Introduction to Psychology/Child and Adolescent Psychology/Infants and Toddlers

Physical Developments

 * Prematurity
 * occurs before 37 weeks of gestation or about 3 weeks earlier than the normal due date
 * Low birth weight is weight less than 5 ½ pounds at birth (2 pounds lighter than average); indicates potential for health risks
 * Very low birth weight is weight less than 3 ½ pounds at birth (4 pounds lighter than average); indicates greater potential for health risks
 * Small for gestational age (SGA) is born below the tenth percentile of birth weight for gestational age; indicates serious health risks
 * Prevention includes childbirth classes, healthy lifestyles and especially good prenatal care, but sometimes there is nothing you can do
 * Infant Mortality
 * Refers to deaths that occur before the age of 1 year
 * Having a Healthy Baby
 * Prenatal care is important
 * Growth of the Body and Brain
 * Physical Growth
 * Average birth weight is 7 ½ pounds, with males bout ½ pound heavier than females
 * Baby's weight doubles in first 5 months
 * About 20 inches at birth and half of adult height by age 2
 * Feeding and Nutrition (Breastfeeding)
 * Sterile, cheap, “specially formulated”
 * Colostrums are a thick, yellowish substance in breast milk containing important antibodies (only for the first few days of breastfeeding)
 * Breastfed babies are at less risk of SIDS, asthma, and other illnesses
 * Breastfeeding helps mom lose weight faster, and lowers risk of breast and ovarian cancer
 * Infectious diseases can be spread via breast milk, so some mothers can’t (iron enriched formula)
 * Exclusively for 6 months, slowly introduce iron-rich foods from 6-12 months, judgment call after
 * More likely if mom married, higher income, and supported to breastfeed, but only ¼ by 6 mnths
 * Structure of the Brain and Nervous System
 * Spinal cord is the “information superhighway”
 * Brain stem controls automatic functions
 * Cerebellum is on the back of the brain and controls posture, body orientation, and complex muscle movements
 * Neurons are specialized cells that process information and allow communication in the nervous system (form by 7 weeks)
 * Cerebral cortex is the “gray matter” that forms the top portion of brain and is divided into the 4 lobes (10 wks)
 * Forming the Brain and Nervous System
 * Neural tube at about 4 weeks, which later develops into central nervous system
 * Synaptogenesis is one form of neuron maturation in which dendrites and axons branch out to form an enormously large number of connections with neighboring neurons (by 23 weeks)
 * Most neural connections (synapses) form AFTER birth, as a result of maturation and experiences
 * Myelination is a form of neuron maturation in which the fatty insulation (myelin sheath) grows around the axons; occurs in different parts of the brain at different times
 * Programmed cell death is a process by which many neurons die during periods of migration and heavy Synaptogenesis (we lose half before even born!)
 * Sensory Capabilities
 * Vision
 * Visual acuity is the ability to see fine detail
 * Infants prefer faces
 * Newborns vision is somewhere between 20/150 and 20/600, reaches 20/20 by bout 6 months
 * Normal color vision by 3 months
 * Prefer to look at green, yellow, or red over gray
 * Depth perception by just under two months, but afraid of cliff by time can crawl
 * Binocular disparity is the difference between the images projected on the two eyes
 * Pictorial cues are relative size and density of the pattern elements shown beneath the glass
 * Hearing
 * Hearing is functional before birth
 * Recognize own names by 5 months
 * Smell and Taste
 * Facial expressions show that newborn babies react to certain odors and tastes similar to adults
 * The fetal system is well enough developed sometime near the end of gestation to sense and store information about odors encountered before birth
 * Motor Development
 * Reflexes
 * Reflexes are involuntary movements elicited by environmental stimuli
 * Important early indicators of nervous system function
 * Primitive reflexes disappear around 4 months; help the infant to find nourishment or might have served protective functions during earlier periods of evolution
 * Postural reflexes disappear by 12 months; help infants to keep their heads upright, maintain balance, and roll their heads in the direction of their body motion
 * Locomotor reflexes disappear by 4 months; mimic locomotor movements such as crawling, stepping, and swimming
 * Voluntary Movements
 * Gross motor development is the process of coordinating movements with the large muscles in the body (first step around 1 year)
 * Fine motor development is the process of coordinating intricate movements with smaller muscles
 * Influences on Motor Development
 * Maturation of the muscles and brain
 * Opportunities for practice
 * culture differences in early experience

Cognitive Developments

 * Perceptual Development
 * research techniques:
 * Preferential-looking
 * technique used to test infant visual perception. If infants consistently look longer at some patterns than at others, researchers infer that the infants can see a difference between the patterns
 * Babies prefer moving stimuli, sharp color contrasts, symmetrical patterns, curved patterns, patterns with some complexity or detail, and patterns that resemble the human face
 * Babies are already equipped at birth with an innate schema, or mental framework, of the human face
 * Habituation-dishabituation
 * technique used to test infant perception. Infants are shown a stimulus repeatedly until they respond less (habituate) to it. Then a new stimulus is presented.
 * Habituation is the tendency of infants to reduce their response to stimuli that are presented repeatedly.
 * Dishabituation= is the recovery or increase in infant’s response when a familiar stimulus is replaced by one that is novel.
 * Intermodal Perception is the process of combining or integrating ifnormatino across sensory modalities.
 * “Impossible events” (Renee Baillargeon)
 * Most recent method of assessing infant cognition is via neuroscience (wave imaging)
 * Explaining Cognitive Development: Piaget’s Constructivist View
 * Mental processes (thought, memory, solving problems, language)
 * Children’s thoughts gradually becomes more organized and complex (cognitive development)