Chapter 4 lifespan canvas notes

CHAPTER 4: INFANCY

CONTENTS

LEARNING OBJECTIVES 1

KEY TERMS 3

CHAPTER OUTLINE 5

LECTURE LAUNCHERS, DISCUSSIONS, AND ACTIVITIES 22

CRITICAL THINKING ABOUT DEVELOPMENT 26

SUPPLEMENTAL READINGS 27

Revel VIDEOS 28

JOURNAL PROMPTS AND SHARED WRITING QUESTIONS 29

HANDOUTS 30

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Section 1

4.1 Describe how the infant’s body changes in the first year, and explain the two basic principles of physical growth.

4.2 Identify the different parts of the brain and describe how the brain changes in the first few years of life.

4.3 Describe how infant sleep changes in the course of the first year and evaluate the risk factors for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), including the research evidence regarding cosleeping.

4.4 Describe how infants’ nutritional needs change during the first year of life and identify the reasons for and consequences of malnutrition in infancy.

4.5 List the major causes and preventive methods of infant mortality and describe some cultural approaches to protecting infants.

4.6 Describe the major changes in gross and fine motor development during infancy.

4.7 Describe when and how infants develop depth perception and intermodal perception.

Section 2

4.8 Describe the meaning of maturation, schemes, assimilation, and accommodation.

4.9 Describe the sensorimotor stage and explain how object permanence develops over the course of the first year.

4.10 Describe the underlying ideas of the information-processing approaches to cognitive functioning.

4.11 Explain how attention and habituation change during infancy.

4.12 Explain how short-term and long-term memory expand during infancy.

4.13 Outline the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID-III) and explain how habituation assessments are used to predict later intelligence.

4.14 Evaluate the claim that educational media enhance infants’ cognitive development.

4.15 Describe the course of language development over the first year of life.

4.16 Describe how cultures vary in their stimulation of language development.

Section 3

4.17 Define infant temperament and describe its main dimensions.

4.18 Explain how the idea of goodness-of-fit pertains to temperament on both a family level and a cultural level.

4.19 Identify the primary emotions and describe how they develop during infancy.

4.20 Describe infants’ emotional perceptions and how their emotions become increasingly social over the first year.

4.21 List the main features of infants’ social worlds across cultures.

4.22 Compare and contrast the two major theories of infants’ social development.

KEY TERMS

Section 1

cephalocaudal principle

proximodistal principle

teething

synapse

neurotransmitter

axon

dendrite

overproduction/synaptic exuberance

myelination

synaptic pruning

hypothalamus

thalamus

hippocampus

cerebral cortex

lateralization

plasticity

sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)

cosleeping

custom complex

marasmus

oral rehydration therapy (ORT)

gross motor development

fine motor development

opposable thumb

depth perception

binocular vision

intermodal perception

Section 2

mental structure

cognitive-developmental approach

maturation

schemes

assimilation

accommodation

sensorimotor stage

object permanence

information processing approaches

habituation

dishabituation

short-term memory

long-term memory

Bayley Scales of Infant Development

developmental quotient (DQ)

cooing

babbling

infant-directed (ID) speech

Section 3

temperament

goodness-of-fit

primary emotions

secondary emotions

social smile

emotional contagion

social referencing

trust versus mistrust

attachment theory

CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. Section 1: Physical Development

A. Growth and Change in Infancy

1. Growth Patterns

LO 4.1 Describe how the infant’s body changes in the first year, and explain the two basic principles of physical growth.

a. Accelerated growth occurs during the first year of life.

b. By 5 months, an infant’s birth weight is expected to double, and by a year it should triple.

c. Babies accumulate fat, which helps them regulate their body temperature. A normal baby looks plump but loses much of the baby fat by 1 year.

d. Height increases from about 20 to 30 inches in the first year. Babies grow about an inch a month, but in spurts, not evenly.

e. Babies’ heads tend to be large compared to the rest of their bodies. Their growth, according to the cephalocaudal principle, begins with the head and travels down the rest of the body. The proximodistal principle states that growth proceeds from the center or trunk outward.

f. Generally, teeth begin to appear between 5 and 9 months of age. Teething, the pain and discomfort the baby feels when a tooth is breaking through, varies greatly by infant. Strategies for soothing teething pain include biting or chewing on an object (particularly if it is cold), cold food or drink, and topical pain relievers.

2. Brain Development

LO 4.2 Identify the key parts of the brain and describe how the brain changes in the first few years of life.

a. Brain Growth

i. There is tremendous brain growth during infancy. Although a newborn infant’s brain is only a quarter of the size of an adult’s brain, it grows to about 70% of the size by 2 years of age.

ii. Infants have billions of brain cells, or neurons, that are separated by synapses or tiny gaps. Chemicals called neurotransmitters flow between neurons from the axon of one neuron to the dendrite of another neuron to communicate.

iii. The tremendous spurt in the number of dendritic connections is called overproduction or synaptic exuberance.

iv. Starting around the 14tth week of fetal development, axons become sheathed in a fatty material called the myelin sheath. This process of myelination increases the speed of communication between neurons.

v. As the neural network develops with use, the strength, accuracy, and precision of the connections increases. The unused connections wither away in a process called synaptic pruning.

b. Brain Specialization

i. The three major parts of the brain are the hindbrain, the midbrain, and the forebrain.

ii. The hindbrain and midbrain maintain basic biological functions like keeping the lungs breathing, the heart beating, and bodily movements balanced.

iii. The forebrain is divided into two main parts, the limbic system and the cerebral cortex.

