Ch. 4 Physical Development in Infancy and Toddler

Question 1

Apoptosis

Answer 1

Programmed death of a cell

Question 2

Brain Plasticity

Answer 2

If part of the brain is damaged, the brain can reassign that part of the brain’s functionality to another, undamaged part of the brain. This flexibility is the placticity.
This placticity decreases as the brain LATERALIZES (shifts specializations to different hemispheres of the brain).
This lateralization begins developing at birth and so, the earlier in life the damage occurs, the greater teh placticity and the more effective the brain will be at re-assigning the functionality.
Even so, the re-assigned sections of the brain tend to perform the function at a decreased level due to the crowding effect of assigning too many functions to a limited part of the brain.

Question 3

Breastfeeding

Answer 3

Recommended to breastfeed exclusively for at least 6 months – gives some immunity, bonds with mother, delivers optimal nutrition, avoids food allergies, ensures digestibility and smooths transition to solid foods

Question 4

Catch-up Growth

Answer 4

A return to a genetically influenced growth path once conditions improve for malnurished or mistreated children

Question 5

Cephalocaudal Trend

Answer 5

A Pattern of growth meaning from “head to tail” – where the head develops more rapidly than the lower part of the body

Question 6

Cerebral Cortex

Answer 6

The intricate fabric of interconnected neural cells covering the brain’s cerebral hemispheres; the body’s ultimate control and information-processing center.
The Cerebral Cortex surrounds the rest of the brain. It is the largest brain structure, accounting for 85% of the brain’s weigh and containing the greatest number of neurons and synapses.
Because it is the last part of the brain to stop growing, it is sensitive to environmental influences for a much longer period than any other part of the brain.

Question 7

Classical Conditioning

Answer 7

A type of learning in which one subconsciously learns to link two or more stimuli to anticipate events.
Think Ivan Pavlov’s dog who salivated when he heard a bell because he was classically conditioned to associate the bell with actual food that had once accompanied the bell.
More specifically, a NEUTRAL STIMULUS (bell) is paired with an UNCONDITIONED STIMULUS (food). Before the conditioning, the presentation of food led to an UNCONDITIONED RESPONSE (salivating). After the conditioning, the Bell becomes a CONDITIONED STIMULUS that leads to a reflexive or CONDITIONED RESPONSE (salivating).
Baby example: Mother strokes forehead (NEUTRAL STIMULUS) of Baby as he sucks (UNCONDITIONAL RESPONSE) during breastfeeding (UNCONDITIONED STIMULUS). After sufficient repetition, the mother need only stroke the baby’s forehead (CONDITIONED STIMULUS) for the baby to start reflexively sucking (CONDITIONED RESPONSE).
UNCONDITIONED STIMULUS – Breast Milk. This stimulus naturally brings about the UNCONDITIONAL RESPONSE
UNCONDITIONAL RESPONSE – Sucking (If Mother’s breastmilk is there, Baby’s gonna suck)
NEUTRAL STIMULUS – stroking baby’s head – is paired with the UNCONDITIONAL STIMULUS (Mother strokes baby’s head as he receives breastmilk)
Once this process has been completed so many times that stroking the baby’s forehead causes him to reflexively suck even without the presence of breast milk, then you have created a:
CONDITIONED STIMULUS – the stroking of the baby’s head – which brings about a…
CONDITIONED RESPONSE – sucking
Remember that the CONDITIONED stimulus/response exist only AFTER the classical conditioning is complete and successfull.

