Environmental Influence On Child Development

The Influence of ASD, Poverty, and Parents’ Disorder on Child Development
Most researches about child development focuses on the typical development or typical environment. However, the environment that surrounding children varies, and even little differences could make large developmental different in each children. For example, it is believed that children have an ability to communicate with others if they learn language. However, there are many children who cannot communicate with others because of lack of language development. Especially, children with disabilities often have developmental delays and the delay influence their entire development. In addition, the environment influences on children’s development. Therefore, the influence

of ASD, poverty, and parents’ disorder on children’s development will be discussed.
Human development have many aspects. Development is unique for each child, so the timetable of children’s development varies. Development is also interrelated. All development such as physical, psychosocial, cognitive, perceptual, social, and emotional development are influenced each other (Mandleco, 2004). If some area dose not develop well, it may lead negative outcomes in other areas. Furthermore, Development is influenced by the biology in some part, whereas the environment influence on some area of development (Mandleco, 2004). Nowadays, many people believe that both nature and nurture are important, and related each other. Moreover, cultural values influence on some development, whereas most of children in all culture follow similar development (Mandleco, 2004). After all, children learn their world through may ways in first few years. Development is the series of changes, and the changes occur based on the age or level of development. Therefore, many famous psychologists believe that each people goes through age-related stages, and each stages are based on the previous stage (Mandleco, 2004).
Jean Piaget was one of the famous cognitive theorist, and he believed that each human passes through four stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, concrete operational stage, and formal stage (Green & Piel, 2010). During these four stages, humans begin to develop their learning skill to understand their world. According to Piaget, people organize pattern of though through interaction with others, such as parents, caregivers, siblings, and adults (Green & Piel, 2010). Children use their knowledge to understand new world, and they can also adjust their previous knowledge into new knowledge (Green & Piel, 2010).
At preoperational stages from age 2 to age 7, children get better understanding the world through symbolic thought, and they can also use language (Green & Piel, 2010). However, children in this stage can’t reason yet, and understanding the process of transition. In addition, they cannot take someone else’s point of view, and that is why children in proportional stage are considered to be egocentric (Green & Piel, 2010). That is, children’s thinking is self-centered unless their cognitive capabilities develop (Green & Piel, 2010). They do not understand that they cannot see it, because they only see their own perspective, not others.
This Piaget’s cognitive theory contribute to the research on cognitive development, but recent researcher believe that children can achieve higher level sooner than Piaget’s stages (Mandleco, 2004). Moreover, whereas the order of stages is usually universal in all cultures, the timing and length of stages vary in may cultures. After Piaget described cognitive developmental stage, many researchers studied how multiple skills contribute to development of Theory of Mind (TOM). TOM is a unique and complex representational system which includes increasing memory recognition, acquiring language skills, executive functioning, and problem solving abilities (Barr, 2006). Cognitive capabilities develop through inductive inference, physical causality, causal reasoning, and interactions with others. Through these interactions, children become understand that other people have different emotions, desires and knowledge (Barr, 2006). Children in infancy imitate others’ gesture when they do not have enough language skill. Even under 12 month-old infants can imitate many gestures that adult show them (Barr, 2006). That is, infants may be able to identify others. By 18 months, children begin to understand other’s desire. In addition, children become to play pretend play by 2 years-old (Barr, 2006). Pretend play requires to understanding other’s thought, emotion, and belief, even if their understanding is misunderstanding (Barr, 2006). At the age of 3, children can not demonstrate TOM, whereas they become to understand beliefs and mental states of themselves and others by 4 or 5 years of age (Matthews, Goldberg & Lukowski, 2013). Children are also able to better understand misrepresentations and conflicts (Barr, 2006).
However, the development of TOM does not follow this timetable in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (Matthews et al., 2013). Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by developmental delays in social, communication and behavior areas. The people with autism have some problem with thinking, feeling, laughing. They also have difficulty to relate to others. (American psychiatric association, 2013) As many research with typically developing children shown, there is the relationship between language acquisition and TOM development (Farrant, Maybery & Fletcher, 2012). However, most of children with ASD demonstrate a delay in TOM because of developmental problem (Matthews et al., 2013). Having a severe disability has influence on the child’s conditions for learning as well as cognitive development (Bottcher, 2012). Children with disabilities share many characteristics with typical children in general, so adult can understanding of their development within typical development in some point (Bottcher, 2012). It is important to know how many differences are existing between children with disabilities and children without disabilities (Bottcher, 2012). Bottcher (2013) stated that understanding the impact of problems and impairments that children with disabilities lead to create an interventions with a positive learning and cognitive development of children with disabilities (Bottcher, 2012).
Children’s development strongly depends on environment that surrounding children.

Many theories and researches suggest that many parents and teacher should make appropriate environment for children’s development as much as possible. However, giving such appropriate environment is not easy for families that have not enough income, because they can’t get sufficient food, clothing, and shelter (Dearing, Berry & Zaslow, 2006). Living in poverty during early childhood leads children to negative development. In fact, compared with non-poor children, poor children are more likely to be exposed many bad environments for grow up such as no playground, child care, health care, parks and after-school program around them (Dearing et al., 2006). Furthermore, poor children have fewer opportunities such as reading a book, play with toys, going to museum (Dearing et al., 2006). The IQ score of poor children also lower than non-poor children (Dearing et al., 2006). Thus, it is important to know that poverty largely impact on children’s development not only social development, but also cognitive development (Dearing et al., 2006; Henninger&

Luze,2014).
Poverty may lead caregiver’s stress and depression, and parents’ status effects children’s cognitive development (Henninger& Luze,2014).

For example, Children at familial high risk for eating disorder have cognitive differences when they are 8–10 years-old (Kothari, Rosinska, Treasure & Micali, 2014). In fact, the children of woman with anorexia nervosa (AN) have poorer motor skills at 18 months (Kothari et al., 2014). The children of woman with AN also have lower independence and less interaction with other children (Kothari et al., 2014). At age 4 years, the children of women with AN have poorer perceptual, social, motor, logical thinking , planning and reasoning skills (Kothari et al.,

2014).
Not only one but also multiple theories explain how individuals grow, change and learn as they get older. Within this framework, it is possible to understand developmental stages and support children and their family to cope with their developmental problem. Since many research showed the importance of the environment, many adults try to give children an appropriate environment. For typical children, the school curriculum may be ideal because such curriculum are often based on developmental theory. However, there is no exact way that can develop children’s social, emotional, cognitive, language, and perceptual skills for all children all over the world. Like early head start program in the U.S., it is important to make options that children in any difficult situation for development can choose.