Piaget is still relevant for understanding the development of children’s minds if we are interested in big questions like how do thinking and logical reasoning develop? Piaget’s work is still important because he was ahead of his time in thinking about how children develop new, valid knowledge, beginning with their action on the world – an insight that is currently receiving new attention.

Piaget and child development theory: Why is he still relevant for understanding how children’s minds develop?

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was one of the most famous scholars in the history of psychology. His focus on fundamental issues concerning how knowledge develops is still relevant and has a great deal to offer current and future approaches in psychology. Yet determining this relevance for our understanding of child development is difficult because he is a paradoxical figure.

Although Piaget was very influential, publishing some 100 books and 600 papers based on uncounted studies with his collaborators, he is also one of the most misunderstood and criticized authors in psychology. Progress in science requires criticism, but to be beneficial it should be based on solid understanding. Unfortunately, much of the well-known criticism in current textbooks and blogs tends to be based on misinterpretations of Piaget’s work.

One reason why Piaget was so commonly misunderstood also reflects why his approach is still important, fitting well with current thinking in developmental psychology. He challenged preconceptions that were taken for granted by adopting a radically different worldview: that intelligence develops through our action and interaction. This view is consistent with some current theory in cognitive science. Thus, Piaget’s approach is not just historical, it established a fruitful foundation for later research.

Piaget is perhaps best known for suggesting that there are four distinct stages of cognitive development, which refer to different and increasingly complex forms of thinking through which children progress. But he later regretted this focus on stages because he understood that it is more important to understand the process through which children move from simple to more complex forms of thinking. This became his theory of how knowledge develops; understanding it is essential to examining his view of knowledge.

Piaget’s constructivist view of knowledge

To understand Piaget’s theory, it is crucial to appreciate the questions that concerned him. He was interested in how human thinking develops, especially scientific thinking. Piaget referred to his work as genetic epistemology, a term that has been misunderstood by some textbook authors as referring to genes, which is the current meaning of genetic. However, when Piaget coined the term in the 1920s, genetic (or the French genese) referred to genesis, as in origin and development. Epistemology refers to the study of knowledge. Thus, Piaget conceptualized the discipline of genetic epistemology as the study of how knowledge develops.

Central to this concept is how humans develop the ability to think – for example, how we plan for the future or reflect on the past. Genetic epistemology considers how children develop new knowledge. Some knowledge is certain or necessary, such as the understanding that two plus two is necessarily four, or that the number of objects in a group remains the same as long as objects are not added or taken away, even if they are moved around or counted in different ways.

Piaget’s question regarding the development of scientific thinking could be studied by examining its history, and he did explore this topic. But his question can also be addressed by studying children as they develop more complex knowledge and ways of thinking. Piaget initially thought he would study children for a few years, but he ended up devoting much of his extensive career to researching child development, from when he first earned a PhD in biology at age 21 to shortly before his death at 84.

Any theory of how children develop forms of thinking is based on assumptions about how they learn about their world, so the presuppositions regarding how we come to know reality should be examined. Many psychologists assume that we learn about the world just by opening our eyes and knowledge floods in. This seems to fit with our intuitions. If we imagine a scene, we might think of it as a match to a landscape we have seen. This is the idea that we know the world through representing it. It reflects the common view that knowledge is based on passively forming mental representations that match the world, much like copies. These representations are either claimed to be derived from experience (empiricism) or be innate (nativism).

Although these two approaches differ in the source of knowledge, they agree that this knowledge is a set of representations of the world. Piaget (1970) labelled this approach the copy theory of knowledge, while his American contemporary, John Dewey (1929), criticized it as the spectator view of knowledge (see Chapman, 1999).

However, if the only way we know the world is through representing it, then the only way to check such a representation is to compare it with another representation. But this does not help us check whether this knowledge is correct because that can only be done by checking the representation against reality. We would need some independent way to do that.

Thus, this representational theory of how knowledge works assumes that we already have knowledge, and it does not explain how we come to know about the world. Therefore, it is flawed and an alternative is needed. Piaget’s theory is built on resolving this problem, but if researchers are not aware of the circularity of the copy theory, then the rest of Piaget’s alternative may seem unnecessary.

As a result of repeated experiences, they come to know the world in terms of their increasing ability to anticipate what will happen when they act.

If knowledge is not a matter of representation, then how can we successfully navigate the world without bumping into parts of it? The fact that we can interact successfully with world suggests a better view of human intelligence –that is, infants and children acquire knowledge through activity. They learn about what they can do with objects, as well as other people, and what happens in response. As a result of repeated experiences, they come to know the world in terms of their increasing ability to anticipate what will happen when they act.

In framing this action-based view of knowledge, Piaget endorsed a view known as constructivism, according to which children come to understand the world through learning what they can do with it. This view involves learning to anticipate what will happen when we do something. Thus, perception, according to Piaget, is not just a passive process. To see a hammer is not just having an image of the tool on the eye’s retina; it involves understanding the potential to interact with the hammer, that is, as an object for grasping and hitting nails (or for an infant, wooden pegs).

Piaget challenged preconceptions that tend to be taken for granted and in their place worked within a constructivist, or action-based, worldview. The word constructivism has been used by a variety of theorists, so readers should carefully assess what researchers mean when they use this word.

To grasp Piaget’s explanation of how the shift from simple action to knowledge occurs, it is important to understand his concepts of scheme, assimilation, and accommodation. A scheme is a pattern of action that can be repeated. It is composed of affect, sensation, motor movements, and perception. Schemes begin with simple reflexes that gradually get more complex. For example, newborns have an initial ability to suck at their mother’s breast, and they quickly get better at this. This sucking scheme can be extended to explore other objects, such as an adult’s finger. That is, other objects are assimilated to the sucking scheme. The infant applies her previous skills to engage in a new experience. But every new experience is different, and this results in accommodation, in the sense that sucking on the nipple of a bottle is different than sucking a mother’s breast – more vigorous sucking is required to obtain milk and some breastfed babies never manage to get used to this (i.e., they do not accommodate to it).

Assimilating objects to previous action schemes gives meaning or significance to new objects. That is, infants understand something in terms of what they can do with it. The processes of assimilation and accommodation are linked and are always involved in how children adapt to the world, gradually developing more complete knowledge of reality.

In assimilation, children understand their new experience in terms of past experience, expecting the world to behave as it has in the past. For example, when babies first see a toy rattle, they may assimilate it to their learned skill in grasping objects (i.e., a grasping scheme) based on their previous experience with objects that have a similar appearance, such as sticks. Their expectations are based on their previous encounters with sticks. But because each new experience is always unique, children accommodate to any differences and thus extends their knowledge in new ways. They then develop new anticipations of what may happen.

In this example, if a rattle that has been picked up makes a noise, infants will learn to shake it but not perform the same action on sticks they have previously played with. Thus, new experiences change the child’s thinking fundamentally. They may then test whether grasping another new object produces a similar rattling sound.

This process also occurs during word learning. For example, a child might learn the word dog, but then assimilate other animals to this experience and refer to horses and squirrels with the same word. Later in development, students might learn about Piaget’s theory but assimilate it into their experience with social learning theories before, hopefully, recognizing the differences and accommodating to reach a deeper understanding.

Progress through Piaget’s stages of cognitive development occurs via a constant iterative process that results in a gradual construction of more complete knowledge of the world. Construction does not mean that this knowledge is made up, but that it is built on experience with reality.

This relational way of thinking is also consistent with many indigenous peoples’ ways of understanding the world and our relations with it.

Piaget’s worldview fits with some current approaches in cognitive science based on embodiment and enaction (e.g., De Jaegher, Di Palolo, & Gallagher, 2010). This relational way of thinking is also consistent with many indigenous peoples’ ways of understanding the world and our relations with it (e.g., Ross, 2006). This perspective can be applied much more broadly beyond Piaget’s areas of interest to the development of communication and social understanding, and his own initial work on moral development can be extended.

Piaget: Stages of development

Piaget described four stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operational stage, and formal operational stage.

1. Sensorimotor stage, birth to 18 months

In the sensorimotor stage, Piaget (1936/1963) described how infants transition from acting on the world to the beginning of mental activity. Development begins with a practical lived form of interaction centered on the child’s own body and movements that are initially involuntary. This stage builds on action in the development of thinking during the first 18 months. Infants are active and curious about new events and experiences. Babies begin interacting with action schemes like sucking, pushing, hitting, and grasping, to explore and manipulate the world they experience. From this perspective, newborns initially have no self-consciousness and no clear awareness of any effects they produce. By coordinating their actions on objects, often in social interactions, they develop a sense of themselves and how they relate to people and things. Piaget described six sub-stages within the sensorimotor stage.

Sub-stage 1: Reflex activity (birth to 1 month)

During the first month, babies’ interaction begins with sucking, rooting, grasping, touching, crying, and moving their arms and legs. Piaget described these actions as reflexes but not in the sense of involuntary bodily movements such as sneezing. These are actions newborns engage in and they also refine these skills.

Sub-stage 2: Primary circular reactions (1-4 months)

At this stage, babies’ activity is focused on their own body (hence “primary”) and it is repetitive (hence “circular”). Babies try to recreate experiences that initially happened by chance, such as sucking their thumb or grasping their foot. Also, two schemes, such as looking and grasping or reaching and sucking, may be combined into an action that the baby finds enjoyable. Piaget argued that this is not a passive process of forming associations. Instead, babies actively explore, and objects come to have significance for them.

Photo: Shutterstock.

Sub-stage 3: Secondary circular reactions (4-8 months)

Infants’ interaction at this stage changes from a focus on their own sensations to what is happening in the world. The baby starts to engage with objects and events (hence “secondary”) and repeats actions to reproduce their effects. For example, Piaget’s daughter repeatedly kicked while in her cot to make dolls that were hung above her move. She did not intend to make the dolls sway, she just enjoying that they did so, and she learned about the link between her kicking and the dolls moving.

At this stage of cognitive development, such learning is by accidental discovery. But it is focused on events in the world (e.g., seeing dolls move) rather than infants’ experience based on their own bodies (e.g., sucking or grasping). Infants’ attempts to grasp might accidently result in pushing and an object moving further away, and this could lead to interest in this unexpected outcome that the infant may explore. These examples illustrate infants’ interest and curiosity in actively exploring their world.

Sub-stage 4: Coordination of secondary schemes (8-12 months)

At this stage, babies begin to act intentionally, that is, to coordinate schemes to achieve a desired result. For example, an infant may move one object to reach another. This demonstrates the emergence of intentional activity because the baby is performing an action to achieve a desired result.

