Ch. 3&4 - Human Growth and Dev.

Weight

*-The avg. North American baby weights 7 1/2 lbs
- 95% of full-term newborns weight between 5 1/2 & 10 lbs
-In the first several days of life, most newborns lose 5-7% of their body weight before they adjust to neonatal feeding
- Infants gain 5-6 ounces pe

Cephalocaudal Pattern

The sequence in which the greatest growth always occurs at the top of the head with physical growth in size, weight, and feature differentiation gradually working its way down the body
(Head, eyes, and brain grow faster than lower parts)

Neuron

A nerve cell that handles information processing at the cellular level.

Brain's Development

- At birth, the newborn's brain is about 25% of its adult weight and, by the second birthday, it is about 75% of its adult weight.
- Newborns have all of the neurons they will ever have- about 100 billion.
- Some areas of the brain, such as the primary mo

Myelination

*The process of encasing axons with fat cells.
- Myelination both insulates the nerve cells and helps nerve impulses travel faster.
- A myelin sheath (a layer of fat cells) encases most axons.
- Myelination for visual pathways occurs rapidly after birth a

Brain Hemispheres

- The highest level of the brain, the cerebral cortex, is divided into two halves, or hemispheres.
- There continues to be considerable interest in the degree to which each hemisphere is involved in various aspects of thinking, feeling, and behavior.
- Th

Early Experience and the Brain

- Starting shortly after birth, a baby's brain produces trillions more connections between neurons than it can possibly use.
*- The brain eliminates connections that are seldom or never used- continuing at least until 10 years of age (PRUNING)
- Current b

Infant States

- Developmentalists are interested in infants' states of consciousness, or levels of awareness
- Classifying infant states has helped researchers identify many aspects of infant development, such as the sleep-waking cycle.
*-Newborns sleep 16-17 hours a d

REM ( Rapid Eye Movement) Sleep

*A recurring sleep stage during which vivid dreams commonly occur.
- Most adults spend about one-fifth of their night in REM sleep
- Infants spend about one-half of their sleep in REM sleep and it begins their sleep cycle
- By 3 months the percentage for

Shared Sleeping

- There exists considerable variation across cultures in newborns' sleeping arrangements.
- Some child experts believe shared sleeping is beneficial with regard to promoting breast feeding, responsiveness to infant crying, and detection of dangerous breat

SIDS

* Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is a condition that occurs when infants stop breathing, usually during the night, and suddenly die without apparent cause.
- It is the highest cause of infant death in the U.S. with approximately 13% of all infant deaths due

Risk Factors for SIDS

- Low birthweight infants are 5 to 10 times more likely to die of SIDS
- Twins and triplets, even at normal birthweight, are twice as likely to die of SIDS.
- After one twin dies, the surviving twin has an increased risk of dying from SIDS
- Infants whose

neuron

Nutritional Needs and Eating Behavior

- The importance of adequate energy and nutrient intake consumed in a loving and supportive environment during the infant years cannot be overstated.
- Nutritionists recommend that infants consume approximately 50 calories per day for each pound they weig

Marasmus

- Marasmus is a wasting away of body tissues in the infant's first year, caused by severe protein-calorie deficiency.
- Infant becomes grossly underweight and muscles atrophy

Kwashiorkor

- Kwashiorkor is a condition caused by a deficiency in protein in which the child's face, legs, and abdomen swell with water.
- It causes a child's vital organs to collect the nutrients that are present and deprive other parts of the body of them.
- The c

Reflexes

- Reflexes, genetically carried survival mechanisms, govern the newborn's movements.
- They are automatic and beyond the newborn's control; built-in reactions to stimuli.
- In these reflexes, infants have adaptive responses to their environment before the

The Sucking Reflex

- Occurs when newborns automatically suck an object placed in their mouth.
- Enables newborns to get nourishment before they have associated a nipple with food.
- Present at birth; later disappears at 3-4 months.
- Most newborns take several weeks to esta

