Childbirth and Infancy Flashcards
What are some of the benefits of a normal childbirth/delivery?
- Stimulates oxytocin which stimulates maternal behavior
- Better immune system for baby
- Less likely to have allergies
What are some of the preparations in natural childbirth programs?
- Parent/birthing classes
- Relaxation and Breathing Techniques
- Assistance of a doctor and doula
The mechanical monitoring of fetal heartbeat during delivery
Electronic fetal monitoring
True or False: There is no risk in using medication during delivery
False, there is a risk to the baby as the medication will pass thru the place while the baby is still in the womb
What are some of the reasons for a Cesarean delivery to be needed?
- Serious maternal infection
- Breech birth
- Slow progress of labor
- Rh incompatibility
Babies that are less than 4 weeks old are called ____?
Neonates
A birthing complication wherein the infant is born smaller than average or prematurely, making them weigh less than 2500g
Low Birth Weight (LBW)
What are the possible outcomes of a LBW?
- Compromised immune system
- Death
- Eroding of coping capacities due to medical procedures
- High blood pressure
- Adult on set diabetes
A birthing complication wherein the infant is not born even 2 weeks after the due date
Postmature Birth
Around how many hours do newborns sleep in a day?
16-18 hrs
This is an infant’s primary way of communicating that they need food, comfort or stimulation
Crying
How does one soothe a crying baby?
- Rock, walk, swing
- Massage
- Play soft rhythmic or soothing sounds
- Pacifier or swaddle
What are the implications of the cephalocaudal principle of physical development?
- Head grows smaller while legs grow longer
- Upper body parts are used before lower body
- Head and hands are developed and controlled before legs or feet
What are the implications of the proximodistal principle of physical development?
- Arms and legs grow before hands or feet
- Use of body parts closer to the body before outer ones
True or False: There should be a steady increasing trajectory of physical growth as a baby grows into a toddler
True
What is the recommended infant diet?
Exclusive breastfeeding up to 6 months for optimal nutrition intake
Why is the first 1000 days of a child critical to their physical and cognitive development?
- Time of rapid physical growth and brain development
- Susceptibility to infections
- Still dependent on others to take care of needs
When are humans most plastic?
Early life
What portions of the brain grow the fastest in the first year of life?
Spinal cord, brain stem, cerebellum
At what week do neurons of infants usually develop in the cortex? What is its main function?
20 weeks. To send and receive information
This type of reflexes are instinctive needs for survival and protection, and to connect with the caregiver
Primitive Reflexes (sucking, rooting, grasping etc.)
A reflex that is a reaction to a change in position or balance
Postural Reflexes (parachuting)
Reflexes that able the infant to move from one place to another
Locomotor Reflexes
This is the first sensory capacity to develop after birth
Touch and Pain
These senses are developed in the womb and are based on the mother’s consumption
Smell and Taste
This is a key sensory capacity that develops rapidly after birth and allows an infant language development
Hearing
True or False: It takes a few months for infants to recognize words
False, it only takes them a few days after birth
This is the least developed sense after birth because of its lack of stimuli in the womb and underdeveloped organ
Sight
True or False: Infants are visually drawn to color and moving targets and have an affinity for faces
True
Type of motor physical skills that use large muscles and movements
Gross motor skills (running, jumping, posture etc.)
Type of motor physical skills that use small muscles and hand-eye coordination
Fine motor skills (writing, coloring, stacking blocks etc.)
This is an infant skill where they look to caregivers to tell whether a situation is secure or frightening
Social referencing
Infants’ ability to perceive objects and surfaces three-dimensionally
Depth perception
Infants’ ability to acquire information about properties of objects such as size, height, weight by handling them
Haptic perception
According to Thelen’s Dynamic Systems Theory, how does motor development occur?
Through a blend of individual, environmental and task factors, motor development changes over time
How does culture influence motor development?
Some cultures encourage fast and early development such as in Africa and India where children do bouncing and stepping exercises, while in Ache, Paraguay for example, infants are restrained from crawling to keep them safe from the hazards of nomadic life
Briefly explain the Behaviorist Approach in Infant Development
Concerned with the basic mechanics of learning
– how behavior changes in response to
experience
Classical conditioning
* A child learns to make a reflex (involuntary)
response to a stimulus that originally bring
about the response.
* Enable infants to anticipate an event before
it happens
* Classically conditioned behaviors become
extinct If not repeated
Operant conditioning
* Focuses on the consequences of behaviors and the likelihood of their repeat
* A babbling baby may continue to babble as
they are given attention (reinforced)
Briefly explain Infant Memory
Infant memory is highly context-specific and they can only recall certain objects or people in the original place that they encountered them or that piece of information.
How are infants tested and measured in the Psychometric Approach?
Since they cannot tell what they know or effectively communicate, infants are tested based on their behavior and in reference to what is the norm, or what a majority of other babies at that age can do.
How can one foster cognitive competence in infants and toddlers?
- Provision of memory stimulation in early months (avoid overstimulation)
- Create an environment that fosters learning
- Respond to babies’ signals (building trust)
- Give babies the power to effect changes (use toys and everyday things)
- Give babies freedom to explore (baby-proof environment)
- Talk to babies (language development)
- Enter into whatever they are interested in
- Arrange opportunities to learn basic skills (label, compare, categorize, etc.)
- Applaud new skills and help babies practice and expand them (do not hover)
- Read to babies in a warm, caring atmosphere from an early age (preliteracy skills)
- Use punishment sparingly (normal trial-and-error exploration is not punished)
Briefly explain the Piagetian Approach in Infant Development
Sensorimotor stage
* First stage of Piaget’s cognitive development
stages
* Infants learn through their senses and motor activity
What is Habituation and Dishabituation
Habituation is when the familiarity of an infant causes a reduction or slowing of their response to the stimuli. While Dishabituation is the increased responsiveness to new stimuli.
