Chapter 3 - Invitation to the Life Span Summary PDF

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This goes over notes taken from Invitation to the Life Span fourth edition by Kathleen Stassen Berger. Chapter 3 is only covered....

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Chapter 3 Growth in infancy Body size ● Newborns lose weight first 3 days and gan an ounce a day for several months ● Birthweight doubles by 4 months and triples by 1 year ● An average 7 pound newborn will be 21 pounds at 12 months ● 24 months most children weigh 28 pounds and have more than a foot in height ● Each numbers is a norm: a standard for a particular population ○ Healthy babies can be larger or smaller due to genetic diversity Norm: an average, or standard, calculated from many individuals within a specific group or population ● Each checkup growth is compared to that baby’s previous numbers Measurements are expressed as percentile: a point on a ranking scale of 0 to 100. The 50th percentile is midpoint; half of the people in the population being studied rank higher and half rank lower ● If baby’s percentile changes markedly (up or down), that is a signal that something might be wrong ○ If 30th-10th percentile, might be a failure to thrive. ○ If weight moves up from 30th to 70th, especially if hight is still close to 30th percentile, overfeeding might be the issue Sleep ● Newborns sleep about 15 to 17 hours a day, w/ every week bringing few more waking minutes ● First 2 months the norm for total sleep is 14 1/4 hours, 3 months 13 1/4 hours, 12 months 12 3/4 hours ● Preterm babies may seem to be frequently dozing, never in deep sleep b/c of constant lights and frequent feedings ● Half the sleep from full-term newborns is REM (rapid eye movement) sleepflickering eyelids and rapid brain waves, may indicate dreaming ● Slow-wave sleep, or quiet sleep increases at 3 to 4 months Bed-sharing: when two or more ppl sleep in the same bed Co-sleeping: a custom in which parents and their children sleep together in the same room Brain Development Brain basics: ● neuron: one of billions of nerve cells in the central nervous system, esp. in the brain

● cortex: 6 outer layers of the brain in humans and other mammals —thinking,

feeling, and sensing involve the cortex ● prefrontal cortex: the area of cortex at the very front of the brain that

specializes in anticipation, planning, and impulse control (inactive the first months of infancy becoming more efficient in childhood and adolescence) ● axon: fibre extends from a neutron and transmits electrochemical impulses from that neuron to the dendrites of other neurons ● !dendrite: a fibre that extends from a neuron and receives electrochemical impulses transmitted from other neurons via their axons ● synapse: the intersection between the axon of one neuron and the dendrites of other neutrons ● neurotransmitter: brain chemical that carries information from the axon of a sending neuron to the dendrites of a receiving neuron ● Limbic system: the parts of the brain that interact to produce emotions, including the amygdala, the hypothalamus, and the hippocampus. Many other parts of the brain also are involved w/ emotion ● Amygdala: a tiny brain structure that registers emotions, particularly fear and anxiety ● Hippocampus: a brain structure that is a central processor of memory, especially memory for locations ● Cortisol: the primary stress hormone; fluctuations in the body’s cortisol level affect human emotions ● Hypothalamus: a brain area that responds to the amygdala and the hippocampus to produce hormones that activate other parts of the brain and body Head-sparing: 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 Exuberance and Pruning Early dendrite growth is called transient exuberance: the great but temporary increase in the number of dendrites that develop in an infant’s brain during the first two years of life. Exuberant b/c is is rapid and transient b/c some is temporary. Expansive growth is followed by pruning Pruning: where unused brain connections atrophy and disappear to enable children to connect the neurons needed in their culture – Very beneficial b/c babies can discard the excess in order to think more clearly Every’s experiences sculpt the brain. Some are called: ● Experience-expectant: brain functions that require certain basic common experiences in order to develop normally ○ Every child needs to develop language ● Experience-dependent: brain functions that depend on particular, variable

