While reading chapter 10 of the textbook I thought the part about social development in infants and children was interesting. It talked about how at first infants are very interested in other people's faces and tend to look at faces more then anywhere else. Very soon after birth children will be happy with complete strangers and don't mind who they are with. As they age and get to around the 8 month mark they may scream or cry when approached by a stranger which is known as stranger anxiety.
Another thing that is interesting about infant social development is the large differences in how infants react to the same things. Some infants are very happy and adapt to whatever they are presented with. Other infants are difficult and tend to be fussy and are frustrated easily. Another group of infants are upset at first but when the same thing is presented over and over they get used to it and eventually they don't really mind the stimuli at all.
This difference in social reactions is very interesting to me. I never knew that babies reacted so differently to the same things. Another thing I realized is this stage is very important in someone's life because the babies are constantly looking at their parents and are heavily influenced by how they act and if they are happy often or upset about something.
I agree with you that it was interesting to learn that the parents' reaction to a specific stimuli are adopted by the baby. I've experienced this personally: my aunt is deathly afraid of bugs and screams at the sight of them, and her son now does the same, even though he should be stepping on them or squishing them with a stick. I also find the difference in reactions are interesting, like how babies can either be easy, difficult, or in-between.
I will join you both in stating that it is interesting that we can classify babies and their social interaction. Also intriguing is that so high a percentage can be classified into the three groups. Like 60% of US babies are in the easy category. Also a point I found interesting is that these characteristics stick with the child throughout their life for the most part.
I go stay with my every occasional weekend, and she is remarried with a three-and-a-half-year-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old. So, for the past few years, especially before coming to college, I have witnessed firsthand how humans develop, from less than a day old until the ages I stated above. My mother also used to operate a home-daycare, and she currently runs a preschool one day a week for toddlers, so I've had quite a bit of experience with infants and small children. I found this chapter particularly fascinating, too, because I recognized some of the things it said that infants do, as well as learning some new things. However, I would say that infants are far more unique than the textbook communicated. Yes, there are many personality types, like it said, but I don't think infants all follow faces as much (of course, this is just based on my life experience, not careful research, but I still think it can be considered). I've held many infants, and I would say they don't follow faces so much as things that stand out to them--for instance, infants will focus on my dark hair rather than my face, since it's so much darker than anything else. I think infants begin to recognize people who hold them often--for instance, if they've been held by too many strangers, they'll cry until someone familiar, usually a parent, holds them again. But again, I don't think you can generalize what infants can and can recognize as much as the book did; rather, I'd say focus on an individual infant to get a sense of their true mental development.
What intrigued me most was the idea of gauging an infant's interest by measuring how long he or she looks at it. Researchers must have come up with the old and common idiom "to catch someone's eye!" However, at the same time, I thought how valid this measurement would be. The longer infants stare at something, the stronger their interests in it? Since infants cannot tell us what they are thinking about, it is required to develop methods in order to measure it. It sounds reasonable to me to assume that if infants look at something longer than any other things, they are showing different feelings about it, perhaps interest. Psychologists always surprise me with their brilliant experiments!
From reading your blog post, taking this course, and a human development course, I have a better understanding of infant capabilities. While it seems like all babies do is cry, eat, and poop, we as a scientific community are learning that even from a young age, infants are able to do lots of things that we assumed they couldn't. It's interesting that even with their poor vision, babies have visual preferences. I don't suggest wild experiments to determine what babies can and cannot do, but they're definitely more capable than we think.
You felt same as me !
When I read that part, I was also surprised that infants "know" what is familiar and strange. At first, I thought to infants, everything would be same and no differences. However, after I studied this chapter, I realized that infants can notice changes! It was so surprising when a professor showed a video that infants can detect littel differences in Indian word which I couldn't notice at all. And my mom always tell me how I was and she described me as "bitch-like infant" because I went to the young, pretty woman or males but I had never acted closely to old ladies like grandma. Whenever grandmothers tried to hug me or say hello to me, I cried. I think it could be an another example that shows infants also thinks and notices the differences.