Chapter 3 Flashcards
Average weight of baby at birth vs. at 24 months
Growth in infancy
At birth: 7 pounds
At 24 months: 28 pounds
Average length of baby at birth vs. at 24 months
Growth in infancy
At birth: 20 inches
At 24 months: 34 inches
Eat and Sleep
Growth in infancy
Babies need to be fed day and night, so the rate of increasing weight in the first weeks of life is high
– Most 1-month-old girls who weigh 10 pounds should be at least 25 pounds by age 2.
– Females weigh less than males on average over their lifespan
Sleep specifics vary because of…
Infant Sleep
biology and the social environment.
How much and how often do newborns sleep?
Infant Sleep
Newborns sleep about 15-17 hours a day, in one- to three-hour segments.
Active sleep
Infant Sleep
Newborns’ sleep is primarily active sleep, or quiet sleep: slow brain waves and slow breathing
– Often dozing, able to awaken if someone rouses them, but also able to go back to sleep quickly if they wake up, cry, and are comforted
REM [rapid eye movement] sleep
Infant Sleep
Newborns have a high proportion of REM sleep, with flickering eyes and rapid brain waves.
Very deep sleep, dreaming
Variation
Infant Sleep
Particularly apparent in the early weeks. As reported by parents, 1 new baby in 20 sleeps 9 hours or fewer per day and 1 in 20 sleeps 19 hours or more.
Where should babies sleep?
Opposing perspectives
Decision to co-sleep or bed-share linked to culture, age of infant, mother’s education level, depressive state, and father involvement.
– U.S. middle class infants sleep separated from parents
– Asian, African, and Latin American infants co-sleep or bedshare.
– Asian and African mothers worry more about separation; European and North American mothers worry more about lack of privacy.
Head-sparing
Brain Development
a biological mechanism that protects the brain when
malnutrition disrupts body growth.
The brain is the last part of the body to be damaged by malnutrition.
Brain Development
Prenatal and postnatal brain growth (measured by head circumference) is crucial for later cognition.
Neuron
Brain Basics
NERVE CELLS in the central nervous system (CNS), especially in the brain
Axon
Brain Basics
Fiber that extends from a neuron and TRANSMITS electrochemical impulses from that neuron to the dendrites of other neurons.
Cortex
Brain Basics
Outer layers of the brain where most thinking, feeling, and sensing occurs.
Prefrontal cortex
Brain Basics
Area of the cortex at the very front of the brain that specializes in anticipation, planning, and impulse control.
Dendrite
Brain Development
Fiber that extends from a neuron and RECEIVES
electrochemical impulses transmitted from other neurons via their axons.
Synapses
Brain Development
Intersection between the axon of one neuron and the
dendrites of other neurons.
Neurotransmitter
Brain Development
Brain chemical that carries information from the axon of a sending neuron to the dendrites of a receiving neuron.
Connecting
neurons grow axons and dendrites to each other’s neurons.
Throughout life, those fragile dendrites will grow or disappear as the person continues thinking.
Experience, expansion and pruning
Brain Development
• Specifics of brain structure and growth depend on genes and maturation but even more on experience.
– Expansion and pruning of dendrites occur for every aspect of early experience.
Transient exuberance
Brain Development
The great but temporary increase in the number of dendrites that develop in an infant’s brain during the first two years of life.
– exuberant because growth is rapid; transient because some growth is temporary
Pruning and sculpting
Brain Development
Pruning - When applied to brain development, the process by which unused connections in the brain atrophy and die.
Unused dendrites whither (through pruning) to allow space between neurons in the brain, allowing more synapses and thus more complex thinking (sculpting)
Experience-expectant
Brain Development
Brain functions that require certain basic common experiences (which an infant can be expected to have) in order to develop normally.
Experience-dependent
Brain Development
Brain functions that depend on particular, variable experiences and therefore may or may not develop in a particular person.
EEG research
- Research has found that babies respond to language long before they speak.
- Experiences of all sorts connect neurons and grow dendrites.
Infants need stimulation
Implications for Caregivers
• Playing, allowing varied sensations, and encouraging movement
– Patterns, not moments, of neglect or maltreatment harm the brain.
Shaken baby syndrome
Implications for Caregivers
• A life-threatening injury that occurs when an infant is forcefully shaken back and forth.
– This motion ruptures blood vessels in the brain and breaks neural connections.
Sensory development
Moving and Perceiving
Is the gradual process by which an infant’s senses begin to grow. These senses are sight, taste, touch, smell and hearing. Sensory development begins during GESTATION
• Typically precedes intellectual and motor development yet are present in utero
• At birth, infants possess functional sensory systems;
– vision is somewhat organized
– audition (hearing), olfaction (smell), and touch are fairly mature
Sensation
Moving and Perceiving
Response of a sensory system (eyes, ears, skin, tongue, nose) when it detects a STIMULUS
– A physical feeling or perception resulting from something that happens to or comes into contact with the body.
Perception follows sensation
Moving and Perceiving
The mental processing of sensory information when the brain interprets a sensation (from stimulus)
• Infants’ brains are especially attuned to their own repeated social experiences, and perception occurs
• Infant brain and auditory capacity to hear sounds in the usual speech range
• The parts of the cortex dedicated to the senses develop rapidly.
