FACTORS INFLUENCING INDIVIDUAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

HEALTH

Here are some facts about poor nutrition and learning:

1. Under-nutrition increases how often and how long a child may be sick.

2. Under-nourished children lack things that make healthy children successful.

3. Iron deficiency and anemia occur among large numbers of children.

Early Brain Development

Brain and biological development during the first years of life is highly influenced by an infant’s health.

Adequate stimulation and nutrition - essential for development during the first three years of life.

Risk Factors Four risk factors affect at least 20–25% of infants

and young children in developing countries:

1. malnutrition that is chronic and severe enough to cause growth stunting

2. inadequate stimulation or learning opportunities 3. iodine deficiency4. iron deficiency anaemia.

Other important risk factors are malaria, intrauterine growth restriction, maternal depression, exposure to violence, and exposure to heavy metals

Economic Impact Early opportunities for learning in combination

with improved nutrition, increases the likelihood that a child will attend school and become an adult with higher income, better health, lower crime rates, and lower levels of welfare dependence than those who do not receive early development support.

INBORN A quick search in the educational

psychology literature yields keywords such as environment, learning, mind/body connection, enrichment, individual

These terms are extremely relevant to educational theories, yet are difficult to define with respect to the underlying.

Multiple intelligences theory (Gardner, 1983, 1993) and other progressive "brain-based" educational initiatives are proving successful because they exploit an individual's predisposition for certain learning styles or types of sensory information.

It is clear that substantial variation in learning behaviors exists, and that such variation in their components reflects the results of numerous developmental battles between nature and nurture.

ACQUIRED

Cognitive Development

Language Development

Cognitive Development The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget took a different

approach to explain about how does a child acquire the knowledge of world.

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development conceives of intelligence as developing through four stages.

Sensory motor development Preoperational development Concrete operational development Formal operational development since sensory motor

development takes places in infancy and toddler hood.

Sensory Motor Stage During the first 2 years babies change from

creatures who respond primarily through reflexes and random behaviour into goal-oriented toddlers.

During the sensory motor stages, children develop several important cognitive concepts: Object permanence: the realization that an object

or person continues to exist even when out of sight.

Casualty: awareness of casualty develops at about 10 months.

Language Development Language learning depends upon maturation of

brain processes and physical structures concerned with making of speech sounds.

Language development among infants occurs in stages. Children, the world over, go through certain stage is acquiring knowledge, which are:

(a)Crying and babbling(b)Followed by one-word sentences(c)Followed by longer or two-word sentences(d)Telegraphic speech and(e)The use of complex grammatical rules.

End of second month: laugh and coo, making soft how vowel sound in response to others.

5 or 6 months: babbling being. Babbling increases until the infant is between 12 months of age then decreases after the first real words are produced.

First word around the age of 11 to 12 months:

comprehension develops earlier and more rapidly than production.

Age of 18 month: the child has the vocabulary of about 50 words.

After the age of two years: the vocabulary continues to grow at a rapid age.