This is an infant’s ability to use information from one sense to guide another.
Cross-model Transfer
How does Piaget’s opinion on sensory connection oppose the Information Processing Approach?
Piaget says that senses are not connected at birth but gradually relate as one grows, while the Information Processing Approach says that there is already a basic form of representational abilities at birth.
What is deferred imitation according to Piaget?
Infants are able to reproduce a behavior based on stored symbols in their heads as proof of their capacity to mentally represent observations
This is a key development under the 6th Sensorimotor substage where infants are able to represent reality in their mind using symbols
Symbolic Development
What is Causality as a key point of development?
It is when infants at around 4-5 months begin to understand simple causality, how one event causes another. As they age, they accumulate more information as to how objects behave and cause certain effects.
True or False: Infant memory is quite short term due to the needed brain structures not yet fully developed
True
What is the difference between implicit and explicit long-term memory?
Implicit memory is the memory of general concepts, skills and habits and unconscious recall while explicit memory is the specific pieces of information and intentional recall such as names, events, places.
What does Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory say about the role of guardians in cognitive development?
Guided participation
* Adult participation in a child’s activity helps to structure it and bring the child’s understanding of it closer to the adult’s
* Often occurs in shared play and everyday activities
True or False: Adolescence is a sensitive period for language development
False, it is childhood that is a most sensitive period for language development
What are some forms of pre-linguistic speech?
- Crying: first way of communication
- Cooing: squealing, gurgling, and making vowel sounds
- Babbling: repeating consonant-vowel strings (ma-ma-ma, ba-ba-ba)
- Accidental imitation: reinforced by parents and encourage to produce sounds
- Deliberate imitation: at about 9 or 10 months, deliberate imitations are done without an understanding ofthe meaning
This is a language error where children apply words to a wider collection of events than is appropriate
Overextension
What does the Nativist Perspective of Language Development say?
Believes that all children has a
language acquisition device
(LAD) – an innate system that
contains a universal grammar,
or set of rules common to all
languages; biologically based
language program
What does the Interactionist Perspective of Language Development say?
Interactions between inner
capacities and environmental
influences are emphasized.
Children’s social skills and
language experiences are
centrally involved. Evocative correlation
True or False: Boys develop language faster than girls
False, girls develop language faster due to quicker physical maturation
What is the difference between referential and expressive styles of language learning?
Referential style is more on building of vocabulary, consisting of words that refer to objects. Expressive style is composed mostly of social formulas and pronouns.
What is infant/child-directed speech?
A form of communication made of short sentences, high-pitched and exaggerated expression, clear pronounciation, clear gestures to support meaning, and repetition of words in a variety of contexts. Built on turn-taking and caregivers’ sensitivity to toddler’s preverbal gestures.
These are subjective reactions that are associated with physiological and behavioral changes.
Emotions
How do infants express emotions?
They can cry, laugh and smile based on the responses of people around them.
What is the difference between self-conscious and sef-evaluative emotions?
Self-conscious emotions arise after the development of self-awareness, cognitive
understanding that they have a recognizable identity. Self-evaluative emotions are demonstrated when society’s accepted standards become a part of their evaluation of their thoughts, behaviors, etc.,
What is the importance of smiling and laughing in infants?
It is their primary showing of a participatory relationship with their parents. Often smiling and laughing between parents and children can secure attachment. It i.s a signal of high positive emotionality
What composes a personality?
Attitude, behaviors, temperament, emotions, thoughts
It is the characteristic disposition or style of
approaching and reacting to situations
Temperament
What are the 3 temperamental patterns in children?
“Easy” children: generally happy temperament, regular biological rhythms, and a readiness to accept new experiences
“Difficult (challenging)” children: irritable temperament, irregular biological rhythms, and intense emotional responses
“Slow-to-warm-up” children: temperament is generally mild but who are hesitant about accepting new experiences
This the appropriateness of environmental demands to a child’s temperament
Goodness of fit
This is how boldly or cautiously a child approaches unfamiliar objects or situations
Behavioral Inhibition (Low or High)
If an infant encounters many issues, what value will they lose according to Erikson’s Psychosocial stages?
Trust
True or False: An infant only must develop trust in their first years to be more sociable
False, they also must develop some mistrust in order to protect themselves
This value is reciprocal and should be developed by infants and their caregivers where both contribute to the relationship
Attachment
Predominant trust: ____ attachment
Predominant mistrust: ____ attachment
Secure, Insecure
According to Bowlby’s theory of attachment, why do infants become attached to their caregivers?
This attachment is a response that promotes survival and is a foundation they use in the absence of the caregiver.
What are some factors that affect attachment security?
- Early Availability of Consistent Caregiver
- Infant Characteristics
- Family Circumstances
- Quality of Caregiving
This is one’s sense of self, a descriptive and evaluative perspective of one’s abilities and traits
Self-concept
This is the conscious knowledge of oneself as a distinct, identifiable being
Self-awareness
In toddlerhood, what are the two values one must develop in balance according to Erikson?
Autonomy & Shame and Doubt
What are the negative tendencies of an over-autonomous child?
Resistance to authority, disregard of rules
This is the process by which children accept societal standards and conduct as their own
Internalization
Parents’ goal is to develop ____, internal standards of behavior, which usually control
one’s conduct and produce emotional discomfort when violated.
Conscience
What are the socialization opportunities children have with their siblings?
- Learning to negotiate disagreements
- Prosocial and play-oriented activities
- Sibling disputes and settlements over shared property
- Younger siblings tend to imitate, the older initiate
