Developmental Psychology I: infancy and childhood part 4.1 Flashcards
(35 cards)
2 years in adulthood vs infancy
Two years is not a long time in terms of development in adulthood: If you meet a friend after two years, they probably won’t have changed dramatically.
Newborns are unrecognisable at 2 years of age:
Quadrupled in weight: Imagine a 3 kg newborn becoming 12 kg.
Emotionally mature: They cry less randomly, and show clear preferences or affection.
Can say full sentences: A baby that used to just cry and babble now says things like “I want milk” or “Where’s my toy?”
👁️ Sensory Development
Before thinking and understanding (cognition) can develop, the senses need to work first.
💡 Analogy:
Think of the brain like a computer. Before it can run software (thinking), the input devices like keyboard and mouse (eyes, ears, skin, etc.) need to function.
📚 Key Points:
Every sense functions at birth:
Babies have:
Open and sensitive eyes
Working ears
Responsive noses, tongues, and skin
🧠 This means even from birth, babies can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel—though not perfectly.
📘 Key Terms:
Sensation
Detecting elementary properties of a stimulus, such as when light stimulates receptors in the eye.
💡 Analogy: Sensation is like receiving raw data—light hitting your eyes, or a sound entering your ear. It’s automatic, passive, like a doorbell ringing.
Perception
Occurs when the brain processes a sensation and adds stored information.
💡 Analogy: Perception is like checking the peephole to see who rang the bell and remembering that it’s your friend.
Sensation → Perception → Cognition
Sensation precedes perception. Then perception leads to cognition.Perception occurs when the brain processes a sensation and adds stored information.
Sensation comes first — it’s when your senses detect something (like light or sound).
Then comes perception — your brain interprets what that sensation means using past experience.
Finally, cognition — you think about or understand what you perceived.
So:
Sensation → Perception → Cognition
Sensory Development – Audition (Hearing)
🔑 Key Idea:
Hearing develops in the womb and is already working well at birth.
📚 Key Points:
Hearing develops during the final trimester of prenatal development:
That’s the last 3 months in the womb. The baby starts responding to sound before being born.
Newborns can turn their heads towards a sound in the first days of life, even if they can’t locate exactly where it came from.
💡 Analogy: It’s like hearing your name at a party—you might not know where it came from, but you instinctively turn toward the sound.
Hearing is normally assessed shortly after birth:
It’s one of the first tests to check a baby’s health.
Hearing Test (AOAE)
🔑 Key Idea:
The newborn hearing test is quick, painless, and essential.
📘 Term:
Automated Otoacoustic Emission (AOAE) test
A test where a soft-tipped earpiece is placed in the baby’s ear, and gentle clicking sounds are played.
❗Important Notes:
It’s not always possible to get clear responses from the 1st test, but this doesn’t always mean hearing loss.
🚩Reasons for unclear AOAE results:
The baby was unsettled (crying or moving too much)
Background noise interfered
There was fluid or a blockage in the ear
Hearing & Language
🔑 Key Idea:
By 4 months, babies already react to speech sounds and form expectations about language!
📚 Key Points:
4-month-old infants attend to voices and develop expectations of speech, even if they don’t understand the words.
💡 Analogy: Like watching a show in a foreign language—you might still tell when a question is being asked or a sentence is ending.
Babies become accustomed to their native language:
They get used to its rhythm, like which syllables are stressed
And sound combinations, like “bl” in “black” or “tr” in “tree”
💡 Analogy: Just like hearing a favorite song many times helps you predict what comes next, babies hear the same language patterns enough that their brains start predicting them.
With rapid development of cortical areas associated with language
It refers to the temporal lobe (especially the auditory cortex) and Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas in the left hemisphere — these are key cortical areas involved in language processing and speech.
Vision at Birth
- Vision is immature at birth
Newborns have 20/600 vision:
At 20 ft (~6 m), they see what adults can see from 600 ft (~180 m).
