ED Psychology Physical Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood – Flashcards
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What is one reason for vast changes in what children can do over the first two years...?
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- Bodies change enormously--faster than at any other time after birth
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By the end of the first year what is a typical infant's height?
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- It is about 32 inches-- more than 50% greater than at birth - By 2 years, it is 75% greater (36 inches)
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Birth weight changes early in life
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- By 5 months of age, birth weight has doubled, to about 15 pounds., - 1 year birth weight has tripled, to 22 pounds, and at 2 years it has quadrupled, to about 30 pounds.
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Do infants and toddlers make steady gains or grow in spurts?
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- Grow in spurts - can happen very quickly
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What is one of the most obvious changes in infants' appearance?
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- Transformation into round, plump babies by the middle of the first year. - This early rise in "baby fat" peaks at about 9 months, helps the infant maintain a constant body temperature.
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What happens in the second year when looking at a babies weight?
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- Most toddlers slim down, a trend that continues into middle childhood.
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Muscle tissues in infants
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- Muscle tissue increases very slowly during infancy and will not reach a peak until adolescence. Babies are not very muscular; their strength and physical coordination are limited.
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Two growth changes that describe a child's overall size increases
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- Cephalocaudal trend & Proximodistal trend
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Cephalocaudal trend
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- "head to to tail" During the prenatal period, the head develops more rapidly than the lower part of the body. - At birth, the head takes up one-fourth of total body length, the legs only one-third. - By age 2, the head accounts for only one-fifth and the legs for nearly one-half of total body length
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Proximodistal trend
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- Growth proceeds, literally from "near to far" - From the center of the body outward - Head, chest, and trunk grow first - Then the arms and legs; and finally the hands and feet.
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Individual and Group Differences
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- Girls are slightly shorter and lighter than boys, in infancy - Boys: higher ratio of fat to muscle. - Children of the same age differ in rate of physical growth
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Growth norms
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- Height and weight averages for children her age.
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Is body size a good indication of being more mature?
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- Current body size is not enough to tell us how quickly a child's physical growth is moving along.
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What is the best estimate of a child's physical maturity?
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- Skeletal age-- a measure of bone development - It is determined by X-raying the long bones of the body to see the extent to which soft, pilable cartilage has hardened into bone, a gradual process that is completed in adolescence.
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Individual and Group Differences with skeletal age.
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- African-American children tend to be slightly ahead of Caucasian- American children in skeletal age. - Girls are ahead of boys.
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What else are girls more advanced in besides skeletal age?
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- Girls are advanced in development of other organs as well. The greater physical maturity may contribute to girls' greater resistance to harmful environmental influences. - Girls experience fewer developmental problems than boys and have lower infant and childhood mortality rates.
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Brain Development
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- At birth, the brain is nearer to its adult size than any other physical structure
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We can best understand brain growth by looking at if from two vantage points
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(1) microscopic level of individual brain cells (2) the larger level of the cerebral cortex, the most complex brain structure and the one responsible for the highly developed intelligence of our species.
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Neurons
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- 100 to 200 billion - nerve cells, that store and transmit information, many of which have thousands of direct connections with other neurons. - Not tightly packed together
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Synapses
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Tiny gaps between neurons-- where fibers from different neurons come close together but do not touch
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Neurotransmitters
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- Chemical released by the neurons that allow them to send messages to one another. - Cross the synapse
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Prenatal period and brain development
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- Neurons are produced in the embryo's primitive neural tube. From here they migrate to form the major parts of the brain. - Once neurons are in place, they differentiate, establishing their unique functions by extending their fibers to form synaptic connections with neighboring cells. - During infancy and toodlerhood, neural fibers and synapses increase at an astounding pace. - Because developing neurons requires space for these connective structures, a surprising aspect of brain growth is that as synapses form, many surrounding neurons die-- 20 to 80%. But the neural tube produces far more neurons than the brain will ever need.
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What happens to neurons as the form connections?
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- Stimulation becomes vital to their survival. Neurons that are stimulated by input from the surrounding environment continue to establish new synapses, forming increasingly elaborate systems of communication that support more complex abilities. - At first, stimulation results in a massive overabundance of synapses, many of which serve identical functions, thereby ensuring that the child will acquire the motor, cognitive, and social skills that our species needs to survive.
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Synaptic pruning
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- Returns neurons not needed at the moment to an uncommitted state so they can support future development. - Lose their synapses - 40% of synapses are pruned during childhood and adolescence.
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If neurons are produced after the prenatal period, what causes the extraordinary increase in brain size during the first two years?
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- About half the brain's volume is made up of gilial cells-- which are responsible for myelination-- The coating of neural fibers with an insulating fatty sheath (Called myelin) that improves the efficiency of message transfer.
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Gilial cells
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- also participate directly in neural communication, by picking up and passing on neuronal signals and releasing neurotransmitters. - Multiply rapidly at the end of pregnancy through the second year of life-- a process that continues at a slower pace through middle childhood and accelerates again in adolescence.
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What are the two major parts that account for the overall increase in size of brain?
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- Gains in neural fibers and myelination account for the overall increase in size of the brain.