Sub-stage 5: Tertiary circular reactions (12-18 months)

At this stage, babies start active experimentation in the sense that they can apply a scheme to achieve a result, but if it does not work, they can try another scheme in their repertoire of action patterns.

Sub-stage 6: Invention of new means through mental combinations (over 18 months)

At this stage, toddlers start to find new ways of doing things on their own initiative instead of through trial and error. For example, in the case of Piaget’s daughter, instead of backing away awkwardly after bumping a toy pram into a wall, she paused for a moment and then walked around the pram to push it from the other side. It appeared that she was able to solve this problem by coordinating her actions implicitly or mentally without actually having to perform them first to grasp their consequence. That is, she could anticipate the outcome of her action even before performing the action. This indicates the end of the sensorimotor intelligence stage.

Knowledge of objects

In addition to describing the six sub-stages, Piaget (1937/1971) also described how infants go through them in the process of developing concepts of the physical world, including objects, space, time, and causality. Most research has focused on infants’ developing understanding of objects. Counterintuitively, Piaget argued that infants do not start off with knowledge of objects. Instead, the knowledge of objects that we take for granted must be constructed gradually.

Piaget described how some knowledge of objects is already in place at 2 months, as indicated by infants’ expectations that someone who disappears from view would reappear. Then at sub-stage 3, infants can find an object if it is partially covered. At sub-stage 4, infants make an odd mistake called the A-not-B error. After they find an object a few times in location A, they continue looking for it in that location even when they see it placed in a new location, B. At sub-stage 5, infants no longer make this error and can find an object if they see it in the experimenter’s hand while it is being moved. Then at sub-stage 6, they can find the new location of the object even if the experimenter hides it in her hand.

2. Pre-operational stage, 2-7 years

In the preoperational stage, children begin to think about objects that are not right in front of them. Along with this advance in thinking, a limitation that is characteristic of this stage is intuitive thinking in which children focus on just one dimension at a time. Piaget devised a number of conservation tasks to assess this limitation in children’s thinking. For example, in the conservation of volume task, a child might figure out the amount of water in a glass by focusing only on the height of the liquid and not considering the glass’s width. This way of thinking leads to a number of errors due to misleading cues; the errors are overcome at the next stage.

3. Concrete operational stage, 7-11 years

According to Piaget, thinking begins in activity, but when actions are sufficiently mastered, they no longer have to be actually performed; they can be implicitly, or mentally, performed. Piaget referred to this process of mastering actions as interiorization and actions that are interiorized as operations.

Operations can be reversible in the sense that objects can be grouped together as well as separated, and liquid can be poured from a wide glass to a tall glass, and also poured back again so it reverts to its original state. Action can also be understood as reversible in the sense that the dimension of the height of the liquid is simultaneously compensated for by the change in the width of the glass so the amount of liquid remains the same.

In the concrete operational stage, a child can now recognize the logical relation that the volume of liquid does not change even though it might appear to do so. This is a logical conclusion about the principle of conservation. That is, even though there can be a misleading change in appearance, some underlying properties can remain the same.

In the conservation of number task, two rows of objects (e.g., five coins) are presented to a child, who sees that there are the same number in each row, and then one row is spread out to make it longer. With pre-operational thinking, children are misled by this cue and tend to say that there are now more coins in the longer row. But with concrete operational thinking, they conclude that nothing has been added or taken away, and that logically, there must still be the same number of objects in each row.

Another type of concrete operational task involves transitivity problems (i.e., based on knowing the premises that A is greater than B and B is greater than C, being able to infer the conclusion that A is necessarily greater than C).

4. Formal operational stage, 12-15 years

The formal operational stage is the final stage Piaget described. At this stage, children and adolescents can experiment by forming hypotheses and testing them systematically. This way of thinking involves abstract concepts, separating form from content (hence the name “formal operations”), and considering all possibilities. The formal operational stage is exemplified by hypothetico-deductive reasoning, in which all possibilities are considered and evaluated.

Piaget worked with his collaborator, Bärbel Inhelder, in assessing this thinking by presenting adolescents with problems based on physics and chemistry (Inhelder & Piaget, 1955/1958). For example, in the colorless liquid task, adolescents were presented with four colorless liquids and had to find out what combination of them resulted in a yellow liquid. Solving this problem requires systematically testing all possible combinations. Similarly, in the pendulum task, adolescents were asked to figure out whether the length of string, the weight of the pendulum, the height of dropping point, or the force of push determines a pendulum’s trajectory and movement. Again, solving this problem requires systematically testing all possibilities.

Not all adolescents pass Piaget’s tests of formal operational thinking, either in western or non-western cultures (Piaget, 1972/2008). Piaget (1972/2008) considered various explanations for this, such as possible differences in the rate of intellectual development due to differences in stimulation, interests, or talents. But Piaget believed that typically developing adolescents would develop this form of thinking in the context of their own area of expertise in which they can systematically work through a problem in terms of the possible variables involved, whether this is in the context of gardening, baking, or mechanics, and other activities. Although formal operational thinking was the most advanced form of thinking that Piaget and Inhelder studied, he did speculate that there might be other more advanced forms of thinking (Chapman, 1988b).

Piaget’s approach to moral development

Although Piaget is known primarily for his research on children’s cognitive development, he devoted one of his early books to moral thinking (Piaget, 1932/1965). His perspective on moral development is not well appreciated, partly because it was assumed that Lawrence Kohlberg (e.g., 1976) continued and extended Piaget’s work. In fact, Piaget’s approach differed from Kohlberg’s in important ways – yet it still tends to be overlooked.

Piaget discussed the culturally constrained rules children learn from their parents (rules from the outside) that often result in little understanding of the reasons they should be followed (heteronomous morality). Piaget also discussed another form of morality that emerges in cooperative relationships based on mutual affection. Within relationships with equals, in particular, children want to interact with each other and thus have to work out ways of getting along, which leads to developing a practical morality. Morality is implicit in these ways of interacting. This involves making rules from the inside (autonomous morality): These rules are negotiated within cooperative relationships among equals in which children must explain themselves and listen to each other. This form of relationship is best suited to reaching mutual understanding and thus, to moral development.

Within relationships with equals, in particular, children want to interact with each other and thus have to work out ways of getting along, which leads to developing a practical morality.

To reach a verbal level of articulation, children still must go through a process of articulating the form of moral knowledge that is implicit in their interaction. Piaget referred to this as conscious realization of the morality that was already implicit in their interaction with each other (Carpendale, 2009; Piaget, 1932/1965). This insight regarding how the structure of relationships can facilitate the development of mutual understanding is also highly relevant for education.

Evaluating common criticisms of Piaget

As we have mentioned, any theory needs criticism for further development. And there certainly is such criticism of Piaget (e.g., see chapters in Müller, Carpendale, & Smith, 2009). Furthermore, Piaget suggested that he was his own greatest critic in constantly modifying his theory.

However, many of the criticisms of Piaget that are common in textbooks and online blogs are based on serious misinterpretations of Piaget’s work. As Piaget put it, “it is pretty catastrophic when I see how I am understood” (Bringuier, 1980, p. 54). Next, we examine some of these criticisms to clarify the context and help deepen understanding of Piaget’s approach and theory (see also Chapman, 1988a; Lourenço & Machado, 1996).

One well-known challenge to Piaget comes from a group of researchers who claim that rather than having to develop knowledge, infants are born with innate knowledge of basic aspects of physics, biology, social understanding, and even morality (e.g., Spelke & Kinzler, 2007). Thus, infants do not need to develop knowledge of objects, as Piaget’s view of cognitive development suggests.

Many of the criticisms of Piaget that are common in textbooks and online blogs are based on serious misinterpretations of Piaget’s work.

For example, by focusing on how long infants looked at various scenes, Renée Baillargeon (1987) claimed that compared to possible events, 4-month-olds looked longer at impossible events, such as when an object appeared to move through another object. She interpreted the differences in looking time as suggesting that infants were surprised by impossible events and thus must already understand that objects continue to exist.

Most textbooks stop at this point and conclude that Piaget was wrong about object permanence. However, there has been a great deal of debate over this matter, beginning with critical evaluation of the methods used to support such claims. In fact, although we know that infants notice some difference between conditions if looking time varies, we do not why. Looking times vary for many reasons (e.g., Carpendale, Lewis, & Müller, 2018; Carpendale et al., 2026).

Beyond the extensive debates about methodology, these claims of innate knowledge are examples of a representational theory of knowledge. They disregard Piaget’s starting point, which begins from a criticism of the assumption about how children learn about the world. These researchers have not solved the problem of knowledge that Piaget addressed. Instead, they ignore it. Thus, they assume but do not explain knowledge.

Furthermore, Piaget (1937/1971) observed that infants had some knowledge of objects at even 2 months, but he placed this early knowledge within a developmental framework in which infants gradually improve their understanding of objects toward a more complete understanding. In contrast, for the neonativists, such knowledge is viewed as dichotomous: A child either understands or does not understand that objects continue to exist.

Another common criticism is that Piaget’s tasks were too difficult for young children so he underestimated their abilities. Critics argued that changing the procedure to simplify the tasks would allow younger children to pass them, which would provide a more accurate assessment of their abilities. However, the simplified tasks can be solved with simpler forms of thinking so, rather than providing a better assessment of children’s abilities, these tasks assess different abilities.

For example, the conservation of number task, which is usually done with five objects in each row, was simplified to two or three objects. Younger children could pass this task simply by seeing at a glance that each row still has the same number of objects, so they could pass without the logical understanding that Piaget wanted to assess, which is that the number of objects in a group does not change just by spreading them out to make the row look longer (Chapman, 1988a).

Another criticism is that children are inconsistent in the form of thinking they use. That is, a child may use concrete operational thinking on some but not all tasks (this is referred to as the problem of horizontal décalage). This evidence was thought to contradict Piaget’s stages of development. However, it does so only if Piaget had claimed that children are assumed to be in a particular stage and use only the form of intelligence of that stage.

In fact, Piaget described forms of thinking, and noted that children may use various forms to solve what to observers are closely related tasks. This evidence of inconsistency should be expected based on an understanding of his theory, which posits that children develop forms of thinking based on their experience interacting with objects. Whether children use concrete operational thinking depends on if they have gained sufficient experience with the particular materials in a specific task.

Piaget has also been criticized for underestimating the importance of social factors in development. He is sometimes contrasted with the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978), another influential figure in psychology, who emphasized the role of social interaction in development. But ironically, Vygotsky had criticized Piaget’s early work for being too focused on social factors (Carpendale, Lewis, & Müller, 2018; Carpendale et al., 2026)! (For more information on Vygotsky, see next section.)

Photo: Shutterstock.

