Beginnings

Physical Development: Key Highlights

Conception

Zygotes: fertilized eggs.

Embryo: The human organism from 2 weeks to2 months of age.

Teratogens

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome:---occurs when pregnant mothers drink heavily---affects 1 in 750 children---small heads and distorted facial features---brain abnormalities---the leading form of mental retardation

Fetus: From 8 weeks to birth.

Physical Development: Key Highlights

Brain Development

Motor Development

Physical Development: Key Highlights

I. Infant Memory

Infantile Amnesia: the inability to remember events experienced within the first two to three years of life.

Cognitive Neuroscience Approach: Approach to the study of cognitive development that links brain development with cognitive development.

Explicit Memory: Intentional and conscious memory, generally of facts, names, and events.

Implicit Memory: Unconscious recall, generally of habits and skills; sometimes called procedural memory.

Cognitive Development

II. Cognitive Development Testing

Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development

Cognitive Skills

Language Skills

Motor Skills

Social-Emotional Behavior

Adaptive Behavior

Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) Some key characteristics HOME assesses are…

Parental responsiveness

Number of books in home

Presence of educational playthings

Some other things that parents can do to promote normal cognitive development are…

Mentor in labeling, sorting, & comparing

Celebrate accomplishments

Avoid punishment for safe exploratory behavior

Stimulate language and communication

Social-Contextual Approach: Approach to the study of cognitive development by focusing on environmental influences, particularly parents and other caregivers.

III. Piaget: Sensorimotor Stage

Sensorimotor Stage: Experiencing the world through our senses and our actions (looking, touching, tasting, etc).

This stage consists of 6 substages…

1. Reflexes (birth to about 1 month): Infants begin to exercise some control over inborn reflexes.

2. Primary Circular Reaction (about 1 to 4 months): Infants learn to repeat pleasant bodily sensations first discovered accidentally.

3. Secondary Circular Reactions (about 4 to 8 months): Infants are interested in manipulating objects.

4. Coordination of Secondary Schemas (about 8 to 12 months): Infants have learned to generalize from the past to solve new problems and exhibit complex, goal-directed behavior.

5. Tertiary Circular Reactions (about 12 to 18 months): Infants experiment with behavior variations to get similar results. Trial and error is used for problem solving.

6. Representational Ability (about 18 months to two years): the capacity to mentally represent objects and experiences, through symbols like words and numbers.

Dual Representation Hypothesis: Proposal that children under the age of 3 have difficulty grasping spatial relationships because of the need to keep more than one mental representation in mind at the same time.

Imitation

Visible Imitation: imitation with parts of one's body that one can see.

Invisible Imitation: imitation with parts of one's body that one cannot see.

Object Permanence: the awareness that objects continue toexist even when not perceived.

Prior to 8 months…If I drop my toy and I can’t see it….it is gone!…..THIS is why peek-a-boo is so much fun!

8-12 months…You hid my toy…I’m looking for it the last place I saw it!

After a year…You hid my toy…I’m looking for it!

IV. Information-Processing Approach

Habituation: a decrease in responding with repeated stimulation.

Attraction to Novelty: a demonstrated interest in a temporally or historically new stimulus.

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Human Sensory Preferences: Infants prefer human sights and sounds.

Cross-modal transfer: Ability to use information gained by one sense to guide another.

Joint Attention: An infant's response to an adult's gaze by looking or pointing in the same direction.

Mother’s Scent: Within days of birth, we know our mother’sscent.

Violating Expectations to Study Object Permanence

V. Language Development During The First Three Years of Life

Prelinguistic Speech: Forerunner of linguistic speech; utterance of sounds that are not words. Includes crying, cooing, babbling, and accidental and deliberate imitations of sounds without understanding their meaning.

Early Vocalizations

Crying: Newborn’s means of communication; can signal hunger, sleepiness, or anger.

Cooing: Squealing, gurgling, and making vowel sounds like “ahhh.”

Babbling: Repeating consonant-vowel strings, such as “ma-ma-ma-ma.”

Recognizing Language Sounds

Precedes language ability and begins in the womb.

Fetuses’ heart rates slow when they hear familiar nursery rhymes.

By 6 months, babies learn to recognize basic sounds of their native language – phonemes.

Gestures

Conventional Social Gestures: Gestures such as waving goodbye or nodding the head to signify “yes,” taught to a child by an adult or older child.

Representational Gestures: Gestures that represent the desired action directly, such as holding an empty cup to one’s mouth to signify wanting a drink.

Symbolic Gestures: Gestures that function much like words and are symbolic of the desired concept, such as blowing to mean hot or sniffing to mean flower.

