There are 5 different stages of child development that are often investigated, including stages of cognitive/intellectual, language, motor, physical, and social development. Each of the stages answers five basic questions about child development and research into it. These problems include:

o Does this stage of child development involve specific gender or population differences (eg, differences in male and female development)?
o What are the developmental mechanisms that occur during each stage? In other words, what are the aspects of both experience and heredity that cause these developmental changes?
o What is the pace and speed of each of these stages of child development?
o What specifically develops in each stage? In other words, what aspects of child development change during a specific period of time that the stage typically spans?
o When it comes to a relevant change, are your individual differences considered normal?

Empirical research is a necessary element of the different stages of child development and can follow a variety of patterns based on the answers to the five questions above. Initially, an investigation will be carried out that involves observing the child to respond to each one of them, so that the specific aspects can be adequately defined and described.

The mechanisms of each stage.

Each of the five stages of child development involves five questions and topic areas and is broken down as follows:

or what develops during the stage
or the pattern of development and the rate at which it occurs
or individual differences
or population differences
or the mechanism of change

The focus is the mechanism of change within each of the stages of child development.

Mechanisms of cognitive/intellectual development: Cognitive/intellectual mechanisms can be both biological and genetic in nature, but it is genetic mechanisms that may be responsible for causing mental retardation. Also, certain functions of the brain can cause cognitive events.

Mechanisms of social and emotional development: Some social and emotional developments will occur as a result of certain genetic factors that are involved in the developmental stages of these children. Items like attachment to a particular adult (ie mother or father) and fear or happiness are often regulated by these different genetic factors.

Language mechanisms: the expressiveness of words and their meanings result from parental input rather than those factors that are intrinsic to the stage of cognitive/intellectual development. This also involves the child’s ability to infer the meaning of words based on certain cues.

The mechanisms of motor development: bone and muscle strength, as well as the actual size of the child’s body parts, involve a variety of genetic ingredients. It is also related to exercise and nutrition. Furthermore, research has shown that the frontal lobe of the brain grows from behind to front, or, in more technical terms, ‘posterior-anterior’.

Mechanisms of Physical Development: Changes in the child’s body proportions and growth rate are generally determined by specific genetic factors that are characteristic of the early physical aspects of the child’s developmental stages.