Question 8

Conditioned Response

Answer 8

A LEARNED RESPONSE from Classical Conditioning.
Pavlov’s dog learned to salivate when a bell was rung. Salivating from the bell was a CONDITIONED RESPONSE.
The Baby learned to suck when the mother stroked his forehead. Sucking from the forehead stroking was a CONDITIONED RESPONSE.
Baby example: Mother strokes forehead (NEUTRAL STIMULUS) of Baby as he sucks (UNCONDITIONAL RESPONSE) during breastfeeding (UNCONDITIONED STIMULUS). After sufficient repetition, the mother need only stroke the baby’s forehead (CONDITIONED STIMULUS) for the baby to start reflexively sucking (CONDITIONED RESPONSE).
UNCONDITIONED STIMULUS – Breast Milk. This stimulus naturally brings about the UNCONDITIONAL RESPONSE
UNCONDITIONAL RESPONSE – Sucking (If Mother’s breastmilk is there, Baby’s gonna suck)
NEUTRAL STIMULUS – stroking baby’s head – is paired with the UNCONDITIONAL STIMULUS (Mother strokes baby’s head as he receives breastmilk)
Once this process has been completed so many times that stroking the baby’s forehead causes him to reflexively suck even without the presence of breast milk, then you have created a:
CONDITIONED STIMULUS – the stroking of the baby’s head – which brings about a…
CONDITIONED RESPONSE – sucking
Remember that the CONDITIONED stimulus/response exist only AFTER the classical conditioning is complete and successfull.

Question 9

Conditioned Stimulus

Answer 9

What begins as a NEUTRAL STIMULUS (because it has no prior association with the stimulus/response behavior being conditioned) , after conditioning is complete and successful, becomes a CONDITIONED STIMULUS which brings about the CONDITIONED RESPONSE.
Pavlov’s dog learned to salivate when a bell was rung. The BELL was a CONDITIONED STIMULUS.
The Baby learned to suck when the mother stroked his forehead. Stroking the baby’s forehead was a CONDITIONED STIMULUS.
Baby example: Mother strokes forehead (NEUTRAL STIMULUS) of Baby as he sucks (UNCONDITIONAL RESPONSE) during breastfeeding (UNCONDITIONED STIMULUS). After sufficient repetition, the mother need only stroke the baby’s forehead (CONDITIONED STIMULUS) for the baby to start reflexively sucking (CONDITIONED RESPONSE).
UNCONDITIONED STIMULUS – Breast Milk. This stimulus naturally brings about the UNCONDITIONAL RESPONSE
UNCONDITIONAL RESPONSE – Sucking (If Mother’s breastmilk is there, Baby’s gonna suck)
NEUTRAL STIMULUS – stroking baby’s head – is paired with the UNCONDITIONAL STIMULUS (Mother strokes baby’s head as he receives breastmilk)
Once this process has been completed so many times that stroking the baby’s forehead causes him to reflexively suck even without the presence of breast milk, then you have created a:
CONDITIONED STIMULUS – the stroking of the baby’s head – which brings about a…
CONDITIONED RESPONSE – sucking
Remember that the CONDITIONED stimulus/response exist only AFTER the classical conditioning is complete and successfull.

Question 10

Contrast Sensitivity

Answer 10

the ability to detect differences in light and dark areas in a visual pattern
This is poor in infants. As a result, they tend to prefer images with GREATER contrast.

Question 11

Differentiation Theory

Answer 11

Infants actively search for features of the environment that remain stable in a constantly changing perceptual world.
They prefer recognizable faces and regularities in speech patterns
Differentiation in this context means analyze or break down.

Question 12

Dynamic Systems Theory Of Motor Development

Answer 12

a perspective on human development that says mastery of motor skills involves acquiring increasingly complex systems of action.
When motor skills work as a system, separate abilities blend together, each cooperating with others to produce more effective ways of exploring and controlling the environment.
Each new skill is a joint product of 4 factors:
1) Central Nervous System Development
2) The body’s movement capacity – strength, flexibility, dexterity
3) Goals the child has in mind
4) Environmental support for the skill
If any element makes the system less stable, the child starts to explore and select new, more effective motor patterns

Question 13

Experience-Dependent Brain Growth

Answer 13

Brain growth that occurs throughout our lives. It consists of additional growth and refinement of established brain structures resulting from specific learning experiences that vary widely across individuals and cultures.
The mechanism through which the structure of the brain is changed by experience – like schooling and learning specific skills like playing an instrument, woodworking, knitting, etc, but also involving experiences like travel, love, and war.

Question 14

Experience-Expectant Brain Growth

Answer 14

Brain growth that requires EXPECTED ordinary experiences – opportunities to explore the environment, interact with people, and hear language and other sounds.
At certain stages of development, the baby’s brain is poised to have certain expected common experiences. And if these experiences fail to exist, it will damage the baby’s development.
For example, a newborn EXPECTS to see human faces, feel human touch, and hear human speech. If he doesn’t, there will be developmental damage.

