Unit 3 & 4 (228)

1. Describe the role of experience in brain development and the two types of processes and provide examples. 

1. Experience-expectant: Brain development that occurs based on environmental experiences that all members of the species typically encounter. Normal visual development requires infants to receive light stimuli. 

2. Experience-dependent: Brain development that occurs based on unique environmental stimuli shared only by individuals in particularly environmental circumstances. A child in another country may find it difficult to pronounce certain English sounds because of their lack of exposure to that sound. 
    

2. Describe the difference between gross and fine motor skills. What has the cross-cultural study of early motor development revealed? 

1. Gross motor skills: A motor skill that relies on large muscles, such as those in the legs and arms. 

2. Fine motor skills: A motor skill that relies on smaller muscles, such as those in the finger. 

3. It has revealed that parents in various cultures handle infants differently. They found that African children sat independently, stood up, and walked earlier than U.S. infants. They have de-emphasized the findings because of poor methodologies, failure to replicate the studies and the realization that timing of motor skills may not be as important an issue as once thought. 
    

3. Describe Piaget’s sensorimotor stage.  

1. Piaget’s first stage of cognitive development, in which infants develop from reflex-driven organisms to more complex and symbolic thinkers. 

2. What is object permanence and why is it significant? The understanding that an object continues to exist even when it is not immediately present or visible. 

3. What is the A-not-B error, and how is it related to object permanence? A mistake made by children in Piaget’s sensorimotor stage as they search for a hidden object in a location where it has been repeatedly placed but is no longer hidden. Object permanence is the ability for an infant to know that an object exists even if they can’t see it, so this error is their inability to find the object, but they know the object exists. 
    

4. Describe language development in terms of expressive and receptive abilities. 

1. Receptive language: Language that an infant understands but may not be able to produce. 

2. Expressive language: Language that an infant can produce. 

3.  Describe the explanation for language development that involves the language acquisition device (LAD).  A theoretical structure possesses by all humans that prewires us to learn language and grammar rules. (Noam Chomsky) 

4. What is the interactionist approach to language development? A view of language learning that stresses the role of socialization.  
    

5. Summarize the development of vision in terms of acuity, focal length, and colour vision. Describe the major milestones in hearing from birth to first year. 

1. Acuity is from a bout 20/120 to 20/240. 
   Focal length (the distance at which things can be clearly seen) is about 18-30cm. 
   By two months, focal length and acuity have improved, by 1 year of age, infants can see like adults. 
   At 2 weeks old infants can discriminate between colours, by 4 months, they appear to have fully developed colour perception. 

2. Birth to 3 months: Startles to loud sounds, quiets or smiles when spoken to, recognize voices, increase/decrease sucking behaviour in response to sound. 
   4 to 6 months: moves eyes in direction of sounds, responds to changes in tone of voice, notices toys that make sound, pays attention to music 
   7 months to 1 year: Enjoys games like peek a boo, turns and looks in direction of sound, listens when spoken to, recognizes words for common items, begins to respond to requests 
    

6. Discuss the mismatch between the western medical model and the conditions under which human biology evolved in terms of feeding, responses to crying, and sleeping. What are the consequences of the mismatch? Can you think of other examples? 

1. The mismatch is thought to clash with the evolved needs and natural inclinations of infants and their caregivers. These practices can be associated with negative developmental outcomes, such as gastrointestinal infection, dehydration, failure to thrive, and attachment issues.  
    

KEYWORDS 

• Cerebral cortex: The uppermost part of the brain and the center largely responsible for complex brain functions. 

• Neuron: A brain or nerve cell that serves as the basic building block of the nervous system. 

• Axon: A nerve fibre that typically sends electrical impulses away from the neuron’s cell body.  

• Dendrite: A branching structure arising from the cell body that typically receives electrical impulses from the axons of neighbouring neurons. 

• Synapse: The space between adjoining neurons, across which electrical impulses are sent from the axon of one neuron to the dendrite of another.  

• Myelination: The process through which the axon of a neuron is coated with a fatty tissue, which serves as insulation and enhances speed of firing.  

• Synaptic pruning: The process by which the brain removes unused synapse through redirecting nutrition, cell injury, and cell death.  

• Plasticity: Changes in the brain resulting from our interactions with the environment. 

• Rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep: A sleep state during which rapid and random eye movements, intense and irregular brain-wave activity, and dreaming occur. 

• Non-rapid-eye-sleep (NREM): A sleep state during which rapid-eye-movement and dreaming do not occur, and brain-wave activity is slow and regular.  

• Reflex: An involuntary response to a stimulus. 

• Newborn reflexes: An inborn automatic response to stimuli, which may disappear before the end of the first year of life.  

• Posture: The way a person holds his or her body as a whole. 

• Schema: Mental structures that help us organize and process information. 

• Implicit memory: Repetition of behaviour, such as a leg movement to make an object move, that occurs automatically and without apparent conscious effort. 

