Chapter 4 Flashcards
What is NREM (regular) sleep?
Infant is at full rest and shows little/no body activity. No eye movements, eyelids closed, face relaxed, regular breathing
What is REM (irregular) sleep?
Gentle limb movements, occasional stirring, facial grimacing
Rapid eye movements and irregular breathing
What is drowsiness?
Either falling asleep or waking up
Body is less active than in irregular sleep but more than in regular sleep
Eyes open and close
What is quiet alertness?
The infant’s body is relatively inactive, eyes are open and attentive
What is waking activity and crying?
Bursts of uncoordinated body activity, irregular breathing and crying may occur
What is the sleep/wake pattern of a newborn?
Sleeping about 18hrs per day, awake 3-4hrs
What is the sleep/wake pattern of a 6 months old?
Sleeps 6hrs per night
What is the sleep/wake pattern of a 1yr old?
Sleeps 12hrs per night and naps during the day
What are the possible causes of sudden infant death syndrom?
Relationship with neurons in the brain
Stomach sleeping
How can we reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome?
Avoid fluffy bedding
Place on their backs for sleeping
What is the cephalocaudal trend of body development?
Head develops before body
What is the proximodistal trend of body development?
Body grows from the center outward
What is synaptogenesis?
Proliferation of neural connections
What is myelination?
formatinon of myelin sheaths around neurons
WHat is pruning?
reduction of unused synapses and neurons (from 4-6yrs old)
What is the rooting relfex?
having their cheek stroked = turn head and attempt to suck
What is the sucking reflex?
suck anything close to the mouth
What is the grasping reflex?
bending of the fingers in response to tactile stimulation on the palm
What is the moro relfex?
in response to feeling that they are falling / lose support: they spread out the arms
What is the stepping relfex?
when soles of feet touch a flat surface they will attempt to walk
What is the babinski reflex?
when the sole is tickled, the toes spread out
What is an electroencephalogram?
• Measures electrical activity in the brain
How does an fMRI work to expose cells in the brain?
• Brain molecules excited by magnetic field - then relaxation: signal emitted when relaxed
How does a PET scan work?
• Injected with tracer substance (IV) - active parts of the brain will light up
What is the sensitive period of brain development?
- Stimulation contributes to brain growth
* Period when the brain benefits from stimulation a lot
What is experience-expectant brain growth? Give an example
Brain’s rapidly developing organization which depends on ordinary experiences (stimuli that we are pretty much all exposed to)
Ex: development of primary language by hearing our parents talk
WHat is experience-dependent brain growth? Give an example
Refinement of established brain structures as a result of specific learning experiences that vary widely across individuals and cultures (no sensitive period)
(Specific to individuals and their own life experiences)
Ex: development of a 2nd language (at school or at home; it depends on this person’s life)
What is the influence of genes on physical changes?
- Genes provide boundaries
* If both parents started to speak at 1yr, then its more expected that you also do it at that age
Why is breastfeeding recommended for the 6 first months?
Provides Nutrients, antibodies, mother-child bonding
What is stunting?
not growing normally (short stature caused by malnutrition)
What is habituation in the context of learning? Give an example
gradual reduction in the strength of a response due to stimulation (new toy excitation fades away)
What is recovery in the context of learning? Give an example
once-habituated stimuli can now elicit a response again (ex: peek-a-boo)
What is gross-motor development?
(involves large muscle groups) ex: crawling, walking
What is fine motor development?
(involves finer muscle groups) reaching, grasping
Name 3 factors that influence the development of a child’s motor skills
• Body movement capacity
• Child’s goals
• Environmental support for the skill
All influence the child’s motor development
What is the differences in fine motor skills in the first VS the next 6 months of life?
0-5 months: move the arms as soon as something interesting catches the eye, can grasp objects close to them, but can’t really reach
6-12 months: Can watch and follow objects as well as holding them for longer, can shake objects and release them voluntarily
What is the differences in gross motor skills in the first VS the next 6 months of life?