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Brain Development summary
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1) neurons and synapses are overproduced 2) cell death and synaptic pruning sculpt away excess building material to form the mature brain 3) The resulting "Sculpture" is a set of interconnected regions, each with specific functions-- much like countries on a globe that communicate with one another
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Two most frequently used methods to detect changes in electrical activity in the cerebral cortex
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- Eleectroencephalogram (EEG) - researchers examine brain-wave patterns for stability and organization- signs of mature functioning of the cortex - Even-related potentials (ERPs) detect the general location of brain wave activity- a technique often used to study pre-verbal infants' responsiveness to various stimuli, the impact of experience on specialization of specific regions of the cortex, and atypical brain functioning in children at risk for learning and emotional problems.
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Neuroimaging techniques
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- Yield detailed, three-dimensional computerized picture of the entire brain and its active areas, provide the most precise information about which brain regions are specialized for certain capacities.
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Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
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- While the person lies inside a tunnel-shaped apparatus that creates a magnetic field, a scanner magnetically detects increased blood flow and oxygen metabolism in areas of the brain as the individual processes particular stimuli. - Does not require injection of radioactive substance like Positron emission tomography (PET)
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fMRI and PET require...
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- Require the participant to lie motionless as possible for an extended time, they are not suitable for infants and young children. - Map activity changes throughout the brain.
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Near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS)
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In which infrared (invisible) light is beamed at regions of the cerebral cortex to measure blood flow and oxygen metabolism while the child attends to a stimulus. The apparatus consists only of thin, flexible optical fibers attached to the scalp using a head cap, a baby can sit on the parent's lap and move during testing. - Maps only the functioning of the cerebral cortex
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Brain wave technologies
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- Other methods must be combined with brain-wave and - imaging findings to clarify their meaning.
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Measuring brain functioning chart
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- Pg. 163
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Cerebral Cortex
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The largest, most complex structure of the human brain, containing the greatest number of neurons and synapses, which accounts for the highly developed intelligence of the human species. - Accounts for 85% of the brains weight. - Last part of the brain to stop growing, it is sensitive to environmental influences for a much longer period than any other part of the brain.
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Regions of the cortex
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- Page 165 picture - Order in which cortical regions develop corresponds to the order in which various capacities emerge in the infant and growing child. Ex. Language areas are especially active from late infancy through the preschool years, when language development flourishes.
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What cortical regions has the most extended period of development?
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- frontal lobes
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Prefrontal cortex
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- Lying in front of areas controlling body movement, is responsible for thought-- in particular consciousness, inhibition of impulses, integration of information, and use of memory, reasoning, planning, and problem solving strategies. - Undergoes especially myelination and formation and pruning of synapses during the preschool and school years, followed by another period of accelerated growth in adolescence, when it reaches an adult level of synaptic connections.
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Hemispheres of the cerebral cortex.
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- Two hemispheres, or sides, that differ in their functions. - Each hemisphere receives sensory information from the side of the body opposite to it and controls only that side.
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Left hemisphere
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- Responsible for verbal abilities (such as spoken and written language) - positive emotion (for example, joy) - Better at processing information in a sequential, analytic (piece-by-piece) way, a good approach for dealing with communicative information-- both verbal (language) and emotional (a joyful smile)
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Right hemisphere
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- responsible for handling of spatial abilities (judging distances, reading maps, recognizing geometric shapes) - Negative emotion - Specialized for processing information in a holistic, integrative manner, ideal for making sense of spatial information and regulating negative emotion.
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Lateralization? Why does it occur?
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- Specialization of two hemispheres. - It enabled humans to cope more successfully with changing environmental demands. - Permits a wider array of functions to be carried out effectively then if both sides processed information in exactly the same way. - Two hemispheres communicate and work together, doing so more rapidly and effectively with age
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Brain plasticity
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- A highly plastic cerebral cortex, in which many areas are not yet committed to specific functions, has a high capacity for learning. And if a part of the cortex is damaged, other parts can take over the tasks it would have handled. Declines as hemispheres of the cerebral cortex lateralize.
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When do the hemispheres begin to specialize?
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- Begin to specialize at birth.
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Brain Plasticity: Insights from Research on Brain-Damaged Children and Adults
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- Adults who suffered injury to a part of the brain in infancy and early childhood usually show fewer cognitive impairment than adults with later-occurring injury. - The more brain tissue destroyed in infancy or early childhood the poorer the outcomes. - Recover after early brain injury is greater for language than for spatial skills. - High brain plasticity, researchers explain, comes at a price. When healthy brain regions take over the functions of damaged areas, a "crowding effect" occurs: Multiple tasks must be done by a smaller-than-usual volume of brain tissue. - The full impact of an early brain injury may not be apparent for many years, until higher-order skills are expected to develop. - Plasticity is greatest while the brain is forming many new synapses it declines during synaptic pruning.
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The Brain summoned up
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- Early experience greatly influences the organization of the cerebral cortex. - Brian is more plastic during the first few years than it will ever be again. - An overabundance of synaptic connections supports brain plasticity and, therefore, young children's ability to learn, which is fundamental to their survival. - Although the cortex is programmed from the start for hemispheric specialization, experience greatly influences the rate and success of its advancing organization.