Piaget did recognize that social factors were important and necessary in development, but he believed that they alone do not fully explain development. He argued that what is also needed is the gradual back and forth process of trying out different strategies, which he described as equilibration. Also, it is not enough simply to make the obvious claim that social experience is important in development.

Piaget argued that it is necessary to go beyond this claim to consider the forms of social relations children experience. He emphasized cooperative interactions among equals, which allow for the development of mutual understanding. In these contexts, individuals need to listen to each other and explain their own position. This is in contrast to constraining social relationships based on one-sided respect in which children cannot ask questions and thus tend to lack understanding (Piaget, 1932/1965, 1977/1995).

A final criticism, perhaps the most misinformed one, is that Piaget’s theory is based on anecdotal evidence from his own children. It is true that Piaget’s three books on infancy, out of his 60 books, were based on observations of his own infants. But these are not just anecdotes; they draw on more than 1,200 pages of detailed notes recording observations made by Piaget and his wife, Valentine. The books have been described as “three of the most remarkable and original documents in psychology” (Russell, 1978, p. 92). In his other areas of research presented in the rest of his 60 books and hundreds of papers, the number of experiments and participants in studies Piaget and his colleagues conducted is so large that it has never been counted but would be in the thousands.

Piaget and Vygotsky

Piaget is often compared to Vygotsky. The Soviet psychologist was born the same year as Piaget (1896), but died at just 38 from tuberculosis, which he contracted after caring for his mother and younger brother. But even based on the few years he was active in psychology, Vygotsky is influential and well known for his focus on the social origins of thinking. Vygotsky’s concern with the social dimension of development is often contrasted with Piaget’s, who was concerned with the individual cognitive dimensions of children’s development. Given this difference, some claim that their theories are incompatible.

However, although these two scholars differed, a more careful reading of their work suggests that they are quite compatible. Both began from the same approach examining action and interaction. When one of Vygotsky’s books was translated into English in 1962, the publisher asked Piaget to comment on it; he wrote that he fully agreed with Vygotsky’s view that forms of thinking have their origins in speech, and that thinking is first a social process before being mastered by individuals as a skill. Piaget’s fundamental point about knowledge developing from action within particular contexts links his approach to Vygotsky and to the importance of the cultural context of development.

Conclusions and extensions

We began this article with the suggestion that one reason Piaget remains relevant today is that he recognized the fundamental problem that must be solved in understanding the development of thinking. He suggested an approach to this problem beginning in activity that is congruent with some current approaches in the cognitive sciences, such as embodied, enactive, and interactive approaches. Furthermore, this action-based, process-relational perspective can be extended beyond the topics that Piaget addressed to study the development of communication, social understanding, and moral development (see Carpendale & Lewis, 2021). This is consistent with sociocultural approaches inspired by Vygotsky and others.

Infants cannot be born with knowledge, but instead are active agents with sensitivities that facilitate their engagement with parents and their physical embodiment functions to create their environment.

Piaget’s approach is also consistent with contemporary thinking in biology that rejects a dichotomy between biology and social aspects of development by recognizing that they mutually create each other, and that it is more fruitful to think of development in terms of systems of interacting factors. Developmental systems theory in biology eschews a dichotomy between nature and nurture, or biology and social experience, and instead focuses on the process of development.

Infants cannot be born with knowledge, but instead are active agents with sensitivities that facilitate their engagement with parents and their physical embodiment functions to create their environment. For example, being born helpless creates a social environment because babies must be cared for, and their further neurological development occurs in this context.

This is only a small taste of the complex system of factors in which biology and social-cultural factors mutually create each other. Culture is a central part of this worldview. That is, individuals develop within families, communities, and societies, and they also maintain as well as change their cultures in a constant bidirectional process.

Piaget’s theory is consistent with current approaches that explain what it is to be human by beginning with action and interaction. Such approaches trace the emergence of thinking within the social, emotional, and communicative contexts of human experience (e.g., Carpendale & Lewis, 2021).

For more by the authors of this article, see What makes us human? How minds develop in social interactions (Carpendale & Lewis, 2021).

The post Piaget’s theory of childhood development: A foundation for current understanding of children appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

To take a modern approach to cognitive development theory it is important to emphasise relationships, and view social interaction as the crucible in which children’s cognitive development takes place. In other words, the mind forms through being part of and contributing to social interaction, a process charged by emotion. Growing up within families provides for a long period of intense social interaction.

(Other cognitive development theories include “nativist” approaches that regard the mind as having innate abilities, growing rather like a tree does from a seed, and “empiricist” approaches that focus only on the factors that act on the mind to form it, rather than also on how the mind influences those factors.)

A relational approach can be illustrated with Donald Winnicott’s memorable quotation from 1964: “there is no such thing as a baby”. What he meant was that a baby is embedded in a complex web of interactions with others, to the extent that the boundary between the baby and parent is no longer distinct.

This theory of cognitive development sees the baby and parent shaping each other’s neurological development. Babies don’t just engage with their surroundings; they influence and shape the environment in which they learn skills. Even basic gestures such as smiling emerge through a process of development.

The relational theory of cognitive development encompasses the wider societal level: the person and culture are co-created like parent and child. A person becomes a member of society by engaging in routines, traditions, rituals, and the use of objects and symbols, including language. The person both grows as part of the culture and forms the culture with others.

Nowadays, the dominant theory of cognitive development is termed “process-relational”.

Where does the biology stop and the social start? The nature/nurture argument does not apply in this worldview. For example, social experience has now been shown to influence the way genes are expressed, through epigenetic changes.

DNA is the source material and is fixed, but how it is expressed can be changed by experience. This has generated a whole new branch of research, social genomics: the study of how social experience shapes gene expression.

The father of cognitive development theory: Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) has had a monumental impact on cognitive development theory. Piaget proposed a developmental theory based on the view of development known as “constructivism.” That is, we come to know the world through acting on it. He wrote that, “In order to know objects, the subject must act upon them and, therefore, transform them.”

Piaget argued that babies and children learn about the world through their action on the world. In this process they develop patterns of interaction involving emotions, sensations, motor movements, and perception, known as “schemes”.

Once a scheme begins to develop through particular interactions, it will be extended in slightly different situations. That is, the child assimilates new experiences to what she has previously learned, but since the experience will be different, the scheme will be modified or accommodated. Repeated many times, this process results in cognitive development.

(Photo: Shutterstock.)

Piaget said children learn through interaction with the world, developing patterns called “schemes”.

Piaget was interested in the stage-by-stage sequence of development that all children go through, each stage providing the foundation for the next. Through extraordinarily detailed observations of children, including his own three, he proposed four stages:

• Sensorimotor stage (during the first two years): a stage in which babies develop action schemes like sucking, pushing, hitting and grasping.
• Pre-operational stage (between two and seven years): the child develops the ability to think, but has limited ability to apply logic to a situation to deduce something by thought alone.
• Concrete operational stage (between seven and 11 years): the child starts working things out through logical thought, rather than just action.
• Formal operational stage (12-15 years): the child engages in systematic experimentation, forming hypotheses, testing them out and trying alternatives.

Sociogenesis theory of cognitive development: Lev Vygotsky

Another 20th-century giant of child development theory, Lev Vygotsky, is commonly regarded as the originator of the idea that the mind forms through social processes.

In fact, the idea predates him considerably, but he articulated it and developed it into a major influence on the modern science of child development, a remarkable feat since he only spent 11 years working on it, moving from work on art and literature when he was 27 and tragically dying when he was only 38.

According to Vygotsky, all higher mental functions occur twice, first between people in social interaction, then within the person’s mind. In this way, he said, social interactions form the mind, they don’t just influence a process already in motion like watering a seed to grow into a plant.

A key tenet of cognitive development theory is Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development”. This follows from his idea that thinking is first social before becoming mastered by an individual.

In the process of developing a new way of thinking there is a gap between what children can achieve alone and what they can achieve with the assistance of others. Two children may appear to be at the same level of development, but with help, one may be capable of more than the other. They differ in their ability to master a new way of thinking.

The key to cognitive development, according to Vygotsky, is the help that the more experienced adult gives the child to grow within this zone.

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Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development” highlights how children learn best with guidance, bridging the gap between what they can do alone and with help.

Vygotsky introduced the idea of “elementary” and “higher” mental functions. Elementary functions are products of evolution and biologically explained. They include involuntary attention and the ability to make simple connections between events.

In contrast, higher mental functions emerge through social interactions and culture. These include language, systems of counting, memorising techniques, art, literature, maps, and so on.

Vygotsky paid much attention to how language develops and considered how children talk to themselves. According to his theory of cognitive development, children learn to talk through relationships and conversations and then use speech as a tool for their own thinking, by talking to themselves.

This applies equally to hearing children, and sign language used by children who cannot hear. Research has indeed shown that children who interact more with others talk to themselves more when they are alone, and that children who are not allowed to talk to themselves perform less well in cognitive tests.

Later, speech goes “underground” to become inner speech or verbal thought, though it sometimes comes back out during adulthood. For example, when we are working out particularly difficult problems. Vygotsky theorised that children (and adults) use speech when operating in their zone of proximal development, just beyond their level of competence.

How parents can support cognitive development: scaffolding

Cognitive development theory uses a metaphor from the construction industry: scaffolding, a temporary structure around the growing building to assist its construction.

In cognitive development theory, scaffolding gives children a structure to master a skill, after which it becomes redundant. In this context, scaffolding is about supporting children within their zone of proximal development: setting goals, regulating their actions and inhibiting unhelpful responses, organising their actions and selecting strategies. It can be as simple as a series of hints and prompts that are appropriate for the child’s developmental level.

Recently, many researchers have studied scaffolding and its impact on cognitive development when variously applied. Cognitive development advances when scaffolding is applied well and constantly adjusted to the child’s progress.

Piaget versus Vygotsky

Psychologists have long sought to discuss the theory of cognitive development by comparing the work of Piaget and Vygotsky, both of whom emphasised the role of social interaction, though in different ways.

In reality, both of them emphasised social interaction to such a degree that even leading experts often can’t read statements from one or the other and be certain of whether it was written by Piaget or Vygotsky.

One way to see a difference is through a thought experiment: What would happen to child development if there were no adults?

For Vygotsky, there would be no development, because children cannot move forward out of their zone of proximal development without more expert help.

For Piaget, there could be development, albeit not a type to be recommended. Two children interacting with each other could learn more than one child alone.

Executive function: a core concept in cognitive development theory

Put very simply, executive function is a set of mental skills that helps a person gain control over their actions and thoughts. Scientists have identified four components:

1. Working memory – the ability to hold information and recall it when carrying out a task.
2. Inhibitory control – suppressing initial impulses in favour of more rational action.
3. Attentional flexibility – changing from one way of solving a problem to another.
4. Planning – using all the skills above, creating a strategy to get a task done.