The Rooting Reflex

- The rooting reflex occurs when the infant's cheek is stroked or the side of the mouth is touched.
- In response, the infant turns its head toward the side that was touched in an apparent effort to find something to suck.
- The rooting reflex disappears

The Moro Reflex

- The Moro reflex is a neonatal startle response that occurs in response to a sudden, intense noise or movement.
- When startled, a newborn arches its back, throws back its head, and flings out its arms and legs.
- The newborn then rapidly closes its arms

The Grasping Reflex

- Occurs when something touches the infant's palms.
- Infant responds by grasping tightly.
- Replaced around the end of the third month by voluntary grasps, often produced by visual stimuli

Babinski

A reflex seen in infants where the toes fan out when the sole of the foot is stroked.

Swimming Reflex

When placed in water the infant will make paddling actions, and hold breath

Stepping Reflex

If baby is held up with feet on surface, will mimic walking

Tonic Neck Reflex

baby laid on back, turns head to left and clenches fist (also known as the Fencer position)

Blinking Reflex

Light or air causes eye to blink, reflex does not go away.

Gross Motor Skills

- Gross motor skills involve large muscle activities, such as moving one's arms and walking.
- These are the most dramatic and observable changes in the infant's first year of life.
- The actual month at which gross motor milestones occur varies by as muc

Gross Motor Skill Milestones

- Birth - no appreciable coordination of the chest or arms
- (1st month) - lift head from a prone position
- (3 months) - hold chest up and use arms for support
- (3-4 months) - roll over
- (4-5 months) - support some weight with legs
- (6 months) - sit w

Fine Motor Skills

- Fine motor skills involve more finely-tuned movements, such as finger dexterity.
- Infants have hardly any control over fine motor skills at birth.
- They do have many components of what later become finely coordinated arm, hand, and finger movements.
-

Sensation

- Sensation occurs when information interacts with sensory receptors�the eyes, ears, tongue, nostrils, and skin.
- The sensation of hearing occurs when waves of pulsating air are collected by the outer ear and transmitted through the bones of the inner ea

Perception

- Perception is the interpretation of what is sensed.
- The information about physical events that contact the ears may be interpreted as musical sounds, human speech, or a jet engine.

Visual Acuity and Color

- The newborn's vision is estimated to be 20/400 to 20/800 on the Snellan chart�about 10-30 times lower than normal adult vision (20/20).
- By 6 months of age vision is 20/100 or better.
- By the first birthday, the infant's vision approximates that of an

ROBERT FANTZ

American Psychologist who did pioneered studies into infant visual perception.

Depth Perception

- Gibson and Walk conducted the classic "visual cliff" experiment in 1960 to assess how early infants could perceive depth.
- They placed a piece of glass over a drop-off patterned the same as the table next to it.
- Mothers coaxed their infants from acro

Other Senses

- Hearing
- Touch
- Pain
- Smell
- Taste

Hearing

- In the last few months of pregnancy, a fetus can hear sounds (the mother's voice, music, etc.)
- After birth, infants responded in a certain way when mothers read them a story that they had read to them during the 6 weeks prior to birth.
- This finding

Touch and Pain

- Newborns respond to touch, particularly with the sucking and rooting reflex.
- An important ability that develops during the first year is to connect information about vision with information about touch.
- It used to be believed that newborns were impe

Smell and Taste

- Newborns can differentiate odors.
- They appear to like vanilla and strawberry scents, but not those of rotten eggs and fish.
- Infants do require several days of experience to show preference for the scent of their mother's breast pad.
- Sensitivity to

Intermodal Perception

- The ability to relate and integrate information about two or more sensory modalities, such as vision and hearing.
- Various studies have found that infants as young as 3� months not only can coordinate visual-auditory information, but prefer to experien

Perceptual-Motor Coupling and Unification

- There is an increasing belief that perceptual and motor development do not occur in isolation from one another but, rather, are coupled.
- Individuals perceive in order to move and move in order to perceive.

