Infancy

• Infancy and Toddlerhood


  • The Newborn Baby
  • Physical Development
  • Motor Development
  • Cognitive Development
  • Psychosocial Development

  
• Neonatal period


  First 4 weeks of life where a fetus transitions from intrauterine dependency to independent existence
• Neonatal period


  A time when the fetus is supported entirely by the mother
• Size and Appearance


  • Boys tend to be slightly longer and heavier
  • Babies lose as much as 10% of their body weight after birth due to loss of fluids, and start gaining weight at around the 5th day
  • Distinctive features: Large head, Fontanels, Pinking cast, Lanugo, Vernix caseosa, Witch's milk
  • Some newborns (especially premature girls) may have swollen genitals
• Body Systems


  • All body systems of the baby needs to be independent after birth
  • Fast and irregular heartbeat and unstable blood pressure at birth will normalize in around 10 days
  • A baby needs to start breathing within 5 minutes after birth to avoid anoxia or hypoxia that may lead to brain damage
  • Babies instinctively suck to take in milk and digest any intake they had which leads them to secrete
  • Sphincter muscles automatically open when bowels and bladder are full
  • Neonatal jaundice: condition caused by immaturity of liver and evidenced by yellowish appearance, can cause brain damage if not promptly treated
• Neonatal Medical and Behavioral Assessment

  • Apgar scale: Standard measurement of a newborn's condition immediately after delivery
  • Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS): Measure neonate's responses to the environment
  • Neonatal screening for medical conditions: In the Philippines, RA 9288 (Newborn Screening Act) of 2004 mandates to screen for 6 diseases

  
• States of Arousal


  • Infant's physiological and behavioral status at a given moment in the periodic daily cycle of wakefulness, sleep, and activity
  • The average sleep needed shorten as babies grow older: Newborn: 16-18 hours, 2 yrs. old: 12-13 hours
  • Changes are affected by brain development and culture
  • REM Sleep: 8-9 hrs./day, Non-REM Sleep: 8-9 hrs./day, Varies: 2-3 hrs./day, 1-4 hrs./day
• Crying


  • First way that babies communicate to let parents know that they are in need of food, comfort, or stimulation
  • Typically increases during the early weeks, peaks at about 6 weeks, and then declines
  • A cry of a baby stimulates a sharp rise in blood cortisol, alertness, and feelings of discomfort to anyone
  • Colic: persistent crying
  • Abnormal crying: Sound of cries of babies with neurological, prenatal, and birth complications are often shrill, piercing, and shorter in duration than normal infants
• Soothing a Crying Baby

  • Talk softly or play rhythmic sounds
  • Offer pacifier or swaddle them
  • Massage baby's body
  • Hold on shoulder, rock, or walk
  • Go for car ride, or swing in cradle
  • Combine methods
  • Let them cry for a short time
  • Do not shake them: Risk for shaken baby syndrome (SBS)
• Growth Patterns


  • As a baby grows into a toddler, body shape and proportions change too
  • From a chubby potbellied 1-year-old to a typically slender 3-year-old
  • Genetic influence is strong and interacts with environmental influences (nutrition and living conditions)
  • Teething begins in 3 or 4 months and have 6 to 8 teeth at 1-year-old

  
• Infant Diet


  • Exclusive breastfeeding (or iron-fortified formula) and no other food and drink (including water) is recommended for 6 months
  • Breastfeeding is inadvisable for mothers infectious diseases, exposed to radiation, or taking drugs unsafe for the baby

  
• Malnutrition


  • The first 1000 days are a critical time for healthy physical and cognitive development
  • Time of rapid physical growth and brain development
  • Greater susceptibility to infections
  • More dependent upon others to take care of needs
  • Initiatives were implemented to provide for malnourished children: Nutritional and health needs assessment, Breastfeeding education and support, Vitamins and nutrients provision
• Obesity


  • Iron-enriched solid (soft) foods may gradually be introduced with water after 6 months
  • Risk for obesity is more prevalent for children born to mothers with higher pre-pregnancy BMI or who gained great weight during pregnancy or infants who gained weight quickly and diagnosed with gestational diabetes, prenatal tobacco exposure, enrollment in child care, inappropriate bottle use, being fed solid food before 4 months, and antibiotic use during infancy
  • Early preventive measures for obesity is recommended
• The Brain


  • Brain growth spurt after birth
  • Spinal cord and brain stem, and cerebellum grows the fastest during the first year of life
  • Lateralization: tendency of each of the brain's hemispheres to have specialized functions
  • Corpus callosum reaches adult size at 10
  • Third trimester growth spurt continues until the 4th year of life and is important in neurological development which shows the development of the cerebral cortex
• Brain Cells


  • Neurons: nerve cells – send and receive information
  • Most of the neurons are in the cortex are in place by 20 weeks of gestation and the dendrites (receives messages) and axons (sends) sprout in the next weeks
  • Synapse: places where neurons connect and communicate with each other
  • Neurotransmitters: chemical messengers of the body
  • Integration: process where neurons coordinate the activities of muscle groups
  • Differentiation: process where cells acquire specialized structures and functions
  • Programmed cell death: normal elimination of excess brain cells for efficient functioning
  • Myelination: process of coating neural pathways with myelin (fat) that speeds communication between cells
  • Glial cells: nourish and protect neurons
• Early Reflexes


  • Primitive Reflexes: instinctive needs for survival and protection, and connection with caregiver (Sucking, Rooting, Moro, Darwinian (Grasping), Tonic neck)
  • Postural Reflexes: reactions to changes in position or balance (Parachute)
  • Locomotor reflexes (Walking, Swimming)
• Sensory Capacities

