Exam 2

neonatal reflexes

sucking

rooting

grasping

moro

infant behavioral states

• Regular Sleep

  • About 8 hours

• Irregular (REM) Sleep

  • Also about 8 hours, decreases during childhood

• Drowsiness

  • The rest

• Quiet Altertness (alert inactivity)

  • 2-3 hours

• Walking Activity/Crying

  • 1-4 hours

infant perceptual abilities

vision

hearing

taste and smell

infant vision

• Least developed at birth

• Visual acuity of 20/300 to 20/600 at birth, rapidly improves

• Best acuity at about 12” to 18” distance

infant hearing

• More fully developed, can distinguish between many types of sounds when only a few days old

• Prefer human speech to non-speech, parent voice to others

infant taste and smell

• Taste and odor preferences present at birth at least partly as a function of mother’s diet during pregnancy

• Prefer mother’s odor and milk to that of other women

Cephalocaudal trend

Head to tail. Head grows fastest first, rest of body catches up

Proximodistal trend

Near to far. Body grows from center out

Skeletal Growth

• Epiphyses (singular epiphysis)

• Growth centers in long bones of body that produce cartilage that will develop into bone at growth plates

• Fontanels (soft spots on skull) allow for birth and brain growth. Will harden during second year

neuron

nerve cell that stores and transmits information throughout the central nervous system

dendrites

branch-like extensions of a neuron that receive chemical messages from other neurons

synapse

the microscopic gap between neurons across which chemical neurotransmitters travel

snyaptogeneisis in infancy

the rapid surge in the formation of synaptic connections between neurons during the first year to 2 years

glial cells

support cells in the nervous system and produce myelin

myelination

glial cells coat neural fibers with an insulating fatty sheath, speeding up neural transmission

synaptic pruning

when the brain eliminates weak or unused synapses

reasons for rapid increase in infant brain size

synaptogenesis and myelination by glial cells

brain plasticity

the ability of the brain to recover and or change specialization of functions due to experience, stimulation, injury, trauma, etc.

decreases over time

why is brain plasticity highest in early life

synapstic connections has not yet gone through synpatic pruning

lateralization

the specialized functions between the two hemisphees of the cerebral cortex

left hemisphere specialization in infants

sequential, analytical processing, spoken language, and positive emotional reactions

right hemisphere specialization in infants

spatial processing, face recognition, and negative emotional expression

motor development

predictable sequence of development

development is a product of multiple factors including CNS development, physical capabilities, children’s goals, environmental support

infant gross motor skills

Crawling, standing, walking

fine motor skills

Reaching, grasping

motor skill milestones

habituation paradigm

• getting used to (bored with) a stimulus after repeated exposures

• Once baby is habituated they are shown familiar and novel stimuli

• If they detect novelty, they will recover attention

habituation paradigm (hearing)

• Infants distinguish simple phonemes by 1 month but by 8-10 months they can no longer distinguish phonemes that are not used in their language

  • Phonemes: the smallest unit of sound in a spoken language that can change a word's meaning

• Distinguish simple melodies

• Distinguish familiar from novel voices

• Detect regularities in the speech stream

habituation paradigm (vision)

• Distinguish patterns, colors, sizes by 3 to 4 months of age

• Familiar faces from novel faces by 4 to 5 months of age

• Categories of objects (e.g. animals, vehicles, etc.) by 6 to 8 months of age

• Develop depth perception by 8 to 10 months

depth perception

• Monocular cues

  • Can be detected with one eye

  • Motion Parallax, perspective, texture gradient, occlusion

  • 4 or 5 months

• Binocular cues

  • Require both eyes, placed frontally

  • Retinal Disparity, convergence

  • 7 or 8 months

visual cliff

• Plexiglass covered checkerboard pattern with high side and low (18 to 24 inches below) side

• If children can gather information about depth from the environment, they shouldn’t crawl over the cliff

• Usually infants who aren’t crawling don’t cross but EARLY crawlers might

• Want to have depth perception in place before babies start moving around

• However, social cues can sometimes override this

Piaget’s view of cognitive development

• Children go from reflexive perceptual beings to mental representational beings over the first two years of life

• They use those basic processes of assmiliation and accommodation to do so

piaget’s sensorimotor substages

1. Reflexive Schemes (0-1)

2. Primary Circular Reactions (1-4)

   • Repeated body-centered actions

3. Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8)

   • Repeated object-centered actions

4. Coordination of SCRs (8-12)

   • Intentional means-ends behaviors

5. Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18)

   • Trying out new things on objects

6. Mental Representation (18-24)

   • Mental images, symbols stand for things in world

object permanence

• The knowledge that objects exist in time and space even when you are not perceiving or acting on the objects

• Actually six substages of OP development that corresponds with the substages

A-not-B error

continuing to look in first location even though baby has seen the object moved

Violation-of-expectations method

an experimental technique in developmental psychology used to measure infants' cognitive abilities by tracking their looking time

Infants look longer at unexpected, "impossible" events than expected, "possible" ones.

language development

• Simple learning (behaviorist, Skinner)

