infancy

READ THE THEORY BELOW AFTER

Cephalocaudal Principle

  growth starts from the top part of the body (i.e., brain to foot)

Proximodistal principle

o   growth proceed from the center of the body outward (e.g., Palm (grasping) to fingers)

Iron fortified formula

o   The only acceptable alternative to breast milk is - -_____based on either cow’s milk or soy protein

Brain Growth Spurts

o   brain’s growth occurs in fits and starts

Cerebellum

o   maintains balance and motor coordination) grows the fastest during the first year of life

Ex: learning to ride a bike

Lateralization

specialization of the hemispheres

Left hemisphere

• concerned with language and logical thinking

  Ex:

• Choosing the right words

• Forming grammatically correct sentences

• Reading your notes

• Understanding questions your classmates ask

Right Hemisphere

 concerned with visual and spatial functions
Ex: Recognizing shapes and patterns

• Interpreting colors and visual-spatial relationships

• Feeling emotional reactions to the art

  • Understanding the "big picture" or meaning behind the artwork

Corpus Collosum

• tough band of tissue that joins the two hemisphere which allows them to share info and coordinate commands

Occipital

• smallest; concerned with visual processing

  • EX: You're sitting in the stands, watching players run across the field.

Parietal

•  involved with integrating sensory info from the body; movement and manipulation of objects

Temporal

•  interpret smells and sounds and involved in memory

Frontal lobe

• involved in high-order processes such as reasoning and problem solving

Cerebral cortex

• outer surface of the cerebrum; grows rapidly in the first few months and are mature by age 6 months

  • Brain Growth Spurt begins at about the third trimester of gestation and continues until at least the 4^th year of life

Neurons

• send and receive info in the brain

Glial cells

Nourish and protect the neurons.

Axon

Sends signals to other neurons.

Dendrites

Receive incoming messages.

Synapses

Tiny gaps which are bridged with the help of chemicals.

Integration

Neurons that control various groups of muscle coordinate their activities.

Differentiation

Each neuron takes on a specific, specialized structure and function.

Cell death

Pruning of cells, a way to calibrate the developing brain to the local environment and help it work more efficiently, beginning during the prenatal period and continuing after birth.

Myelination

Enables signals to travel faster and more smoothly by coating the neural pathways with myelin.

Deprived environment effects

Children who grew up in deprived environments may have depressed brain activity.

Neuroconstructivist view

States that biological processes and environmental conditions influence development, the brain is plastic, and the child’s cognitive development is closely linked to the development of the brain.

Experience and gene expression importance

Emphasizes the importance of considering interactions between experience and gene expression in brain development.

Reflex behavior

An automatic, innate response to stimulation controlled by lower brain centers that govern involuntary processes.

Primitive reflexes

Includes sucking, rooting, and the Moro reflex, related to instinctive needs for survival and protection or may support early connection to the caregiver.

Postural reflexes

Reactions to changes in position or balance.

Locomotor reflex

• resemble voluntary movements that do not appear until months after the reflexes have disappeared

First 6-12 months

Early reflexes disappears on?

Moro

Extend legs, arms, and fingers, arches back, draws back head.

Darwinian (Grasping)

Make strong fist.

Tonic Neck

Fencer position.

Babkin

Mouth opens, eyes close, neck flexes, head tilts forward.

Babinski

Toes fan out; foot twists in.

Rooting

Head turns, mouth opens, sucking begins.

Walking

Steplike motions.

Swimming

Swimming movements.

Purpose of sleep

Restores, replenishes, and rebuilds our brains and bodies.

Evolutionary perspective on sleep

All animals sleep, and this sleep is necessary for survival to protect themselves at night.

Restorative perspective on sleep

Replenishes and rebuilds the brain and body, such as clearing out neural tissues.

Plasticity perspective on sleep

Critical for brain plasticity, increasing synaptic connections between neurons, linked to improved consolidation of memories.

Newborn sleep

Approximately 18 hours a day.

Non-REM sleep

No eye movement and is more quiet.

Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep

Eyes flutter beneath the closed lids, usually appearing 1 hour after non-REM sleep in adults. Half of an infant's sleep is REM, providing added self-stimulation and promoting brain development in infancy.

