Developmental Psychology Reporting
Group 2
Outline
PATTERNS OF GROWTH
● Cephalocaudal pattern - growth proceeds from top to bottom
● Proximodistal pattern - growth starts at the center of the body and moves
toward the extremities
HEIGHT AND WEIGHT
Average North American newborn
● 20 inches long and weighs 7.6 pounds
Full-term Newborns
● 95% of them: 18 to 22 inches long and weigh between 5 and 10 pounds
First several days of life
● lose 5 to 7 percent of their body weight
First month
● grow rapidly
● average of 5 to 6 ounces per week
4th month
● doubled their birth weight
First birthday
● tripled birth weight
First year
● grow about 1 inch per month
● doubling their birth length
2 years
● 26 to 32 pounds (one-fifth of their adult weight)
● average 32 to 35 inches
Growth
● often is not smooth and continuous but rather is episodic, occurring in spurts
● alternate with long time frames
In a single day:
● infants grew seven-tenths of an inch
● head circumference increased three-tenths of an inch
THE BRAIN
Infant
● approximately 100 billion nerve cells
● head should be protected
● head should never be shaken
Shaken baby syndrome
- brain swelling and hemorrhaging
Electroencephalogram (EEG)
- measures the brain’s electrical activity to learn about the brain’s development in
infancy
Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNRIS)
- uses very low levels of near-infrared light to monitor changes in blood oxygen
- non-invasive and can assess infants as they move and explore their
environment
Magnetoencephalography (MEG)
- records magnetic fields produced by electrical currents
- used to assess such perceptual and cognitive activities (i.e., vision, hearing,
and language) in infants
The Brain’s Development
Newborn’s brain
- 25 percent of its adult weight
2nd year
- 75 percent of its adult weight
- brain’s areas do not mature uniformly
a. Mapping the Brain
Forebrain
- farthest from the spinal cord
- includes the cerebral cortex and several structures beneath it
- cerebral cortex - covers the forebrain like a wrinkled cap
Hemispheres
- left & right
- Lateralization - the specialization of function in one hemisphere of the cerebral cortex
or the other
Myth: The left hemisphere is the exclusive location of language and logical thinking and
the right hemisphere is the exclusive location of emotion and creative thinking.
Fact: Complex thinking in normal people is the outcome of communication between
both brain hemispheres.
4 Lobes
1. Frontal - voluntary movement, thinking, personality, and intentionality
2. Occipital - vision
3. Temporal - hearing, language processing, and memory
4. Parietal - registering spatial location, attention, and motor control
b. Changes in Neurons
Neuron - a nerve cell that handles information processing
Parts of a Neuron:
Axon - carry signals away from the cell body
Dendrites - carry signals toward the cell body
Myelin Sheath - a layer of fat cells that encases many axons
● Myelination - involved in providing energy to neurons and
in communication
Terminal Button - releases chemicals called neurotransmitters
into synapses
Synapses - tiny gaps of neurons’ fibers
Neurons change in 2 very significant ways during the first years of life:
+ Myelination
- the process of encasing axons with fat cells begins prenatally and continues after
birth, even into adolescence and emerging adulthood
- speeds up neural transmissions
+ Connectivity among neurons increases
- creating new neural pathways
expansion of dendritic
- connections facilitates the spreading of neural pathways in infant development
Early Experience and the Brain
● Children who grow up in a deprived environment may have depressed brain
activity
● Brain demonstrates flexibility & resilience
● Repeated experience - what wires/rewires the brains
Neuroconstructivist View
- emphasizes the importance of considering interactions between experience and
gene expression in the brain’s development, much as the epigenetic view
proposes.
- believes that…
- biological processes and environmental conditions influence the brain’s
development
- the brain has plasticity and is context-dependent
- the child’s cognitive development is closely linked to the development of
the brain
Brain plasticity
● also known as neuroplasticity
● the brain's capacity to alter its connections or rewire itself
● allows an individual to adapt to a rapidly changing environment through
strengthening, weakening, pruning, or adding of synaptic connections and by
promoting neurogenesis
● without this, any brain would be unable to develop from infancy to adulthood or
heal from brain damage without this capacity
SLEEP (Grazelle S. Brina)
Why do we sleep?
