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Devpsych Infancy
Chapter 4: Physical Development in Infancy
●
Chapter Outline
● Physical growth and development in
●
infancy
Motor development
●
Sensory and perceptual development
Electroencephalogram
○ Measure of the brain’s electrical
activity
○
Help learn about the brain’s
development in infancy
●
Brain’s development
○
Physical Growth and Development in Infancy
Mapping the brain
■ Forebrain
● Portion farthest from
the spinal cord,
includes the cerebral
Patterns of Growth
● Cephalocaudal pattern
○ Developmental sequence in which
cortex and structures
beneath it
the earliest growth always occurs at
■
Brain has two hemispheres,
the top, with physical growth and
each hemisphere constitutes
differentiation of features gradually
working their way down from top to
of four lobes
●
bottom
●
Lateralization
○ Specialization
of function in
Proximodistal pattern
○ Sequence in which growth starts at
one
the center of the body and moves
hemisphere of
toward the extremities
the cerebral
cortex or the
other
Changes in Proportions of the Human Body
During Growth
●
Neurons
○ a nerve cell that handles
●
Myelin sheath
○ a layer fat cells that helps electrical
●
Neurotransmitters
○ Tiny gaps between neuron’s fibers
●
Changes in neurons
○ Myelination
information processing
signals travel faster down the axon
Height and Weight
● The average American newborn is 20
inches long and weighs 7 pounds
●
long and weigh between 5 and 10 pounds
●
○
Most of the newborns are 18 to 22 inches
Grow about 1 inch per month during the
●
first year
●
By 2 years of age
○ Infants weigh approximately 26 to
○
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Changes in regions of the brain
○ Blooming and pruning vary by brain
○
32 pounds
Average 32 to 35 inches in height
Shaken baby syndrome
○ Brain swelling and hemorrhaging
region
Peak of synaptic overproduction in
the visual cortex followed by a
gradual retraction
Heredity and environment
influence the timing and
course
Pace of myelination varies
■
The Brain
● Contains approximately 100 billion neurons
at birth
●
Connectivity among neurons
increases
○
●
Early experience and the brain
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Devpsych Infancy
Children in deprived environment
Early Deprivation and Brain Activity
may have depressed brain activity
○
■ Ex: Romanian Orphanage
Brain demonstrates both flexibility
and resilience
■
●
Ex: Michael Rehbein
Neuroconstructivist view
○ Biological processes and
environmental conditions influence
the brain’s development
○
Brain has plasticity and is
○
context-dependent
Development of the brain and the
child’s cognitive development are
Sleep
●
closely linked
Why Do We Sleep?
○ Evolutionary perspective
■
○
The Brain’s Four Lobes
Sleep necessary for survival
Replenishes and rebuilds the brain
and body
■
■
Restorative function
Clearing out waste in neural
tissue
○
Critical for brain plasticity
■
Increases synaptic
connections between
neurons
●
Typical newborn sleeps approximately 18
hours a day
●
Infant sleep-related problem
●
Cultural variations influence infant
●
REM sleep
○ Eyes flutter beneath closed lids
○ Approximately half of an infant’s
●
Shared sleeping
●
Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
○ Occurs when an infant stops
○
Synaptic Density in the Human Brain from
Infancy to Adulthood
Nighttime waking
sleeping patterns
sleep is REM sleep
breathing, usually at night
○
Suddenly dies without an apparent
cause
●
Sleep and Cognitive Development
○ Sleep may be linked to cognitive
development
■ Likely occurs because of
sleep’s role in brain
maturation and memory
consolidation
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Devpsych Infancy
Lower quality of sleep linked with
■
behavioral problems
SIDS: Findings
● SIDS is likely in infants:
○ With abnormal brain stem
■
○
Need to have a diet that includes:
■ Fruits and vegetables
With sleep apnea and low birth
weight
●
Breast versus bottle feeding