• Nativist theory (Chomsky)

• General Cognitive mechanisms

• Social interaction and feedback

  • Infant-directed/Child Directed speech (”motherese”)

language acquisition device

a hypothetical, innate mental faculty proposed by linguist and cognitive psychologist Noam Chomsky in the 1950s and 1960s to explain how children rapidly acquire language

language development milestones

• Typical language milestones

• Cooing (2 months)

• Babbling (6 months)

• Word comprehension (8-12 months)

• First word production (around 12 months)

• Vocabulary explosion (around 18 months)

• Multiple word utterances (18-24 months)

cooing

2 months

vowel sounds

babbling

6 months

CV syllables

deaf babies do too!

first words

• Typically words for common objects, object properties, social words

  • Fewer action words, very few function words

• Typical mistakes

first word combinations

• Usually simple combinations of words children already know

word coprehension vs. production

• Word Comprehension (Receptive Language): The ability to perceive, process, and understand spoken or written words. It requires linking a phonological sound pattern (how a word sounds) to a semantic representation (its meaning).

• Word Production (Expressive Language): The ability to retrieve a word from memory and actively articulate or write it. This process demands heavier cognitive and motor execution, including phonological retrieval, grammatical framing, and physical articulation.

vocabulary burst

• Rapid increase in size of productive (spoken vocabulary) that occurs around 18 months of age

• Used to be believed that all children go through it

• More recent data shows that some do, but many show a more linear increase

• Children can use multiple cues and their existing vocabularies to help them acquire words more rapidly

underextensions

Using a word more narrowly than is appropriate (more common earlier)

overextensions

Applying a word too broadly (more common later)

telegraphic speech

• “Mine shoe”

• “Daddy eye”

• “More juice”

• These early word combinations usually express common meanings (possession, negation, reoccurrence, etc.) in simple formulas (e.g. More + ___)

• Few grammatical markers

specific language impairment

• language delay in the absence of other developmental delays

  • Some vocabulary delays, but usually seen in word combinations and development of grammar which is just beginning at the end of the 2nd year

pidgins and creoles

Some of the best evidence for this comes from the changes in language when people who don’t share a language must communicate (Derek Bickerton)

• Pidgin: Combination of languages with limited or reduced grammar/syntax

• Creole: Fully grammatical language that emerges from a pidgin by virtue of children being exposed to it

• Is processed through the “LAD” of the next generation

temperament

• Stable, constitutionally based individual differences in the quality and intensity of emotional reactions — valence

• Broadened to include emotion, attention, and action

Thomas and Chess’ dimensions of temperament

• Activity level

• Rhythmicity (regularity of function)

• Distractibility

• Approach/withdrawal (response to novelty)

• Adaptability

• Attention span

• Intensity of emotional reaction

• Quality of Mood

• Threshold of responsiveness

Rothbart’s dimensions of temperament

• Distress

• Attention span and persistence

• Activity Level

• Positive affect

• Rhythmicity

effortful control

• Voluntary suppression of a dominant reactive response in favor of a more planful, adaptive response

• A newer player in the temperament world

• May be important because it involves all three fundamental underlying components of temperament

  • Emotion, attention, and action

  • Early Indication of self-regulatory capabilities

easy child

40%

high rhythmicity, positive effect, adaptable

difficult child

15%

irregular, negative and intense affect, dislikes new experiences

slow-to-warm-up child

15%

Less active, less intense reactions, moderately negative effect, slow response to novelty

inhibited child

shy (20%)

uninhibited

sociable children (40%)

attachment

• Primary emotional relationship between child and his/her primary caretaker(s)

• Develops during first year of life

• Early theories relied on Freudian concepts or learning theory concepts

  • Famous studies by Harlow — food is not the “primary reinforcer”

John Bowlby

• Unique combination of psychodynamic, ethological, and cognitive theories

• Children develop an “internal working model”

pre-attachment (0-6 weeks)

Indiscriminate social responsiveness

Attachment-in-the-making

(6 weeks to 8 months)

Discriminate social responsiveness

Clear-cut attachment

(8-18 months)

• Strong preferences for some caretakers over others

• Separation anxiety

• Stranger wariness/distress

Separation anxiety

a normal developmental stage in infants and toddlers that typically emerges around 6 to 12 months of age, peaks around 9 to 18 months, and usually resolves by 2 to 3 years of age

wariness of strangers

a normal developmental milestone where infants and young children show caution, distress, or fear when approached by unfamiliar people

internal working model

a set of expectations based on early caregiving experiences

attachment security

moderately predictive of developmental outcomes in childhood and adolescence

• Secure attachment is predictive of social competence, self-esteem, cooperativeness, social status

• Disorganized attachment predictive of hostility, aggression, poor peer relations

• Modestly predictive of adult relationship style

• Continuity of care?