Normal adult vision = 20/20.
🔍 Analogy: It’s like looking through foggy glasses—you can see shapes close-up but everything far is blurry.
- Eyes are used independently
Babies often look cross-eyed or don’t coordinate their eyes.
Why? Because binocular vision (using both eyes together) cannot develop in the uterus — there’s nothing far away to look at!
- Newborns can see facial features from ~50 cm away
About the distance from a mother’s face when held—nature is smart!
First Few Months of Visual Development
By 2 months:
Babies stare at faces and smile in response to them.
By 3 months:
They look closely at the eyes and mouth, and smile more at smiling faces than angry/blank ones.
🧠 They’re learning emotional reactions from facial expressions.
Between 2–4 months:
Binocular vision develops → both eyes coordinate.
This enables depth perception (judging how far away things are).
By 6 months:
Vision improves to 20/60.
By 9 months:
Infants show “adult sight”: 20/20 vision.
📈 The visual acuity (sharpness of vision) matures rapidly.
Depth Perception and the Visual Cliff
Depth perception:
Ability to judge how far away something is.
It is important for understanding the layout of the environment and for guiding motor activity.
🔍 Analogy: It’s how you know not to step off a cliff or trip over stairs.
Visual Cliff (Gibson & Walk, 1960):
A table with a checkerboard pattern:
Shallow side (pattern just under glass)
Deep side (pattern far below glass)
🧠 If babies avoid the deep side, it shows they understand depth.
Findings:
Crawling babies usually cross shallow side but avoid the deep side.
Around crawling age, they can distinguish deep vs. shallow and avoid drop-offs.
Social Referencing
Visual cliff was also used to test social referencing:
Infants use emotional cues from adults to decide how to behave.
💡 For example: If a baby is unsure about crossing the “deep” side, and mom looks scared, the baby won’t go.
🧠 To do this, babies must:
Identify emotions
Differentiate emotions
Respond to emotions
Limitations of Visual Cliff expereiment
Limitation:
The visual cliff test only works with babies who can already crawl, because they need to move across the platform.
Later studies found other ways:
Reaching behaviours: babies reach more for objects that are closer than ones that seem far.
Defensive reactions: babies flinch or blink when something (like light) moves quickly toward them.
🧠 These reactions show that even 2-week-old babies may already sense depth!
Preference Technique
Preference technique:
Present 2 images → measure how long the infant looks at each.
🧠 The one they look at longer = preferred.
Finding:
Newborns prefer structured patterns (like faces) over random blobs.
Object Constancy & Externality Effect
Object constancy:
Knowing that an object stays the same even when it looks different.
🔑 Includes:
Size constancy: a car driving away looks smaller, but we know it’s not shrinking.
Shape constancy: a door that opens looks different, but we know it’s the same door.
Externality effect:
Young infants focus on edges (external features), not details inside.
This fades after 1 month, when they start paying attention to internal features.
🧠 That’s why a newborn might look at the outline of a face, but a 2-month-old looks at eyes and mouth.
Face Perception Timeline
Newborns:
No innate preference for faces.
< 2 months:
Look around the face, not at internal features.
> 2 months:
Prefer internal features, especially eyes.
3 months:
Can recognize mother’s face.
4 months:
Focus on eyes, nose, mouth (internal features).
5 months:
The facial scheme diversifies:
They begin to see differences between faces.
5–6 months:
Can recognize emotions and respond differently.
🧠 Motor Development
📌 Key points:
All basic motor skills develop over the first 2 years — sitting, crawling, standing, walking, grasping, etc.
At birth, motor abilities are weaker than sensory abilities — babies feel more than they can move!!!!!
🔄 Development follows two directions:
Cephalo-caudal (head to tail):
Babies gain control from top to bottom — first the head, then arms, then legs.
Proximo-distal (center to limbs):
Control spreads from the body’s center outward — from torso to arms/hands, then fingers.
