Frieda Developmental Psych Ch. 4

Fine Motor Skills

"Smaller" movements, such as picking up smaller objects and holding a spoon that use the small muscles of the fingers, toes, wrists, lips, and tongue.

Highest Infant Mortality Rates

- African Americans = 13.6 per 1,000 - Native Hawaiians = 9 per 1,000 - Native Americans = 8.3 per 1,000 1. One reason for these differences is that infants in these groups are 2 -3 times more likely to suffer from congenital abnormalities and low birth weight—the 2 leading causes of infant death in the first month of life—than babies in other groups. SIDS is also 2-3 times as common in these groups. 2. Financial stability can also play a factor in these groupings.

Lowest Infant Mortality Rates

- Chinese American infants = 3 per 1,000 - White American infants = 5.6 per 1,000

Gross Motor Skills

1. "Larger" movements, such as rolling over and sitting that use the large muscles in the arms, legs, torso, and feet. 2. Include the abilities such as crawling that enable the infant to get around in the environment.

Midbrain & Medulla

1. Both located in the lower parts of the skull and connected to the spinal cord. 2. Both regulate vital functions such as heartbeat and respiration, as well as attention, sleeping, waking, elimination, and movement of the head and neck—all actions a newborn can perform at least moderately well.

Vision

1. In adults, usual standard in 20/20. As the second number INCREASES, the poorer the person's visual acuity. At BIRTH, an infant's acuity is in the range of 20/200 to 20/400, but it improves rapidly during the first year as a result of SYNAPTOGENESIS, PRUNING, and MYELINATION in the neurons that serve as the eyes and the brain's vision processing centers. 2. Experts believe that most children reach the level of 20/20 vision by 6 months of age. 3. But it's difficult to determine an infant's actual visual acuity b/c children can't be tested with a conventional eye exam until they are old enough to respond verbally to the examiner, typically at 4 to 5 years of age.

Synapses

Connections between neurons.

Infant Mortality

Death within the first year of life.

In the United States, how many babies out of every 1000 die before the age of 1?

1. In the United States, 6 babies out of every 1000 die before the age of 1. 2. This rate has been steadily declining for the past several decades (down from 30 per 1,000 in 1950), but the US continues to have a higher infant mortality rate than other industrialized nations. 3. Almost 2/3 of these infant deaths occur in the first month of life and are directly linked to wither congenital anomalies or low birth weight.

Hearing

1. Newborns' auditory acuity is better than their visual acuity. 2. Within the general range of pitch and loudness of the human voice, newborns hear nearly as well as an adult. 3. Only with high pitched sounds is their auditory skill less than that of an adult; such a sound needs to be much louder to be heard by a newborn than to be heard by an older child or adult. 4. The ability to determine the location of a sound is present at birth but continues to improve through life. Newborns can at least judge the general direction from which a sound has come from b/c they will turn their head in that direction.

Smelling and Tasting

1. Smell and taste are intricately related in infants, just like in adults. Think for a moment, if you cannot smell (because of a cold or something) your taste sensitivity is also lowered. 2. The taste buds on the tongue detect taste and register four basic flavors: sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. Newborns appear to respond differentially to all four of the basic flavors.

Plasticity

1. The ability of the brain to change in response to experience. 2. A term used by neuroscientists to refer to the brain's ability to change in response to experience. 3. This ability of the brain is more prominently visible in younger infants rather than adults. Even though infants' brains are LESS efficient than adults, they have much more dense dendrites and synapses and more unused synapses they can bounce back from a host of insults to the brain (malnutrition, head injury) much more easily than an adult.

Reticular Formation

1. The part of the brain that regulates attention. 2. The part of the brain responsible for keeping your attention on what you're doing and for helping you sort out important and unimportant information. 3. Myelinization of this begins in infancy but continues in spurts across childhood and adolescence.

Ossification

1. The process of bone hardening, occurs steadily, beginning in the weeks of prenatal development and continuing through puberty. Bones in different parts of the body harden in a sequence that follows the typical proximodistal and Cephalocaudal patterns. 2. Motor Development depends to a large extent on this.

Pruning

1. The process of eliminating unused synapses. 2. The process of eliminating unnecessary synaptic pathways and connections in the brain. 3. This occurs because during synaptogenesis, the synaptic growth spurt generates many more synaptic connections than is necessary.

Synaptogenesis

1. The process of synapse development, occurs rapidly in the cortex during the first few years after birth, quadrupling the overall weight of the brain by age 4. (WHERE!) 2. However is NOT smooth and continuous; rather, it happens in spurts. 3. Important because synaptic connections are what allow humans to eventually gain control over their body movement.