1) The limbic system includes several structures, including:

a) The hypothalamus, which monitors and regulates basic functions

b) The thalamus, which relays information from the body to the brain

c) The hippocampus, which is vital to memory function

2) The cerebral cortex is the outermost part of the forebrain.

a) It is much larger in human animals than in nonhuman animals and is the center of brain growth during infancy.

b) The cerebral cortex facilitates language, problem solving, and thinking about concepts, ideas, and symbols.

c) It is divided into the right and left hemispheres, which are connected by a band of fibers called the corpus callosum.

d) Lateralization is the term for the specialization of the two hemispheres—left for language and sequential information processing and right for spatial reasoning and holistic, integrative information processing.

e) Each hemisphere has four lobes with distinct functions. The visual processing system is in the rear occipital lobes, while auditory processing takes place in the temporal lobes located near the ears. The parietal lobes process bodily sensations and the frontal lobes deal with more advanced processes. The prefrontal cortex is the foremost part of the frontal lobes and has specialized abilities for planning and organizing information to direct behavior.

c. The Plasticity of the Infant Brain

i. As the infant brain matures, it is high in plasticity, meaning that it is highly responsive to environmental influences and thus responsive to environmental circumstances.

ii. One benefit of plasticity is that brain damage due to early deprivation before 6 months of age is reversible. However, plasticity decreases with age. Consequently, as children age, they are less able to overcome poor environmental conditions that result in cognitive impairment.

3. Sleep Changes

LO 4.3 Describe how infant sleep changes in the course of the first year and evaluate the risk factors for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), including the research evidence regarding cosleeping.

a. Newborns sleep about 16–17 hours a day, but by 3–4 months of age they are sleeping up to 6–7 hours in a row at night, and REM sleep has declined to about 40%.

i. At 6 months, cultural practices influence the amount of sleep an infant gets each day. Among the Kipsigis people of Kenya, infants sleep about from 12 hours a day; American infants sleep 14 hours a day; and Dutch infants sleep about 16 hours a day.

ii. Two important issues of sleep in infancy is the risk of dying during sleep and the issue of with whom infants should sleep.

b. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)

i. Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) occurs when an infant with no apparent illness or disorder dies in the first year of life.

ii. Infants aged 2 to 4 months are at the highest risk of dying of SIDS.

iii. It is the leading cause of death for infants 1 to 12 months in developed countries.

iv. In the United States, infants of Asian descent are less likely to die of SIDS than those of European or African descent; rates are highest for Native American and African American infants, especially those who have had poor prenatal care.

v. Risk factors include sleeping on the stomach, having low birth weight and low APGAR scores, having a mother who smoked during pregnancy or being around smoke during infancy, sleeping in an overheated room or wearing two or more layers of clothing during sleep, and having soft bedding.

vi. Theoretically, the risk for infants during the 2–4-month age range may be linked to the transition from reflexive behaviors (like clearing an obstruction to breathing) to intentional behaviors. If infants have a breathing problem and are not able to engage in the intentional behavior, they might die.

vii. The “BACK to Sleep” campaign dramatically reduced the number of deaths due to SIDS in developed countries.

c. Cosleeping: Helpful or Harmful to Babies?

i. Cosleeping is a cultural practice in which an infant sleeps in the same bed as one or both parents.

ii. Cosleeping is common worldwide, except in Western countries. The Western practice of isolating infants is frowned on by most of the rest of the world.

iii. The benefits of cosleeping are thought to include easy breast-feeding, protection of the infant from illness and injury, and parent-child bonding.

iv. In non-Western cultures, cosleeping usually occurs until the next child is born or about 2–4 years.

v. Cosleeping is an example of a custom complex, a distinctive cultural pattern of behavior that is based on underlying cultural beliefs.

vi. SIDs is almost unknown in cosleeping cultures and SIDs rates are high in the United States.

B. Infant Health

1. Nutritional Needs

LO 4.4 Describe how infants’ nutritional needs change during the first year of life and identify the reasons for and consequences of malnutrition in infancy.

a. Introduction of Solid Foods

i. Because infants grow at such a rapid rate, they need to eat a lot of quality, high-fat food with great frequency. This can be achieved by feeding breast milk and, later, solid foods.

ii. There is some cultural variation in the timing of the introduction of solids to the infant diet, but 4–5 months of age is common.

iii. Even at 4–5 months old, infants resist solids due to a gag reflex; chewing and swallowing effectively does not develop until after

6 months.

iv. In the West, pediatricians recommend introducing solid food by the fourth to sixth month of life. Babies start with thinned rice cereal or oatmeal cereal, which are an important source of iron (because it has been fortified). Then they eat pureed veggies and fruits.

v. In traditional cultures, the first solid foods are actually mashed, pureed, or prechewed.

b. Malnutrition in Infancy

i. Malnutrition can lead to severe and enduring negative developmental outcomes, including physical and cognitive deficits.

ii. Because breast milk is readily available to most infants, malnutrition usually only occurs when a mother is unable or unwilling to breast-feed due to being ill, malnourished, or diseased, or formula may not be available in sufficient quantity.

iii. Marasmus is a disease in which the body wastes away due to insufficient protein and calories. The body stops growing, the muscles atrophy, and the baby becomes lethargic; eventually death occurs. If the child lives, he or she will always have impairments. Using some form of nutritional supplements can be very helpful in avoiding the consequences of starvation.

2. Infant Mortality

LO 4.5 List the major causes and preventive methods of infant mortality and describe some cultural approaches to protecting infants.

a. Causes and Prevention of Infant Mortality

i. The risk of death during the life span is greatest during infancy but is highest for those in developing countries.

ii. Most often, infant mortality in the first month is the result of neonatal issues, such as severe birth defects, preterm birth complications, or maternal death.

iii. In months 2–12, infant deaths in developing countries are due to malnutrition diseases and illnesses like malaria and respiratory infections, and diarrhea.

iv. Infants with diarrhea lose fluids and eventually die from dehydration if untreated. Diarrhea, which is caused by unsafe water, inadequate sanitation, and insufficient hygiene, can be treated easily with oral rehydration therapy (ORT). ORT involves having infants with diarrhea drink a solution of salt and glucose mixed with clean water.

v. Infant deaths have been significantly reduced in the last half century with the introduction of vaccines, but there is great variability worldwide in how likely children are to be vaccinated. As of 2016, coverage for the major infant vaccines was about 90% worldwide, but in some African countries rates were below 50%.

vi. The claim that vaccines are harmful to children and should be avoided has been completely debunked by recent scientific studies.

b. Cultural Beliefs and Practices to Protect Infants

i. In traditional cultures, parents are acutely aware that infants are vulnerable and must be protected to increase the chances of survival.

ii. Historically, and even currently, many cultures in developing countries with limited access to medical care have devised practices to protect their infants. Some resort to magical practices.

iii. Cultural practices vary from holding infants constantly, carrying a knife near babies to ward off evil spirits, making derogatory comments about babies so that evil spirits would not think them valuable, and covering them in many cloths to hide them from evil spirits.