Question 15

Glial Cells

Answer 15

Few neurons are produced after the prenatal period. So the extraordinary increase in brain size during the first two years is duto the development of GLIAL CELLS, which are responsible for MYELINATION, the coating of the neural fibers with an insulating fatty sheath (called myelin) that improves the efficiency of message transfer.
Cells in the nervous system that support, nourish, and protect neurons

Question 16

Habituation and Recovery

Answer 16

Refers to an organism’s decreasing response to a stimulus with repeated exposure to it – simply because they get used to it and it loses its novelty.
Once this has occurred, a new stimulus – a change inthe environment – causes responsiveness to return to a high level, an increase called RECOVERY.
HABITUATION and RECOVERY make learning more efficient by focusing oour attention on those aspects of the environment we know least about.

Question 17

Intermodal Perception

Answer 17

This means that we take in all the multi-sensory stimuli in the environment – light, sound, smells, touches and tastes – and we process them as a whole rather than as separate inputs.
If a gigantic truck rumbles by, shaking the ground, blocking our view, with a loud motor and stinky fumes – we know that as a single thing, not as 4 separate things.
An infant plays with a toy block in the dark, so he cannot see it. Later, he is shown a ball as well as the block. He realizes that it was the block, not the ball that he was playing with in the dark through:

Question 18

Kwashiorkow

Answer 18

Diets lacking protein or essential amino acids-happens when children stop breast-feeding… characterized by a bloated stomach and physical disabilities.

Question 19

Lateralization

Answer 19

Specialization of the two hemsipheres of the brain, where the:
LEFT hemisphere is better at processing information in a sequential and ANALYTICAL way (also controls the right side of the body)
RIGHT hemisphere is better at processing information in a HOLISTIC way, ideal for making sense of spatial information and regulating negative emotions (also controls the left side of the body)
Both Hemispheres communicate with each other
LATERALIZATION may have evolved because the specialization makes those processes more efficient than if each part of the brain processed everything.

Question 20

Marasmus

Answer 20

Is a wasted condition of the body caused by a diet low in all essential nutrients. It usually appears in the first year of life when a baby’s mother is too malnourished to produce enough breast milk and bottle feeding is also inadequate.

Question 21

Imitaiton and Mirror Neurons

Answer 21

IMITATION is simply a learning method where you imitate what you see and learn as a result.
MIRROR NEURONS are neurons that may underlie early imitative capacities. Mirror neurons fire identically when a person hears or sees an action and when it carries the action out on its own.
The brain’s mirroring of another’s action may enable imitation, language learning, and empathy. It might also be the basis for the practice of visualization, which allows you to practice a skill in your imagination while your brain treats the visualization as actual physical practice by your body. This is a common and powerful practice for athletes, artists, designers, and doctors, and anyone wishing to gain a new skill.

Question 22

Myelination

Answer 22

The process of coating of the neural fibers with an insulating fatty sheath (called myelin) that improves the efficiency of message transfer.
This is done by the GLIAL CELLS

Question 23

Neurotransmitters

Answer 23

Neurons communicate by with these chemical messengers, which cross the synapse in the nervous system

Question 24

Neurons

Answer 24

A nerve cell; the basic building block of the nervous system – store and transmit information

Question 25

Romanian Orphanages

Answer 25

Studies of Romanian Orphanages (known for their lack of a stimulative environment for newborns) found that children in the orphanages for LESS THAN 6 MONTHS and inserted into healthy homes, were able to recover from the damage of early inattentiveness and a lack of stimulation. Those who remained in the orphanage longer than 6 months, however, suffered sustained developmental damage, which became increasingly severe the longer they had to stay there.

Question 26

Operant Conditioning

Answer 26

A type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher.
Infants act, or operate, on the environment, and stimuli that follow their behavior change the probability that the behavior will occur again.
A REINFORCER is presented to increases the occurrence of a desired response. This could be a reward of any sort – food, praise, a smile, etc.
PUNISHMENT is presented to decrease the occurence of an undesirable response.