Multiple theories have been proposed on why we sleep:
1. Evolutionary perspective: All animals sleep and this sleep is necessary for
survival.
2. Sleep replenishes and rebuilds the brain and body. It plays a part in the body’s
restorative function.
3. Sleep is critical for brain plasticity, as neuroscientists recently debated that
sleeping increases synaptic connections between neurons and leads to improved
memory.
Infant Sleep
- The typical newborn sleep approximately 18 hrs a day, but newborns greatly vary
in how much they sleep.
- Study also shows by 6 mos of age, the majority of infants sleep through the night.
Recent studies show that:
● First few months: 2.5 hrs sleep
● 3 to 7 mos: 10.5 hrs sleep
● Up to 2 years of age: 12.8 hrs sleep out of 24 hrs (typical range: 9.7 to 15.9 hrs)
Sleep Problems:
- Estimated to affect 15 to 25 percent of infants.
- Most common infant sleep-related problems: Nighttime waking
FACTORS THAT AFFECT INFANT SLEEP:
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Maternal depression
Early introduction to solid food
Infant TV viewing
Childcare attendance
Parental factors such as involvement in caregiving responsibility.
Such factors may lead to:
● Separation Distress
● Greater Inhibition
● Higher anxiety and depression
REM (Rapid Eye Movement)
- The eyes flutter beneath closed eyelids while sleeping.
- Individuals spend about ⅕ of their night in REM sleep by the time they reach
adulthood.
- Half of an infant’s sleep is REM sleep, and infants often begin their sleep in REM
sleep.
- At 3 mos, 40 percent of infants’ sleep is REM however REM sleep no longer
begins their sleep cycle.
SHARED SLEEPING
- Sleeping arrangements.
- ex: sharing a bed with a mother.
● Some experts recommend it and others argue against it.
● In a recent study, Infant-parent bed-sharing was associated with more nighttime
waking for mothers as well as infants and more marital distress.
● The American Academy of the pediatrics task force on infant positioning and
SIDS is against shared sleeping, as it could be the case if a sleeping mother rolls
over her baby.
● Research in 6 countries including the United States found that 6 to 12 mos
infants reported earlier bedtime, shorter time to fall asleep, fewer sleep
interruptions, and more total sleep when infants sleep in a separate room.
SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome)
- is a condition that occurs when infants stop breathing, usually during the night,
and suddenly die without a reason.
- One of the Leading causes of infant death in the USA; more than 2000 infant
deaths annually are attributed to SIDS.
- Researchers have found SIDS decrease when infants sleep in a supine position
rather than on their stomachs or sides because it increases access to fresh air
and decreases chances of overheating
- A most common cause of SIDS: are infants sleeping in a prone position.
Factors linked to SIDS:
● Occurs more in infants with Abn brain stem functioning involving the
neurotransmitter serotonin.
● Heart Arrhythmia
● Sleep apnea.
● Low birth weight
● Infants who DO NOT use a pacifier when they go to sleep.
● Infants whose siblings died of SIDS
● African-American and Eskimo Infants.
● Lower Socioeconomic group
● Infants that are particularly exposed to cigarette smoke.
● Sleep Sharing
● Infants who sleep in soft bedding
Breastfeeding = lower
bedroom with a fan
Sleep And Cognitive Development:
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Recent Research review indicates a positive link between sleep and cognitive
functioning including memory, language, and executive function.
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In Addition, decreased quality of sleep at 1 year is linked to lower attention
regulation and more behavior problems at 3 to 4 years of age. It also shows more
distractibility during attention tasks. This phenomenon likely occurs because of
sleep’s role in brain maturation.
NUTRITION
● From birth to 1 year of age, human infants nearly triple their weight and increase
their length by 50 percent.
Nutritional Needs and Eating Behavior
● Nutritionists recommend that infants consume approximately 50 calories per day
for each pound they weigh—more than twice an adult’s caloric requirement per
pound.
