50 Fun Facts About Child Development

A 1993 study in Nature sparked the myth that playing babies which composer's music makes them smarter?

Mozart was the composer, though the original study found only a 15-minute boost in spatial reasoning among 36 college students. Georgia's governor later proposed funding a classical recording for every newborn.

Walter Mischel's Stanford study of delayed gratification in preschoolers is popularly named after which sweet treat?

Marshmallow gave the test its name: a child left alone with one for about 15 minutes earned a second by not eating it. Children who preferred could wait for a pretzel stick instead.

Which children's TV show, launched in 1969, was the first to build its content around a formal curriculum?

Sesame Street was also the first show whose educational effects were formally studied. Its producers had writers work alongside educators and researchers from the very start.

Albert Bandura's 1961 study of imitated aggression had children watch an adult attack which toy?

Bobo doll is the name of the inflatable toy the adult punched and struck with a mallet. Bandura used the results to argue that children learn by observing and copying others.

Peekaboo delights young babies because they have not yet grasped which concept, first studied by Jean Piaget?

Object permanence is knowing that things still exist when out of sight. Piaget tested it by hiding a favourite toy under a blanket and watching whether the baby went looking for it.

Harry Harlow's infant rhesus monkeys clung to a surrogate mother covered in what, over a wire one holding their milk?

Cloth beat food: the monkeys visited the wire mother only when hungry, then returned. Harlow took it as proof that comfort, not feeding, builds the bond between infant and mother.

The practice of holding premature babies skin-to-skin on a parent's bare chest is named after which animal?

Kangaroo care was developed in Bogotá, Colombia, as an alternative to scarce incubators. Fathers turn out to be as effective as mothers at keeping the baby warm.

Daily 'tummy time' became necessary after a 1994 campaign urged parents to put babies to sleep in which position?

On their backs is the advice that roughly halved sudden infant death syndrome. The side effect was a sharp rise in flattened skulls, which time spent face down while awake helps prevent.

Which type of school for young children did the educator Friedrich Fröbel create in 1837 and name in 1840?

Kindergarten was Fröbel's own coinage, a 'garden of children' where the young could grow in a natural way. He also manufactured play materials for his pupils at Bad Blankenburg.

Which naturalist kept a diary of his baby son's smiles and cries and published it in the journal Mind in 1877?

Charles Darwin recorded the gestures and expressions of his firstborn, William, for three years. He noted the baby following a candle with his eyes at just nine days old.

In Erik Erikson's eight-stage theory of psychosocial development, which conflict does a baby face in the first year?

Trust vs. mistrust is settled by whether caregivers reliably meet the infant's needs. Erikson held that a baby who learns to trust carries the virtue of hope into every later stage.

Jean Piaget's four stages of cognitive development begin with which one, lasting from birth until language arrives?

Sensorimotor describes babies learning through their senses and movements before words arrive. Piaget saw them move from pure reflexes at birth to the beginnings of symbolic thought.

Jean Piaget poured liquid from a short beaker into a tall, thin one to test children's grasp of which concept?

Conservation is knowing that an amount stays the same when its container changes shape. Children under about seven usually insist the taller glass now holds more.

Which Soviet psychologist, who died of tuberculosis at 37, introduced the 'zone of proximal development'?

Lev Vygotsky's work fell from official favour under Stalin, and a first collection of his major texts appeared only in 1956. His 'zone' is the gap between what a child can do alone and with a more knowledgeable helper.

Which British psychiatrist, brought up by a nanny and sent to boarding school at seven, pioneered attachment theory?

John Bowlby later said he would not send even a dog away to boarding school at that age. He argued that a child's first bond with a caregiver shapes relationships for life.

Which psychologist devised the 'Strange Situation', the first validated method of assessing infant attachment?

Mary Ainsworth made her first mother-and-infant observations in villages around Kampala, Uganda. Her original Baltimore study sorted just 26 children into three attachment types.

Lawrence Kohlberg's Heinz dilemma, used to probe moral reasoning, has a husband steal what for his dying wife?

