Infancy Flashcards
What vision do babies have at birth
20/500: profound visual impairment.
This is because they can’t adjust their focus - their lenses are fixed and dont change shape hence cant change between near and long
Focal point of babies vision and purpose of it
20cm to allow them to see caregiver
What kind of contact is essential for babies?
Skin to skin contact. This is why ‘kangaroo care’ is used in premature babies to ensure this.
What is biological regularity
Whether the baby sleeps and eats regularly or irregularly.
What is hedonic tone?
State of being e.g. are they happy. When they wake up, are they happy or do they cry.
Babies are 1 of 3 things
40% are easy: biologically regular, happy, positive response to novelty
Small proportion are difficult
Some are Slow-to-warm-up: At first they dont like anything new but then they come around in response to novelty
4 methods of experiments with babies
- Habituation: Repeated stimulation of same form becomes less potent over time; its just boredom.
- Surprise: Expectation has been violated and they stare and open mouth
- High amplitude sucking: Modulation of sucking speed depending on whether they like the stimuli or not
- Preferential looking: How long do babies stare before getting bored.
Nature vs nurture
Nature: provides you with genetic disposition for a type of behaviour
Nurture: Your environment affects the gene expression
By what age do they develop adult vision and depth perception?
8 months
Do babies prefer sweet or bitter?
Sweet - evolutionary so we dont eat poisonous things.
4 kinds of reflexes
Moro: Throws out arms and crosses over arms and legs. If they get dropped or jostled, it breaks fall by throwing arms to protect
Grasping: Touching palm, they grasp with strong grip
Rooting and sucking: Rooting is tickling on cheek, turns head towards stimuli. Sucks anything in its mouth
Stepping: Marching along when feet touch ground
Response to novelty
Present a toy, range of response from interested all the way to negative
When does voluntary movement start?
First 2 to 3 months
What sounds do babies have a preference for?
Human sounds: heartbeats, human voices, mother’s voice
In regards to their smell, what are they sensitive of
The difference between different women’s smell and prefer mothers smell