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🧠 Motor control = voluntary movement
Babies are born with reflexes, like sucking or grasping, which are automatic.
Motor control develops gradually and builds on these reflexes + experiences from interacting with the environment.
⚙️ How do Voluntary Movement Happen?
🔑 Voluntary movement requires:
Coordination between brain areas, spinal cord, and muscles.
Takes time to develop because these connections are immature at birth.
🧠 Voluntary movement =
Innate reflexes + environmental stimulation + practice.
💡 Analogy: Like learning to ride a bike — the instinct to balance is there, but you need feedback and repetition to ride well.
Gross Motor Development
Gross motor = big movements (e.g., crawling, walking)
First the head, then upper body, then arms, then legs/feet.
(Again: cephalo-caudal and proximo-distal)
👶 Specific milestones in gross motor development
🗣 Head:
From birth: can move it a bit.
1–4 months: lift head during tummy time.
4 months: can hold head up while sitting.
✋ Hands:
Newborns: palmar grasp reflex (automatic grabbing).
3–4 months: can grab medium objects, struggle with small ones.
7–11 months: better coordination for lifting objects.
15 months: can build block towers.
🏃 Locomotion:
3 months: can roll over.
1–4 months: can sit with support, 5–9 months: without support
Babies who don’t first sit with support take longer to sit unsupported (Berger, 2015)
5 months: drag on belly
5–11 months: crawl and pull up
7 months: stand with help
11–12 months: stand alone
10–17 months: walk
18–30 months: run and jump
✏️ Fine Motor Development
Fine motor = small movements, especially with hands and fingers.
Examples:
Drawing, grabbing a coin, turning pages.
Key milestones:
Key milestones:
Palmar grasp at birth (reflex, no control).
Pre-reaching: swiping at objects randomly.
4–6 months: start using eyes to guide reaching.
9–10 months: develop pincer grip (thumb + index finger)
→ much more precise than the early ulnar (palmar) grip.
💡 Analogy: Moving from grabbing a sandwich with your whole hand → to picking up a crumb with two fingers.
⚡ Myelination & Movement
Myelination = insulating neurons with myelin, a fatty coating.
Makes signals faster and clearer from brain to muscles.
💡 Analogy: Like covering bare wires in plastic so electricity flows faster and safer.
Development pattern:
Myelination follows cephalocaudal and proximodistal paths too.
Starts in prenatal life (spinal cord → hindbrain → forebrain)
First myelinated: sensory areas (so babies can feel and see)
Later: motor areas (controlling muscles, hands, arms, etc.)
Myelinisation then occurs in cortical areas responsible for motor control of arms and trunk~1 month of age, followed by areas responsible for control of legs, hands and fingers.
🌱 Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory (1962)
Main Idea:
Children do not think like adults. Their cognitive development (thinking, problem-solving, understanding) unfolds in stages, where each stage builds upon the previous one.
🔄 INVARIANT DEVELOPMENTAL SEQUENCE
Think of it like a video game: you must beat Level 1 before Level 2 unlocks. You cannot skip a stage.
The first 👶 Stage 1: Sensorimotor Intelligence (Birth to 2 years)
This is the time when babies explore the world through their senses (seeing, touching, hearing, etc.) and motor actions (grabbing, sucking, kicking).
🧠 Key Concepts:
1. Schemas
A schema is like a mental folder or blueprint in your brain. It’s a pattern of thought or action we use to make sense of experiences.
Schema = “an organized pattern of thought or action that one constructs to interpret some aspect of one’s experience (= cognitive structure)”
🔄 For example, a baby might have a “sucking schema” – whenever something touches their lips, they try to suck it, whether it’s a bottle, toy, or thumb.
🪞 Reflexive → Reflective
Babies go from reflexive (automatic responses like sucking) to reflective (intentional actions like reaching for a toy they want). Think of it like a robot slowly becoming self-aware.