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Sensitive Periods in Brain Development
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- Extreme sensory deprivation results in permanent brain damage and loss of functions. Ex. if a 1-month-old kitten is deprived of light for just three or four days, these areas of the brain degenerate. If the kitten is kept in the dark during the fourth week of life and beyond, the damage is severe and permanent. - When animals reared from birth in physically and socially stimulating surroundings are compared with those reared in isolation, the brains of the stimulated animals are larger and show much denser synaptic connections
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Humans Evidence: Victims Deprived Early Environments
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- When babies are born with cataracts in both eyes, those who have corrective surgery within four to six months show rapid improvement in vision. The longer cataract surgery is postponed beyond infancy, the less complete the recovery in visual skills. - Orphans show importance of a stimulating environment-- Cognitive catch-up was impressive for children adopted before 6 months, who consistently attained average mental test scores in childhood and adolescence. - More than 6 months- showed serious intellectual deficits. - Early lack of stimulation permanently damaging the brain. - The longer the children spent in orphanage care, the higher their coritisol level-- even 6 1/2 years after adoption. - Orphans had abnormally low levels of oxytocin- a hormone released by the brain that evokes calmness and contentment in the presence of familiar trusted people.
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Appropriate Stimulation
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- good parenting seems to protect the young brain from the potentially damaging effects of both excessive and inadequate stress-hormone exposure.
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How then, can we characterize appropriate stimulation during the early years? Two types of brain development help explain. Define the first type
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- Experience- expectant brain growth-- refers to the young brain's rapidly developing organization which depends on ordinary experiences-- opportunities to explore the environment, interact with people and hear language and other sounds - Occurs early and naturally, as caregivers offer babies and preschoolers age-appropriate play materials and engage them in enjoyable daily routines-- a shared meal, a game of peekaboo, a bath before bed, a picture book to talk about, or a song to sing.
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Define the second type of brain growth
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- Experience-dependent brain growth-- occurs throughout our lives. It consists of additional growth and the refinement of established brains structures as a result of specific learning experiences that vary widely across individuals and cultures. - Ex. Reading and writing, playing computer games, weaving an intricate rug
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Early learning
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Rushing early learning also harms the brain by overwhelming its neural circuits, thereby reducing the brains sensitivity to the everyday experiences it needs for a healthy start in life.
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Changing of States of Arousal
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- Rapid brain growth means that organization of sleep and wakefulness changes substantially between birth and 2 years, and fussiness and crying also decline.
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How long does the average newborn sleep? How long does the average 2-year-old need for sleep?
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- The average newborn needs 16 to 18 hours. - The average 2-year-old needs 12 to 13 hours. - Change in arousal patterns are due to brain development. - Also affected by cultural beliefs and practices and parents' needs-- Dutch parents view sleep regularity as far more important than U.S. parents do.
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At what age does Melatonin become greater at night then during the day?
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- The middle of the first year - Melatonin is a hormone within the brain that promotes drowsiness, much greater at night than during the day.
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Even after infants sleep through the night. What starts temporary periods of disrupted sleep?
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- Temporary periods of disrupted sleep start to begin when babies begin to crawl and walk.
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Cultural Variation in Infant Sleeping Arrangements?
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- Western society encourages the nighttime separation of baby from parent. - Babies sleep in own room by 3 months of age. By 6 months, a child who regularly sleeps in her parents' room may feel uneasy sleeping anywhere else. - Parents-infant bed sharing may increase the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
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How popular is "cosleeping" parent-infant?
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- The norm for approximately 90% of the world's population usually lie next to their mothers throughout infancy and early childhood, and many continue to sleep with a parent or other family member until adolescence.
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Guatemalan Mayan mothers vs. American middle-SES mothers
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Mayan mothers stressed the importance of promoting an interdependent self, explaining that cosleeping builds a close parent-child bond American mothers emphasized and independent self, mentioning their desire to instill early autonomy, prevent bad habits, and protect their own privacy.
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Has cosleeping increased or decreased in Western nations?
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- Increased in western nations. An estimated 11% of U.S. infants routinely bedshare, and an additional 30 to 35% sometimes do.
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Cosleeping in relation to breastfeeding and SIDS?
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- During the night, cosleeping babies breastfeed three times longer than infants who sleep alone - May prevent SIDS because mother wakes up more in the night therefore checking on her baby.
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North American vs. Mayan babies ability to fall asleep
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- Mayan babies doze off in the midst of ongoing family activities and are carried to bed by their mothers. In contrast, for many North American parents, bedtime often requires a lengthy, elaborate ritual. Perhaps bedtime struggles, so common in Western homes but rare elsewhere in the world, are related to the stress young children feel when they must fall asleep without assistance.
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Cosleeping advantages and disadvantages
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- Bedsharing will promote emotional problems-- Not proven very well. - Infants may become trapped under the parents body or in soft bedding and suffocate.
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What is Physical growth affected by?
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- Physical growth, like other aspects of development, result from the continuous and complex interplay between genetic and environmental factors. Ex. Heredity, nutrition, relative freedom from disease, and emotional well-being all affect early physical growth.
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Heredity
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- When diet and health are adequate, height and rate of physical growth are largely determined by heredity. - Genetic make up
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Nutrition
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- Especially crucial in the first two years. -25% of infants' total caloric intake is devoted to growth and babies need extra calorie to keep rapidly developing organs functioning properly.