  • Touch and Pain: First sense to develop and the most mature at birth, Importance of skin-to-skin contact when in pain
  • Smell and Taste: Develops in the womb and flavors are taken in from mother's consumption, Preference for sweet tastes
  • Hearing: Develops rapidly after birth and can recognize a word up to a day earlier at 2 days old, Listen longer to human speech than structurally similar nonspeech sound
  • Sight: Least developed sense at birth – limited stimuli inside the womb, Incomplete retinal structures and underdeveloped optic nerve, Follows moving target and color perception in the first months, Binocular vision at 4 or 5 months, Special affinity for faces
• Motor Development


  • Babies first learn simple skills then combine them into increasingly complex systems of action
  • Denver Developmental Screening Test: measures Gross motor skills and Fine motor skills
• Gross Motor Development Milestones

  • Head control: By 4 months, almost all infants can keep their heads erect while being held or supported in a sitting position
  • Locomotion: Self-locomotion at 6-10 months, Social referencing: skill when they look to caregivers whether a situation is secure or frightening
• Fine Motor Development Milestones

  • Hand control: 15 months - can build a tower of two cubes, 3 years old - can copy a circle fairly well
• Motor Development and Perception


  • Has a bidirectional connection mediated by the brain that gives infants useful information about the self and the world
  • Clumsy corrective movements is believed to be illustrating immature cerebellar development
  • Depth perception: ability to perceive objects and surfaces three-dimensionally
  • Walk and Gibson's Ecological Theory of Perception (1961): Describes developing motor and perceptual abilities as interdependent parts of a functional system that guides behavior in varying contexts
  • Haptic perception: ability to acquire information about properties of objects, such as size, weight, and texture, by handling them
• Thelen's Dynamic Systems Theory (DST)


  The interplay between individual, environmental and task factors, is believed to lead to changes in motor development over time
• Cultural Influences on Motor Development

  • Some cultures encourage early development of motor skills (Implement handling routines, Africa and West India: bouncing and stepping exercises, Jamaica)
  • Some cultures discourage its early development (Paraguay (Aché): pulling babies back to their laps when they start to crawl early to keep them safe from the hazards of nomadic life; at 8-10 years old, children can climb trees, chop branches, etc.)
• Cognitive Development Approaches


  • Behaviorist Approach
  • Psychometric Approach
  • Piagetian Approach
  • Information-Processing Approach
  • Cognitive Neuroscience Approach
  • Social-Contextual Approach
  • Language Development
• Behaviorist Approach


  • Concerned with the basic mechanics of learning – how behavior changes in response to experience
  • Classical conditioning: A child learns to make a reflex (involuntary) response to a stimulus that originally bring about the response, enabling infants to anticipate an event before it happens
  • Operant conditioning: Focuses on consequences of behaviors and the likelihood of its repeat
• Behaviorist Approach: Infant Memory


  • Infant memory is context-dependent and appears to be strongly linked to the original cues encoded during learning
  • During the first year of life, infants only recognized a picture when shown in the room they originally saw it
  • One-year-olds can already recognize pictures they saw before in a different room
• Psychometric Approach


  • Seeks to measure intelligence quantitatively through tests that indicate or predict abilities
  • Intelligence enables people to: Acquire, remember, and use knowledge, Solve everyday problems
  • Intelligent behavior: Behavior that is goal-oriented and adaptive to circumstances and conditions of life
  • Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests: Psychometric tests that seek to measure intelligence by comparing a test taker's performance with standardized norms
• Psychometric Approach: Testing Infants and Toddlers


  • Babies cannot tell what they know and how they think, so the psychometric approach is limited in assessing their cognitive development
• Infant memory


  Context-dependent and strongly linked to the original cues encoded during learning
• In Jones, Pascalis, Escoffé, and Herbert in 2011, they found that during the first year of life, infants only recognized a picture when shown in the room they originally saw it

  
• One-year-olds can already recognize pictures they saw before in a different room
• Psychometric Approach


  Seeks to measure intelligence quantitatively through tests that indicate or predict abilities
• Intelligence


  • Enables people to acquire, remember, and use knowledge
  • Solve everyday problems
• Intelligent behavior

  Behavior that is goal-oriented and adaptive to circumstances and conditions of life
• Intelligence Quotient (IQ) tests

  Psychometric tests that seek to measure intelligence by comparing a test taker's performance with standardized norms
• Testing Infants and Toddlers

  • Babies cannot tell what they know and how they think, so their intelligence is measured through their behavior
  • When they are tasked to do something, there is no way to know if it is because they do not know how, do not feel like doing it, do not realize what is expected of them, or they have lost interest (validity concern)
  • Instead of intelligence, functioning on development tests (intelligent behavior) of babies is measured through comparing their performance with norms established based on what large numbers of babies can do at specific ages
• Assessment tools


  • Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development
  • Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME)
• Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development


  Standardized test of infants' and toddlers' competencies in five developmental areas: cognitive, language, motor, socio-emotional, and adaptive behavior
• Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME)


  • Instrument to measure the influence of home environment (appropriate learning materials in the home, parents' involvement, parental responsiveness, children's behavior acceptance, environment organization, and stimulation opportunities) on children's cognitive growth
  • Trained observers interview the primary caregiver and rate on a yes-or-no checklist of intellectual stimulation and support observed in a child's home
• Early intervention may be considered especially for children with special needs