OTD 721 Lifespan - Chapters 4, 5, & 6
Language style (2)
1. Referential: their vocabularies consisted mainly of words that refer to objects 2. Expressive style: compared to referential children, they produce many more social formulas and pronouns
Information processing - info is held for processing in 3 areas:
1. Sensory register: briefly stores sights and sounds 2. Short-term memory store: - Attended-to information is retained briefly and "worked" on - Working memory: number of items that can be briefly held in mind while also monitoring or manipulating them 3. Long-term memory: permanent knowledge base
The steps of classical conditioning
1. unconditioned stimulus (breast milk) 2. unconditioned response (sucking) 3. Neutral stimulus (forehead stroking) 4. Unconditioned stimulus (breast milk) 5. Unconditioned response (sucking) The neutral stimulus is then called: 6. Conditioned stimulus (forehead stroking) 7. Conditioned response (sucking)
walks alone
11 months, 3 weeks
The average 2-year old need __ hours of sleep
12-13 hours
scribbles vigorously
14 months
A new-born baby takes round-the-clock naps that total about __ - ___ hours
16-18 hours
Food insecurities afflicts ___% of U.S. children, affecting physical growth and learning
19%
Mile stones in pattern perception
2 months Detection of detail: sensitive to contrast in complex patterns; prefers patterns with more contrast 2‒3 months Improved scanning ability: explores pattern features, pausing briefly to look at each part 4 months Detects pattern organization: perceives subjective boundaries that are not really present 12 months Detects familiar objects represented by incomplete drawings
Malnutrition affects ____ million children annually; stunts growth of ____ of all children under 5
2.1 million One-third
jumps in place
23 months and 2 weeks
grasps cube (average age achieved)
3 months, 3 weeks
Developments in hearing 4-7 months 6-7 months 6-8 months 6-12 months 7-9 months
4‒7 months Sense of musical phrasing 6‒7 months Distinguishes musical tunes based on variations in rhythmic patterns 6‒8 months "Screens out" sounds not used in native languages 6‒12 months Detects sound regularities in human speech 7‒9 months Begins to divide speech stream into wordlike units
Sits up alone and crawls
7 months
Pulls to stand
8 months
Children typically produce their first word around their first birthday, the range is large, from __ to ___
8 to 18 months
plays pat-a-cake
9 months, 3 weeks
infant co-sleeping is the norm for __% of world's population
90%
Two-word utterances:
Telegraphic speech: they focus on high-content words, omitting smaller, less important words (can, the, to) like Mommy shoe, go car High-content word pairings Copying adult gradually shifts to using grammatical rules
The way two checkerboards differing in complexity look to infants in the first few weeks of life
The way two checkerboards differing in complexity look to infants in the first few weeks of life. Because of their poor vision, very young infants cannot resolve the fine detail in the complex checkerboard. It appears blurred, like a gray field. The large, bold checkerboard appears to have more contrast, so babies prefer to look at it.
Motion
first depth cue to which infants are sensitive. babies 3-4 weeks old blink their eyes defensively when an object moves toward the face as if its going to hit
Operant conditioning
infant acts, or operates, on the environment Stimuli that follow the behavior change the probability that the behavior will occur again - Reinforcer - Punishment
Certain skills become better developed as children represent their experiences more efficiently and meaningfully
information processing
Amodal sensory properties
information that overlaps multiple sensory systems Example: the sight and sound of a bouncing ball Rate, rhythm, intensity, duration, temporal synchrony (for vision and hearing),and texture and shape (for vision and touch)
Piaget's sensorimotor stage
spans the first 2 years of life. Piaget believed that infants and toddlers think with their eyes, ears, hands, and other sensorimotor equipment. They cannot carry out many activities inside their heads.
Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development:
standardized tests of infants' and toddlers' mental and motor development - Current edition: Bayley-III - Subtests: Cognitive (familiar and unfamiliar objects), Language(understanding and expression of language), and Motor Scales (gross and fine motor skills) - Parental report: Social-Emotional and Adaptive Behavior Scales - children 1 month - 3.5 years
zone of proximal development
tasks too difficult for child to do alone but possible with help of a skilled partner range of tasks that the child cannot yet handle alone but can do with the help of more skilled partners
Executive function
the diverse cognitive operations and strategies that enable us to achieve our goals in cognitively challenging situations - these include controlling attention and irrelevant information and by flexibly directing thought and behavior to suit the demands of a task; coordinating information in working memory and planning - capacities governed by the prefrontal cortex
Breastfeeding excessively for how long?
the first 6 months
Autobiographical memory
the meaningful one-time events from both the recent and the distant past (the day a sibling was born)
Pictorial depth cues
the ones artists often use to make a painting look 3-D
___ occurs at a dramatic pace during the first two years, more slowly through childhood, followed by an acceleration at adolescence and then a reduced pace in early adulthood.
