1. Chapter 3- The First Two Years Body and Brain

2. Overview: 0-2 Amazing Growth Developing Motor and Sensory Skills
Health: Immunization, Safety, Nutrition
Learning about the World
Learning to Talk

3. Body Changes Height and Weight Average weight at birth: 7.5 pounds
Average length: 20 inches
These numbers are norms, an average measurement.

4. Early Brain Development
Most critical biosocial aspect of growth
newborn’s skull disproportionately large
at birth, 25% of adult brain weight
by age 2, 75% of adult brain weight
Head measurement increases 35% in first year
brain development: changes in the brain’s communication system
Myelination speeds neural impulses about 10 times

5. Head Proportion

6. Body Changes

7. Body Changes Well-baby checkup
Doctor or nurse measures baby’s growth: height, weight, and head circumference.
Abnormal growth may indicate physical or psychological problems.
Headsparing- A biological mechanism that protects the brain when malnutrition disrupts body growth. The brain is the last part of the body to be damaged by malnutrition.

8. Body Changes
Neurons and synapses proliferate (increase rapidly in number) before birth. This increase continues at a fast pace after birth (exuberance), but soon an opposite phenomenon occurs: the elimination, or pruning, of unnecessary connections.
The last part of the brain to mature is the prefrontal cortex, the area for anticipation, planning, and impulse control.
Shaken baby syndrome- a life-threatening injury that occurs when an infant is forcefully shaken back and forth, a motion that ruptures blood vessels in the brain and breaks neural connections.

9. Body Changes
Newborns sleep about 17 hours a day, in one- to three-hour segments.
Newborns’ sleep is primarily active sleep: often dozing, able to awaken if someone rouses them, but also able to go back to sleep quickly if they wake up, cry, and are comforted.
Quiet sleep: slow brain waves and slow breathing
Newborns have a high proportion of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, with flickering eyes and rapid brain waves.

10. Moving and Perceiving Motor Skills
The first movements are not skills but reflexes, involuntary responses to a particular stimulus.

11. Moving and Perceiving
Some reflexes help insure survival: breathing, thrashing, shivering, sucking, rooting, swallowing, spitting up.
Other reflexes are signs of normal functioning:
Babinski reflex. When infants’ feet are stroked, their toes fan upward.
Stepping reflex. When infants are held upright with their feet touching a flat surface, they move their legs as if to walk.
Swimming reflex. When they are laid horizontally on their stomachs, infants stretch out their arms and legs.
Palmar grasping reflex. When something touches infants’ palms, they grip it tightly.
Moro reflex. When someone startles them, perhaps by banging on the table they are lying on, infants fling their arms outward and then bring them together on their chests, as if to hold on to something, while crying with wide-open eyes.

12. Moving and Perceiving
Gross motor skills- Physical abilities involving large body movements, such as walking and jumping.
Fine motor skills- Physical abilities involving small body movements, especially of the hands and fingers, such as drawing and picking up a coin.

13. Gross Motor Skills Involve large muscles and body movements
Hold up torso/head about 4 mos
crawl, creep, walk
Locomotion increases risk of injury (falls/bumps and getting into household chemicals and equipment)-

14. Fine Motor Skills
Small, finely tuned movements, especially of hands and fingers, including
successful swiping
adjusting reach
fingering, pointing, and holding
picking up (palmar 2-6 mos; pincer 12+ mos)
grasping a moving object
transferring objects from hand to hand

15. Moving and Perceiving

16. Moving and Perceiving
The sense of hearing develops during the last trimester of pregnancy and is already quite acute at birth; it is the most advanced of the newborn’s senses.
Vision is the least mature sense at birth.
Newborns focus only on objects between 4 and 30 inches away.
Binocular vision, the ability to coordinate the two eyes to see one image, appears at 3 months.
Sensation is essential for the visual cortex to develop normally.

17. Tasting, Smelling, and Touching
taste—functions at birth; calmed by sugar, sensitive to sour
touch—comforted by human touch; feel pain
smell—can distinguish between odors and have preferences
Early sensation is organized for
social interaction
comfort

18. Surviving in Good Health
Preventing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
In 1990, about 5,000 babies died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in the United States.
The actual cause of SIDS is still unknown: low birthweight, heavy clothing, soft bedding, teenage parenthood, and, particularly, maternal smoking are risk factors.
Putting infants to sleep on their backs reduces the risk but does not eliminate it.

19. Surviving in Good Health
Adequate Nutrition
For every infant disease (including SIDS), breast-feeding reduces risk and malnutrition increases it, stunting growth of body and brain.
Breastfed babies are less likely to develop allergies, asthma, obesity, and heart disease.
As the infant gets older, the composition of breast milk adjusts to the baby’s changing nutritional needs.

20. Nutrition: Breast Is Best
Breast Milk
begins with colostrum, high-calorie nourishment before milk “lets down”
easily digestible
has antibodies and antibacterial properties
better for baby’s health
Bottle Feeding
better option if mother is HIV-positive or using drugs
Babies more likely to have allergies
Feed on demand

21. Why “Breast is Best”
The nutritional composition of breast milk is ideal for human infants.
As the baby grows and its nutritional needs change, mother’s milk adapts to meet these needs.
Breast milk is easily digested.
Breastfeeding promotes attachment (close nurturing bond).

