Infants and children chapter5-7

BODY GROWTH

Changes in Body Size and Muscle, Birth weight changes,

Changes in Body Proportions: as the child's overall size increases, parts of the body grow at different rates.

cephalocaudal trend: from the Latin for "head to tail". During the prenatal period, the head develops more rapidly than the lower part of the body.

proximodistal trend: growth proceeds, literally, from "near to far"---from the center of the body outward. The head, chest, and trunk grow fast, then the arm and legs, and finally the hands and frets.

BRAIN DEVELOPMENT

neurons: or nerve cells, that store and transmit information.

synapses: between neurons are tiny gaps, or synapses, where fibers from different neurons come close together but do not touch.

neurotransmitters: neurons send messages to one another by releasing chemicals, called neurotransmitters, which cross the synapse.

synaptic pruning: neurons that are seldom stimulated soon lose their synapses, in a process called synaptic pruning that returns neurons not needed at the moment to an uncommitted state so they can support future development.

electroencephalogram (EEG) : researchers examine brain-wave patterns for stability and organization---signs of mature functioning of the cortex.

functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) : does not depend on x-ray photography, which requires injection of a radioactive substance. Rather, when a child is exposed to a stimulus fMRI detects changes in blood flow and oxygen metabolism throughout the brain magnetically, yielding a colorful moving picture of parts of the brain used to perform a given activity.

positron emission tomography (PET): after injection or inhalation of a radioactive substance, the person lies on an apparatus with a scanner that emits fine streams of x-rays, which detect increased blood flow and oxygen metabolism in areas of the brain as the person processes particular stimuli. As with fMRI, the result is a computerized image of activity anywhere in the brain. Not appropriate for children younger than age 5-6.

near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), in which infrared (invisible) light is beamed at the regions of the cerebral cortex to measure blood flow and oxygen metabolism while the child attends to a stimulus. Because the apparatus consists only of thin, flexible optical fibers attached to the scalp using a head cap, a baby can sit on the parent's lap and move during testing. But unlike PET and fMRI, which map activity changes throughout the brain, NIRS examines only the functioning of the cerebral cortex.

cerebral cortex: surrounds the rest of the brain, resembling half of a shelled walnut. It is the largest brain structure---accounting for 85 percent of the brain's weight and containing the greatest number of neurons and synapses.

frontal lobes: the cortical regions with the most extended period of development are the frontal lobes.

prefrontal cortex: lying in front of areas controlling body movement, is responsible for thought---in particular, consciousness, inhibition of impulses, integration of information, and use of memory, reasoning, planning, and problem solving strategies.

Lateralization:the specialization of the two hemispheres.

Brain plasticity: a highly plastic cerebral cortex, in which many areas are not yet committed to specific functions, has a high capacity for learning, and if a part of the cortex is damaged, other parts can take over the tasks it would have handled.

Sensitive Periods in Brain Development, Victims of Deprived Early Environments.

INFLUENCES ON EARLY PHYSICAL GROWTH; Heredity, when diet and health are adequate, height and rate of physical growth are largely determined by heredity. Also affects body weight.

Nutrition: is especially crucial for development in the first two years because the baby's brain and body are growing so rapidly.

Are Chubby Babies at Risk for Later Overweight and Obesity? Breastfeeding, healthy food, tv limits.

Malnutrition

LEARNING CAPACITIES

classical conditioning: in this form of learning, a neutral stimulus is paired with a stimulus that leads to a reflexive response. Once the baby's nervous system makes the connection between the two stimuli, the neutral stimulus produces the behavior by itself.

unconditioned stimulus (UCS): before learning takes place, ucs must consistently produce a reflexive or unconditioned response.

consistently produces a reflexive, or unconditioned response (UCR).

A neutral stimulus that does not lead to the reflexive response is presented just before, or at about the same time as, the UCS. The neutral stimulus, now called a conditioned stimulus (CS), produces the reflexive response, now called a conditioned response (CR). Breast milk--sucking, forehead stroking+ breastmilk feeding, forehead stroking--sucking.

Extinction is a decline in the CR as a result of presenting the CS repeatedly without the UCS. If the cs is represented alone enough times, without being paired with the Ucs, the cr will no longer occur.

Operant conditioning: infants act, or operate, on the environment, and stimulus that follow their behavior change the probability that the behavior will occur again.

reinforcers: a stimulus that increases the occurrence of a response is called reinforcers.

Punishment: removing a desirable stimulus or presenting an unpleasant one to decrease the occurrence of a response:

Habituation: refers to a gradual reduction in the strength of a repetitive stimulation.

Recovery: a new stimulus---a change in the environment, causes responsiveness to return to a high level, an increase called recovery.

Imitation: by copying the behavior of another person.

mirror neurons: 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.

