Infancy Flashcards
Baby blues vs. Postpartum depression
What are the 5 causal factors and 3 risk factors?
What are impacts in the child?
Treatment?
can occur in women and men
10% of mothers and 4% of fathers experience PPD
Stress and overwhelm Transition and change Hormones Sleep Daily routines
History
Environment
Relationships
Physical
Cognitive
Socioemotional
Describe how the infants body changes in the first year, and explain the two basic principles of physical growth.
- physical development of infants include a tripling of weight and an inch per month in height
- cephalocaudal principle means that physical growth tends to begin at the top with the head, and then proceeds downward to the rest of the body
- proximodistal principle means that growth proceeds from the middle of the body outwards
For most infants, first tooth appears between 5 and 9 months of age. Teething pain can be soothed with something to bite or chew on, something cold to drink or eat, or by using topical medications
Identify the different parts of the brain and describe how the brain changes in the first few years of life
- brain is separated into 2 HEMISPHERES connected by the CORPUS CALLOSUM, and each hemisphere has 4 LOBES with distinct functions
- brain development in infancy is concentrated in the expansion of dendritic connections and myelination
- studies of infants and children exposed to extreme deprivation indicate that the brain is especially vulnerable in the first year of life
- 3 major regions of brain are hindbrain, midbrain and forebrain
Hindbrain and midbrain nature earliest and perform basic biological functions necessary to life
Forebrain divides into two main pArtS, the limbic system and the cerebral cortex
Limbic - hypothalamus, thalamus, hippocampus
Cerebral cortex - far larger than in other animals 85% of brain weight and where most of brains growth takes place after birth
-divides into two hemispheres connected by corpus callousum and lateralizafion is the specialization of the two hemispheres
Left - language information processing
Right - spatial reasoning
Describe how infant sleep changes in the course of the first year and evaluate the risk factors for SIDS, including the research evidence regarding cosleeping
- sleep needs decline during the first year
- SIDS is most common at age 2-4 months
- sleeping on the back rather than the stomach greatly REDUCES the risk of SIDS
- in cultures where infatns sleep alongside their mothers on a firm surface the risk of SIDS is very low
- historically and worldwide today, mother-infant cosleeping is far more common than putting babies to sleep in a room of their own
Describe how infants nutritional needs change during the first year of life and identify the reasons for and consequences of malnutrition in infancy
- the best way to obtain good high-fat nutrition during infancy is through breast milk.
- timing of introduction of solid food varies among cultures, from the first weeks of life to sometime in the second half of the first year
- malnutrition in infancy is usually due to mainly the mother being unable or unwilling to breastfeed
List the major causes and preventative methods of infant mortality and describe some cultural approaches to protecting infants
- malnutrition is a common source of infant mortality, but the most common source is diarrhea
- diarrhea can be cured by oral rehydration therapy (ORT) though access to clean water makes this treatment unavailable in some parts of the world
- the cultural practices of secluding infants in their early weeks, cosleeping with them, and constantly carrying them developed out of long and painful human experience with high infant mortality
Describe the major changes during infancy in gross and fine motor development
-achievements in gross motor development in infancy include:
Balance and posture, as well has whole body movements such as rolling over, crawling, and standing
- achievements in fine motor development entails finely tuned movements such as grasping and manipulating objects
- cultural practices restricting or encouraging gross motor development make a slight different in the timing of gross motor achievements but little difference in the long run
- reaching and grasping are two of the fine motor milestones of the first year
Describe when and how infants develop depth perception and intermodal perception
- increased adeptness at binocular vision around 3 months of age enables infants to develop depth perception during the first year
- infants also become better at intermodal perception or coordinating their senses
Describe the meaning of maturation, schemes, assimilation and accommodation
- maturation is the biologically-based program of development
- Piaget proposed that the child’s construction of reality takes place through the use of schemes, which are cognitive structures for processing, organizing and interpreting information.
- the two processes involved in the use of schemes are assimilation and accommodation.