C. Motor and Sensory Development

1. Motor Development

LO 4.6 Summarize the major changes in gross and fine motor developing during infancy.

a. Gross motor development is the development of abilities including balance and posture, as well as whole-body movements such as crawling. Fine motor development is the development of motor abilities involving finely tuned movements of the hands, such as grasping and manipulating objects.

b. Gross Motor Development

i. Skills like holding the head up without support, crawling, and walking are major gross motor milestones that usually occur in this sequence, but the timing is variable within a normalized range.

ii. Most developmental psychologists view gross motor development in infancy is mostly ontogenetic (takes place due to an inborn, genetically based, individual timetable) but it is also due to a combination of the maturation of the brain, support and assistance from adults, and the child’s own efforts to practice the skill. The interaction of genetics and the environment contribute to the variability we see within and between cultures.

iii. Some cultures restrict gross motor movement early in life to protect the infant, while others encourage it. In the long run, it usually does not impact their developmental timeline significantly; infants in cultures where gross motor development is actively stimulated may develop slightly earlier than in cultures where parents make no special efforts.

c. Fine Motor Development

i. The basis of fine motor development is our opposable thumb, which enables us to do things like make tools, pick up small objects, and thread a needle.

ii. Reaching and grasping are the essential fine motor tasks infants must master. Before 2 months of age, infants will reflexively prereach for and grasp objects. Later, as these reflexes fade, they learn to be skilled at reaching and grasping, which becomes smoother, more direct, and deliberately make adjustments by the end of their first year.

iii. As these skills become more advanced, 5-month-old infants can reach for, pick up, and transfer an object from one hand to the other, or more commonly, to their mouths.

iv. By the end of the first year, this ability culminates in the “pincer grasp,” whereby the child is able to pick up a small object between the thumb and forefinger.

2. Sensory Development

LO 4.7 Describe when and how infants develop depth perception and intermodal perception.

a. Depth Perception

i. Depth perception is the ability to discern the relative distance of objects in the environment by using binocular vision, the ability to combine the images of each eye into one image, which is necessary for depth perception.

ii. This important aspect of vision is essential for babies who are on the move to help them stay safe.

iii. Gibson and Walk’s famous visual cliff experiment provides strong evidence of the development of depth perception in infants.

1) Using a glass-covered table with a checkered pattern just below the surface on one half and about 2 feet below on the other half, they tested their theory of depth perception.

2) The infants (6–14 months) who had developed binocular vision saw the visual “cliff” and refused to crawl across it even when encouraged to do so by their mothers.

b. Intermodal Perception

i. Intermodal perception is the integration and coordination of incoming sensory information.

ii. One-month-olds can integrate touch and sight.

iii. By 4 months of age, infants can integrate visual and auditory stimuli.

iv. Eight-month-olds begin to coordinate visual and auditory information.

II. Section 2: Cognitive Development

A. Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

1. According to psychologist Jean Piaget, children of different ages experience cognitive development in distinct stages.

2. Basic Cognitive-Developmental Concepts

LO 4.8 Explain the meaning of maturation, schemes, assimilation, and accommodation.

a. In Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, mental structures are the cognitive systems that organize thinking into coherent patterns so that all thinking takes place on the same level of cognitive functioning.

b. Piaget’s theory is called the cognitive-developmental approach.

c. The driving force behind development from one stage to the next is maturation, a biologically drive program of developmental change.

d. The other driving force is driven by the child’s own efforts to understand and influence the surrounding environment. The child constructs his or her own understanding of the world through the use of schemes, cognitive structures for processing, organizing, and interpreting information.

e. The two processes involved in the use of schemes are assimilation and accommodation. The two processes usually take place together in varying degrees.

i. Assimilation occurs when new information is altered to fit an existing scheme.

ii. Accommodation occurs when a scheme is changed to adapt to new information.

3. The Sensorimotor Stage

LO 4.9 Describe the sensorimotor stage and explain how object permanence develops over the course of the first year.

a. The Sensorimotor Stage

i. The sensorimotor stage occurs during the first 2 years of cognitive development. This is the first of four stages that Piaget and his colleague Barbel Inhelder theorized that children’s thinking passes through:

1) Sensorimotor, ages 0–2

2) Preoperational, ages 2–7

3) Concrete operations, ages 7–11

4) Formal operations, ages 11–15 and up

ii. The child can successfully move through the sensorimotor stage when he or she is able to coordinate his or her senses with motor activities.

iii. In infancy, one major cognitive achievement is the advance in sensorimotor development from reflex behavior to intentional action. Reflex schemes are weighted heavily toward assimilation because they do not adapt much in response to the environment. Over the course of the early months, infants’ activities become based less on reflexes and more voluntary and purposeful.

b. Object Permanence

i. Object permanence is the awareness that objects (including people) continue to exist even when we are not in direct sensory or motor contact with them.

ii. Infants less than 8 months old generally do not have an awareness of an object’s permanence.

iii. However, between 8 and 12 months of age, they begin to develop a rudimentary awareness of object permanence. After an 8-month-old found a hidden object under a blanket several times, Piaget complicated the task by adding a second blanket and, in the infant’s sight, hid the object under it. The infant looked again under blanket A instead of under blanket B. Piaget called this the A-not-B error.

c. Motor Coordination and Object Permanence

i. Could infants’ cognitive abilities may have been underestimated? Their inability to locate a missing object may have been due to a lack of motor coordination, rather than cognitive immaturity.

ii. Renée Baillargeon and colleagues developed experiments to test her hypotheses regarding young infants’ development of object permanence using the “violation of expectations method.” When the researcher failed to meet the infants’ expectations for the location of an object, this demonstrated that the infants had an awareness of the object.

iii. Findings from other cultures support the argument that some understanding of object permanence develops earlier than Piaget claimed. Infants around the world play “peek-a-boo,” and in one study, at about the age of 5 months, babies began to smile and laugh when the other person appeared, indicating that they anticipated the event and expected the person’s face to be there.

iv. Chimpanzees, dogs, and carrion crows have also been shown to possess object permanence in various versions.