Denver Developmental Screening Test

• used to chart progress between ages 1 month and 6 years and to identify children who are not developing normally

Gross motor skills

Using large muscles
Example:Walking

• Running

• Jumping

• Climbing

• Skipping

• Throwing a ball

• Kicking a soccer ball

  • Riding a bicycle

Fine motor skills

using small muscles),
EX: Writing or drawing

• Buttoning a shirt

• Using scissors

• Picking up small objects like coins

• Tying shoelaces

• Using utensils to eat

  • Manipulating toys such as building blocks.

First Month

Infants can turn their head from side to side and exhibit grasping reflex.

Second-Third Month

Babies can lift their heads, grasp moderate-sized objects, hold their head still, match voice to faces, distinguish between female and male, discriminate between ethnic group faces, and develop size constancy.

Fourth Month

Babies can keep their heads erect while supported, roll over accidentally, and begin to reach for objects.

Sixth Month

Babies cannot sit without support, can start creeping or crawling, successfully reach for objects in the dark, and localize sounds.

Seventh Month

Pincer grasp begins, can start standing, and sit independently.

Eighth Month

Babies can assume sitting position without help, and learn to pull themselves up and hold on to a chair.

Tenth Month

Babies can now stand alone.

Eleventh Month

Babies can let go and stand alone well.

Thirteenth Month

Toddlers can pull a toy attached to a string and climb stairs using hands and legs.

Eighteenth to Twenty-Fourth Month

Toddlers can walk quickly, run, and balance in a squatting position.

Crawling

Helps babies learn to judge distances and perceive depth. Example: A baby crawls towards a toy across a room, learning how far it is away.

Social Referencing

Babies learn to look at caregivers for clues as to whether a situation is secure or frightening. Example: A baby looks at their parent’s face to determine if a loud noise is scary or not.

Sensory Perception

Enables infants to learn about themselves and their environment so they can make better judgements. Example: A baby explores various textures of toys to understand how they feel.

Visual Guidance

The use of eyes to guide the movements of the hands. Example: A baby watches their hand reach for a bottle to drink.

Clumsy Corrective Movements

More likely to illustrate immature cerebellar development. Example: A baby misses their target when trying to grasp a ball and then makes awkward movements to try again.

Depth Perception

The ability to perceive objects and surfaces in three dimensions. Example: A baby reaches for a toy on a table and understands it is not just a flat image.

Kinetic Cues

Produced by movement of the object or the observer or both. Example: A baby tracks the movement of a rolling ball to understand its trajectory.

Haptic Perception

Ability to acquire information by handling objects rather than just looking at them. Example: A baby learns about the texture of a block by grasping and feeling it.

Posture

Dynamic process linked with sensory information in the skin, joints, and muscles. Example: A baby adjusts their posture while sitting to maintain balance as they reach for something.

Swaddling

Shows slight delays in motor development. Example: A swaddled baby may take longer to learn to roll over due to restricted movement.

Perceptual Constancy

Sensory stimulation is changing but perception of the physical world remains constant. Example: A baby recognizes that a ball is still a ball regardless of its distance from them.

Size Constancy

Recognition that an object remains the same despite changes in retinal image. Example: A baby still sees a friend as the same size whether they are up close or far away.

Shape Constancy

An object remains the same shape even though its orientation changes. Example: A baby recognizes a square block as still being a square when it's tilted.

Gibson’s Ecological View

• we directly perceive info that exists in the world around us

Affordances

• opportunities for interaction offered by objects that fit within our capabilities to perform activities

  • Newborns cannot see small things that are far away

Thelen’s Dynamic theory

• Behavior emerges in the movement from the self-organization of multiple components

• Opportunities and constraints presented by the infant’s physical characteristics, motivation, energy level, motor strength, and position in the environment at a particular moment in time affect whether and how an infant achieves a goal

• A solution emerges as the baby explores various combinations of movements and assembles those that most efficiently contribute to that end

• Infants modulate their movement patterns to fit a new task by exploring and selecting possible configurations

• Infant actively put together skill to achieve a goal within the constraints set by the infant’s body and environment

Classical Conditioning

A person learns to make a reflex, or involuntary, response to a stimulus that originally did not bring about the response. Example: A dog salivates when it hears a bell that signals feeding time, even if no food is present.

