used to describe the social behavior of infants and
young toddlers who have not yet developed certain
rudimentary social-cognitive and social-emotional ca-
pabilities. In contrast, as children approach adoles-
cence, the failure to balance powerful self-interests
(e.g., autonomy, material gain, emotional gratifica-
tion, social superiority) with the interests of others can
increasingly be attributed to weak integrative motives
(e.g., lack of concern for others’ welfare or norms of
social responsibility).
See also: EGOCENTRISM; SELF-CONCEPT
Bibliography
Damon, William. Greater Expectations: Overcoming the Culture of In-
dulgence in Our Homes and Schools. New York: Free Press, 1996.
Eisenberg, Nancy, and Paul Mussen. The Roots of Prosocial Behavior
in Children. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Ford, Martin. ‘‘Motivational Opportunities and Obstacles Associat-
ed with Social Responsibility and Caring Behavior in School
Contexts.’’ In J. Juvonen and K. Wentzel eds., Social Motiva-
tion: Understanding Children’s School Adjustment. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Martin E. Ford
SENSORY DEVELOPMENT
Everything humans do involves using one or more
senses. It is through the senses that infants discover
the world. Without one’s senses, the brain would be
an eternal prisoner within the confinement of one’s
skull. Humans experience these sensations through
interactions with the environment; interpreting the
meaning of these sensations for actions is called sen-
sory processing. When a child uses her senses to dis-
cover a new object, she creates a neuronal pathway in
the brain. The more often she stimulates her senses
from her environment, the more likely she is to create
new neuronal pathways and strengthen old neuronal
pathways in the brain.
Sensory development begins during gestation
and continues throughout childhood. There are
seven sensory processes: taste, smell, touch, hearing,
seeing, body position sense (called proprioception),
and movement sensations (called vestibular input).
Below is a brief discussion of each sense, its purpose,
and the stages of its development; how infants stimu-
late their senses; and why sensory stimulation is im-
portant for infants.
Touch
Several touch receptors make up the somatosen-
sory system. The infant experiences the sense of
touch by any direct contact to the skin. The sensory
receptors for touch send messages to the brain,
through neurons, concerning temperature, pain, and
the texture and pressure of objects applied to the
skin.The somatosensory system begins to develop dur-
ing gestation. The nervous system, which is the mes-
sage carrier to the brain for the senses, begins to
develop at the third week of gestation. At the ninth
week of gestation the sensory nerves have developed
and are touching the skin. By the twenty-second week
of gestation, the fetus is sensitive to touch and tem-
perature. At birth, the sense of touch can be observed
through the infant’s reflexes when it comes in contact
with different stimuli. One example is the rooting re-
sponse. This is when an infant will reflexively turn its
head in the direction of a touch to its cheek.It is important for adults to understand what
types of touch stimulation a specific infant needs. For
example, infants who fall asleep only when rocked
and like to be cuddled may prefer firm pressure
against the body. One way to apply this pressure is by
swaddling infants. This firm pressure relaxes excited
neurons that are sending messages back and forth
from the surface of the skin to the brain. Some infants
are content to lie or sit and play in one spot; this does
not mean that they are not as curious as other infants,
but that they can absorb only so much stimulation at
one time. By contrast, other infants who are constant-
ly exploring by reaching out to touch various objects
and textures are more likely seeking stimulation.Taste and Smell
Taste and smell are chemical senses; they process
information by processing chemical changes in the air
and in objects on the tongue. These are primitive sen-
sory systems that are intimately involved with early
developmental activities such as feeding, eating, and
recognizing family members compared to strangers.
In this way, these are protective senses; they enable
the organism to survive, both through recognizing fa-
miliarity for safety purposes and by enabling the in-
fant to identify food for nourishment.The taste buds become apparent during the
eighth week of gestation, and by the fourteenth week
the taste sensation is formed. At birth, infants express
positive and aversive facial responses to tastes. The
sense of smell is apparent at birth as an infant begins
to recognize and prefers its mother’s scent. As infants
begin to develop, it is important to observe their reac-
tion to the different sensations of sweet, sour, bitter,
and salty, as well as to textures, to know what they like
or dislike.SENSORY DEVELOPMENT 355