adulthood. Middle childhood is characterized by friendships with age-mates, and adolescence by emotions connected with sexuality and the beginnings of romantic love. Anger seems most intense during the toddler and early preschool period and during adolescence.


title: Child development

text: Some aspects of social-emotional development, like empathy, develop gradually, but others, like fearfulness, seem to involve a rather sudden reorganization of the child's experience of emotion. Sexual and romantic emotions develop in connection with physical maturation.


title: Child development

text: Genetic factors appear to regulate some social-emotional developments that occur at predictable ages, such as fearfulness, and attachment to familiar people. Experience plays a role in determining which people are familiar, which social rules are obeyed, and how anger is expressed.


title: Child development

text: Parenting practices have been shown to predict children's emotional intelligence. The objective is to study the time mothers and children spent together in joint activity, the types of activities that they develop when they are together, and the relation that those activities have with the children's trait emotional intelligence. Data was collected for both mothers and children (N = 159) using self-report questionnaires. Correlations between time variables and trait emotional intelligence dimensions were computed using Pearson's Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient. Partial correlations between the same variables controlling for responsive parenting were also computed. The amount of time mothers spent with their children and the quality of their interactions are important in terms of children's trait emotional intelligence, not only because those times of joint activity reflect a more positive parenting, but because they are likely to promote modeling, reinforcement, shared attention, and social cooperation.


title: Child development

text: Population differences may occur in older children, if, for example, they have learned that it is appropriate for boys to express emotion or behave differently from girls, or if customs learned by children of one ethnic group are different from those learned in another. Social and emotional differences between boys and girls of a given age may also be associated with differences in the timing of puberty characteristic of the two sexes.


title: Child development

text: Gender identity involves how a person perceives themselves as male, female, or a variation of the two. Children can identify themselves as belonging to a certain gender as early as two years old, but how gender identity is developed is a topic of scientific debate. Several factors are involved in determining an individual's gender, including: neonatal hormones, postnatal socialization, and genetic influences. Some believe that gender is malleable until late childhood, while others argue that gender is established early and gender-typed socialization patterns either reinforce or soften the individual's notion of gender. Since most people identify as the gender that is typically associated to their genitalia, studying the impact of these factors is difficult. Evidence suggests that neonatal androgens, male sex hormones produced in the womb during gestation, play an important role. Testosterone in the womb directly codes the brain for either male or female-typical development. This includes both the physical structure of the brain and the characteristics the person expresses because of it. Persons exposed to high levels of testosterone during gestation typically develop a male gender identity while those who are not or those who do not possess the receptors necessary to interact with these hormones typically develop a female gender identity. An individual's genes are also thought to interact with the hormones during gestation and in turn affect gender identity, but the genes responsible for this and their effects have not been precisely documented and evidence is limited. It is unknown whether socialization plays a part in determining gender identity postnatally. It is well documented that children actively seek out information on how to properly interact with others based on their gender, but the extent to which these role models, which can include parents, friends, and TV characters, influence gender identity is less clear and no consensus has been reached.


title: Child development

text: In addition to the course of development, previous literature has looked at how race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status has affected child development. Some studies seem to speak to the importance of adult supervision of adolescent youth. Literature suggested that African Americans child development was sometimes differentiated on the basis of cultural socialization and racial socialization. Further, a different study found that immigrant youth tended to choose majors focusing on the fields of science and math more often than not.


title: Child development

text: Language serves the purpose of communication to express oneself through a systematic and traditional use of sounds, signs, or written symbols. There are four subcomponents in which the child must attain in order to acquire language competence. They include phonology, lexicon, morphology and syntax, and pragmatics. These subcomponents of language development are combined to form the components of language, which are sociolinguistics and literacy. Currently, there is no single accepted theory of language acquisition but various explanations of language development have been accumulated.


title: Child development

text: Children's development of language also includes semantics which is the attachment of meaning to words. This happens in three stages. First, each word means an entire sentence. For example, a young child may say "mama" but the child may mean "Here is Mama", "Where is Mama?", or "I see Mama." In the second stage, words have meaning but do not have complete definitions. This stage occurs around age two or three. Third, around age seven or eight, words have adult-like definitions and their meanings are more complete.


title: Child development

text: A child learns the syntax of their language when they are able to join words together into sentences and understand multiple-word sentences said by other people. There appear to be six major stages in which a child's acquisition of syntax develops. First, is the use of sentence-like words in which the child communicates using one word with additional vocal and bodily cues. This stage usually occurs between 12 and 18 months of age. Second, between 18 months to two years, there is the modification stage where children communicate relationships by modifying a topic word. The third stage, between two and three years old, involves the child using complete subject-predicate structures to communicate relationships. Fourth, children make changes on basic sentence structure that enables them to communicate more complex relationships. This stage occurs between the ages of two and a half years to four years. The fifth stage of categorization involves children aged three and a half to seven years refining their sentences with more purposeful word choice that reflects their complex system of categorizing word types. Finally, children use structures of language that involve more complicate syntactic relationships between the ages of five years old to ten years old.


