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Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University

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The science of child development points to three core principles that can guide what society needs to do to help children and families thrive. These include:

1. Supporting responsive relationships

2. Strengthening core life skills

3. Reducing sources of stress

Play in early childhood is an effective way of supporting all three of these principles. In this video, learn more about how play can foster children's resilience to hardship, and how the complex interactions involved when children play help build their brains.

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Play in Early Childhood: The Role of Play in Any Setting

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The science of child development points to three core principles that can guide what society needs to do to help children and families thrive. These include: Supporting responsive relationships Strengthening core life skills Reducing sources of stress Play in early childhood is an effective way of supporting all three of these principles.

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How infants communicate/Baby Cues - Grow Well - Read Well - Videos for parents teachers & caregivers

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Early learning resources for young children 

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Early learning resources for young children 

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WXXI Education is focused on anytime, anywhere learning resources to support educators and families. Our online learning resources include PBS LearningMedia, virtual training and events, and live streams of WXXI-TV & WXXI PBS KIDS 24/7 with on-demand players. These provide educators, students and families with rich choices for learning.

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Ages zero to three are the most important for lifelong mental health and well-being.

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Pax tools for teachers. students, community.

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PAX Tools Self-paced Training for Youth Workers provides youth workers with the strategies and materials to implement PAX Tools – 8 evidence-based strategies for working with youth in the community. PAX Tools for Youth Workers ensures everyone who works with youth has access to evidence-based behavioral support strategies.

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PAX tool flyer

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Piaget's Stages of cognitive development

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Piaget's Stages of cognitive development

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Piaget's stages ofcognitive development

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Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four different stages of learning. His theory focuses not only on understanding how children acquire knowledge, but also on understanding the nature of intelligence. Piaget's stages are:

Sensorimotor stage: Birth to 2 years

Preoperational stage: Ages 2 to 7

Concrete operational stage: Ages 7 to 11

Formal operational stage: Ages 12 and up

Piaget believed that children take an active role in the learning process, acting much like little scientists as they perform experiments, make observations, and learn about the world. As kids interact with the world around them, they continually add new knowledge, build upon existing knowledge, and adapt previously held ideas to accommodate new information.

History of Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

Piaget was born in Switzerland in the late 1800s and was a precocious student, publishing his first scientific paper when he was just 11 years old. His early exposure to the intellectual development of children came when he worked as an assistant to Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon as they worked to standardize their famous IQ test.

Piaget vs. Vygotsky

Piaget's theory differs in important ways from those of Lev Vygotsky, another influential figure in the field of child development. Vygotsky acknowledged the roles that curiosity and active involvement play in learning, but placed greater emphasis on society and culture.

Piaget felt that development is largely fueled from within, while Vygotsky believed that external factors (such as culture) and people (such as parents, caregivers, and peers) play a more significant role.

Much of Piaget's interest in the cognitive development of children was inspired by his observations of his own nephew and daughter. These observations reinforced his budding hypothesis that children's minds were not merely smaller versions of adult minds.

Until this point in history, children were largely treated simply as smaller versions of adults. Piaget was one of the first to identify that the way that children think is different from the way adults think.

Piaget proposed that intelligence grows and develops through a series of stages. Older children do not just think more quickly than younger children. Instead, there are both qualitative and quantitative differences between the thinking of young children versus older children.

Based on his observations, he concluded that children were not less intelligent than adults-they simply think differently. Albert Einstein called Piaget's discovery "so simple only a genius could have thought of it."

Piaget's stage theory describes the cognitive development of children. Cognitive development involves changes in cognitive process and abilities. In Piaget's view, early cognitive development involves processes based upon actions and later progresses to changes in mental operations.

The Sensorimotor Stage of Cognitive Development

During this earliest stage of cognitive development, infants and toddlers acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating objects. A child's entire experience at the earliest period of this stage occurs through basic reflexes, senses, and motor responses.
Birth to 2 Years
Major characteristics and developmental changes during this stage:

Know the world through movements and sensations

Learn about the world through basic actions such as sucking, grasping, looking, and listening

Learn that things continue to exist even when they cannot be seen (object permanence)

Realize that they are separate beings from the people and objects around them

Realize that their actions can cause things to happen in the world around them

During the sensorimotor stage, children go through a period of dramatic growth and learning. As kids interact with their environment, they continually make new discoveries about how the world works.

The cognitive development that occurs during this period takes place over a relatively short time and involves a great deal of growth. Children not only learn how to perform physical actions such as crawling and walking; they also learn a great deal about language from the people with whom they interact. Piaget also broke this stage down into substages. Early representational thought emerges during the final part of the sensorimotor stage.

Piaget believed that developing object permanence or object constancy, the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, was an important element at this point of development.

By learning that objects are separate and distinct entities and that they have an existence of their own outside of individual perception, children are then able to begin to attach names and words to objects.

The Preoperational Stage of Cognitive Development

The foundations of language development may have been laid during the previous stage, but the emergence of language is one of the major hallmarks of the preoperational stage of development.
2 to 7 Years
Major characteristics and developmental changes during this stage:

Begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent objects

Tend to be egocentric and struggle to see things from the perspective of others

Getting better with language and thinking, but still tend to think in very concrete terms

At this stage, kids learn through pretend play but still struggle with logic and taking the point of view of other people. They also often struggle with understanding the idea of constancy.

Children become much more skilled at pretend play during this stage of development, yet they continue to think very concretely about the world around them.

For example, a researcher might take a lump of clay, divide it into two equal pieces, and then give a child the choice between two pieces of clay to play with. One piece of clay is rolled into a compact ball while the other is smashed into a flat pancake shape. Because the flat shape looks larger, the preoperational child will likely choose that piece, even though the two pieces are exactly the same size.

The Concrete Operational Stage of Cognitive Development

While children are still very concrete and literal in their thinking at this point in development, they become much more adept at using logic.﻿﻿ The egocentrism of the previous stage begins to disappear as kids become better at thinking about how other people might view a situation.
7 to 11 Years
Major characteristics and developmental changes during this stage:

Begin to think logically about concrete events

Begin to understand the concept of conservation; that the amount of liquid in a short, wide cup is equal to that in a tall, skinny glass, for example

Thinking becomes more logical and organized, but still very concrete

Begin using inductive logic, or reasoning from specific information to a general principle

While thinking becomes much more logical during the concrete operational state, it can also be very rigid. Kids at this point in development tend to struggle with abstract and hypothetical concepts.

