Psychology

Walking is an essential part of human development. It is a sign of increase in intelligence and maturity. In average families, one of the most significant events in their lives is when their babies start walking. It seems to be a must for parents to capture or record the first glimpses of their offspring moving from one place to another in an upright position.

This essay discusses an article written by Joseph J. Campos, Bennett I. Bertenthal, and Rosanne Kermoian entitled, Early Experience And Emotional Development

The Emergence of Wariness of Heights. It focuses on the emotional development of children as they enter the stage when they would start walking. It also tackles the significant changes underwent as a result of walking independently.

1. Wariness of Heights
The article explains that the wariness of heights is not an innate characteristic of infants, as previously thought. The authors pointed out that locomotor experiences greatly affect the infants emotional development. Their study consisted of four experiments to find out whether or not locomotor experience induces fear of heights. In the first experiment, they were able to compare emotional responses between prelocomotor infants and locomotor infants or the novice walkers. The results of the experiment showed that locomotor infants experienced wariness of heights while the prelocomotor infants did not. The implication of this experiment suggests that novice walkers experience a fear of heights. In the second experiment, results showed that fear could even be accelerated with the use of artificial means such as walkers. The fear is also evident to even prelocomotor infants. The deprivation of locomotor experience resulted in an absence of fear of heights until after ten months when the infant could already crawl.

2. Other Changes
Aside from fear, there are other emotional changes brought about by locomotor experiences. When the child becomes an independent walker, hisher self-esteem is raised because of the new skill that heshe has acquired. The effect could also become negative as starting to walk independently would cause frequent falls, creating frustration in the infant, not to mention the negative emotional responses expressed by parents. The presence of locomotor skills in an infant would also deepen hisher attachment to hisher parents, making them easier to approach. However, it also raises the sensitivity of the infant to the parents location, causing anxiety in times of separation. It also increases the infants ability to move away from potentially harmful environments and move towards pleasant stimuli.

3. Applications
The results of the four experiments would help the way parents encourage their infants to walk independently. The studies would give more insights to training infants to walk at a very early age and the emotional changes that are brought by it. It is interesting to know that fear of heights does not emerge naturally in human development but rather results in acquiring locomotor experiences. Perhaps other emotional changes in human beings are also results of new experiences, which pave the way to changes in personality and intelligence. As to the novice walker, hisher fears are only a sample of what is coming for himher in the next years of hisher life. It just might suggest that there can never be development if there are no fears to conquer.