Prenatal

• Cephalocaudal Principle – growth starts from the top part of the body (i.e., brain to foot)
• Proximodistal Principle – growth proceeds from the center of the body outward (e.g., Palm (grasping) to fingers)
• Children grow faster during the first 3 years
• Teething usually begins around 3-4 months
• Growth slows in the second year of life
• Growth isn’t often smooth and continuous but rather is episodic, occurring in spurts
• Benefits of Breastfeeding:

  • Babies are less likely to contract infectious illnesses
  • Lower risks of SIDS and of Post-neonatal death
  • Lesser risks of inflammatory bowel disease
  • Better visual acuity, neurological development, and long-term cardiovascular health
  • Less likely to develop obesity, asthma, eczema, diabetes, lymphoma, etc.
  • Less likely to show language and motor delays
  • Score higher on cognitive tests
  • Fewer cavities and are less likely to need braces
  • Mothers can quickly recover with childbirth
  • They are more likely to return to the pre-pregnancy weight
• • Reduced risk of anemia and lowered risk of repeat pregnancy while breastfeeding
  • Report feeling more confident and less anxious
  • Less likely to develop osteoporosis or ovarian and premenopausal breast cancer
  • Reduction in type 2 diabetes
• The only acceptable alternative to breast milk is Iron-Fortified Formula based on either cow’s milk or soy protein
• Babies should consume nothing but milk during the first 6 months of life
• • Right Hemisphere – concerned with visual and spatial functions
  • Corpus Callosum – tough band of tissue that joins the two hemisphere which allows them to share info and coordinate commands
  • Occipital – smallest; concerned with visual processing
  • 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 4th year of life
  • Neurons – send and receive info in the brain
  • Glia or 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 which is a way to calibrate the developing brain to the local environment and help it work more efficiently, beings during the prenatal period and continues after birth
  • Myelination – enables signals to travel faster and more smoothly by coating the neural pathways with myelin
  • Children who grew up in deprived environment may have depressed brain activity
• Brain and Reflex Behavior:

  • By age of 6, the brain is almost adult size but some parts are still continuously developing
  • Brain Growth Spurts – brain’s growth occurs in fits and starts
  • By birth, spinal cord and brain stem has nearly run its course (responsible for breathing, heart rate, temp, and sleep-wake cycle)
  • Cerebellum (maintains balance and motor coordination) grows the fastest during the first year of life
  • Lateralization – specialization of the hemispheres
  • Left Hemisphere – concerned with language and logical thinking
• • Neuroconstructivist View – biological process and environmental conditions influences development, the brain is plastic, and the child’s cognitive development is closed linked to development of the brain
  • Emphasized the importance of considering interactions between experience and gene expression in the brain’s development
• • Extend legs, arms, and fingers, arches back, draws back head
  • Darwinian (Grasping)
  • Make strong first
  • Tonic Neck
  • Fencer Position
  • Babkin
  • Mouth opens, eyes close, neck flexes, head tilts forward
  • Babinski
  • Toes fan out; foot twist in
  • Rooting
  • Head turns, mouth opens, sucking begins
  • Walking
  • Steplike motions
  • Swimming
  • Swimming movements
• Reflex Behavior – automatic, innate response to stimulation which are controlled by the lower brain centers that govern involuntary processes

  • Primitive reflexes – includes sucking, rooting, and the Moro reflex are related to instinctive needs for survival and protection or may support the 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
  • Early Reflexes Disappear during the first 6-12 months
  • Early Human Reflexes:
  • Moro
• Brain is Plastic, they are living, changeable organs which responds to environmental influences (Plasticity)
• Early Sensory Capacity:

  • Touch is the first sense to develop, the most mature sensory system for the first several months
  • Newborns can and do feel pain
  • Sense of smell and taste begin to develop in the womb
  • Newborns strongly dislike bitter flavors
  • Auditory Discrimination develops rapidly after birth
  • At 4 months, infant’s brain responds preferentially to speech
  • Vision is the least developed sense at birth
  • Binocular Vision (the use of both eyes to focus) does not develop until 4-5 months
  • Infants like attractive faces
• Sleep:

  • Sleep restores, replenishes, and rebuilds our brains and bodies
  • Evolutionary Perspective: all animals sleep and this sleep is necessary for survival (to protect themselves at night)
  • Restorative Perspective: sleep replenishes and rebuilds the brain and the body such as clearing out neural tissues
  • Plasticity Perspective: sleep is critical for brain plasticity, i.e., increases synaptic connections between neurons which is linked to improved consolidation of memories
  • Newborns sleep approx. 18 hrs/day
  • Non-REM Sleep – no eye movement and sleep is more quiet
• • Rapid Eye Movement (REM Sleep) – the eyes flutter beneath the closed lids
  • Usually appears 1 hr after non-rem (adults)
  • Half of infant’s sleep is REM
  • May provide infants with added self-stimulation
  • Promote brain development in infancy
  • When adults wake up from REM Sleep, they report dreaming
  • There is a positive link between infant sleep and cognitive functioning
• • Locomotor movement depends on infants’ increasing sensitivity to the interaction between their changing physical characteristics and new and varied characteristics of their environment
  • Babies learn to continually gauge their abilities and adjust their movements to meet the demands of their current environment
  • Baby is somewhat a small scientist testing out new ideas in each situation
  • 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
• • Could successfully reach for objects in the dark faster than they could in the light
  • They can now localize or detect sounds from their origins
  • Seventh Month:
  • Pincer Grasps could already manifest
  • Can start standing
  • Can now sit independently
  • Eighth Month:
  • Babies can assume sitting position without help
  • Infants can now learn to pull themselves up and hold on to a chair
  • Tenth Month:
  • They can now stand alone
  • Eleventh Month:
  • Babies can let go and stand alone well
  • Thirteenth Month:
• • Newborns cannot see small things that are far away
  • Thelen’s Dynamic Systems 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
• • Toddlers can now pull a toy attached to a string and use their hands and legs to climb stairs
  • Eighteenth to Twenty-Fourth Month:
  • Toddlers can now walk quickly, run, and balance on their feet in a squatting position
  • Crawling – helps babies learn to judge distances and perceive depth
  • Social Referencing – babies learn to look at caregivers for clues as to whether a situation is secure or frightening
  • Sensory Perception – enable infants to learn about themselves and their environment so they can make better judgements about how to navigate in it
• • Visual Guidance – the use of eyes to guide the movements of the hands
  • Clumsy corrective movements are more likely to be illustrating immature cerebellar development
  • Depth Perception – the ability to perceive objects and surfaces in three dimensions
  • Kinetic Cues – produced by movement of the object or the observer or both
  • Haptic Perception – ability to acquire information by handling objects rather than just looking at them
  • Posture – dynamic process that is linked with sensory information in the skin, joints, and muscles which tell us where we are in space
• Motor Development:

  • Denver Developmental Screening Test – used to chart progress between ages 1 month and 6 years and to identify children who are not developing normally
  • Measures Gross Motor Skills (using large muscles), Fine Motor Skills (using small muscles), Language Development, Personality, and Social Development
  • First Month:
  • Infants can turn their Head from side to side
  • Grasping Reflex
  • Second-Third Month:
  • Babies can lift their heads
  • Can grasp moderate sized things until they will be able to grasp one thing using right hand and transfer it to their left hand
• • 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
• • Babies can now hold their head still to find out whether the object is moving
  • They can already match the voice to faces
  • Distinguish female and male
  • Discriminate between faces of their own ethnic group and those of other groups
  • Size constancy
  • Infants develop the ability to perceive that occluded objects are whole
  • Fourth Month:
  • Babies can keep their heads erect while being held or supported in a sitting position
  • Can now roll-over, accidentally
  • Begin to reach objects
  • Sixth Month:
  • Babies cannot sit without support
  • Can start creeping or crawling
• • Swaddling shows slight delays in motor development
  • Perceptual Constancy – sensory stimulation is changing but perception of the physical world remains constant
  • Allows infants to perceive that their world as stable
  • Size Constancy – recognition that an object remains the same even though the retinal image of the object changes as you move toward or away from the object
  • Shape Constancy – an object remains the same shape even though its orientation changes
  • Ecological Theory of Perception
• • Infant memory is context-dependent and appears to be strongly linked to the original cues encoded during learning
  • Psychometric Approach
  • Intelligent Behavior – presumed to be goal-oriented, meaning it exists for the purposes of attaining a goal
  • IQ Tests – consists of questions or tasks that are supposed to show how much of the measured abilities a person has by comparing that person’s performance with norms
  • Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development – developmental test designed to assess children from 1 month to 3 ½ years
• • Cognitive, Language, Motor, Social-Emotional, and Adaptive Behavior
  • Accompanied by Behavior Rating Scale taken from the caregiver
  • Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) – trained observers interview the primary caregiver and rate on a yes-or-no checklist the intellectual stimulation and support observed in a child’s home
  • Number of books and toys, parents involvement with the child, parental emotional and verbal responsiveness, acceptance of the child’s behavior, organization of the environment, and opportunities for daily and varied stimulation
• • Early Intervention – systematic process of planning and providing therapeutic and educational services for families that need help in meeting infants’, toddlers’, and pre-school children’s developmental needs
  • Jean Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage
  • The first stage of Jean Piaget’s cognitive development is Sensorimotor Stage
  • Approx. from birth to 2 years old
  • Circular Reactions – an infant learns to reproduce events originally discovered by chance
  • Schemes – actions or mental representations that can be performed on objects
• Cognitive Development:

  • Behaviorist Approach
  • Classical Conditioning – a person learns to make a reflex, or involuntary, response to a stimulus that originally did not bring about the response
  • Extinction – if the conditioned learning is not reinforced by repeated association
  • Operant Conditioning – focuses on the consequences of behaviors and how they affect the likelihood of the behavior occurring again
  • Babies were able to use contextual cues (e.g., odor) to retrieve memories
• • Assimilation – occurs when children use their existing schemes to deal with new information
  • Accommodation – occurs when children adjust
• Assimilation occurs when children use their existing schemes to deal with new information
• Accommodation occurs when children adjust their schemes to take new information and experiences into account
• Organization is the grouping of isolated behaviors and thoughts into a higher-order system
• Disequilibrium is cognitive conflict
• Children constantly assimilate and accommodate as they seek equilibrium