Myelination
Theories of Language Development
Nativist (Chomsky) Interactionist
proximodistal trend
Near to far Growth proceeds from center of body outward Changes in body proportions
Psychosocial stages during infancy and toddlerhood: Erikson's stage: - basic trust vs mistrust (first year) - Autonomy vs. shame and doubt (second year)
Needed from care givers - - basic trust vs mistrust (first year) - responsiveness - Sympathetic, loving balance of care - Autonomy vs. shame and doubt (second year) - suitable guidance and reasonable choices - reasonable expectations for impulse control
Siblings' Sensitive Caregiving
New baby can be stressful for older siblings Children treat older siblings as attachment figures Siblings generally develop rich emotional relationship Certain temperamental traits (e.g., high emotional reactivity) increase likelihood of sibling conflict Maternal warmth toward both children supports positive sibling interaction
Milestones in Intermodal Perception
Newborn Perceives amodal sensory properties 3-5 months Matches faces with voices on basis of lip‒voice synchrony, emotional expression, and speaker's age and gender 6 months Perceives and remembers unique face‒voice pairings of unfamiliar adults
Milestones in Face Perception
Newborn Prefers simplified drawings of faces with naturally arranged features, with eyes open and a direct gaze 2 months Prefers complex facial patterns to other complex stimulus arrangements, and mother's detailed facial features to another woman's 3 months Makes fine distinctions among the features of different, moderately similar faces 5 months Perceives emotional expressions as meaningful wholes 7 months Discriminates among a wider range of facial expressions (e.g., happiness, surprise, anger)
Height and Weight for: - Newborn - End of year 1 - End of year 2
Newborn: H: 20 inches long W: 7.5 lbs End of year 1: H: 32 inches; 50% greater than at birth W: Triples to 22 lbs. End of year 2: H: 36 inches; 50% greater than at birth W: Quadruples to 30 lbs.
Milestones of reaching and grasping Newborn 3-4 months: 4-5 months: 9 months:
Newborn: prereaching 3-4 months: ulnar grasp 4-5 months: transferring object from hand to hand 9 months: pincer grasp
Early face perception.
Newborns prefer to look at the photo of a face (a) and the simple pattern resembling a face (b) over the upside-down versions. (c) When the complex drawing of a face on the left and the equally complex, scrambled version on the right are moved across newborns' visual field, they follow the face longer. But if the two stimuli are stationary, infants show no preference for the face until around 2 months of age.
Fathers' Sensitive Caregiving
Often expressed through sensitive, stimulating play Predicts children's favorable emotional and social adjustment Involvement promoted by: Time spent in physical proximity to baby Intimacy and cooperation between parents
Fear
First fears: 6 months, keeps exploration in check; caregiver as secure base Stranger anxiety: most frequent expression of fear From 4-6 months into the 2nd year, angry expressions increase in frequency and intensity
What foods should parents avoid giving their children?
Food rich in: sugar salt saturated fat
Brain regions and functioning - 3D neuroimaging
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) Positron emission tomography (PET) Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS)
influential factors for child's first word
Gender: girls are slightly ahead of boys Temperament Caregiver-child conversation, reading Vocabulary growth
Anger and sadness
General distress: from birth Angry expressions: 4-6 months Sadness: response to disrupted caregiver-infant communication newborn babies
Genetic influences on temperament
Genetic influences: Responsible for half of individual differences Vary with trait and age Gender and ethnic differences Short 5-HTTLPR or DRD4 7-repeat genotypes
Deferred imitation
Ability to remember and copy past behavior of a model who is no longer present Enriches toddlers' range of sensorimotor schemes
What does mental representation permit?
Advanced object permanence Deferred/inferred imitation Make-believe play Problem solving Symbolic understanding
Parental-child relationship suffers. Maternal depression (chronic or postpartum) affects the child how?
Affects infants' sleep, attention, and stress hormones Hinders motor and cognitive development and emotion regulation Paternal depression linked to child behavior problems Early therapy is vital to revise negative views and facilitate responsive caregiving
Evaluation of sensorimotor stage: capacities that develop when Piaget suggested
Anticipation of events Hidden object search A-not-B object search Varying of sensorimotor schemes Make-believe play Symbolic understanding of pictures
Binocular depth cues
Arise because our 2 eyes have slightly different views of the visual field. The brain blends the 2 images, resulting in perception of depth
when children are not changing, they ___ rather than ____
Assimilate rather than accommodate Comfortable state that Piaget called cognitive equilibrium Steady, comfortable state in which children assimilate more than they accommodate
Attachment Q-Sort
Attachment Q-Sort (ages 1-5): Home observation of 90 behaviors High to low in security More precise measure than Strange Situation
______: responsible for myelination
Glial cells are responsible for myelination - account for half the brain's volume - multiply rapidly in first 2 years
neurotransmitters
Chemicals released by neurons that send messages across the synapse
At birth, infants know so little that they cannot explore purposefully. The _____ provides a special means of adapting their first schemes.
