Physical and Cognitive Development
in Infants and Toddlers
Chapter 3
EXPERIENCING THE LIFESPAN
Janet Belsky | Fifth Edition
Setting the Context (part 1)
• The expanding brain
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Cerebral cortex
Axon
Dendrite
Synapse
Synaptogenesis
Setting the Context (part 2)
• Neural pruning and brain
plasticity
• Neural loss due to synaptic
pruning and neural death is
critical.
• Brain plasticity demonstrates
nature-combines-with-nurture
principle, particularly in early
life.
• Remarkable variability exists
in normally developing
children.
Setting the Context (part 3)
• Basic brain principles
• Development progresses in its own neurological time.
• Stimulation molds neurons.
• The brain continues to develop throughout life.
Basic Newborn States (part 1)
• Eating: the basis of living
• First reflexes are automatic and programmed by noncortical brain
centers.
• Rooting, sucking, grasping
• Gradually reflexes are replaced by operant-conditioned, adaptive
behaviors.
Basic Newborn States (part 2)
• Breast-feeding
• Breast-feeding survival value is seen in world regions lacking
clean water and food.
• Survival may also be confounded by maternal commitment
and social class; data are correlational.
• Maternal physical discomfort and work demands often reduce
breast-feeding length.
Basic Newborn States (part 3)
• Malnutrition in the
developing world
• Undernutrition
• Stunting
• Micronutrient
deficiency
• Food insecurity
Basic Newborn States (part 4)
• Major U.S. federal nutrition programs serving young
children
• SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program/Food
Stamps)
• WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women,
Infants, and Children)
• CACFP (Child and Adult Care Food Program)
Stunting
• Trends in stunting
in different world
regions, 1990–
2020
• Stunting
prevalence in
different world
regions today
Basic Newborn States (part 5)
• Crying: the first communication signal
• Crying normally peaks at 1 month of age and declines around
4 months with cortex development.
• Continual crying during the first 3 months of life may signal
colic; excessive crying after this may signal cause for concern.
• Motivation for crying changes with age.
Interventions: Quieting a Young Baby
• What quiets a young
baby?
• Rocking, picking up,
feeding, satisfying the
need to suck
• Skin-to-skin contact
• Kangaroo care
• Infant massage
Basic Newborn States (part 6)
• Sleeping: the main
newborn state
• Newborn sleep patterns
adapt to human world.
• Approximately 6 hours at
6 months; 12 hours at 1
year; only night sleep by
preschool
Basic Newborn States (part 7)
• Infant sleep physiologically different than adult pattern
• Immediate entry into REM
• Primary sleep stage until adolescence
• Chronic sleep problems create and created by
bidirectional parent–child impact
• Person–environment fit important
Sleep Brain Waves and Lifespan Changes
in Sleep and Wakefulness
Interventions: Self-Soothing
• What helps a baby self-soothe?
• Behaviorist: teaching not to cry; crying not reinforced; comfort
not encouraged
• Attachment theorists (Bowlby and Erikson): sensitive
responding; basic trust building; unconditional love provided
• Self-soothing encouraged at six months
• Gentle, sensitive routine more effective than complicated
settling approach
Basic Newborn States (part 8)
• To co-sleep or not to co-sleep?