During this stage, children also become less egocentric and begin to think about how other people might think and feel. Kids in the concrete operational stage also begin to understand that their thoughts are unique to them and that not everyone else necessarily shares their thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

The Formal Operational Stage of Cognitive Development

The final stage of Piaget's theory involves an increase in logic, the ability to use deductive reasoning, and an understanding of abstract ideas. At this point, adolescents and young adults become capable of seeing multiple potential solutions to problems and think more scientifically about the world around them.
Age 12 and Up
Major characteristics and developmental changes during this time:

Begins to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems

Begins to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical, social, and political issues that require theoretical and abstract reasoning

Begins to use deductive logic, or reasoning from a general principle to specific information

The ability to thinking about abstract ideas and situations is the key hallmark of the formal operational stage of cognitive development. The ability to systematically plan for the future and reason about hypothetical situations are also critical abilities that emerge during this stage.

Important Cognitive Development Concepts

It is important to note that Piaget did not view children's intellectual development as a quantitative process. That is, kids do not just add more information and knowledge to their existing knowledge as they get older.

Instead, Piaget suggested that there is a qualitative change in how children think as they gradually process through these four stages. At age 7, children don't just have more information about the world than they did at age 2; there is a fundamental change in how they think about the world.

Piaget suggested several factors that influence how children learn and grow.

A schema describes both the mental and physical actions involved in understanding and knowing. Schemas are categories of knowledge that help us to interpret and understand the world.

In Piaget's view, a schema includes both a category of knowledge and the process of obtaining that knowledge. As experiences happen, this new information is used to modify, add to, or change previously existing schemas.

For example, a child may have a schema about a type of animal, such as a dog. If the child's sole experience has been with small dogs, a child might believe that all dogs are small, furry, and have four legs. Suppose then that the child encounters an enormous dog. The child will take in this new information, modifying the previously existing schema to include these new observations.

Assimilation

The process of taking in new information into our already existing schemas is known as assimilation. The process is somewhat subjective because we tend to modify experiences and information slightly to fit in with our preexisting beliefs. In the example above, seeing a dog and labeling it "dog" is a case of assimilating the animal into the child's dog schema.

Accommodation

Another part of adaptation is the ability to change existing schemas in light of new information; this process is known as accommodation. New schemas may also be developed during this process.

Equilibration

As children progress through the stages of cognitive development, it is important to maintain a balance between applying previous knowledge (assimilation) and changing behavior to account for new knowledge (accommodation).

Piaget believed that all children try to strike a balance between assimilation and accommodation using a mechanism he called equilibration. Equilibration helps explain how children can move from one stage of thought to the next.

One of the main points of Piaget's theory is that creating knowledge and intelligence is an inherently active process.

"I find myself opposed to the view of knowledge as a passive copy of reality," Piaget wrote. "I believe that knowing an object means acting upon it, constructing systems of transformations that can be carried out on or with this object. Knowing reality means constructing systems of transformations that correspond, more or less adequately, to reality."

Piaget's theory of cognitive development helped add to our understanding of children's intellectual growth. It also stressed that children were not merely passive recipients of knowledge. Instead, kids are constantly investigating and experimenting as they build their understanding of how the world works.

Additional Reading

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What Is Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development?

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Psychologist Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development has 4 stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.

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Rewards for children

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PAX Tools - Mystery Motivators / Motivadores Misteriosos

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Your career and professional empowerment portalSupport for wherever you are on your journey as an early childhood professional.

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Baby Feeding Guide 2025: Schedules, Cues, and Tips for Healthy Growth

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Feeding your baby is not just about nutrition—it’s about building trust, comfort, and healthy habits that can last a lifetime. Many parents wonder: How often should I feed my baby? When is the right time to start solids? What are the signs that my baby is full? In this comprehensive Baby Feeding Guide 2025, you’ll lear

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Pathways.org | Track Your Baby’s Milestones?

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Track baby’s milestones from birth to 3 years old. Watch videos of milestones in action.

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Screening young children is an effective, efficient way for professionals to check a child's development, help parents celebrate their child's milestones and know what to look for next, and determine whether follow-up steps are needed. It's also an essential first step toward identifying children with delays or disorders in the critical early years, before they start school.

Did you know?

Because social-emotional and developmental delays in children can be subtle, most children who would benefit from early intervention aren't identified until after they start school. In fact, this happens 70% of the time when busy pediatricians and specialists rely on clinical judgment alone.¹

Developmental delays, learning disorders, and behavioral and social-emotional problems are estimated to affect 1 in every 6 children.² Only 20% to 30% of these children are identified as needing help before school begins.³

Intervention before kindergarten has huge academic, social, and economic benefits. Studies have shown that children who receive early treatment for developmental delays are more likely to graduate from high school, hold jobs, live independently, and avoid teen pregnancy, delinquency, and violent crime, which results in a savings to society of about $30,000 to $100,000 per child.⁴

If social-emotional problems are identified and addressed early, children are less likely to be placed in special education programs-and later in life, they're also less likely to experience school failure and unemployment.

Experts Agree: Screening is Essential

Because early childhood screening has so many benefits, influential laws and organizations have made it a top priority:

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires states to identify, locate, and evaluate all children with disabilities who are in need of early intervention or special education services.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that all infants and young children be screened for delays as a regular part of their ongoing health care.⁵

The Center for Disease Control (CDC)'s national campaign Learn the Signs. Act Early encourages parents to monitor their child's development, participate in developmental screenings, and share any concerns early.

The Head Start Program Performance Standards require use of research-based, standardized, culturally appropriate developmental screening tools for all children within 45 days of program entry.

The American Academy of Neurology (AAN) and the Child Neurology Society (CNS) call for screening at all well-child visits from infancy through school-age and "at any age thereafter if concerns are raised about social acceptance, learning, or behavior."⁶

Medicaid's Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnosis and Treatment (EPSDT) benefit requires screening at each well-child visit.