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Breast feeding-- Nutritional and health advantages
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1) Provides the correct balance of fat and protein-- ideal for rapidly myelinating nervous system 2) Ensures nutritional completeness- Mother who breast feeds need not add other foods to her infant's diet until the baby is 6 months old. Iron contained in breast milk-- Consequently, bottle-fed infants need iron-fortified formula. 4) Protects against many diseases- Transfer antibodies and other infection-fighting agents from mother to baby and enhances functioning of the immune system. Bottle-fed infant have more allergic reactions and respiratory and intestinal illnesses. Breast feeding is linked to lower blood cholesterol levels in adulthood. 5) Protects against faulty jaw development and tooth decay-- Avoid malocclusion-- a condition in which the upper and lower jaws do not meet properly. Sweet liquid remains in the mouths of infants who fall asleep while sucking on a bottle. 6) Ensures digestibility- Breastfed babies have a different kind of bacteria growing in their intestines than do bottle- fed infants, they rarely suffer from constipation or other gastrointestinal problems. 7) Smooths the transition to solid foods- Breastfed infants accept new solid foods more easily than do bottle-fed infants, perhaps because of their greater experience with a variety of flavors, which pass from the maternal diet into the mother's milk.
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Breastfeeding vs. bottle-feeding
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- Breastfed babies in poverty-stricken regions of the world are much less likely to be malnourished and 14 times more likely to survive the first year of life.
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What is the World Health Organizations recommendation on beast feeding?
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- Recommends breastfeeding until age 2, with solid foods added at 6 months. These practices, if widely followed, would save the lives of more than 800,000 infants annually. - Breastfeeding for a few weeks offers some protection against respiratory and intestinal infections, which are devastating to young children in developing countries. - Helps increase spacing among infants- a major factor in reducing infant and childhood deaths in nations with widespread poverty.
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Do many mothers in the developing world know about the benefits of breast feeding?
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- No, not many. - In place of breast milk, mothers give their babies commercial formula or low-grade nutrients, such as rice water or highly diluted cow or goat milk. Can cause illness and infant death
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What does the United Nations promote to the maternity units in developing countries?
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- All hospitals and maternity units in developing countries to promote breastfeeding as long as mothers do not have viral or bacterial infections (HIV or tuberculosis) that can be transmitted to baby - Banned practice of giving free or subsidized formula to new mothers.
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Breastfeeding in industrialized nations?
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- Breastfeeding has become more common in industrialized nations, especially among well-educated women. - 77% of American mothers begin breastfeeding after birth but more than one-third stop by 6 months.
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Preterm babies and breast feeding
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- Only 50% of preterm infants are breastfed at hospital discharge. Breast feeding a preterm baby presents special challenges, including maintaining a sufficient milk supply with artificial pumping until the baby is mature enough to suck at the breast and provide the infant with enough sucking experience to learn to feed successfully.
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How hungry does a breast milk fed baby to a bottle-fed baby?
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- Breast milk is so easily digestible that a breastfed infant becomes hungry quite often-- every 1 1/2 to 2 hours, compared to every 3 or 4 hours for a bottle-fed baby. Which makes breastfeeding inconvenient for many employed women. - Mothers who return to work earlier wean their babies from the breast earlier. - Can combine breast and bottle feeding. - U.S. Department of Health and Human services advises exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months and inclusion of breast milk in the baby's diet until at least 1 year.
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Are Chubby Babies at Risk for Later Overweight and Obesity?
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- Most chubby babies thin out during toddlerhood and the preschool years, as weight gain slows and they become more active. - Recent evidence indicates a strengthening relationship between rapid weight gain in infancy and later obesity. The trend may be due to the rise in overweight and obesity among adults who promote unhealthy eating habits in their children.
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How can parents prevent their infants from becoming overweight children and adults?
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- One way is to breastfeed for the first six months, which is associated with slower weight gain over the first year, leaner body build through early childhood, and 10 to 20 percent reduced obesity risk in later life. - Avoid giving babies food loaded with sugar, salt and saturated fats. - Limit television watching time.
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U.S. Public Policy Changes Improve Infant Feeding Practices in Low-Income Families.
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- Inappropriate feeding of solids and liquids in infancy is consistently associated with greater daily caloric intake and excessive weight gain during the first two years. - U.S. Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is a federally funded initiative that provides nutrition education and food to low-income mothers and to their children from birth to age 5. Serves about 1/2 U.S. infants, two-thirds who live in poverty. - Mothers who breastfeed got enhanced food packages - WIC incentives lengthened the duration of breast feeding.
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Malnutrition
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- 1/3 of the world's children suffer from malnutrition before age 5.
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Marasmus
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- A wasted condition of the body caused by a diet low in all essential nutrients. It usually appears in the first year of life when a baby's mother is too malnourished to produce enough breast milk and bottle-feeding is also inadequate.
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Kwashiorkor
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- Caused by an unbalanced diet very low in protein. The disease usually strikes after weaning, between 1 and 3 years of age. - It is common in regions where children get just enough calories from starchy food but little protein.