A drug newly discovered by a local chemist is what Heinz takes. Kohlberg cared less about whether a child approved of the theft than about how the child justified the answer.

Before opening her first Casa dei Bambini in Rome in 1907, Maria Montessori had qualified in which profession?

Medicine was her second ambition: as a girl she enrolled at an all-boys technical school hoping to become an engineer. She graduated as a doctor with honours in 1896.

Which pediatrician wrote the 1946 best-seller Baby and Child Care, telling mothers they knew more than they thought?

Benjamin Spock had already won Olympic gold, rowing in the American eight at the 1924 Paris Games. His book had sold 50 million copies by his death in 1998.

Diana Baumrind's 1960s typology of parenting named which style, balancing control with autonomy, as the ideal?

Authoritative parenting sets high expectations of maturity while staying centred on the child. Baumrind began with three styles; later researchers added a fourth for indifferent parents.

On the CDC's developmental checklists, which of these do most babies manage by the age of two months?

Smiling in response to a voice or a smile is on the CDC's two-month list, along with holding the head up during tummy time. Rolling over is not expected until about six months.

The CDC's checklists expect most babies to have learned which of these by their first birthday?

Waving bye-bye sits on the CDC's one-year list beside calling a parent mama or dada. Walking without holding on is not listed until 18 months, when at least three in four toddlers can do it.

Strings of repeated syllables such as 'mamama', which the CDC lists as a nine-month milestone, are known as what?

Babbling is not only vocal: infants raised with a sign language do it with their hands. Cooing, the earlier stage of drawn-out vowel sounds, is on the CDC's four-month list.

Picking up a crumb between thumb and forefinger, which most babies can do by age one, is called which grasp?

Pincer grasp replaces the earlier raking grasp, in which the fingers do all the holding without the thumb. It is what finally lets a baby pick up small finger foods.

The distress many babies start showing around unfamiliar adults at about eight months old is known by what name?

Stranger anxiety usually peaks between six and twelve months and can return until age two. It is a normal sign that a baby now tells familiar caregivers apart from everyone else.

Linguists name toddlers' clipped two-word sentences, with no articles or conjunctions, after which kind of message?

Telegrams were charged by the word, so senders cut everything but the essentials. Children at the two-word stage do much the same, which is why the style is called telegraphic speech.

Which baby teeth are usually the first to break through the gums, typically between six and ten months of age?

Lower incisors, the two bottom front teeth, lead the way and tend to arrive as a pair. The rest of the baby teeth then keep emerging two at a time.

In the 'rouge test' of self-awareness, a toddler is secretly dabbed with makeup on the face and then shown what?

A mirror shows whether the child reaches for the mark on their own face rather than the reflection. In one early study, half of 18-month-olds recognised themselves.

According to CDC checklists, which crayon-and-paper skill can most children manage by the age of three?

Drawing a circle after being shown how is on the CDC's three-year list. A person with three or more body parts is expected at four, and some letters of the child's own name at five.

Which of these playground skills comes last on the CDC's checklists, expected of most children only at five?

Hopping on one foot appears on the CDC's five-year list. Kicking a ball is expected by two, and catching a large ball most of the time by four.

In Mildred Parten's 1929 stages, what is the term for toddlers playing close to each other but separately?

Parallel play has children mimicking one another's actions without actually joining in. Parten found it gives way to shared, cooperative games as communication skills improve.

Buttoning a shirt or holding a crayon uses the small muscles of the hands and fingers, skills described by which term?

Fine motor skills coordinate small muscles with the eyes. Gross motor skills, by contrast, move the arms, legs and other large body parts.

Which newborn reflex, a sudden spreading of the arms when support is lost, usually disappears by six months of age?

Moro is the surname of the pediatrician Ernst Moro, who triggered the reflex by slapping a pillow on both sides of a baby's head. The arms spread wide, then pull in again.

Stroke a newborn's sole and the big toe bends upward while the others fan out, a sign named after which neurologist?