• Explicit memory: Repetition of a behaviour that shows a clear, observable, conscious effort to recall an event, such as when an infant imitates at a later time a behaviour seen earlier.  

• Deferred imitation: The ability of 6- to 7-month-old infants to imitate an action after a delay and not in the presence of a model. 

• Habituation: Decreased responding to a stimulus that occurs because of continuous presentation of the stimulus. 

• Dishabituation: Increased responding to a stimulus, usually because it’s novel. 

• Babbling: The repeated creating of meaningless sounds that typically consist of one syllable. 

• Holophrase: One-word utterances that express a complete thought or phrase. 

• Telegraphic speech: The creation of short phrases that convey meaning but lack some of the parts of speech that are necessary for a full and complete sentence. 

• Joint attention: The ability to direct the attention of a social partner to objects or events and, in turn, follow their attention-directing gestures, such as head-turning and pointing. 

• Infant-directed speech: A way of speaking to infants that is higher in pitch, simpler, and more repetitive than speech directed to adults or children. It seems to be used automatically when in the presence of an infant. 

• Sensation: Physical reception of stimulation 

• Perception: Interpretation of stimulus that occurs in the higher processing centres of the brain. 

• Ciliary muscles: The small muscles of the eye that work to move each eyeball and change the shape of each eye’s lens. 

• Cones: Neurons in the retina that respond to colour. 

• Visual cliff: A method used to examine infant depth perception using a patterned floor and a pane of Plexiglas over a deep drop. When infants willing crawl over the Plexiglas, it’s assumed they don’t perceive the depth. 

• Vaccine: A substance that is usually injected into a person to improve immunity against a particular disease. 

• Vaccine hesitancy: A refusal or a delay in immunization participation caused by concerns about vaccines. 

• Nutrition: The process of consuming carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and other elements in the form of calories, to obtain energy and regulate body functions.  

• Exclusive breastfeeding: When infants receive only breast milk, whether from the breast or expressed, and no other liquids or solids including water. 

• On-demand breastfeeding: Nursing a baby whenever the baby shows signs of hunger during the day and night, such as by crying or rooting, rather than according to a set schedule. 

• Complementary feeding: The process of consuming other foods and liquids, along with breast milk, to meet the nutritional requirements of infants after 6 months of age. 

• Colostrum: The yellowish, sticky breast milk that is secreted during the first two to three days after birth. 

• Otitis media: Infection of the middle ear and a common cause of earaches. 

• Lactational amenorrhea: Natural postpartum infertility that occurs when a woman is breastfeeding, and her menstrual cycle has not yet returned.  

• Preterm: An infant born before 32 weeks' gestation. 

• Very low birth weight: Infants born weighing less than 1,500 g.  

• Malnutrition: A deficiency 

• Medical model of infant care: A dominant set of assumptions that guide the provision of infant care in the Western part of the world. 

• Graduated extinction: A variety of sleep-training techniques, where parents delay responding to their infants' cries for specified intervals of time, then 

UNIT 2 - CHAPTER 5 

1. Compare and contrast the two psychodynamic theories by Freud and Erikson with respect to personality development. How are they similar? How are they different? 

1. Freud: Believed that individuals are passive agents whose personalities are driven by unconscious conflict between biology of survival and societal rules and regulations.  
   During the first two years he believed development happened in two stages according to where libidinal energy is focused, the erogenous zone: 
   1^st stage – oral: Desire for oral stimulation, satisfied by nursing or putting things into their mouth. Adult problem behaviour resulting from fixations during this stage include overeating, alcoholism, smoking, sarcasm, and talking too much. Personality that emerges is the id. It has no boundaries or limits, and gratification must happen immediately.  
   2^nd stage – anal: toilet training, he believed that it triggers personality development as the infant masters the challenge of delaying immediate gratification of the desire for bowel movement. Adult problem behaviour resulting from this stage could be from one of two paths: anal-retentive - overly neat, orderly, and controlled, or anal-expulsive personality – messy highly emotionally expressive, and undercontrolled. Personality that emerges is ego. This works to control the id and impulsive bodily functions.  

2. Erikson: Emphasized social interactions and de-emphasized sex. Believed that early development was acutely influenced by an infant’s social context. 
   Trust vs mistrust stage: Infant’s primary task is to develop a sense of trust in their caregivers, in themselves, and in the world around them. 
   Autonomy vs shame and doubt stage: Toddlers undergo a transformation based on physical and cognitive changes, a central issue being toilet training as well as the mastery of environments in general. Trust from the previous stage helps toddlers to attempt to control their own bowel movements because the caregiver will respond and understand with care to mistakes and accidents. Choices for a toddler to move toward people for guidance to facilitate a sense of independence, whereas choices to move away results in feelings of shame and doubt. Poorly resolved psychosocial development in infancy and childhood has potential to influence adult beliefs about self and others, which leads to beliefs that others will lie, hurt, manipulate, or take advantage of them.  
    