Circular reaction
Categorical Self
Classifying self and others based on: Age Physical characteristics Goodness vs. badness Develops between ages 1½ and 2½ Used to organize their own behavior, including gender-typed activity
Compliance Delay of gratification
Compliance reflects clear awareness of caregivers' wishes and expectations Delay of gratification influenced by quality of caregiving
First speech sounds
Cooing (2 months) Babbling (6 months)
Development of shyness and sociability
Opposite extremes of temperament: Shyness (inhibited): withdraw from novel stimuli Sociability (uninhibited): approach novel stimuli Neurobiological correlates of shyness and sociability: heart rate, saliva concentration of cortisol, pupil dilation, blood pressure, skin surface temperature Child rearing influences persistence of temperament
Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) assesses
Organization and safety of physical environment Provision of appropriate play materials Parental emotional and verbal responsiveness Parental acceptance of child Parental involvement with child Opportunities for variety in daily stimulation Linked to toddlers' mental test performance
Classical conditioning
Pairs neutral stimulus with one that prompts reflexive response Helps infants recognize which events usually occur together Environment becomes more orderly and predictable
Perceptual narrowing effect
Perceptual sensitivity becomes attuned with age to information most often encountered Example: discriminating human and monkey faces at 6 months, but only human faces at 9 months Between 6 and 12 months, biologically prepared to "zero in" on socially meaningful perceptual distinctions (speech, faces, music)
Describe the periods of sleep and wakefulness of an infant
Periods of sleep and wakefulness become fewer but longer, increasingly comforting to a night-day schedule
Early Intervention for At-Risk Infants and Toddlers
Persistent poverty causes declines in test scores - Stressful home environments increase likelihood children will remain poor as adults Interventions to break cycle of poverty: - Center-based child care and social services - Home-based training for parents by skilled adult - Participating children score higher on mental tests and maintain benefits - Early Head Start: federal program with 1,000 sites
Developmentally Appropriate Infant and Toddler Child Care - characteristics include:
Physical setting Toys and equipment Caregiver-child ratio Daily activities Interactions among adults and children Caregiver qualifications Relationships with parents Licensing and accreditation
Infants and toddlers create new schemes by acting on the physical world
Piaget
The visual cliff
Plexiglas covers the deep and shallow sides. By refusing to cross the deep side and showing a preference for the shallow side, this infant demonstrates the ability to perceive depth. Avoidance of of drop-offs linked, but not how they are related or when depth perception first appears
Language development milestones
Second half of first year: Distinguishes language sounds, segments speech into word and phrase units 12 months: Says first word 1½-2 years: Combines two words 3½ years: Forms more complex sentences Age 6: Understands meaning of about 14,000 words
At birth hemispheres have begun to specialize. True or false?
True
Infants are born with primitive ability to imitate T/F?
True
True or false: Infant tests do not assess same aspects of intelligence
True Often test perceptual and motor responses Largely used to screen for developmental problems Labeled DEVELOPMENT QUOTIENT (DQ) instead of IQ
What position do Western cultures lack in?
Tummy Time Sitting on their backs to protect them from SIDS delays gross-motor milestones
Increase in retention in two operant conditioning tasks from 2 to 18 months
Two- to 6-month-olds were trained to make a kicking response that turned a mobile. Six- to 18-month-olds were trained to press a lever that made a toy train move around a track. Six-month-olds learned both responses and retained them for an identical length of time, indicating that the tasks are comparable. Consequently, researchers could plot a single line tracking gains in retention from 2 to 18 months of age. The line shows that memory improves dramatically
Around age 1, acquire one to three new words per week, which gradually accelerates - First words:
Underextension: applying newly learned word too narrowly Overextension: applying word too broadly
Development of neurons
establish unique functions by forming synaptic connections with neighboring cells Stimulation is vital for survival of neurons and formation of new synapses
Happiness
expressed first in blissful smiles and later through exuberant laughter Smile: from birth Social smile: 6-10 months Laughter: 3-4 months
if part of the cortex is damaged, other areas CANNOT take over. True or false?
false
visual acuity
fineness of discrimination increases steadily, reaching 20/80 by 6 months and an adult level of about 20/20 by 4 years
First schemes
are sensorimotor action patterns Ex. at 6 months, Timmy dropped objects in a fairly rigid way, simply letting go of a rattle or teething ring and watching with interest. At 18 months, his dropping scheme, had become deliberate and creative. Change sensorimotor --> preoperational thought
Problem solving
around 7-8 months, infants develop intentional means-end action sequences that they use to solve problems Tools to manipulate objects (7-8 months) Analogy (10-12 months); apply a solution strategy from one problem to other relevant problems
The formation of synapses is rapid during the first 2 years especially in the__, __, and __ areas of the cerebral cortex
auditory visual language
Children transferred from Romanian orphanages to British adoptive homes in the first six months of life attained .... scores
average scores and fared as well as British early-adopted children, suggesting that they had fully recovered from extreme early deprivation.
Skeletal age is best estimate of ___
physical maturity
- responsible for complex thought - functions more effectively from age 2 months on
prefrontal cortex
cephalocaudal trend
"Head to tail" Head develops more rapidly than lower part of the body. Changes in body proportions
Testing infants for basic number of concepts
(a) First, infants saw a screen raised in front of a toy animal. Then an identical toy was added behind the screen. Next, the researchers presented two outcomes. (b) In the expected outcome, the screen dropped to reveal two toy animals. (c) In the unexpected outcome, the screen dropped to reveal one toy animal. Five-month-olds shown the unexpected outcome looked longer than did 5-month-olds shown the expected outcome. The researchers concluded that infants can discriminate the quantities "one" and "two" and use that knowledge to perform simple addition: 1 + 1 = 2. A variation of this procedure suggested that 5-month-olds could also do simple subtraction: 2 - 1 = 1.
