Lifespan Development and Personality Paper Essay - 1

Lifespan Development and Personality Paper - Essay Example In addition, alcohol, drugs such as cocaine, lead, pesticides can damage sperm and cause children wit congenital defects. If the mother consumes alcohol during pregnancy, then the alcohol crosses the placenta and can result in children with ‘fetal alcohol syndrome’. The kind of diet that a mother takes, drugs, both legal and illegal would effect the later development of the infant. Mothers who have a healthy life style give birth to well formed babies with the right development of limbs and brains. Tobacco smoking by pregnant women is seen to cause premature babies that have low birth weight and increase in fetal deaths. Such children also show increased behavior abnormalities and cognitive problems. Motor development is mainly due to natural maturity but it can also be affected by environmental influences such as disease and neglect. Children with alcoholic mothers or ones who are neglected show lesser inclination to learn motor skills and may grow up with learning disa bilities and other problems. Piaget showed that an infants intellect is different from an adult and that an infant begins at a cognitively primitive level and that intellectual growth progresses in distinct stages, motivated by an innate need to know. Three major concepts are important: schemas, assimilation and accommodation. Schemas are cognitive structures or patterns consisting of a number of organized ideas that grow and differentiate with experience. Assimilation is the process of absorbing new information into existing schemas and accommodation is the process of adjusting old schemas or developing new ones to better fit with new information. In the first few weeks of life, an infant has multiple schemas based on the innate reflexes of sucking and grasping. These schemas are primarily motor and may be little more than stimulus and response mechanisms and soon other schemas emerge as the infant starts eating solid food. Assimilation and accommodation are the two major