experiences and therefore may or may not develop in a particular infant ○ What specific language is heard, faces seen, emotions expressed vary from one family to another Adults should comfort crying babies, NOT tell them to stop ● 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 The senses ● Sensation: the response of a sensory organ (eyes, ears, skin, tongue, nose) when it detects a stimulus ● Perception: the mental processing of sensory information when the brain interprets a sensation ○ Perception require experience and motivation, not just sensation The fetus hears during the last trimester of pregnancy; loud sounds trigger reflexes even w/o conscious perception ● B/c of early maturation of language areas of the cortex, even 4 month olds attend to voices. ● About 6 months a baby can recognize their name Vision is immature at birth; are legally blind at birth ● By 2 months infants can stare at faces w/ perception and the beginning of cognition, smile ● Binocular vision: the ability to focus the two eyes in a coordinated manner in order to see one image ○ Many newborns use eyes independently ○ 2-4 months allows both eyes to focus on a single thing ● Age 1, infants have learned to interpret facial expressions Tasting and smelling – 1 year olds enjoying taste of family food not only joins them to their community, it may save their lives – Adaptation also occurs for the sense of smell – As babies learn to recognize people’s scent, the prefer to sleep next to their caregivers Touch and pain Sense of touch is acute in infants. Cradling is comforting, infants stop crying when held securely by caregivers. – First year, heartbeat slows and muscles relax when infants are stroked gently and rhythmically Some believe pain receptors are less sensitive at birth When surgery is required, anesthesia is sparingly used, overuse might risk death due to slowed breathing

Few weeks after birth, infants may feel pain Digestive pain (colic) caused by the gut microbiome is the usual explanation

Motor skills ● Motor skill: the learned abilities to move some part of the body, in actions

ranging form a large leap to a flicker of the eyelid (motor refers to movement of muscles) ○ Every motor skill develops over the first two years ● Gross motor skills: physical abilities involving large body movements, such as walking and jumping (gross refer to big) ○ Skills emerge directly from reflexes and proceed in a cephalocaudal (head-down) and proximodistal (center-out) direction Sitting requires muscles to steady the torso ● Moving head is cephalocaudal maturation ● By 3 months most babies can sit propped up in a lap ● 6 months can sit unsupported Crawling is an example of head-down and center-out direction of skill mastery ● 5 months use arms and legs to move forward —affected by culture and amount of tummy time ● 8-10 months lift mid-sections and crawl on all four limbs ● It is not true that babies must crawl to develop normally ● dynamic systems underlying motor skills have three interacting elements: 1. muscle strength 2. brain maturation 3. practice ● May walk by one year Fine motor skills: physical abilities involving small body movements, especially of the hands and fingers, such as drawing or picking up a coin (fine = small) – Movements of the tongue, jaw, lips, teeth, and toes are fine movements ● By 2 months, babies stare and wave their arms at objects dangling within reach ● 3 months can usually touch such objects, but b/c of limited eye-hand coordination they cannot yet grab and hold on unless an object is placed on hand ● 4 moths infants sometimes grab, but timing is off ● 6 months most babies can reach, grab, and grasp Age and culture Ethnic culture groups have various motor skill developments Some cultures discourage walking if danger abounds, so infants are safer if they cannot wander. By contrast, some cultures encourage running for marathons

Infant cognition ● Sensorimotor intelligence: Piaget’s term for the way infants think––by using

their senses and motor skills––during the first period of cognitive development The Six Stages of Sensorimotor Intelligence ● Stages One and Two: Primary Circular Reactions ○ The stages involve infants’ responses to their own bodies ○ Stage one (birth to 1 month): reflexes, includes senses and motor reflexes, foundation of infant thought ◆ Infants adapt their sucking reflex to bottles or breasts ○ Stage two (1-4 months): first acquired adaptations, infant cognition leads babies to suck in some ways for hunger, in other ways for comfort, not to suck fuzzy blankets ● Stages Three and Four: Secondary Circular Reactions ○ Involves infants’ responses to objects and people ○ Stage three (4-8 months): making interesting sights last: responding to people and objects ◆ Clapping hands when mother says “patty-cake” ○ Stage four (8-12): new adaptation and anticipation: becoming more deliberate and purposeful in responding to people and objects ◆ Putting mother’s hands together to make her start playing patty-cake ● Object permanence: the realization that objects still exist when they can longer be seen, touched, or heard ○ Occurs 8 months ○ Piaget discover until 8 months do infants search for toys that have fallen from the crib, or out of sight ○ 18 months can search well, but not if the object is moved from one place to another ○ 2 years children fully understand object permanence ● Stages Five and Six: Tertiary Circular Reactions ○ Last stages are most creative, first w/ action and then w/ ideas ○ Stage five (12-18 months): new means through active experimentation: experimentation and creativity in the actions of the “little scientist” ◆ Putting a teddy bear in the toilet and flushing it ○ Stage six (18-24 months): new means through mental combinations: thinking before doing, new ways of achieving a goal w/o resorting to trial and error ◆ Before flushing teddy bear again, hesitating b/c of past memory when toilet overflowed and mother angry

