Four principles of growth
Cephalocaudal, Proximodistal, Principle of hierarchial integration, Principle of the independence of systems.
Cephalocaudal principle
States that growth follows a direction and pattern that beings with the head and upper body parts and then proceeds to the rest of the body.
Proximodistal principle
States that development proceeds from the center of the body outward. The trunk of the body grows before the arms and legs.
Principle of hierarchial integration
States that simple skills typically develop separately and independently. Later these simple skills are integrated into more complex ones.
Principle of the independence of systems
Suggest that different body systems grow at different rates. for instance the patterns of growth for body size, the nervous system and sexual maturation are quite different.
-Birth: around 7 pounds; 20 inches
-5 months: doubled birth weight
-12 months: tr
Physical growth
- not all infants grow at the same rate.
- At birth the head accounts for one quarter of the new borns entire body size.
- During the first 2 years of life, the rest of the body begins to catch up.
- By the age of 2 the baby's head is only one-fifth of bo
Girl physical growth
generally shorter and weigh less than boys. These differences remain throughout childhood.
-They become greater during adolescents.
Cultural differences
- Asian infants tend to be slightly smaller than North american caucasian infants, and African american infants tend to be slightly bigger than North American Caucasian infants.
Nervous system
Comprises the brain and the nerves that extend throughout the body.
Neurons
The basic cells of the nervous system.
- Neurons have a cell body containing a nucleus.
Dendrites
A cluster of fibers at one end of a cell that is used to communicate neurons with other cells.
- They receive messages from other cells.
Axon
The neurons have a long extension At the opposite end.
Neurotransmitters
Neurons do not actually touch one another, they communicate with other neurons by means of chemical messengers call Neurotransmitters.
Synapses
The small gaps that neurotransmitters travel across
Limbic system
A complex set of brain structures that lies on both sides of the thalamus, right under the cerebrum.
- Supports a variety of functions such as emotion, behavior, motivation, long-term memory, and olfaction.
_ appears to be primarily responsible for our em
Cerebral Cortex
- The upper layer of the brain.
- As baby's grow the neurons also reposition themselves, becoming arranged by function so they move into the cerebral cortex.
- Cells in this region are responsible for higher order processes such as thinking and reasoning
Subcortical levels
Below the cerebral cortex, it regulates fundamental activities such as breathing and heart rate, most fully developed at birth.
Brain growth at birth
Birth: 100-200 billion neurons relatively few neurons/ neuron connections.
- Birth: neurons multiply at an amazing rate prior to birth. At some points in prenatal development, cell devision creates some 250,000 additional neurons every minute.
Brain growth by 2 years
- Billions of new connections established and become more complex.
- The intricacy of neural connections continues to increase throughout life. In fact, in adulthood a single neuron is likely to have a minimum of 5,000 connections to other neurons or othe
Synaptic Pruning
- unused neurons are eliminated.
-Allows established neurons to build more elaborate communication networks with other neurons.
-Development of nervous system proceeds most effectively through loss of cells.
-Neurons that do not become interconnected with
Myelin
Axons of neurons become coated with myelin, a fatty substance, like insulation on an electric wire, provides protection and speeds the transmission of nerve impulses.
- Contributes to increased weight of brain.
Shaken baby
Brain sensitive to forms of injury shaking can lead to brain rotation within skull.
- Blood vessels tear causing severe medical problems, long-term disabilities and sometimes death.
Plasticity
The degree to which a developing structure or behavior is modified due to experience.
Sensitive period
A specific but limited, time, usually early in an organism;s life, during which the organism is particularly susceptible to environmental influences relating to some particular facet of development.
Life cycles of infancy
- Wake, sleep, eat, eliminate
- controlled by a variety of bodily systems.
Rhythms
- Repetitive, cyclical patterns of behavior.
- Some are immediately obvious such as breathing and sucking patterns.
State
- One of the major body rhythms.
- degree of awareness infant displays to both internal and external stimulation.
- Change in state alters amount of stimulation required to get infants attention.
