Infancy

Question 1

Mothers experience

Answer 1

-Maternity blues is a mild depression related to hormonal changes
Postpartum depression impacts 10% of mothers and is more serious, linked to unwanted pregnancies and poor social support

Question 2

Fathers experience

Answer 2

-Report engrossment with the baby and also experience hormonal changes

Question 3

Infant states

Answer 3

• Regular sleep: Baby still, breathing slow, eyes closed (8 hours)
• Irregular sleep: baby moves, breathing irregular, eyes closed but REM (8 hours)
• Drowsy: falling asleep or waking up (2 hours)
• Alert (inactive): Baby inactive, eyes open, breathing irregular (2 hours)
• Alert (active): Bursts of activity, eyes open, breathing irregular (2 hours)
• Crying: intense crying with bursts of activity (2 hours)

Question 4

Neonatal reflexes

Answer 4

• Survival reflexes: uninhibited as brain matures
• Primitive reflexes: Inflexible response patterns replaced by voluntary actions after 1 year (sign neurodevelopmental health is on schedule)

Question 5

Sensory stimuli

Answer 5

-Sensation (registering sensory stimuli), perception (basic processing) and cognition (higher order processing)

Question 6

Visual acuity in infancy

Answer 6

• Sight involves several structures, linked to form the visual system
• Analysed using spontaneous visual preference, habituation - novelty and visual evoked potentials

Question 7

Spontaneous visual preference

Answer 7

• Reliable phenomenon e.g. infants prefer patterned stimuli over plain
• Random presentation of lines becoming thinner until they couldn’t be perceived

Question 8

Habituation vs novelty

Answer 8

-Electrodes record activity in areas of the scalp surrounding the visual cortex, reversing black and white patterns evoked activity showing infants detect change

Question 9

Visual evoked potentials

Answer 9

-Electrodes record activity in areas of the scalp surrounding the visual cortex, reversing black and white patterns evoked activity showing infants detect change

Question 10

Infant acuity results

Answer 10

-1 month - 20/600 vision to 6 month - 20/20 vision (matured system)

Question 11

Frantz (1960)

Answer 11

• Measured infants preference for faces by presenting face-like vs non-face-like pictures. Degree of preference is small but significant towards face like pictures
• Youngest = 4 days old suggesting they show very early learning or innate preference

Question 12

Wilcox (1969)

Answer 12

• Images used by Fantz didn’t control for symmetry or contour, Wilcox used a scrambled but symmetrical face and a schematic face
• This found there were no face preference until 4-5 months although recent controlled research suggests a preference for mother’s face develops within a few days from birth (same for her smell and voice)

Question 13

Gibson and Walker (1960)

Answer 13

• Visual cliff demonstrates depth perception and shows fear of heights develops as babies become more mobile
• The more the child learns, the more the environment affords, suggesting the child and the child’s perceptual world grows together

Question 14

First months of life

Answer 14

-Discriminate mother from stranger, some colours, features, depth and 3D objects

Question 15

Learning in infancy

Answer 15

• Infants learn just as well and quickly as adults
• Classical conditioning: Pairing US with food = sucking and can create phobias
• Operant conditioning: infants are very sensitive to consequences of their actions e.g. learn to kick mobile or suck thumb to hear sounds

Question 16

Auditory discrimination

Answer 16

• Sucking on dummy produces a sound which eventually results in habituation, if new sound is introduced and baby discriminates then sucking increases again
• Neonates can discriminate speech from music and some phonemes

Question 17

Auditory preferences

Answer 17

• Sounds have reinforcing properties
• 2 sounds to choose from, 1 after long pause and 1 after short (inner-burst pause)
• New-borns show preference for mother over anyone else, their own language and stories read to them in the womb

Question 18

Taste and smell

Answer 18

• Facial reactions of newborns are similar to adults for tastes and smells
• Lower-brain control as we see the same reactions in acephalic infants
• Quick learning: in their first week of life infants prefer their mothers breast pads