By Lisa Fiore 1

 What are the major physical accomplishments of the infancy period?  How do infants acquire information about their world?  What are the differences between Piaget’s view of cognitive development in infancy and that of information processing?  How do infants acquire their language?  What is the role of relationships in psychosocial development?  How do children develop and control their emotions?  How would you assess the importance of attachment in psychosocial development?  How does temperament affect the relationship between parents and their children? 2

What are the major physical accomplishments of the infancy period? 3

 Rapid physical development  Time of extreme vulnerability 4

Rapid changes in: ◦ Body shape and composition ◦ Distribution of tissues ◦ Motor skills Total growth ◦ Complex series of changes in developmental sequence ◦ Proper nutrition vital 5

Breast Feeding vs. Bottle Feeding: ◦ Human milk ideal food for infants up to 6 mos. ◦ Not always supported Benefits of Breast Feeding: ◦ Protection against disease ◦ Less risk for allergic reactions ◦ Stronger bones ◦ Advanced cognitive development ◦ Easier transitions to solid food ◦ Lower risk for obesity 6

7 Brain Development: ◦ More active than an adult’s brain ◦ ¼ of its adult weight ◦ ½ lb. at birth ◦ 3 lbs. (adult size) by 5 years ◦ Shaken baby syndrome

8 Neurons  Axons  Dendrites  Myelin  Synapse

Develops in two ways ◦ Cephalocaudal ◦ Proximodistal Progression of Motor Development: ◦ Head Control ◦ Creeping ◦ Crawling ◦ Standing ◦ Walking 9

 Failure to thrive (FTT) ◦ Organic ◦ Nonorganic  Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) ◦ Dies suddenly during the night without an apparent cause ◦ Impaired brain functioning ◦ “Back to sleep” 10

Sleep patterns: ◦ About 16 to 17 hours in the first week; 13 hours at age 2 REM (rapid eye movement) sleep: ◦ Spend 80% of sleep in REM sleep ◦ Large amount of REM sleep provides extra stimulation for brain development 11

Respiratory Distress Syndrome (RDS) ◦ Common with premature babies ◦ Caused by lack of a substance that keeps air sacs in the lungs open 12

How do infants acquire information about their world? 13

Perception: ◦ Obtaining and interpreting information from stimuli Habituation: ◦ Decrease in an infant’s attention 14

Visual Preferences ◦ Complex patterns ◦ Human faces Fantz’s “looking chamber” ◦ Instrument to measure visual perception 15

 Gibson’s & Walk’s Visual Cliff ◦ Infants discriminate depth when they begin crawling  Perception ◦ More sophisticated by 2 – 4 months 16

Auditory Perception  Developed prenatally  Sensitivity to differences in sounds  Locate the direction of a sound  Pay attention to speech-like sounds  Prefer mother’s voice over others 17

What are the differences between Piaget’s view of cognitive development in infancy and that of information processing? 18

Piaget’s Sensorimotor Period ◦ Ages birth to 2 years ◦ Egocentrism ◦ Six Stages ◦ Circular Reactions 19

Six Sub-stages ◦ Exercise reflexes ◦ Primary circular reactions ◦ Secondary circular reactions ◦ Coordination of secondary schemes ◦ Tertiary circular reaction ◦ Internalization of schemes 20

Four accomplishments: ◦ Object permanence ◦ Sense of space ◦ Causality ◦ Time sequences Infants move: ◦ From sensory & motor functioning ◦ To symbolic kinds of activity 21

Criticisms  Changes are not stage-like, but gradual  Level of cognitive development depends more on nature of the task  Piaget underestimated infants’ abilities: ◦ Gelman & Baillargeon (1983) 22

Information processing assumptions ◦ Limited capacity ◦ Research focus is on attention and memory ◦ Children have a wide variety of strategies to use again if successful Attention: ◦ Selective ◦ Active in cognitive processing ◦ Limited 23

1. The brain as a whole is involved in memory 2. Memories are retrieved in the same manner as they were formed 3. Memories are stored in the brain’s synapses 4. Synaptic connections can be strengthened through use, and learning can form new synaptic processes 24