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Executive function emerges through social interactions, particularly parental scaffolding that helps children operate in their zone of proximal development.

These skills develop in a sequence. Working memory typically develops in early childhood and improves during preschool and beyond. Inhibitory control and attentional flexibility develop in preschool. Planning skills develop during childhood and adolescence.

Like other cognitive development skills, executive function emerges through social interactions, particularly parental scaffolding that helps children operate effectively in their zone of proximal development. If children are specifically taught executive function skills at an appropriate level relative to their development, their skills improve.

Poverty is a key inhibitor of developing executive function skills. But its negative impacts can be mitigated if the parent-child attachment is secure and if the child has more social interaction, for example, at a daycare facility. Sadly, poverty reduces parental resources and is frequently associated with poorer relationships and more chaos.

Cognitive development theory: the importance of social interaction in language development

Unsurprisingly, language ability is critical to the cognitive development that takes place within relationships. The importance of social interaction in language development is one of the most consistent findings across cognitive development research.

Language develops in a critical early period of a child’s life. Research on feral children and on deaf children raised without sign language shows that they cannot learn normal syntax and morphology.

The first language abilities emerge shortly after birth. Babies will respond more to familiar voices, the language of their families, and books that were read aloud while they were in the womb. One-year-olds can distinguish among speech sounds that adults who have learned particular languages can no longer distinguish.

Babies understand words before speaking them. When they learn to speak in their second year, there is an explosion of understanding and speaking words.

So great is the richness and complexity of what children learn so quickly that some have proposed particular innate skills, beyond just the ability to use language that humans have, but other animals don’t.

Noam Chomsky has proposed an innate propensity to grasp syntax and proposed a “universal grammar” for human beings. As children develop, he argues, pre-existing on/off switches are triggered, leading the child from the universal grammar to the actual languages they learn.

Proponents of a social cognitive development theory find many problems with this version of nativism. The developmental view, based on Piaget and Vygotsky, is that children learn language through interaction with their parents and others and through learning social routines on which communication is based.

Parents typically modify language for babies and toddlers – a high intonation often called child-directed speech. This is often called motherese, though fathers do it too. Parents speak more slowly and more simply (though perhaps not in all cultures). Interestingly, in some contexts, fathers tend to use more complex speech, stretching children more within their zone of proximal development. This might be why a father talking with his child correlates better with later language skills than a mother talking with her child.

Researchers have also found that simply hearing words in their environment makes no difference to their language ability. Instead, children learn words in interactions with parents and carers. Time and again, the importance of social interaction in language development is reinforced, lying at the heart of cognitive development.

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What is social emotional development?

When social emotional development has proceeded well, children develop five key social and relationship skills. These include:

Self-awareness

They recognize their emotions, describe their interests and values, and accurately assess their strengths. They have a well-grounded sense of self-confidence and hope for the future.

Self-management

They manage stress, control impulses, and persevere in overcoming obstacles. They can set and monitor progress toward personal and academic goals and express their emotions appropriately in a wide range of situations.

Social awareness

Their social learning enables them to take the perspective of and empathize with others and recognize and appreciate individual and group similarities and differences. They seek out and appropriately use family, school, and community resources.

Relationship skills

They establish and maintain healthy and rewarding relationships based on cooperation. They resist inappropriate social pressure; constructively prevent, manage, and resolve interpersonal conflict; and seek and provide help when needed.

Responsible decision-making at school, at home, and in the community

In making decisions, they consider ethical standards, safety concerns, appropriate social norms, respect for others, and the likely consequences of various courses of action. They apply these decision-making skills in academic and social situations and are motivated to contribute to the well-being of their schools and communities.

Adapted from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL).

The social emotional development journey: baby steps

The first steps of social emotional development are gaze, attachment, attention and gestures.

1. Gaze

Even before birth, babies react to projections of faces through the abdomen into the womb. They will gaze into the eyes of their mother and father within days of being born. At 4-5 months, babies will stop smiling and frown if their carer stops smiling or smiles at the wrong time relative to the activity they are both engaged in. The foundations of relationship skills are being laid.

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2. Attachment

Attachment is a cornerstone of early social emotional development. The strong emotional bonds that form between infants and caregivers over the first year of life are referred to as attachments, which are based on children’s experience with their caregivers. The originator of the idea of attachment, John Bowlby (1958), observed in the 1950s that infants go through a period between about 6 and 30 months when they require the care and proximity of one or two key people, known as “attachment figures”. Emotional learning starts within these intensely emotional relationships. Patterns of everyday love and care set up the infant’s expectations of how particular caregivers will respond to them. Bowlby called these “internal working models”.

3. Joint attention

This is the ability to home in on another person’s point of view while they are describing or pointing at something, such as a toy or book. It starts around the age of one. The baby learns gradually to switch attention between the carer and the object. Babies will also start to look to the carer when they don’t understand a situation, possibly as a bid to get information or just comfort. Joint attention is a foundation for relationship skills.

4. Intentional gestures

At this stage of social emotional development, around the first year, infants start to point at things. Some months later, they start to use head movements, for example, to indicate yes and no. Gestures can be learned through imitation, such as waving and nodding; others are not necessarily what carers are doing, such as lifting the arms.

Social emotional development: preschoolers’ social learning of others’ perspectives

The next key stage in the social emotional development journey is the emergence of an understanding of others’ perspectives.

The “false belief” test is one measure of this understanding. The child is presented with the story of Maxi, who returns home from shopping with his mother, and, before going out to play, puts his chocolate away. While he is outside, his mother moves the chocolate. When Maxi gets hungry and returns for his chocolate, where will he look for it and/or were will he think it is? A five-year-old will know immediately that Maxi will look for it where he left it, but a three-year-old will incorrectly claim that Maxi will look for it where Maxi’s mother put it.

Another test that a three-year-old is unlikely to pass involves showing something to them that looks like a stone and which they identify as a stone. But once they touch it, they discover it is a sponge. Three-year-olds will then claim they knew it was a sponge all along and that another child would think it is a sponge too.

As children develop, they reach higher levels of social learning.

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For example, the “faux pas” test is a measure of a child’s reaction to a situation in which a child says he does not like a picture and then realises he is standing next to the child who drew it. Social learning involves recognising the embarrassment and the feelings of the budding artist.

Six stages of social learning in childhood

Two researchers, Henry Wellman and David Liu (2004), developed a five-stage test of social understanding up to five to six years of age.

1. Grasping that people may want different things (diverse desires).
2. Understanding that different people may have and act on different beliefs about the same thing when it is not known whether these beliefs are true or false (diverse beliefs).
3. Appreciating that a lack of visual access results in not knowing something (knowledge access).
4. False belief understanding, as described above.
5. Grasping that the emotions that someone experiences may be different from what they display (hidden emotion).

More recently, a sixth stage has been added: understanding sarcasm, which is reported to emerge when a child is six to nine years old.

Emotional learning: the development of empathy

Empathy is the emotional reaction to another’s feelings. Reacting emotionally to another’s distress starts very early, before babies are one year old.

Researchers have observed four stages in the emotional learning of empathy:

1. Global empathic distress. A baby cries when another baby cries.
2. Egocentric empathic distress (11-12 months). As in the first stage, but the babies do something to soothe themselves, like seek refuge with their father.
3. Quasi-egocentric empathic distress (12-14 months). The toddler will attempt to soothe the distress of the other child.
4. Veridical empathy (two years). Toddlers will bring distressed children something to comfort them, like their own teddy bear.

Other research has shown that babies as young as 8-10 months show facial and vocal responses to the distress of another.

Parents who actively encourage emotional learning in their children, helping them see the perspectives of others, have children with more empathic skills. Children who are not just told the rules, but who are made aware of the consequences for others of their own actions, tend to have greater empathy and a feeling of responsibility for the feelings of others.

Relationship skills: prosociality or being nice to others

A key area of current research is the emergence of prosocial behaviour in children: that is, when one person acts for the benefit of another.

Toddlers around the age of 14 and 18 months typically love to help their parents with housework and picking up dropped objects, often so enthusiastically that it becomes very difficult to get any housework done at all. This may, however, not be prosocial, but just a desire to be involved in the activity.

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Two-year-olds will stop playing to help someone, even if that person does not realise they need help – for example, if they have dropped something unknowingly.

Parents’ encouragement of helping in the home is associated with greater social understanding in children later. Giving a 20-month-old a reward for prosocial behaviour actually decreases the helping behaviour, whereas praise strongly encourages it. These things happen irrespective of a child’s temperament.

Nine influences on social emotional development in children

Social emotional development in childhood is a gradual process of social learning and emotional learning through activity and talking about the activity.

Culture

Children’s rate of social learning varies significantly, as does the age at which they are able to pass the false belief test. Australian and Canadian children understand false belief, on average, a little before British or American children. Austrian and Japanese children lag further behind. In some communities, children will pass the test only at the aged of eight, for example, Samoan children, Junin Quechaun children in Peru, Mofu children in Cameroon, or the Tola and Tainae children of Papua New Guinea.

Interestingly, authoritarian parenting reduces performance in the false belief test in European Americans, but not in Korean-American families where they a positively related.

Siblings

Interaction with siblings helps social learning and relationship skills. Children with siblings progress some months ahead of children without siblings, though the varied results from research suggests that more than just the fact of having siblings is involved. The quality of the interaction may be important. For example, a child with older siblings may be more exposed to discussions about what others know and don’t know. Also, the impact of siblings is less on a child with already advanced language abilities. One theory is that siblings help generate greater self-awareness through more frequent references to “me” and “mine”.

Play

Pretend play involves making plans and assigning roles, and this may develop social learning and relationship skills. It may also be a factor in the sibling effect.

Peers

Popular children tend to be better at the false belief test and children who have been rejected by peers tend to do worse on the faux pas test. It is unclear which way cause and effect are working here. Lack of friendship and a low level of social learning could contribute to each other.

Child characteristics

A shy and socially fearful temperament is associated with more advanced social understanding in preschool, though the evidence is not entirely consistent.

Blindness and deafness

An inability to see or hear delays social learning, though this is not the case for deaf children with deaf parents who communicate well with them, suggesting that language is important for social learning.

Parent-child interaction

The way that parents interact with their children and use language influences the children’s social development. Responsive conversations, with organised give and take, contribute to social understanding. So do conversations about thinking, desires, emotions and intentions.

Parents with more advanced social understanding have children with better social learning. Parents who talk to their children more about others’ feelings have children who do better on the false belief test. Authoritarian parenting, characterised by shouting and physical punishment, is associated with less social learning.

Earlier attachment

Children who have enjoyed secure attachment in their first year will tend to do better in the false belief test when they are five.

