Analyzing Infant Development

Instruction and chapter 5 and chapter 6

The major assignment in this course is to observe TWO infants and analyze their development. After conducting your observations, you will write a corresponding analysis paper. These guidelines explain how to write each paper. 

You will use your observation notes and course material to analyze each infant’s functioning on the three topics within each domain. Your paper will be structured as follows: 

• APA 7th title page (no abstract necessary)
• Introduction (~1/2 page)
  • Introduce the developmental domain and why it is important in the larger context of infant development. 
  • Name the infants you observed, their ages, and where you observed them. 
• Typical Development (~1 page)
  • Provide an overall summary of typical development for the domain. 
  • You cannot discuss every detail here – instead provide a general description of what we would expect to see over the course of 0-36 months, with particular focus on the required topics. 
  • You MUST cite Gross (our textbook) and any other relevant course readings. You MUST use APA 7th style for in-text citations. 
  • Additional references beyond what is provided in this course are not necessary. 
  • DO NOT cite anything from random baby websites.
• Analysis of Each Topic (~1 page each)
  • Provide an analysis of what you observed about your infants for each of the required topics. You should make sub-headings for each topic. For example, in terms of gross motor skills, you will write a one page analysis explaining how your TWO infants used their gross motor skills (citing your observation notes every time you mention a specific example) and if what you observed is typical for an infant their age or not (citing Gross and course material every time also). 
  • The goal in these sections is to demonstrate your understanding of each of the required topics and apply what you know to your live observations of your TWO infants. You can explain the things you observe, if they are typical for their age or not, how they compare to each other, how they use these skills in the classroom, etc. Your goal is to demonstrate how these skills are observed in the real world, and the implication of different abilities for the infants’ interactions with caregivers and the environment.
• Conclusion (~1/2 page)
  • To wrap up the paper you will provide an analysis of your knowledge about the domain overall, now that you have analyzed these topics with real infants. What did you notice? What knowledge did you gain? How do you understand this domain in new ways?
• References
  • APA 7th reference list of all references cited in your paper.

Other Important Requirements: 

• APA 7th formatting for title page, headings, in-text citations, and references
• Typed, double-spaced, 1in margins, 12pt professional font
• NO DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE COURSE MATERIAL. Everything MUST be paraphrased in your own words and then cited appropriately. For example, if this is a direct quote from our textbook: “Infants show increasingly hand specificity the first few months of life, and may even demonstrate a dominant hand preference by 11 months old.” you can use this information in your paper as such: “According to Gross (2019), infants may show hand preference by 11 months.” Or “It is typical for infants to prefer one hand over the other by the time they are 1 year old (Gross, 2019).
• 5 pages minimum – 6 maximum (631a students have no page limit)
• Citations from your observations can be something like (Elliott, 10:45) – or something else consistent.