Developmental Psychology

Infancy
Source: Papalia (2021), Santrock (2018)
Physical Development o Cerebellum (maintains balance and motor
o Cephalocaudal Principle – growth starts from coordination) grows the fastest during the first
the top part of the body (i.e., brain to foot) year of life
o Proximodistal Principle – growth proceed from o Lateralization – specialization of the
the center of the body outward (e.g., Palm hemispheres
(grasping) to fingers)
o Children grow faster during the first 3 years
o Teething usually begins around 3-4 months
o Growth slows in the second year of life
o Growth isn’t often smooth and continuous but
rather is episodic, occurring in spurts
Benefits of Breastfeeding
o Babies are less likely to contract infectious
illnesses
o Lower risks of SIDS and of Post-neonatal death
o Lesser risks of inflammatory bowel disease
o Better visual acuity, neurological development,
and long-term cardiovascular health
o Less likely to develop obesity, asthma, eczema, o Left Hemisphere – concerned with language
diabetes, lymphoma, etc. and logical thinking
o Less likely to show language and motor delays o Right Hemisphere – concerned with visual and
o Score higher on cognitive tests spatial functions
o Fewer cavities and are less likely to need o Corpus Callosum – tough band of tissue that
braces joins the two hemisphere which allows them to
o Mothers can quickly recover with childbirth share info and coordinate commands
o They are more likely to return to the pre-
pregnancy weight
o Reduced risk of anemia and lowered risk of
repeat pregnancy while breastfeeding
o Report feeling more confident and less anxious
o Less likely to develop osteoporosis or ovarian
and premenopausal breast cancer
o Reduction in type 2 diabetes
o The only acceptable alternative to breast milk
is Iron-Fortified Formula based on either cow’s
milk or soy protein
o Babies should consume nothing but milk during
the first 6 months of life o Occipital – smallest; concerned with visual
Brain and Reflex Behavior processing
o By age of 6, the brain is almost adult size but o Parietal – involved with integrating sensory
some parts are still continuously developing info from the body; movement and manipulation
o Brain Growth Spurts – brain’s growth occurs in of objects
fits and starts o Temporal – interpret smells and sounds and
o By birth, spinal cord and brain stem has nearly involved in memory
run its course (responsible for breathing, heart
rate, temp, and sleep-wake cycle)
 Developmental Psychology
Infancy
Source: Papalia (2021), Santrock (2018)
o Frontal Lobe – involved in high-order o Postural Reflexes – reactions to changes in
processes such as reasoning and problem position or balance
solving o Locomotor Reflex – resemble voluntary
o Cerebral Cortex – outer surface of the movements that do not appear until months
cerebrum; grows rapidly in the first few months after the reflexes have disappeared
and are mature by age 6 months o Early Reflexes Disappear during the first 6-12
o Brain Growth Spurt begins at about the third months
trimester of gestation and continues until at Early Human Reflexes
least the 4th year of life Moro Extend
o Neurons – send and receive info in the brain legs, arms,
o Glia or Glial Cells – nourish and protect the and
neurons fingers,
o Axon – sends signals to other neurons arches
o Dendrites – receive incoming messages back,
draws back
o Synapses – tiny gaps which are bridged with
head
the help of chemicals
Darwinian Make
o Integration – neurons that control various (Grasping strong first
groups of muscle coordinate their activities )
o Differentiation – each neuron takes on a
specific, specialized structure and function
o Cell Death – pruning of cells which is a way to
calibrate the developing brain to the local Tonic Fencer
environment and help it work more efficiently, Neck Position
beings during the prenatal period and
continues after birth
o Myelination – enables signals to travel faster
and more smoothly by coating the neural Babkin Mouth
pathways with myelin opens,
eyes close,
o Children who grew up in deprived environment
neck
may have depressed brain activity
flexes,
o Neuroconstructivist View – biological process head tilts
and environmental conditions influences forward
development, the brain is plastic, and the child’s Babinski Toes fan
cognitive development is closed linked to out; foot
development of the brain twist in
▪ Emphasized the importance of considering
interactions between experience and gene