Infant Processing ● Information-processing theory: the idea that human cognition and

comprehension occurs step by step, similar to the way that input, analysis,

and output occur via computer Memory Infant brain is a very active organ, ready from birth to take in experiences and remember repeated ones ● Within first days after birth, infants recognize their caregivers by face, voice, and smell ● Renee Baillargeon proved 3 moth old infants fraps object permanence. Devised clever experiments that entailed showing infants an object then covering it with a screen, and then removing the screen ○ Baby will be surprised if object is gone, expected the object still present, that an object was permanent Surprise and the brain The conclusion that surprise indicates object permanence is accepted by most scientists. Cognition can be measured via surprise 3 months old can learn to kick a mobile. They can remember based on previous experiences, even when the mobile is removed after 1 week. Reminders are powerful for infants to remember

Language: What develops in the first two years? The Universal Sequence human linguistic ability by age 2 surpasses that of grown adults from every other species. Some children learn several languages, some only one, but follow the same path. ● Listening and Responding ○ begin to learn language at birth —prefer language mother speaks in the womb ○ closely look at facial expressions to understand what being communicated ○ Infants improve in their ability to distinguish sounds in whatever language they hear, whereas their ability to hear sounds never spoken in their native language deteriorates ○ Adults use higher pitch, simpler words, repetition, varied speed, and exaggerated emotional tone when talking to infants. Babies respond with attention and emotion ○ Infants like rhymes, repetition, melody, rhythm, and varied pitch ● Babbling ● The extended repetition of certain syllables, such as ba-ba-ba, that begins when babies are between 6-9 months old ○ Expectations appear early, infants notice patterns of speech, such as which sounds are commonly spoken together ○ Learn the relationship between mouth movements and sound (such as when dialogue and screen is mistimed) ○ Gestures may be powerful

○ 10 month can recognize pointing gesture. Pointing well developed by 12

months ● First Words ○ 1 year the average baby utters a few words, understood by caregivers if

not by strangers ○ 1st month of second year spoken vocal increases gradually. Meanings are learned rapidly, babies understand more than they say ● Holophrase: a single word that is used to express a complete, meaningful thought ● Naming explosion: a sudden increase in an infant’s vocabulary, especially in the number of nouns, that begins at about 18 months of age ○ Spoken vocal builds our rapidly once the first 50 words are mastered, w/ 21 month olds saying twice as many words as 18 months old Cultural Differences ● Cultures and families vary in how much child-directed speech children hear ○ Some parents read tot heir infants, teach them signs, and respond to every burp or fart as if it were an attempt to talk ○ Other parents are much less verbal, they may use gestures and touch; they say hush and no instead of expanding vocabulary ● Traditionally in small agriculture communities, everyone hauled be strong and silent. Any adult taking too much is a blabbermouth or gossip ○ A good worker did not waste time in conversation ● Communication is crucial in 21st century global economy, and verbal proficiency is needed in childhood Putting words together ● Grammar: all of the methods that languages use to communicate meaning. Word order, prefixes, suffixes, intonation, verb forms, pronouns, etc. ● Grammar is evident in holophrase: one word is spoken differently depending on meaning ○ Grammar become essential when babies combine words, within 18-24 months ● Mean length of utterance (MLU): the average number of words in a typical sentence (called utterance b/c children may not talk in a complete sentences). MLU is often used to measure language development ○ Children’s proficiency in grammar correlates with sentence length

