lecture 4 Flashcards
reflexes
Define reflex and what are the types of reflexes seen in infants
- involuntary responses that occur in the presence of a certain stimuli
- rooting: touch of the cheek will cause infant to turn towards the touh and open mouth to suck, disappears by 3 month
- Babinski: sole of the foot is stroked, infant’s toes fan out and up, disappears around 12 months
- Moro: A suddent noise or loss of support causes the infant to arch the back and throw the arms and legs out and then bring them in, disappears after 4 or 5 months
There are cultural difference in the moro reflex: caucasian - flings and cries more whhile Navo flings and cries less
reflexes
define: adaptive and primitive reflex
- adaptive: such as sucking and rooting help newborns survive
- primitive: like Moro, Babinski are controlled by primitive parts of the brain (medulla and midbrain), disappears during first year or life
- ## function is for survival, social and dignostic
- weak or absent adaptive reflexts in neonates suggest that the brain is not functioning properly and that the baby requires assessment
- if primitive reflexts persis past the ages of 6-8 monts, baby may have some kind of neurological problem
Behavioural states: seep and wakefulness
what is the pattern of sleep and at what ages are babies sleeping a certain amount?
- sequence of: deep sleep, lighter sleep; alert then fussingl pattern every two hours
- this stablizes with age
- new borns sleep 80% of time
- week 8 - babies sleep through the night
- 6 motns - babies are sleeping 13hrs per day as day-night time sleep habits are being formed
behavioural states: crying
what are the types of cries and define colic
- basic cry: signals hunger; rhythmical pattern
- anger cry: louder and more intense
- pain cry: very abrupt onset
- crying increases until 6 weeks of age then tapers off
- attention to crying in first 3 months leads to less crying later
- COLIC: an infant behaviour pattern of unknown cause, involving intense daily bouts of crying, totalling 3 or more hours a day for several months
describe the physical changes during infancy
- grow 25-30 centimetres and triple their body weight in the first year
- ~2 for girls and ~21/2 for boys, toddles are half as tall as they will be as adults
- two-yr old have proportionately much larers heads than do adults - have nearly full-sized brains
- proceeds in a cephalocaudal and proximodistal pattern
physical change
describe the changes in the brain and nervous sys
define: synaptogensis, synaptic pruning, neuroplasticity, myelinization
- rapid developmnent during first 2 yrs
- midbrain and medulla which regulate vital functions are most fully developed at birth (ex. breathing, heartbeating, involuntary body functions)
- least develop part is the cortex
- synaptogensis: creating of synapses (making of connections)
- synaptic pruning: removal of unused or unnecessary neural pathways and connections (Use it or lose it)
- neuroplasticity: the ability of the brain to reorganize its neural structures and functioning in response to experiences - this period the child may be most vulnerable to major deficits
- young infant needs sufficient simtulation and order in his environment to maximize the early period of rapid growth and neuroplasticity
Physical change: body systems
describe the changes to body systems
bones, muscles, lungs and heart
bones:
- ossification: the process of hardening bones
- improved coordinations as more bone and more bone density changes
- increases in length of bones underlie increases in height
msucles:
- muscle fibres are all present at birth
- initally small and have a high ratio of water to muscle
- high fat content declines to adult levels by age 1
lungs and heart
- inprovements in lung efficiency and increasing strength of heart muscles provide more stamina
- developments in all are important for motor skills and negotiation of the physocal and social world
physical changes: motor skills
describe the different types of motor skills
- locomotor skills (gross motor) eg. crawling and walking
- non-locomoto skills: eg. squat, hold up head, clapping
- maipulative (fine motor control): eg. use of hands and fingers
- there is wide variability in the ages at which infants reach developmental milestones, with differences within and between cultural settings
- acquisition of motor skills depends on brain development and substantial changes in other body sys
physical changes: gender differences
explain the gender differences in motor skills
- girls: are ahead during infancy in some aspects of phsycial maturity; slight advantage in manipulative skills (fine motor)
- boys: typically more active; preference for rough and tumble play; more aggressive than girls by the end of the second year
what is Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)?
- the suddent and unexpected death of an apparently healthy infant
- account for ~5% of all infant deaths
- cultural differences
- lower risks and not causes
Infant Sensory and Perceptual Capabilities
Explain use of reflexes
Optojinetic nystagmus (OKN)
- tracking with your eyes without moving your head
- testing of visual acuity
- use of moving bars and will get smaller and blurry
- if they stop moving their eyes, they don’t have the visual acuity to differentiate the bars; no longer able to track moving bars
Infant Sensory and Perceptual Capabilities
Explain Prefernce Technique
- longer looking times at one picture or object compared to another reveals something about what captures the babies’ attention
- looking at whats more interesting to a baby
- if baby looks longer they are able to tell them apart, but if they hvae similiar looking time, unable to discriminate the 2
problem: what if the baby has no preference?
Infant Sensory and Perceptual Capabilities
Describe Habituation/ Dishabituation
- after habituation to a response, the dishabituation to a new or slightly different stimulus indicates that the infant percieves the change
idea of looking at increased looking time, if your react more, you are dishabituated to it knowing it’s a difference stimulus
Infant Sensory and Perceptual Capabilities
explain operant conditioning and conitive neruoscience
operant conditioning: after a learned response is well established, stimuli can be manipulated systematicly to see whether the baby still resposes; ex. reinforcement of a ding! and seeing a toy, dong vs ding!; if no response, baby knows sound is different
cognitive neuroscience: methods like brain recording and imaging techniques to compare infant brain responses to stimuli to that of older children or adults
Infant Sensory Capabilites: vision
what is and infant’s vision like?
define visual acuity, tracking, colour vision
- visual acuity: how well one can see details at a distance
- newborn 40 times worse visual acuity
- 6 months, vision is only 8 times worse
- infants can see near objects clearly
- tracking: process of following amoving object, initially inefficient but improves rapidly
- colour vision: red, green and blue present by 1 month
- infant’s ability to sense colour is almost idnetical to an adults