○ Breast feeding is better
○
Who do not use a pacifier when they
●
○
go to sleep
Whose siblings have died of SIDS
Benefits of breast feeding: outcomes for
the child
○ Lower gastrointestinal infections
○
Lower socioeconomic groups
○
○
Who are passively exposed to
○
No evidence reduction in the risk of
○
cigarette smoke
Share the same bed with parents or
○
allergies
Protects against wheezing in babies,
○
sleep on soft bedding
●
movements
To chew-and-swallow
movements with semisolid
and then complex foods
functioning involving the
neurotransmitter serotonin
●
From using
suck-and-swallow
Lower respiratory tract infections
but whether it prevents asthma in
older children is unclear
SIDS is less common in infants who:
○ Are breast fed
○ Sleep in a bedroom with a fan
○
African American and Eskimo infants are
Less likelihood to:
■ Develop middle ear infection
■
four to six times as likely as all others to die
of SIDS
Become overweight or obese
in childhood, adolescence,
and adulthood
■
Develop Type 1 diabetes in
childhood
Developmental Changes in REM and Non-REM
Sleep
■
●
Experience SIDS
Benefits of breast feeding: outcomes for
the mother
○ Lower incidence of breast cancer
○
●
and ovarian cancer
Small reduction in type 2 diabetes
Mother should not breast feed:
○ When infected with HIV or some
other infectious disease
●
○
If she has active tuberculosis
○
If she is taking any drug
Malnutrition in infancy
○
Nutrition
● Nutritional needs and eating behavior
○ Infants should consume
○
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approximately 50 calories per day
for each pound they weigh
As motor skills improve, infants
change:
Marasmus
■ Wasting away of body
■
○
tissues in the infant’s first
year
Caused by severe
protein-calorie deficiency
Kwashiorkor
■ Caused by severe protein
deficiency
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■
Child’s abdomen and feet
become swollen with water
■
Appears between 1 and 3
years of age
Gross Motor Skills
● Involve large-muscle activities, such as
walking
●
Motor Development
Development of posture
○
Dynamic Systems View
●
Dynamic systems theory
○ Infants assemble motor skills for
●
Motor skills are developed by:
○ Development of the nervous system
Posture
■ Dynamic process linked with
sensory information in the
skin, joints, and muscles,
which tell us where we are in
perceiving and acting
○
space
●
Learning to walk
●
The first year
○ Motor development milestones and
●
Development in the second year
○ Toddlers become more skilled and
Body’s physical properties and its
possibilities for movement
○
○
Child’s motivation to reach a goal
Environmental support for the skill
variations
mobile
Reflexes
● Built-in reactions to stimuli that govern the
newborn’s movements
●
Are automatic and beyond the newborn’s
control
●
Rooting reflex
○ Occurs when the infant’s cheek is
○
By 13-18 months
■ Toddlers can pull a toy or
climb stairs
○
By 18-24 months
■ Toddlers can walk quickly
■ Balance on their feet
■
stroked or the side of the mouth is
Walk backward and stand
and kick a ball
touched
○
Turns his or her head in an effort to
Milestones in Gross Motor Development
find something to suck
●
Sucking reflex
○ Occurs when newborns
automatically suck an object
placed in their mouth
○
Enables newborns to get
nourishment before they have
associated a nipple with food
○
Serves as a self-soothing
mechanism
●
Moro reflex
○ A neonatal startle response that
○
●
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occurs in reaction to a sudden,
intense noise or movement
It is believed to be a way of
grabbing for support while falling
Grasping reflex
○ Occurs when something touches
the infant’s palms
○ Responds by grasping tightly
Fine Motor Skills
● Involve more finely tuned movements, such
as finger dexterity
●
Types of grasps
○ Palmer grasp
○ Pincer grip
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Devpsych Infancy
Sensory and Perceptual Development
What are sensation and perception?