How do infants acquire their language? 25

Amazing accomplishments of childhood! ◦ Learn words & meanings ◦ How to combine them in a logical & purposeful way Children all over the world acquire language in the same process ◦ First emit sounds ◦ Single words ◦ Two words ◦ Complex sentences ◦ By age 5, acquired basics of language 26

How does this achievement occur?  First learn the rules of their language  By the end of 2 nd year, learn to apply a label to an object  Fast mapping  Learn at a fast pace  By age 5, remarkably sophisticated language users  Continue expanding and refining language skills 27

Stages 1. Preintellectual speech 2. Naive Psychology 3. Egocentric Speech 4. Inner Speech 28

 Physiological Sounds (1 st mo.)  Cooing (2 nd mo.)  Babbling (5 – 7 mos.)  First words (12 mos.)  Word spurt  Holophrases  Telegraphic Speech  Two word stage (18 – 24 mos.) ◦ Difficulties with word order 29

Children quickly learn: ◦ Phonology ◦ Semantics ◦ Syntax ◦ Pragmatics 30

Nature: ◦ Chomsky (1957) ◦ Language Acquisition Device (LAD) ◦ Broca’s & Wernicke’s Language areas Nurture: ◦ Behaviorists believe environment & reinforcement are forces in language development 31

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What is the role of relationships in psychosocial development? 34

Relationships:  Patterns of interactions between people over time  Baby’s relationships & aspects of development: ◦ Playing (physical and social) ◦ Talking and communicating (language) ◦ Understanding self and others (cognitive) ◦ Attachment (emotional) 35

Pattern of interactions  Infants focus on mothers as sources of relief & satisfaction  Mothers, in turn, discriminate between infants’ cries: hunger, discomfort, or fear  Possible contradictory interactions 36

Reciprocal interactions ◦ Interactions that result in mutual changes Infants: ◦ Infants not passive, but active ◦ Seek stimulation from environment ◦ Interpret and react to how they are treated Parents: ◦ have preconceived ideas about the role they play in their relationships with their children 37

How do children develop and control their emotions? 38

During infancy, emotions: ◦ Generate adaptive functions that help to define the meaning of a child’s experiences ◦ Motivate them to either approach or withdraw from situations ◦ Communicate their needs to those around them ◦ Help infants learn about social exchanges Emotions: the language of infancy 39

Analyzing Emotional Expressions ◦ Emotional experiences at different ages vary drastically The Smile ◦ 2-month-old infants: “Smilers” ◦ “False” smiles appear until the sixth week when the true social smile appears 40

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How would you assess the importance of attachment in psychosocial development? 42

Attachment:  Behavior intended to keep a child (or adult) in close proximity to a significant other Ethology  Bowlby: ◦ Child’s need for mother’s presence is as strong as his/her need for food ◦ Mother’s continued absence can cause a sense of loss and feelings of anger 43

Bowlby: ◦ Studies in which children were separated from their parents and predictable sequence of behaviors was observed: 1. Protest 2. Despair 3. Detachment 4. Apathetic 44

Ainsworth: ◦ Studied quality of infants’ attachment ◦ Strange Situation Test ◦ Attachment Styles:  Securely attached children  Avoidantly attached children  Ambivalently attached children  Disorganized/disoriented children 45

Harlow’s Classic Study (1971): ◦ Rhesus monkeys “raised” by 2 types of substitute “mothers”  constructed out of wire  terry-cloth towels ◦ Results:  Those with softer surrogate mothers fared better than those caged with cold, hard wire mothers  All monkeys exhibited clear effects from being deprived of maternal affection 46

How does temperament affect the relationship between parents and their children? 47

 Temperament - a child’s unique and stable style of behaving  The Origins of Temperament ◦ Clear genetic influence ◦ Changes in the expression of temperament over time 48

Kagan’s Biological Interpretation ◦ Biology is a major contributor to temperament ◦ Temperament: an inherited physiology linked to emotions and behaviors 49

Thomas & Chess: ◦ New York City Longitudinal Study ◦ 3 types of temperament  Easy  Difficult  Slow-to-warm-up ◦ Goodness of Fit ◦ Sensitive responsiveness 50

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