The Help Me Grow system model, adopted in 28 states across the U.S., aims to increase the rates of developmental screening. One of the key goals of Help Me Grow is to identify children at risk for delays and connect them to services that can help.

Birth to 5: Watch Me Thrive!, a coordinated federal effort, is committed to encouraging universal developmental and behavioral screening. They've compiled a helpful Compendium of Screening Measures for Young Children to assist programs in choosing a research-based tool.

Many state quality rating improvement systems (QRIS) include use of developmental and social-emotional screening tools as requirements or quality indicators.

ASQ is the Answer

Your choice of screening tool can determine so much about a young child's outcomes-so you'll want to choose one that's reliable, research-based, and rigorously reviewed. Here's why ASQ® is your answer:

__________________________________

Sources:
¹ Glascoe, F.P. (2000). Early detection of developmental and behavioral problems. Pediatrics in Review, 21(8), 272-280.
² Dunkle, M. (Fall 2004). High Quality Developmental Screening. Developmental & Behavioral News, 13(2).
³ Component Seven: Surveillance and Screening Facilitator Manual, Medical Home Initiatives for Children with Special Needs. Retrieved January 2, 2006, http://www.medicalhomeinfo.org/training/materials/April2004Curriculum/SS/Screening Facilitator.pdf
⁴ Glascoe, F.P., Shapiro, H.L. (2004, May 27). Introduction to Developmental and Behavioral Screening.developmental behavioral pediatrics online. Retrieved December 16, 2005, from http://www.dbpeds.org/articles/detail.cfm?id=5
⁵ American Academy of Pediatrics (2001, July). Developmental Surveillance and Screening of Infants and Young Children, Pediatrics, 108(1), 192-196.
⁶ American Academy of Neurology and the Child Neurology Society, (2000, August). Practice parameter: Screening and diagnosis of autism, Neurology, 468-479.

" ASQ-3 has helped make our staff and our families more aware of developmentally appropriate growth and development. The resources that come with the ASQ-3 have been instrumental for parents to provide school readiness activities at home and to understand the objectives that we cover in our plans."

Jessica Trail, Head of Faculty & Administration, The Young School

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Screening young children is an effective, efficient way for professionals to check a child's development, help parents celebrate their child's milestones and know what to look for next, and determine whether follow-up steps are needed. It's also an essential first step toward identifying children with delays or disorders in the critical early years, before they start school.

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Sensory play and lesson ideas for infants

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Sensory play and lesson ideas for infants

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480 Kids ideas in 2025 | infant activities, toddler activities, toddler learning activities

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Save your favorites to your Pinterest board! | infant activities, toddler activities, toddler learning activities

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14.3: Cognitive Theorists- Piaget, Elkind, Kohlberg, and Gilligan

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Cognition refers to thinking and memory processes, and cognitive development refers to long-term changes in these processes.

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Research has proved that showing you baby high contrast images can help strengthen their cognitive abilities as well as their gross motor skills.

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Attachment can be defined as a deep and enduring emotional bond between two people in which each seeks closeness and feels more secure when in the presence of the attachment figure.

The initial and perhaps most crucial emotional bond forms between infants and their primary caregivers.

Distinct behaviors characterize attachment in children and adults, such as seeking closeness with the attachment figure when distressed or threatened (Bowlby, 1969).

John Bowlby

Attachment theory in psychology finds its roots in the pioneering work of John Bowlby (1958). During the 1930s, Bowlby was a psychiatrist at a Child Guidance Clinic in London, treating numerous emotionally troubled children.

His experiences there underscored the significance of a child's relationship with their mother in shaping their social, emotional, and cognitive development.

It molded his understanding of the connection between early separations from the mother and subsequent maladjustment, leading him to develop his attachment theory.

The attachment bond isn't coincidental. Its primary purpose is to ensure the survival of the vulnerable infant, requiring the constant presence of a caregiver (Bowlby, 1973, 1980).

Viewed from this lens, attachment emerges as an evolutionary concept. The behavior of seeking proximity is universally observed across cultures (Van Ijzendoorn & Sagi-Schwartz, 2008).

Bowlby (1988) contended that the drive for proximity arises from an interconnected set of behavioral systems that collectively shape behavior. These include the attachment, caregiving, and exploratory behavioral systems.

Attachment Behavioral System

The attachment behavioral system concerns the tendency of an individual to seek security during times of stress (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2003), which can be internal (i.e., hunger, fatigue, illness) or from external features of the environment, such as threatening stimuli (Bowlby, 1988).

The more extreme the stress, the more intense the attachment system activation. The attachment system is most readily activated during the first five years of life, a period characterized by high levels of vulnerability and dependence.

Once the attachment system is activated, the infant is motivated to seek proximity to significant others (attachment figures) to protect themselves from physical or emotional harm (Bowlby, 1969).

If this goal is achieved, the infant develops feelings of safety and security, and their attachment system becomes deactivated. The infant will call upon a range of attachment behaviors with the goal of attaining proximity to the attachment figure.

Bowlby (1988) suggests the attachment behavioral system remains important throughout life and will also motivate adults to seek proximity in times of stress during adulthood.

Caregiving System

The attachment figure is viewed as a 'safe haven', and their role is to correspondingly alter their level of responsiveness to deactivate the infant's attachment system by promoting feelings of security.

George and Solomon (1996) call this reciprocal response of the attachment figure to the infant's attachment system the 'caregiving' system.

Bowlby (1969) posits that the caregiving system exists to provide protection and support to others in need of assistance, through providing sensitive and responsive care.

The caregiving system is activated when an individual expresses a need for support or their attachment system is activated, and is deactivated when the care recipient appears to be in a secure state (Shaver & Mikulincer, 2006).

Once activated, the caregiver may utilize a variety of behavioral strategies intended to improve the other person's well-being, re-establishing their felt security, and facilitating their coping efforts.

Caregiving strategies include validating a person's worries, providing physical closeness and affection, and communicating that a person is loved and valued (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007).

In addition to attachment behaviors, the caregiving system can support exploratory behaviors (Feeney, 2004).