Question 27

Poverty (How does Poverty affect Development?)

Answer 27

Poverty negatively effects every aspect of development – from neonatal to newborn, to growing child.
LACK of proper healthcare, nutrition, parenting attentiveness, or social support combined with higher stress levels and dangerous behaviors (like drug use) are all associated with with poverty. In general, poverty is the greatest threat to any developing child.

Question 28

Prefrontal Cortex

Answer 28

Part of brain’s frontal lobe responsible for thinking, planning, and language – the conscious part of the brain
connects to the Amygdala (part of the brain that experiences emotions), involved in expressing, inhibiting and reading emotions

Question 29

Programmed Cell Death

Answer 29

An induced and ordered process in which the cell actively participates in bringing about its own death – called Apoptosis
This process occurs after the OVERproduction of cells for this purpose. During the prenatal period, the neural tube produces far more neurons than the brain will ever nead.

Question 30

Proximodistal Trend

Answer 30

A Pattern of growth meaning from “near to far” - body growth proceeds from the center of the body outward, with the trunk growing first, then the limbs and then hands/feet.
Physical growth and motor skills that proceeds from the center of the body outward

Question 31

Skeletal Age

Answer 31

Best Estimate of a child’s physical maturity, a measure of bone development using x-ray. Some children can be very big, but not physically mature and vice-versa.

Question 32

States of Arousal

Answer 32

Children’s sleep patterns vary depending on parental practices, which may promote sleep as early as the first two years. Before that the baby is subject to many other survival urges other than the night/day cycle.

Question 33

Statistical Learning Capacity

Answer 33

This is the capacity for babies to analyze speech for patterns, discriminating words and word sequences for which they will later learn meanings – long before they start to talk around age 12 months
What feature does the brain specialize in that allows babies to learn language?

Question 34

Synapses

Answer 34

TINY SPACES BETWEEN NEURONS – where fibers from different neurons come close together but do not touch

Question 35

Synaptic Pruning

Answer 35

A process where the synaptic connections in the brain that are frequently used are preserved, and those that are not are lost. Until adolescence

Question 36

Cultural and Gender Differences in Development

Answer 36

African Americans tend to be above North American norms and Asian American below the norms for Development.
Girls develop much more quickly than boys.

Question 37

Early Sensory Stimulation (Why is it critical?)

Answer 37

Newborns require sensory stimulation for their senses to develop properly, and even short periods of sensory depreivation will damage their development.’

Question 38

Novelty Preference vs. Familiarity Preference

Answer 38

Relating to Habituation and Recovery, NOVELTY PREFERENCE highlights an infant’s preference for that which is new, or novel, in the short term, a preference necessary to learn new things.
Over long periods of time, once removed from the stimulus that originally caused habituation, babies and adults alike tend to show a preference for what they know. This is because familiarity is comforting over the long term or in times of stress and so this is referred to as the FAMILIARITY PREFERENCE.

Question 39

Motor Skills, Gross and Fine Motor Development

Answer 39

Sitting, Standing, Walking, Talking, etc. All come with a normal timetable and development can often be measured in relation to these milestones.
Gross Motor Development – refers to control over actions that help infants get around – crawling, standing, walking
Fine-Motor Development – refers to smaller movements – grasping, reaching, manipulating the environment

Question 40

Reaching and Grasping (Why so important?)

Answer 40

Reaching and grasping (something that begins in earnest around 3-4 months old as hand-eye coordination reach a level supportive of the behavior) may play the greatest role in the babies cognitive development because it is with this facility that the baby is allowed to interact with its environment in the most detail – feeling things, turning them over, manipulating them, interacting with others, touching, etc

Question 41

Perceptual Narrowing Effect

Answer 41

Perceptual sensitivity that becomes increasingly attuned with age to information most often encounterd.
In other words, when you are really used to something/someone, you are able to use the fine details about it/them to differentiate that thing/person from something/someone different that is very close, but not exactly the same in appearance.
Ex: If you used a specific bat for years and someone switched it for one of the same make and model and similar wear and tear, etc. You would still know the difference.