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Extreme malnutrition and its affects
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- Grow to be smaller in all body dimensions and suffer from lasting damage to the brain. heart, liver, pancreas, and other organs. - When diets doess improve they tend to gain excess weight. - A malnourished body protects itself by establishing a low basal metabolism rate, which may endure after nutrition improves. - Malnutrition may disrupt appetite control centers in the brain, causing the child to overeat when food becomes plentiful. - Learning and behavior - Permanently reduces brain weight and alters the production of neurotransmitter sin the brain. - Poor fine-motor coordination, have difficult paying attention, often display conduct problems, and score low on intelligence tests into adulthood. Display more intense stress and irritability
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Iron-deficiency anemia
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A condition common among poverty-stricken infants and children that interferes with many central nervous system processes.
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Food insecurity
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- Uncertain access to enough food for a healthy, active life. - 22% of U.S. Children suffer from it - High among single-parent families and low-income ethnic minority families.
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Growth faltering
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- Term applied to infants whose weight, height, and head circumference are substantially below age-related growth norms and who are withdrawn and apathetic. In as many as half such cases, a disturbed parent-infant relationship contributes to this failure to grow normally.
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Learning
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- Refers to changes in behavior as the result of experience. - Infants are capable of two basic forms of learning: classical and operant conditioning.
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Classical conditioning
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- Possible in the young infant. - Form of learning, a neutral stimulus is paired with a stimulus that leads to reflexive response. Once the baby's nervous system makes the connection between the two stimuli, the neutral stimulus produces the behavior by itself. - Helps infants recognize which events usually occur together in the everyday world, so they can anticipate what is about to happen next. - The environment becomes more orderly and predictable.
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Steps of Classical Conditioning.
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1) Before learning takes place, and unconditioned stimulus (UCS) must consistently produce a reflexive, or unconditioned, response (UCR) 2) To produce learning, a neutral stimulus that does not lead to the reflex is presented just before, or at about the same time as the UCS. 3) If learning has occurred, the neutral stimulus alone produces a response similar to the reflexive response. The neutral stimulus is then called a conditioned stimulus (CS), and the response it elicits is called a conditioned response (CR)
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Classical Conditioning
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- Babies build expectations about stimulus events in the environment, but they do not influence the stimuli that occur.
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Unconditioned stimulus
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In classical conditioning, a stimulus that leads to reflexive response
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Unconditioned response
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In classical conditioning, a reflexive response that is produced by an unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
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Conditioned stimulus
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In classical conditioning, a neutral stimulus that, through pairing with an unconditioned stimulus (UCS), leads to a new, conditioned response (CR)
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Conditioned response
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In classical conditioning, a neutral stimulus that, through pairing with an unconditioned stimulus (UCS), leads to a new conditioned response (CR).
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Example of Classical Conditioning
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- It is springtime and the pollen from the flowers causes you to sneeze. Soon you are sneezing every time you see a flower. - US = pollen from the flowers; UR = sneeze; CS = any flower sighted; CR = sneeze.
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Extinction
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When the CS is presented alone enough times, without being paired with the UCS, the CR will no longer occur. Ex. If Carolyn repeatedly strokes Caitlin's forehead without feeding her, Caitlin will gradually stop sucking in response to stroking.
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Operant conditioning
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Infants act, or operate, on the environment, and stimuli that follow their behavior change the probability that the behavior will occur again.
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Reinforcer
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A stimulus that increases the occurrence of a response. Ex. Sweet liquid reinforces the sucking response in newborns
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Punishment
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Removing a desirable stimulus or presenting an unpleasant one to decrease the occurrence of a response. Ex. A sour-tasting fluid punishes newborn babies' sucking response, causing them to purse their lips and stop sucking entirely.
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Many different types of...?
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Stimuli
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Infants tend to respond more strongly to...?
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A new element that has entered their environment
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Habituation
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A gradual reduction in the strength of a response due to repetitive stimulation.
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Recovery
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Following habituation, and increase in responsiveness to a new stimulus. - A new stimulus- change in the environment- causes responsiveness to return to a high level
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How do habituation and recovery promote learning?
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- They promote learning by focusing our attention on those aspects of the environment we know least about.
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Novelty preference
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- Infants are more likely to pay attention to new objects or people than those they've seen before.
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Familiarity preference
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- Instead of attending to novelty (quality of being new), you are likely to focus on aspects that are familiar.
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Remote memory
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- Memory for stimuli to which infants were exposed weeks or months earlier
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Habituation and recovery to stimuli as babies age more quickly?
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With age, babies habituate and recover to stimuli more quickly, indicating that they process information more efficiently.
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Imitation
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- Babies come into the world with a primitive ability to learn through Imitation - Copying the behavior of another person. - Powerful means of learning. Using imitation, infants explore their social world, learning from other people.
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Mirror neurons
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- Specialized cells in many areas of the cerebral cortex in primates that underlie the ability to imitate by firing identically when a primate hears or sees and action and when it carries out that action on its own. - Humans have especially elaborate neural mirroring systems, which enable us to observe another person's behavior (such as smiling or throwing a ball) while stimulating the behavior in our own brain.
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Motor Development
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- Allow babies to master their bodies and the environment in new ways.
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Gross-motor development
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- Refers to control over actions that help infants get around in the environment, such as crawling, standing, and walking
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Fine-motor development
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- Has to do with smaller movements, such as reaching and grasping. - Concerned about a child's development only if many motor skills were seriously delayed.
