Infant observation

A detailed Summary of Infant observation

On Wednesday, July 19th, I had a chance to observe carefully an infant for about half an hour in my psychology class at Santa Monica College. The infant, Ali Osman is a healthy, playfull boy, appeared to be of Middle Eastern origin. He is 15.5 months old, 32" tall and weighs about 24 lbs with brown curly hair, dark brown eyes and fairly tanned skin.

1. There were several kinds of toys like blocks, dolls, automobiles... in the room. However, when he just came in, he was immediately drawn to the dolls with intense focus. Eventhough there wasn't any way to measure his heart rate or brain wave, I could easily tell how interested he was by the way he gazed, touched and played with the dolls. This could be explained by the fact that "the perception of an unfamiliar stimulus usually elicits physiological responses" (Berger, p. 156). Later, this explanation of mine for his behavior was confirmed to be correct by his mother that he had never seen a doll before. Clearly, he was sensing the strange object and trying to perceive it. And exactly as the text said, "eventually, habituation occurs, in which the stimulus becomes so familiar and uninteresting that these responses slow down." (Berger, p. 156), he got tired of the dolls

2. According to table 5.2, the Age Norms for Motor Skills in Berger, p. 153, for his age of 15.5 months, 90% of all babies master the skill of walking. Beside being able to walk, just like the majority of infants at his age (from 1-2 years old), Ali is quite a toddler, "for the characteristic way they move their bodies, toddling from side to side." (Berger, p. 151). Still toddling but Ali obviously belongs to the upper half of the population in mastering his gross motorskill since he is also able to walk backward, a skill that only 50% of infant could master at his age according to again table 5.2.

and began to pay attention to other toys and people around.

4. After playing for awhile, he came up to me with a book and showed me the content, then he gurgled something, clearly wanting me to read it to him. His intention was well understood. Without sufficient vocabulary, using only hollowphrases, he still has no communication problem, afterall, communication is about understanding not vocabulary anyway (Berger, p. 198). He showed clear signs of understanding his mother's commands such as "up, down, kiss, bye..." by following them. His spoken language has been developed normally according to table 6.2 in Berger, p. 194. One interesting thing was that when he was sitting in the chair and reading the book, he did not make any recognizable word but "bla..bla..bla...", however, the way I see it, that was not babbling, he was probably pretending to read but he could not find any word that matched with the content of the book so he ended up with that one-size-fits-all babble.

I cannot believ

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1086
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Science