Direct stressors
(e.g., angry adult interactions) disrupt emotional climate and routines
Indirect stressors
(e.g., financial, marital) can cause insensitive caregiving
Earliest emotions consist of two arousal states:
- Attraction to pleasant stimulation - Withdrawal from unpleasant stimulation Emotions gradually become organized and specific, supported by sensitive caregiving and mirroring Face, voice, and posture form patterns with age
changing states of arousal is influenced by:
- Brain development - Cultural beliefs and practices - Parents' needs and schedule - Increased melatonin secretion - Attachment to caregiver
Central executive
- Directs flow of information - Conscious part of mind - Coordinates incoming information with existing information - Selects, applies, and monitors strategies that aid memory storage, comprehension, reasoning, and problem solving - controls attention
Brain-wave patterns and changes in electrical activity. What are 2 types of measures?
- Electroencephalogram (EEG) - Event-related potentials (ERPs)
Cortical regions develop as capacities emerge... - First year: - Infancy through preschool:
- First year: auditory and visual; body movement areas - Infancy through preschool: language areas
Episodes in Strange Situation
- a widely used laboratory procedure for assessing the quality of attachment between the ages of 1-2 Parent and baby introduced to playroom Parent sits while baby plays with toys Stranger enters, is seated, talks to parent Parent leaves; stranger offers comfort if baby is upset Parent returns, greets baby, offers comfort if necessary; stranger leaves Parent leaves Stranger enters, offers comfort Parent returns, greets baby, offers comfort if necessary, tries to reinterest baby in toys
What does plasticity depend on?
- age at time of injury - site of severity of damage, skill area affected - environmental supports for recovery
Recovery from brain-injury
- greater for language than for spatial skills - practicing relevant tasks builds and strengthens synapses - limited if widespread or in certain regions, prefrontal cortex
Possible benefits of co-sleeping
- helps infants sleep - breastfeeding more convenient - co sleeping safely may protect babies at risk for SIDS
Cross-cultural research illustrates:
- how early movement opportunities -stimulating environment contribute to motor movement
Becoming a communicator
- joint attention of child and caregiver (3-4 months) - give and take: mutual imitation of sounds (3 months) - preverbal gestures (end of the first year)
Cultural variation in infant sleeping arrangements
- parents - cultural values of interdependence - independence influence sleeping arrangements
Early, extreme sensory deprivation results in ___
- permanent brain damage - loss of function
Sensorimotor substages
-Reflexive schemes (birth-1 month) Newborn reflexes -Primary circular reactions (1-4 months) Simple motor habits centered around own body -Secondary circular reactions (4-8 months) Repetition of interesting effects, imitation of familiar behaviors - Coordination of secondary circular reactions (8-12 months) Intentional, goal-directed behavior; beginning of object permanence - Tertiary circular reactions (12-18 months) Exploration of object properties through novel actions - Mental representation (18 months-2 years) Internal depictions of objects and events; advanced object permanence (invisible displacement)
Rothbart's Model of Temperament
-influential model of temperament Reactivity: Activity level Attention span/persistence Fearful distress Irritable distress Positive affect Self-regulation: Effortful control: predicts favorable adjustment/ capacity to voluntarily suppress a dominant, reactive response in order to plan and execute a more adaptive response
Dietary diseases of several malnourished children:
-marasmus -Kwashiorkor Causes long-term damage to brain and organs, affects earning and behavior, and disrupts development
Each new skill is a joint of four factors:
1. Central nervous system development 2. Body's movement capacities 3. Goals the child has in mind 4. Environmental supports for the skill Change in any element makes the system less stable, and the child starts to explore and select new, more effective motor patterns
Schemes also change through organization, which is defined as
A process that occurs internally, apart from direct contact with the environment. Once children form new schemes, they rear-range them, linking them with other schemes to create a strongly interconnected cognitive system. Ex. Timmy will relate "dropping" to "throwing" and to his developing understanding of "nearness" and "fairness"
Milestones in Developing Self-Awareness
Beginnings of self-awareness •Newborn capacity for intermodal perception •Discriminate own limb and facial movements Self-recognition •Point to self in photos •Refer to self by name or by pronoun "I" or "me" •Recognize own shadow Empathy •Communicate concern when others are distressed •Offer others what they consider comforting Perspective taking •Cooperate in resolving disputes over objects •Aware of how to upset others
Bowlby's Ethological Theory of Attachment
Begins with innate signals that keep parent nearby; over time, affectionate bond forms - Preattachment - Attachment-in-the-making - Clear-cut attachment; separation anxiety - Formation of reciprocal relationship Internal working model: expectations about availability of attachment figures and their likelihood of providing support during times of stress. Becomes a vital part of a personality, serving a guide for all future close relationships
