Chapter 5

• Function of “baby fat”:

• maintains body temperature; peaks at 9 m

• Benefits of breastfeeding:

• best for infants’ needs, correct amount of fat/protein, protection against respiratory/intestine infection

• Cephalocaudal trend vs. proximodistal trend:

• Cephalocadual: head develops faster than body

• Proximodistal: center outward develops before arms/legs

• Areas of the brain and the prefrontal cortex:

• Neurons: nerve cells store/transmit info

• Glial: ½ brains volume; physical and chemical; responsible for myelination; multiply rapidly 4th month of pregnancy - 2nd year of life

• Prefrontal cortex: front areas controlling movement

• Frontal lobe: responsible for concentration, planning, problem solving, speech, and motor control

• Parietal lobe: sensory/touch processing and reception

• Cerebellum: coordination

• Brain growth patterns :

• Experience-expectant brain growth: natural-like chances to explore environment like interactions with people; depends on ordinary experience

• Experience-dependent brain growth: growth based on specific experiences the child has; not always natural; additional growth as a result of specific experiences

• Synaptic pruning

• Synapses: tiny gaps between neurons

• Neurotransmitters: chemicals released by neurons and send messages across synapses

• Synaptic pruning: neurons that die off when not stimulated (40% die off, leaves space for preexisting synapses)

• Function of myelination

• Myelination: coating of neutral fibers with myelin, insulating fatty sheath; efficient message transfer

• Growth faltering and catch-up growth

• Growth faltering: slower rate of weight gain in childhood than expected for sex/age

• Catch up growth: physical growth delayed due to environment

• Neuroimaging techniques (basic procedure for each)

• EEG (Electroencephalogram): brain wave pattern and stability

• ERP (Event-Related Potentials): general location of brain wave activity with stimulus

• PET (Positron Emission Tomography): blood flow and oxygen metabolism in areas of brain in response to stimuli; injection of radioactive substance and xray

• fMRI (Functional magnetic Resonance Imaging): measures the same as PET (blood flow/oxygen metabolism) but magnetically

• NIRS (Near-Infrared Spectroscopy): infared light beamed at areas of cerebral cortex; measures the same as PET and fMRI, allows movement; limited to C.C.

• Characteristics of a highly plastic cortex

• Highly plastic cortex characteristics: depends on timing of lateralization; brain is highly plastic in first few years of life and able to reorganize specific functions

• Cerebral Cortex: largest most sensitive brain structure with extended period of development

• Sensitive period for brain development; studies of children in orphanages

• Extreme sensory depravation in early life = permanent brain damage or loss of function

• Appropriate stimulation vs. overstimulation in an infant’s environment

• Appropriate stimulation: helps with brain development

• Overstimulation: overwhelming amount of stimulus

• Learning capacities in infancy (conditioning, habituation)

• Classical Conditioning: reflexes; require unconditioned stimulus; learned behavior

• Operant conditioning: operate in environment; stimulus that causes learned behavior; reward-avoidance learning

• Habituation: reduction of strength of response of a stimulus due to repetitiveness

• Recovery: return high strength response with new stimulus

• Development of motor skills (prereaching, different grasps)

• Gross-motor development: control over actions that help infant navigate environment

• Fine motor development: control over smaller movements

• Dynamic system theory of motor development: mastery of motor skills through aquiring more complex systems of actions

• Prereaching: newborn poorly coordinated swipes toward objects (3-6 months)

• Reaching: controlled by proprioception

• Ulnar grasp: clumsy motion in which fingers close against palms (3-4 months)

• Pincer grasp: well-coordinated grasp using thumb/index finger (9 months)

• Visual cliff (Gibson & Walk)

• Visual cliff (Gibson & Walk): develops depth cues

• Infant preference for faces

• Infants face preference: mother due to repeated exposure; distinctions at 3 months

• Other information

• Lateralization: specialization of brain hemispheres (left/right brain

• Skeletal age: measure of bone development

• Programmed cell death: makes space for neural fibers/synapses

Chapter 6

• Piaget’s sensorimotor stage – how do infants think

• Primary circular reaction (1-4 months) simple motor habits centered around body

• Secondary circular reactions (4-8 months): imitation of familiar behaviors and interesting effects

• Coordination of secondary circular reactions (8-12 months): intentional, goal directed behavior

• Tertiary circular reactions (12-18 months): exploring objects by acting on them in novel ways