First Words

Linguistic Speech: Verbal expression designed to convey meaning.

Holophrase: Single word that conveys a complete thought.

Passive: Referring to understood vocabulary.

Expressive: Referring to spoken vocabulary.

First Sentences

Telegraphic Speech: 2-3 words expressing one idea.

Competence in syntax (rules for forming sentences) gradually increases.

Language Acquisition

Nativism: Chomsky’s theory that human beings have an inborn capacity for language acquisition.

Language acquisitions device (LAD): In Chomsky’s terminology, an inborn mechanism that enables children to infer linguistic rules from the language they hear.

Hand-babbling: The gestures of deaf babies that are repeated over and over.

Parentese: a slow and high-pitched method of communication that may enhance early language learning.

I. FOUNDATIONS OF PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Personality: A relatively consistent blend of emotions, temperament, thought, and behavior that makes each person unique.

Psychosocial development: From birth to death, personality development is intertwined with social relationships.

Psychosocial Development

Emotions

Emotions: Subjective reactions to experience that are associated with physiological and behavioral changes.

Stranger Anxiety: Fear of strangers, especially when the primary caregiver is not present, shown by babies by about 8 months of age.

Non-organic failure to thrive: Failure of an infant to grow and gain weight despite adequate nutrition.

Separation Anxiety: Distress shown by an infant when a familiar caregiver leaves.

First Signs of Emotion

Crying: 4 types

Hunger cry: A rhythmic cry, not always associated with hunger.

Angry cry: A variation of the rhythmic cry in which excess air is forced through the vocal cords.

Pain cry: A sudden onset of loud crying without preliminary moaning, sometimes followed with holding the breath.

Frustration cry: Two or three drawn-out cries, with no prolonged breath-holding.

Smiling and Laughing: Initially it’s involuntary, but eventually it becomes voluntary.

When Do Emotions Appear?

Soon after birth, infants will exhibit contentment, interest, and distress. Over the next 6 months, they begin to express the 6 basic emotions…

HappinessSurpriseSadnessDisgustAngerFear

Emotions Involving the Self

Self-conscious emotions: Emotions such as embarrassment,empathy, and envy that require a degree of self-awareness.

Self-awareness: Conscious knowledge of the self as a distinct, identifiable being that is separate from others.

Self-evaluative emotions: Emotions such as pride, guilt, and shame that involve evaluation of one’s own thoughts and behavior against socially appropriate thoughts and behavior.

Empathy: The ability to put oneself in another person’s place and feel what that person feels.

Sympathy: Sorrow or concern for another person’s unfortunate situation.

Prosocial Behavior: Any voluntary behavior intended to help others.

Social Cognition: In reference to early cognitive development,the cognitive ability to understand that others have mentalstates.

Temperament

Temperament: Characteristic disposition, or style of approaching and reacting to situations.

1. Easy: Generally happy; Responds well to change and novelty

2. Slow to Warm Up: Generally mild reactions; Hesitant about new experiences.

3. Difficult: Irritable; Intense emotional responses

Goodness of fit: Adjustment is easiest when the child’s temperament matches the situation.

PhysicallySociallyCulturally

Earliest Social Experiences: The Infant in the Family

The Mother’s Role

Body Contact

Harlow’s Monkeys

The Father’s Role

How Parents Shape Gender Differences

Gender: Significance of being male or female.

Gender-typing: Socialization process by which children, at an early age, learn appropriate gender roles.

II. DEVELOPMENTAL ISSUES IN INFANCY

Developing Trust

Basic trust versus basic mistrust: Erikson’s first stage in psychosocial development, in which infants develop a sense of the reliability of people and objects.

Hope: The belief among infants that they can fulfill their needs and obtain their desires because the world is safe and reliable.

Success at this stage is based on… Sensitive, responsive, and consistent care.

‘Can I count on you to feed me when I’m hungry?’

Virtue attained…

Developing Attachments

Attachment: Reciprocal, enduring tie between infant and caregiver, each of whom contributes to the quality of the relationship.

Strange Situation

A mother and infant (12 to 18 months of age) enter a room with toys in it.A stranger enters the room.Mother leaves the room.Mother returns to the room.Mother and the stranger leave the room.The stranger returns to the room.Mother returns to the room again.

Securely Attached: child explores environment when mother is present, cries briefly when she leaves, is happy when mother returns, goes off and plays again.

Insecure Attachment…

Anxious/Ambivalent: child clings to mother, cries uncontrollably when mother leaves, clings to mother once again when she returns, yet kicks and squirms.

Avoidant: child ignores mother while she’s there, when

she leaves, and when she returns.

Disorganized: child doesn’t seem to notice mother or looks away when approaching her, alternates between approach and avoidance.

