Infancy

Question 1

In infant motor development, how do newborns develop reflexes and what are the two types?

Answer 1

They are unlearned, involuntary responses to stimuli that are either survival or primitive in reflex type.

Adaptive reflexes - breathing, eye-blinking, sucking.

Primitive reflexes - Babinski reflex (fanning out toes) and grasping reflex. These disappear in early infancy.

Question 2

What are the two trends of motor development and examples of gross and fine motor skills?

Answer 2

Cephalocaudal (head to tail) - control of head before the body
Proximodistal (near to far) - control of body parts that are closer to the centre of the body occurs first; arms before fingers.

Gross - Movement of large muscles; arms, legs and torso

Fine - Movement of small muscles; fingers and toes.

Question 3

What are some physiological techniques used to assess infant perception?

Answer 3

Habituation
Preferential Looking
Evoked Potentials
Operant Conditioning

Question 4

What is habituation, its method and reason for its use?

Answer 4

The process of learning to be bored with a stimulus.

Method: Repeated presentation of a single visual stimulus makes an infant bored. A new stimulus is presented and the infant regains interest. Thus, the infant has discriminated between the two stimulus.

It tests for discrimination of stimuli through the senses.

Question 5

When assessing infants abilities, what is the method of preferential looking?

Answer 5

Present an infant with two stimuli at the same time and measure the length of time the infant spends looking at each. A preference for one over the other indicates that the infant discriminates between the two stimuli.

Question 6

Using EEG to look at cortical activity in an infant’s brain, what is evoked potentials?

Answer 6

It assesses how an infants brain responds to stimulation by measuring its electrical conductivity.

Question 7

When assessing an infant’s abilities, how is operant conditioning used?

Answer 7

Infants can learn to respond to a stimulus (to suck faster or slower or to turn their head) if they are reinforced for the response. This helps tease out the perceptual influences of infants.

Question 8

What is the ability of an infant’s vision?

Answer 8

At birth, infants have vision, but lack acuity. They can see more clearly at about 20-25cm, objects at 6 meters are as distinct at 180 metres for adults. This improves steadily during infancy.

Question 9

What are infants’ visual preferences?

Answer 9

They are attracted to patterns that have light-dark transitions, or contours.

Attracted to displays that are dynamic rather than static.

Question 10

Around 2 - 3 months a breakthrough begins to occur in the perception of forms, what are they at 1 and 2 months, what happens in visual scanning?

Answer 10

1 month: Focus on outer contours of forms such as faces (a person’s chin, hairline, top of the head) - visual scanning begins at the chin then moves to the eyes then the top of the head.

2 months: infants begin to explore the interiors of figures thoroughly (facial features) visual scanning is more orientated towards the eyes and inner facial features.

Question 11

In infant depth perception, what is the visual cliff experiment and at what age does depth perception change?

Answer 11

The visual cliff experiment sets up a perspex illusion where one-half of a checkerboard has a clear drop-off that infants can crawl over. At 2 months, the drop-off is perceived but there is no fear - indicative of a lowered heart rate meaning curiosity. At 6 - 7 months, the ages they are able to move or crawl independently they develop depth perception and do not move onto the glass.

Question 12

What are the basic capacities of hearing that infants develop at birth?

Answer 12

Hear better than they can see
Can localise sound
Can be startled by loud noises
Can turn toward soft sounds
Prefer relatively complex auditory stimuli
Can discriminate among sounds that differ in loudness, duration, direction and frequency/pitch

Question 13

In early development, what experiences are vital in determining the organisation of the developing brain?

Answer 13

The visual system requires stimulation early in life to develop normally - early visual deficits (i.e. congenital cataracts) can affect later visual perception.

Exposure to auditory stimulation affects the architecture of the developing brain and influences auditory perception skills.

For this to affect development, it needs to be a massive lack of input.

Question 14

In Infant cognition, what is Piaget’s sensorimotor stage?

Answer 14

The world is understood through the senses and actions. The dominant cognitive structures are the behavioural scenes that develop through the coordination of sensory information and motor responses. Piaget said that there are major limitations that infants have, meaning infants understand their world through sensors and movement.

Question 15

What is reflexive activity in the substage of sensorimotor?