Visual Perception
● Visual acuity and human faces
●
●
●
The ecological view
Visual perception
Other senses
●
Intermodal perception
●
Nature, nurture, and perceptual
development
remains the same even
though the retinal image of
●
Perceptual-motor coupling
the object changes as you
move toward or away from
●
●
○
●
Size constancy
■ Recognition that an object
the object
What are Sensation and Perception?
● Sensation
○ Occurs when information interacts
○
Color vision
Perceptual constancy
○
Shape constancy
■ Recognition that an object’s
with sensory receptors
shape remains the same
Eyes, ears, tongue, nostrils, and skin
even though its orientation
Perception
○ Interpretation of what is sensed
●
changes
Perception of occluded objects
●
Depth perception
The Ecological View
● Perception functions to bring organisms in
contact with the environment and to
increase adaptation
○
Affordances
■ Opportunities for interaction
offered by objects that fit
within our capabilities to
perform functional activities
Methods to Study Infant Perception
●
Visual preference method
○ Determines whether infants can
distinguish one stimulus from
another by measuring the length of
time they attend to different stimuli
●
Habituation and dishabituation
○ Habituation
■ Decreased responsiveness
Visual Acuity During the First Months of Life
to a stimulus after repeated
presentations of the stimulus
○
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Dishabituation
■ Recovery of a habituated
response after a change in
stimulation
Examining Infants’ Depth Perception on the
Visual Cliff
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Devpsych Infancy
Piaget’s Theory of Infant Development
Other Senses
● Hearing
○
Cognitive Processes
Changes in hearing
■
Loudness
■
Pitch
●
■ Localization
Touch and pain
●
Smell
●
Taste
●
Schemes
○ Actions or mental representations
that organize knowledge
■
■
Behavioral scheme
Mental scheme
●
Assimilation
○ Using existing schemes to deal with
●
Accommodation
○ Adjusting schemes to fit new
●
Organization
○ Grouping of isolated behaviors and
new information or experiences
Intermodal Perception
● Involves integrating information from two
or more sensory modalities
○
Vision and hearing
Nature, Nurture, and Perceptual Development
● Nativists - Nature proponents
○ The ability to perceive the world in a
competent, organized way is inborn
information and experiences
thoughts into a higher-order
system
●
○
or innate
●
Equilibration and stages of development
Equilibration
■ Mechanism by which
Empiricists
○
children shift from one stage
Emphasis on learning and
of thought to the next
experience
○
Individuals go through four stages
of development
Perceptual-Motor Coupling
● Perception and action are not isolated but
■
are coupled
●
Cognition is qualitatively
different from one stage to
another
Individuals perceive in order to move and
move in order to perceive
Chapter 5: Cognitive Development in Infancy
JEAN PIAGET’S COGNITIVE STAGES
1. Sensorimotor Stage
2. Preoperational Stage
3. Concrete Operational Stage
Chapter Outline
● Piaget’s theory of infant development
●
●
●
Learning, remembering, and
conceptualizing
Individual differences and assessment
Language development
4. Formal Operational Stage
SENSORIMOTOR STAGE (0-2yrs.)
CHARACTERISTICS:
● Begins to make use of imitation, memory &
thought.
●
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Begins to recognize that objects do not
cease to exist when they are hidden.
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●
Devpsych Infancy
Moves from reflex actions to goal-directed
○
activity.
COGNITIVE ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
● Object permanence involves
understanding that objects & events
●
4. COORDINATION OF REACTIONS (8-12
months)
○ Child starts to show clearly
intentional actions
continue to exist even when they cannot be
seen, heard or touched.
○
Child combines schemas in order to
achieve a desired effect
Gradual realization that there is a
difference between oneself and the
○
Children begin exploring the
environment around them
surrounding environment.
○
Children will often imitate the
○
observed behavior of others
Children have an understanding of
STUDY:
●
AIM
○
objects & they will begin to
Investigate at what age children
recognize certain objects as having
acquire OBJECT PERMANENCE
●
METHOD
○ Piaget hid the toy under a blanket
while the child was watching, and
○
will make a sound when shaken.
mos.)