Attachment Q-set (AQS)

Influences on Attachment

Parental

Level of warmth and responsivenessEmployment and amount of separation

Baby’s temperament

Long-Term Effects of Attachment

Amount of independenceChild’s expectations about social relationshipsLevel of curiosity and self-confidencePreparation for adult intimacy

Adult Attachment Interview (AAI): A semi-structured interview that asks adults to recall and interpret feelings and experiences related to their childhood attachments.

Emotional Communication with Caregivers: Mutual Regulation

Mutual regulation: Process by which infant and caregiver communicate emotional states to each other and respond appropriately.

“Still-face” paradigm: Research method used to measure mutual regulation in infants 2 to 9 months old.

Still-face: referring to the mother suddenly becoming stony-faced, silent, and unresponsive.

Reunion: referring to the mother’s resumption of normal interaction after the “still-face” episode.

“Still-face” paradigm: Sequence

Mother becomes stony face.Child stops smiling and looking at mother.Child tries to comfort self.After still-face baby is joyous, but demanding.

Social Referencing: Understanding an ambiguous situation by seeking out another person’s perception of it.

The Emerging Sense of Self

Self-concept: descriptive and evaluative mental picture of one’s existence, abilities, and traits.

Personal Agency: A feature of the self in which the baby realizes that one can control external events. “I can make that move!”

Self-efficacy: Sense of capability to master challenges and achieve goals. “I’m GREAT at making it move!”

Self-coherence: The sense of being a physical whole with boundaries, within which agency resides.

Self-awareness: Conscious knowledge of the self as a distinct, identifiable being that is separate from others. Rouge test

III. DEVELOPMENTAL ISSUES IN TODDLERHOOD

Development of Autonomy

Autonomy versus shame and doubt: Erikson’s second stage in psychosocial development, in which children achieve a balance between self-determination and control by others.

Autonomy

A shift from external control to self-controlEmerges from trust and self-awareness

The Terrible Twos… Negativism: The tendency of a toddler to shout “No!” just for the sake of resisting authority.

Shame and Doubt

Help toddler recognize need for limits

Virtue attained…

Will: The driving force to accomplish tasks.

Moral Development: Socialization and Internalization

Socialization: Development of habits, skills, values, and motives shared by responsible, productive members of a society.

Internalization: Process by which children accept societal standards of conduct as their own; fundamental to socialization.

Developing Self-Regulation…

Self-regulation: Child’s independent control of behavior to conform to understood social expectations even when caregiver is not present.

Depends on attentional processes

Ability to monitor negative emotions

Origins of Conscience: Committed Compliance

Conscience: Internal standards of behavior, which usually control one’s conduct and produce emotional discomfort when violated.

Inhibitory control: Conscious, or effortful, holding back of impulses.

Refraining because they believe it is the right thing to do…not just self-regulation.

Committed ComplianceWillingly follows orders without lapses.

Shows internalization of household rules.

Situational Compliance Follows orders with prompting and reminders.

IV. CONTACT WITH OTHER CHILDREN

Socialization with Siblings…

becomes a vehicle for understanding social relationships outside the home.leads to constructive conflict which helps children with empathy.

The "Only Child" Syndrome

Twins

Sociability with Non-Siblings

Babies who spend more time with other babies tend to be more sociable.Toddlers can learn by imitating each other…

Playing follow-the-leaderPaves the way for more complex games

V. CHILDREN OF WORKING PARENTS

NLSY found little or no effect of maternal employment on children’s:

ComplianceBehavioral problemsSelf-esteemCognitive developmentAcademic achievement

Whether or not day care (schooling before age 2) is beneficial likely depends on a number of factors…

The quality of the day care center.The temperament and attachment styles of the child.The household income.Quality of parenting.

VI. MALTREATMENT: ABUSE AND NEGLECT

Maltreatment: Deliberate or avoidable endangerment of a child.

Abuse (general definition): Action that inflicts harm.

Neglect (general definition): Inaction that causes harm.

Physical abuse: Action taken to endanger a child, involving potential bodily injury.

Neglect: Failure to meet a child's basic needs.

Sexual abuse: Sexual activity involving a child and an older person.

Emotional maltreatment: Action or inaction that maycause behavioral, cognitive, emotional, or mental disorders.

Abuse-Prevention ProgramsTeach parenting skills.Investigate reports of

maltreatment.Provide shelters and therapy.Facilitate foster care.

Long-Term Effects of MaltreatmentOne third of adults abused as children

victimize own children.Sexually abused children grow up with:Lower self-esteemGreater risk of depression and anxietyRisk of precocious sexual behavior