Prenatal development - Assignment Example

Prenatal al Affiliation Prenatal Development Newborn today demonstrates enormous capabilities. They also go through various things and challenges as they develop. This paper seeks to focus on newborn competency.There are various views on the newborn competency. Firstly, there is a view on infant’s attention. Attention enables the children to do several things. For example, they are able to decipher on what is important, what is needed, and what is dangerous (Dacey & Travers, 2008, p.127). The attention is achieved through brain internalization of the external factors, and through physiological and psychological mechanism (Dacey & Travers, 2008, p.128). This causes children to respond to any stimuli especially the moderate one.

Secondly, is on infants and memory. Children have the capability to remember, and this makes them possible to learn about their world (Dacey & Travers, 2008, p. 128). This occurs through the repetition of action in which they drive pleasure. This enables them to distinguish a new thing from the one they have stored in memory (Dacey & Travers, 2008, p.129). In fact, with time an infant memory is the same as that one of older children. Thirdly, there is more evidence shown on child competency based on language development.

Infants learn a language they have not heard before and make it familiar. All this happens without any formal training. I totally agree with the view of child competency based on language development.Parenting practices influences infant development in myriad ways. Parents are able to influence infant development through their actions and behavior. This is because infant changes the behaviors of their parents (Dacey & Travers, 2008, p.105). For example, they change parent eating, sleeping, and working habits.

According to neonates, they have the ability to imitate immediately after birth (Dacey & Travers, 2008, p.113). The parents also influence infant development through the environment they expose the infant. A supportive environment will result into more connections in parts of the brain responsible for such interaction (Dacey & Travers, 2008, p. 111). The influence can also take place through exposure of the infant to various objects and colors (Dacey & Travers, 2008, p.122). In addition, this can happen through physical contact and generation of sound.

ReferenceDacey, J & Travers, J. (2008). Human Development across the Lifespan. New York: McGraw Hill