The sensorimotor stage
Birth to age 2 Building schemes through sensory and motor exploration
____ increases quickly during the first 9 months, where as ____ development is slow and gradual.
Body fat Muscle development
Statistical Learning Capacity
By analyzing speech stream for patterns, babies: - Acquire speech structures for which they will later learn meanings - Extract patterns from complex, continuous speech Present in first weeks of life Extends to visual stimuli
emotional self-regulation
Emerges as motor and language skills develop Improves rapidly during first few years due to brain development and caregiver support Caregivers teach socially approved ways of expression End of year 2, vocabulary forms for talking about emotions, but unable to manage them and tantrums occur
Intermodal Perception
Capacity to perceive streams of simultaneous, multisensory input as integrated whole make sense of these streams of light, sound, tactile, odor, and taste information, perceiving them as integrated wholes. Rapid development during first six months supports: - Perceptual understanding of physical world - Social and language processing
To manage the cognitive system's activities, the ___ directs the flow of information, implementing the basic procedures just mentioned and also engaging in more sophisticated activities that enable complex, flexible thinking
Central executive
Punishment
Decreases occurrence of response; removing a desirable stimulus or presenting an unpleasant one to decrease occurrence of a response - presenting unpleasant stimulus - removing desirable stimulus Ex. a sour-tasting fluid punishes newborns' sucking response, causing them to purse their lips and stop sucking entirely
Zinacanteco Indians of southern Mexico and Gusii of Kenya, adults view babies who walk before they know enough to keep away from fires and weaving as dangerous to themselves and disruptive to others. What was the result?
Discourages infants' gross motor skills
Factors That Affect Attachment Security
Early availability of consistent caregiver Quality of caregiving: - Sensitive caregiving - Interactional synchrony Infant characteristics Family circumstances Parents' internal working models (view of their own childhood attachment experiences)
Face Perception
Early experience promotes perceptual narrowing with respect to gender and race: - As early as 3 months, prefers and more easily discriminates female faces than male (unless caregiver is male) - If exposed mostly to members of own race, by 3‒6 months, shows own-race bias, and between 6 and 9 months, has more difficulty discriminating other-race faces By age 10‒11, face discrimination in children matches that of adults
Temperament
Early-appearing, stable individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation
Thomas and Chess's model: Easy children (40%) Difficult children (10%) Slow-to-warm-up children (15%) Unclassified children (35%)
Easy children (40%) quickly establishes regular routines in infancy, is generally cheerful and adapts easily to new experiences Difficult children (10%) is irregular in daily routines, is slow to accept new experiences and tends to react negatively and intensity Slow-to-warm-up (15%) inactive, shows mild, low key reactions to the environment stimuli is negative in mood , and adjusts slowly to new experiences
Self-Control
Effortful control: ability to inhibit impulses, manage negative emotion, and behave in socially acceptable ways Depends on: - Awareness of self as separate, autonomous being - Confidence in directing own actions - Memory for caregiver's directives
Goodness-of fit model
Encourages an effective match between child rearing and child's temperament. Explain how temperament and environment can together produce favorable outcomes Children have unique dispositions that adults must accept Successful child rearing: - Responsive to child's temperament - Simultaneously encourages more adaptive functioning Best accomplished early
Supporting early language learning with toddlers
Engage in joint make-believe Engage in frequent conversations Read often and talk about books
Benefits of breastfeeding
Ensures nutritional completeness Provides correct fat-protein balance Helps ensure healthy physical growth Protects against disease Protects against faulty jaw and tooth development Ensures digestibility Smooths transition to solid foods
Environmental influences on temperament
Environmental influences: Nutrition Quality of caregiving Cultural variations Gender stereotyping Parental distinctions among siblings
- Occurs throughout our lives - Growth and refinement - Results from specific, individual learning experiences
Experience-Dependent brain growth
- occurs early and naturally - rapidly developing organization - depends on ordinary experiences "expected" by brain for normal growth
Experience-expectant brain growth
Cognitive System Improvements During Childhood and Adolescence
Greater working-memory capacity Increased speed for working on information Gains in EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING: mental operations and strategies for cognitively challenging situations - Controlling attention - Coordinating information in working memory - Planning
Social origins of make-believe play
Greatly extends toddlers' cognitive and social skills Taught and scaffolded under guidance of experts: - Adults or older siblings; cultures vary - Toddlers must be encouraged to participate - Rich cues help distinguish pretend from real acts When adults participate, toddlers' make-believe play is more complex and teaches cultural values
Categorization
Grouping similar objects and events reduces large amount of new information encountered
Self-conscious emotions
Guilt, shame, embarrassment, envy, and pride Appear middle of second year Injure or enhance sense of self Require self-awareness and adult prompting in when to feel emotions Influence achievement-related and moral behavior
___ and ___ gains are greater during the first 2 years than at any other time after birth.
Height and weight
What are some influences on early growth
Heredity Nutrition Malnutrition
In the first few years of life there is (high/how) brain plasticity?
