Infant Observation

Infant Observation Report

On February eighteenth our Life-Span Development class at Dordt College had five visitors, two of which were mothers, a two month old, a five month old and a three year old child. These mothers kindly volunteered their time to lets us observe the physical, cognitive, and social development of Cooper and Mariah. The observation went well and it lasted about an hour, my classmates and I were able to observe and take note of the development of the infants.

The first infant that we observed was Cooper, he is a white two month old baby boy, and his mother kindly brought him in and consented the observation. Coopers mother explained that she had a tough time with her pregnancy. Before she became pregnant she was taking

She sleeps well at night and sleeps for about eleven hours a day in her bassinette. Mariah can already sit by herself at 5.5months old, she can flip over but not quite all of the way and she can lift her head up. Mariah’s mother explained the Mariah does not yet have separation anxiety (Santrock 2014). One example of this was she her mom left the room and gave Mariah to Professor Elgersma to hold Mariah did not fuss at all as she seemed to be very content. She does not seem to have much recognition either, but she does seem to recognize her mom and her sister and she responds to them sometimes. She mainly responds to loud noises, but she does quite respond to not her name yet. Mariah also responds to peek-a-boo, which is dishabituation “recovery of a habituated response after a change in stimulation.” (Santrock 2014, pg. 86) When Mariah was born her mother took two months off from work at the dance studio and one week off from working with the Dordt dance team. Her father was busy with football when she was born and because of this Mariah was not as attached to her father as she was to his mother. Now he is not as busy with football so the balance is much better. This can be described as scaffolding, which is “the process in which parents time interactions so that infants experience turn-taking with their parents.” (Santrock, 2014, pg.

72) An example of this is when her mother explained that Mariah could not crawl yet, but she could go up on her hands and not quite her knees yet. Mariah also moves her toy around with her hands and her feet, but she has much more control moving the object with her hand and arms. Mariah moves around a fair amount and likes to grab things, she has some gross movement control (Sanntrock 2014). She cannot quite stand on her own but she can stand with quite a bit of assistance. She does not have any depth perception and she cannot recognize her own reflection in the mirror. Mariah’s interests include, grabbing things, grabbing things and putting them in her mouth, sleeping and eating, these characteristics are typical for a five and a half month old