Chapter 5 Flashcards
At birth, the _____ is nearer to its adult size than any other physical structure
At birth, the BRAIN is nearer to its adult size than any other physical structure
The _______ undergoes especially rapid pruning of synapses during the pre-school and school years.
The Pre-Frontal Cortex undergoes especially rapid pruning of synapses during the pre-school and school years
A baby combined his skill of kicking, rocking on all fours, and reaching in order to crawl: this is an example of _____ .
A baby combined his skill of kicking, rocking on all fours, and reaching in order to crawl: example of dynamic systems of actions
Baby Alfredo looks more intensely at a checkerboard with a large black & white squares rather than one with smaller grey and white squares….
Why?
Contrast sensitivity
Nutrition
- Baby’s brain is developing rapidly
- 25% of infants’ total caloric intake is devoted to growth
- Parents’ faced with decision to bottle or breastfeed
Breastfeeding
77% of women begin breastfeeding after birth, but 1/3 of women stop by 6 months
Why breastfeed? • Better jaw and tooth development • Organic • Norm for infant feeding • Minimizes exposure to foreign protein • Optimal developmental outcomes for child • Provide immunologic benefits
At 6 months, moms often go back to work, which would take it much harder to breastfeed
Cow milk is more sugary
Child Health Benefits of Breastfeeding
Decreased rates of: • Celiac disease • Inflammatory bowel disease • Hypertension • Hypercholesterolemia
Childhood Obesity
One of the most significant childhood health problems in the U.S.
Affects 20% of children in the U.S., with up to 30% classified as overweight for age
Incidence decreased in the breastfed population
Breastfeeding Discussion
The benefits of breastfeeding continue as long as a child is being breastfed.
Some moms breastfeed until they go back to work (6 weeks), while others try to make it to the 6-month marker.
Some moms want to breast feed for a year, and others push on longer than that.
Are chubby babies at risk for later obesity?
Recent research shows an association between rapid weight gain in infancy and later obesity.
• On average, infants consumed 20% and toddlers 30% more calories than they need, while 1⁄4 ate no fruits and 1/3 no vegetables (on an average day)
What can parents do? • Breastfeed • Avoid unhealthy foods • Promote physical exercise • Limit television viewing
Emotional Well-Being
Affection is as vital as food for healthy physical growth.
Growth Faltering applies to infants whose weight, height, and head circumference are substantially below age-related growth norms.
• Infants are withdrawn and apathetic.
• Often a result of disturbed parent–child relationship
• Unhappy marriage or parental psychological disturbance may be at fault.
• May cause lasting cognitive and emotional difficulties
Imitation
Imitation is a powerful method of learning.
It is more difficult to induce in babies 2 to 3 months old than
right after birth.
Andrew Meltzoff: Newborns imitate as much as older children and adults.
Mirror Neurons enable us to observe another person’s behavior while simulating that behavior in our own brain.
Meltzoff’s theory of newborn imitation as a voluntary capacity is controversial.
The Sequence of Motor Development
Gross-motor development includes crawling, standing, walking
Fine-motor development includes reaching and grasping
Gross-motor
Gross-motor development includes crawling, standing, walking
Fine-motor
Fine-motor development includes reaching and grasping
Increasingly complex _____ ___ ______with each skill
systems of ___
Motor Skills as Dynamic Systems
4 factors in each new skill:
- CNS development
- Body’s movement capacity
- Child’s goals
- Environmental supports
Motor Development:
APPLIED
Researchers held sounding toys alternating in front of infants’ hands and feet.
Infants used their feet to explore the toys.
Why do you think researchers saw this pattern?
This is because infants have better motor control of their feet than their hands, because their feet have less range of motion
Cultural Variations in Motor Development
Home environments and infant rearing practices affect motor development.
Some cultures discourage rapid motor progress.
Kipsigis of Kenya and the West Indians of Jamaica teach early motor skills.
Western parents consider crawling and “tummy time” essential, but not all cultures do.
tummy time
Good for developing abdominal muscles, good for their skulls
Good for pre-crawling, etc.