Mind mindedness

If a parent describes their child as someone with a mind, rather than just a physical being – so-called “mind mindedness” – and use psychological terms to describe their children, the children are likely to pass the false belief test at an earlier age. Hearing psychological terms used to explain and elaborate social events improves children’s social understanding. A mediating factor here is the higher language skills of these children.

Social emotional development: the role of language

Language has been shown to play a very important role in the whole process of social emotional development in the early years. Advanced language skills are linked to better performance on the false belief test, for example.

Purposefully teaching children the meaning of mental-state words, such as know, think, wonder, and figure out, has a positive impact on understanding of emotion at age three and performance in the false belief test at age four.

The benefits of strong social emotional development: good relationship skills

Does a child who does better in the false belief test or the faux pas test have better relationship skills and a better social life with friends? The answer is yes. Such a child is likely to have better relationship skills, engage less in conflict, use more sophisticated arguments in response to others’ perspectives and interests, have better close friendships, and be less likely either to bully or be bullied. Greater social understanding and relationship skills are not linked to premeditated proactive use of aggression, but they are linked to the more unthinking reactive form.

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Some of these associations are small – for example, only 4% of the variance in peer popularity could be linked to difference in performance on the faux pas test.

Advanced social emotional learning: morality

Jean Piaget

In The Moral Judgement of the Child (1932/1965), Jean Piaget discussed children’s understanding of the rules of the game and their judgement of bad behaviours. He proposed that morality emerges as children develop relationship skills with peers.

Piaget observed how children play with marbles:

• At three years, children tend to be unaware of any rules.
• Between three and six years, children are inconsistent about rules and their application.
• From the age of seven, children understand the rules.
• From the age of nine, children start to understand that rules are not simply handed down from on high, but are agreed by mutual consent.
• From the age of 11, children master the rules completely and police them.

These are only approximate ages for the children Piaget interviewed. He thought that what is important in moral development are relationships of cooperation among equals. These are best suited for understanding others and working out a solution that is good for all. In contrast, within relationships of constraint, children have difficulty understanding others’ perspectives, so these relationships are not well suited for moral development.

Lawrence Kohlberg

Lawrence Kohlberg took another approach. He maintained that the key to morality is not behaviour itself but the reasons that a person has for behaving that way. For example, not paying taxes could be a selfish means of cheating the state, or an unselfish stand against the way the state uses the money.

Kohlberg posed painful moral dilemmas, often choices about who should be allowed to die in a situation with two possibilities. He then observed how people respond to them.

He described six stages or world views.

1. Might is right. Rules must be followed, and disobedience should be punished.
2. Do to others what you would want them to do to you.
3. Do to others as if they were yourself, with the perspective extending to family and friends only.
4. Communities need accepted rules to prevent breakdown, and these should be broken only in the most extreme cases.
5. Rules should be defined by fundamental human rights. The question should always be asked: are current rules and laws moral?
6. Everyone affected by a rule should have a say in how that rule is put in place and implemented.

Kohlberg observed that most adults reach stage 3 or 4, and few reach 5 or beyond. He believed that moral development occurs as people encounter situations where the current rules break down and they are faced with new moral dilemmas.

Objections raised to Kohlberg’s theory include:

• People are not always consistently in one stage at a time.
• Some cultures place more emphasis than others on social solidarity, harmony relationships and deep affection for others. This affects how rules are applied.
• The stages are not necessarily hierarchical. There are very good people who help others in their communities and yet are at stages 3 and 4.

Morality versus social conventions

Not all rules are the same, and children learn this early. Some rules are social conventions – calling a teacher “Mr” or “Mrs”, wearing a school uniform, how to hold a knife and fork. But other rules are moral, including those relating to protecting others from harm, such as not stealing or not fighting. Children as young as three years understand the difference between these types of rules.

Some have criticised both Piaget and Kohlberg for mixing up the learning of social conventions and morality. “Domain theory” holds that they are separate processes from the outset, though this idea creates the problem of rules that are somewhere in between, such as lining up and dressing in a way that may offend others.

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The brain changes that shape baby development stages

Babies’ brains change in many ways as a product of biological maturation and external stimuli. These changes are critical for explaining important baby development stages during the first years.

Though the number of neurons remains constant, brain size triples. Neurons grow to connect distant parts of the brain. They form synapses to allow ‘associative learning’, connecting different experiences with one another. They become myelinated (electrically isolated) to speed up information flow.

Sleeping and digestion rely on the brain stem. The stem is the oldest part of the brain, and it regulates all our vital functions. In the early stages, new connections form between the brain stem and the frontal lobe—the youngest part of the brain, which controls higher order processes, including attention and body perception. These new connections help infants develop a stable biological rhythm and control their bowels and bladders.

Shortly after birth, a huge production of synapses takes place in different areas of the brain. This is followed by a pruning, with critical periods for each brain area. Which neural connections are kept depends on a baby’s learning experiences and follows the use it or lose it principle. This is why six-month-olds can discriminate between facial expressions or oral sounds from different cultures really well, but then show perceptual narrowing to adjust to their own environment towards their first birthday.

To function more efficiently, each neuron also needs to become electrically isolated through myelinisation. At this stage, gross motor actions such as crawling, sitting or standing and walking, as well as fine motor actions such as exploring a toy, all require communication between different parts of the brain. This communication speeds up with increasing neural myelinisation, resulting in improved motor coordination.

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Eight Baby Development Stages

Baby development in the early years includes rapid changes in different areas. Each area has its own milestones and develops according to its own rules.

To know and to understand how baby development stages in each area build on one another, and how development in different domains is coordinated, is key to helping infants achieve their potential.

The motor development stages include (1) gross motor functions such as head or torso movements, and (2) fine motor functions such as hand and finger movements. Age-related changes in motor skills largely depend on maturation of the brain but also require muscle training and coordination. In general, moving around and manipulating objects allows a baby to explore the environment, indirectly supporting mental development.

The mental development stages start with (3) perception (especially seeing and hearing), followed by (4) cognition. Cognition includes basic processes (attention, categorization, memory) and higher-order abilities (reasoning and problem solving).  Brain maturation and external experiences jointly determine mental development. Mental development induces changes in many other domains.

Later stages of development involve behaviors directed at others, including (5) verbal communication (i.e., language comprehension and production) and (6) building social relations (i.e., forming and maintaining contact, showing prosocial behavior, following rules, cooperating, playing). Adequate stimulation by caregivers largely determines the baby’s development in these domains, but self-directed behaviors seem relevant, too.

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Self-directed developments lie behind infants’ (7) self-regulation (e.g., sleeping behavior, bladder and bowel or impulse control) and (8) emotions (experience and expression). Even though progress in these areas has a strong biological basis, co-regulation—-when caregivers help the child regulate his or her internal states—seems equally important. Other- and self-directed abilities are closely intertwined at this stage of development because language skills and social relations both help the child gain an awareness of inner states and control expressive behavior.

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Baby milestones: gross motor development

Throughout the first three years, babies progress from more or less stationary beings with little body control to explorers who can roll, sit, crawl, stand, and walk. They learn how to keep their balance and to throw or catch objects. Once this happens, the main milestones of gross motor development have been achieved.

Newborns have motor reflexes to interact with their physical environment. Voluntary movements are also possible but not yet well adjusted.

During the first weeks of life, infants learn to keep their heads in a stable position without support, before they learn to lift their upper bodies while lying on their tummies. A few months later, another milestone is reached: they can roll from tummy to back and vice versa.

Most infants start to move forward and backwards on the floor by four to six months. When lying on their tummy and lifting up their bottom, bending their knees, and then pushing backwards, they find themselves in a perfect position to start crawling. By seven months of age they reach another milestone: they can sit without support and freely move around on the floor.

Their legs and arms now become stronger, and soon they learn to pull themselves up the furniture. Once they can reach a standing position, they practice keeping balance without support, and around their first birthday, most infants start to walk.

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In their second year, they seek new challenges, such as climbing staircases, walking backwards, bending down and straightening up again and standing on just one leg. But it is usually not until their third birthday that children reach another key milestone: daring to hop or jump.

Regarding arm movements, throwing and catching a ball can now be mastered, but only if these skills are practised regularly.

Baby milestones: fine motor development

The fine-tuning of finger movements, and the coordination of finger, wrist, and arm movements, allows infants to manipulate objects effectively, providing the basis for many other milestones, such as cultural skills – drawing, dressing up or using eating tools effectively.

Infants need to use hand and finger control to explore objects or surfaces, and to use tools. How do they reach this particular milestone?

Newborns come equipped with a grabbing reflex: all fingers immediately close around objects touching the palm of the hand. By grabbing different objects this way, the infant quickly learns that finger positions need to adjust to the size and shape of an object.

As they start gaining control over their hand movements at two to three months of age, infants bring the thumb and the other four fingers in an opposing position to prevent objects from slipping. Some time later, towards the end of the first year of life, they also acquire the “scissor-grip”, using just the thumb and the index finger, to hold very fine objects like pearls or a hair.

Another important milestone attained early is rotating the wrist of the hand under visual control. That way, infants can not only grab objects, but also look at them from different angles. This skill develops around six months. Around the same time, they acquire the ability to transfer an object from one hand to the other. This helps the baby learn how to move both hands independently.

Many fine motor milestones of the first three years also require good coordination with arm, hand, and wrist movements. Among the easier tasks to master are drinking from an open cup without spilling liquid. A more demanding task is to use a pencil for drawing or to open and close zippers or studs.

Baby milestones: perceptual development

Perception in all but the visual domain is already well developed at birth. Babies feel pain, are sensitive to touch, and respond to changes in body posture. They can smell and taste even subtle differences in odors and liquids. They can also hear well. They quickly learn how to combine information from different senses.

One way to detect achievement of these milestones is to look for behavioral responses. Young infants respond positively to the soft touch of their skin but negatively to painful stimulation or sudden changes in posture. They show more movements when feeling cold, and they turn away from heat sources when feeling hot. They show disgust in facial expression when confronted with things they don’t like to smell or taste (e.g., rotten food) but respond positively when smelling or tasting things they like (e.g., breast milk). With regard to hearing, clear preferences for complex sounds and human voices can be observed, especially when a familiar person talks in a soft melodic way.

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Unlike other senses, visual perception is quite limited at birth. But even then, infants prefer to look at facial features and objects with sharp contrasts. Their color vision and contrast sensitivity are still poor, but they can detect moving objects easily. As the visual pathway matures, they learn to fix on objects with both eyes, and their vision gradually improves over the first year of life. This is also true of depth perception.