Answer 15

Reflexive activity (birth - 1 month) - Active exercise and refinement of inborn reflexes

Question 16

In the sensorimotor period, what is the development of object permanence and what characteristic errors are made at different ages?

Answer 16

The understanding that objects continue to exist when they are not visible.

4-8 months: “out of sight out of mind”

8-12 months: Make the A-not-B error “tendency to look for an object where it has been repeatedly found, rather than in a new location”

1 year: A-not-B error is overcome, but continued trouble with visual displacement.

18 months: object permanence is mastered.

Question 17

When critiquing Piaget’s theory, what are some other reasons why object permanence may not be present?

Answer 17

Visual acuity - they cannot see the toy
Lost interest in the toy
Reduced attention span
Undeveloped memory
Reduced motor control that could not specify the location of the toy

Question 18

In order to test Piaget’s theory and therefore limitations, what experiment did Baillargeon use to test object permanence, and what are the findings?

Answer 18

It utilised habituation paradigms. A car rolled down a track obscured by a screen. Possible test event: A toy mouse was placed behind the track, the screen came down and the car rolled- an infant doesn’t care if this works. Impossible event: The mouse was placed on the track and secretly removed, and the car rolled down as if through the mouse- this was interesting to the infants. The only way this is interesting is if the child has object permanence.

Question 19

In psychosocial development, what emotions increase in complexity as an infant gets older, what are they and at what ages?

Answer 19

Earliest emotion - crying (hunger, anger, pain, fussiness)

Other emotions
Joy and laughter, 3-4 months
Wariness, 3-4 months
Surprise, 4 months
Fear, 5 - 8 months

More complex emotions in toddlerhood, these emotions develop in complexity when toddlers begin to understand their sense-of-self.

Question 20

How do infants develop an implicit sense of self and how do they discover this?

Answer 20

They develop this through perceptions of their bodies and actions.

In the first 2 or 3 months, infants discover they can cause things to happen.

Question 21

When infants develop a sense of self, what is the concept of joint attention?

Answer 21

After 6 months, infants realise they and other people are separate beings with different perspectives, ones that can be shared. They check with a caregiver figure to see if that person saw what the infant did.

Question 22

In psychosocial development, 18-month-old infants recognise themselves as visually distinct individuals; Lewis and Brooks-Gun (1979) developed the rouge test to understand this, what did the experiment test?

Answer 22

Babies were placed in front of a mirror, the caregiver very subtly put some lipstick or a red mark on the baby’s nose. At around 6 months of age, they didn’t make any attempt to remove the mark on their nose. At 18 months old, they would see the mark and then wipe it off their own nose.

Question 23

In infant psychosocial development, what is attachment and why does it occur?

Answer 23

A strong and enduring bond that develops between an infant and a caregiver during the infant’s first year of life. It is characterised by reciprocal affection, and a shared desire to maintain physical and emotional closeness therefore attachment is mutual.

Question 24

What are the four theoretical perspectives as to why we develop attachments?

Answer 24

Psychoanalytical - I love you because you feed me
Learning - I love you because you are reinforcing
Cognitive - I love you because I know you
Ethological - I love you because I was born to love

Question 25

What is the 2nd substage of sensorimotor activity: Primary circular activity?

Answer 25

Primary circular activity (1 - 4 months) - Repetition of interesting acts centered on the child’s own body (e.g., repeatedly sucking a thumb, kick legs, or blow bubbles)

Question 26

What is the 3rd substage of sensorimotor activity: Secondary circular reactions?

Answer 26

Secondary circular reactions (4 - 8 months) - Repetition of interesting acts on an object

Question 27

What is the 4th substage of sensorimotor activity: Coordination of secondary schemes?

Answer 27

Coordination of secondary schemes (8 - 12 months) - Combination of actions to solve simple problems

Question 28

What is the 5th substage of sensorimotor activity: Tertiary circular reactions?

Answer 28

Tertiary circular reactions (12 - 18 months) - Experimentation to find new ways to solve problems or produce interesting outcomes

Question 29

What is the 6th substage of sensorimotor activity: Beginning of thought?

Answer 29

Beginning of thought (18 - 24 months) - First evidence of insight, solve problems mentally, use symbols to stand for objects and actions, visualise how a stick could be used.