Week 3 Flashcards
(26 cards)
What is infancy?
A period of rapid growth and development in a range of areas:
- physical
- cognative
- language
- social and emotional
What is infant motor development (reflexes)
Reflexes are unlearned, involuntary responses to stimuli
- Survival reflexes are necessary for survival
– E.g. breathing, eye-blink, sucking - Primitive reflexes arent necessary for surival and typically disappear in early infancy
– E.g. Babinski reflex, grasping reflex
What are the two trends of motor development
Cephalocaudal - Development occurs from the head down to the feet… A baby can lift their head before they can sit up.
Proximodistal - Development occurs from the center of the body outward. A baby can move their shoulders and upper arms before they can use their hands and fingers to grasp small objects
What are gross motor skills?
– Movement of large muscles of arms,
legs, and torso
What are fine motor skills
– Movement of small muscles such as
fingers, toes
How do we know what babies can see/perceive/know? (infant perceptions)
– Habituation
– Preferential looking
– Evoked potentials
– Operant conditioning
What is Habituation
– The process of learning to be bored with a
stimulus
* After repeated presentation with the same visual stimulus, the infant becomes bored and looks away
- If a different stimulus is presented and the infant regains interest
What is preferitial looking?
Preferential looking is a research method used to study infants’ visual preferences and perception—especially before they can speak or move much.
What is evoked potentials?
– Researchers can assess how an infant’s brain
responds to stimulation by measuring its
electrical conductivity
How do you assess infant perception abilties
evoked potentials and operant conditioning
Whats operant conditioning in infant perception
– Infants can learn to respond to a stimulus (to
suck faster or slower or to turn the head) if
they are reinforced for the response
What are Infants’ visual preferences
– Attracted to patterns that have light-dark transitions, or contour
– Attracted to displays that are dynamic rather than static
- Young infants prefer to look at whatever they can see well
- Around 2 or 3 months, a breakthrough begins to occur in the perception of forms
What is depth perception?
Refers to how babies develop the ability to perceive depth and judge distances. This skill doesn’t exist at birth but develops gradually over the first few months.
– Gibson and Walk (1960): Classic study to examine depth perception in infants using the visual cliff
– Infants can perceive the cliff by 2 months (tend to be curious rather than fearful)
What is Infant cognition understood through?
Piagets theory - object permanance
What is Piaget’s Sensory motor stage
– The world is understood through the senses and
actions
– The dominant cognitive structures are the behavioral schemes that develop through coordination of sensory information and motor responses
- 6 substages
What are the 6 substages of Piaget’s Sensory Motor stage
- Reflex activity (birth - 1 month)
- Primary circular reactions (1-4)
- Secondary circular reaction (4-8)
- Coordination of secondary schemas (8-12)
- Tertiary secondary schemas (12 - 18)
- Beginning of thought (18months(
What is reflex activity?
Infants respond to the environment using inborn reflexes which are automatic not intentional (e.g., sucking, grasping).
what is primary circular reaction?
Babies begin repeating actions centered on their own body because of enjoyment (e.g. Sucking thumb repeatedly because it feels pleasurable.)
What is secondary circular reaction
Infants repeat actions that produce interesting effects on the environment.
Focus shifts from self to objects.
Example: Shaking a rattle to hear the sound.
What is secondary coordination schemas
Intentional, goal-directed behavior emerges.
Infants start combining actions to achieve a goal.
Example: Pushing a toy aside to grab another one
What is tertiary circular reactions?
Infants explore the world through trial and error.
They deliberately vary actions to observe outcomes.
Example: Dropping a ball from different heights to see what happens.
What is begining of thought?
Infants begin forming internal mental images of objects and events.
They can solve problems mentally rather than through trial and error.
When do Infants develop object permanance?
- Object permanence develops during the sensorimotor period
- From 4-8 months, “out of sight, out of mind”
- By 8-12 months, make the A-not-B error
*By 1 year, A-not-B error is overcome, but continued trouble with invisible displacement
- By 18 months, object permanence is mastered
What is attachment in infant psychosocial development
– strong and enduring emotional bond that develops between an infant and a caregiver during the infant’s first years of life
– characterised by reciprocal affection and a shared desire to maintain physical and emotional closeness