High brain plasticity many areas of the brain are not yet committed to specific functions, and the capacity for learning is high experiences influence its organizaiton
Attention
Improved efficiency, ability to shift focus Early attraction to novelty gives way to sustained attention
Using habituation to study infant perception and cognition
In the habituation phase, infants view a photo of a baby until their looking declines. In the test phase, infants are again shown the baby photo, but this time it appears alongside a photo of a bald-headed man. (a) When the test phase occurs soon after the habituation phase (within minutes, hours, or days, depending on the age of the infants), participants who remember the baby face and distinguish it from the man's face show a NOVELTY PREFERENCE; they recover to (spend more time looking at) the new stimulus. (b) When the test phase is delayed for weeks or months, infants who continue to remember the baby face shift to a FAMILIARITY PREFERENCE; they recover to the familiar baby face rather than to the novel man's face.
Infantile Amnesia and possible causes
Inability to recall events that happened prior to age 2 or 3 Possible causes: - Brain's hippocampus integrating new neurons - Nonverbal nature of early memory processing - Lack of clear self-image
Experiences Contributing to Self-Awareness
Infants act on environment, distinguishing self, other people, and objects Joint attention lets toddlers compare their own and others' reactions to objects and events Cultural variations exist: - Autonomous child rearing facilitates earlier mirror self-recognition - Relational child rearing facilitates earlier capacity for compliance
Differentiation Theory
Infants actively seek features that remain stable amid an ever-changing environment Example: analyzing speech stream for regularities Over time, detect finer and finer invariant features Applies to: Intermodal perception Pattern perception Depth perception
Core knowledge Perspective
Infants are born with innate knowledge systems, or core domains of thought - Permit a quick grasp of new information - Support rapid early development Experience is essential to extend core knowledge Suggested domains of core knowledge: physical, linguistic, psychological, numerical
Categorization in - infants - toddlers
Infants: Young infants sort based on physical properties Older infants expand in variety of features Toddlers: Categorize flexibly, considering multiple groupings Shift from perceptual to conceptual categorization Language variations lead to cultural differences
Interactionist
Interactions between inner capacities and environmental influences Information-processing view Social-interactionist view
Nativist (Chomsky)
Language Acquisition Device (LAD): innate system containing universal grammar, or set of rules common in all languages. It enables children, no matter which language they hear, to understand and speak in a rule-oriented fashion as soon as they pick enough words. Infants biologically prepared to learn language
Which hemisphere? - sequential, analytic processing - verbal communication - positive emotion
Left hemisphere
Memory
Longer retention intervals Recognition and recall improve steadily with age Long-term recall advances as brain's neural circuits develop
Stability of temperament
Low in infancy and toddlerhood More stable after age 3 Influential factors: - Brain development enabling impulse suppression - Effortful control and emotional reactivity - Child rearing
By the end of the first year, infants have some ability to:
Move beyond trial-and-error experimentation Represent a solution mentally and use it in new contexts
Broad disagreement with Piaget
Many cognitive changes of infancy are gradual and continuous rather than abrupt and stagelike Various aspects of infant cognition change unevenly due to varying experiences with different tasks Findings serve as basis for information processing
infants' emotional expressions are closely tied to interpret the emotional cues of others. How do infants' respond to emotions of others during the initial months, 3 months, 5 months, 8-10 months?
Matching caregiver's tone (initial months) Sensitivity to face-to-face interactions (3 months) Responding to emotional expressions as organized wholes (5 months) Social referencing (8-10 months)
Infant Characteristics That Endanger Attachment
May result in attachment insecurity: Infant emotional reactivity Certain genotypes combined with insensitive parenting Mother's experience of trauma
Depth Perception
Milestones: 3‒4 weeks: sensitivity to motion 2‒3 months: sensitivity to binocular depth 5‒7 months: sensitivity to pictorial depth Independent movement: Promotes three-dimensional understanding Helps infants remember object locations and find hidden objects
Wayne Dennis observed infants in Iranian orphanages who were deprived of the tantalizing surroundings that induce infants to acquire motor skills. These babies were lying on their backs in cribs without any toys to play with. What was the result?
Most did not move on their own until after 2 years of age. When they did move, they would scoot in a sitting position rather than crawl on their hands and knees. By the time they were 3-4 years of age, only 15% of them were walking on their own.
Dynamic systems theory shows us why motor development cannot genetically determined because...
Motivated by exploration and the desire to master new tasks and varies with context, heredity can map it out only at a general level. Rather than being hardwired into the nervous system, motor behaviors area softly assembled from multiple components, allowing for different paths to the same motor skill
Scaffolding
Promotes learning at al ages Outside assistance to achieve goals
Fine motor development
Reaching, grasping Has to do with smaller movements
Factors fostering attachment security:
Reducing stress Improving parent-child communication Social support
What physiological process explains imitation?
Scientists have identified specialized cells in motor areas of the cerebral cortex in primates - called mirror neurons - that may underlie early imitative capacities. Mirror neurons fire identically when a primate hears or sees an action and when it carries out that action on its own
Inferred imitation
Requires inferring others' intentions More likely to imitate purposeful rather than accidental behaviors
Supporting early language learning with infants
Respond to coos and babbles Establish joint attention Use infant-directed speech Play social games
Fostering Toddlers' Compliance and Self-Control
Respond with sensitivity and encouragement Give advance notice of change in activity Offer many prompts and reminders Reinforce self-controlled behavior Encourage sustained attention Support language development Increase rules gradually
Synaptic pruning
Returns seldom-stimulated neurons to an uncommitted state
Which hemisphere? - holistic, integrative processing - making sense of spatial information - regulating negative emotion
Right hemisphere
Social Issues: Health Does Child Care in Infancy Threaten Attachment Security and Later Adjustment?