SENSORIMOTOR DEVELOPMENT STAGE

- According to Piaget, this stage lasts from birth to about 2 years of age.
- Mental development is characterized by considerable progression in the infant's ability to organize and coordinate sensations with physical movements and actions.
- Children pro

Substages of Sensorimotor Development

*- Simple reflexes
- First habits and primary circular reactions
- Secondary circular reactions
- Coordination of secondary circular reactions
- Tertiary circular reactions, novelty, and curiosity
*-Internalization of schemes

Internalization of Schemes

- This stage develops between 18-24 months.
- The infant's mental functioning shifts from a purely sensorimotor plane to a symbolic plane.
- The infant develops the ability to use primitive symbols (internalized sensory images or words that represent even

Object Permanence

Object permanence is the Piagetian term for understanding that objects and events continue to exist, even when they cannot directly be seen, heard, or touched

Conditioning

- Both classical and operant conditioning have been demonstrated to occur in infants.
- If an infant's behavior is followed by a rewarding stimulus, the behavior is likely to recur.
- Operant conditioning has been helpful to researchers in their efforts t

Classical Conditioning

(also known as Pavlovian or respondent conditioning) is a learning process in which an innate response to a potent stimulus comes to be elicited in response to a previously neutral stimulus; this is achieved by repeated pairings of the neutral stimulus wi

Operant Conditioning

is a learning process in which behavior is sensitive to, or controlled by its consequences.

Habituation and DisHabituation

- Habituation is the process by which infants become uninterested in a stimulus and respond less to it after it is repeatedly presented to them.
- Dishabituation is an infant's renewed interest in a stimulus.
- Newborns habituate in virtually every stimul

Imitation

- Andrew Meltzoff believes infants' imitative abilities to be biologically based because they can imitate a facial expression within the first few days after birth.
- This occurs before they've had the opportunity to observe social agents in their environ

Memory in Infancy

- Memory is a central feature of cognitive development that involves the retention of information over time.
- Some argue that infants as young as 2-6 months can remember some experiences through 1�-2 years of age.
- Critics of these findings argue that t

Bayley Scales of Infant Development

- These scales are widely used in the assessment of infant development.
- The current version has 3 components: a mental scale, a motor scale, and an infant behavior profile.
- It includes assessment of the following:
Auditory and visual attention to stim

Defining Language

- Language is a form of communication, whether spoken, written, or signed, that is based on a system of symbols.
- All human languages have some common characteristics such as infinite generativity and organizational rules.
- Infinite generativity is the

How Language Develops

- (First few months of life) - infants startle to sharp noises
- (3-6 months) - begin to show an interest in sounds, respond to voices
- (6-9 months) - babbling begins (goo-goo) due to biological maturation; infants also begin to understand their first wo

Telegraphic Speech

Speech that sounds very much like a telegram, has words arranged in an order that makes sense, and contains almost all nouns and verbs. For example, a child at this stage of development who wants to get milk may say "get milk", as opposed to saying just

The First Words

- A child's first words include those that name:
- Important people (dada) -Body parts (eye)
- Familiar animals (kitty) -Clothes (hat)
- Vehicles (car) -Household items (keys)
- Toys (ball) -Greeting terms (bye)
-Food (milk)
- These were the first words o

Meanings Expressed in Children's Two Word Utterances

Identification: "See doggie"
Location: "Book there"
Repetition: "More milk"
Nonexistence: "All gone thing"
Negation: "Not wolf"
Possession: "My doggy"
Attribution: "Big car"
Agent-action: "Mama walk"
Action-direct object: "Hit you"
Action-indirect object:

Biological Prewiring

- Linguist Noam Chomsky believes humans are biologically prewired to learn language at a certain time, in a certain way.
- He states children are born with a language acquisition device (LAD)�a biological endowment that enables them to detect certain lang