B. Information Processing in Infancy

1. Information Processing Approaches

LO 4.10 Describe the underlying ideas of the information-processing approaches to cognitive functioning.

a. Information processing approaches view cognitive change as continuous, meaning gradual and steady. The focus is on how mental capabilities and processes gradually change with age.

b. The original model for these approaches was the computer; researchers tried to break human thinking into components, like attention, processing, and memory.

c. Recent models have moved away from the computer analogy and recognize that the brain is more complex than any computer.

2. Attention

LO 4.11 Explain how attention and habituation change during infancy.

a. For information to be processed to any degree beyond sensory memory, one must pay attention to that stimulus information.

b. In infants the study of attention has focused on habituation, which is the gradual decrease in attention to a stimulus after repeated presentations, and dishabituation, which is the revival of attention when a new stimulus is presented following several presentations of the previous stimulus. Habituation and dishabituation can be studied by monitoring infants’ looking behavior, but two other methods have also been used: monitoring heart rate and monitoring sucking rate.

c. The time it takes for habituation to occur decreases as the age of the infant increases. Although there are individual differences in the rate of habituation, it tends to be stable over time. Speed of habituation predicts memory ability on other tasks in infancy, as well as later performance on intelligence tasks.

d. After 6 months of age, infants’ attention becomes more social. That is, infants not only pay attention to sensations that are stimulating to them, but they also pay attention to the stimuli that seem of interest to significant others. This is referred to as joint attention, which is important for learning language and understanding emotional cues.

3. Memory

LO 4.12 Explain how short-term and long-term memory expand during infancy.

a. Infants’ memory abilities expand greatly during the first year of life, both for short-term and long-term memory.

i. Short-term memory refers to the capacity to retain information for a brief time.

ii. Long-term memory is knowledge that is accumulated and retained over time.

b. Researchers have shown that infants’ long-term memory is about a week for a 2-month-old but about 3 weeks for a 6-month-old.

c. Further experiments showed a distinction between recognition memory and recall memory. Even if something appears to be lost from an infant’s recall memory, the memory may be triggered when the infant is given a hint he or she recognizes (recognition memory).

C. Assessing Infant Development

1. Approaches to Assessing Development

LO 4.13 Outline the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID-III) and explain how habituation assessments are used to predict later intelligence.

a. The Bayley Scales

i. The Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID-III), now in their third edition, can assess development from age 3 months to 3½ years.

ii. There are three main scales:

1) Cognitive Scale: Measures mental abilities such as attention and exploration

2) Language Scale: Measures use and understanding of language

3) Motor Scale: Measures fine and gross motor abilities

iii. The Bayley scales produce a developmental quotient (DQ) as an overall measure of infants’ developmental progress.

b. Information-Processing Approaches to Infant Assessment

i. The information-processing approaches to infant assessment have primarily focused on habituation.

ii. Longitudinal research supports the reliability and validity of this approach as infants who were quick to habituate, or short-lookers, were later shown to be quick learners who succeeded academically compared to long-lookers who did not habituate quickly.

iii. This approach was also found to effectively assess developmental problems and the most recent version of the Bayley scales includes a measure of habituation.

2. Can Media Stimulation Enhance Cognitive Development? The Myth of “Baby Einstein”

LO 4.14 Evaluate the claim that educational media enhance infants’ cognitive development.

a. Studies have concluded that educational media products have no effect on infants’ cognitive development. In fact, it may be detrimental because they could receive less social interaction.

b. The best that caregivers can do to support cognitive development in infancy is to interact with their infants by talking to them, reading to them, and responding to them.

D. The Beginnings of Language

1. First Sounds and Words

LO 4.15 Describe the course of language development over the first year of life.

a. Cooing, at 2 months, and babbling, at 4–6 months, are the first sounds an infant makes that will eventually develop into language.

b. Babbling has been shown to be universal and infants produce the same sounds initially, but then lose sounds that are not relevant to the language they are learning. By 9 months of age, infants’ babbling becomes very distinctive to their own culture.

c. Gestures, as a method of communication, generally begin at about 8–10 months of age.

d. An infants’ first words are usually uttered between 10–14 months of age and commonly include “mama, dada, dog, car, milk, and bye-bye.”

e. Language production is very limited at this age, but language comprehension is much better.

f. Infants’ ability to discriminate different sounds is apparent within their first few weeks of life and continues along the same developmental trajectory as babbling.

2. Infant-Directed (ID) Speech

LO 4.16 Compare how cultures vary in their stimulation of language development.

a. In developmental science, what you may think of as “baby talk” is referred to as infant-directed (ID) speech. That is when the pitch of the voice becomes higher, intonation is exaggerated, and grammar is simplified when speaking to an infant.

b. ID speech is often used because infants like and respond to it due to the emotional tone of the speech.

c. ID speech also provides clues that help infants learn language.

d. Although ID speech is common in developed countries, there is more variability in developing countries. In some cultures, caregivers do not make an effort to speak directly to infants. These infants learn language by listening to the words and phrases spoken in their presence by others.

e. After a few years, there are no differences in language fluency between infants who heard ID speech and those who did not.

III. Section 3: Emotional and Social Development

A. Temperament

1. Temperament, the biological basis of personality, is defined as innate responses to the physical and social environment, including qualities of activity level, irritability, soothability, emotional reactivity, and sociability. These tendencies are shaped by the infants’ behavior, personality development, and the environment.