- Some of the different states produce changes in electrica
Major State
16-17 hours daily (average); wide variations.
- By 1 year need about 15 hours of sleep.
- 2 hour spurts; periods of wakefulness.
- By 16 weeks sleep about 6 continuous hours; by 1 year sleep through the night.
Cyclic pattern
During periods of sleep, infants' heart rates increase and become irregular, their blood pressure rises, and they begin to breathe more rapidly.
REM Sleep (rapid eye movement)
- Closed eyes begin to move in a back and forth pattern.
- Takes up around one-half of infant sleep.
- May provide means for brain to stimulate itself through auto stimulation.
- Associated with dreaming.
- REM like sleep takes up around one-half of an in
Baby dreams
- around 3 or 4 months of age the wave patterns become similar to those of dreaming adults, suggesting that young infants are not dreaming during active sleep, or at least are not doing so in the same way as adults do.
SIDS
sudden infant death syndrome,
- found in children of every race and socioeconomic group and in children who have had no apparent health problem.
- A disorder in which seemingly healthy infants die in their sleep.
strikes about 1 in 1,000 infants in the U.
Differential risk of SIDS
- Boys
- African American infants
- Low birthweight
- Low APGAR scores
-Mother's smoking
- Some brain defects
- Child Abuse
Reflexes
- learned, organized involuntary responses that occur automatically in presence of certain stimuli.
- may stimulate parts of the brain responsible.
Moro Reflex ethnic differences
- Some difference reflect cultural and ethnic variations.
- Caucasian infant show a pronounced response to situations that produce the moro reflex. not only do they fling out their arms, but they also cry and respond in a generally agitated manner.
- Nava
Diagnostic tools for pediatricians
- Reflexes emerge and disappear on a regular timetable, their absence, or presence, at a given point of infancy can provide a clue that something may be amiss in an infant's development.
Motor development
-When placed on their stomach wiggle their arms and legs and may try to lift their heavy heads.
-as strength increases they are able to push hard enough against the surface on which they are resting to propel their bodies in different directions.
6 month motor development
- They often end up moving backward rather than forwards but at 6 months they become rather accomplished at moving themselves in particular directions.
Crawling
- appears typically between 8 and 10 months.
Walking
around age 9 months; most infants are able to walk by supporting themselves on furniture, and half of all infants can walk well by the end of their first years of life.
Dynamic systems theory
- describes how motor behaviors are assembled
- Theory places emphasis on child's own motivation (a cognitive state) in advancing important aspects of motor development.
- motor skill do not develop in vaccum
- each skill advances in context of other moto
Brazelton Neonatal behavior Assessment scale (NBAS)
One of the most widely used techniques to determine infants' normative standing; measure designed to determine infants neurological and behavioral responses to their environment; provides a supplement to the traditional APGAR test.
Comparing individual to Group Norms
- Represent the average performance of a large sample of children of a given age.
-Permits comparisons between a particular child's performance on a particular behavior and the average performance of the children in the norm sample.
-must be interpreted w
Fueling Motor development
- Without proper nutrition, infants cannot reach physical potential and may suffer cognitive and social consequences.
- Infants differ in growth rates, body composition, metabolism, and activity levels.
Healthy caloric allotment for infants
- about 50 calories per day for each pound of weight.
- most infants regulate their caloric intake quite effectively on their own.
- if allowed consume as much them to want, and not pressured to eat more, they will be healthy.
Malnutrition
- The condition of having improper amount and balance of nutrients, produces several results, none good.
- common in developing countries.
-slower growth rate apparent by the age of 6 months.
- By 2 years, height and weight are only 95% the height and wei
Chronically malnourished
- during infancy later score lower on IQ tests and tend to do less well in school. These effects may linger even after dies has improved.
Undernutrition
- Undernutrition also has long term costs, including mild to moderate cognitive delays.
- Up to 25% of 1 to 5 year old in US have diets that fall below minimum caloric intake recommended by nutritional experts.