The Importance of Early Emotional Bonds

Attachment behavior in adults toward the child includes responding sensitively and appropriately to the child's needs. Such behavior appears universal across cultures.

Attachments are most likely to form with those who responded accurately to the baby's signals, not the person they spent more time with. Schaffer and Emerson called this sensitive responsiveness.

Reciprocity is the mutual, two-way interaction between an infant and caregiver, where both respond to each other's signals, such as when a baby's smile evokes a smile in return. This interaction is vital for a child's development, establishing their foundational trust and shaping future relationships and learning.

Exploratory Behavioral System

When infants feel safe and secure, and their attachment system is deactivated, their energy can be devoted to what Bowlby (1969) refers to as the exploratory behavioral system.

The exploratory behavioral system refers to behaviors that drive the organism to interact with the environment in a bid to inspect it, manipulate it, and master it (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007).

According to Bowlby (1969), the exploratory system is activated by novelty and is terminated when a person exhibits a sense of competence and familiarity with their environment. From this perspective, attachment figures can also be seen as a 'secure base' which infants use to explore their social world (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978).

The more assured the infant is in the availability of their attachment figure in times of stress, the more likely they will interact with others and their environment. Thus attachment, far from interfering with exploration, is viewed as nurturing exploration.

Caregivers who provide a secure base allow infants to become autonomous, inquisitive, and experimental. Children who lack a secure base find their attachment system keeps overriding their attempts to be autonomous and to competently interact with their social environment.

This, in turn, can impair and harm a child's social, emotional, and cognitive development (Bowlby, 1980). Of course, not all attachment figures become a secure base, and this function is based on the responsiveness of their caregiver towards the infant (Ainsworth & Wittig, 1969).

Ainsworth et al. proposed the interconnecting between attachment and exploratory systems are adaptive as they ensure a balance between protection and exploration of the social and physical environment.

Ainsworth's Strange Situation

Mary Ainsworth and her colleagues discovered three major patterns that infants attach to their primary caregivers ("mother figures") from their Strange Situation Procedure (Ainsworth et al., 1978).

The study recruited four different samples of infants at around one year of age, and engaged them in the Strange Situation procedure, roughly described below:

An infant was put into an unfamiliar environment with his or her mother and was free to explore the environment; a stranger entered the room and gradually approached the infant; the mother then left the room, returning after the infant spent some time alone with the stranger.

Ainsworth and colleagues observed how comfortable each infant was physically farther away from the mother in an unfamiliar environment, how each infant interacted with the stranger, and how each infant greeted the mother upon her return.

Based on the observations, they sorted the infants into three groups: secure, anxious, and avoidant.

Attachment Styles

Attachment styles refer to the particular way in which an individual relates to other people. The style of attachment is formed at the very beginning of life, and once established, it is a style that stays with you and plays out today in how you relate in intimate relationships and in how you parent your children.

The concept involves one's confidence in the availability of the attachment figure for use as a secure base from which one can freely explore the world when not in distress and a safe haven from which one can seek support, protection, and comfort in times of distress.

Secure Attachment

Bowlby (1988) described secure attachment as the capacity to connect well and securely in relationships with others while also having the capacity for autonomous action as situationally appropriate.

Secure attachment is characterized by trust, an adaptive response to being abandoned, and the belief that one is worthy of love.

An infant with a secure attachment is characterized as actively seeking and maintaining proximity with the mother, especially during the reunion episode. The infant may or may not be friendly with the stranger, but always shows more interest in interacting with the mother.

Additionally, during the same situation the infant tended to be slightly distressed during separation from the mother, but the infant rarely cried.

Ainsworth and colleagues interpreted infants who were securely attached to their mothers, showed less anxiousness and more positive attitudes toward the relationship, and were likely because they believed in their mothers' responsiveness towards their needs.

Anxious (Ambivalent) Attachment

Anxious attachment (also called ambivalent) relationships are characterized by a concern that others will not reciprocate one's desire for intimacy. This is

caused when an infant learns that their caregiver or parent is unreliable and does not consistently provide responsive care towards their needs.

An anxiously attached infant is characterized as being somewhat ambivalent (and resistant) to the mother. The infant often demonstrated signs of resisting interactions with the mother, especially during the strange situation reunion episode.

However, once contact with the mother was gained, the infant also showed strong intentions to maintain such contact. Overall, ambivalent infants often displayed maladaptive behaviors throughout the Strange Situation.

Ainsworth and colleagues found ambivalent infants to be anxious and unconfident about their mothers' responsiveness, and their mothers were observed to lack "the fine sense of timing" in responding to the infants' needs.

As adults, those with an anxious preoccupied attachment style are overly concerned with the uncertainty of a relationship. They hold a negative working model of self and a positive working model of others.

Avoidant Attachment

Children with avoidant attachment styles tend to avoid interaction with the caregiver, and show no distress during separation. This may be because the parent has ignored attempts to be intimate, and the child may internalize the belief that they cannot depend on this or any other relationship.

An infant with an avoidant attachment was characterized as displaying little to no tendency to seek proximity with the mother.

The infant often showed no distress during separation from the mother, interacted with the stranger similarly to how he or she would interact with the mother, and showed slight signs of avoidance (turning away, avoiding eye contact, etc.) when reunited with the mother.

Ainsworth and colleagues interpreted infants' avoidance behaviors as a defensive mechanism against the mothers' own rejecting behaviors, such as being uncomfortable with physical contact or being more easily angered by the infants.

Disorganized (Fearful) Attachment

Main and Solomon (1986) discovered that a sizable proportion of infants did not fit into secure, anxious, or avoidant, based on their behaviors in the Strange Situation experiment. They categorized these infants as having a disorganized attachment type.

Disorganized attachment is classified by children who display sequences of behaviors that lack readily observable goals or intentions, including obviously contradictory behaviors or stilling/freezing of movements.

Main and Solomon found that the parents of disorganized infants often had unresolved attachment-related traumas, which caused the parents to display either frightened or frightening behaviors, resulting in the disorganized infants being confused or forcing them to rely on someone they were afraid of at the same time.

Stages of Attachment

Rudolph Schaffer and Peggy Emerson (1964) investigated if attachment develops through a series of stages by studying 60 babies at monthly intervals for the first 18 months of life (this is known as a longitudinal study).