0-5 months: keeps rolling over from front to back / vice-versa, tries to sit with support
6-12 months: crawl forward on belly, can sit without support, able to take 2-3 steps without help
Go revise the steps of auditory development
x
go revise the steps of visual development
x
What is required for the successful completion of the visual cliff test?
Binocular vision required
Depth perception happens around 8 months
What is Gibson’s differentiation theory about?
Children search for invariant/common features in their environment; and they gradually detect finer and finer features - they can recognize what is familiar and what is not
Active exploration helps to develop the sense of differentiation
What are affordances?
all the possibilities for the infant to explore the environment
What is intermodal perception?
Linking aspects of perception together (ex: voice with face - audio with visual)
What is the 1st stage of Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory? What happens there?
Sensorimotor stage - from birth to 2yrs old
Infants experience the world through senses/actions
Purposeful experimentation
Object permanence is introduced
End of stage = development of language
What is deferred imitation?
Imitating caregivers not simultaneously (ex: little girl imitating mother on the phone)
What is A-not-B error?
will choose cloth A where they last saw the toy even if they saw people put it under the B cloth
What are circular reactions?
Primary: 1-4 months
• Repetitive habits centering about the baby’s body
• Ex: grabbing toes, moving legs, sucking thumb, etc
Secondary: 4-12 months
• Repetitive habits centering on environmental objects
• Ex: grasping toys, reaching for them, shaking toys, etc
Tertiary: 1-2 years
• Repetitive habits centering around exploring objects properties
• Ex: Exploring the object’s properties, more experimenting (see the outcomes of behaviour: spit out food and see where it lands)
What was Bower and Wishart “lights out technique”?
closing the lights and seeing what the child does to find the toy
Demonstrated that infants grasp physical reality before age 1 - contrairly to Piaget’s theory of sensorimotor development
What was Baillargeon’s “violation of expectation paradigm” about? What did it demonstrate?
Children looked at lot more to an impossible event vs a possible (plausible) one: they have an idea of what is possible/not in the physical world
Name 3 milestones of memory development in infants between 5 months and 9 months
Memory: +/- 9 months = remembering events from previous days
Forming categories: +/- 7-9 months = distinguishing between animals and vehicles
Understanding numbers: +/- 5 months = distinguishing between different numbers (mostly with the 2:1 ratio - could differentiate between 4 and 8 but not 4 and 6)
What is Vygotsky’s social development theory about?
emphasis on sociocultural influences on cognitive development - DID NOT agree with Piaget’s theory
What can the Bayley scales assess? What are their limitations?
- Cognitive abilities (ability to engage in play-pretend)
- Language
- Motor (gross and fine scales)
- Social-emotional (ability to engage with others socially, to regulate own emotions, engage in cooperative play)
- Adaptive behaviour (Mix between multiple scales; ability to perform “everyday life skills”)
Those scales cannot predict later intelligence - they are useful to asses current state of development
What is social cognition?
Refers to inferences made about people’s inner feelings and goals based on their actions (these inferences will in turn influence our behaviours)
What happened when 5 months olds kids were shown a video where the dog in the white shirt was nice and the blue shirt one was mean? What does it implies?
- Children chose the white shirt one when given the choice
* They have a sense already of what is good or bad/people’s goals
What is joint attention?
The first sign that a child is getting human interaction (watching the same thing as someone for example)
What is the progressing of joint attention from 2 to 9+ months?
- 1st form: eye contact (2-3 months)
- Intentional joint attention - follow gaze of the parent (+/- 6 months)
- Pointing (8-9 months)
- Gaze checking (9+ months)
What is Noam Chomsky’s view on language?
Nativist theory: there is a biologically-programmed language Acquisition Device
What is BF Skinner view on language?
language is learned by being reinforced
What is the social-interactionist view on language?