expression in the brain’s development
o Reflex Behavior – automatic, innate response Rooting Head turns,
mouth
to stimulation which are controlled by the lower
opens,
brain centers that govern involuntary
sucking
processes begins
o Primitive reflexes – includes sucking, rooting,
and the Moro reflex are related to instinctive
needs for survival and protection or may
support the early connection to the caregiver

Walking Steplike
motions
Swimmin Swimming
g movement
s ▪ When adults wake up from REM Sleep, they
o Brain is Plastic, they are living, changeable
organs which responds to environmental
influences (Plasticity)
Early Sensory Capacity
o Touch is the first sense to develop, the most
mature sensory system for the first several
months
o Newborns can and do feel pain
o Sense of smell and taste begin to develop in the
womb
o Newborns strongly dislike bitter flavors
o Auditory Discrimination develops rapidly after
birth
o At 4 moths, infant’s brain responds
preferentially to speech
o Vision is the least developed sense at birth
o Binocular Vision (the use of both eyes to focus)
does not develop until 4-5 months
o Infants like attractive faces
Sleep
o Sleep restores, replenishes, and rebuilds our
brains and bodies
o Evolutionary Perspective: all animals sleep and
this sleep is necessary for survival (to protect
themselves at night)
o Restorative Perspective: sleep replenishes and
rebuilds the brain and the body such as clearing
out neural tissues
o Plasticity Perspective: sleep is critical for brain
plasticity, i.e., increases synaptic connections
between neurons which is linked to improved
consolidation of memories
o Newborns sleep approx. 18 hrs/day
o Non-REM Sleep – no eye movement and sleep
is more quiet
Developmental Psychology
Infancy
Source: Papalia (2021), Santrock (2018)
o Rapid Eye Movement (REM Sleep) – the eyes
flutter beneath the closed lids
▪ Usually appears 1 hr after non-rem (adults)
▪ Half of infant’s sleep is REM
▪ May provide infants with added self-
stimulation
▪ Promote brain development in infancy
report dreaming
o There is a positive link between infant sleep and
cognitive functioning
Motor Development
o Denver Developmental Screening Test – used
to chart progress between ages 1 month and 6
years and to identify children who are not
developing normally
▪ Measures Gross Motor Skills (using large
muscles), Fine Motor Skills (using small
muscles), Language Development,
Personality, and Social Development
First Month
Infants can turn their Head from side to side
Grasping Reflex
Second-Third Month
Babies can life their heads
Can grasp moderate sized things until they will be
able to grasp one thing using right hand and
transfer it to their left hand
Babies can now hold their head still to find out
whether the object is moving
They can already match the voice to faces
Distinguish female and male
Discriminate between faces of their own ethnic
group and those of other groups
Size constancy
Infants develop the ability to perceive that
occluded objects are whole
Fourth Month
Babies can keep their heads erect while being
held or supported in a sitting position
Can now roll-over, accidentally
Begin to reach objects
Sixth Month
Babies cannot sit without support
Can start creeping or crawling
Could successfully reach for objects in the dark
faster than they could in the light

They can now localize or detect sounds from their
origins
Seventh Month
Pincer Grasps could already manifest
Can start standing
Can now sit independently
Eighth Month
Babies can assume sitting position without help
Infants can now learn to pull themselves up and
hold on to a chair
Tenth Month
They can now stand alone
Eleventh Month
Babies can let go and stand alone well
Thirteenth Month
Toddlers can now pull a toy attached to a string
and use their hands and legs to climb stairs
Eighteenth to Twenty-Fourth Month
Toddlers can now walk quickly, run, and balance
on their feet in a squatting position
o Crawling – helps babies learn to judge
distances and perceive depth
o Social Referencing – babies learn to look at
caregivers for clues as to whether a situation
is secure or frightening
o Sensory Perception – enable infants to learn
about themselves and their environment so
they can make better judgements about how to
navigate in it
o Visual Guidance – the use of eyes to guide the
movements of the hands
o Clumsy corrective movements are more likely
to be illustrating immature cerebellar
development