The children were all studied in their own homes, and a regular pattern was identified in the development of attachment.

The babies were visited monthly for approximately one year, their interactions with their carers were observed, and carers were interviewed.

A diary was kept by the mother to examine the evidence for the development of attachment. Three measures were recorded:

* Stranger Anxiety - response to arrival of a stranger.

* Separation Anxiety - distress level when separated from carer, degree of comfort needed on return.

* Social Referencing - degree that child looks at carer to check how they should respond to something new (secure base).

They discovered that baby's attachments develop in the following sequence:

Very young infants are asocial in that many kinds of stimuli, both social and non-social, produce a favorable reaction, such as a smile.

Indiscriminate Attachments (6 weeks to 7 months)

Infants indiscriminately enjoy human company; most babies respond equally to any caregiver. They get upset when an individual ceases to interact with them.

From 3 months, infants smile more at familiar faces and can be easily comfortable by a regular caregiver.

Specific Attachment (7 - 9 months)

Special preference for a single attachment figure. The baby looks to particular people for security, comfort, and protection. It shows fear of strangers (stranger fear) and unhappiness when separated from a special person ( separation anxiety).

Some babies show stranger fear and separation anxiety much more frequently and intensely than others; nevertheless, they are seen as evidence that the baby has formed an attachment. This has usually developed by one year of age.

Multiple Attachment (10 months and onwards)

Many of the babies from the Schaffer and Emerson study had multiple attachments by 10 months old, including attachments to mothers, fathers, grandparents, siblings, and neighbors.

The baby becomes increasingly independent and forms several attachments. By 18 months, the majority of infants have formed multiple attachments.

The multiple attachments formed by most infants vary in their strength and importance to the infant. Attachments are often structured in a hierarchy, whereby an infant may have formed three attachments, but one may be stronger than the other two, and one may be the weakest.

The results of the study indicated that attachments were most likely to form with those who responded accurately to the baby's signals, not the person they spent more time with. Schaffer and Emerson called this sensitive responsiveness.

Intensely attached infants had mothers who responded quickly to their demands and, interacted with their child. Infants who were weakly attached had mothers who failed to interact.

The Lasting Impact of Early Attachment

According to Bowlby's theory (1988), when we form our primary attachment, we also make a mental representation of what a relationship is (internal working model), which we then use for all other relationships in the future i.e., friendships, working, and romantic relationships.

The different attachment styles may be viewed as internal working models of "relationships" that evolved from event experiences (Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985).

This would suggest that early interactions with caregivers could not only shape how an infant understood and behaved in relationships (as exemplified by infant attachment styles), but that such impact could be carried forward into adult attachment.

According to Bowlby (1969) later relationships are likely to be a continuation of early attachment styles (secure and insecure) because the behavior of the infant's primary attachment figure promotes an internal working model of relationships which leads the infant to expect the same in later relationships.

In other words, there will be continuity between early attachment experiences and later relationships. This is known as the continuity hypothesis.

In humans, attachment does not conclude in infancy, or even childhood, but instead is active throughout the lifespan, with individuals gaining comfort from both physical and mental representations of significant others (Bowlby, 1969).

It is through an individual's internal working model that childhood patterns of attachment are carried forward across the life cycle into adolescence and adulthood.

The notion of security is still an important one; however, the growing emergence of autonomy is also significant as the attachment system in adults is less likely to be activated due to them being able to tolerate higher levels of distress compared to children.

During adulthood, new attachment bonds are formed which may become a significant source of support during periods of distress, or during periods of goal achievement and exploration.

Researchers have proposed that working models are interconnected within a complex hierarchical structure (Bowlby, 1980; Bretherton, 1985, 1990; Collins & Read, 1994; Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985).

For example, the highest level model comprises beliefs and expectations across all types of relationship, and lower level models hold general rules about specific relations, such as romantic or parental, underpinned by models specific to events within a relationship with a single person.

The existence of multiple mental models is supported by evidence which demonstrates considerable within-person variability in the expectations and beliefs that people hold about the self and others (Baldwin & Fehr, 1995).

Furthermore, although specific models of attachment relationships are positively associated with more overarching general working models, the correlations are small to moderate (less than .40), indicating that they comprised distinct beliefs regarding the self and significant others (Cozzarelli, Hoekstra, & Bylsma, 2000).

Likely, general mental models indicate a typical appraisal of the self and others across relationships, and relationship-specific beliefs about the self and one's partner would plausibly represent only a part of these generalized beliefs.

Key Takeaways

Attachment is defined as a "lasting psychological connectedness between human beings" (Bowlby, 1969, p. 194), and may be considered interchangeable with concepts such as "affectional bond" and "emotional bond."

Attachment is characterized by specific behaviors in children, such as seeking proximity to the attachment figure when upset or threatened (Bowlby, 1969).

Attachment theory explains how the parent-child relationship emerges and influences subsequent development.

A person's first attachment is often established with the primary caregiver during infancy. However, it must be noted that attachment is not unique to infant-caregiver relationships but may also be present in other social relationships.

Attachments of various kinds are formed through the repeated act of "attachment behaviors" or "attachment transactions," a continuing process of seeking and maintaining a certain level of proximity to another specified individual (Bowlby, 1969).

Because caregivers vary in sensitivity and responsiveness, not all infants attach to caregivers in the same way.

References

Ainsworth, M. D. S., & Bell, S. M. (1970). Attachment, exploration, and separation: Illustrated by the behavior of one-year-olds in a strange situation. Child Development, 41, 49-67.

Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1973). The development of infant-mother attachment. In B. Cardwell & H. Ricciuti (Eds.), Review of child development research (Vol. 3, pp. 1-94) Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1991). Attachments and other affectional bonds across the life cycle. In C . M. Parkes, J. Stevenson-Hinde, & P. Marris (Eds.), Attachment across the life cycle (pp. 33-51). London: Routledge.

Ainsworth. M. D. S., & Wittig, B. A. (1969) Attachment and exploratory behaviour of one-year-olds in a strange situation. In: B. M. Foss (Ed.) Determinants of infant behaviour, IV. London: Methuen, p. 111-136.