Maramus
A disease in which infants stop growing. Marasmus, attributable to a sever deficiency in proteins and calories causes the body to waste away and ultimately results in death.
Kwashiorkor
Older children are susceptible, a disease in which a child's stomach, limb, and face swell with water.
Nonorganic failure to thrive
- Infants receive sufficient nutrition but are deprived of attention and stimulation.
- Symptoms include underdevelopment, listlessness, and apathy and usually occurs by the age 18 months.
- Reversal is possible through intensive parent training or remova
Fast food babies
- develop taste for certain foods at an early age and then tend to stick with those foods as they get older.
- like food mothers like
- Often consume convenience foods that are high in sugar and fat and low in nutrients.
Breast feeding against
- Starting around 1940's, the general belief among child care experts was that breast feeding was an obsolete method that put children in unnecessarily at risk.
Bottle feeding
Parents could keep track of amount of milk their baby was receiving and could ensure that child was taking in sufficient nutrients. Use of the bottle was also supposed to help mothers keep their feedings to rigid schedule of one bottle every 4 hours, the
Breast feeding today babies
for first 12 months of life, there is no better food for an infant than breast milk.
- not only contains all the nutrients necessary for growth but it also seems to offer some degree of immunity to a variety of childhood diseases, such as respiratory illn
Breast feeding today mothers
- lower rates of ovarian cancer and breast cancer prior to menopause.
- Hormones produced during breast feeding held shrink uteruses of women following birth, enabling their bodies to return more quickly to a prepregnancy state.
- Hormone also may inhibit
Breast feeding stats
- 70% of mothers in US breast feed.
- rates of breast feeding are higher among women who are older, have better education, are of higher socioeconomic status and have social or cultural support
- breast feeding is higher in white women than in black women
Introducing Solid foods
- Solids can be started at 6 months but are not needed until 9 to 12 months
- introduced gradually, one at a time
Sensation
- the physical stimulation of the sense organs.
Perception
- The mental process of sorting out, interpreting, analyzing, and integrating stimuli from the sense organs and brain.
Visual perception
- newborns distance vision ranges from 20/200 to 20/600
- by 6 months average infants vision is already 20/20
- infants can only see with accuracy visual material up to 20 feet that an adult with normal vision is able to see with similar accuracy from a d
visual preferences
- genetically preprogrammed to prefer particular kinds of stimuli
- Prefer to look at patterns over simpler stimuli.
- They prefer curved over straight lines, three dimensional figures to two dimensional ones and human faces to non face.
- distinguish bet
Auditory
- infants hear before birth and have good auditory perception after they are born.
- They are more sensitive to certain frequencies
- Reach adult accuracy in sound localization by age 1
- Can discriminate groups of different sounds
- react to changes in m
Smell
- Well developed at birth
- helps in recognition of mother early in life.
Taste
- Have innate sweet tooth
- Show facial disgust at bitter taste
- Develop preferences based on what mother ate during pregnancy.
Contemporary views on infant pain
- developmental progression in reaction to pain.
- Infants born with capacity to experience pain; produces distress.
- Exposure to pain in infancy may lead to permanent rewiring of nervous system resulting in greater sensitivity to pain during adulthood.
Touch
- one of the most highly developed sensory systems in a newborn.
- even young infants respond to gentle touches.
- several of the basic reflexes present at birth require touch sensitivity to operate.
- several theorists have suggested that one of the ways
Multimodal approach to perception
- considers how information that is collected by various individual sensory systems is integrated and coordinated.
Perceptible affordances
- exist where information on actions that are afforded are perceptible.
- These are dependent on language, culture, context, and experience and vary for different individuals.
Exercising infant's body and senses
- Attempts to accelerate physical and sensory-perceptual development yield little success but infants need sufficient physical and sensory stimulation.
stimulating physical and sensory stimulation
- carry baby in different positions: backpack, frontpack, football hold with the infants head in the palm of your hand and its feet lying on your arms.
- let infants crawl and wander around. childproof area first.
- rough and tumble play, wrestling, danci