○ Children begin a period of
permanence. He assumed that the
trial-&-error experimentation
child could only search it.
○
RESULT
○ Piaget found that infants searched
for the hidden toy when they were
getting attention from a caregiver.
(18-24 mos.)
○ Children begin to develop symbols
to represent events or objects in the
SIX SUBSTAGES OF SENSORIMOTOR (0-2yrs.)
world.
REFLEXES (0-1 month)
○ Child understands the environment
purely through inborn reflexes >
○
○
Ex. sucking and looking
purely through actions.
schemas
PREOPERATIONAL (2-7 yrs.)
Ex. A child may suck one’s thumb by
CHARACTERISTICS:
● Gradually develops use of language &
accident & then later intentionally
repeat the action. These actions are
repeated because the infant finds
●
them pleasurable.
3. SECONDARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS (4-8
months)
○ Child becomes more focused on the
world > Begins to intentionally
repeat an action in order to trigger a
response in the environment.
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Children begin to move towards
understanding the world through
mental operations rather than
2. PRIMARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS (1-4 mos.)
○ Coordinating sensation and new
○
Ex. A child may try out different
sounds or actions as a way of
6. 6. EARLY REPRESENTATIONAL THOUGHT
around 8 mos. old.
1.
specific qualities.
Ex. A child might realize that a rattle
5. TERTIARY CIRCULAR REACTIONS (12-18
observed whether or not the hidden
toy was evidence of object
●
Ex. A child will purposefully pick up a
toy in order to put it in one’s mouth.
●
ability to think in symbolic form.
Able to think operations through logically in
one direction.
Has difficulties seeing another person’s
point of view
STUDY:
● AIM
○
Find out at what age children
decenter/ not egocentric
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Devpsych Infancy
METHOD
○ He used three mountain tasks to
test whether children were
egocentric. Egocentric children
assume that other people will see
STUDY:
●
●
the same view of the three
mountains as they do.
●
RESULT
○ At age 7, thinking is no longer
egocentric a the child can see more
●
glass, the quantity of liquid remains
the same, even though its
thinking them through instead of
literally performing the actions.
appearance has changed. However,
5 year old children would think that
there was a different amount
2. Semiotic function
○ Ability to use symbols – language,
because the appearance has
pictures , signs or gestures – to
represent actions or objects
Ex. Miming or pretending
3. Reversible thinking
○ Thinking backward (from end to
beginning)
4. Conservation
○ Principle that some characteristics
of an object remain the same
despite changes in appearance.
5. Decentering
○ Focusing on more than one aspect
at a time
6. Egocentric
○ Assuming that others experience
the world the way they do
7. Collective monologue
○ Form of speech in which the
children in a group talk but do not
really interact or communicate.
CONCRETE OPERATIONAL ( 7-11 yrs.)
CHARACTERISTICS:
● Able to solve concrete (hands-on)
problems in logical fashion.
● Understands laws of conservation and is
able to classify and seriate.
● Understands reversibility.
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RESULT
○ At age 7, majority of children can
understand that when water is
poured into a different shaped
Operations
○ Actions a person carries out by
mentally.
METHOD
○ He used 2 different shaped glasses.
conserve liquid. They can
IMPORTANT CONCEPTS:
○
Find out at what age children can
understand conservation
One was filled with water while the
other was not.
that their own point of view.
1.
AIM
○
changed.
IMPORTANT CONCEPTS:
1.
Concrete operations
○ Mental tasks tied to concrete
objects and situations.
2. Identity
○ It is a principle that a person or
object remains the same over time.
3. Compensation
○ It is a principle that changes in one
dimension can be an offset by
changes in another.
4. Reversibility/ Reversible thinking
○ It is the ability to think through a
series of steps, then mentally
reverse the steps & return to the
starting point.
5. Classification
○ It is the grouping of objects into
categories
6. Seriation
○ It is the arranging of objects in
sequential order according to one
aspect such as size, weight, or
volume.