- assimilation occurs when new information is altered to fit an existing scheme
- accommodation entails changing the scheme to adapt to the new information
Describe the first 4 sensorimotor substages and explain how object permanence develops over the course of the first year
- substage 1 is based on neonatal reflexes
- substage 2 is based more on purposeful behaviour
-substage 3 entails the repetition of movements that first occurred by chance
substage
-substage 4 is based on intentional, goal-directed behaviour
Object permanence has begun to develop by the end of infancy, but is not complete until the end of the second year
Summarize the major critiques of Piaget’s sensorimotor theory
- some critics may argue that the theory may have underestimated infants cognitive abilities
- another criticism of piaget is cultural because nearly all research has been on children in the west
Describe the elements of the information processing model of cognitive functioning
- in contrast to the cognitive-developmental approach initiated by Piaget, (which divides cognitive development into distinct stages), the information-processing approach investigates the process of cognitive functioning that occur at all ages.
- the focus is on the components of cognitive functioning, especially attention and memory
Explain how attention and habituation change during infancy
- infants pay more attention to a stimulus that they have not seen before
- habituation develops more quickly during the course of the first year, and at any given age, quickness of habituation is positively related to later cognitive achievements
- increasingly during the first year, infants learn through joint attention with others
Explain how short-term and long-term memory expand during infancy
- both short-term and long-term memory improve notably over the course of the first year
- though recognition memory comes easier than recall memory as it does at later ages
describe the major scales used in measuring infant development and explain how habituation assessments are used to predict later intelligence
the bayley scales are widely used to measure infants development, but scores on the bayley do not predict later cognitive development except for infants with serious deficits
- efforts used to predict later intelligence using information processing approaches have shown greater promise
- these assessments measure habituation by distinguishing between “short-lookers” and “long-lookers” with short-lookers higher in later intelligence
Evaluate the claim that educational media enhance the infants cognitive development
-many studies investigating this question have concluded that educational media products have no effect on infants cognitive development and may even be detrimental
Describe the course of language development over the first year of life
infants begin cooing when about 2 months old.
when they first begin to babble at 6 months, infants use a wide range of sounds, but within a few months, they more often make the sounds from the main language they hear around them
- first words are usually spoken around the endif the first year; infants can already understand about 50 words by this tme
Describe how cultures vary in their stimulation of language development
many cultures use infant-directed (ID) speech and babies appear to enjoy hearing it
however, even in cultures that do not use ID speech children become adept users of language by the time they are a few years old
Define infant temperament and it’s main dimensions
Temperament includes qualities such as activity level, soothability, emotionality and sociability. Temperament is the biologically based raw material of personality.
Or includes qualities such as activity level, attention span and emotionality. Thomas and chess conceptualizer temperament by classifying infants as east, difficult and slow to warm up. Other theorists rate temperament in the basis of dimensions rather than categories. However in all cases infant temperament is difficult to measure due to the frequent changes in infants states
Explain how the idea of goodness of fit pertains to temperament on both a family level and cultural level
Goodness of fit means that children develop bet if there is a good fit between the temperament of the child and environmental demands. It varies culturally given that different cultures have different views of the value of personality traits such as emotional expressiveness
Identify the primary emotions and describe how they develop during pregnancy
The original primary emotions of distress interest and pleasure develop into anger fear surprise and happiness within a few months after birth but sadness tends to appear after infancy
Describe infants emotional perceptions and how their emotions become increasingly social over the first year
Infants are socially aware of others emotions from the first days of life and respond withbdistress to the distress of others. Toward the end of the first year they draw emotional cues from how others respond to ambiguous situations a process called social referencing
List main features of infants social worlds across cultures
Infants are typically cared for by their mothers (in early months) and then by older siblings. They are surrounded by other people and held or carried often. In western developed countries infants have a smaller social world and more time alone but they also learn to function socially
Compare and contrast the two major theories of infants social development
The key to healthy social development according to Erickson and bowlby is a strong reliable attachment to a primary caregiver. The theories differ in their origins and bowlbys theory has inspired thousands of studies.