Bowlby, J. (1958). The nature of the childs tie to his mother. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 39, 350-371.

Bowlby J. (1969). Attachment. Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Loss. New York: Basic Books.

Bowlby, J., and Robertson, J. (1952). A two-year-old goes to the hospital. Proceedings
of the Royal Society of Medicine, 46, 425-427.

Bowlby, J. (1973). Attachment and loss, Vol. 2: Separation. New York: Basic Books.

Bowlby, J. (1980). Attachment and loss, Vol. 3: Loss, sadness and depression. New York: Basic Books.

Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human development. New York: Basic Books.

Dollard, J. & Miller, N.E. (1950). Personality and psychotherapy. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Feeney, B. C. (2004). A secure base: responsive support of goal strivings and exploration in adult intimate relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(5), 631.

George, C., & Solomon, J. (1996). Representational models of relationships: Links between caregiving and attachment. Infant Mental Health Journal, 17(3), 198-216.

Harlow, H. F. & Zimmermann, R. R. (1958). The development of affective responsiveness in infant monkeys. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 102, 501 -509.

Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2003). The attachment behavioral system in adulthood: Activation, psychodynamics, and interpersonal processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 35, 53-152.

Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2007). Attachment in adulthood: Structure, dynamics, and change. New York: Guilford Press.

Prior, V., & Glaser, D. (2006). Understanding attachment and attachment disorders: Theory, evidence and practice. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Schaffer, H. R., & Emerson, P. E. (1964). The development of social attachments in infancy. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 1-77.

Shaver, P. R., & Mikulincer, M. (2006). Attachment theory, individual psychodynamics, and relationship functioning. The Cambridge handbook of personal relationships, 251-271.

Van Ijzendoorn, M. H., & Sagi-Schwartz, A. (2008). Cross-cultural patterns of attachment: Universal and contextual dimensions. In J. Cassidy & P. Shaver (Eds) Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research and Clinical Applications (pp. 880-905). New York: Guildford Press.

FAQs

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Attachment Theory In Psychology Explained

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Attachment can be defined as a deep and enduring emotional bond between two people in which each seeks closeness and feels more secure when in the presence of the attachment figure.

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Erikson’s 8 Stages of Psychosocial Development Explained

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Books for babies and where to get them!

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Your Baby’s First Year: What to Read to Them at Every Stage | Brightly

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The difference between a newborn baby and a 1-year-old is amazing! These books and reading techniques are great for each of their various first-year stages.

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Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University

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How-to: 5 Steps for Brain-Building Serve and Return - Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University

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This how-to video breaks down serve and return into 5 simple steps and features adults and young children doing each step together.

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Michael Yogman, Andrew Garner, Jeffrey Hutchinson, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, COMMITTEE ON PSYCHOSOCIAL ASPECTS OF CHILD AND FAMILY HEALTH, COUNCIL ON COMMUNICATIONS AND MEDIA, Rebecca Baum, Thresia Gambon, Arthur Lavin, Gerri Mattson, Lawrence Wissow, David L. Hill, Nusheen Ameenuddin, Yolanda (Linda) Reid Chassiakos, Corinn Cross, Rhea Boyd, Robert Mendelson, Megan A. Moreno, MSEd, Jenny Radesky, Wendy Sue Swanson, MBE, Jeffrey Hutchinson, Justin Smith; The Power of Play: A Pediatric Role in Enhancing Development in Young Children. Pediatrics September 2018; 142 (3): e20182058. 10.1542/peds.2018-2058

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The Power of Play: A Pediatric Role in Enhancing Development in Young Children

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Children need to develop a variety of skill sets to optimize their development and manage toxic stress. Research demonstrates that developmentally appropriate play with parents and peers is a singular opportunity to promote the social-emotional, cognitive, language, and self-regulation skills that build executive function and a prosocial brain.

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Infant Lesson Plans That Meet Developmental Milestones

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Developing lesson plans for infants is a unique process that focuses on each child’s developmental milestones and turns daily routines and playtime into a learning opportunity.

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Tummy Time is one of Baby's first exercises-and the most important! Tummy Time is when Baby spends supervised periods on their stomach while awake (also known as prone position).

Why Tummy Time is Essential for Baby's Development

Tummy Time is essential for developing the muscles Baby needs to reach motor milestones, including rolling, sitting, and crawling. Starting Tummy Time shortly after birth and continuing it regularly throughout the first year supports healthy growth and development.

Baby Tummy Time Benefits

Engaging Baby in Tummy Time offers many developmental benefits, such as:

Muscle Development: Strengthens the neck, shoulder, back, and core muscles, preparing Baby for Tummy Time milestones such as tilting their head to both sides, rolling over, and sitting up.

Prevention of Positional Conditions: Reduces the risk of positional plagiocephaly (flat head syndrome) and positional torticollis (tight neck muscles), conditions that can be caused by too much time spent lying on the back.

Sensory and Visual Development: Encourages sensory exploration and enhances visual tracking skills as Baby learns to move their head and observe their environment.

How to Do Tummy Time

Here are some ways to integrate Tummy Time into Baby's routine:

Start Early: Introduce Tummy Time as soon as Baby comes home from the hospital, beginning with short sessions of 2-5 minutes, a few times daily. Gradually work up to at least 15-30 minutes of Tummy Time per day by 2 months old.

Create a Safe Environment: Lay Baby on a clean, firm surface, such as a blanket on the floor. Always supervise Baby during Tummy Time to ensure safety.

Engage and Encourage: Interact with Baby by talking, singing, or placing toys within reach to make Tummy Time enjoyable and stimulating.

As Baby progresses, you can explore different Tummy Time positions and activities to further support their development. Discover more information and Tummy Time exercises for babies in our resources below!

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Make Tummy Time Enjoyable for Your Baby! See the Importance of Tummy Time for Developing Motor Skills, Core Strength and More.

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Tummy Time: What It Is and 6 Major Benefits

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Flipping your baby onto their stomach for “tummy time” gives them new perspective and plays an important role in their development. A pediatrician and pediatric physical therapist explain.