o Depth Perception – the ability to perceive
objects and surfaces in three dimensions
o Kinetic Cues – produced by movement of the
object or the observer or both
o Haptic Perception – ability to acquire
information by handling objects rather than just
looking at them
o Posture – dynamic process that is linked with
sensory information in the skin, joints, and
muscles which tell us where we are in space
o Swaddling shows slight delays in motor
development
Developmental Psychology
Infancy
Source: Papalia (2021), Santrock (2018)
o Perceptual Constancy – sensory stimulation is
changing but perception of the physical world
remains constant
▪ Allows infants to perceive that their world
as stable
▪ Size Constancy – recognition that an object
remains the same even though the retinal
image of the object changes as you move
toward or away from the object
▪ Shape Constancy – an object remains the
same shape even though its orientation
changes
Ecological Theory of Perception
o Locomotor movement depends on infants’
increasing sensitivity to the interaction
between their changing physical
characteristics and new and varied
characteristics of their environment
o Babies learn to continually gauge their abilities
and adjust their movements to meet the
demands of their current environment
o Baby is somewhat a small scientist testing out
new ideas in each situation
o Gibson’s Ecological View: we directly perceive
info that exists in the world around us
o Affordances – opportunities for interaction
offered by objects that fit within our capabilities
to perform activities
o Newborns cannot see small things that are far
away
Thelen’s Dynamic Systems Theory
o Behavior emerges in the movement from the
self-organization of multiple components
o Opportunities and constraints presented by the
infant’s physical characteristics, motivation,
energy level, motor strength, and position in the
environment at a particular moment in time
affect whether and how an infant achieves a
goal
o A solution emerges as the baby explores
various combinations of movements and
assembles those that most efficiently
contribute to that end
o Infants modulate their movement patterns to fit
a new task by exploring and selecting possible
configurations

o Infant actively put together skill to achieve a
goal within the constraints set by the infant’s
body and environment
Cognitive Development
Behaviorist Approach
o Classical Conditioning – a person learns to
make a reflex, or involuntary, response to a
stimulus that originally did not bring about the
response
o Extinction – if the conditioned learning is not
reinforced by repeated association
o Operant Conditioning – focuses on the
consequences of behaviors and how they affect
the likelihood of the behavior occurring again
o Babies were able to use contextual cues (e.g.,
odor) to retrieve memories
o Infant memory is context-dependent and
appears to be strongly linked to the original
cues encoded during learning
Psychometric Approach
o Intelligent Behavior – presumed to be goal-
oriented, meaning it exists for the purposes of
attaining a goal
o IQ Tests – consists of questions or tasks that
are supposed to show how much of the
measured abilities a person has by comparing
that person’s performance with norms
o Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler
Development – developmental test designed to
assess children from 1 month to 3 ½ years
▪ Cognitive, Language, Motor, Social-
Emotional, and Adaptive Behavior
▪ Accompanied by Behavior Rating Scale
taken from the caregiver
o Home Observation for Measurement of the
Environment (HOME) – trained observers
interview the primary caregiver and rate on a
yes-or-no checklist the intellectual stimulation
and support observed in a child’s home
▪ Number of books and toys, parents
involvement with the child, parental
emotional and verbal responsiveness,
acceptance of the child’s behavior,
organization of the environment, and
opportunities for daily and varied
stimulation
Developmental Psychology
Infancy
Source: Papalia (2021), Santrock (2018)
o Early Intervention – systematic process of
planning and providing therapeutic and
educational services for families that need help
in meeting infants’, toddlers’, and pre-school
children’s developmental needs
Jean Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage
o The first stage of Jean Piaget’s cognitive
development is Sensorimotor Stage
o Approx. from birth to 2 years old
o Circular Reactions – an infant learns to
