Body and Brain

• Average weight at birth: 7.5 pounds

  Average length: 20 inches
• Well-baby checkup


  Doctor or nurse measures baby's growth: height, weight, and head circumference

  Abnormal growth may indicate physical or psychological problems
• Prefrontal cortex


  The area for anticipation, planning, and impulse control (which does not fully mature until the mid-twenties, between the ages of 22 – 27)
• Shaken baby syndrome


  A life-threatening injury that occurs when an infant is forcefully shaken back and forth, a motion that ruptures blood vessels in the brain and breaks neural connections
• Synaptic pruning


  A process that occurs inside the brain that results in reducing the overall number of neurons and synapses

  Some of the associations a child has for how the world works become more complex as he grows older, so there's no need to remember the old ones
• Reflexes


  • Involuntary responses to a particular stimulus

  Help ensure survival (breathing, sucking, rooting, swallowing, spitting up)

  Signs of normal functioning (Babinski, stepping, swimming, palmar grasping, Moro)
• The presence and strength of a reflex is an important sign of nervous system development and function
• Gross motor skills


  Physical abilities involving large body movements, such as walking and jumping
• Fine motor skills


  Physical abilities involving small body movements, especially of the hands and fingers, such as drawing and picking up a coin
• Sensation


  The response of a sensory system (eyes, ears, skin, tongue, nose) when it detects a stimulus
• Perception


  The mental processing of sensory information when the brain interprets a sensation
• Sensory development typically precedes intellectual and motor development
• Hearing development


  Develops during the last trimester of pregnancy and is already quite acute at birth; it is the most advanced of the newborn's senses
• Vision development


  The least mature sense at birth

  Newborns focus only on objects between 4 and 30 inches away (clearly about 8 – 13 inches)
• Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)


  In 1990, about 5,000 babies died of SIDS in the United States

  The actual cause is still unknown, but low birthweight, heavy clothing, soft bedding, teenage parenthood, and maternal smoking are risk factors.
• Breastfeeding


  - For every infant disease, breastfeeding reduces risk and malnutrition increases it, stunting growth of body and brain

  - Breastfed babies are less likely to develop allergies, asthma, obesity, and heart disease
• Sensorimotor intelligence


  Piaget's term for the way infants think—by using their senses and motor skills during the first period of cognitive development
• Assimilation


  Piaget's term for a type of adaptation in which new experiences are interpreted to fit into, or assimilate with, old ideas
• Accommodation


  Piaget's term for a type of adaptation in which old ideas are restructured to include, or accommodate, new experiences
• Object permanence


  The realization that objects (including people) still exist when they can no longer be seen, touched, or heard
• Child-directed speech


  The high-pitched, simplified, and repetitive way adults speak to infants (Also called baby talk or motherese)
• Babbling


  The extended repetition of certain syllables, such as ba-ba-ba, that begins when babies are between 6 and 9 months old
• Naming explosion


  A sudden increase in an infant's vocabulary, especially in the number of nouns, that begins at about 18 months of age
• Learning approach to language development

  Infants need to be taught

  Parents are expert teachers, and other caregivers help them teach children to speak

  Frequent repetition of words is instructive, especially when the words are linked to the pleasures of daily life

  Well-taught infants become well-spoken children
• Social impulse toward communication

  Infants communicate in every way they can because humans are social beings, dependent on one another for survival, well-being, and joy

  Infants must be able to communicate their needs since they cannot take care of themselves
• Binocular vision


  the ability to coordinate the two eyes to see one image, appears at 3 months
• Sensation


  is essential for the visual cortex to develop normally
• The visual cliff


  designed to provide the illusion of a sudden dropoff between one horizontal surface and another