22. Why “Breast is Best”
Breastfeeding reduces the incidence & severity of diseases, infections some chronic diseases.
Breastfeeding enhances brain development.
Breastfeeding helps reduce the possibility of SIDS.

23. Why “Breast is Best”
Breastfeeding reduces postpartum bleeding and aids involution (uterus returning to normal size).
Breastfeeding the risk of breast cancer & ovarian cancer for the mother.
Breastfeeding mothers have fewer hip fractures in the postmenopausal period than women who have never breastfed.

24. Infant Cognition Piaget sensorimotor intelligence
Piaget’s term for the way infants think—by using their senses and motor skills—during the first period of cognitive development.
assimilation
Piaget’s term for a type of adaptation in which new experiences are interpreted to fit into, or assimilate with, old ideas.
accommodation
Piaget’s term for a type of adaptation in which old ideas are restructured to include, or accommodate, new experiences.
object permanence
The realization that objects (including people) still exist when they can no longer be seen, touched, or hear. (8 months)

25. Infant Cognition

26. Infant Cognition Information-processing Theory
A perspective modeled on computer functioning.
Information-processing theorists believe that a step-by-step description of the mechanisms of thought adds insight to our understanding of cognition at every age.
Information-processing research has overturned some of Piaget’s conclusions—including the concept of object permanence.

27. Infant Cognition
The visual cliff was designed to provide the illusion of a sudden dropoff between one horizontal surface and another.
Mothers were able to urge their 6-month-olds to wiggle forward over the supposed edge of the cliff, but 10-month-olds fearfully refused to budge.

28. Infant Cognition Early Memory
According to classic developmental theory, infants store no memories in their first year.
Developmentalists now agree that very young infants can remember if the following conditions are met:
Experimental conditions are similar to real life.
Motivation is high.
Special measures aid memory retrieval.

29. Language Learning Early Communication
Child-directed speech- The high-pitched, simplified, and repetitive way adults speak to infants. (Also called baby talk or motherese.)
Babbling- The extended repetition of certain syllables, such as ba-ba-ba, that begins when babies are between 6 and 9 months old.
Naming explosion- A sudden increase in an infant’s vocabulary, especially in the number of nouns, that begins at about 18 months of age.

30. Language Learning First Words
At about 1 year, babies speak a few words. First words (2 new/week); common in US: ball, dadddy, book, go, no, up
Spoken vocabulary increases gradually (about one or two new words a week).
Once spoken vocabulary reaches about 50 words, it builds quickly, at a rate of 50 to 100 words per month.

31. Language Learning
Holophrase- A single word that is used to express a complete, meaningful thought. All new talkers say names and utter holophrases.
Infants differ in their use of various parts of speech, depending on the language they are learning, e.g. more nouns and fewer verbs.
Naming explosion - sudden increase in infant vocabulary, especially nouns, beginning at 18 months (9/day)
Pivot words used in 1st 2 word phrases (no up, no cup)

32. Language Learning Acquiring Grammar
Grammar includes all the devices by which words communicate meaning: sequence, prefixes, suffixes, intonation, loudness, verb forms, pronouns, negations, prepositions, and articles.
Worldwide, people who are not yet 2 years old already use language well.

33. Language Learning Theories
Learning Approach: Infants need to be taught
B. F. Skinner (1957) noticed that spontaneous babbling is usually reinforced.
Parents are expert teachers, and other caregivers help them teach children to speak (high pitch, simple vocab., short sentences, repetition, more questions & commands)
Frequent repetition of words is instructive, especially when the words are linked to the pleasures of daily life.
Well-taught infants become well-spoken children.

34. Language Learning Theories
Language Learning is Innate
Language acquisition device (LAD)- Chomsky’s term for a hypothesized mental structure that enables humans to learn language, including the basic aspects of grammar, vocabulary, and intonation.

35. Language Learning Theories
Social Impulse Toward Communication
Infants communicate in every way they can because humans are social beings, dependent on one another for survival, well-being, and joy.
Infants seek to respond by vocalizing, babbling, gesturing, listening, & pointing

36. Why Sign?
Deaf children (whose parents sign to them) produce first words before hearing children
Gross motor movements develop before fine motor skills
Signing takes advantage of natural gestures (wave, clap)

37. Why Sign? (2) (Research on using signs with young children)
Enhances communication (Lindert, 2001)
Linguistically & cognitively advanced at age 4 (Goodwyn, Acredolo & Brown, 2000)
Less frustration & aggressive behavior (Grabmeier, 1999)
Enhanced vocabulary, spelling and reading skills (Daniels, 2001)

38. Why Sign? (3) (Effects of signing on school-aged children)
Children’s ability to integrate language with gestures is positively related to their literacy skills (Anthony, 2002).
Advanced phonemic & metalinguistic awareness (Anthony & Lindert, in press)
Average IQ advantage of 12 points (Acredolo & Goodwyn, 2000)

39. Avoid Tantrums Tantrums occur… Out of frustration
When child is unable to communicate needs/desires
Signing allows…
Communication before speech
Manners
A way to halt bad behavior
Silent or private communication