First 3 Years of Life

Patterns of Growth

Children grow faster during the first three years, especially during the first few months. Teething usually begins around 3 or 4 months

Brain

At birth is only 1/4 of the adult brain, and by age 6 it is almost adult size.

Brain Growth Spurts

Different parts of the brain grow more rapidly at different times.

Cerebellum

Maintains balance and coordination; grows fastest during the first three years

Cerebrum

Largest part of the brain, divided in hemispheres with specialized functions.

Lateralization

Tendency of each brain hemisphere to have specialized functions

Left Hemisphere

Language and logical thinking

Right Hemisphere

Visual and spatial functions

Corpus Callosum

Tough band of tissue joining the two hemispheres which allows sharing of information

Frontal

Located at the front; responsible for decision-making, reasoning, planning, personality, and voluntary movement.

Parietal

Located near the top-middle; processes sensory information like touch, temperature, pressure, and pain.

Occipital

Located on the sides near the ears; handles hearing, language comprehension and memory.

Temporal

Located at the very back; dedicated entirely to processing visual information like shape, color, and depth

Brain Growth Spurt

Begins about the 3rd trimester of gestation and continues at least until 4 years old; important for neurological functioning.

Brain Cells

At birth, most of the more than 100 billion neurons in a mature brain are already formed but are not yet fully developed. As neurons multiply, migrate to their assigned locations and develop connections, they undergo certain processes:

Integration

Process by which neurons coordinate the activities of muscle groups

Differentiation

Process by which cells acquire specialized structures and functions

Synaptic Pruning

Cells not used or that do not function well die out, which helps make the nervous system faster and more efficient.

Myelination

Coats the nerve fibers (axons) in a child's brain with a protective layer of fatty tissue called myelin, which speeds up electrical signal transmission

Reflex Behavior

Automatic, innate response to stimulation present at birth; reflects normal neurological development and brainstem function. Most early reflexes disappear, yet others remain to serve as protective factors, such as blinking, shivering, and sneezing

Primitive Reflexes

Related to instinctive needs for survival and protection.

Postural Reflexes

Reaction to changes in position or balance, as the higher brain becomes active

Locomotor Reflexes

Resemble voluntary movements

Motor Development

Babies do not have to be taught such basic motor skills; they just need room to move and freedom to see what they can do.

Systems of Action

Increasingly complex combination of motor skills

Denver Developmental Screening Test

Used to chart progress between 1 month to 6 years old and to identify children who are not developing normally. The test measures:

Gross Motor Skills

Movements involving large muscles

Fine Motor Skills

Movements involving small muscles (pincer grasp)

Ecological Theory of Perception

Developed by psychologists Eleanor Gibson and James J. Gibson. States that perception is direct and does not require mental processing, internal representations, or cognitive inferences by the brain. Instead of the brain taking ambiguous sensory data and "guessing" or constructing a mental picture of the world, Gibson argued that the environment already contains rich, structured information that organisms simply pick up through active exploration.

Dynamic Systems Theory

Developed by Esther Thelen. "Behavior emerges in the moment from the self-organization of multiple components." Views human behavior, cognition, and development as the emergent result of continuous, non-linear interactions among multiple biological, psychological, and environmental systems across various time scales

Early Cognitive Development

Infants learn about themselves and their world through their developing sensory and motor activity.

Representational Ability

Ability to mentally represent objects and actions in memory, largely through symbols such as words and numbers.

Object Permanence

Idea that objects have their own independent existence, characteristics, and locations in space; basis for children's awareness that they exist apart from others.

Use of Reflexes

"Inborn"

Primary Circular Reactions

"Ay nasarapan ako, ulitin ko nga!"

Secondary Circular Reactions (4 to 8 months)

"Uy! Pag ngumingiti ako, kinikissan nila ako... ulitin natin :>"

Coordination of Secondary Schemes (8 to 12 months)

"Ilalaglag ko yung laruan para mapansin ako ni mama" (Tinitigan ko, nilapitan ko stage)

Tertiary Circular Reactions (12 to 18 months)

"Hmmm... try ko nga 'to"

Mental Combinations

"'Di ko na need i-try, isipin ko muna paano gawin"

Implicit Memory

Remembering that occurs without effort or conscious awareness and commonly pertains to habits and skills. Ex. tying a shoelace or throwing a ball

Explicit Memory

Also called declarative memory; the conscious or intentional recollection, usually of facts, names, events, or other things that can be stated or declared.

Working Memory

During the 2nd half of the 1st year, this acts as the short-term storage of information the brain is actively processing or working on.

Language Development

A communication system based on words and grammar

Prelinguistic Speech

Utterance of sounds that are not words; includes crying, cooing, babbling, accidental imitation, and deliberate imitation of words

Conventional Social Gestures

By 12 months; waving bye-bye, nodding her head to mean yes and shaking it for no

Representational Gestures

By 13 months; holding an empty cup to her mouth to show that she wants a drink or holding up her arms to show that she wants to be picked up

Symbolic Gestures

Such as blowing to mean hot or sniffing to mean flower

Linguistic Speech

Verbal expression that conveys meaning

Holophrase

Entire sentence is expressed with one word

Passive Vocabulary

By 18 months; can understand 150 words and can say 50 of them

Expressive Vocabulary

By 16 to 24 months; "naming explosion" may occur; within a few months, a toddler may go from saying about 50 words to saying several hundred.