• Individualistic cultures
• Behaviorists: excessive dependency
• Freudian theorists: risk for sexual abuse
• Collectivist cultures
• Crucial for healthy infant development
• Current research perspective
• Inconclusive
• Person–environment fit important
• Midway approach used by many
Hot in Developmental Science: SIDS
• Sudden infant death
syndrome (SIDS)
• 1 in 1,000 U.S. deaths
during first months of life;
top cause worldwide
• Causes
• Brain region
abnormalities; biological
prebirth problems
• Smothering
• Strategies
• Back to Sleep campaign
• Baby sleeping-basket
Sensory and Motor Development (part 1)
• Research on infant vision
• Preferential-looking paradigm: habituation; attraction to
novelty
• Face perception
• Newborn preference for faces, particularly mothers and
attractive people; sharpens over time
• Fear bias around 8 months; less sensitivity to different ethnic
groups around 9 months
Sensory and Motor Development (part 2)
• Research on depth
perception
• Gibson’s visual cliff
apparatus
• Venturing beyond drop-off
around 8 months; only
when crawling begins
Sensory and Motor Development (part 3)
• Other newborn senses
• Hearing: fetal discrimination
possible
• Smell: newborn preference
for odor of breast milk
• Taste: newborns sensitive
to basic tastes
Sensory and Motor Development
(part 4)
• Expanding body size
• Growth rate varies across
child/adolescent years
• Body sculpting occurs in
definite ways
• Growth principles apply
Sensory and Motor Development
(part 5)
• Mastering motor milestones
• Milestones impacted by three growth principles
• Cephalocaudal: top to bottom
• Proximodistal: interior to outer
• Mass-to-specific: large before small and detailed
• Variations
• Great variability in motor development
• In typical development, motor milestone mastery not predictive
of advanced or later intelligence
Interventions: Baby-Proofing
• Baby-proofing: the first
person–environment fit
• Advances in motor
development present new
safety challenges adults
must address.
• Baby-proofing helps to
make the home safe for
newly mobile infants.
Cognition (part 1)
• Piaget’s sensorimotor stage
• During first two years, basics of physical reality mastered and
symbolic thinking emerges
• Circular reactions: repetitive action-oriented schemas
• Primary circular reactions: body-centered repetitive actions; 1 to
4 months
• Secondary circular reactions: outside world, action-oriented
schemas; 4 months
• Tertiary circular reactions: ”little scientists” behaviors; around 1
year
Cognition (part 2)
• Major advances used in tracking early
thinking
• Means–end behavior
• Important sign of emerging reasoning
around 1 year
• Performance of different action to get a
goal
• Object permanence
• Understanding existence of out of sight
objects
• A-not-B error
Cognition (part 3)
• Critiquing Piaget
• Contribution
• Conception of early life cognition transformed; little scientist
• Challenge
• Timing and extent of infant cognition underestimated
• Current research (Bailargeon)
• Physical reality grasped before age 1
• Understanding of physical reality develops gradually
Two Impossible Events
Cognition (part 4)
• Information-processing
approach
• Divides thinking into
specific steps and
component processes;
using metaphor of
computer
• Information-processing
researchers want to
understand what specific
skills made this boy
capable of achieving this
miraculous means–end
feat.
Cognition (part 5)
• Infant social cognition
• Babies make judgments
about motivations of
others at a young age.
• At 8 months, they can
make adult-like judgments
about intentions.
Language: The Endpoint of Infancy
(part 1)
• Nature, nurture, and the passion to learn
• Elasticity is the key to language development.
• The use of grammar and the ability to form infinitely different
sentences differentiates humans from other species.
• Perspectives and theories
• Skinner: Language is learned through reinforcement.
• Chomsky: Language develops through a biologically built-in
language acquisition device (LAD).
• Social-interactionists: Mutual motivation to communicate drives
language development.
Language: The Endpoint of Infancy
(part 2)
Age
Language Characteristic
2–4 months
Cooing: First sounds growing out of reflexes
Example: “ooooh”
5–11 months
Babbling: Alternate vowel–consonant sounds
Examples: “ba-ba-ba,” “da-da-da”
12 months
Holophrases: First one-word sentences
Example: “ja” (“I want juice.”)
18 months–2
years
Telegraphic speech: Two-word combinations, often
accompanied by an explosion in vocabulary
Example: “Me juice”
Language: The Endpoint of Infancy
(part 3)
• Tracking emerging language: the pathway
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Reflexive crying
Cooing
Babbling
Holophrases
Telegraphic speech
Language: The Endpoint of Infancy
(part 4)
• Adult contribution
• Continuously talking to
infants
• Using infant-directed
speech (IDS)