Sense of hearing
Moving and Perceiving: Hearing
- Develops during the LAST TRIMESTER of pregnancy
- Most advanced of the newborn’s senses
- Speech perception by four months after birth
What area of the brain produces speech?
Moving and Perceiving: Hearing
BROCA’S AREA (like “boca”)
• Note that a person could hear but not understand OR understand but not speak if Broca’s area is damaged.
Damage of Wernicke’s area is concerned with the…
Moving and Perceiving: Hearing
COMPREHENSION of language
Damage causes Wernicke’s aphasia, characterized by superficially fluent, grammatical speech but an inability to use or understand more than the most basic nouns and verbs.
Sense of Sight (Vision)
Moving and Perceiving: Seeing
- Least mature sense at birth
- Newborns focus between four and 30 inches away
- Experience and maturation of visual cortex improve shape recognition, visual scanning, and details
Depth perception
Moving and Perceiving: Seeing
Usually present by 3 months, but understanding depth requires experience
Sense of smell and taste
Moving and Perceiving: Smelling and Tasting
• Smell and taste function at birth and rapidly adapt to the social world
– Newborns can recognize the smell of their own amniotic fluid
• Newborns are primed to learn very quickly about the smells associated with their mothers
Touch
Moving and Perceiving: Touch and Pain
- Sense of touch is acute in infants
- Although all newborns respond to being securely held, soon they prefer specific touches
- Some touches may be experience-expectant for normal growth
Pain and temperature
Moving and Perceiving: Touch and Pain
- Pain and temperature are often connected to touch.
- Some people assume that even the fetus can feel pain.
- Others say that the sense of pain does not mature until months or years later.
Reflexes Necessary for Survival
Reflexes that…
• Maintain oxygen supply, e.g. breathing reflex
• Maintain constant body temperature, e.g. shivering
• Manage feeding, e.g. rooting
Define “reflexes”
Reflexes
Involuntary response to particular stimuli.
Reflexes become skills if they are practiced and encouraged.
Babinski reflex
Reflexes
a reflex in which the big toe remains extended when the sole of the foot is stimulated
Stepping reflex
Reflexes
baby appears to take steps when held upright with their feet touching a solid surface
Swimming reflex
Reflexes
when infant is placed face down in a pool of water, will begin to paddle and kick in a swimming motion.
– They are NOT swimming and cannot swim alone. The reflex disappears between 4–6 months.
Palmar grasping reflex
Reflexes
Stroking the palm of a baby’s hand causes the baby to close their fingers in a grasp. The grasp reflex lasts until about 5 to 6 months of age.
Moro reflex
‘STARTLE reflex’, occurs when baby is startled by a loud sound, movement or change in position. Baby throws back their head, extends out the arms and legs, cries, then pulls the arms and legs back in. Lasts about 5 to 6 months.
Gross motor skills
Moving and Perceiving: Gross and Fine Motor Skills
Physical abilities involving large body movements, such as walking and jumping. (The word gross here means “big.”)
– Every basic motor skill develops over the first two years of life.
Fine motor skills
Moving and Perceiving: Gross and Fine Motor Skills
(or DEXTERITY) Physical abilities involving small body movements, especially of the hands and fingers, such as drawing and picking up a coin. (The word fine here means “small.”)
– Shaped by culture and opportunity (writing, painting, carving, etc.)
Cephalocaudal
Moving and Perceiving: Motor Skills
(head-down or head-to-toe) principle refers to the general pattern of development seen in the earliest years ranging from infancy into toddlerhood.
Proximodistal development
Moving and Perceiving: Motor Skills
(center-out) direction - is a pattern of growth observed in very young children where parts of the body closest to the trunk develop motor skills before parts of the body further away.
Simply stated, gross motor skills like waving an arm develop before fine motor skills like writing legibly.
Three interacting elements underlying motor skills
Combining Senses and Skills
- Muscle strength
- Brain maturation
- Practice
The entire package of sensations and motor skills furthers three goals
(Combining Senses and Skills)
- Social interaction
- Comfort
- Learning
Binocular Vision
Moving and Perceiving: Seeing
Vision using two eyes with overlapping fields of view, allowing good perception of depth
– Develops between 2 and 4 months
Most common way for babies to die
Accidents
• United Nations estimates that more than 8 billion children were born between 1950 and 2015 and that almost 1 billion of them died before age 5.
What are the two main reasons the world’s fertility rate in 2010 was half the 1950 rate
- Infant survival
* Maternal education
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and risks
– An infant’s unexpected, sudden death; when a seemingly healthy baby, usually between 2 and 6 months old, stops breathing and dies while asleep.
• Back to Sleep program cut SIDS rate dramatically
Other Risks
• Low birthweight
• Exposure to cigarette smoke
• Bed-sharing
Immunization
Surviving in Good Health
the process whereby a person is made immune or
resistant to an infectious disease, typically by the
administration of a vaccine.
Vaccines
Surviving in Good Health
Stimulate or prime the body’s own immune system to resist and protect against subsequent infection or disease.
