Cephalocaudal Trend

The cephalocaudal trend (also known as the cephalocaudal gradient of growth) efers to the body's changing growth patterns, and spatial proportions, over time. Typically this is referencing changes or growth in a top to bottom manner (cephalo = head; caudal = tail or lower body). The most obvious example of this is how a child's head, which seems disproportionately large when compared to the infant's body, gradually becomes proportional as the child's body grows. Cephalocaudal trend also refers to how infants learn developmentally to use their upper limbs before they do the lower limbs.