○ Language is dependent on the place where a person is reared
○ Interactions between the baby and the caregiver - one encourages the other
Go review slide on language development milestones
x
What is the 1st stage of Erik Erikson’s psychosocial development theory?
Stage 1: Infancy (birth to 1yr) - basic trust vs mistrust
What is attachment?
Powerful bond of love between a caregiver and a child
What is the behaviourist view on attachment (Watson and Skinner)
John B Watson
-Appeared hostile to the idea of attachment
-Crusaded against the dangers of “too much” mother love
B.F. Skinner
-Minimized human attachment need
-Believed “maternal reinforcement” created infant’s need to be close to caregiver
What is ethology? Name one of its founding fathers
study of animal behaviours under natural conditions (exploring adaptive/evolutionary traits) - Konrad Lorenz
What is Lorenz’s discovery with gooselings?
They attach with the first moving thing they see when they are born - its a biologically programmed attachment response (it’s called imprinting)
What was Harry Harlow’s experiment with monkeys? What were the conclusions?
- Isolating babies from mothers at birth and exposed to either a barb wire mother or a cloth covered mother (sort of doll)
- Monkeys preferred the cloth mother - contact comfort important to bonding
What was John Bowlby’s main theory about attachment?
a primary attachment figure is crucial for healthy development (resulted in a change in hospital policies for visits of parents)
What is Bowlby’s evolutionary based theory of attachment?
- 1st year is a critical period when the attachment response is programmed to emerge
- Proximity-seeking behaviour: survival response is activated by threats occurring at any age
Name the 4 stages of the attachment theory
Pre-attachment stage (first 3 months)
• Social smile (smile back at people)
• Does not reflect attachment to a specific person
Attachment in the making stage (3-7 months)
• Transitional period
• Begin to develop a sense of trust to the caregiver
Clear-cut attachment stage (7+ months)
• Needing the primary caregiver close
• Start to understand they are a separate person from caregiver and they need the presence of caregiver
Reciprocal relationship (18-24 months)
• Definitely prefers the caregiver
• Development of language
What are the 4 possible outcomes of the strange situation test by Mary Ainsworth?
Secure, avoidant (ignores caregiver) or resistant (doesn’t stop crying when caregiver arrives)
Disorganized: frightened by their caregiver
Name 3 important concepts influencing the attachment style of a child with its caregiver
- Synchrony: bidirectional relationship
- Caregiver-sensitivity hypothesis: caregiver’s response to baby signals are foundation for secure attachment
- Temperament: inborn style of dealing with the world
Review basic emotions chart
x
When do children begin to acquire a sense of “self”?
Around 1.5-3 years old
Can children recover from deprivation, and is there an age at which help might come too late?
1st year is critical for attachment - by 3 years its almost too late (it wont have as much impact later on if by 3yrs there is no bond)
What is reactive attachment disorder?
extremely unattached or malfunctioning (cannot establish relationships)
What is the 2nd stage of psychosocial development theory? What is it about?
Toddlerhood (1-2 years): autonomy VS Shame and doubt
Not enough experimentation with their own autonomy leads to shame and confusion (do not put too much demands on the child) - has to learn the consequences of their actions and caregiver has to be there to support this exploration
Name a few ways that we can help toddlers
- Respond with sensitivity and support
- Give advance notice of change in activities
- Explain the reasoning behind each behaviour
- Reinforce self-controlled behaviour
- Encourage sustained attention
- Support language development
- Increase rules gradually
What is socialization?
Process by which children are taught to obey the norms of society (right/wrong)
What is the difference between exuberant and shy toddlers in terms of socialization?
- Exuberant, joyful, fearless toddlers are more difficult to socialize
- Shy toddlers tend to withdraw from social interactions
How can we socialize a shy toddler?
- Do not “treat them as glass”
- Be responsive
- Expose them to new situations
How can we socialize an exuberant toddler?
- Foster positive guidance
* Arrange a child’s environment to suit temperamental style