Theories of Language Learning ● Theory one: infants need to be taught ○ Skinner noticed that spontaneous babbling is usually reinforced, praised

by parents ○ Repetition strengthens association, so infants learn language faster if

parents speak to them often

◆ Some parents use behaviorist techniques by respond to toddler’s

simple and mispronounced speech ○ Parents are expert teachers, although other caregivers help ○ Well-taught infants become well-spoken children ● Theory two: social impulses foster infant language ○ Sociocultural reason for language: communication ○ Human are social beings, dependent on others for survival and joy ◆ Talking is a practice that furthers social interaction ○ It is a social function of speech, not the words, that undergirds early

language ◆ Theory challenges child-directed videos, CDs, and MP3 downloads to appeal parents ○ Video-learning can be harmful, book reading enabled children to use the new word in another context ○ Adult input is essential for language learning, cognitive development is reduced by video time ○ Screen time cannot substitue for responsive, loving face-to-face relationships ● Theory three: infants teach themselves ○ Language learning is genetically programmed. Adults need not to teach it (theory 1), nor is it a by-product of social interaction (theory 2). Instead it arises from a particular gene (FOXP2), brain maturation, and the overall human impulse to imitate ○ Ancestors were genetically programmed to imitate for survival, but until a few millennia ago, no one needed to learn languages other than their own ◆ Thus human genes allow experience-dependent language learning, pruning the connection that our particular language does not need ○ Chomsky: focused on the similarities in language ◆ universal grammar as evidence that born with structure prepares us for speaking ◆ Language acquisition device (LAD): term for a hypothesized mental structure that enables humans to learn language, including the basic aspects of grammar, vocabulary, and intonation ○ Language is experience-expectant, as the developing brain quickly and efficiently connects neurons to support whichever language the infant hears ● All true? ○ Human mind is a hybrid system, perhaps using different parts of the brain for each kind of learning ○ Contend that language learning is neither the direct product of repeated input (behaviorism) nor the result of a specific human neurological capacity (LAD)

● Hybrid theory: perspective that combines various aspects of different theories

to explain how language, or any other developmental phenomenon, occurs ○ all three theories have merit ○ hybrid theory explains, acquisition of first words, and learning verbs: perceptual, social, and linguistic abilities combine to make learning possible ○ different aspects of language may have evolved in different ways

Surviving and Thriving Better days ahead ● Fist month is hazardous, now almost all newborns who survive first month live to adulthood. Chili’s rate of infant mortality was 4 times higher than the US in 1970 ● As more children survive, parents focus more effort and income on each child having fewer children overall ● Infant survival and maternal education are the two main reasons the world’s fertility rate is half the 1950 rate ● Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS): a situation in which a seemingly healthy infant, between 2 and 6 months old, suddenly stops breathing and dies unexpectedly while asleep Immunization ● A process that stimulates the body’s immune system by causing production of antibodies to defend against attack by a particular contagions disease. Creation of antibodies may be accomplished either naturally, injection, drops being swallowed, or nasal spray ● Vaccination had the greater impact on human mortality reduction and population growth than any other public health intervention besides clean water Success and survival ● Small pox eradicated in 1980, vaccination no longer required ● Only 784 cases of polio were reported anywhere in the world in 2003 ● Measles was down to only 55 cases in 2012 ● Two problems are apparent: war and ignorance ○ Misinformation of vaccination can cause more sickness ● Immunization protects not only from temporary sickness but also from complications, including deafness, blindness, sterility, and meningitis ● Herd immunity: where each vaccinated child stops transmission of the disease ● Increased missed vaccination due to media coverage Nutrition Breast milk ● Best defense against malnutrition is breast milk ○ WHO recommends first 6 months exclusive breast-feeding (no juice,

formulas, etc). Better for digestion and for the brain ○ Nutrition starts with colostrum: a thick, high-calorie fluid secreted by the

mother’s breasts at birth ○ Breast feeding mothers should be well nourished and hydrated ○ Formula is preferable e only in unusual circumstances, such as milk having HIV Mulnutrition ● Protein-calorie malnutrition: a condition in which a person does not consume sufficient food of any kind. This deprivation can result in several illnesses, severe wight loss, and even death ● Stunting: the failure of a child to grow to a normal heigh t of their age due to severe and chronic malnutrition ● Wasting: the tendency for children to be severely underweight for their age and height as a result of malnutrition ○ Africa is suffering greatly from wasting ○ Most adults who were severely malnourished as infants have lower IQs throughout life ○ Malnourished children have less energy and reduced cu...