reproduce events originally discovered by
chance
o Schemes – actions or mental representations
that can be performed on objects
o Assimilation – occurs when children use their
existing schemes to deal with new information
o Accommodation – occurs when children adjust
their schemes to take new information and
experiences into account
o Organization – grouping of isolated behaviors
and thoughts into higher-order system
o Disequilibrium – cognitive conflict
o Children constantly assimilate and
accommodate as they seek equilibrium
o Equilibration – children shift from one stage of
thought to the next
Substages
1. Use of Reflexes (Birth to 1 Month)
Exercise their inborn reflexes and gain some
control over them
Practice their reflexes and control them (e.g.,
sucking whenever they want to)
2. Primary Circular Reactions (1-4 months)
Repeat pleasurable behaviors that first occur by
chance
Begin to coordinate sensory information and
grasp objects
They turn towards the sounds
3. Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8 months)
Repeat actions that brings interesting results
Learns about causality
4. Coordination of Secondary Schemes (8-12
months)
Coordinate previously learned schemes and use
previously learned behaviors to attain their goals
Can anticipate events
5. Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18 months)
 Developmental Psychology
Infancy
Source: Papalia (2021), Santrock (2018)
Purposefully vary their actions to see results ▪ Familiarity breeds loss of interest
Actively explore the world o Dishabituation – if a new sight or sound is
Trial and error in solving problems presented, the baby’s attention is generally
6. Mental Combinations captured once again, and the baby will reorient
Can think about events and anticipate toward the interesting stimulus and once again
consequences without always resorting action sucking slows
Can use symbols such as gestures and words, o Visual Preference – tendency to spend more
and can pretend time looking at one sight rather than another
Transition to Pre-operational stage o Visual Recognition Memory – ability that
Learns about numbers depends on the capacity to form and refer to
o Representational Ability – the ability to
mental representations
mentally represent objects and actions in
o Babies like to look at new things
memory, largely through symbols such as
o Senses are unconnected at birth and are only
words, numbers, and mental picture
gradually integrated through experience
o Infants develop the abilities to think and
o Cross-Modal Transfer – the ability to use
remember
information gained from one sense to guide
o Visible Imitation that uses body parts that
another – as when a person negotiates a dark
babies can see develops first followed by
room by feeling for the location of familiar
Invisible Imitation (involves with parts of the
objects
body that babies cannot see)
Cognitive Neuroscience Approach
o Piaget believed that children under 18 months
o Examines the hardware of the CNS to identify
could not engage in Deferred Imitation
what brain structures are involved in specific
▪ Reproduction of an observed behavior after
areas of cognition
the passage of time
o Implicit Memory – refers to remembering that
▪ Children lacked the ability to retain mental
occurs without effort or even conscious
representations
awareness
o Infants under the age of about 8 months act as
▪ Habits and skills
if an object no longer exists once it is out other
▪ Develop early and is demonstrated by such
line of sight
actions as an infant’s kicking
o Object Permanence – the realization that
o Explicit Memory – declarative memory;
something continues to exist when out of sight
conscious intentional recollection, usually of
o Until about 15 months, infants use their hands
facts, names, events, or other things that can
to explore pictures as if they were objects
be stated or declared
o By 19 months, children are able to point at a
o During the second half of the first year, the
picture of an object while saying its name,
prefrontal cortex and associated circuitry
demonstrating an understanding that a picture
develop the capacity of working memory
is a symbol of something else
(short-term storage of information the brain is
o Dual Representation Hypothesis – proposal
actively processing)
that children under age of 3 have difficulty
o Working memory may be responsible for the
grasping spatial relationships because of the
slow development of object permanence
need to keep more than one mental