Risk factors: Insensitive caregiving Long hours in child care More than one child-care arrangement Supportive factors: High-quality child care and fewer hours Small group sizes Generous caregiver-child ratios Caregivers educated about child rearing
To ensure safety and ease toileting while parents work in the fields, mothers in rural China place infants on their backs in bags of sand for most of the day. What was the result?
Sandbag reared babies were delayed in sitting and walking
According to Piaget, specific psychological structures - organized ways of making sense of experience called ____ - change with age
Schemes
By acting on the environment, children move through 4 stages in which psychological structures, or ____, achieve a better fit with external reality
Schemes (Piaget's Schemes)
Evaluation of sensorimotor stage: Capacities that develop earlier than Piaget suggested
Secondary circular reaction Understanding of object properties First signs of object permanence Deferred imitation Problem solving by analogy Displaced reference of words
Attachment and Later Development
Secure attachment is related to later cognitive, emotional, and social competence Long-term effects of early attachment security are conditional: dependent on the quality of future relationships Continuity of caregiving promotes favorable development
strange situation
Secure: 60% Insecure-avoidant: 15% Insecure-resistant: 10% Disorganized/disoriented: 15%
Social referencing
Seeking emotional information from a trusted person to appraise an uncertain situation Helps toddlers: - Evaluate surroundings - Guide their actions - Understand others Adult voice is more useful than facial expression; supports focusing on activity
Genetic markers affecting temperament
Short 5-HTTLPR: Base pair repetition on chromosome 7 Interferes with inhibitory neurotransmitter serotonin Increased risk of self-regulation difficulties DRD4 7-repeat: Base pair repetition on chromosome 11 Linked to impulsive, overactive behavior Children highly susceptible to parenting quality: benefit most from interventions to improve child rearing
Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory
Social and cultural contexts affect how a child's cognitive world is structured Complex mental activities develop through joint activities with more mature individuals of their society - zone of proximal development - scaffolding
Subjective boundaries in visual patterns
Subjective boundaries in visual patterns. (a) Do you perceive a square in the middle of the figure? By 4 months of age, infants do, too. (b) What does the image, missing two-thirds of its outline, look like to you? By 12 months, infants detect a motorcycle. After habituating to the incomplete motorcycle image, they were shown an intact motorcycle figure paired with a novel form. Twelve-month-olds recovered to (looked longer at) the novel figure, indicating that they recognized the motorcycle pattern on the basis of very little visual information.
Visual Development
Supported by rapid maturation of eyes and visual centers in brain Milestones: 2 months: focus 4 months: color vision 6 months: acuity, scanning, and tracking 6-7 months: depth perception
Displaced reference
Symbolic understanding: Realization that words can cue mental images of things not physically present Emerges around first birthday Expands as memory and vocabulary improve Facilitates learning and communication
Violation of expectation method
To discover what infants' know about hidden objects and other aspects of physical reality They may habituate babies to a physical event to familiarize them with a situation in which their knowledge will be tested. Or they may show babies an expected event (one that is consistent with reality) and an unexpected event (a variation of the first event that violates reality). Heightened attention to the unexpected event suggests that the infant is surprised by a deviation from physical reality and is aware of that's aspect of the physical world
Toddler's first words build on what?
Toddlers' first build on early cognitive achievements new words and expressions increase the speed and flexibility of their thinking
Social issues: education Baby Learning from TV and Video: The Video Deficit Effect
Video deficit effect: poorer performance after viewing a video than a live demonstration - Information perceived as less relevant - Lack of eye contact, direct conversation, and shared focus More effective videos are interactive, with verbal cues, familiar characters, and close-ups Effect declines around age 2½ Avoid heavy viewing early on
Many aspects of cognitive development are socially mediated
Vygotsky
Automatic processes
Well-learned, require no space in working memory Permit us to focus on other information
Infant-Directed Speech (IDS)
a form of communication made up of short sentences with high-pitched, exaggerated expression, clear pronunciation, distinct pauses between speech segments, clear gestures to support verbal meaning, and repetition of new words in a variety of contexts
Recovery
a new stimulus - a change in environment - causes responsiveness to return to a high level Example: when you walk into a familiar space, you notice things that are new and different - a recently hung picture on the wall or a piece of furniture that has been moved
IDS and parent-child conversation create...