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Motor skills are interrelated
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- Each is a product of earlier motor attainments and a contributor to new ones. And children acquire motor skills in highly individual ways. - Many influences -- both internal and external to the child -- join together to support the vast transformations in motor competencies of the first two years.
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Dynamic systems theory of motor development.
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- Mastery of motor skills involves acquiring increasingly complex systems of action. When motor skills work as a system, separate abilities blend together, each cooperating with others to produce more effective ways of explore and controlling the environment. Ex. control of the head and upper chest combine into sitting and support Ex. Kicking, rocking on all fours, and reaching combine to become crawling. Ex. Crawling standing, standing, and steeping are united into walking.
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Refer to chart about Gross- and Fine-Motor Development in the First Two Years
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- Pg. 182
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What factors is each new skill a joint product of?
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1) Central nervous system development 2) the body's movement capacities 3) the goals the child has mind 4) environmental supports for skill. - Vary with age
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When a skill is first required, what must infants do?
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- Infants must refine it.
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What is the average amount of time toddlers practice walking per day? How many times do they fall per hour?
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- Spend six or more hours a day practicing walking - Fall on average 32 times per hour
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What does the Dynamic systems theory show us?
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- Shows us that motor development cannot be genetically determined. - Because it is motivated by exploration and the desire to master new tasks and varies with context, heredity can map it out only at a general level. Rather than being hardwired into the nervous system, motor behaviors are softly assembled from multiple components, allowing for different paths to the same motor skill.
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Why did babies reach "feet first?"
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- Infants could more easily control their leg movements
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Often advances in one motor skill...?
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- Often advances another motor skill.
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Do toddlers when walking fall more or less often when they are carrying things in their hands?
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- fall less often.
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Cultural Variations in Motor Development
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- Cultural variations in infant-rearing practices affect motor development. - Certain places encourage sitting, crawling, early motor maturity, practicing formal exercises to stimulate particular skills.
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How is walking promoted
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- promoted by frequent standing, bouncing them on their feet, and exercising stepping reflex.
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SIDS decreases tummy time
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- Having babies sleep on their backs to protect them from SIDs delays gross-motor milestones of rolling, sitting, and crawling. Regularly exposing infants to tummy-lying positing during waking hours prevents these delays
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Fine-Motor Development: Reaching and Grasping
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- May play the greatest role in infant cognitive development. By grasping things, turning them over, and seeing what happens when they are released, infants learn a great deal about the sights, sounds, and feel of objects.
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Prereaching
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- The poorly coordinated swipes toward objects of newborn babies. - Stops around 7 weeks of age, when babies improve in eye movements involved in tracking and fixating on objects, which are essential for accurate reaching.
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Development of Reaching and Grasping
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- At about 3 to 4 months as infants develop the necessary eye, head, and shoulder control, reaching reappears as purposeful, forward arm movements in the presence of a nearby toy and gradually improves in accuracy.
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Proprioception
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- Reaching is largely controlled by this - Our sense of movement and location in space, arising from stimuli within the body. - Reaching improves as depth perception advances and as infants gain greater control of body posture and arm and hand movements.
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Once infants can reach...
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- They increase the quantity and variety of their exploratory behaviors with objects-- mouthing, fingering, looking and combining these actions. - Modify their grasps until the ulnar grasp
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Ulnar grasp
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A clumsy motion in which the young infant's fingers close against the palm.
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Around 4 to 5 months...
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infants begin to sit up, both hands become coordinated in exploring objects. Babies of this age can hold an object in one hand while the other scans it with the tips of the fingers, and they frequently transfer objects from hand to hand.
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Pincer grasp
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- Infants use the thumb and index finger in a well coordinated grasp - End of the first year.
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Between 8 to 11 months
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- Reaching and grasping are well-practiced. As a result, attention is released from the motor skill to events that occur before and after obtaining the object. - Look at how adults reaches for and plays with the same object
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Early Experience and reaching
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- Reaching is affected by early experience. - In cultures where mothers carry their infants not at their hips or in slings for most of the day, babies have rich opportunities to explore with their hands. - Visual surroundings- mobile over a crib-- infants given nothing to look at did not reach as quickly as those who had a mobile over a crib
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Hearing
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- Between 4 to 7 months infants display sense of musical phrasing - Around 6 to 7 months infants can distinguish musical tones on the basis of variations in rhythmic patterns, including beat structure (duple or tripe) and accent structure (emphasis not he first note of every beat until or at other positions). - Prefer to listen to high-pitched playsongs (aimed at entertaining) - Low-pitched lullabies (used to soothe).
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Speech Perception
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- Brain-imaging evidence reveals that in young infants, discrimination of speech sounds activates both auditory and motor areas in the cerebral cortex. - As infants listen to people talk, they learn to focus on meaningful sound variations. ERP brain-wave recordings reveal that around 5 months, infants become sensitive to syllable stress patterns in their own language. Between 6 and 8 months, they start to "screen out" sounds not used in their native tongue and, in the case of bilingual infants, in both native lungs - tuning - Infants focus on larger speech units that are critical to figuring out meaning. They recognize familiar words in spoken passages and listen longer to speech with clear clause and phrase boundaries - Around 7 to 9 months, infants extend this sensitivity to speeches tractor to individual words. They begin to divide the stream into word like units
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Tuning
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- Process in the second half to the first year in which a possible sensitive period in which babies acquire a range of perceptual skills for picking up socially important information,
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"'Tuning in' to Familiar Speech, Faces, and Music: A Sensitive Period for Culture and Specific Learning"
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- First babies are all sensitive to virtually all speech sounds but, around 6 months, they narrow their focus, limiting the distinctions they make to the language they hear and will soon learn. - Perceptual narrowing effect - 6-month-olds-were shown the familiar face and the novel face side by side. For both pairs, they recovered to (looked longer at) the novel face, indicating that they could discriminate the individual faces of both humans and monkeys equally well. But at 12 months, infants no longer showed a novelty preference when viewing the monkey pair. Like adults, they could only distinguish only the human faces. - Sensitive period-- in the second half of the first year, when babies are biologically prepared to "zero in" on socially meaningful perceptual distinctions.