The Sequence of Motor Development - Gross-motor development: refers to control over actions that help infants get around in the environment, such as crawling, standing, and walking.

Fine-motor: has to do with smaller movements, such as reaching and grasping.

SENSORY AND PERCEPTION What is Sensation? It suggests a fairly passive process--what the baby's receptor detect when exposed to stimulation.

What is Perception? Which is active---when we perceive, we organize and interpret what we see.

What do newborns have? Are they the same as adults? What is habituation? What about smell? Give examples of what infants can smell and respond to. What about taste? Touch? Pain? Sight? Hearing? What about Perception? How do infants perceive the world?

PIAGET & VYGOTSKY TERMS – Organization : a process that occurs internally, adapt from direct contact with the environment. Once children form new schemes, they rearrange them, linking them with other schemes to create a strongly interconnected cognitive system.) and Adaptation: adaption involved building schemes through direct interaction with the environment. (include assimilation: we use our current schemes to interpret the external world) and accommodation: we create new schemes or adjust old ones after noticing that our current ways of thinking do not capture the environment completely)

Schemes:specific psychological structures--organized ways of making sense of experience called schemes--change with age. Thinking before action.

perspective taking: skills are rooted in a cognitive skill called, Perspective-taking—viewing the world from something other than one's habitual vantage point—covers a broad range from the literal to metaphorical.

Theory of Mind.” A formal definition of Theory of Mind is, “an understanding of other people's mental states” (their thoughts, feelings, desires, motivations, intentions).

Equilibration: when children do not change much, they assimilate more than they accommodate--a steady comfortable state that Piaget called cognitive equilibrium.

Disequilibration: during times of rapid cognitive change, children are in a state of disequilibrium, or cognitive discomfort. Realizing that new information does not match their current schemes, they shift from assimilation to accommodation.

Object permanence: the understanding that objects continue to exist when they are out of sight.

animism,

egocentricism (preoperational and adolescent), Egocentrism refers to the child's inability to see a situation from another person's point of view. According to Piaget, the egocentric child assumes that other people see, hear, and feel exactly the same as the child does

conservation: Conservation is one of Piaget's developmental accomplishments, in which the child understands that changing the form of a substance or object does not change its amount, overall volume, or mass. This accomplishment occurs during the operational stage of development between ages 7 and 11.

Outline Piaget’s four stages of development and identify what develops at each stage：sensorimotor stage birth to 2 : deal with world directly through their perceptions and actions. -preoperational stage: 2-7-has now developed the capacity for symbolic thought but is not yet capable of logical problem solving. -concrete operation stage: they now use a trial and error approach to problem solving and do well on problems that involve thinking about concrete objects. -the formal operations stage. Think more abstractly and hypothetically than school age children.

Conservation skills,

Mountain Task:Egocentric children assume that other people will see the same view of the three mountains as they do. According to Piaget, at age 7 thinking is no longer egocentric, as the child can see more than their own point of view.

Describe Vygotsky’s theory and why does it represent a cultural historical perspective of children’s development.

What are ZPD: the gap between a learner can accomplish independently and what she can accomplish with the guidance and encouragement of a more skilled partner.

MKO: somewhat self explanatory. It refers to someone who has a better understanding or higher ability level than the learner, with respect to a particular task, process, or concept. Although the implication is that the mko is a teacher or an older adult, this is not necessarily the case. Many times, a child's peers or an adult's children maybe the individuals with more knowledge or experience.

and scaffolding: the more skilled person gives structured help to a less skilled learner but gradually reduces the help as the less skilled learner becomes more competent.

How are Piaget and Vygotsky alike? Different?

INFORMATION PROCESSING

sensory register: first, information enters the sensory register, where sights and sounds are represented directly and stored briefly.

short-term memory store: in the second part of the mind, the short term memory store, we retain attended to information briefly so we can actively work on it to reach our goals.

working memory: the number of items that can be briefly held in mind while also engaging in some effort to monitor or manipulate those items.

central executive: to manage the cognitive system's complex activities, the central executive directs the flow of information, implementing the basic procedures just mentioned and also engaging in more sophisticated activities that enable complex flexible thinking. For example, the central executive coordinates incoming information with information already in the system, and it selects, applies, and monitors strategies that facilitate memory storage, comprehension, reasoning and problem solving.

Automatic processes: are so well learned that they require no space in working memory and therefore, permits us to focus on their information while performing them. Consider the richness of your thinking while you automatically drive a car.

Long-term memory: our permanent knowledge base, which is unlimited.