a zone of proximal development for language acquisition
In Piaget's theory, 2 processes, ___ and ___ account for changes in schemes
adaptation organization
Kwashiorkor
after weaning, due to low-protein diet caused by an unbalanced diet very low in protein. The disease usually strikes after weaning, between 1 and 3 years of age
Social smile
between 6-10 weeks, the parent's communication evokes a broad grin
Twin adoption studies reveal that heredity contributes to
body size and rate of physical growth
infants changing arousal patterns are primarily affected by __
brain growth, but the social environment also plays a role
Adaptation
building schemes through direct interaction with the environment Consists of Assimilation and Accommodation. These vary overtime
Body proportions change as growth follows the ___ and ___
cephalocaudal and proximodistal
Largest brain structure and surrounds the rest of the brain
cerebral frontal cortex
During times of rapid cognitive change,
children are in a state of disequilibrium or cognitive disequilibrium state of discomfort and rapid cognitive change in which children shift from assimilation to accommodation
Myelination
coating of neural fibers with myelin, an insulating fatty sheath Improves efficiency of message transfer
Intelligence quotient (IQ):
comparison with typical performance for age Standardization: based on results from large sample; representative of the sample Normal distribution: bell-shaped curve, mean/average
The prefrontal cortex is responsible for ____
complex thought, undergoes more extended synaptic growth
appropriate stimulation is vital for brain growth which will....
counteracts negative effects of depleted environment
Gross-motor development
crawling, standing, walking Refers to control over actions that help infants get around the environment Concerns about a child's development only if many motor skills are delayed
Accommodation
creating new schemes and adjusting old ones to better fit the environment When Timmy dropped objects in different ways, he modified his dropping scheme to take into account of the varied properties of objects
Breastfeeding is crucial for
development in first 2 years
Breast milk is ideally suited to infants' growth needs. Breastfeeding protects against ...
disease and malnutrition and infant death in poverty stricken areas of the world
Marasmus
during the first year, due to inadequate feeding wasted condition of the body cause by a diet low in all essential nutrients. It usually appears in the first year of life when a baby's mother is too malnourished to produced enough breast milk and bottle-feeding is also inadequate
__________- is used to study infant perception and cognition
habituation and recovery
Basic emotions
happiness interest surprise fear anger sadness disgust
Growth norms
height and weight averages
Reinforcer
increases occurrence of response or a stimulus that the occurrence of response - presenting desirable stimulus - removing unpleasant stimulus Ex. sweet liquid reinforced the sucking response in newborns
Describe major changes in body growth over the first 2 years
infancy (first year) through toddlerhood (second year) Rapid changes in body and brain support learning, motor skills, and perceptual capacities Motor, perceptual, cognitive, and social development mutually influence one another Example: when child walks, hands are free toe explore and interact with physical world
Mental Representation
internal depictions of information that the mind can manipulate Images: mental pictures of objects. people, spaces Concepts: categories of similar objects or events
The relationship between rapid weight gain in infancy and....
later obesities is strengthening because of the rise in unhealthy parental feeding practices
gradually, the hemispheres of the cerebral cortex specialize, a process called ____
lateralization
Chinese and Japanese babies tend to be ___ active, irritable, vocal and easily soothed; ____ fearful remaining closer to their mothers,
less more
Dynamic systems theory of motor development
mastery of motor skills involves acquiring increasingly complex systems of actions. When motor skills work as a system, separate abilities blend together, each cooperating with others to produce more effective ways of exploring and controlling the environment Example, crawling, standing, and stepping unite into walking
Habituation and recovery make learning....
more efficient by focusing our attention on those aspects of the environment we know least about
What are western cultural influences on infant's sleep?
most parents in Western nations try to get their babies to sleep through the night much earlier than parents throughout most of the world, who are more likely, to sleep with their babies. Regular bedtime routines promote sleep infants and toddlers
Neurons
nerve cells that store and transmit information
Programmed cell death
neurons die to make space for new connective structures
Circular reaction
provides a special means of adapting their first schemes. It involves stumbling onto a new experience caused by the baby's own motor activity. The reaction is "circular" because, as the infant tries to repeat the event again and again, a sensorimotor response that originally occurred by chance strengthens into a new scheme.
Heredity has large influence on
rate of physical growth when diet and health are adequate Height and weight
habituation
refers to gradual reduction in the strength of a response due to repetitive stimulation Time spent looking at the stimulus, heart rate, respiration rate, and brain activity may all decline, indicating a loss of interest.
Catch-up growth
return to genetically influence growth path once negative conditions corrected
should parents start teaching their children right away?
rushing early learning overwhelms neural circuits, impedes brain's potential
Synapses
the tiny haps between neurons where fibers from different neurons come close together but do not touch
Object permanence
the understanding that objects continue to exist even when out of sight, as revealed by retrieval of hidden objects Present within first few months of life, as evidence by violation-of-expectation tasks Mastery is gradual, more complex with age: Awareness not yet complete: A-not-B search error Full understanding revealed by problems involving invisible displacement
Kipsigis of Kenya and West Indians of Jamaica, babies hold their heads up, sit alone, and walk considerably earlier than Northern Americans
use formal exercises that promote early motor maturity. In the first few months, babies are seated in holes dug in the ground with rolled blankets to keep them upright. Walking is promoted by sitting on adults laps, bouncing them on their feet and exercising stepping reflex.
Assimilation
using current schemes to interpret the world ' Ex. Timmy dropped the objects he was assimilating them to his sensorimotor dropping scheme
Romanian children adopted after 6 months of age performed
well below average