First-year
- from using suck-and-swallow movements with breast milk or formula to
chew-and-swallow movements with semisolid and then more complex foods
- being fed by others toward self-feeding
Caregivers
- play very important roles in infants’ early development of eating patterns.
- Caregivers who are not sensitive to developmental changes in infants’ nutritional
needs, negligent caregivers, and conditions of poverty can contribute to the
development of eating problems in infants.
● Low maternal sensitivity when infants were 15 and 24 months of age was linked
to a higher risk of obesity in adolescence
● Infants who were introduced to vegetables at 4 to 5 months of age showed less
fussy eating behavior at 4 years of age than their counterparts who were
introduced to vegetables after 6 months.
● Poor dietary patterns early in development can result in more infants being
overweight.
● Breastfed infants have lower rates of weight gain than bottle-fed infants in
childhood and adolescence, and it is estimated that breastfeeding reduces the
risk of obesity by approximately 20 percent
Breast VS Bottle-Feeding (Ainhoa Cananea)
For the first 4-6 months of life, human milk or an alternative formula is the baby’s source
of nutrients and energy.
In 2016, 81% of U.S. mothers breastfed their newborns, and 52% breastfed their
6-month-olds. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2016)
The American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Breastfeeding (2012) reconfirmed its
recommendation of exclusive breastfeeding as complementary foods are introduced
and further breastfeeding for one year or longer as mutually desired by the mother and
infant.
Outcomes for the Child
● Fewer gastrointestinal infections
● Fewer Respiratory tract infections
● recent research review found no support for breastfeeding reducing the risk of
allergies in young children
● Asthma - protects against wheezing in babies; lower incidence of asthma from 6
to 42 months of age
● less likely to have Ear, throat, and sinus infections
● less likely to become overweight or obese
● Diabetes - less likely to develop type 1 diabetes in childhood and type 2
diabetes in adulthood
● lower rates of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)
● Hospitalization - less likely to have ever been hospitalized
Outcomes for the Mother
● lower incidence of breast cancer
● reduction in ovarian cancer
● a reduction in type 2 diabetes
No Conclusive Evidence:
● return pre-pregnancy weight
● reduced rate of osteoporosis
● decreased risk of postpartum depression
Lower incidence of metabolic syndrome in midlife
- a disorder characterized by obesity, hypertension, and insulin resistance
Breastfeeding in the mother-infant relationship is NOT supported by research.
Links between breastfeeding and higher intelligence in children have NOT
consistently been found in research
Which women are least likely to breastfeed?
● Mothers who work a full-time job outside the home
● Mothers under the age of 25
● Mothers without a high school diploma
● Mothers in low-income circumstances
Are there circumstances when mothers should not breastfeed?
● Mother is infected with HIV or other infectious diseases that can be transmitted
● Mother has active tuberculosis
● Mother is taking any drug that may not be safe for the infant
Some researchers have found no psychological differences between breastfed and
bottle-fed infants.
Malnutrition in Infancy
● Many infants around the world are malnourished (UNICEF, 2018).
● Early weaning of infants from breast milk to inadequate sources of nutrients can
cause protein deficiency and malnutrition in Infants.
● Breastfeeding is more optimal for mothers and infants in developing countries,
except for mothers who have or are suspected of having HIV/AIDS.
● Even if it is not fatal, severe and lengthy malnutrition is detrimental to physical,
cognitive, and social development.
● One study found that Asian Indian children who had a history of chronic
malnutrition performed more poorly on tests of attention and memory than
their counterparts who were not malnourished.
● A longitudinal study revealed that Barbadians who had experienced moderate to
severe protein/energy malnutrition during infancy had persisting attention
deficits when they were 40 years old.
● Researchers also have found that interventions can benefit individuals who
have experienced malnutrition in infancy.
○ For example, in one study, standard nutritional care combined with
psychosocial intervention (group meetings with mothers and play
sessions with infants, as well as six months of home visits) reduced the
negative effects of malnutrition on severely malnourished Bangladeshi
6-to 24-month-olds’ cognitive development.