2. Conceptualizing Temperament

LO 4.17 Define infant temperament and its main dimensions.

a. Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess conceptualized temperament by classifying infants as easy, difficult, and slow-to-warm-up based on parental reports. Their longitudinal study supported their initial approach but excluded 35% of the infants who did not fall into one of these classifications.

b. Mary Rothbart and colleagues added the temperamental trait of self-regulation. They point out that children differ in how they regulate or manage their initial responses.

c. Both Thomas and Chess and Rothbart and colleagues have been moderately successful in predicting children’s later functioning from infant temperament.

3. Goodness-of-Fit

LO 4.18 Explain how the idea of goodness-of-fit pertains to temperament on both a family level and a cultural level.

a. Thomas and Chess proposed the concept of goodness-of-fit, the principle that children who develop best if there is a good fit between the temperament of the child and environmental demands.

b. When there is a good fit, it can mean that children who are difficult or slow to warm up have better emotion regulation when they have patient and nurturing caregivers. Conversely, a “bad” fit can have negative outcomes for the child and the caregivers.

c. Goodness of fit varies from culture to culture, given that different cultures have different views of the value of personality traits, such as activity level and emotional expressiveness.

B. Infants’ Emotions

1. Primary Emotions

LO 4.19 Identify the primary emotions and describe how they develop during infancy.

a. Primary emotions are basic emotions such as anger, sadness, fear, disgust, surprise, and happiness, which are evident in the first year of life. However, secondary emotions or sociomoral emotions, such as embarrassment, shame and guilt, are emotions that require social and cultural learning.

b. Distress, interest, and pleasure are the first emotions to emerge in infancy.

c. Anger is expressed early in the form of a distinctive anger cry, but as an emotional expression separate from crying it shows development over the course of the first year.

d. Sadness is rare in infants, except for infants with depressed mothers.

e. At about 6 months of age, both fear and surprise are noted.

i. One fear that infants show is stranger anxiety in response to unfamiliar adults.

ii. Surprise is generally produced when an event violates an infant’s expectations.

f. Evidence of happiness is seen after birth in response to certain kinds of sensory stimuli. But at 2–3 months of age, social smiles appear. A social smile occurs in response to a pleasant interaction with others. Laughter follows within the next month.

2. Infants’ Emotional Perceptions

LO 4.20 Describe infants’ emotional perceptions and how their emotions become increasingly social over the first year.

a. Infants are aware of others’ emotions from the first days of life and become increasingly adept during the first year at perceiving and responding to others’ emotions.

b. Emotional contagion, an infant’s crying when hearing another infant cry, provides evidence of infants’ emotional perception when they are just days old.

c. In the beginning, infants perceive emotions based on what they hear and later on what they see.

d. Infants’ emotional perception has been researched using the following methods:

i. Using a habituation method, researchers are presented with the same photograph of the same facial expression repeatedly until they no longer show any interest; they become habituated. Then they are shown the same face with a different facial expression. If they look longer at the new facial expression, this indicates they have noticed the difference.

ii. In the still-face paradigm, researchers ask parents are asked to show no emotion to their infant; by 2 to 3 months of age, the infant will become disturbed by this behavior. Infants’ responses to the still-face paradigm demonstrate that from early on emotions are experienced through relations with others rather than originating only within the individual.

iii. Another indicator of the development of emotional perception during the first year is in infants’ abilities to match auditory and visual emotion. Researchers show infants two photographs with markedly different emotions and then play a vocal recording matching one of the facial emotions. They then monitor infants’ attention. By the age of 7 months, infants look more at the face that matches the emotion of the voice.

e. By 9–10 months of age, infants use an emotion perception technique called social referencing. That is, they observe the emotional responses of others when presented with stimuli that may be ambiguous and uncertain and use that information to shape their own emotional responses.

C. The Social World of the Infant

1. Cultural Themes of Infant Social Life

LO 4.21 List the main features of infants’ social worlds across cultures.

a. Culture is very important to understanding infant development.

b. Some common themes of infant social life across cultures have emerged over time.

i. Infants are with the mother almost constantly in the early months.

ii. About halfway through the first year, infant care is delegated to an older girl, usually a sister, but other relatives may help as well.

iii. Infants are among many other people in the course of a day.

iv. Infants are held or carried most of the time.

v. Fathers are usually remote or absent during the first year of the infants’ life.

c. These features are the dominant worldwide pattern in developing countries.

d. Infants’ social life in Western, developed countries departs from this pattern in many ways. For example, infants are usually exposed to only their nuclear family on a consistent basis, they sleep alone, they are not carried for most of the day, and paternal involvement is higher.

e. Despite cultural differences, social development seems to hinge on infants having a strong, reliable bond with at least one social relationship with someone who is devoted to their care.

2. The Foundation of Social Development: Two Theories

LO 4.22 Compare and contrast the two major theories of infants’ social development.

a. The two most influential theories of infants’ social development are Erik Erikson’s psychosocial theory of development and Bowlby’s theory of attachment.

b. According to Erikson, the major crisis in infancy is trust versus mistrust, the need to establish a stable attachment to a loving and nurturing caregiver.

c. Bowlby’s attachment theory also emphasized the importance of a sensitive and responsive caregiver.

d. The theories differ in their origins and Bowlby’s theory inspired methods for evaluating the infant–caregiver relationship that led to a research literature comprising thousands of studies.

LECTURE LAUNCHERS, DISCUSSIONS, AND ACTIVITIES

Section 1 Lecture Launcher: Infant Brain Growth

When the human pelvis evolved and became thicker to adapt to walking in an upright position, the brain was also evolving and getting larger. Consequently, to pass through the birth canal, human infants must be born early in their brain development. Although they are born with nearly all the neurons (brain cells) they will ever have—more than 100 billion cells—their brains are only about 25% of their adult weight. By 24 months, the brain is about 75% of adult weight, which explains why babies and toddlers are so top-heavy! All of this brain growth is not new cells; in fact, many neurons die off as the brain specializes for language, motor skills, and so on. What grow are the axons and dendrites that connect neurons and the myelin that coats the axons and speeds brain processing. Thus, the major portion of brain growth occurs outside the womb. (By comparison, baby chimps are born with 50% of their adult brain weight.)