title: Child development

text: Infants begin with cooing and soft vowel sounds. Shortly after birth, this system is developed as the infants begin to understand that their noises, or non-verbal communication, lead to a response from their caregiver. This will then progress into babbling around 5 months of age, with infants first babbling consonant and vowel sounds together that may sound like "ma" or "da". At around 8 months of age, babbling increases to include repetition of sounds, such as "da-da" and infants learn the forms for words and which sounds are more likely to follow other sounds. At this stage, much of the child's communication is open to interpretation. For example, if a child says "bah" when they're in a toy room with their guardian, it is likely to be interpreted as "ball" because the toy is in sight. However, if you were to listen to the same 'word' on a recorded tape without knowing the context, one might not be able to figure out what the child was trying to say. A child's receptive language, the understanding of others' speech, has a gradual development beginning at about 6 months. However, expressive language, the production of words, moves rapidly after its beginning at about a year of age, with a "vocabulary explosion" of rapid word acquisition occurring in the middle of the second year. Grammatical rules and word combinations appear at about age two. Between 20 and 28 months, children move from understanding the difference between high and low, hot and cold and begin to change "no" to "wait a minute", "not now" and "why". Eventually, they are able to add pronouns to words and combine them to form short sentences. Mastery of vocabulary and grammar continue gradually through the preschool and school years. Adolescents still have smaller vocabularies than adults and experience more difficulty with constructions such as the passive voice.


title: Child development

text: By age 1, the child is able to say 1–2 words, responds to its name, imitates familiar sounds and can follow simple instructions. Between 1–2 years old, the child uses 5–20 words, is able to say 2-word sentences and is able to express their wishes by saying words like "more" or "up", and they understand the word "no". During 2 and 3 years of age, the child is able to refer to itself as "me", combine nouns and verbs, has a vocabulary of about 450 words, use short sentences, use some simple plurals and is able to answer "where" questions. By age 4, children are able to use sentences of 4–5 words and has a vocabulary of about 1000 words. Children between the ages of 4 and 5 years old are able to use past tense, have a vocabulary of about 1,500 words, and ask questions like "why?" and "who?". By age 6, the child has a vocabulary of 2,600 words, is able to form sentences of 5–6 words and use a variety of different types of sentences. By the age of 5 or 6 years old, the majority of children have mastered the basics of their native language. Infants, 15 month-olds, are initially unable to understand familiar words in their native language pronounced using an unfamiliar accent. This means that a Canadian-English speaking infant cannot recognize familiar words pronounced with an Australian-English accent. This skill develops close to their second birthdays. However, this can be overcome when a highly familiar story is read in the new accent prior to the test, suggesting the essential functions of underlying spoken language is in place before previously thought.


title: Child development

text: Vocabulary typically grows from about 20 words at 18 months to around 200 words at 21 months. From around 18 months the child starts to combine words into two-word sentences. Typically the adult expands it to clarify meaning. By 24–27 months the child is producing three or four-word sentences using a logical, if not strictly correct, syntax. The theory is that children apply a basic set of rules such as adding 's' for plurals or inventing simpler words out of words too complicated to repeat like "choskit" for chocolate biscuit. Following this there is a rapid appearance of grammatical rules and ordering of sentences. There is often an interest in rhyme, and imaginative play frequently includes conversations. Children's recorded monologues give insight into the development of the process of organizing information into meaningful units.


title: Child development

text: By three years the child begins to use complex sentences, including relative clauses, although still perfecting various linguistic systems. By five years of age the child's use of language is very similar to that of an adult. From the age of about three children can indicate fantasy or make-believe linguistics, produce coherent personal stories and fictional narrative with beginnings and endings. It is argued that children devise narrative as a way of understanding their own experience and as a medium for communicating their meaning to others. The ability to engage in extended discourse emerges over time from regular conversation with adults and peers. For this, the child needs to learn to combine his perspective with that of others and with outside events and learn to use linguistic indicators to show he is doing this. They also learn to adjust their language depending on to whom they are speaking. Typically by the age of about 9 a child can recount other narratives in addition to their own experiences, from the perspectives of the author, the characters in the story and their own views.


title: Child development

text: Although the role of adult discourse is important in facilitating the child's learning, there is considerable disagreement among theorists about the extent to which children's early meanings and expressive words arise. Findings about the initial mapping of new words, the ability to decontextualize words, and refine meaning of words are diverse. One hypothesis is known as the syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis which refers to the child's ability to infer meaning from cues, using grammatical information from the structure of sentences. Another is the multi-route model in which it is argued that context-bound words and referential words follow different routes; the first being mapped onto event representations and the latter onto mental representations. In this model, parental input has a critical role but the children ultimately rely on cognitive processing to establish subsequent use of words. However, naturalistic research on language development has indicated that preschoolers' vocabularies are strongly associated with the number of words addressed to them by adults.