Executive function: the diverse cognitive operations and strategies that enable us to achieve our goals in cognitively challenging situations. These including controlling attention, suppressing impulses, coordinating information in working memory, and flexibly directing and monitoring thought and behavior.

recognition: noticing when a stimulus is identical or similar to one previously experienced.

recall: is more challenging because it involves remembering something not present.

infantile amnesia:

autobiographical memory: Autobiographical memory is a memory system consisting of episodes recollected from an individual's life, based on a combination of episodic (personal experiences and specific objects, people and events experienced at particular time and place) and semantic (general knowledge and facts about the world) memory.

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

When do toddlers say their first word?

two-word combinations? Telegraphic speech? These two word utterances are called telegraphic speech because like a telegram, they focus on high content words, omitting smaller less important ones.

What is the Nativist perspective? Who is Chomsky? According to linguist Noam Chonsky's nativist theory, language is a uniquely human accomplishment, etched into the structure of the brain.

language acquisition device (LAD): an innate system that contains a universal grammar, or set of rules common to 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 up enough words.

universal grammar: set of rules common to all languages.

, —Broca’s area: located in the left frontal lobe, supports grammatical processing and language production.

and Wernicke’s area: located in the left temporal lobe, plays a role in comprehending word meaning.

What is The Interactionist Perspective: recent ideas about language development emphasize interactions between inner capacities and environmental influences.

Cooing and Babbling when do they occur? Around 2 months, babies begin to make vowel like noises, called cooing because of their pleasant 'oo' quality. Around 6 months, babbling appears, in which infants reparations consonant vowel combinations, often in long strings, such as "babababababab".

joint attention: in which the child attends to the same object or event as the caregiver.

under-extension: when young children first learn words, they sometimes apply them too narrowly, an error called underextension. Bear to refer to the worn and tatered teddy bear.

overextension: applying a word to a wider collection of objects and events that is appropriate. Car to refer to buses, trains, trucks, and fire engines.

expressive: Expressive language, is most simply the “output” of language, how one expresses his or her wants and needs. This includes not only words, but also the grammar rules that dictate how words are combined into phrases, sentences and paragraphs as well as the use of gestures and facial expressions. It is important to make the distinction here between expressive language and speech production. Speech production relates to the formulation of individual speech sounds using one’s lips, teeth, and tongue. This is separate from one’s ability to formulate thoughts that are expressed using the appropriate word or combination of words. If you have concerns about your child’s language development, consider both how they respond to directions you provide, as well as the words and word combinations they use. Give credit to the gestural cues and facial expressions that your child uses and reacts to as this is an early-developing and important skill. If your concerns persist, seek out the advice of a Speech-Language Pathologist who can evaluate your child and determine if their development is on track, or whether therapy is warranted. And regardless of your child’s skill set, keep talking and interacting with your child- however they are able. Language models are key in fostering the development of communication skills.

receptive; Receptive language is the understanding of language “input.” This includes the understanding of both words and gestures. girls talkingReceptive language goes beyond just vocabulary skills, but also the ability to interpret a question as a question, the understanding of concepts like “on,” or accurately interpreting complex grammatical forms (i.e. understanding that the phrase “The boy was kicked by the girl” means that a girl did the kicking). A child typically develops receptive language skills first, you can think of children as sponges who absorb the rules and use of language before they begin to express themselves using each of these language skills. (To learn more about receptive language delays, click here.)

comprehension: the language they understand. At all ages, comprehension develops ahead of production.

production: the words and word combinations children use.

ERIKSON’S THEORY OF INFANT AND TODDLER PERSONALITY - psychosocial theory Stage 1. Basic Trust Stage: when the balance of care is sympathetic and loving, the psychological conflict of the first year--basic trust vs mistrust, is

2. Autonomy versus Shame and Doubt: the conflict of toddlerhood, is resolved favorably when parents provide young children with suitable guidance and reasonable choices.

Basic emotions: happiness, interest, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust are universal in humans and other primates and have a long evolutionary history of promoting survival.

happiness: expressed first in blissful smiles, later through exuberant laughter, contributes to many aspects of development.

social smile: between 6 and 10 weeks, the parent's communication evokes a broad grin called social smile.

anger and sadness,

fear,

stranger anxiety: the most frequent expression of fear is to unfamiliar adults.

secure base: infants use the familiar caregiver as a secure base, or point from which to explore, venturing into the environment and then returning for emotional support.

social referencing: activity seeking emotional information from a trusted person in an uncertain situation.

self-conscious emotions: humans are capable of a second higher order set of feelings, including guilt, shame, embarrassment, envy, and pride. These are called self conscious emotions because each involves injury to it enhancement to our sense of self.

Emotional self-regulation: refers to the strategies we use to adjust our emotional state to a comfortable level of intensity so we can accomplish our goals.

Temperament: early appearing, stable individual differences in reactivity and self-regulation. Reactivity refers to quickness and intensity of emotional arousal, attention, and motor activity. Self-regulation: as we have seen, refers to strategies that modify that reactivity.