At birth, the lower brain (brain stem, cerebellum, limbic system) is better developed than those parts of the brain allocated to thinking and reasoning (cerebrum). The lower brain helps the infant breathe, eat, and sleep and controls all vital organs. The development of the “thinking” brain requires more dendrite connections and myelin sheathing. This development requires a tremendous amount of sleep and nutrients. Is it any wonder infants sleep so much and eat so frequently? In addition, dendrite growth is stimulated as the infant is exposed to a rich environment of sights and sounds and is allowed to move around. Studies have found that severe malnutrition can cause inadequate brain growth and intellectual disabilities. Studies with rats show that those who grow up in a rich environment with lots of visual stimulation and movement have heavier brains than rats who grow up in cages devoid of such a rich environment.

Sources:

Drescher, H. (August, 1998). Climbing through the brain. Discover.

Ornstein, R., Thompson, R. F., & Macaulay, D. (1984). The amazing brain. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Section 1 Discussion: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)

As noted in the section of the text associated with Learning Objective 4.3, “SIDS is the leading cause of death for infants 1–12 months of age in developed countries”; the statement is followed by a list of risk factors. Ask students to share their knowledge and experience of any babies that died from SIDS. Then, have them compare the risk factors listed in the text with the examples they came up with to see which risk factors (if any) were present. Last, have students offer possible reasons for the differences in rates of SIDS between various groups.

Section 1 Activity: Reducing Infant Mortality

As noted in the section of the text associated with Learning Objective 4.5, “in the past half century many diseases that formerly killed infants and young children have been reduced or even eliminated due to vaccines that provide immunization.” Despite this tremendous success, some parents have come to believe the unfounded rumors that vaccinations harm babies, resulting in some parents refusing to vaccinate their children, which increases the chances of infectious diseases spreading. Have students break into small groups of 4–6 individuals each and brainstorm ways to increase vaccination rates in their communities.

Sections 1 and 2 Activity: What Do Infants Like?

Review the Mayo Clinic’s research and advice entitled “Infant development: Birth to 3 months” at http://www.mayoclinic.org. Considering the information on the website and in your textbook, develop (either in a brief descriptive paragraph or in a drawing with notations) a newborn’s toy, blanket, mobile, baby room, or crib decorations. Use the known research about newborns to justify and strengthen your choice of applicable color, tone, texture, or recommended distance or placement.

Section 2 Activity: Learning Piaget’s Terms: Assimilation and Accommodation

Students have a difficult time understanding Piaget’s terms assimilation and accommodation. To help them gain an understanding of these terms, divide students into groups and have them think of examples of assimilation and accommodation in an infant’s development. Then have the groups make a list of examples of these concepts at work in their own adult lives. Use Handout 4-1 for this exercise. Have representatives from each group present their examples to the entire class. You can list their examples on the board or on an overhead.

Section 2 Discussion: Object Permanence

The material associated with Learning Objective 4.9 establishes that object permanence emerges early in humans across all cultures and is even present in many other species, illustrating the fundamental importance of this for survival. After presenting this material, have some fun in class by asking students to hypothesize what their life would be like if they were like an infant, without object permanence.

Sections 2 and 3 Activity: Infant Day Care

The National Institute on Child Health and Human Development (https://www.nichd.nih.gov/) released the following data on infant day care:

• Children (ages 15 months to 36 months) in high-quality day care—care that provides a stimulating environment—do as well on cognitive and language tests as children who stay home with their mothers, regardless of how many hours a day they spend in such care.

• Mothers whose children are in higher-quality day care settings are slightly more affectionate and attentive to their children.

• Mothers whose children spend less time in day care are slightly more affectionate and attentive to their children.

Have your classroom groups list the advantages and disadvantages of placing infants in day care centers. Choose one representative from each group to argue the “pro” side, and one representative to argue the “con” side. You may want to give your class several days to prepare their arguments. Below are resources to help them.

Additional Resources:

Azar, B. (June 1997). It may cause anxiety, but day care can benefit kids. APA Monitor, 28(6), 13.

Baydar, N., Brooks-Gunn, J., Vandell, D. L., & Ramanan, J. (1995). Does a mother’s job have a negative effect on children? In R. L. DelCampo & D. S. DelCampo (Eds.), Taking sides: Clashing views on controversial issues in childhood and society. Guilford, CT: Dushkin.

Belsky, J., Vandell, D. L., Burchinal, M., Clarke-Stewart, K. A., McCartney, K., & Owen, M. T. (March 01, 2007). Are there long-term effects of early child care? Child Development, 78(2), 681–701.

Clark-Stewart, K. A. (1989). Infant day care: Maligned or malignant? American Psychologist, 44(2), 266–273.

Phillips, D. A., & Lowenstein, A. E. (January 01, 2011). Early care, education, and child development. Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 483–500.

Section 2 Discussion: Emergence of Speech

The material associated with Learning Objective 4.15 establishes that infants go through a fairly universal sequence in the acquisition of language: cooing, babbling, gesturing, comprehending, and speaking. Some students will have learned another language as a child or will have received instruction in another language during their schooling. Have them compare and contrast the language acquisition process of infants in their native language with the language acquisition process later in life.

Sections 1–3 Activity: Visit to a Toy Store

Have students use Handout 4-2 as they determine how toys for infants enhance sensory development. If students have children or young brothers or sisters at home, they can bring in toys that develop the senses.

Section 3 Lecture Launcher: Should You Let a Baby Cry?

Many developmentalists believe that the discomfort caused by listening to a baby cry is an adaptive response that assures the helpless baby will get attention from an adult. However, even the experts disagree on how quickly parents or caregivers should respond to a crying baby.

The first psychologist to advise new parents on whether or not to allow babies to cry was behaviorist John B. Watson in the 1920s. Watson argued that when parents respond each time their baby cries, they are rewarding the crying and increasing its occurrence. In other words, they are spoiling their children.