Extinction

Occurs if the conditioned learning is not reinforced by repeated association. Example: The dog stops salivating when the bell is rung without food present over time.

Operant Conditioning

Focuses on the consequences of behaviors and how they affect the likelihood of the behavior occurring again. Example: A child receives praise (reward) for doing homework, increasing the likelihood

Intelligent Behavior

Presumed to be goal-oriented, meaning it exists for the purposes of attaining a goal. Example: A child solving a puzzle to achieve the goal of completing it.

IQ Tests

Consist of questions or tasks that indicate how much of the measured abilities a person has by comparing that person’s performance with norms. Example: A child answers various cognitive questions to assess their intellectual abilities compared to peers.

Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development

A developmental test designed to assess children from 1 month to 3 ½ years. Example: The test evaluates a child's cognitive, language, motor, social-emotional, and adaptive behavior skills.

Behavior Rating Scale

Accompanied by the Bayley Scales, this scale is taken from the caregiver's perspective to assess the child's behavior. Example: A caregiver rates their child's responsiveness and social interactions.

Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME)

Involves trained observers who interview the primary caregiver and rate the intellectual stimulation and support observed in a child’s home on a yes-or-no checklist. Example: Observers note the number of books and toys in the home.

Criteria for HOME

Includes factors such as number of books and toys, parental involvement, emotional and verbal responsiveness, acceptance of the child's behavior, organization of the environment, and opportunities for varied stimulation. Example: A home with diverse toys and active parental engagement scores higher on the checklist.

Early Intervention

A systematic process of planning and providing therapeutic and educational services for families needing help with infants', toddlers’, and pre-school children’s developmental needs. Example: A family receives support services to help their child reach developmental milestones.

1. Use of reflexes - Birth to 1 month

Exercise their inborn reflexes and gain some control over them

Practice their reflexes and control them (e.g., sucking whenever they want to)

2. Primary Circular reactions 1-4 months

Repeat pleasurable behaviors that first occur by chance

Begin to coordinate sensory information and grasp objects

They turn towards the sounds

3. Secondary circular reactions (4-8months)

Repeat actions that brings interesting results

Learns about causality

4. Coordination of Secondary schemes(8-12 months)

Coordinate previously learned schemes and use previously learned behaviors to attain their goals

Can anticipate events

5.Tertiary circular reactions (12-18 months)

Purposefully vary their actions to see results

Actively explore the world

Trial and error in solving problems

6. Mental Combinations

Can think about events and anticipate consequences without always resorting action

Can use symbols such as gestures and words, and can pretend

Transition to Pre-operational stage

Learning about numbers

Representational Ability

• the ability to mentally represent objects and actions in memory, largely through symbols such as words, numbers, and mental picture

  • Infants develop the abilities to think and remember

Object permanence

the realization that something continues to exist when out of sight

Dual represenation hypothesis

•  proposal that children under age of 3 have difficulty grasping spatial relationships because of the need to keep more than one mental representation in mind at the same time.
  
  Ex: A 2.5-year-old child is shown a small model of a room where a toy is hidden under a miniature bed. When taken to the real, full-sized room that looks exactly the same, the child struggles to find the toy. This difficulty happens because the child can't yet hold two mental representations at once

Dishabituation

• if a new sight or sound is presented, the baby’s attention is generally captured once again, and the baby will reorient toward the interesting stimulus and once again sucking slows

• EX: A baby is repeatedly shown a picture of a red circle, and over time, they lose interest and stop looking at it—this is habituation. Then, the researcher shows a picture of a blue square. The baby suddenly looks at it with renewed interest.

Habituation

• a type of learning in which repeated or continuous exposure to a stimulus, reduces attention to that stimulus

• Familiarity breeds loss of interest

• A baby is repeatedly shown a picture of a red circle, and over time, they lose interest and stop looking at it—this is_______

Visual Recognition memory

• ability that depends on the capacity to form and refer to mental representations

• Babies like to look at new things

  • Senses are unconnected at birth and are only

Cross-modal transfer

• the ability to use information gained from one sense to guide another – as when a person negotiates a dark room by feeling for the location of familiar objects

Implicit memory

•  refers to remembering that occurs without effort or even conscious awareness

• Habits and skills

  • Develop early and is demonstrated by such actions as an infant’s kicking

Explicit memory

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