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Perceptual narrowing effect
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- Perceptual sensitivity that becomes increasingly attuned with age to information most often encountered.
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Statistical learning capacity
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The capacity to analyze the speech stream for repeatedly occurring sequences of sounds, through which infants acquire a stock of speech structures for which they will later learn meanings.
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Analyzing the speech stream
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- Babies as young as 5 months listened for statistic regularities: They locate words by discriminating syllables that often occur together (indicating they belong to the same word) from syllables that seldom occur together (indicating a word boundary) - Once infants being locating words, they focus on the words and discover additional statistical cues that signal word boundaries. - 7-to 8-month-olds detect regular syllable-stress patterns-- for example the onset of a strong syllable often signals a new word. - Also around 7-month-olds distinguished the ABA structure of "ga ti ga" from the ABB structure of "wo fe fe" - 10 months babies can detect words that start with weak syllables, such as "surprise," by listening for sound regularities before and after the words.
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Vision
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- undergoes extraordinary changes during the first 7 to 8 months of life. - Visual development is supported by rapid maturation of the eye and visual centers in the cerebral cortex. - Newborn baby focuses and perceives color poorly. - Around 2 months, infants can focus on objects about as well as adults, and their color vision is adultlike by 4 months - Visual Acuity - Scanning the environment and tracking moving objects also improve over the first half-year as infants see ore clearly and better control their eye movements.
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Visual acuity
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Fineness of discrimination. Increasing steadily throughout the first year, reaching 20/80 by 6 months an adult level of about 20/20 by 4 months.
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What are the 3 aspects of vision
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Depth, pattern, and object perception
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Depth perception
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The ability to judge the distance of objects from one another and from ourselves. It important for understanding the layout of the environment and for guiding motor activity.
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Visual cliff
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- Used in the earliest studies of depth perception. It consists of a Plexiglas-covered table with a platform at the center, a "shallow" side with a checkerboard pattern just under the glass, and a "deep" side with a checkerboard several feet below the glass. - The researchers found that crawling babies readily crossed the shallow side, but most avoided the deep side. They concluded that around the time infants crawl, most distinguish deep from shallow surfaces and steer clear of drop-offs.
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Emergence of Depth Perception
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- Nearby objects move past your field of vision more quickly than those far away. - Motion: first depth cue to which infants are sensitive Babies 3 to 4 weeks old blink their eyes defensively when an object moves toward their face as though it is going to hit
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Binocular depth cues
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- Two eyes have slightly different views of the visual field. Especially important in determining the distance of objects that are relatively close. - Emerges at 2 to 3 months.
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Pictorial depth cues
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- Begin at 3 to 4 months and strengthening between 5 to 7 months - Ex. receding lines that create the illusion of perspective, changes in texture, overlapping objects, and shadows cast on surfaces.
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Why does perception of depth cues emerge in the order just described?
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- Researchers speculate that motor development is involved. For example, control of the head during the early weeks of life may help babies notice motion and binocular cues. Around 5 to 6 months, the ability to turn, poke, and feel the surface of objects may promote perception of pictorial cues.
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Independent Movement and Depth Perception
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- Infants with more crawling experience are far more likely to refuse to cross the deep side of the visual cliff.
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Pattern Perception
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- Newborns prefer to look at patterned rather than plain stimuli - Infants prefer more complex patterns as they get older.
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Contrast sensitivity
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- Explains early pattern preferences. Contrast refers to the difference in the amount of light between adjacent regions in a pattern. If babies are sensitive to (can detect) the contrast in two or more patterns, they prefer the one with more contrast.
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Combining Pattern Elements
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- In early weeks of life, infants respond to the separate parts of a pattern. - Once babies can take in all aspects of a pattern, they integrate the parts into a unified whole. Around 4 months, babies are so good at detecting pattern organization that they perceive subjective boundaries that are not really present. - 9-months-old look much longer at an organized series of moving lights that resembles a human being walking than at an upside-down or scramble version. -12-months-old infants can detect familiar objects represented by incomplete drawings, even when as much as two thirds of the drawing is missing.
