Baby's cognitive development in the first year

Measuring a baby's brain development or cognitive abilities may not be as easy as measuring physical growth. However, cognitive development should not be ruled out, as it is involved in controlling the functioning of all members of the baby's body. Check out the full explanation below!

What are the cognitive abilities of babies?

Babies' cognitive abilities are the baby's way of learning to think, remember, imagine, collect information, organize information, and solve problems.

Quoted from the Urban Child Institute, in other words, this cognitive ability contributes to helping babies carry out their daily activities.

Although there may appear to be many aspects involved in the development of a baby's cognitive abilities, these are things that your little one learns gradually.

Along with the stages of development of the baby including getting older, the brain function of the little one will help him to develop these cognitive abilities one by one.

The stage of development of the baby's cognitive abilities

In the newborn phase, the baby's brain has not been able to fully develop the ability to think, process information, speak, remember things, physical coordination, and so on.

The more mature the baby is, not only the baby's motor development, the baby's cognitive function will also develop.

The following are the stages of development of a baby's cognitive abilities according to their age:

0-6 months of age

From birth to around 3 months of development, your baby is learning about taste, sound, sight and smell. Usually, he is able to see objects more clearly at a distance of approximately 13 inches, and see colors in the human visual spectrum.

Babies can also focus on looking at moving objects, including the faces of those they are with a lot of, such as you and their caregivers. He will also respond to the conditions of the surrounding environment by showing certain facial expressions.

Every now and then, you will see him open his mouth when you touch his cheek or this is called the rooting reflex (rooting relflex). He also does repetitive movements of the hands and feet at the same time to help train brain function and memory.

After about 3 months of age until the baby is 4 months of development, your little one will begin to develop other cognitive abilities.

This includes recognizing the faces of people who are used to him, responding to the facial expressions of other people he sees, to recognizing and responding when he hears familiar voices.

Stepping on the developmental age of a baby at 5 months, your little one looks curious about an object, thus making him put the object in his mouth. He also tries to respond to the conversation by babbling certain words.

In fact, your baby is slowly able to recognize and respond when his name is called. All these things continue until the baby's developmental age of 6 months.

Age 6-12 months

At the age of 6 months, your baby is starting to be able to coordinate the ability of his muscles and limbs properly.

Your little one can sit on his own, and learn to stand, from initially still needing a handle to finally being able to maintain his balance.

The development of cognitive abilities at this time, including starting to understand the difference between living things and inanimate objects.

Longer look at objects that appear "strange" to his eyes, such as when watching a balloon fly itself through the air. This is because curiosity is also increasing.

Learning and curiosity is likely to increase in the development of babies aged 9 months. Although he has been able to eat solid food since he was 6 months old, at this age his ability increases by trying to eat alone.

Your child is also interested in knowing the cause and effect after he has done something, for example what will happen later when he shakes his toy.

Almost right at the development of a baby at 11 months, a baby's cognitive development can already make it easy to mimic the basic movements that other people make.

In fact, he can respond to communications conveyed by other people with movement and sound, and place an object on another object.

How to train a baby's cognitive abilities

Even though it develops with age, you can hone the development of your baby's cognitive abilities by doing the following:

0-6 months of age

Here are tips to train the development of cognitive abilities for babies aged 0-6 months:

1. Talk a lot with babies

From the very beginning of birth, babies love to hear your voice. In this way, he learns to both hear and recognize the voices of his parents. Although it seems simple at first glance, it is very useful to train the baby's cognitive abilities.

2. Often hug the baby

Basically, babies love to be hugged by anyone. That way, he will learn and recognize your signature scent, so he can tell when you are not there.

3. Provide various types of toys that are safe

Babies enjoy learning to reach, pick up, and put things in their mouth. He also likes to hit two toys at the same time, only to find out what the consequences will be. This will help train the development of the baby's cognitive abilities.

When he touches an object, he learns to recognize the shape and texture of the object. From here your little one begins to understand the difference between an object and another.

Age 6-11 months

Here are tips for training the cognitive abilities of babies aged 6-11 months:

1. Call the baby's name more often

Every time you call a baby by his unique name, either by a name or a nickname, such as "Sis", "Sis", "Darling", he learns to recognize himself.

Increasingly, your little one becomes more familiar with these calls. That is what makes him reflex to look for the origin of the sound when he hears someone calling his name.

2. Give examples of good actions

Training the development of the baby's cognitive abilities, including setting an example. You might just see your little one doing the things you did yesterday, for example, when you were calling someone else.

The next day, he uses the toys around him to imitate your activities as if you were chatting happily on the phone.

Laughter is also part of cognitive development

If you pay close attention, most babies begin to smile at 6 weeks to 3 months of age. Please note that initially the smile is a reflex movement.

Until finally this is a stage of development of the brain and other nervous systems. He began to realize what could make him smile and laugh. Babies begin to laugh clearly when they are 3 to 4 months old.

One of the reasons babies love to laugh is because they also love the sound of their own laughter. Apart from that, he also likes the response of the people around him when he laughs.

Once your baby understands the joy of laughing at a baby's cognitive development, he will do it more often, even for no particular reason.

Laughter feels happy and strange sounds that come out when laughing make babies feel even happier. Over time, he will learn to move his mouth and tongue to make different laughter sounds.

There have been many scientific studies exploring the causes of babies laughing. One of them according to Jean Piaget, a well-known psychologist from Switzerland. Piaget argued that baby laughter is a way for babies to gain insight into the world around them.

Caspar Addyman, a researcher from the University of London is looking into this more through a large-scale survey. More than 1000 parents from around the world took the survey, answering when, where and why their babies laugh.

The results show that babies laugh not because of funny things. Even though you tried really hard to get him to laugh.

Most babies according to research will show laughter rather than expressions of surprise or sadness when they do something that should not be, such as dropping a toy, falling while playing or walking.

Hone `cognitive development and the child's brain

In the early days of human life, the development of brain function occurred very rapidly. Children's brain development has started when the child is still in the womb and continues until the child is born.

Although brain cell formation is almost complete before birth, the maturation of the brain, important neural pathways, and connections is progressively developed after the child is born at an early age.

Newborn babies have about 100 billion brain cells. The brain reaches half its mature weight at about 6 months of age and reaches 90% of its final weight by age 8. So, the child's brain is still developing until the child is 8 years old.

Play is good for the baby's cognitive development

A group of researchers from Princeton University, United States, studied the phenomenon of parents playing with children. The trick is to look at the brain activity records of some babies and adults.

They found that the brains of infants and adults experienced a variety of similar neural activities when playing together. This neural activity rose and fell at the same time each time the two shared toys and made eye contact.

As a result, infants and adults who interact directly have similar neural activity in several parts of the brain. This similarity was not found in infants and adults who were far away from each other and did not meet face to face.

When communicating, babies and adults experience a condition calledfeedback loop. The adult brain is able to predict when the baby will laugh, while the baby brain in return predicts when the adult will talk to him.

Without realizing it, the baby's brain turns out to "direct" the adult brain when the two play together. These interactions occur continuously and get stronger with eye contact and the use of toys.