Chapter 4: Physical, Sensory, Perceptual Development in Infancy Flashcards
______ is the developmental period from birth to 2 years old
Infancy
Babies are born with ______, which are involuntary responses that occur in the presence of certain stimuli.
reflexes
This reflex is when a soft touch on her cheek will cause an infant to turn toward the touch and open her mouth in an attempt to suck.
This reflex disappears by 3 months
Rooting reflex
This reflex is when the sole of the foot is stroked, the infant’s toes fan out and up.
This reflex disappears around 12 months
Babinski
This reflex is when a sudden noise or loss of support causes the infant to arch the back and throw the arms and legs out and then bring them back in.
This reflex disappears after 4 or 5 months
Moro
If you do the ____ reflex to Caucasian infants, you notice a lot of crying and agitation
Moro
_____ reflexes such as sucking and rooting help newborns survive.
Adaptive
______ reflexes (Moro/startle, Babinski) are controlled by primitive parts of the brain; these reflexes disappear during the first year of life.
Primitive
3 Reflex functions
- survival
- social
- diagnostic
Reflexes are also used to identify normal _____ activity.
brain
Absence, persistence beyond the normal time for disappearance or the reappearance of the reflex later in life is suggestive of significant _______ problems.
Ex: presence of Babinski after 2 years old indicates damage to the nerve paths connecting the spinal cord and the brain.
neurological
Absence of the Moro reflex at birth or the reappearance after the normal age of disappearance approximately 5 months may suggest damage to the _______
CNS
______ reflex is related to postural control.
-when held upright with the feet just touching a flat surface, they take steps and walk
- Typically disappears around 2-3 months. Will not be seen again until they learn how to walk on their own.
Stepping
Patterns of sleep and wakefulness stabilize with _____
age
Newborns sleep ____% of the time
80
By __ weeks, babies will begin to sleep through the night
8
By ___ months, babies are sleeping 13 hours per day
6
Infants typically move through different states of sleep and wakefulness in the same sequences (3) pattern every 2 hours.
- deep sleep
- lighter sleep
- alert then fussing
____ beliefs play an important role in parents’ responses to infants’ sleep patterns
Cultural
This type of cry signals hunger; rhythmical pattern
basic cry
This type of cry is louder and more intense
anger cry
This type of cry is a very abrupt(rapid) onset
pain cry
cross-cultural studies suggest that _____ increases until 6 weeks of age then tapers off.
crying
Prompt attention to crying in the first ___ months leads to less crying later.
3
____ is an infant behavior pattern of unknown cause, involving intense daily bouts of crying, totalling 3 or more hours a day for several months
Colic
TRUE or FALSE
Shaking baby causes brain damage or death
TRUE
Apart from prenatal development, the greatest degree of physical change is happening in the first __ years of life.
2
At about age ___ for girls and age ____ for boys, toddlers are half as tall as they will be as adults.
2, 2 1/2
Two-year-olds have proportionally much larger heads than ____- have nearly full-sized brains
adults
The _____ and ____, which regulate vital functions, are most fully developed at birth
midbrain and medulla
What is the least developed part of the brain at birth?
cortex
______ is the creation of synapses- is followed by a period of synaptic pruning to make brain more efficient
Synaptogenesis
A one-year-old has denser dendrites and synapses than an adult does, enabling the brain to reorganize neural pathways and connections in response to experience known as ________
However, the on-year-old’s network operates far less efficiently than that of the adult.
neuroplasticity
In myelinization, ____ gradually covers individual axons and electrically insulates them from one another, improving conductivity of the nerve.
Myelin
In infancy, a lot of cognitive changes happen because of ____ and _____ that’s why we’re having these advancements in cognition and efficiency.
synaptogenesis and myelinization
____ is the process of hardening of bones. It begins during prenatal development and continues through puberty. It is required for motor development.
Ossification
Muscle fibers are virtually all present at ____
You are not growing new muscles, you are just increasing them.
birth
Improvements in lung efficiency and increasing strength of _____ muscles provide the two-year-old with greater stamina than that of the newborn.
heart
There is wide variability in the ages at which infants reach developmental milestones, with differences within and between ______ settings.
cultural
This type of motor skill is anything that’s moving you from one place to another. Also called gross motor.
e.g., crawling, walking
Locomotor skills
Examples of this type of motor skill is squat, hold up head, clapping
Non-locomotor skills
This motor skill is also called fine motor skill
e.g., use of hands and fingers
Manipulative skills
_____ children generally achieve gross motor skills earlier but language skills slightly later in comparison to broad Canadian norms.