Gender Differences in Growth

1. Throughout infancy, Girls are ahead of Boys in some aspects of physical maturity. 2. For example, the separate bones of the wrist appear earlier in girls than in boys. This means that female infants may have a slight advantage in the development of fine motor skills, such as self-feeding. Typically, boys are more physically active and acquire gross motor skills faster than girls do.

Habituation

A decline in attention that occurs because a stimulus has become familiar.

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)

A phenomenon in which an apparently healthy infant dies suddenly and unexpectedly. • Physicians have not yet uncovered the basic cause of SIDS, but there are a few clues. - For one thing, it is more common in the WINTER when babies may be suffering from viral infections that cause breathing difficulties. - In addition, babies with a history of apnea—brief periods when their breathing suddenly stops—are at increased risk of dying from SIDS. - SIDS is also most frequent among babies who sleep on their stomachs or sides, especially on a soft or fluffy mattress, pillow, or comforter.  Physicians' organizations and AAP recommend that healthy infants be positioned on their backs to sleep. - Another important contributor is smoking by the mother during pregnancy or by anyone in the home after the child's birth. Babies exposed to such smoke are 4 times as likely to die from SIDS as are babies with no smoking exposure. • Ways to prevent it? - Placing infants on their backs to sleep. - Sleep on more firm surfaces. - Use sleep clothing, such as a one-piece sleeper, instead of a blanket. - Make sure nothing covers the baby's head. - Do not use pillows, blankets, sheepskins, or pillow-like bumpers in your babies sleep area. - Do not let anyone smoke near your baby. - Keep soft objects such as stuffed toys, and loose bedding out of your baby's sleep area.

Myelinization (Myelination)

A process in neuronal development in which sheaths made of a substance called myelin gradually cover individual axons and electrically insulate them from one another to improve the conductivity of the nerve.

Preference Technique

A research method in which a researcher keeps track of how long a baby looks at each of 2 objects shown.

Synaptic Development

All brain structures are composed of two basic types of cells: Neurons and Glial Cells. Millions of these cells are present at birth and Synapses, or connections between neurons, have already begun to form.

At what age are toddlers half as tall as they will be as adults?

At about age 2 for girls and age 2 & ½ for boys, toddlers are half as tall as they will be as adults.

What important changes in the brain take place during infancy?

At birth, the midbrain and the medulla are the most fully developed structures of the brain. The least developed of the brain at birth is the cortex.

How fast do babies grow?

Babies grow ten to twelve inches and triple their body weight in the first year.

Nutrition

Breast is best for most but all—exceptions??? • Breastfeeding for most infants is substantially superior nutritionally to formula feeding; breastfeeding is associated with a number of benefits. 1. Breast milk contributes to more rapid weight and size gain. 2. On average, breastfed infants are also less likely to suffer from such problems as diarrhea, gastroenteritis, bronchitis, ear infections, and colic, and they are less likely to die in infancy. 3. Breast milk also appears to stimulate better immune-system function. • Surprisingly though, there are there are situations in which breast milk is not sufficient to meet babies' nutritional needs. 1. For example, preterm babies' intestinal tracts are not as mature as those of full-term infants. As a result, preterm babies require special formulas that contain amino acids and fats that full-term babies can manufacture on their own. - But these babies still need the immunological benefits of breast milk. Thus, physicians typically recommend feeding preterm babies expressed breast milk that has been fortified with the proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals their bodies need. 2. Sometimes breastfeeding is impossible. For example, drugs are often present in the breast milk of mothers who are abusers or who depend on medications to maintain their own health. Many of these drugs can negatively affect infant development. Consequently, doctors recommend that these women avoid breastfeeding. In such cases, babies who are fed high-quality infant formula, prepared according to the manufacturer's instructions and properly sterilized, usually thrive on it.

Intermodal Perception

Formation of a single perception of a stimulus that is based on information from two or more senses.

Visual Acuity

How well one can see details at a distance.

Auditory Acuity

How well one person can hear.

"Use it or Lose it"

It means that if you don't continue to practice or use an ability, you might lose that ability.

Primitive Reflexes

Reflexes, controlled by parts of the brain, that disappear during the first year of life. (DISAPPEAR)

Adaptive Reflexes

Reflexes, such as sucking, that help newborns survive. (STAY)

Dishabituation

Responding to a somewhat familiar stimulus as if it were new.

Cortex

The convoluted gray matter that wraps around the midbrain and is involved in perception, body movement, thinking, and language.

Touch and Motion

The infant's senses of touch and motion may be the best developed sense of all.

Tracking

The smooth movements of the eye that follow the track of a moving object.

Dynamic Systems Theory

The view that several factors interact to influence development.

Empiricists

Theorists who argue that perceptual abilities are learned.

Nativists

Theorists who claim that perceptual abilities are inborn.