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Know

Physical Development From the Start

Healthy babies are born with fully developed systems that allow their bodies to function, such as the ability to suck, swallow, and breathe. In order to support the best possible physical development, all infants require responsive care from loving adults, proper nutrition, and appropriate and stimulating environments. Infant and toddler physical development occurs rapidly over the first years of a child's life. It is essential that caregivers understand the various stages of infant and toddler physical development so that they can respond to children's needs appropriately.

Infants are born to explore to the world around them. While each child will grow to master many of the stages in physical development on their own schedule, infants are often eager to progress from those innate abilities to further movement in their mouth, eyes, and bodies as they seek people and objects of comfort or interest. They continue practicing skills and building one form of physical movement upon another, step by step as they move closer to desired objects. Through ongoing observation and frequent conversations with families you can learn what infants are able to do, what they're learning to do, and in what areas they need your support.

Infants develop physically from the top down, starting with their heads and necks. At birth, an infant has a very difficult time holding up their head because their neck muscles are not strong enough to provide support. As infants and toddlers grow, their determination to master movement, balance, and fine- and gross-motor skills remains strong. Rolling and crawling occur as infants develop skill in using large-muscle groups. Grasping and picking up objects with fingers are part of small-muscle growth.

Influences on Early Physical Growth and Development

There is no exact age at which all infants should be able to grasp objects or hold up their head without support. Physical development occurs at different times for all children depending on many factors, such as a child's unique characteristics, the family's values and culture, and access to available resources. However, many infants and toddlers experience developmental milestones within similar timeframes of growth. The chart below outlines the approximate periods when many infants and toddlers will learn and experience these milestones.

Examples of Physical Development Milestones - Infants and Toddlers

Holds head up when on tummy

Kicks both arms and legs while on back

Briefly relaxes hands from fists for short periods

Grasps adult finger

Raises head and chest while lying on stomach

Primitive reflexes present, including the rooting and sucking reflex

This information was compiled from various sources including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Ages and Stages Questionnaires (ASQ).

All children develop at different rates, so keep in mind that the milestones above are simply the average ages at which specific skills are observed.

Certain conditions must exist for an infant or toddler to grow and develop. A young child's basic physical needs, include:

Food (nutritious and age-appropriate)

Shelter (protection from harm)

Warmth

Clean air and environment

Health and dental care

Activity and rest

We also know that the way we ourselves were raised is important to our understanding of how, and in what contexts children develop. The values and beliefs held by our family and culture contribute to our knowledge of growth and development.

Culture Impacts How We See and Interpret Behaviors and Development

Because culture shapes so many parts of an infant's and toddler's development, you must understand the practices, beliefs, and values of the families you support. Without this understanding, it's difficult to interpret the infant's or toddler's behaviors and development. For example, across cultures, the rates at which infants and toddlers begin to self-feed may vary. You may believe it is important to help toddlers learn to become independent and begin to feed themselves using fine motor skills. However, a family may be accustomed to assisting with feeding their infant until a later age. While the family may not have made a conscious decision about feeding as it relates to independence, it is likely that their family's culture values more interdependence and collective support over other cultures which value independence and self-reliance.
Other influences on infant and toddler physical growth and development are:

Prenatal care and development including, genetic inheritance and makeup, family growth patterns, exposure to drugs and alcohol, and birth experience

Prematurity (birth before the 38th week of development) and a low birth weight may result in respiration difficulties, vision problems, feeding, and digestive problems

Temperament, or other ways an infant or toddler approaches and interacts with their world

Family's composition, lifestyle, level of education, and housing

Maturation, or the genetic or biological development that reflects a pattern of growth from conception through adolescence

Developmental delays or disabilities, including health and medical concerns

Review the handout Infant and Toddler Physical Development in the Learn activity section below to learn even more about important milestones in physical development, as well as variations in the rate of physical development for infants and toddlers.

The Brain's Role in Physical Development

You can easily observe infants making movements with their bodies and refining their motor skills. Thanks to advances in research and technology, we can now also see how the brain changes and grows as young children develop. At birth, the brain is 25 percent of its adult size and by age 5, it reaches 90 percent of adult size. Infants' and toddlers' early-life interactions and experiences help them make sense of the world and form connections between different parts of the brain.

These supportive experiences and connections help improve coordination and develop stronger muscles. As infants repeat and practice different movements, such as turning their heads or reaching for an object, they build and maintain connections between brain cells. In essence, the brain is busy making sense and learning from experiences.

It is important for infants and toddlers to have time for these new experiences and to explore the world around them with a trusted caregiver. Repeated exposure to experiences with trusted caregivers allows children to feel safe and secure, and allows them to focus on experimenting, developing, and mastering new skills. The safe space that you create for their exploration ensures that their brains are able to focus on learning, developing, and making connections. If infants and toddlers do not have nurturing and responsive adults to help keep them safe, their brains are forced to focus on survival. This kind of stress on a child's brain may make them more hesitant to engage in exploration, and experimentation; causing them to have less opportunities to create and strengthen connections in the brain that further their growth and skill development.

Supporting Physical Development for All Learners

Physical development, including gross- and fine-motor skills, consumes the interest of infants and toddlers as they practice learned skills and look to develop new ones. Healthy physical development is dependent on adequate nutrition, brain development, the central nervous system, muscles, bones, and the interactions and experiences offered to infants and toddlers. By recognizing developmental delays during infancy or toddlerhood, early intervention may be more effective than if the delays are not acknowledged until later in childhood. Below are some characteristics of possible physical concerns and developmental delays by various sources:

Signs of Impaired Physical Development - Infants & Toddlers

Does not coo or make sounds

Does not bring objects to mouth

Does not occasionally push down with legs when feet placed on a firm surface

Has trouble moving eye or eyes in all directions

Crosses eyes most of the time (occasional crossing of eyes normal in early months)

Does not pay attention to faces, or seems very frightened by new faces or environment

Difficulty sucking

Not gaining weight or growing in height

Not responding to sounds and voices

Does not bring objects to mouth, and/or has difficulty getting objects to mouth

Does not roll over from front to back or back to front

Stiff limbs (arms, legs) with tight muscles

Weak limbs (arms, legs) or body feels floppy like a rag doll

Not using hands to grasp or hold objects

Does not attempt to reach for objects

Shows no affection for caregivers

Does not make vowel sounds like "ah" "eh" and "oh"