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FORMAL OPERATIONAL (11 yrs. & above)
CHARACTERISTICS:
● Able to solve abstract problems in logical
fashion.
● Becomes more scientific in thinking.
●
Develops concerns about social issues and
identity.
STUDY:
●
AIM
○
JEAN PIAGET’S COGNITIVE STAGES
STAGES
AGE
KEY FEATURE
Sensorimotor
Birth to 2 years
Object permanence
Preoperational
2 to 7 years
Egocentrism
Concrete operational
7 to 11 years
Conservation
Formal Operational
11 years to
adulthood
Manipulation of ideas
Find out which factor was most
important in determining the speed
of the swing of the pendulum.
●
METHOD
○ It involved a length of a string and a
Evaluating Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage
● A-not-B error: Occurs when infants make
the mistake of selecting the familiar hiding
set of weights. Participants had to
place (A) rather than the new hiding place
consider 3 factors (variables) the
length of the string, the heaviness of
(B)
○
the weight, and the strength of
push.
●
RESULT
○ The formal operational children
●
Perceptual development and expectations
●
The nature-nurture issue
○
approached the task
systematically, testing each
variable. Piaget concluded that this
indicated these children were
thinking logically unlike younger
Core knowledge approach
■ Infants are born with
domain-specific innate
knowledge systems
●
Conclusions
○ Piaget thought to not be specific
children.
enough
○
IMPORTANT CONCEPTS:
1.
As they progress into sub stage 4 in
Piaget’s sensorimotor stage
Infant cognition has become
extremely specialized
Formal Operations
○ Mental tasks involving abstract
thinking and coordination of a
○
Currently trying to understand how
developmental changes in
cognition take place, examine the
number of variables.
big issue for nature and nurture,
2. Hypothetical-deductive reasoning
○ embodies the concept that
and to study the brain’s role in
cognitive development
adolescents can develop
hypotheses (best hunches) to solve
Learning, Remembering, and Conceptualizing
problems and systematically reach
a conclusion.
3. Adolescent egocentrism
○ is the heightened self
consciousness that is reflected in
adolescent’s beliefs that others are
Conditioning
● Operant conditioning
● Information retention
●
Attention
○ Focusing of mental resources on
select information
○ Orienting/investigative process
○ Sustained attention
●
Habituation
as interested in them as they
themselves are.
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Devpsych Infancy
Decreased responsiveness to a
○
stimulus after repeated
Occurs after a delay of hours or
days
presentations of the stimulus
●
Dishabituation
○ Increase in responsiveness after a
●
Joint attention requires:
○ Ability to track another’s behavior
change in stimulation
○
One person’s directing another’s
attention
○
Reciprocal interaction
Concept Formation and Categorization
● Concepts
○ Cognitive groupings of similar
●
objects, events, people, or ideas
Perceptual categorization
●
Conceptual categorization
Gaze Following in Infancy
Memory
● Retention of information over time
○
Implicit memory
■
Without conscious
recollection
● Memories of skills and
routine procedures
that are performed
automatically
○
Explicit memory
○
Conscious remembering of facts
and experiences
○
●
●
Individual Differences and Assessment
Measures of infant development
Predicting intelligence
Measures of Infant Development
●
Childhood amnesia
Developmental quotient (DQ)
○ Score that combines sub scores in:
■ Motor, language, adaptive,
and personal-social
Age Group
domains in the Gesell
Length Of Delay
6-month-olds
24 hours
9-month-olds
1 month
10-11-month olds
3 months
13-14-month olds
4-6 months
20-month-olds
12 months
assessment of infants
●
Bayley Scales of Infant Development
○ Used to assess infant behavior and
predict later development
Imitation
● Involve flexibility and adaptability
●
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○
●
Current version has three
components
■ Mental scale
■ Motor scale
■ Infant behavior profile
Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence evaluates
an infant’s ability to process information
Deferred imitation
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