• Contributes to reduced mortality and population growth
Vaccine Successes
Surviving in Good Health
– Smallpox
– Polio
– Measles
Immunizations are unsafe for who? Problems?
Surviving in Good Health
- Embryos/rubella
- Newborns
- People with compromised immune systems; herd immunity
Problems
• Reactions
• Potential side effects
• Parental refusal; myths
Adequate nutrition: breastfeeding
Surviving in Good Health
- For every infant disease (including SIDS), breast-feeding 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.
- As the infant gets older, the composition of breast milk adjusts to the baby’s changing nutritional needs.
Protein-calorie malnutrition
Surviving in Good Health
Condition in which a person does not consume sufficient food of any kind that can result in several illnesses, severe weight loss, and even death
Stunting
Surviving in Good Health
Failure of children to grow to a normal HEIGHT for their age due to severe and chronic malnutrition
Wasting
Surviving in Good Health
Tendency for children to be severely UNDERWEIGHT for their age as a result of malnutrition
Effects of Chronic Malnutrition
• Brains may not develop normally
• Protection against common diseases may be reduced.
• Some diseases result directly from malnutrition
– Marasmus
– Kwashiorkor
Marasmus
Effects of Chronic Malnutrition
A disease of severe protein-calorie malnutrition during early infancy, in which growth stops, body tissues waste away, and the infant
eventually dies.
Kwashiorkor
Effects of Chronic Malnutrition
A disease of chronic malnutrition, in which a protein-calorie deficiency makes a child more vulnerable to other diseases, such as measles, diarrhea, and influenza.
Assimilation
Infant Cognition: Piaget
Type of adaptation in which new experiences are interpreted to fit into, or assimilate with, old ideas.
Accommodation
Infant Cognition: Piaget
Type of adaptation in which old ideas are restructured to
include, or accommodate, new experiences.
Sensorimotor intelligence (Infant Cognition: Piaget)
Piaget’s term for the way infants think—by using their senses and motor skills—during the first period of cognitive development.
Six stages of sensorimotor intelligence
Infant Cognition: Piaget
– Reflexes
– First acquired adaptations: Accommodation and
coordination of reflexes
– Making interesting sights last
– New adaptations and anticipation: Becoming more
deliberate and purposeful
– New means through active experimentations
– New means through mental combinations: Thinking before doing, new ways of achieving a goal without resorting to trial and error
Object permanence
Piaget Evaluated
the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be observed (seen, heard, touched, smelled or sensed in any way)
Deferred imitation
Piaget Evaluated
a sequence in which an infant first perceives something done by someone else and then performs the same action hours or even days later
Information-processing theory
Infant Cognition
A perspective that compares human thinking processes to computer analysis of data, including sensory input,
connections, stored memories, and output.
- Modeled on computer functioning
- Involves step-by-step description of the mechanisms of thought
- Adds insight to understanding of cognition at every age
- Has overturned some of Piaget’s conclusions—including the concept of object permanence
Language: The Universal Sequence
- Listening and responding
- Babbling
- First words
- Verbs and nouns
- Putting words together
Child-directed speech
Language: The Universal Sequence
High-pitched, simplified, and repetitive way adults speak to infants
Babbling
Language: The Universal Sequence
- Extended repetition of certain syllables, such as ba-ba-ba, that begins when babies are between 6 and 9 months old
- Gradual imitation of accents, cadence, consonants, and gestures in the environment
First words
Language: The Universal Sequence
- At about 1 year, babies speak a few words.
* Spoken vocabulary increases gradually (about one or two new words a week).
Holophrase
Language: The Universal Sequence
– Single word used to express a complete, meaningful thought
– Infants differ in use of various parts of speech, depending on the language they are learning (e.g., more nouns and fewer verbs).
Naming explosion
Language: The Universal Sequence
A sudden increase in an infant’s vocabulary, especially in the number of nouns, that begins at about 18 months of age.
– Once vocabulary reaches about 50 expressed words, it builds rapidly, at a rate of 50 to 100 words per month
– 21-month-olds say twice as many words as 18-month-olds.
– Ratio of nouns to verbs vary from place to place.
Putting words together
Language: The Universal Sequence
• Grammar includes all the devices by which words
communicate meaning.
– Sequence, prefixes, suffixes, intonation, volume, verb forms, pronouns, negations, prepositions, and articles
• Proficiency in grammar correlates with sentence length MLU
Mean length of uIerance (MLU)
Language: The Universal Sequence
The average number of meaningful sound combination in a typical sentence (called utterance, because children may not use conventional words). MLU is often used to indicate a child’s language development.
Percentile
A point on a ranking scale of 0 to 100. The 50th percentile is the midpoint; half the people in the population being studied rank higher and half rank lower.
Co-sleeping
A custom in which parents and their children (usually infants) sleep together in the SAME ROOM.
Bed sharing
When two or more people sleep in the same bed.
Motor skills
The learned abilities to move some part of the body, in actions ranging from a large leap to a flicker of the eyelid.
Little Scientist
The stage-five toddler (age 12 to 18 months) who experiments without imagining the consequences, using trial and error in active and creative exploration.