• Circular reactions • Mental representations

• Mental representations (18 m - 2 years): internal depictions of that info can manipulate; make believe play

• Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (scaffolding, zone of proximal development)

• Sociocultural theory: social and economic status that the child is born into affects their cognitive structure of the world

• Zone of Proximal Development: range of tasks the child cannot handle but can do with assistance

• Scaffolding: child joins in interactions and picks up mental strategies

• Information processing theory – components of the mental system

• Sensory store: sights and signs are represented directly and stored momentarily

• Short term memory store: info is retained then discarded when not needed

• Infant categorization skills

• (6 months) categorize on basis of 2 correlated features

• (after 6 months) categories are based on clusters of features

• Operant conditioning research

• memory moves from highly context dependent to context free

• Theories of language development (nativist, behaviorist, interactionist) – strengths and limitations of each

• Behaviorist (BF Skinner): operant conditioning (reinforcement) and intimidation; the environment in which we pick up language will effect language we use; doesnt provide evidence for children making up words

• Nativist (Noam Chomsky): inborn LAD (language acquisition) which biologically prepares infant to learn language rules; no explanation for universal rules of grammar

• Interactionist: Children interact with environment then watch how environment responds

• Sequence of language development/acquisition

• Language acquisition device (LAD): innate system containing a universal grammar common to all languages

• Language comprehension vs. production (which comes first)

• Production: word combinations children use

• Comprehension: language children understand

• Joint attention: child attends to the same object/event as caretaker; mirroring

• First speech sounds

• cooing: vowel-like sounds (2 months)

• Babbling: repeated consonant-vowel combinations (6 months)

• Overextension and underextension

• Overextension: applying words broadly

• Underextension: applying words too narrowly

• Telegraphic speech

• Telegraphic speech: 2-word utterances and involving smaller words that aren’t necessary

Chapter 7

• Erikson’s psychosocial stages during infancy and toddlerhood

• Basic trust vs mistrust (year 1): if needs are met, they develop trust and expect the world to be good, allowing exploration. Reliant on people around.

• Autonomy vs shame and doubt (year 2): seeing how much control over the environment; children who arent overly-criticized will develop self-confidence or security. Under controlling parents will create shame or doubt in ability to act on their own. Reliance on others

• Basic and self-conscious emotions

• Emotions: important part of children’s dynamic system of actions; facial expression best cues for determining infant emotions

• Basic emotions: happiness, interest, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, disgust

• Self conscious emotions: higher-order feelings involving injury to or enhancement of sense of self; guilt, shame, embarrassment, envy, pride

• Social referencing

• social referencing (8-10 months): seek emotional info from trusted person in uncertain situation. Toddlers use others’ emotional messages to evaluate safety of surroundings to guide their actions and gather information

• Emotional self-regulation and effortful control

• Emotional regulation: strategies to adjust emotional states to a comfortable level of intensity to accomplish goals

• Temperament dimensions and modes of temperament

• Temperament: early appearing, stable individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation

• Reactivity: quickness and intensity of emotional arousal, attention, and motor activity

• Self regulation: strategies that modify reactivity

• Thomas and Chess’ model: categorizations of children; Easy child (40%), Difficult child (10%), slow to warm up child (10%)

• Goodness of fit and temperament

• Goodness of fit and temperament: create child-rearing environments that recognize childs temperament and encourage more adaptive functioning; helpful in effective parenting

• Bowlby’s ecological theory and stages of attachment

• Ethological Theory of Attachment: attachment as an evolved response that promotes survival; preattachment, attachment, clear cut attachment, reciprocal relationships

• Preattachment: attachment at birth - 6 weeks old

• Attachment: attachment in the making - 6 weeks to 6-8 months

• Clear-cut attachment: 6-8 months to 18m - 2 years - separation anxiety emerges

• Reciprocal relationships: attachment 18 months - 2 years

• Self-awareness and self-categorization in infancy and toddlerhood

• Self awareness: implicit sense of self-world differentiation; acting on the environment and receiving sensitive caregiving

• Self-recognition: well underway around 2 years old

• Categorical self: classifying self and others based on age, sex, physical appearance, goodness and badness

• Self-control, compliance, delay of gratification

• Self control: self awareness contributes to effortful control

• Compliance: ability to obey simple requests and commands (12-18 months)

• Delay of gratification: waiting for the right time and place to engage in a tempting act