By the 1940s, Dr. Spock (in his classic book, Baby and Child Care) dispensed very similar advice: when babies are fussy and won’t sleep, let them cry it out until they fall asleep. Fifty years later, Dr. Richard Ferber, head of the Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders at Children’s Hospital in Boston, wrote a best-selling book called Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems. After studying babies’ sleep habits for years, Ferber says that most healthy babies are sleeping through the night by age 3 months. Babies need to learn that if they cry at night, parents will not (a) take them out of the crib, (b) feed them, or (c) play with them. Also, says Ferber, if a baby learns to fall asleep only while being held, rocked, or fed, she’ll insist on those conditions being met night after night. While it’s normal for babies to wake during the night, Ferber continues, it is knowing how to go back to sleep that is the problem. Instead, advises Ferber, parents should teach her to sleep on her own; they should give the baby a pat (not a cuddle) and leave the room. If the crying continues, parents should return and calmly reassure the child. Ferber suggests increasing the intervals between returning to the child’s room by 5 minutes at first, then 10, then 15. Within a week, claims Ferber, the child will be trained to fall asleep on her own. Some researchers have supported this claim, finding that quick, soothing responses to infants’ crying increased subsequent crying (Gewirtz, 1977).

Many developmentalists disagree with Ferber’s behaviorist view. John Bowlby (1989) argued that babies’ cries are preprogrammed distress signals that bring caregivers to the baby. The caregivers, too, are programmed to respond to babies’ cries. The adaptive significance of crying ensures that:

• the infant’s basic needs will be met

• a sense of trust in others will develop

• the infant will have sufficient contact with other human beings to form social and emotional attachments

Mary Ainsworth believes that you cannot respond too often to an infant’s crying in the first year. She found that mothers who responded quickly to their infants when they cried at the age of 3 months had infants who cried less later (Bell & Ainsworth, 1972). Decades later, the work of Bowlby, Ainsworth, and other attachment theorists has culminated in a growing approach to parenting called “Attachment Parenting,” with support groups worldwide (http://www.attachmentparenting.org).

Students might find this an interesting topic for discussion. Students may even enjoy surveying parents they know about their views on responding to babies’ crying.

Sources:

Bell, S. M., & Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1972). Infant crying and maternal responsiveness. Child Development, 43, 1171–1190.

Bowlby, J. (1989). Secure and insecure attachment. New York: Basic Books.

Ferber, R. (2006). Solve your child’s sleep problems (2nd ed.). New York: Fireside.

Gewirtz, J. (1977). Maternal responding and the conditioning of infant crying: Directions of influence within the attachment-acquisition process. In B. C. Etzel, J. M. LeBlanc, & D. M. Baer (Eds.), New developments in behavioral research. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Gordon, D. (Spring/Summer, 1997). Preventing a hard day’s night. Newsweek Special Issue, 56–57.

Is it wrong to show affection to children? (August, 1996) Parents, 50.

Spock, B. (1957). Baby and child care. New York: Pocket Books.

Watson, J. B. (1928). Psychological care of infant and child. New York: W. W. Norton.

CRITICAL THINKING ABOUT DEVELOPMENT

Confirmation Bias

Although these exercises are effective stimuli for class, small-group or online discussion, they are best completed as individual assignments first.

Understanding the Concept

Have students read Handout 4-3 for an overview of confirmation bias.

Critical Thinking Challenge, Use the Concept

Have students complete the Critical Thinking Challenge at the bottom of Handout 4-3. A correct answer will indicate that confirmation bias caused people to notice the instances in which treated infants did not become ill or survived an illness, thus confirming the belief in amulets or the use of leeches.

Mastery Exercise, Capstone

Give each student a copy of Handout 4-4 and have them complete the Mastery Exercise at the top of the page. This version of a classic exercise in Bayesian decision situations is based on the theory that part of the explanation for confirmation bias is that it is inherently difficult for humans to think about two hypotheses at once. Therefore, whichever hypothesis we start with, we tend to seek information only about it. This contributes to our failure to seek or note any information about a second hypothesis.

The correct answer is b, “The percentage of infants with Pago Disease who have green bumps.” Most students will choose a, “The percentage of infants with Merp Disease who have triangular orange patches,” and continue to examine the first hypothesis suggested (Merp Disease), although this information contributes nothing to the diagnosis.

Since this is a more subtle form of confirmation bias, students may need assistance to think it through.

Bringing It Home

This exercise is usually self-explanatory. One difficulty that may arise is that students choose something they just learned in the textbook, rather than a belief they previously held.

SUPPLEMENTAL READINGS

Axia, G., & Bonichini, S. (2005). Are babies sensitive to the context of acute pain episodes? Infant distress and maternal soothing during immunization routines at 3 and 5 months of Age. Infant & Child Development,14, 51–62.

Baillargeon, R. (October, 1994). How do infants learn about the physical world? Current Directions in Psychological Science. pp. 133–140.

Berko-Gleason, J. (Ed.). (1993). The development of language. New York: Macmillan.

Bower, T. G. R. (1989). The rational infant: Learning in infancy. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company.

Brazelton, T. B., Nugent, J. K., & Lester, B. M. (1987). Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale. In J. D. Osofsky (Ed.), Handbook of infant development (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley.

Chick, K. A., Heilman-Houser, R. A., & Hunter, M. W. (2002). The impact of child care on gender development and gender stereotypes. Early Childhood Education Journal, 29, 149–154.

Eisenberg, A., Murkoff, H. E. & Hathaway, S. E. (1989). What to expect in the first year. New York: Workman.

Flavell, J. H., Miller, P. H., & Miller, S. A. (2002). Cognitive development (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Fogel, A. (2001). Infancy: Infant, family and society (4th ed.). Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY: Sloan Publishing.

Gleason, J. B., & Bernstein, R. N. (2009). The development of language (7th ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Hock, R. R. (2002). Out of sight, but not out of mind. In Forty studies that changed psychology: Explorations into the history of psychological research (4th ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. A subsection of Chapter 5, “Human Development,” is a good distillation of Piaget’s research and writing on object permanence. It includes actual citations of his observations of his children—Laurent, Lucienne, and Jacqueline—during their sensorimotor stage. Hock also discusses some of the criticisms of Piaget’s work.

Jacob, S. H. (2009). Your baby’s mind: How to make the most of the critical first two years. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse.