Who are Thomas and Chess? They initiated the New York longitudinal study, a groundbreaking investigation of the development of temperament that followed 141 children from early infancy well into adulthood. Results showed that temperament can increase a child's chances of experiencing psychological problems or alternatively protect a child from the negative effects of a highly stressful home life. At the same time, they discovered that parenting practices can modify children's emotional styles considerably.

easy child: quickly establishes regular routines in infancy, is generally cheerful, and adapts easily to new experiences.

difficult child: is irregular in daily routines, is slow to accept new experiences and tends to react negatively and intensely.

slow-to-warm-up child: is inactive? Shoes mild, low key reactions to environmental stimuli, is negative in mood and adjusts slowly to new experiences.

Who is Mary Rothbart? Rothbart's dimensions represent the 3 underlying components included in the definition of temperament. 1-emotion(fearful stress, irritable distress. Positive affect) 2-attention( attention span/persistence) 3-action(activity level)

Effortful control: according to Rothbart, individuals differ not just in their reactivity on each dimension but also in the self regulatory dimension of temperament, the capacity to voluntarily suppress a dominant response in order to plan and executive a more adaptive response.

goodness-of-fit model: to explain how temperament and environment can together produce favorable outcomes. Goodness of fit involves creating child rearing environment that recognize each child's temperament while simultaneously encouraging more adaptive functioning.

ATTACHMENT: is the strong affectionate tie we have with special people in our lives that leads us to experience pleasure and joy when we interact with them and to be comforted by their nearness in times of stress.

Bowlby’s Ethological Theory : which recognizes the infant's emotional tie to the caregiver as an evolved response that promotes survival, is the most widely accepted view.

Attachment develops in four phases-Preattachment phase: birth to 6 weeks: built in signals--grasping, smiling, crying, and gazing into the adult's eyes--help bring newborn babies into close contact with other humans, who comfort them. Babies of this age recognize their own mother's smell, voice and face. But they are not yet attached to her, since they do not mind being left with an unfamiliar adult.

Attachment in the making” phase: 6 weeks to 6-8 months: during this phase, infants respond differently to a familiar caregiver than to a stranger. As infants learn that their own actions affect the behavior of those around them, they begin to develop a sense of trust--the expectation that the caregiver will respond when signaled--but they still do not protest when separated from her.

Clear-cut” attachment phase: 6-18 months to 2 years: now attachment to the familiar caregiver is evident. Babies display separation anxiety. Besides protesting the parent's departure, older infants and toddlers try hard to maintain her presence. They approach, follow, and climb on her in preference to others.

separation anxiety: becoming upset when their trusted caregiver leaves. It does not always occur, it depends on infant temperament and the current situation.

Formation of a reciprocal relationship: 18months to 2 years and on: by the end of the second year, rapid growth in representation and language enables toddlers to understand some of the factors that influence the parents' coming and going and to predict her return. As a result, separation protest declines.

internal working model: or set of expectation about the availability of attachment figures, their likelihood of providing support during times of stress, and the self's interaction with those figures. The internal working model becomes a vital part of personality, serving as a guide for all future close relationship.

The Strange Situation: a widely used laboratory technique for assessing the quality of attachment between 1 and 2 years of age is the strange situation. In designing it, Mary ainsworth and her colleagues reasoned that securely attached infants and toddlers should use the parent as a secure base from which to explore in an unfamiliar playroom. In addition, when the parent leaves, an unfamiliar adult should be less comforting than the parent. The strange situation takes the baby through eight short episodes in which brief separations from and reunions with the parent occur.

Secure attachment: these infants use the parent as a secure base. When separated, they may or may not cry, but if they do, it is because the parent is absent and they prefer her to the stranger. When the parent returns, they express clear pleasure---some expressing joy from a distance, others asking to be held until settling down to return to play--and crying is reduced immediately.

Insecure–avoidant attachment: these infants seem unresponsive to the parent when she is present. When she leaves, they usually are not distressed, and they react to the stranger in much the same way as to the parent. During reunion, they avoid it are slow to greet the parent, and when picked up, they often fail to cling.

Insecure–resistant: before separation, these infants seek closeness to the parent and often fail to explore. When the parent leaves, they are usually distressed, and on her return they combine clinginess with angry, resistive behavior( struggling when held, hitting and pushing) or with an anxious focus on the parent. Many continue to cry after being picked up and cannot be comforted easily.

Disorganized/disoriented attachment: this pattern reflects the greatest insecurity. At reunion, these infants show confused, contradictory behaviors---for example, looking away while the parent is holding them or approaching the parent with flat depressed emotion. Most display a dazed facial expression and a few cry out unexpectedly after having calm d down or display off, frozen postures.