Joseph Babinski described it in 1896, yet the upturned toe appears in a Botticelli Virgin and Child painted in the 15th century. In adults it signals nervous-system damage.

A newborn's fontanelles, gaps that let the skull flex during birth and the brain expand, are better known as what?

Soft spots let the skull's bony plates flex so the head can pass through the birth canal. The diamond-shaped one on top of the head stays open until about 18 months.

Which anesthesiologist devised the ten-point health score that newborns are given one and five minutes after birth?

Virginia Apgar's surname was later turned into a memory aid for the five checks: appearance, pulse, grimace, activity and respiration. She devised the score at Columbia in 1952.

Adults' inability to retrieve memories of events from before about age three is known by what name?

Infantile amnesia was first formally reported in 1895 by the psychologist Caroline Miles. Memory stays patchy for a few more years and settles at adult-like reliability around five or six.

Konrad Lorenz's incubator-hatched goslings followed his wading boots like a mother, showing which kind of learning?

Imprinting happened only in a critical window, which Lorenz put at 13 to 16 hours after hatching. Goslings that first saw something moving in that time treated it as their parent.

Sigmund Freud's five psychosexual stages of childhood open with which stage, spanning a baby's first year?

Oral comes first because, in Freud's view, an infant's pleasure centres on feeding and on exploring the world with the mouth. He held that frustration at any stage could cause lasting fixation.

Which linguist proposed in the 1960s that children are born with an innate 'language acquisition device'?

Noam Chomsky argued that children pick up grammar far too quickly, and with too little correction, to be learning it from scratch. He concluded some knowledge of language must be inborn.

John Watson's 'Little Albert' experiment taught a baby to fear which animal by pairing it with a loud clang?

A white rat was shown just as a hammer struck a steel bar behind the 11-month-old's back. He was soon upset by other furry things too, including a rabbit and a fur coat.

Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk's 1960 'visual cliff' experiment tested whether crawling babies could perceive what?

Depth was the question: the Plexiglas covered a checkerboard pattern that fell away about four feet on one side. Some babies refused to crawl over the apparent edge, even toward their mothers.

Passing the Sally–Anne test, in which one character's marble is moved while she is away, shows a child understands what?

False beliefs are the key: the child must see that Sally will look where she left the marble, not where it now is. Children under four usually point to its real location.

Which French psychologist and his colleague Théodore Simon devised the first practical intelligence test in 1905?

Alfred Binet built the test for a French education commission deciding how to teach pupils with learning difficulties. He wanted that decision to rest on objective evidence.

Babies control their arms before their legs, a top-down pattern of development known by which term?

Cephalocaudal means head-to-tail: growth and control begin at the head and work downward. That is why a newborn's head looks so large for its body, and why babies lift their heads months before they walk.

In Urie Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, which layer holds the family, school and peers closest to a child?

Microsystem is the innermost ring. The mesosystem links those settings together, such as contact between family and teachers, and the macrosystem is the wider culture around them all.

The first Waldorf school opened in Stuttgart in 1919 for the children of employees at a factory making what?

Cigarettes were the product of the Waldorf-Astoria company, whose owner Emil Molt asked Rudolf Steiner to set up the school. The brand gave the whole movement its name.

Which first president of the American Psychological Association applied the phrase 'storm and stress' to adolescence?

G. Stanley Hall borrowed the phrase from the German Sturm und Drang movement. He also founded the American Journal of Psychology in 1887 and was the first president of Clark University.

Which philosopher wrote Emile, a 1762 treatise on raising a child that was banned and burned in Paris and Geneva?

Rousseau called it the best and most important of all his writings. It was a section on religion, not the advice on education, that got the book condemned.

Which sedative, promoted for morning sickness in the late 1950s, harmed more than 10,000 babies before it was withdrawn?

Thalidomide never reached the American market because FDA reviewer Frances Oldham Kelsey blocked it. Elsewhere, babies were born with missing or malformed limbs.