Chapter 5 - Physical Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood Flashcards
Growth patterns from 0 - 2 yrs
Height: around 32” at 1 year, 50% growth from birth, and 75% growth around 2 years (36”)
Weight: 5 months, doubled birth weight; 1 year, tripled birth weight; 2 years, quadrupled birth weight
2 different growth patterns
Cephlocaudal trend
proximodistal trend
Cephlocaudal trend
from the Latin for “head to tail”. During the prenatal period, the head develops more rapidly than the lower part of the body
Proximodistal trend
Growth proceeds, literally, from “near to far” - from the center of the body outward
Skeletal age
Best estimate of a child’s physical maturity. A measure of bone development. It is determined by X-raying the long bones of the body to see the extend to which soft, pliable cartilage has hardened into bone. Gradual process that is completed in adolescence. Girls progress faster than boys.
Synaptic pruning
A process that returns neurons not needed at the moment to an uncommitted state so they can support future development. This shows the importance of stimulating babies minds!
Cerebral cortex
Surrounds the rest of the brain, resembling half of a walnut shell. The largest brain structure, accounting for 85% f the brain’s weight and containing the largest number of neurons and synapses. One of the last parts of the brain to stop growing, and therefore sensitive to environmental influences longer than other parts of the brain
Prefrontal cortex
Lying in front of areas controlling body movement, is responsible for thought - in particular, consciousness, inhibition of impulses, integration of information, and use of memory, reasoning, planning, and problem-solving strategies.
Lateralization
The specialization of the two hemispheres (Right and Left)
Left Hemisphere
Better at processing information in sequential, analytic ways. Largely responsible for verbal abilities and positive emotions.
Right Hemisphere
Better at processing information in a holistic, integrative manner, making sense of spatial information and regulating negative emotions
Brain plasticity
A highly plastic cerebral cortex,in which many areas are not yet committed to specific functions, has a high capacity for learning. And if a part of the cortex is damaged, other parts can take over the tasks it would have handled. Is more plastic during first few years of life than it will ever be.
Experience-expectant brain growth
Refers to the young brain’s rapidly developing organization, which depends on ordinary experiences - opportunities to explore the environment, interact with people, and hear language and other sounds.
Experience-dependent brain growth
Occurs throughout our lives. Consists of additional growth and the refinement of established brain structures as a result of specific learning experiences that vary widely across individuals and cultures.
Influences of early physical growth
- Heredity
- Nutrition
- Malnutrition
- Emotional well-being
Marasmus
A wasted condition of the body caused by a diet low in all essential nutrients. It usually appears in the first year or life when a baby’s mother is too malnourished to produce enough breast milk, and bottle feeding is also inadequate.
Kwashiorkor
Caused by an unbalanced diet very low in protein. The disease usually strikes after weaning, between 1 and 3 years of age.
Food insecurity
Uncertain access to enough food for a healthy, active lire. Especially high among single-parent, low-SES families, and low-income ethnic minority families.
Growth-faltering
A term applied to infants whose weight, height, and head circumference are substantially below age-related growth norms and who are withdrawn and apathetic. In as many as half such cases, a disturbed parent-infant relationship contributes to this failure to growth normally.
Learning capacities
- Classical conditioning
- Operant condiitoning
- Habituation
- Imitation
Classical conditioning
A form of learning where a neutral stimulus is paired with a stimulus that leads to a reflexive response. Once the baby’s nervous system makes the connection between the two stimuli, the neutral stimulus produces the behavior by itself. Babies build expectations about stimulus in the environment, but they do not influence the stimuli that occur.
Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS), Unconditioned Response (UCR)
Must consistently produce a reflexive (unconditioned, UCR) response. Example: breastmilk (UCS) results in sucking (UCR)
Conditioned Stimulus (CS), Conditioned Response (CR)
If learning has occurred, the neutral stimulus (Conditioned stimulus) produces a response similar to the reflexive response. The response it elicits is called the Conditioned Response.
Summary:
UCS –> UCR
CS + UCS –> CR
Operant Conditioning
Infants act, or operate, on the environment, and stimuli that follow their behavior change the probability that the behavior will occur again. Involves Reinforcements and punishments.
Reinforcer
A stimulus that increases the occurrence of a response
Punishment
Removing a desirable stimulus or presenting an unpleasant one to decrease the occurrence or a response.
Habituation
Refers to a gradual reduction in the strength of a response due to repetitive stimulation
Recovery
When a new stimulus - a change in the environment - causes responsiveness to return to a high level. Usually following habituation.
Familiarity preference vs. novelty preference
Adults and children tend towards a familiarity preference, recover the familiar stimulus faster than the novel one. (returning somewhere you haven’t been in a while, you often will latch onto the things that are the same - “I remember this was here last time!”)
Imitation
copying the behavior of another person
Mirror neurons
specialized cells identified by scientists in motor areas of the cerebral cortex in primates that may underlie early imitative capacities. They fire identically when a primate hears or sees an action and when it carries out that action on its own.
Dynamic systems theory of motor development
According to this theory, 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.
Prereaching
A newborn’s poorly coordinated swipes toward an object
Ulnar grasp
A clumsy motion in which the young infant’s fingers close against the palm
Pincer grasp
Infants use the thumb and index finger in a well-coordinated pincer grasp
Perceptual Development factors
- Hearing
- Vision
- Object perception
- Intermodal perception
Perceptual Narrowing Effect
Shown in the ability to perceive faces; a perceptual sensitivity that becomes increasingly attuned with age to information most often encountered.
Statistical Learning Capacity
By analyzing the speech stream for patterns, infants acquire a stock of speech structures for which they will later learn meanings, long before they start to talk around 12 months.
Contrast Sensitivity
A principle that explains early pattern preferences. Contrast refers to the difference in the amount of light between adjacent regions in a pattern. If babies are sensitive to the contrast in two or more patterns, they prefer the one with more contrast.
Size constancy
Perception of an object’s size as the same, despite changes in the size of it retinal image
Shape constancy
Perception of an object’s shape as stable, despite changes in the shape projected on the retina.
Intermodal stimulation
Simultaneous input from more than one modality (sensory system)
Intermodal perception
When we make sense of these running streams of light, sound, tactile, odor, and taste information, perceiving them as integrated wholes. (example - we see lips moving and think sound, see a ball and know it is a circle, and know that hitting a table with one’s hand will make a loud, smacking sound)
Amodal Sensory Properties
Information that is not specific to a single modality, but that overlaps two or more sensory systems. Babies perceive input from sensory systems in a unified way by detecting this information.
Differentiation Theory
Proposed by James and Eleanor Gibson, this says that infants actively search for invariant features of the environment - those that remain stable - in a constantly changing perceptual world.
Affordances
The action possibilities that a situation offers an organism with certain motor capabilities. The discovery of these guides perception.
