Physical and cognitive development in such an essential period of human life as infancy is critical to the quality of people’s lives, and my personal experience indicates the rapid pace of this process. These two aspects are interrelated since the researchers proved that the successful acquisition of fundamental motor skills at 3-5 months of age positively correlates with excellent language skills at 10-14 months (Libertus & Violi, 2016). Therefore, my observations add to these results and confirm that the physical aspect precedes cognition and, therefore, affects children’s general progress in the future.
Moreover, according to my knowledge of these stages of human development, the consideration of either of the abilities specified above contributes to the assessment of an infant’s learning process. From this perspective, the combination of motor skills and cognition is an optimal approach to their evaluation. Hence, the inclusion of these two components in healthcare practices contributes to the understanding of different periods in their growth.
The knowledge of processes attributed to infancy help nursing personnel timely reacts to emerging difficulties in this area. This task is extremely vital for the definition of potential deviations from norms, and it allows predicting the outcome of specific interventions as well as making recommendations based on the specificities of patients. In this way, medical specialists can modify the treatment with regard to an infant’s problems with either physical or cognitive abilities and thereby ensure their future success in life. As a result, their interventions also improve the quality of services provided by facilities for this population group. As for personal benefits, they are related to the professional growth of specialists and, consequently, greater satisfaction from the performed work.
Reference
Libertus, K., & Violi, D. A. (2016). Sit to talk: Relation between motor skills and language development in infancy. Frontiers in Psychology, 7. Web.