Indigenous
At this age (in months),
- locomotor skill: stepping reflex
- non-locomotor skills: lifts head slightly; follows slowly moving objects with eyes
- manipulative skills: holds object if placed in hand
1 month
At this age (in months),
- non-locomotor skills: lifts head up to 90-degree angle when lying on stomach
- manipulative skills: begins to swipe at objects in sight
2-3 months
At this age (in months),
- locomotor skills: rolls over; sits with support; moves on hands and knees (“creeps”)
- non-locomotor skills: holds head erect while in sitting position
- manipulative skills: reaches for and grasps objects
4-6 months
At this age (in months),
- locomotor skills: sits without support; crawls
- manipulative skills: transfers objects from one hand to the other
7-9 months
At this age (in months),
- locomotor skills: pulls self up and walks grasping furniture; the walks alone
- non-locomotor skills: squats and stoops; plays patty cake
- manipulative skills: shows some signs of hand preference; grasps a spoon across palm but has poor aim when moving food to mouth.
10-12 months
At this age (in months),
-locomotor skills: walks backward, sideways; runs (14-20 mos)
- non-locomotor skills: rolls ball to adult; claps
- manipulative skills: stacks two blocks; puts objects into small container and dumps them out.
13-18 months
At this age (in months),
- locomotor skills: walks up and down stairs, two feet per step
- non-locomotor skills: jumps with both feet off ground
- manipulative skills: uses spoon to feed self; stacks 4 to 10 blocks.
19-24 months
____ (girls or boys) are ahead during infancy in some aspects of physical maturity. They have slight advantage in manipulative skills.
Girls
____(girls or boys) are typically more active. They have clear preference for rough and tumble play and more aggressive by the end of the second year
Boys
Virtually all children follow the same sequence of motor skill development- cephalocaudal and proximodistal. Developmentally delayed children just do so more _____
slowly
Lower-income families and families in remote areas experience ____ infant mortality rates
higher
Canada’s infant mortality rate has declines from 134 per 1000 live births in 1901 to <___ per 1000 live births in 2007
5
_____ (SIDS) is the sudden and unexpected death of an apparently healthy infant.
Sudden infant death syndrome
SIDS account for ~__% pf all infant deaths in Canada, with 90% of the cases occurring between 28 days and one year of age (over 29% of deaths)
5
SIDS rates for ____ infants are 3 times the national average.
first nation
__% of non-indigenous infants deaths are SIDS
__% of first nations
7, 24
______ is physical stimulation of sense organs
Sensation
____ is what the brain does with sensation information
Perception
What is the problem in studying infant sensory and perceptual capabilities?
Language- infants can’t speak yet so they can’t answer questions.
______ (OKN) is a method of reflex to study infant sensory and perceptual capabilities where it allows you to keep your head in one position.
Optokinetic nystagmus
This is a method in studying infant sensory and perceptual capabilities.
Longer looking times at one picture or object compared to another reveals something about what captures babies’ attention.
Preference technique
Infants like to look at ___ patterns
interesting
If the infant shows a preference, that shows ______
discrimination - shows the infant can discriminate the difference between the two stimuli.
A limitation of the preference technique is when the infant has no _______.
preference.
The infant wouldn’t look at one more than the other.
This is a method in studying infant sensory and perceptual capabilities.
After a diminished rate of responding to a particular stimulus, renewed interest in a novel or slightly different stimulus indicates that the infant perceives the change.
Habituation/Dishabituation
If there’s no ____, then the baby doesn’t see the difference or it’s too fine of a difference for the baby to notice.
dishabituation
What is measured in habituation/dishabituation study?
looking time, heart rate or increase in sucking
In ______ ______, after a learned response is well established, the experimenter can vary the stimulus in some systematic way to see whether the baby still responds
Operant conditioning
______ _______ uses methods such as brain recording and imaging techniques to compare infant brain responses to stimuli to that of older children or adults.
Cognitive Neuroscience
______ ______ refers to how well one can see details at a distance.
This develops rapidly during the first year as a result of synaptogenesis, pruning, and myelination.
Visual acuity
The visual acuity of a newborn is about __ times worse than that of a normal-sighted adult.
40
BY ___ months of age, vision improves to the point where it is only eight times worse than that of a normal-sighted adult.
6
Can infants see near objects clearly?