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Face Perception
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- Newborns prefer to look at photos and simplified drawings of faces with features arranged naturally (urpright) rather than unnaturally (upside down or sideways) - Track facelike pattern moving across their visual field farther than they track other stimuli. - Rely more on outer features to distinguish real faces, newborns prefer photos of faces with eyes open and a direst gaze. - Tendency to look longer at both human and animal faces judged by adults as attractive-- a preference that may be the origin of the widespread social bias favoring physically attractive people. - Orient toward members of one's own species. - Cannot discriminate a complex facial pattern from other, equally complex patterns. - when they are newborns - Prefer their mother's detailed face features to those of another women - Around 3 months, infants readily make fine distinctions among the features of different faces-- for example, between photographs of two strangers, even when the faces are moderately similar. - At 5 months- infants perceive emotional expressions as meaningful wholes. The treat positive faces (happy and surprised) as different from negative ones (sad and fearful) - 7 months discriminate among a winder range of facial expressions, including happiness, surprise, sadness, fearfulness, and anger.
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Female vs. Male faces
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- 3 months, infants prefer and more easily discriminate among female faces than among male faces. The greater time infants spend with female adults explains this effects, since babies with a male primary caregiver prefer male faces.
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Preferring of Races
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- 3-to-6-month-olds exposed mostly to members of their own race prefer to look at the faces of members of that race. - Between 6 and 9 months their ability to discriminate other0race faces weakens. - Own-race bias is absent in babies who have frequent contact with members of other races or who through exposure to racial diversity.
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Perceptual narrowing
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- Tendency of an individual to narrow the attentional focus and miss certain types of information in the environment as the level of arousal increases.
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Size and shape constancy
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- As we move around the environment, the images that objects cast on our retina constantly change in size and shape. To perceive objects as stable and unchanging, we must translate these varying retinal images into a single representation.
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Size constancy
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- Perception of an object's size as the same, despite changes in the size of its retinal image. - When a small cube was presented together with a new, large cube-- but at different differences so that they cast retinal images of the same size-- all babies recovered (looked longer at) the novel large cube, indicating that they distinguished objects on the basis of actual size, not retinal image size. - Evident in first week of life
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Shape constancy
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- Perception of an object's shape as stable, despite changes in the shape projected on the retina. - Evident in first week of life
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Perception of Object Identity
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- At first, babies rely heavily on motion and spatial arrangement to identify objects. - Object unity- babies realize that a moving rod whose center is hidden behind a box is a complete rod rather than two rod pieces. Motion, a textured background, and a small box (so most of the rod is visible) are necessary for young infants to infer object unity. Cues are needed to help babies understand - As infants become familiar with many objects and improvements in scanning assist them in integrating each object;s features into a unified whole, they rely more on shape, color, and pattern and less on motion.
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Objects moving frequently
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- In every day life, objects frequently move in and out of sight, so infants must keep track of their disappearance and reappearance to perceive their identity. - Around 4 moths, infants first perceive the ball's path as continuous. Between 4 and 5 months, infants can monitor more intricate paths of objects. Indicated by their future-oriented eye movements (looking ahead to where they expect an object to reappear from behind a barrier)
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Objects
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- From 4 to 11 months, infants need increasingly use of featural information to detect the identity of an object raveling behind a screen. - At first they need strong featural cues-- a change in two features (size and shape, or shape and color)-- to signify that a disappearing object is distinct - Physically manipulating the object-- boosts older infants' attention to its surface features.
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Intermodal stimulation
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- Simultaneous input from more than one modality, or sensory system
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Intermodal perception
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We make sense of these running streams of light, sound tactile, odor and taste information perceiving them as integrated wholes. Ex. Lip movements are closely coordinated with the sound of a voice. Ex. Dropping a rigid object on a hard surface will cause a sharp, banging sound.
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Amodal sensory properties
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- Information that is not specific to a single modality but that develops two or more sensory systems. - Rate, rhythm, duration, intensity, temporal synchrony (for vision and hearing), and texture and shape (for vision and touch). - Sight and sound of a bouncing ball or the face and voice of a speaking person. In each event, visual and auditory information are conveyed simultaneously and with the same rate, rhythm, duration and intensity.
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Infants master remarkable range of intermodal relationships within the first half-year.
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- Three-to 5-month-olds can match faces with voices on the basis of lip-voice synchrony, emotional expression, and even age and gender of the speaker. - 6 months infants can perceive and remember the unique face-voice pairings of unfamiliar adults.
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Intermodal sensitivity
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- Crucial for perceptual development. In the first few months, when much stimulation is unfamiliar and confusing, it enables babies to notice meaningful correlations between sensory inputs and rapidly make sense of their surroundings. - Facilitates processing of the social world. Infants discriminate positive from negative emotion in each sensory modality-- first in voices (around 5 months), later (from 7 months on ) in faces - Supports diverse aspects of learning - Infants receive much support from other senses in acquiring language.
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Intermodal stimulation summed up
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- When caregivers provide many concurrent sights, sounds, and touches, babies process more information and learn faster. Intermodal perception is yet another fundamental capacity that assists infants in their active efforts build an orderly, understandable world.
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Differentiation theory
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- Infants actively search for invariant features of the environment-- those that remain stable-- in a constantly changing perceptual world. - Babies seek out invariant relationships-- first, amodal properties, such as common rate and rhythm, in a voice and face, later more detailed associations, such as unique voice-face matches.
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Differentiation
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- Over time the baby detects finer and finer invariant features among stimuli.
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Affordances
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- The action possibilities that a situation offers an organism with certain motor capabilities. Discovering affordances plays a major role in perceptual differentiation. - Slopping surface affords the possibility of falling.