Telegraphic Speech

Consisting of only a few essential words. Ex. "Dada falls," "Dog bite"

Syntax

Fundamental rules for putting sentences together

Code Mixing

Blending of words from two or more languages within a single sentence or utterance.

Code Switching

Ability to shift from one language to another.

Underextension

Use of a word in too narrow a category, applying it to only a specific instance instead of the entire category.

Overextension

Using words in too broad a category. Ex. calling every man "daddy" or every vehicle a "car"

Overregularization

Language error that nonetheless illustrates children's growing knowledge of syntax.

Noam Chomsky

Believes that children have an inborn capacity to acquire language, which may be activated or constrained by experience.

Nativism

Emphasizes the active role of the learner's innate capability

Language Acquisition Device

An inborn program that allows children's brains to analyze the language they hear and to figure out its rules

Role of Caregiver and Environment

Language takes not only the necessary biological machinery and cognitive capacity but also interaction with a live communicative partner.

Child-Directed Speech

Also known as "motherese," "parentese," or "baby talk"; speak slowly in a sing-song, high-pitched voice with exaggerated ups and downs, simplify your speech, exaggerate vowel sounds, and use short words and sentences and much repetition

Emotions

Subjective reactions to experience that are associated with psychological and behavioral changes

Crying

Most powerful way and sometimes the only way infants can communicate their needs

Basic Hunger Cry

Rhythmic cry

Angry Cry

Variation of the rhythmic cry in which excess air is forced

Pain Cry

Sudden onset of loud crying without preliminary moaning; sometimes followed by holding the breath

Frustration Cry

Two to three drawn-out cries with no prolonged breath holding

Smiling

Earliest faint smiles occur spontaneously soon after birth, apparently as a result of subcortical nervous system activity

Social Smiling

Signals the infant's active, positive participation

Anticipatory Smiling

Infants appear to communicate pre-existing positive affect by smiling at an object and then turning the smile toward an adult.

Emotional Development

Follows an orderly process in which complex emotions unfold from simpler ones.

Self-Awareness

Cognitive understanding that they have a recognizable identity, separate and different from the rest of the world; this emerges between 15 and 24 months

Self-Conscious Emotions

Such as embarrassment, empathy, and envy; arise only after children have developed self-awareness

Self-Evaluative Emotions

Such as pride, shame, and guilt; depend on both self-awareness and knowledge of socially accepted standards of behavior.

Temperament

Early-appearing, biologically based tendency to respond to the environment in predictable ways. Relatively consistent and enduring, and an early building block of personality. .

Goodness of Fit

Match between a child's temperament and the environmental demands and constraints the child must deal with.

Easy Children

40% of the population; generally happy, rhythmic in biological functioning, and accepting of new experiences

Difficult Children

10% of the population; more irritable and harder to please, irregular in biological rhythms, and more intense in expressing emotion

Slow-to-Warm-Up Children

15% of the population; mild but slow to adapt to new people and situations.

Attachments

A reciprocal, enduring emotional tie between an infant and a caregiver, which contributes to the quality of the relationship.

John Bowlby

Attachment owes much to the him, pioneer in the study of bonding in animals.

Mary Ainsworth

Student of Bowlby; went on to study attachment in African babies in Uganda, then later devised the Strange Situation.

Secure

Infant cries or protests when the primary caregiver leaves and actively seeks out the caregiver on his/her return

Avoidant

Infant rarely cries when separated from the primary caregiver and avoids contact on its return

Ambivalent

Infant becomes anxious before the primary caregiver leaves, is extremely upset during his absence, and both seeks and resists contact on his return

Disorganized-Disoriented

Infant, after separation, shows contradictory, repetitious, or misdirected behaviors on his/her return.

Waters and Deane Attachment Q-Set

Developed by Everett Waters and Kathleen E. Deane (1985); an observational research tool used to evaluate a child's secure-base behavior in naturalistic settings such as the home

Stranger Anxiety

Wariness of a person she does not know

Separation Anxiety

Distress when a familiar caregiver leaves her. It may not be due to the separation itself so much as to the quality of the substitute care.

Adult Attachment Interview

AAI found that the way adults recall early experiences with parents or caregivers is related to their emotional well-being and may influence the way they respond to their own children.

Social Referencing

Understanding an ambiguous situation by seeking another person's perception of it.

Self-Concept

Sense of self; descriptive and evaluative mental picture of one's abilities and traits. By at least 3 months, infants pay attention to their mirror image; this early perceptual discrimination is the foundation of conceptual self-awareness. These developments occur in interaction with caregivers in games such as peekaboo, with awareness of the difference between self and other.

Rouge Test

A small, inconspicuous dot of red makeup (rouge), lipstick, or a sticker is placed on a child's (or animal's) nose or forehead without them noticing, usually while wiping their face or distracting them. A mirror is used to observe their spontaneous reaction.

Socialization

Process by which children develop habits, skills, values, and motives that make them responsible, productive members of society.

Self-Regulation

Control of her behavior to conform to a caregiver's demands or expectations of her, even when the caregiver is not present.

Conscience

Involves the ability to refrain from certain acts as well as to feel emotional discomfort if they fail to do so.

Situational Compliance

Compliance depends on ongoing parental control

Committed Compliance

Willingly follow, without reminders or lapses