Does not bear weight on legs with support

Does not sit with help

Does not babble ("mama", "baba", "dada")

Does not play any games involving back-and-forth play

Does not respond to own name

Does not seem to recognize familiar people

Does not look where you point

Does not transfer toys from one hand to the other

Cannot stand with help

Does not search for things you hide

Does not say single words like "dada" or "mama", and does not imitate your sounds

Does not imitate gestures like waving hands, clapping or shaking head

Not pointing to communicate needs or ideas

Not crawling or sitting on own

Not picking up small objects

Loses skills once had

Does not point to show others things

Cannot walk

Does not know what familiar things are used for (brush, spoon, cup)

Not imitating sounds or gestures

Does not have at least six words and does not learn new words

Not playing with toys

Not self-feeding

Loses skills once had

Does not seem to mind when caregiver leaves or comes back

Not physically active

Not scribbling or stacking blocks

Not showing interest in playing with toys

Extra sensitive to or avoids a variety of textures

Does not walk steadily

Does not use 2-word phrases (for example, "drink milk")

Does not follow simple instructions

Loses skills once had

Clumsy or inactive

Not feeding self

Not helping dress or undress self

Not interested in playing with other children or a variety of toys

Drools or has very unclear speech

Does not speak in sentences

Does not make eye contact

Does not play pretend or make-believe

Loses skills once had

Delays in physical development may affect more than gross- and fine-motor skills. For example, if an infant is unable to smile at parents or lift their arms to be picked up, this could impact social and emotional development (e.g., relationship building). Some of the delays listed above can be critical to a child's development. The connections in a baby's brain are most adaptable in the first three years of life. These connections, also called neural circuits, are the foundation for learning, behavior, and health. Over time, these connections become harder to change. Early intervention can help children improve their abilities and learn new skills.

Your trainer, coach, or administrator can help you learn more about the programs and services available to you, and the families you serve, that help assess and enhance physical development and learning. To find your state or territory's early intervention contact information, go to: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/parents/states.html. And for more information, including what to say when you contact early intervention and how to get support for your family, visit: cdc.gov/Concerned.

See

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Watch this video to learn what infants and toddlers can do with their bodies.

Do

How can you make sure to provide age-appropriate experiences to support infant and toddler physical development? Take a moment to read and review the sets of guidelines on the following webpage from SHAPE (Society of Health and Physical Educators, formerly known as the National Association for Sport and Physical Education, or NASPE): https://www.shapeamerica.org/standards/guidelines/activestart.aspx. Next, try one or more of the following activities with the infants or toddlers in your care:

When an infant is awake and active, offer "tummy time" - lay the baby on the floor on his or her tummy, and provide stimulating and high contrast toys or pictures for the infant to look at

Hold an infant or dance with a toddler to music - toddlers can swing colorful scarves in the air or jump on bubble wrap while the music is playing

Encourage imitation of gestures and other movement experiences in which mobile infants and toddlers can use their bodies to interact and play

Use colorful mobiles over infants' cribs so that they can try to reach and grasp. Have toddlers experience kicking, catching, rolling, and bouncing balls

Encourage toddlers to scribble with crayons

Once finished, share your experience and what you learned with a trainer, coach, or administrator.

Allen, K.E., & Marotz, L. (2001). By the ages: Behavior and development of children pre-birth through eight. Clifton Park, NY: Thomson Delmar Learning.

Berger, S.E., & Adolph, K.E. (2003). Infants Use Handrails as Tools in a Locomotor Task. Developmental Psychology, 39: 594-605.

Blakemore, C. (2003). Movement is essential to learning. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, 74(9): 22-25, 41.

Bosco, F. M., Friedman, O., & Leslie, A. M. (2006). Recognition of pretend and real actions in play by 1- and 2-year-olds: Early success and why they fail. Cognitive Development, 21: 1-10.

Bourgeois, K. S., Akhawar, A. W., Neal, S. A., & Lockman, J. J. (2005). Infant manual exploration of objects, surfaces, and their interrelations. Infancy, 8: 233-252.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2021). Learn the signs, act early: Developmental milestones. https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/pdf/FULL-LIST-CDC_LTSAE-Checklists2021_Eng_FNL2_508.pdf

Claxton, L. J., Keen, R., & McCarty, M. E. (2003). Evidence of motor planning in infant reaching behavior. Psychological Science, 14: 354-356.

Clearfield, M. W., Osborne, C. N., & Mullen, M. (2008). Learning by looking: Infants' social looking behavior across the transition from crawling to walking. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 100: 297-307.

Comfort, R. L. (2005). Learning to play: Play deprivation among young children in foster care. Zero to Three, 25: 50-53.

Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., Inc. (2002). Ages and stages questionnaire (ASQ). https://agesandstages.com/

The Importance of Early Intervention for Infants and Toddlers with Disabilities and Their Families pdf icon[1.19 MB, 2 Pages]external icon Accessed February 26, 2015.

Ward, M., Lee, S., & Lipper, E. (2000). Failure to thrive is associated with disorganized infant-mother attachment and unresolved maternal attachment. Infant Mental Health Journal, 21(6): 428-442.

Waters, E., Weinfield, N., & Hamilton, C. (2000). The stability of attachment from infancy to adolescence end early adulthood: General discussion. Child Development, 71(3): 703-706.

Zeanah, C. (Ed.). (2000). Handbook of infant mental health (2nd ed.). New York: The Guilford Press.

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Healthy babies are born with fully developed systems that allow their bodies to function, such as the ability to suck, swallow, and breathe. In order to support the best possible physical development, all infants require responsive care from loving adults, proper nutrition, and appropriate and stimulating environments.

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The Kansas Association for Infant & Early Childhood Mental Health is an association of professionals in Kansas who are concerned with the emotional development of infants.

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Attachment Issues and Attachment Disorders in Children

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Attachment problems can affect your child’s development, relationships, and overall well-being. Here’s how to overcome insecure attachment.

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Creating Secure Attachment: The 10 C’s Every Parent Needs