• Strange situation rarely used today (attachment q-sort)

strange situation procedure

a 20-to-21-minute laboratory assessment developed to evaluate infant-caregiver attachment styles in children typically aged 9 to 30 months

secure attachment

(60-65%)

Explore freely, moderate distress on separation, joyful reunion, calms quickly

avoidant attachment

(15%)

Good exploration, low or no distress on separation, ignore or slow response to parent on reunion

resistant attachment

(10%)

Poor exploration (often clingy), high distress on separation, angry and/or resistant upon reunion

disorganized attachment

(10%)

Don’t fit into any of the other 3!

attachment q-sort

measures individual differences in infant and early childhood attachment security (typically for children aged 1 to 5)

goodness-of-fit

Match between temperamental characteristics and caretaking practices

Continuity of care

keeping infants, toddlers, and a consistent caregiving team together in a group care setting for an extended period, typically the first three years of life

stability and predictive value of temperament and attachment

• only moderately predictive of later socio-emotional development

• Goodness-of-fit models to the rescue

• Babies have unique dispositions

• Parents have unique caretaking styles

• The unique interaction between the two that will tell the whole story

basic emotions

• Necessary for survival, present very early in infancy

• At birth we see startle, disgust, distress

social smile

4-6 weeks

an infant's intentional smile triggered by external social stimuli—such as a parent's face, voice, or eye contact—rather than internal physical reflexes

self-conscious emotions

• Require emotional reaction to stimuli AND a cognitive concept of the self

• Examples include shame, jealousy, pride

self-awareness

develops gradually over first two years of life

• usually assessed with mirror tasks

  • How do babies respond to their image in mirror

emotion recognition

• Infants are pretty good at recognizing the basic emotions by 7 months of age in naturalistic contexts

• Studies using the habituation-dishabituation paradigm have shown:

  • Recognition of basic emotions in 5-month olds and maybe as young as about 3.5 months old with some limitations

  • Infants habituated on images of emotions displayed by familiar individuals (e.g. parents) are most likely to show dishabituation to:

    • New emotion exhibited by parent

    • New emotion exhibited by novel person

    • Old emotion exhibited by novel person

    • Best when going from sad to happy expressions

self-recognition

• Secretly change the baby’s appearance

• Most common is the “rouge” task, where in the course of play an experimenter marks the baby’s nose or cheek with make-up

  • 6 month olds do not react to change

  • 12 months olds react by touching the altered mirror image

  • 18 month olds react by touching themselves, indicating a cognitive awareness of self

  • Usually considered the critical age for self-awareness and self conscious emotions

social referencing

• When an infant (or older child for that matter) looks at the emotional expression of a caretaker in order to gather information about a situation

• Novel stimuli (stranger, new toy, new behavior)

• By 9 months babies can use that information

  • Smile = stimulus is okay, you can approach

  • Fear/anger = stimulus is dangerous, stay away

  • Most helpful in ambiguous situations

early childhood body growth

• Wide typical variation in height and weight thorughout the period

• Wide cross-cultural variation too

• Skeletal growth continues, driven by the appearance of new epiphyses, growth centers in bones

• Baby tooth loss/adult teeth begin to appear at end of early childhood

hemisphere dominance

• Brain scans (PET, fMRI) and brain wave (EEG) activity show major growth/devlopment in the following areas

  • Frontal lobe

  • Left hemisphere

early childhood gross motor skills

• Cephalocaudal trend means young children become less top-heavy and better balanced

• Movements become smoother

• Proximodistal trend

• Limbs become more coordinated and independent of body

• Throwing and catching are great examples

fine motor skills

• Dressing, feeding, toileting all depend on fine motor skills

  • 3 year olds can go to the bathroom by themselves, put on simple clothes (t-shirts, pull-on pants/shorts/dresses), use spoons

  • 4 year olds can use forks and work some fasteners like buttons and zippers

  • 5 year olds can cut soft foods with knives, begin to tie their own shoes

early childhood drawings

• Scribbling (<3)

• First representation forms (3-5)

• More realistic forms (5-6)

• Depends not only on fine motor skills but cognitive advances as well

brain development

• Brain is 90% of adult size by age 6

• High density of synapses that continue to be reduced via synaptic pruning

• Myelination continues

cerebellum

Motor skills and balance

Hippocampus

Memory and spatial cognition

Reticular Formation

Attention, alertness

Jean Piaget

• Four stages of Cognitive Development

• Universal and invariant

• Qualitative difference between stages

  • Children are fundamentally different kinds of thinkers during each stage

preoperational stage

• (2-6)

• Child has symbolic representation

• Child CANT operate logically on those symbols

• Thus the preschool child’s though is characterized by

  • Lack of logical problem solving

    • E.g. the conservation task

  • Egocentrism

symbolic representation

where children learn to use words, gestures, images, objects, and actions to stand for people, events, and ideas that are not physically present

logical thought

how children and adolescents learn to reason, structure information, and apply rules to solve problems over time

operations

a mental action or rule that allows a child to manipulate, organize, and transform information logically

egocentrism

• Inability to take another’s perspective

• Believe everyone shares their own point of view

conservation task

• Why do preoperational children fail the conservation taks?\

• Lack of logical ability

  • A +/-0 = A

• Centration

• Irreversability of thought