DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCH  Brain is both flexible & resilient

Chapter 4: Physical Dev’t in Infancy Sleep:

Patterns of Growth:  Typical newborns sleep 18 hours a day
 Infants vary in their preferred times for sleeping
 Cephalocaudal Pattern – sequence in which the
 Most common infant sleep related problem is night
earliest growth always occurs from the top
walking
downward.
 Consistently linked to excessive parental
 Proximodistal Pattern – sequence in which
involvement in sleep-related interactions with
growth starts in the center of the body moves
their infant
toward the extremities.
 REM Sleep: eyes flutter beneath closed lids
Height & Weight:  Sleep cycle begins with REM sleep in infants
 May provide infants with added self-
 Average North American newborn is 20 inches
stimulation
long, 7 ½ pounds
 REM sleep may also promote brain
 At 2 years of age, infants weigh 26-32 pounds
development
and are half their adult height
 We do not know whether infants dream or
The Brain: not
 Shared sleeping:
 Contains approx. 100 billion neurons at birth
 Varies from culture to culture
 Extensive brain development continues after
 American Academy of Pediatrics discourages shared
birth, through infancy, and later
sleeping
 Head should be protected
 Potential benefits:
 Shaken baby syndrome: Brain swelling
 Promotes breast feeding & a quicker response
& hemorrhaging from child abuse
to crying
trauma
 Allows mother to detect potentially dangerous
breathing pauses in baby
 The Brain’s Development
 SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome): infants stop
 At birth, the brain is 25% of its adult weight,
breathing & die without apparent cause
at 2 years of age, it is 75% of its adult
 Highest cause of infant death in US annually
weight
 Highest risk is 2-4 months
 Mapping the Brain
 Many other risk factors associated with SIDS
 4 Lobes
 Lateralization Nurtrition:
 Left brained vs. Right brained
 Nutritional needs & eating behavior
 Changes in neurons
 50 calories per day for each pound they weigh
 Continued Myelination
 Fruits & veggies by end of 1st year
 Greater connectivity & new neural
pathways  Poor dietary patterns lead to increasing rates of
overweight & obese infants
 Changes in Regions of the Brain
 Breastfeeding reduces risk of obesity
 Dramatic “Blooming & Pruning” of synapses
in the visual,  Breast vs bottle feeding
 Early experience of the Brain  Concensus: breastfeeding is better
 Depressed brain activity has been found in  Breastfeeding throughout the first year
children who grow up in a deprived  Malnutrition in Infancy
environment  Early warning can cause malnutrition
 Repeated experience wires (and rewires)
the brain
 Two life threatening conditions resulting from
malnutrition:
 Marasmus: a severe protein-calorie deficiency
resulting in a wasting away of body tissues
 Kwashiorkor: a severe protein-calorie deficiency
that causes the abdomen & feet to swell with
water
 Severe and lengthy malnutrition is detrimental to
physical, cognitive, and social development
MOTOR DEVELOPMENT:
 Arnold Gesell (1943)
 Genetic Plan: Malnutrition
 The dynamic systems view
 Esther Thelen (90s onwards)
 Infants assemble motor skills for perceiving and
acting
 Motor skills represent solution to goals
 Development is an active process in which nature
and nurture work together as part of an ever-
changing system
 How does a motor skill developed according to this
theory?
 Converging factors:
1. Development of Nervous syetem
2. Body’s physical properties
3. Possibilities for movement
4. The goal the child is motivated to reach
5. Environmental support for the skill
 Reflexes: build-in reactions to stimuli; autonomic
and inborn
 Rooting reflex: walking, standing, movement of
hands
 Sucking: thumb-sucking, breastfeeding
 Moro reflex: Stretching of the arms
 Grasping reflex: Paghawak
 Some reflexes continue throughout life; others
disappear several months after birth
 Gross motor skills: large muscle activities
 Development of posture:
 Posture: a dynamic process linked with
sensory information in the skin, joints &
muscles, which tell us where we are in
space
 Learning to walk:
 Occurs about the time of their first birthday
 Development in the first Year:
 Some milestones & variations
 Some milestones vary by as much as 2 to 4
months
 Experience can modify the onset of the motor
accomplishments
 Development in the second year:
 Toddlers become more skilled & mobile
 By 13-18 months toddlers can pull a toy or
climb stairs
 18-24 months can walk, balance, kick a ball
 Fine motor skills: finely tuned movement
 Using spoon, buttoning a shirt, reaching,
grasping
 Palmer grasp: grasping with the whole hand
 Pincer grip: gripping thumb and forefinger
 Perceptual: motor coupling is necessary for
infants to coordinate grasping
SENSORY & PERCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT:
What are sensation & perception?
 Sensation: occurs when information interacts with
sensory receptors (eyes, ears, tongue, nostrils, skin)
 Perception: interpretation of what is sensed
 Perception varies; does not mean right or
wrong
 Ecological view: we diretly perceive information
that exists in the world around us
 Affordances: opportunities for interaction
offered by objects that fir within our capabilities
to perform activities
Visual Perception:
 Visual act & human faces:
 Newborn’s vision is about 20/20 but 20/40 by 6
months of age
 Infants show an interest in human faces after
birth
 Spend more time working at the mother’s
face than a stranger’s face as early as 12
hours after being born
 A 2 month old scans much more of the face
more than 1 month old
 Color vision
 Depth perception: Eleanor Gibson & Richard Walk
studied development of depth perception using a
“visual cliff”
 Infants 6-12 months old can distinguish depth  Organization: groupings isolated behaviors &
 Nature, nurture, and the development of infants thoughts into a higher-order, more smoothly
visual perception functioning cognitive system