YES
_____ is the process of following a moving object. This is inefficient but improves rapidly.
Tracking
TRUE or FALSE
Infant’s ability to sense color is almost identical to an adult’s
TRUE
What colors are present in 1 month of age?
red, green, blue
______ can hear nearly as well as adults do
Newborns
Newborns react ____ to each basic taste
differently
Smell is well developed at ____
birth
_____ and _____ are the best developed of all senses
touch and motion
Babies take in a lot of sensory information through grabbing objects and putting them in their _____.
mouth
There are _____ periods of time when an infant or child needs a specific quality of visual stimulation in order to develop normal visual perception.
critical
When early experience is lacking, visual capability fails to develop normally many years later. This is the so-called ________ effect.
sleeper
Depth perception is judged by three types of cues:
- Kinetic cues
- Binocular cues
- Monocular cues
In this cue,
-motion from objects or the eyes
- objects appear to move more when they are near
- used by about 3 months of age
Kinetic cues
In this cue,
- involves both eyes
- the closer the object is, the more the view from the two eyes differs
- information from eye muscles tells about distance
- used beginning at 4 months
Binocular cues
In this cue,
- input from one eye
- interposition: one object is in front of another (means it is closer to us)
- linear perspective: lines get closer together as they get farther away
- used last, perhaps at 5-7 months
Monocular cues
babies initially scan for ______ contrast and attend to motion
light-dark
At ___ months, babies scan entire objects to identify things
2
Caron and Caron (1981) suggest that by 3-4 months babies can find and pay attention to _____.
patterns
Infants clearly prefer _____ faces
attractive
Babies can distinguish sound contrasts in any language, but at ___ months this ability begins to fade. This suggests the role of experience.
6
At ___ month, infants can discriminate between single syllables, such as pa and ba
1
At ____ months, infants can discriminate between two-syllable words, such as bada and baga
6
Babies recognize melody patterns by ___ months
6
Newborns can discriminate mother’s voice from another female, but not ____’s voice from another male.
father
_________ Perception is being able to see, taste, smell, feel, and hear yourself biting into an apple.
- formation of a single perception of a stimulus that is based on information from two or more senses.
- possible as early as 1 month and common by 6 months
Intermodal
______ Transfer is the transfer of information from one sense to another.
Cross-Modal
The ________ approach to perception considers how information that’s collected by various individual sensory systems is integrated and coordinated.
multimodal
In the ______ (nativist) aspect, newborns have very impressive sensory capabilities.
innate
In ______ (empiricist) aspects, some minimum exposure to sensory stimuli is required for normal development.
experiential
In _______ nativism and empiricism, both nature and nurture are involved.
Integrating
Because infants have more unused synapses than adults,
a. they are less sensitive to changes in the environment.
b. they have greater plasticity and can recover from injuries to the brain more easily than adults can.
c. any damage to the infant’s brain through injury or illness is difficult to repair.
d. action potentials are more difficult to generate.
B
Children who have serious physical or mental anomalies
a. move through the various motor milestones in the same sequence as other children, but at a slower pace.
b. develop their motor skills on about the same timetable as other children, but the sequence of these skills is more variable.
c. follow a unique pattern of motor development.
d. follow neither the timetable nor the sequencing of skills that is seen in normally developing children.
A
Why is the process of tracking so important for a very young infant?
a. Very young infants cannot move independently; tracking allows them to keep their eyes on moving objects.
b. Tracking helps infants blink and wink, which keeps their eyes sufficiently moist.
c. The tracking process strengthens an infant’s eye muscles, which in turn improves visual acuity.
d. Improvements in tracking allow infants to see and discriminate among various colours.
A
Which of the following statements about infants’ hearing is true?
a. Infants first begin to hear sounds within a few weeks of birth.
b. The ability to locate sounds is well developed at birth.
c. Compared to adults, newborns cannot hear very well at all.
d. Newborns’ auditory acuity is actually better than their visual acuity.
D
Newborns
a. are insensitive to pain or they couldn’t survive the childbirth process.
b. are born with all of their senses operating at only the most basic level.
c. have senses of touch and motion that are better developed than any of the other senses.
d. are not very sensitive to touches on the abdomen.
C
When an infant habituates, or loses interest in a stimulus that has been presented repeatedly and then shows renewed interest when the stimulus is changed slightly, we can conclude that the infant
a. needs to utilize a different sensory modality to process the information.
b. detects the difference between the original and the changed stimulus.
c. cannot process the sensory input because of its complexity.
d. has experienced sensory fatigue.