Some intersensory pathways are linked from early on. Newborns automatically turn their heads in the direction of a sound source. They also gradually learn to associate different sensual experiences, thereby forming stable representations for objects and events long before they can be labeled verbally. This marks the boundary to the next major milestone: cognitive development.

Baby milestones: cognitive development

Cognitive development refers to basic skills (e.g., attention, categorization and memory), and to higher-order skills (e.g., symbolic thinking needed for language acquisition, means-end analysis relevant for forming multiple-step goals, causal reasoning necessary for finding explanations, and problem solving allowing for adaptive behavior).

Infants learn how to control their attention, categorize things they perceive, and memorize objects and events. At the next milestone, they understand goal-directed behavior, and they extend their causal and functional knowledge about objects. This allows them to solve problems.

Whereas newborns still respond automatically to external stimulation, voluntary attention gradually improves from two to six months. Infants first learn to fix on something, then to disengage attention again, and finally to show focused attention, resisting distractions. With age, attention becomes more focused and can be kept high for longer.

When two-month-olds pay attention to different stimuli, they can already recognize similarities common to all exemplars, for example, recognizing different objects as “dogs” because they all have a similar shape and all bark. By seven months, they have been found to identify animate beings based on perceptual cues such as facial features and the ability to show self-initiated movement and to interact with others.  This marks a major milestone: the start of conceptual thinking and causal reasoning. Now, infants learn more about causal and functional relations every day.

Towards their first birthday, infants start to search for hidden toys and become able to consciously memorize individual objects. Furthermore, they can now imitate action sequences involving multiple steps and memorize events. However, until about three years, they fail to show “elaborated episodic memory”, that is, knowing when and where a given event took place.

Around their second birthday, infants pass another milestone, coming to understand that to achieve a certain goal they might need to do something else first, for example, get a cup to be able to drink water from it. Around the same time, they learn to interpret the meaning of gestures, words or other symbols. Such higher-order skills allow them to start combining different memories and to understand more causal or functional relations, thus providing the ground for problem solving.

Baby milestones: language development

Language comprehension precedes language production. In general, infants understand and produce very short verbal expressions, then gradually learn to put syllables, words and sentences together.

From birth on, infants show language recognition of their mother tongue. Until eight months, they remain sensitive to phonemes of all other languages as well. Later, perceptual narrowing leads to a loss of sensitivity for languages that they don’t hear on a regular basis.

Nine-month-olds identify individual words when listening to a continuous word flow and show the first signs of true language comprehension. They understand nouns and end-state oriented prepositions (e.g., out, off, gone) earlier than verbs, and adjectives. By 12 months, infants can comprehend simple sentences.

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Interestingly, two- to three-year-olds still have a hard time interpreting sentences that include negations. They may follow the instruction “Stop that!” but fail to understand the command: “Don’t do that!” They also have trouble understanding long sentences that include side phrases or passive forms.

Language production begins at two months when infants start ‘cooing’. Soon after, they enter the ‘babbling phase’, first producing simple syllables (such as “ma”) and then doubling them (“ma-ma”) before they learn to combine different syllables (e.g., “au-to”) at about eight to 10 months.

The next milestone is producing longer utterances that sound like their mother tongue but have no meaning yet. This is called ‘jargoning’. They also start using a given sound-combination repeatedly to label a specific entity, thus producing their first meaningful word at 12 months.

During the second and third year, infants reach another milestone: they learn to combine nouns with end-state propositions or other words, thus producing simple sentences like “pants off”. These sentences become longer with age as the child begins to speak in multiple sentences.

Baby milestones: social development

Infants are social beings from the very beginning. They communicate and imitate, share attention and knowledge about objects with others, show prosocial behavior, and play cooperatively. The quality and complexity of these interactions increases at each milestone.

Newborns are specifically interested in other humans and soon become engaged in nonverbal social interactions. This helps infants discriminate between their primary caregiver(s) and other people, eventually leading to stranger anxiety at about seven months and to clear attachment behavior by one year. Now infants treat their primary caregivers as a safe base for exploration and respond with protest if they leave the room.

By three to four months, infants can follow the gaze of other people. At about nine to 12 months, this behavior may lead to a state called joint attention, when both individuals focus on the same object and are aware the other’s state of mind.

Another form of social learning is imitation, which plays a central role in early childhood. Toddlers learn a great deal about our culture by observing and imitating others.

Children’s high interest in social interactions also shows in their prosocial behavior. At two years, they achieve another milestone, showing helping behavior. Via observational learning and verbal instruction, toddlers rapidly start to recognize norms – they learn rules of behavior and complain if others don’t follow these rules.

Regarding play behavior, infants first show parallel play with others, but soon start to show associative play, exchanging toys or tools and commenting on playmates’ actions.

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Past their second birthday, they start constructive games like building something in cooperative play. More advanced forms of social play like pretend or role play emerge in the third year. Towards the end of toddlerhood, children reach another milestone—they can play simple rule games like hide-and-seek or catch-and-run.

Baby milestones: self-regulation development

Self-regulation refers to the ability to regulate mental states and behavior, including attention, thoughts, emotions and needs. Early childhood is a critical time for this milestone, as caregivers gradually reduce their help and support children’s emerging self-regulation skills.

Self-regulation has a physical, mental and behavioral dimension, including the regulation of sleep and attention, emotions and basic needs, and impulse control. These different skills start emerging in infancy but make greater progress in later toddlerhood.

Even newborns can sometimes soothe themselves and regulate their attention without external help, thus revealing a basic capacity for cognitive and emotional self-regulation.

During the first months of life, they are primarily developing a stable sleeping rhythm. But when infants are healthy, have regular digestion, eat enough in the evening, go to sleep at a regular time each day, and are not disturbed at night, they can learn to sleep through by three to four months of age. During the day, they may reduce sleeping to one longer nap in the afternoon from their second year on.

Another important milestone of self-regulation is to stop wearing nappies/diapers. Again, children’s competences depend on biological maturation and caregiver help, but most toddlers can indicate when they need to go to the toilet, and they typically manage to stay clean overnight by age three.

Emotion and impulse regulation are still very difficult for young children, but first attempts can be perceived when toddlers wait until it’s their turn, and when they can deal with frustration and accept prohibitions. It is important to recognize these early milestones of self-regulation and to reinforce them, because self-regulation becomes more relevant soon. In preschool, children are expected to act cooperatively, to consider the perspective of other people, to become patient, and to avoid expressing anger and aggression without restraint.

Baby milestones: emotional development

In emotional development, we first observe body-related emotions, then basic emotions and finally complex emotions like guilt, pride or shame, which require self-awareness and knowledge about social norms. Emotions become more differentiated and conscious with age. Cognitive and language development, including mental talk, play a critical role in emotion experience and expression.

Newborns can express basic emotions like hunger, tiredness, pain, or disgust, but also psychological states like negative or positive arousal, curiosity, pleasure and excitement.

Basic emotions become differentiated somewhat later. Infants can now experience various degrees of discomfort, anger or fear, pleasure or surprise, and they develop affectionate attitudes towards certain persons or objects.

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More complex emotions are closely tied to cognitive and social development. This is true of experiencing guilt, pride, shame or anxiety. These emotions first emerge during toddlerhood. The same is true of emotions like sympathy or pity that involve taking someone else’s perspective, but this is a later milestone and can be observed only in older toddlers.

Consciously hiding a given emotion or pretending to have it requires self-control and can thus typically not be observed before the age of three, whereas the unconscious control of emotional expressions (e.g., stopping crying after being picked up by a caregiver) can be found much earlier.

Young children find it hard to talk about emotions. They start by naming body states like feeling hungry, tired, or cold. Next they learn to talk about basic emotions like fear or anger. Some older toddlers can start to describe more complex emotions like anxiety.

In general, it seems easier for children to name emotions they observe in others than to reflect on their own feelings. Caregivers can support verbal emotion expression by using mental talk, that is, frequently describing their own feelings and needs or those of other people.

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Barriers to achieving baby milestones

Some babies may show genetic defects that lead to a deformation of their brain or body in the womb. The risk of such defects increases with the age of the mother and the father.

Pregnancy is the most vulnerable development stage, especially early on. When mothers suffer from certain infections (such as measles), or when they consume alcohol, cigarettes, other drugs, or hormones, fetal development can suffer. The same holds true if mothers are exposed to increased stress or when the functionality of the placenta is impaired.

Infants who are born prematurely or who experienced birth complications also carry an increased risk for abnormal developmental later in life.

In early infancy, many things may prevent the child from achieving further milestones. Young infants need to develop a stable biological rhythm, and this requires the support of caregivers who feed the them, change nappies/diapers, put them to sleep, keep their body temperature stable and provide protection. If any of these basic needs is not met, the baby may become ill and/or fail to reach the next milestone in different areas of development.

If impaired perception goes unnoticed, other domains of development may also fall behind, including fine motor development, cognition, language or social development.

Finally, positive face-to-face interactions are crucial to achieve normal milestones in cognition, language, social, self-regulation and emotional development. Infants deprived of adequate social stimulation often show abnormal behavior later in life.

How parents help the baby achieve milestones normally

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Caregiving is a challenging but rewarding experience. To help a baby achieve normal milestones, adults should remain curious to learn about early development every day, observe their child carefully, and try to be responsive, thus showing sensitive caregiving.

All human adults have intuitive parenting skills. Without previous training, we approach babies who cry, pick them up and rock them gently, seek eye-to-eye contact, smile when looking at them and speak slowly, with a high and melodic voice. Despite these talents, providing good infant care has become challenging. Infants need to compete with work, mobile phones, computers, and multiple other distractions when trying to get their caregivers’ attention.

Apart from living and eating healthily during pregnancy, supporting an infant requires the willingness to interact with children, provide adequate care and cognitive or social stimulation, and help them regulate their own emotions. When children reach the toddler milestones, parents should be patient in explaining rules, answering questions and improving perspective taking as well as social cooperation.

With regard to motor development, a great challenge for parents is to find the right balance between allowing children to try new movements (such as climbing) and protecting them from getting hurt.

Considering perceptual development, it is important not to overlook potential difficulties in any domain. For example, if a child is cross-eyed for more than six weeks during a sensitive period of visual development (between four and nine months) and this remains unnoticed, spatial vision will remain impaired throughout the child’s later life. In terms of cognitive and language development, parents should help children express questions verbally and find answers. A child who has a vocabulary of less than 50 words by the age of 24 months carries double the risk of being language impaired permanently.

Regarding social development, caregivers introduce the child to cultural achievements and promote achievement of social understanding milestones. If caregivers do not treat children well and neglect their social needs, this may lead to slower cognitive development, less social understanding and behavioral difficulties later in life.