Other Senses: Processes of Development:

 Hearing:  Equilibration: explanation of cognitive shift

 Fetuses can hear & learn sounds during the last (qualitative) from 1 stage thought to next
2 months of pregnancy  Disequilibrium: cognitive conflict motivation for
 Touch & Pain: change
 Newborns do respond to touch and can also  Equilibrium: resolve conflict through assimilation
feel pain and accommodation to reach new balance
 Smell:
 Newborns can differentiate odors
 Varies
 Taste:
 Sensitivity to taste may be present at birth

 Intermodal perception: ability to integrate

information from 2 or more sensory modalities
 Perceptual-motor Coupling: perception & action are
coupled
 Action educates perception
Sensorimotor stage:

CHAPTER 5: COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN INFANCY
Piaget’s Theory of Infant Development:
 Infants construct their own knowledge (learn on
their own)
 Own way to understand the world
 Unifying story of how biology & experience sculpt
cognitive development
 Our physical bodies enable us to adapt to the world,
so does we build mental structures
 Cognitive process
 Schemes: actions or mental representations
that organize knowledge
 Assimilation & accommodation
 Assimilation: Using existing schemes to deal
with new information or experience
 Accomodation: adjusting schemes to fit
new information and experience
 Object permanence:
 Understanding that objects still exist when not
seen, heard, or touched
 One of infants most important accomplishment
 Acquired in stages
 Causality & violation of expectations testing
Conditioning:
 B.F. Skinner: Operant Conditioning
 Consequence of the behavior produce changes
in the probability if the behavior’s occurrence
Attention:
 Sustained Attention: Learn & remember
characteristics of the stimulus as it becomes familiar
(3 months y/o, within 5 to 10 seconds)
 Habituation: decreased responsiveness after
repeated presentations of the stimulus
 Dishabituation: increase in responsiveness after a  Perceptual Categorization: similar perceptual
change in stimulation features of objects

 The focusing of mental resources on select
information
 First year or life is dominated by an orientation
or investigate process (locating& understanding
“what & where”)
 Joint attention: process that occurs when
Language Development:
 A form of communication: spoken, written, or
signed – that is based on a system of symbol
 Infinite generativity: ability to produce an endless
number of meaningful sentences using a finite set
of words and rules

Memory:

 Central feature of cognitive development that

involves the retention of information over time
 Implicit Memory: memory without conscious
recollection skills & routine procedures that are
automatically performed
 Explicit Memory: memory facts & experiences that
individuals consciously know and can state (2nd half
of their 1st year)
 Infantile/childhood amnesia

Imitation:

 Automatic response to a stimulus

 Deferred imitation: imitation that occurs after a
delay of hours/days
 Watching someone perform an act and then
performing that action at a later date
 Common gestures:
1. Extending the arm to show caregiver
something infant is holding

 Concepts: Ideas about categories represent or said

another way