title: Child development

text: There is no single accepted theory of language acquisition. Instead, there are current theories that help to explain theories of language, theories of cognition, and theories of development. They include the generativist theory, social interactionist theory, usage-based theory (Tomasello), connectionist theory, and behaviorist theory (Skinner). Generativist theories refer to Universal Grammar being innate where language experience activates innate knowledge. Social interactionist theories define language as a social phenomenon. This theory states that children acquire language because they want to communicate with others; this theory is heavily based on social-cognitive abilities that drive the language acquisition process. Usage-based theories define language as a set of formulas that emerge from the child's learning abilities in correspondence with its social cognitive interpretation and understanding of the speakers' intended meanings. Connectionist theories is a pattern-learning procedure and defines language as a system composed of smaller subsystems or patterns of sound or meaning. Behaviorist theories define language as the establishment of positive reinforcement, but is now regarded a theory of historical interest.


title: Child development

text: Communication can be defined as the exchange and negotiation of information between two or more individuals through verbal and nonverbal symbols, oral and written (or visual) modes, and the production and comprehension processes of communication. According to First International Congress for the Study of Child Language, "the general hypothesis [is that] access to social interaction is a prerequisite to normal language acquisition". Principles of conversation include two or more people focusing on one topic. All questions in a conversation should be answered, comments should be understood or acknowledged and any form of direction should, in theory, be followed. In the case of young, undeveloped children, these conversations are expected to be basic or redundant. The role of a guardians during developing stages is to convey that conversation is meant to have a purpose, as well as teaching them to recognize the other speaker's emotions. Communicative language is nonverbal and/or verbal, and to achieve communication competence, four components must be met. These four components of communication competence include: grammatical competence (vocabulary knowledge, rules of word sentence formation, etc.), sociolinguistic competence (appropriateness of meanings and grammatical forms in different social contexts), discourse competence (knowledge required to combine forms and meanings), and strategic competence (knowledge of verbal and nonverbal communication strategies). The attainment of communicative competence is an essential part of actual communication.


title: Child development

text: Language development is viewed as a motive to communication, and the communicative function of language in-turn provides the motive for language development. Jean Piaget uses the term "acted conversations" to explain a child's style of communication that rely more heavily on gestures and body movements, rather than words. Younger children depend on gestures for a direct statement of their message. As they begin to acquire more language, body movements take on a different role and begin to complement the verbal message. These nonverbal bodily movements allow children to express their emotions before they can express them verbally. The child's nonverbal communication of how they're feeling is seen in babies 0 to 3 months who use wild, jerky movements of the body to show excitement or distress. This develops to more rhythmic movements of the entire body at 3 to 5 months to demonstrate the child's anger or delight. Between 9–12 months of age, children view themselves as joining the communicative world. Before 9–12 months, babies interact with objects and interact with people, but they do not interact with people about objects. This developmental change is the change from primary intersubjectivity (capacity to share oneself with others) to secondary intersubjectivity (capacity to share one's experience), which changes the infant from an unsociable to socially engaging creature. Around 12 months of age a communicative use of gesture is used. This gesture includes communicative pointing where an infant points to request something, or to point to provide information. Another gesture of communication is presented around the age of 10 and 11 months where infants start gaze-following; they look where another person is looking. This joint attention result in changes to their social cognitive skills between the ages of 9 and 15 months as their time is spent increasingly with others. Children's use of non-verbal communicative gestures foretells future language development. The use of non-verbal communication in the form of gestures indicate the child's interest in communication development, and the meanings they choose to convey that are soon revealed through the verbalization of language.


title: Child development

text: Language acquisition and development contribute to the verbal form of communication. Children originate with a linguistic system where words they learn, are the words used for functional meaning. This instigation of speech has been termed pragmatic bootstrapping. According to this, children view words as a means of social construction, and that words are used to connect the understanding of communicative intentions of the speaker who speaks a new word. Hence, the competence of verbal communication through language is achieved through the attainability of syntax or grammar. Another function of communication through language is pragmatic development. Pragmatic development includes the child's intentions of communication before he/she knows how to express these intentions, and throughout the first few years of life both language and communicative functions develop.