Finally, with respect to self-regulation and emotional development, parents serve as co-regulators when the child is in a state of imbalance. Parents can help find words for the child’s experiences and emotions, such as fear, anger or frustration. This is a necessary prerequisite for children’s developing ability to regulate their own emotions.

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Some disagree with the very idea that there are distinct child development milestones. Children develop in such diverse ways, particularly if we look across different cultures. Even in a single culture, children develop differently, and can perform more or less competently within a given stage. Those who disagree with the idea of child development milestones see development as a gradual and uneven growth of various psychological mechanisms.

Variation in child development milestones: familiarity and culture

Variation in competence between child development milestones is strongly related to familiarity with a situation. In one experiment, conducted by psychologist Jean Piaget, preschool children were shown a diorama of three mountains, each with a distinctive object on top. The children were unable to say what the scene would look like to a doll sitting on the other side of it.

But later in 1975, another researcher, Helen Borke, found children of the same age could achieve this task if the landmarks were familiar objects – farms with animals, people, buildings and trees – and if the doll were replaced by Grover, a character from Sesame Street, driving around in a car.

What children learn in different cultures is extremely varied: using technology in the USA, finding water-bearing roots in the Kalahari desert, dancing in Bali, skiing and skating in Norway, and so on. Culture and environment determine what objects are available to learn with, what activities are frequent and normal, what people do together and what children learn at school.

The brain developments that underpin early child development milestones

At two years, the brain is 80% of its full adult weight; by five, it reaches 90%.

Three key brain development processes occur during these years:

• Improvement in the efficiency and speed of connections. Between the ages of 2 and 5, myelination is most prominent in the frontal cortex, which is important for things like planning and regulating behavior.
• Increase in length and branching of neurons connecting different parts of the brain.
• Synaptic pruning, whereby nonfunctional synapses die off.

Overall, the brain remains relatively immature during this period. The development of parts of the brain associated with memory (the hippocampus and the frontal cortex) is still incomplete. This may help explain why children of this age find it difficult to keep several things in mind at once.

Different parts of the brain develop unevenly. One illustration of this involves “scale errors.” A fully mature person can seamlessly integrate two different brain activities – the perception of scale or size, and actions towards an object. If these two abilities are not integrated, as in children up to around two and a half years, a child may try to do impossible things, like pushing a big peg into a small hole, or sitting in a doll’s chair or toy car. They cannot match their perception of size with their actions towards the object.

Brain development, like child development overall, comes with practice – it depends on experience. This it is highly influenced by the specific experiences afforded by different cultures. Brain areas associated with certain spatial abilities develop in response to children’s involvement in hunting or weaving. Language areas undergo increased growth where verbal expression is frequent and important. Brain processes associated with attention and memory are highly developed when children learn music.

Motor stages of development

A two-year-old and a five-year-old have enormously different physical abilities. During this period, children learn new gross motor skills. For example, they may learn to ride a tricycle and later a scooter, throw a ball overhand and climb. Fine motor skills also develop: drawing, dressing, tying shoes.

Cognitive child development milestones

According to Piaget, children between the ages of two and six are at the “pre-operational” stage.

At this stage, children can

• represent reality to themselves through the use of symbols, including mental images, words, and gestures;
• think about objects and events even when these things are not actually present;
• struggle to distinguish their point of view from that of others;
• become easily captured by surface appearances; and
• be confused about causal relations.

A key characteristic of the pre-operational stage of development is overcoming “centration,” which is the tendency to be “captured” by a single feature of a situation to the exclusion of all others. A child can be shown two balls, both with red stripes but where the other color is different. Before centration is overcome, children will, when asked to “point to the red ball”, confidently pick one at random and stick to their choice with confidence.

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Piaget called the ability to pull away from one aspect of a problem and consider multiple aspects simultaneously “decentration,” which leads directly to objectivity. Piaget regarded this as a major stage in child cognitive development.

Early cognitive development stage: learning a different person’s perspective

Egocentrism is the tendency to center things on oneself. Children might believe that the moon follows them around when they walk at night. They won’t understand this can’t be true because another child walking in the other direction will have the same experience.

The mountain diorama test described above is a test of egocentrism: can the child understand a different person’s perspective?

The development of an understanding of others’ perspectives is called “theory of mind,” demonstrated by the false belief test. In this test, the child is presented with the story of Maxi, who returns home from shopping with his mother and, before going out to play, puts his chocolate away. While he is outside, his mother moves the chocolate. When Maxi gets hungry and returns for his chocolate, children are asked, where will he look for it and/or were will he think it is? A five-year-old will know immediately that Maxi will look for it where he left it, but a three-year-old will incorrectly claim that Maxi will look for it where Maxi’s mother put it.

Early cognitive development stage: learning the difference between appearance and reality

Two-and-a-half-year-olds can be frightened by someone putting a witch or dragon mask on. They have difficulty distinguishing between appearance and reality.

For example, researchers have presented children with objects whose appearance is deceptive: a sponge that looks like a stone, a stone that looks like an egg, a bar of soap that looks like a block. Children are asked to name the objects before touching them, and then they are given the objects to touch so they discover their true nature. Then they are asked what the object looks like. Three-year-olds change their minds and will now insist that the stone-like sponge looks like a sponge, the stone-like egg looks like an egg and the block-like soap looks like soap. Five-year-olds will not, because they are able to differentiate between appearance and reality.

Early cognitive development stage: learning cause and effect

At this stage of development, children learn more about cause and effect. Four- to five-year olds typically ask endless questions about cause and effect: “Why is the sky blue?” “Where do babies come from?” “What makes clouds?” In contrast, Piaget described his own daughter at three years confusing cause and effect after missing an afternoon nap: “I haven’t had a nap, so it isn’t afternoon.”

Children at this stage of development show more attention to confusing situations where they cannot deduce cause and effect. They start to search for new explanations. In one experiment, a blue object is shown to activate a light box and turn it on, while a green object does not. Once they have learned this, children particularly take note when the experiment is rigged and the blue and green objects start to do unexpected things.

Early cognitive development stage: distinguishing between living and nonliving things

The distinction between animate and inanimate things is a complex capacity. It involves being able to understand quite abstract biological processes – growth, the ability to move independently, the possession of internal parts and internal thoughts. In computer screen tests, four-year-olds show an emerging but incomplete ability to categorise objects between living and nonliving.

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Some scientists believe this ability is a specific and separate domain of child development. Whatever the theory, it is a milestone for all children.

Early cognitive development stage: understanding physics

Children below the age of four understand gravity—they know that an object falls down if dropped. But when presented with an arrangement where balls cannot drop directly down but are diverted sideways, they often get it wrong. As with other tasks, this one can be made easier so that children are more likely to get the answer right. In this, case, how the tubes and buckets are matched up color-wise will influence how children predict the ball will fall.

The development of identity in early childhood

Child development milestones: gender identity

Gender identity is a key stage of development between the ages of two and five. It has begun already at two, with girls and boys using more same-gender-type words, such as boy, girl, truck, dress. By the time they enter school, boys and girls generally have different toy preferences. Boys are more likely to engage in rough-and-tumble play, while girls show more verbal and nurturing behavior. Gender segregation – the selection of friends of the same gender – starts at two in girls and three in boys.
There are a number of ways that child development psychologists understand this stage of development.

The “social learning” understanding observes that children model their behavior by observing and imitating others. Then they experience differential reinforcement – rewards for behaving in particular ways. Two- to five-year-olds are influenced not just by their parents, but by siblings, peers, other adults and what they see on TV and other media. Girls with older sisters and boys with older brothers are more stereotyped in their behavior than if their older sibling is of the other gender.

The “constructivist” understanding – based on Piaget’s stages of development – proposes that children create a “gender schema”, a mental model that is used to process gender-related information. Information can be objects, such as “boy things” and “girl things”, and routines, such as what Daddy does and what Mommy does.

Early experiences in school have an important influence on gender identity. If teachers emphasise gender more or less, children are more or less stereotyped in their behaviors.

Culture evaluates how children do and do not conform to gender roles.  In many Western cultures it is OK for girls to want to engage in stereotypical boy behavior, but it is much less acceptable the other way round. These unwritten rules can regulate behavior with some force.

Child development milestones: ethnic identity

The development of ethnic identity is an important stage for two- to five-year-olds. The process by which parents communicate ethnicity-related messages to children has been termed “ethnic socialisation.”

Researchers have identified two types of socialisation. “Cultural socialisation” emphasises ethnic heritage and pride. “Preparation for bias” emphasises awareness of ethnic bias and how to cope with it. Children whose parents promote ethnic pride and provide a home rich in culture tend to have stronger cognitive abilities and problem-solving skills and fewer behavior problems.

Child development milestones: personal identity

By the age of four, children have developed the ability to recount their own personal experiences by themselves. This personal story has been termed their “autobiographical memory.” As they develop this ability, they are likely to get assistance from their parents. At bedtime, for example, a two-year-old may ask a parent to tell them the story of their day. The parent and child together construct the story, with the parent shaping the story, playing some things up, such as the child’s capabilities, and playing some things down, such as the child’s fears. Some parents may introduce moral lessons to the story. This stage of development is very much shaped by the interaction with parents.

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At the early childhood stage of development, the child does not develop a subjective sense of self, for example, “I am shy” or “I am smart”. This comes later in middle childhood. Rather, two- to five-year olds communicate their identity by means of more objective characteristics: “I live in a big house.” “I have blue eyes.” “I have a kitten.”

Children of this age also do not distinguish well between what they can do and what they aspire to do, leading to rather exaggerated notions of their abilities. A child might say “I know all my ABCs” or “I can swim the whole way across the pool” when in fact they can do nothing of the sort. The ability to distinguish between aspiration and ability comes at a later stage of development.

The development of morality

The development of morality represents one of the key child development milestones. Two- to five-year-olds, when presented with moral stories, tend to focus on the objective consequences of the action, rather than the nature of the person’s motivation. Piaget, who examined the development of a sense of right and wrong, called this “heteronomous morality.”

Piaget asked children to consider the following two stories. Luke is warned by his mother to stay away from the freshly baked cookies cooling on the kitchen counter. When she leaves the room, Luke snitches a cookie and, in his clumsy haste, knocks over a cup that falls to the floor and breaks. Meanwhile, Zack is helping his mother to set the dining room table for dinner. With hands full of napkins and silverware, he pushes open the door leading from the kitchen to the dining room. When the door swings open, it hits a tray on which are stacked a dozen cups, all of which fall to the floor and break.

At the preoperational stage of development, the four-year-old will declare that Zack is the naughtier child because the consequences of his action are more severe. Older children regard Luke as naughtier, because he was deliberately disobeying his mother. Piaget terms this later stage of development “autonomous morality.”