Social-Contextual Approach
representation in mind at the same time
o Guided Participation – refers to mutual
Information-Processing Approach
interactions with adults that help structure
o Habituation – a type of learning in which
children’s activities and bridge the fap between
repeated or continuous exposure to a stimulus,
a child’s understanding and an adult’s
reduces attention to that stimulus
Language

o Language – communication system based on
words and grammar
o Infinite Generativity – the ability to produce and
comprehend an endless no. of meaningful
sentences using a finite set of words and rules
o Pre-linguistic Speech – sounds that progress
from crying to cooing and babbling
o Crying – newborn’s first means of
communication
o Between 6-3 months, babies start cooing
o By 6-10 months, they start babbling
o Phonology – sound system of a language
o Morphology – system of meaningful units
involved in word formation
o Syntax – the system that involves the way
words are combined to form acceptable
phrases and sentences
o Semantics – the system that involves the
meaning of words and sentences
o Pragmatics – the system of using appropriate
conversation and knowledge of how to
effectively use language in context
o Infants start using gestures at about 7-15
months
o As early as 5 months, infants recognize their
name
o Receptive Vocabulary – words that the child
understand
o Spoken Vocabulary – words the child
expresses/uses
o Overextension – tendency to apply a word to
objects that are inappropriate for the word’s
meaning by going beyond the set of referents
an adult would use (e.g. “Dada” not only for her
Dad but also to other male strangers)
o Underextension – tendency to apply the word
too narrowly; occurs when children fail to use
a word to name a relevant event or object
o Children between 18 to 24 months, speak in
two-word utterances
o Telegraphic Speech – the use of short and
precise words without grammatical markers
such as articles, etc. (“Momi give water”)
o Regions involved in Language: Broca’s Area
(Speech Production) and Wernicke’s Area
(Language comprehension, sounds)
Developmental Psychology
Infancy
Source: Papalia (2021), Santrock (2018)
o Aphasia – loss or impairment in language
processing
o Language Acquisition Device – biological
endowment that enables the child to detect
certain features and rules of language
o The support and involvement of caregivers and
teachers greatly facilitate a child’s language
o Child-Directed Speech – language spoken with
a higher-than-normal pitch, slower tempo, and
exaggerated intonation, with simple words and
sentences
o Recasting – rephrasing something the child has
said that might lack appropriate morphology
o Expanding – adding information to a child’s
incomplete sentence
o Labeling – name objects that children
o Storybook reading especially benefits children
Psychosocial Development
o Personality – the relatively consistent blend of
emotions, temperament, thought, and behavior
that makes each person unique
Emotions
o Subjective reactions to experience that are
associated with physiological and behavioral
changes
o During the 1st month, babies cries when they are
unhappy and become quiet at the sound of
human voice or when they are picked up
o Four Patterns of Crying of Infants:
1. Basic Hunger Cry – rhythmic pattern that
usually co sist of cry, followed by a briefer
silence
2. Angry Cry – more excess air is forced
through vocal cords
3. Pain Cry – sudden long, initial loud cry
followed by breath holding
4. Frustration Cry
o A higher pitch an a more monotonic
vocalization is associated with autonomic
system activity during stressful procedures in
infants
o Earliest smiles resulted from subcortical
nervous system activity
o Involuntary smiles appear during periods of
REM Sleep

o Social Smiling – newborn infants gaze and
smile at their parents; smile that occurs in
response to external stimulus (2 months)
o Reflexive Smile – a smile that does not occur in
response to external stimuli and appear during
the first month after birth
o Anticipatory Smiling – infants smile at an object
then gaze at an adult while continuing to smile
o Self-Conscious emotions arise only after
children have developed self-awareness
o Altruistic Behavior – acting out of concern with
no expectation of reward
o Mirror Neurons – underlie empathy and
altruism
Temperament
o An early-appearing, biologically based
tendency to respond to the environment in
predictable ways
