p4 l1 (physical development)

• Oxytocin


  A key hormone candidate for influencing the development of maternal-infant attachment
• Patterns of growth

  
  

  • Cephalocaudal pattern
  • Proximodistal pattern
• Shaken baby syndrome


  includes brain swelling and hemorrhaging
• • Frontal lobe - voluntary movement, thinking, personality, and intentionality or purpose.
  • Occipital lobe - vision
  • Temporal lobe - hearing, language processing, and memory.
  • Parietal lobe - registering spatial location, attention, and motor control.
• The brain's development

  • at birth, 25% of its adult weight
  • second birthday, 75% of its adult weight
  • the brain's areas do not mature uniformly
• Mapping the brain

  
  

  • Forebrain - farthest from the spinal cord.
  • Cerebral cortex - covers the forebrain like a wrinkled cap.
  • has two hemispheres (left & right)
• Lateralization


  refers to specialization of function in one hemisphere or the other.
• Early experiences play an important role in brain development.
• Newborns show greater electrical brain activity in the L-hemisphere than the R-hemisphere when they are listening to speech sounds.
• Difference between infant and adult brains

  • changes in neurons
  • changes in regions of the brain
• Myelination


  the process of encasing axons with fat cells (prenatal - birth - adolescence)
• increase of connectivity among neurons that creates new neural pathways
• Synaptic pruning


  a natural process that occurs in the brain between early childhood and adulthood
• Some areas of the brain such as the primary motor areas develop earlier than others such as the primary sensory areas
• Frontal lobes are immature in the newborn
• neurons in the frontal lobe become myelinated and interconnected in the first year of life, infants develop an ability to regulate sleep and reflexes.
• cognitive skills do not emerge until later in the first year
• Prefrontal region of the Fl


  has the most prolonged development, of any brain region -with changes detectable into emerging adulthood
• Early experiences and the brain

  
  

  • children who grow up in a deprived environment may have depressed brain activity.
  • the brain can demonstrate flexibility and resilience
  • neuroscientist believe that what wires the brain -or rewires it, is repeated experience
• The Neuroconstructivist View


  • scientists have initially believed that our genes determined how our brains were "wired" and that the cells in the brain responsible for processing information naturally unfolded with not much input from the environment
  • the brain has plasticity and its development depends pn context
• Neuroconstructivist view

  • biological process (genes) and environmental conditions (enriched or impoverished) influence the brain's development
  • the brain has plasticity and is context dependent
  • development of the brain and the child's cognitive development are closely linked

  this view emphasizes the importance of considering interactions between experience and gene expression in the brain's development, much in the way the epigenetic view purposes
• newborns usually sleep about 18 hours a day. by 6 months of age, many american infants approach adult-like sleeping patterns
• Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)


  a condition that occurs when a sleeping infant suddenly stops breathing and dies without an apparent cause
• individual differences among infants in terms of their nutrient reserves, body composition, growth rates, and activity pattern make defining nutrient needs difficult
• as infants develop their motor skills, so as their eating movement (suck-and-swallow to chew-and-swallow)
• caregivers play very important roles in infants' early development of eating patterns
• Malnutrition in infancy

  • Marasmus - a wasting away of body tissues in the infant's first year, caused by severe protein-calorie deficiency
  • Kwashiorkor - a condition caused by severe protein deficiency in which the child's abdomen and feet become swollen with water; usually appears between 1-3 yrs old