Kolb, B. (1989). Brain development, plasticity, and behavior. American Psychologist, 44(9).

1203–1212.

La Leche League. (1991). The womanly art of breast-feeding (5th ed.). New York: Plume.

Murkoff, H. E., & Widome, M. D. (2010). What to expect the first year (2nd ed.). New York: Workman Publishing.

Roberts, P. (May/June, 1996). Fathers’ time. Psychology Today, 49–55, 81.

Shell, E.R. (August, 1988). Babes in day care. The Atlantic Monthly.

Stern, D. (2001). The interpersonal world of the infant (New ed.). New York: Basic Books. This is perhaps the best book on the emotional and interpersonal world of the very young.

Torgus, J., Gotsch, G., & La Leche League International. (2004). The womanly art of breastfeeding. New York: Penguin Group

Tronick, E. Z. (1989). Emotions and emotional communication in infants. American Psychologist, 44(2), 112–119.

Revel VIDEOS

Chapter Introduction: Infancy

Cosleeping

Milestones of Gross Motor Development in Infancy

Infant Fine Motor Development Across Cultures

Assimilation and Accommodation

Object Permanence Across Cultures

Media Use in Infancy

Language Development

Infant-Directed Speech

Research Focus: Measuring Temperament

Pediatric Nurse Practitioner

JOURNAL PROMPTS AND SHARED WRITING QUESTIONS

Journal Prompts

Motor and Sensory Development

Can you think of any related skills that the pincer grasp might be a precursor for? What about skills related to grasping? In what ways would these primitive skills be important across cultures?

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

According to this video, object permanence is universal across cultures. Why would this be such an important concept for children to acquire?

End-of-Chapter Activities

Imagine you are a medical professional, and a young couple who has just had their first child asks you about SIDS and cosleeping. Based on the information in this chapter, what advice would you give to help them protect the health of their infant?

Shared Writing Questions

Growth and Change in Infancy

What might cosleeping indicate about expectations for marital relations in a culture that practices it?

Infant Health

Can you think of beliefs and behaviors in your culture that reflect the deep-seated desire to keep infants and young children healthy and protected against mortality?

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Provide an example of something a 4-year-old could learn easily but a 1-year-old could not learn even with special teaching.

The Social World of the Infant

Of the five features of the infant’s social world described here, how many are similar to and how many are different from the culture you are from? What do you think explains the differences?

Handout 4-1

Assimilation and Accommodation

Define the concept of assimilation.

Define the concept of accommodation.

List several ways an infant (birth–2 years) displays the use of assimilation.

List several ways an infant displays the use of accommodation.

List several ways adults display the use of assimilation.

List several ways adults display the use of accommodation.

Handout 4-2

Infant Toy Survey

Examine several toys marketed for infants (see their packages for age ranges). Determine how each toy is designed for infant safety and to stimulate infant development, especially sensory development. Try to find one well-designed toy and one poorly designed toy.

Toy #1

Description:

Recommended age range:__________

Toy rating (1= poor, 2= fair, 3= average, 4= good, 5= excellent) _____. Explain why.

Durability

Safety

Attractiveness

Source of stimulation

Toy #2

Description:

Recommended age range:

Toy rating (1= poor, 2= fair, 3= average, 4= good, 5= excellent) _____. Explain why.

Durability

Safety

Attractiveness

Source of stimulation 

Handout 4-3

Confirmation Bias, Part 1

Understanding the Concept

In the section on infancy, the textbook’s authors tell us about a time when people thought that teething caused illness and death in infants. They remind us that this is an example of mistaking correlation for causation. It is also a good example of our tendency toward confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias helps explain why erroneous beliefs, bad ideas, and ineffective or dangerous behaviors stick around so long. Experts in critical thinking have proposed that confirmation bias may be the leading cause of conflict between people and nations. To confirm something is to support its correctness with evidence. Confirmation bias refers to our strong tendency to look for, see, remember, or mostly accept information that supports what we already think.

Confirmation bias slows down progress, too. In medicine, many practices that were ineffective or even harmful continued for centuries because of confirmation bias. Unless a treatment was lethal, some individuals receiving it would survive and improve. Which cases do you think people noticed?

There are many theories about why we are so prone to confirmation bias and why it is so strong and so pervasive. If you would like to explore these, a good starting point is Raymond S. Nickerson’s article, “Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises.” You can read the full text in the Review of General Psychology, 1998, 2(2), 175–220.

Critical Thinking Challenge

In Medieval Europe, when people believed teething was a cause of illness and death in infancy, they developed all sorts of remedies from protective amulets to bleeding infants’ gums with leeches. How did confirmation bias encourage the continued use of these (ineffective) behaviors? Write your answer below.

Handout 4-4

Confirmation Bias, Part 2

Mastery Exercise

1. Joseph, age 9 months, is very ill. He has strange green bumps and triangular orange patches on his skin. Both are symptoms of Merp Disease and Pago Disease. We are trying to decide which one he has. Our decision will mean life or death for Joseph.

We know the percentage of infants with Merp Disease who have green bumps. Which of the following pieces of information will be of most help to us in making the correct diagnosis?

a. The percentage of infants with Merp Disease who have triangular orange patches

b. The percentage of infants with Pago Disease who have green bumps

2. Explain your choice of a or b. Might your reasoning have been influenced by confirmation bias? If so, in what way did confirmation bias play a role?

Bringing It Home

Examine a belief you have held for a long time about infants or infant care. For example, do you believe frequent responding to infants’ cries does or does not make them dependent, weak, or fussy? Do you believe infants have or have not been affected directly by what they heard while in the womb?

In doing the following exercise, do not look up any information. Rely only on your memory of experiences, examples, and information that come to mind easily.

1. Write a defense of your belief using information that comes to mind that support it.

2. Write an attack of your belief using information that comes to mind to contradict it.

3. Did examples that contradict your belief come to mind easily?

4. Had you ever looked for examples or information that contradicted your belief?

5. Now that you have been directed to think about your belief, can you remember having been exposed to information that did not support that belief? How did you handle that information? Did you ignore, forget, or undermine it in some way?