Why “tummy time?”
To keep the baby’s soft skull from flattening in the back
More opportunities to crawl or roll over
Can help baby build stronger muscles
Milestones of Reaching:
• Pincer Grasp
• Ulnar Grasp
• Pre-reaching
Newborns make poorly coordinated swipes called _____
Pre-reaching
The _________ is a clumsy motion in which the young infant’s fingers close against the palm.
Ulnar Grasp
The _________ is when infants use the thumb and index finger in a well- coordinated way.
Pincer Grasp
Developments in Hearing
4–7 months:
Sense of musical phrasing
6–8 months:
Screen out sounds from non-native languages
7–9 months:
Divide the speech stream into word-like units

10 months:
Can detect words that start with weak syllables
Analyzing the Speech Stream
Neural network models emphasize the value of statistical information in language
• What information can be extracted from this?
• Is this sufficient to account for human performance?
• Are humans able to perform this kind of analysis?
• If so, does it contribute to an understanding of the uniquely human ability to learn language?
Statistical Learning
PRE TTY High likelihood
BA BY High likelihood
TTY BA Low likelihood
Continuations within words are systematic
Continuations between words are arbitrary
Saffran, Aslin, & Newport
8-month old infants
Passive exposure to continuous speech (2 mins)
bidakupadotigolabubidaku…
Test (Experiment #2) bidakubidakubidakubidakubidaku… kupadokupadokupadokupadokupado…
Infants listen longer to unfamiliar sequences
Improvements in Vision
Brain development helps infants reach adult levels of vision skills.
2–4 months: Focus and color vision, 20/60
6 months: acuity, scanning, and tracking
6–7 months: Depth perception.
Depth perception coincides with the time they start to crawl
Steps in Pattern Perception
3 weeks: Poor contrast sensitivity Prefer large simple patterns  2 months: Can detect fine-grained detail Prefer complex patterns
4 months:
Can detect patterns even if boundaries are not really present

12 months:
Can detect objects if two-thirds of drawing is missing
Depth Perception
The ability to judge the distance of objects from one another and from ourselves
The Visual Cliff: Infants preferred the apparently shallower side (really, both sides were the same depth)
A parent can give either positive or negative cue (like a smile or frown) to greatly affect the child’s decision whether or not to go the perceived deep way
Even at a very young age, the infant is balancing social/emotional cues with its perception of reality
Perceptual Constancy
perceiving objects as unchanging even as illumination and retinal image change
- color
- shape
- size
Size & Shape Constancy
Learning about perspective!
That the size of an object doesn’t change as the object gets closer or further away, and that the shape of an object doesn’t change even though you look at it from a different angle.
Pattern Perception
Newborns prefer to look at patterned rather than plain stimuli.
Their visual systems are not as sensitive to contrast.
3-week olds: look longest at black & white checker boards with a few large squares
8- to 14- week olds prefer those with many squares
Contrast sensitivity — difference to amount of light between adjacent regions in pattern
Sensitive babies can __________________ ?
Facial Recognition
Newborns prefer geometrical, non- facelike stimuli with more elements in the upper part over stimuli in which more elements are in the lower part.
…and these effects also obtain with “real” faces…
they stare at what looks more like a real face longer than other things
Intermodal Perception
World provides intermodal stimulation: simultaneous input from more than one modality, or sensory system.
(multiple senses)
amodal sensory properties overlaps 2 or more senses, like feeling and seeing a square block
Intermodal perception: making sense of multisensory input as integrated wholes
• Infants can detect amodal sensory properties even as newborns.
• Abilities develop rapidly in the first year.
• Facilitates perception of physical world and understanding of social world
When presented with a male and a female whose mouths are moving at the same time mouthing the same words, but only the audio from the female is played, the infant looks to the female
Differentiation Theory of Infant Perception
Infants actively search for invariant, unchanging features of the environment.
• Borders of stimuli, faces
• They note stable relationships between features.
Perception gets more and more sensitive: infants differentiate (or “break down”)
Acting on the environment helps this process: affordances
affordances are basically action possibilities