o Easy Children – generally happy, rhythmic in
biological functioning, and accepting of new
experiences
o Difficult Children – more irritable and harder to
please
o Slow-to-Warm-Up Children – mild but slow to
adapt to new people and situations
o Strong links between infant temperament and
childhood personality at age of 7
o Goodness of Fit – the match between a child’s
temperament and the environmental demands
and constraints the child must deal with
Developmental Issues in Infancy
o According Erik Erikson, as babies, our first
challenge involves forming basic sense of Trust
versus Mistrust
o Ideally, babies develop a balance between trust
and mistrust
o If trust predominates, as it should, children
develop Hope and the belief that they can fulfill
their needs and obtain their desires
Approximate Crisis Virtue
Age Developed
Infancy (0-18 Trust vs. Hope
months) Mistrust
Toddler (18 Autonomy vs. Will
months – 36 Shame/Doubt
months)
Developmental Psychology
Infancy
Source: Papalia (2021), Santrock (2018)
o Maladaptive Tendency for Infancy: Sensory
Maladjustment – overly trusting and gullible,
unrealistic, spoiled
o Malignant Tendency: Withdrawal – never trust
anyone, paranoid, neurotic, depressive
o Significant Individual: Mother
o Attachment – reciprocal, enduring emotional
tie between an infant and a caregiver, each of
whom contributes to the quality of the
relationship
o Strange Situation – by Mary Ainsworth;
designed to assess attachment patterns
between infant and adult
o Secure Attachment – flexible, resilient
o Avoidant Attachment – outwardly unaffected by
a caregiver leaving or returning
o Ambivalent (Resistant) Attachment – generally
anxious even before the caregiver leaves
o Disorganized-Disoriented Attachment – lack a
cohesive strategy to deal with the stress of the
strange situation; they show contradictory,
repetitive, or misdirected behaviors; confused
and afraid
o According to Bowlby, attachment styles
resulted from repeated interactions with a
caregiver
o Stranger Anxiety – wariness of a person she
does not know
o Separation Anxiety – distress when a familiar
caregiver leaves her
o Separation Protest – crying when caregiver
leaves
o Babies react negatively to strangers by 8 or 9
months
o Mutual Regulation – the ability of both infant
and caregiver to respond appropriately and
sensitively to each other’s mental and
emotional states
o Social Referencing – seeking emotional
information to guide behavior
Developmental Issues in Toddlerhood
o Maladaptive Tendency for Toddler:
Impulsiveness – shameless willfulness that
leads to jump into things without proper
consideration
 Developmental Psychology
Infancy
Source: Papalia (2021), Santrock (2018)
o Malignant Tendency for Toddler: whereas they desire to obey rules and avoid
Compulsiveness – perfectionism, rule follower being punished
o Sphincter Muscle is developed
o Self-Concept – our image of ourselves; it
describes what we know and feel about
ourselves and guides our actions
o By at least 3 months, infants pay attention to
their mirror image
o Pretend Play – an early indication of the ability
to understand other’s mental states and their
own
o Usage of person pronouns (me, mine) usually
at 20-24 months
o Socialization – process by which children
develop habits, skills, values, and motives that
make them responsible and productive
members of the society
o Children obey societal or parental dictates
because they believe them to be right and true
o The eventual goal is the development of
conscience end
o Situational Compliance – extra assistance
provided by their parents reminder and
prompts to complete the task
o Committed Compliance – they were committed
to following request and could do so without
their parents direct intervention
o Receptive Cooperation – eager willingness to
cooperate harmoniously with a parent, not only
in disciplinary actions, but in variety of daily
interactions
Maltreatment in Infancy and Toddlerhood
A. Nonorganic Failure to thrive – slowed or
arrested physical growth with no known
medical cause, accompanied by poor
developmental and emotional functioning
B. Shaken Baby Syndrome – baby has a weak
neck muscles, and a large, heavy head, shaking
makes the brain bounce back and forth inside
the skull
Moral Development
o According to Kohlberg, children in Infancy
stage is at the first level of Moral Development
which is the Pre-Conventional Level
o Infants or children from 0-2 yrs old is in Pre-
conventional Level, specifically in Stage 1