title: Child development

text: When children acquire language and learn to use language for communicative functions (pragmatics), children also gain knowledge about the participation in conversations and relating to past experiences/events (discourse knowledge), and how to use language appropriately in congruence with their social situation or social group (sociolinguistic knowledge). Within the first two years of life, a child's language ability progresses and conversational skills, such as the mechanics of verbal interaction, develop. Mechanics of verbal interaction include taking turns, initiating topics, repairing miscommunication, and responding to lengthen or sustain dialogue. Conversation is asymmetrical when a child interacts with an adult because the adult is the one to create structure in the conversation, and to build upon the child's contributions. In accordance to the child's developing conversational skills, asymmetrical conversation between adult and child modulate to an equal temperament of conversation. This shift in balance of conversation suggests a narrative discourse development in communication. Ordinarily, the development of communicative competence and the development of language are positively correlated with one another, however, the correlation is not flawless.


title: Child development

text: Delays in language is the most frequent type of developmental delay. According to demographics 1 out of 5 children will learn to talk or use words later than other children their age. Speech/language delay is three to four times more common in boys than in girls. Some children will also display behavioral problems due to their frustration of not being able to express what they want or need.


title: Child development

text: Simple speech delays are usually temporary. Most cases are solved on their own or with a little extra attribution from the family. It's the parent's duty to encourage their baby to talk to them with gestures or sounds and for them to spend a great amount of time playing with, reading to, and communicating with their baby. In certain circumstances, parents will have to seek professional help, such as a speech therapist.


title: Child development

text: It is important to take into considerations that sometimes delays can be a warning sign of more serious conditions that could include auditory processing disorders, hearing loss, developmental verbal dyspraxia, developmental delay in other areas, or even an autism spectrum disorder (ASD).


title: Child development

text: There are many environmental causes that are linked to language delays and they include situations such as, the child is having their full attention on other skills, such as walking perfectly, rather than on language. The child may have a twin or a sibling in which their age are relatively close, and may not be receiving the parent's full attention. Another circumstance could be a child that is in a daycare that provides few adults to be able to administer individual attention. Perhaps the most obvious component would be a child that suffers from psychosocial deprivation such as poverty, malnutrition, poor housing, neglect, inadequate linguistic stimulation, or emotional stress.


title: Child development

text: Language delay can be caused by a substantial number of underlying disorders, such as intellectual disability. Intellectual disability takes part for more than 50 percent of language delays. Language delay is usually more rigorous than other developmental delays in intellectually disabled children, and it is usually the first obvious symptom of intellectual disability. Intellectual disability accounts to global language delay, including delayed auditory comprehension and use of gestures.


title: Child development

text: Impaired hearing is one of the most common causes of language delay. A child who can not hear or process speech in a clear and consistent manner will have a language delay. Even the most minimum hearing impairment or auditory processing deficit can considerably affect language development. Essentially, the more the severe the impairment, the more serious the language delay. Nevertheless, deaf children that are born to families who use sign language develop infant babble and use a fully expressive sign language at the same pace as hearing children.


title: Child development

text: Developmental Dyslexia is a developmental reading disorder that occurs when the brain does not properly recognize and process the graphic symbols chosen by society to represent the sounds of speech. Children with dyslexia may encounter problems in rhyming and separating sounds that compose words. These abilities are essential in learning to read. Early reading skills rely heavily on word recognition. When using an alphabet writing system this involves in having the ability to separate out the sounds in words and be able to match them with letter and groups of letters. Because they have trouble in connecting sounds of language to the letter of words, this may result difficulty in understanding sentences. They have confusion in mistaking letters such as "b" and "d". For the most part, symptoms of dyslexia may include, difficulty in determining the meaning of a simple sentence, learning to recognize written words, and difficulty in rhyming.


title: Child development

text: Autism and speech delay are usually correlated. Problems with verbal language are the most common signs seen in autism. Early diagnosis and treatment of autism can significantly help the child improve their speech skills. Autism is recognized as one of the five pervasive developmental disorders, distinguished by problems with language, speech, communication and social skills that present in early childhood. Some common autistic syndromes are the following, being limited to no verbal speech, echolalia or repeating words out of context, problems responding to verbal instruction and may ignore others who speak directly.


title: Child development

text: Malnutrition, maternal depression, and maternal substance use are three of these factors which have received particular attention by researchers, however, many more factors have been considered.


title: Child development

text: Although there are a large number of studies contemplating the effect of maternal depression and postnatal depression of various areas of infant development, they are yet to come to a consensus regarding the true effects. There are numerous studies indicating impaired development, and equally, there are many proclaiming no effect of depression on development.


title: Child development

text: A study of 18-month-olds whose mothers had depressive symptoms while they were 6 weeks and/or 6 months old indicated that maternal depression had no effect on the child's cognitive development at 18 months. Furthermore, the study indicates that maternal depression combined with a poor home environment is more likely to have an effect on cognitive development. However, the authors conclude that it may be that short term depression has no effect, where as long term depression could cause more serious problems. A further longitudinal study spanning 7 years again indicate no effect of maternal depression on cognitive development as a whole, however it found a gender difference in that boys are more susceptible to cognitive developmental issues when their mothers had depression.