2. Summarize the findings on temperament and why temperament is so important. What does goodness of fit mean? Provide an example of how goodness of fit could apply for each of three patterns as identified by the New York Longitudinal Study. 

1. Three patterns emerged from nine dimensions of behaviour: easy, difficult, and slow to warm up. Goodness of fit is the relationship between an infant's predisposition to behave a certain way and their parents’ tendencies to respond. If parents can respond calmly and find ways to arrange the environment to avoid sudden changes, situations that trigger their babies’ outbursts.  
    

3. What is attachment theory? What is separation anxiety, and how is it different from stranger anxiety? 

1. Attachment theory: The perspective that the process of social, emotional, and cognitive development occurs in the context of caregiver-infant attachment. 

2. Separation anxiety: A set of seeking and distress behaviours that occur when the primary caregiver is removed from the immediate environment of the infant/child. 

3. Stranger anxiety: Distressed avoidance of a novel individual.  

4. The difference between the two is that one is distress when the primary caregiver is removed and the other is distress when in the presence of a strange individual. 
    

4. Describe the Strange Situation. What are the three attachment styles first identified by Mary Ainsworth? Describe the fourth recently added attachment style and why it is important.  

1. Strange situation: A means of categorizing attachment styles, consisting of a series of episodes in which a mother and her child are observed together, separated, and reunited in the presence of a stranger.  

2. The three styles are:  
   Secure attachment: flexible proximity between parent and infant and positive reunion behaviour. Infants see the caregiver as a secure base. Distress when separated, joy when reunited. 
   Insecure-avoidant: insecure attachment in which infants show little or no distress upon separation and avoidant behaviour upon reunion.  
   Insecure-resistant: insecure attachment where infants show very high distress when separated and mixed reactions when reunited.  
   Disorganized/disoriented attachment: insecure attachment characterized by inconsistent behaviour upon separation and reunion that shows no clear pattern. Show confused or fearful emotions, most likely to have suffered some form of maltreatment. 
    

5. What are some of the predictors of secure attachment? Describe synchrony and provide an example. What are the socioemotional outcomes of secure attachment. 

1. Mothers who are sociable and extraverted, lower on measures of depression, neuroticism, and anxiety, and a mother’s insightfulness about her infant’s internal states and motives. Marital satisfaction is another factor. Caregiver sensitivity is the central factor. 

2. Synchrony: The reciprocal and mutually rewarding qualities of an infant-caregiver attachment relationship. When an infant is crying because they are hungry, and the caregiver feeds them. 

3. Socio-emotional outcomes are a more harmonious parent-child relationship later on in life. 
    

6. Describe the stages of emotional development in infancy, including the development of secondary emotions. Why are secondary emotions important? What is social referencing, and how is it related to emotional development? 

1. Primary emotion: An emotion that is present early in life and is most likely innate. 

2. Secondary emotion: An emotion that emerges with the help of certain cognitive and social developments. (pride, shame, guilt, empathy) These are important because they can’t appear without an understanding of self, it plays in important role in socio-emotional development across the lifespan.  

3. Social referencing: Using a caregiver’s emotional cues to help understand an uncertain or ambiguous event or stimulus. It means that infants are good at reading the emotional cues of others and using that information to guide their own responses to events, and it’s the beginning of a lifelong process and feature of social development: using others’ emotional signals to understand what is meaningful within one’s society.  
    

KEY TERMS 

• Oral fixation: A return to the oral stage later in life, shown through habits such as smoking or gum chewing, as a result of too much or too little gratification during the oral stage. 

• Anal fixation: A return to the anal stage in later life, shown through obsessive personality issues, as a result of too much or too little gratification during the anal stage. 

• Easy temperament: The temperament of a child who is generally cheerful and adaptable and has regular patterns of eating and sleeping. 

• Temperament: Biologically based individual differences in how one responds to the environment that influences emotions, physical activity level and attention. 

• Difficult temperament: Generally fussy, doesn’t respond well to new situations, and has irregular patterns of eating and sleeping. 

• Slow to warm up temperament: low activity level who adjusts to new situations over time. 

• Amygdala: The part of the brain that mediates emotion.  

• Goodness of fit: The relationship between environmental forces and predisposed temperamental behaviour.  

• Attachment: An enduring emotional bond that connects two people across time and space. 

• Self-regulation: The ability to deliberately change one’s behaviour and emotion. 

• Attachment behaviour: A behaviour that promotes proximity or contact, such as approaching, following, and clinging, in the older infant and toddler. 

• Gender: A social construction of expectations that a given culture associates with a person’s biological sex. 

• Gender differences: Cognitive and behavioural differences associated with gender. 

• Sex differences: Biologically based differences between sexes. 

• Social smile: In infancy, the first facial expression of pleasure, enabled by neurophysiological maturation and an increasing readiness for social interactions with caregivers. 

• Primary emotion: An emotion that is present early in life and is most likely innate.  

• Self-awareness: The ability to recognize oneself as a separate being.