(These stories also illustrate gender identity formation. Mommy is cooking and laying the table.)

“Social domain theory” distinguishes between different types of right and wrong:

• • Moral rules are based on principles of justice and the welfare of others. These rules are about not harming others.

• • Social conventions coordinate social behavior. These rules are about how to behave and dress and who has authority over whom.

• • Personal rules. An example is how to thank an uncle for a birthday present, by phone or letter.

Three- and four-year-olds can distinguish between these types of rules, responding quite differently to violations of the different types. The borders between the rules are sometimes blurred. Swearing could be considered a moral rule or a social convention. Running around naked on a beach could be breaking a social convention or be a personal rule.

The development of self-regulation: controlling actions

Further development of the capacity to regulate one’s own thoughts, emotions and behaviors takes place during early childhood.
Developing “effortful control” – the ability to concentrate on a task and inhibit impulsive or distracting actions – is a key stage of development in early childhood.

The ability can be tested by giving children a task that requires self-control or concentration. One test involves putting a desirable toy in front of children and asking them not to touch it. Another test involves sorting toys into different boxes in ways that require careful thought.

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Another measure is observation by parents and/or teachers: can the child wait before entering new activities when asked, can the child quit working on a project when asked, does the child concentrate when drawing?

Higher capacity for effortful control varies among children and predicts better academic performance and better social adjustment, such as stronger friendships and less aggression.

The two tests above are different in nature. The first – resisting the toy – is more emotional than the task of sorting toys, and it has been termed a “hot task”. Children good at hot tasks have been found to be better at working cooperatively with other children and less aggressive with their peers.

Some cultures, such as those influenced by Confucianism, emphasise self-control, and children in these cultures show greater ability in this area. Socioeconomic circumstances also influence this stage of development. Children from poorer backgrounds tend to show less self-control, though preschool progams can teach these skills successfully.

Play is an important part of this stage of development: playing a particular role in a game requires regulating thoughts and behaviors according to the imaginary situation. When the link has been tested, three- and four-year-olds who engage more in socio-dramatic play showed higher levels of self-regulation a few months later, even though there was no correlation between these variables at the start. These children were more attentive to post-activity clean-up and more attentive when gathered in a circle to listen to their teachers.

The development of self-regulation: socioemotional competence

At this stage of development, two- to five-year olds develop the ability to keep their emotions under control. They may avoid or reduce their exposure to an adverse experience by closing their eyes, turning away or blocking their ears. They may distract themselves with pleasurable activities. They may use their budding language and cognitive abilities to reinterpret events in a more palatable way (“I didn’t want to play with her anyway, she’s mean”), to reassure themselves (“Mommy said she’ll be right back”), and to encourage themselves (“I’m a big girl; big girls can do this”).

During this stage of development, children learn the difference between experiencing an emotion and expressing it. They can see when someone might be concealing an emotion. This ability develops in widely different ways from culture to culture. Children in cultures that more highly value social hierarchy and group harmony show earlier abilities to control their emotions than do children in cultures that emphasise autonomy and individual needs and desires.

The development of empathy and sympathy

Empathy and sympathy are defined as “prosocial behaviors” – voluntary actions to benefit others.

Empathy matures through early childhood, enabling a child to respond more sensitively to another’s distress. Their increased language ability expands the scope for them to empathize with people who are expressing their feelings verbally.

This developing understanding of others’ perspectives can work the other way, of course. A child may understand perfectly well why another child is in distress and may feel glad as a result!

Researchers have distinguished two reactions to the distress of another. Sympathy involves feelings of sorrow or concern for another person. This has been termed “other-oriented concern”. Personal distress, by contrast, is a self-focused reaction. Sympathy is more likely to lead to prosocial behavior. The capacity for self-regulation of emotion is key to the ability to respond with sympathy rather than just personal distress. Similarly, children with a greater capacity to focus their attention have a greater capacity for sympathy.

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Early child development is underpinned by brain development, by genetic and epigenetic inheritance and by physical development. Two key features of early childhood development that researchers study are ‘self-regulation’ and ‘executive function’.

Parental care shapes early childhood development. Neglect, the absence of adequate parental care, is a severe threat to early childhood development. Over-exposure to stress – ‘toxic stress’ – undermines development while strong relationships with parents provide protection and build resilience.

The mechanics of early childhood development

The brain

The human brain develops continually through childhood development, from before the birth and into adulthood. Like the construction of a building, the foundations are laid early. The brain builds from the bottom up in clearly defined development stages. That’s why early support for development is so important. A stronger foundation not only means the child is further ahead at a given moment in time, it also means learning and development can proceed more rapidly in the future.

Early childhood development sees the brain developing extremely rapidly. Billions of new connections are created every hour among neurons in different parts of the brain. After this rapid proliferation, brain development shifts towards efficiency. Some neural connections are made stronger and faster and others are pruned and lost. Meanwhile, the brain builds ever more sophisticated connections during later childhood and adolescence, associated with more enhanced skills. Pruning continues.

Brain development fundamentally shapes early child development stages. More basic capacities, such as vision, hearing and touch, develop earlier on. Later comes the development of more complex capacities, such as communication, understanding facial expressions, reasoning, and decision-making. Higher-level skills, such as the ability to sustain attention, set goals, follow rules, solve problems and control impulses, start developing in early childhood and continue through adolescence.

Children’s experiences of the world – how they see, hear and feel, and how they relate with parents and other carers – shape every aspect of the brain’s development. This reinforces some circuits and allowing others to be lost.

Genetics and epigenetics

The genes that children receive from their mothers and fathers give them certain predispositions and susceptibilities that influence early child development. Some children are naturally less fearful than others, for example, and those who are less fearful are less at risk of long-term anxiety and depression.

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But some researchers have found that children who are more vulnerable to adverse environments may also be more sensitive to positive experiences and profit from them more. (See our article, Tackling child behaviour problems effectively requires better understanding of differences between an ‘orchid’ child and a ‘dandelion’ child.) This provides great hope for supporting more vulnerable children.

Experiences of the world, including relationships within the family and community, can influence the expression of genes rather than the genes themselves. Positive and negative experiences result in the production of proteins that regulate gene activity, creating temporary or permanent changes in the “epigenome”. These epigenetic changes to how genes are expressed can be inherited by the next generation. For example, the children of men and women who survived the Holocaust have inherited epigenetic changes associated with response to extreme stress. (See our article, Epigenetics offers hope for disadvantaged children.)

Physical development in early childhood

Early childhood development is defined not only by brain development and genetics/epigenetics. Cardiovascular, immune, neuroendocrine and metabolic systems all have a role to play in shaping a child’s capacities for the future.

Everything is intertwined. Supporting early child development is about ensuring that all the strands are strong.

Components of early child development

Although researchers still debate how to define different components of early childhood development, a number of concepts have become mainstream in the field.

The three domains of development most widely discussed are cognitive (thinking), social and emotional. Research has demonstrated that these are closely intertwined. Their development is associated with neural activity across the entire brain.

The connections can also be seen in children’s behaviour. For example, children develop the ability to think through relationships with carers. A child with high social skills will typically develop cognitive skills more quickly.

Self-regulation

Based in a part of the brain called the amygdala is an automatic and impulsive response to risk and danger, commonly known as the “fight or flight response”. Self-regulation is the ability to bring in a more conscious response to a situation, working out how to respond in that moment. It may be that more planned responses counteract the initial fight or flight instinct. The ability to regulate emotion is a vital skill acquired in early childhood in part through relationship with carers.

Executive function

Executive function is a cluster of skills that emerge in early child development that create the foundations for learning and interacting well with others. Researchers have divided executive function into several distinct abilities:

• Working memory – holding and using information for short periods of time.
• Mental flexibility (or cognitive flexibility) – adapting quickly in response to external stimuli.
• Self-control (or inhibitory control) – resisting impulsive behaviour.
• Sustaining focus and attention throughout a task.
• Solving problems.
• Following rules.
• Setting goals.
• Delaying immediate gratification for more reward later.

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Developing executive function is a key part of the early childhood development stages. By the age of three, basic executive functions are in place – remembering and following simple rules. The skills develop substantially between the ages of three and five, but they continue to develop right through adolescence.

These more advanced stages of early child development involve increased speed and efficiency of neural circuits acting across different parts of the brain.

Parental care shapes early child development

Responsive caregiving from parents, the wider family and all those involved in a child’s life, along with experience of the world, shape children’s development. Researchers have coined the term “serve and return” to describe the reciprocal actions with parents and carers.

Multiple relationships enhance social and emotional development, building the child’s ability to sustain strong relationships in future. A child with multiple stable and caring relationships has a strong advantage. Conversely, a child without even one stable and responsive relationship is at a severe disadvantage.

Researchers have used the term “scaffolding” to describe the environment that caregivers can create for children to practice skills. Scaffolding includes establishing routines, modelling social behaviour, enabling creative play, facilitating social connection and encouraging physical exercise.

Threats to healthy early child development: neglect and toxic stress

Neglect

The world’s most widespread risk to children is a lack of responsive care, known as neglect: 78% of all child maltreatment cases in the world relate to neglect, which can have a more detrimental impact on early child development than physical abuse.

Photo: Brandon Warren. Creative Commons. 

Like physical abuse, neglect severely disrupts the brain’s development in early childhood by depriving children of adequate relationships, thereby altering the development of biological stress-response systems. Neglect is related to a multitude of poor outcomes in children’s later life – mental health, physical health, social relations and educational achievement.

Toxic stress

Stress, as a part of learning how to cope with adversity, is a normal and essential part of early child development. A threat triggers physiological changes associated with the hormone cortisol that support a quick response to mitigate the danger. A child exposed to simple stresses, and protected by strong relationships with adults, learns to cope, and to regulate the stress response system. Strong relationships can also mitigate the potentially damaging effects of high levels of stress caused by events like the death of a loved one, serious injury, or a local disaster.

Excessive and prolonged stress, termed toxic stress, is not a normal part of early child development. Examples of toxic stress include physical and emotional abuse, chronic neglect, poor care as a result of drugs or mental illness, persistent poverty and prolonged exposure to violence.

Exposure to chaos and constant threat impairs the development of self-regulation, trapping children in an instinctive fight and flight response. Toxic stress that undermines early childhood development stages is associated with many poor outcomes in later life.

Building resilience through relationships

Relationships with caregivers are the key to protecting children from the adverse effects of stress. Early in life, such care can prevent or even reverse the damaging effects of toxic stress.

Resilience emerges when a child exposed to stress also has access to reliable and nurturing relationships. A child’s heightened physiological response to stress can be restored by relating to a caring adult. Exposure to stress in the presence of a caring adult can help the child learn to feel some control in the situation and to develop self-regulation.

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