B
A technique developed by researchers to study depth perception in infants who are too young to crawl relies upon watching
a. whether infants look away when shown pictures of objects at different distances from them.
b. how often babies blink when they are shown a visual cliff.
c. whether the infants flinch when an object appears to be looming toward them.
d. how long they stare at the edge of objects in their field of vision.
C
Up to about 6 months of age,
a. babies can accurately discriminate all sound contrasts that appear in their own language but not in languages that they do not hear spoken around them.
b. babies are not able to discriminate between speech sounds.
c. babies can discriminate between speech sounds but not as well as adults can.
d. babies can accurately discriminate all sound contrasts that appear in any language, including sounds they do not hear in the language spoken to them.
D
Infants recognize which mouth movements go with certain sounds because they have developed the skill of
a. binocular perception.
b. sensory discrimination.
c. multimodal acuity.
d. intermodal perception.
D
Which is evidence for the empiricist theory of perceptual development?
a. Newborns can distinguish their mother’s face from other women’s faces.
b. Newborns have excellent tactual perception.
c. Newborns respond in unique ways to different tastes.
d. Newborns have adequate visual acuity.
A
The synaptogenesis/pruning cycle increases the _________ of the infant’s brain.
a. complexity
b. efficiency
c. responsiveness
d. plasticity
B
Lisa is concerned about her 9-month-old son, David. Whenever he hears a loud noise, David throws his arms outward and arches his back. What is the best advice you could give Lisa?
a. Lisa should have David examined for a potential neurological problem.
b. Lisa will quickly eliminate this behaviour when she begins to wean David.
c. Lisa should try to keep her home as quiet as possible to encourage development of David’s nervous system.
d. Lisa need not worry because this normal startle reflex will disappear by age 2.
A
Jayla is 5 months old. Her motor skill development would be ahead of schedule if she
a. can pass a ball from her right to left hand and back again.
b. reaches out for her father’s finger when he extends it to her.
c. can hold a small rattle if her mother places it in her hand.
d. is able to lift her head up to look at something while lying on her stomach.
A
Nathan is a newborn. If his mother picks him up promptly when he begins crying,
a. he will cry less later in infancy.
b. he will probably not stop crying.
c. his crying will increase in frequency.
d. she will spoil him.
A
Breastfeeding protects infants from a variety of health problems, but it is unlikely to prevent
a. whooping cough.
b. ear infections.
c. diarrhea.
d. colic
A
Which of the following factors or influences is not associated with sudden infant death syndrome?
a. sleeping on the stomach on a soft surface
b. smoking by the mother during pregnancy or by anyone in the home after the child’s birth
c. a history of physical abuse
d. sleeping with quilts, duvets, pillows, or soft toys that may cover the baby’s head
C
What should parents of a premature or low-birth-weight infant know about the physical development of their child?
a. Premature infants are maturationally younger than their full-term peers, and this comparative lag in development affects the child’s physical capabilities.
b. When considering the corrected age of a premature infant, all of the developmental differences typically disappear.
c. The developmental deficits observed in premature and low-birth-weight infants are often permanent.
d. Recent innovations in the care of premature and low-birth-weight infants suggest that parents should limit the amount of skin-to-skin contact the infant receives in the first few months.
A
At birth, visual acuity is in the range of
a. 20/20 to 20/40.
b. 20/400 to 20/800.
c. the average adult.
d. 20/200 to 20/400.
D
Which of the following visual abilities appears to be almost identical in newborns and adults?
a. visual acuity
b. tracking
c. colour sensation
d. scanning of objects
C
At what age do researchers find the ability to hear in infants?
a. first month of life
b. prenatally
c. first day of life
d. first week of life
B
Which of the following illustrates the concept of habituation?
a. no longer noticing a ticking clock after a few moments of exposure
b. learning how to categorize information into schemes through practice
c. learning habits simply by being exposed to them
d. hearing someone whisper your name across a loud and crowded room
A
Which of the following is not characteristic of infants who experience early visual deprivation (e.g., due to cataracts) that is later corrected?
a. difficulty in distinguishing differences in the spacing of facial features
b. compensating with an improved ability to discriminate among human speech sounds
c. difficulty in identifying faces when head orientation or facial expression changes
d. a tendency to see faces as independent features, which impedes facial recognition
B
Nativists’ arguments are supported by the fact that
a. animals deprived of light show a decrease in perceptual abilities.
b. animals deprived of auditory stimuli have limited auditory perceptual skills.
c. newborns have so many sensory abilities early in life.
d. infants from Iranian orphanages showed delayed development of perceptual skills.
C
