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Reflexes:
- unlearned responses triggered by specific stimuli
- Reflexes reflect the health of the childs nervous system
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The five Apgar scores
- 1. Heart rate
- 2. Respiration
- 3. Muscle tone
- 4. Reflexes
- 5. Skin tone
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Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS)
- Includes 28 behavioral and 18 reflex items
- Assesses four systems
- Autonomic: body regulation (e.g., breathing)
- Motor: activity level and control of body
- State: maintaining states (e.g., alertness)
- Social: interacting with people
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infant states
- Alert inactivity:
- calm, eyes open and attentive; deliberately inspecting environment
- Waking activity:
- open but unfocused eyes; uncoordinated motions
- Crying: cries vigorously; motion is agitated and uncoordinated
- Sleeping: eyes closed; degree of activity and quality of breathing alternate
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Basic cry
- Starts softly and builds in volume and intensity
- Often seen when the child is hungry
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Mad cry
More intense and louder
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Pain cry
Starts with a loud wail, followed by a long pause, then gasping
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Newborns sleep an average of
16-18 hours/day
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Sleep cycles
- Newborns: 4-hour cycle; 3 hours sleep and 1 hour awake
- By 3 to 4 months: 5-to-6-hour cycle
- By 6 months: sleep 10 to 12 hours at night
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REM sleep
- 50% of newborn sleep
- 25% by 12 months
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co-sleeping
The practice of sleeping in the same room or bed with the child
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SIDS: sudden, inexplicable death of a healthy baby
- Risk factors
- Premature birth and low birth weight
- Parental smoking
- Child overheating and sleeping on stomach
- African-American infants (often sleep on stomach)
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Rothbart s (2007) three dimensions
- (surgency/extroversion) generally happy, active, vocal, and seeks stimulation
- (negative affect) angry, fearful, frustrated, shy, and not easily soothed
- (effortful control) focuses attention, is not easily distracted, and can inhibit impulses
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Heredity and twin studies on temperament
- Identical twins are more similar in temperament than are fraternal twins
- Heredity influences negative affect more than other temperament dimensions
- Heredity contributes more to temperament in childhood than during infancy
- addition expressions of temperament
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Parental characteristics influence temperament
- Parental responsiveness reduces infant emotionality
- Depressed mothers have more fearful infants
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Growth of the body
- Infants double their weight by three months
- Infants triple their weight by one year
- Height depends largely on heredity
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New foods should be introduced one at a time
- to determine allergy
- consistency of swallowing reflex
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Malnutrition
- Malnourished children develop more slowly
- Malnutrition is most damaging during infancy due to rapid growth rate
- brain, body, all developing
- Giving malnourished children adequate diets is challenging because they are listless, quiet, and inactive
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Neurons consist of a
soma, dendrites, the axon (mylen sheath coating maturing), and terminal buttons
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Cerebral cortex:
the wrinkled surface of the brain
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Hemispheres:
the two halves of the brain
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Corpus callosum:
the thick band of fibers connecting the two hemispheres
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Emerging Brain Structures
- At 3 weeks after conception, the neural plate, a flat structure of cells, forms
- By 28 weeks after conception, the brain has all the neurons it will ever have
- In the 4th month of prenatal development myelinated sheaths form
- Number of synapses peaks at 12 months
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Synaptic pruning
certain unnecessary synapses soon begin to disappear'
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Five general principles of Brain Specialization
- 1Specialization is early in development
- 2Specialization takes two specific forms (areas become more focused, less diffuse: stimuli specific rather than general)
- 3Different brain systems specialize at different rates
- 4Environmental stimulation is necessary for successful specialization
- 5Plasticity is a benefit of the immature brain s lack of specialization
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Plasticity:
brain is very flexible, allowing recovery of function, especially in young children
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Experience-expectant growth
All human brains require exposure to experiences common to all individuals (e.g., exposure to faces) to fine-tune their circuits and to have different regions specialize
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Experience-dependent growth
Brain circuits and regions also are fine-tuned according to each persons unique experiences (e.g., learning to play the violin vs. learning to play soccer)
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Locomotion
- By 7 months, infants can sit alone
- Toddling: at around 14 months, toddlers may stand alone briefly and walk without assistance
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Dynamic systems theory
Instead of simple maturation, motor development involves many distinct skills that are organized and reorganized over time to meet specific task demands
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Posture and Balance
- Infants are top-heavy and easily lose their balance
- Within a few months, infants use inner ear and visual cues to adjust posture
- Infants must relearn balance each time they achieve new postures
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Stepping
- Many infants move their legs alternately in a stepping-like motion as early as 6-7 months
- Infants use environmental cues to judge whether a surface is suited to walking (e.g., flat vs. bumpy)
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Differentiation:
mastery of component skills
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Integration:
combining components into the sequence needed to accomplish the task
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Unsupported, independent walking occurs at
about 12 to 15 months, once children have mastered and coordinated its component skills
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Fine Motor Skills
- Fine motor skills are associated with grasping, holding, and manipulating objects
- At 4 months, infants clumsily reach for objects
- By 5 months, they coordinate movement of the two hands
- By 2-3 years, children can use zippers but not buttons
- Tying shoes is a skill that develops around age 6 years
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Handedness
- About 90% of children prefer to use their right hand
- Most children grasp with their right hand by age 12 months, with a clear preference seen by preschool age
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Perception:
brain processes receiving, selecting, modifying, and organizing sensory inputs
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Odors infancy
they distinguish pleasant from unpleasant, or familiar from unfamiliar (e.g., mothers breast or perfume)
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Taste infancy
they differentiate among salty, sour, bitter, sweet, and changes in mothers breast milk
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children recognize own name by
4 months
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Visual acuity
(clarity of vision) is the smallest pattern that can be distinguished dependably
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Infants at 1 month see at 20 feet what adults see at
- 200-400 feet
- By 1 year, infants visual acuity is the same as adults
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Cones:
sets of neurons located along the retina at the back of the eye, each specialized to one of the three light wavelengths
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infants perceive colors similarly to adults at:
3- to 4-months
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Visual cliff at 6 weeks
6-week-olds react with interest to differences in depth (heart rate deceleration)
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Visual Cliff at 7 months
- By 7 months, they show more fear than interest to the cliff s deep end (heart rate acceleration and refusal to cross the deep side)
- Fear of depth seems to develop around the time babies can crawl
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Kinetic cues
- closer objects appear larger while moving
- begin using at few weeks old
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expansion
- closer objects fill more of the retina
- begin using at few weeks old
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Motion parallax
- closer objects move faster
- begin using at few weeks old
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Retinal disparity
- closer objects yield greater disparity between eyes
- begin using 4-6 months
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Sound
- closer objects sound louder
- begin using in infancy
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Linear perspective
- closer objects have wider parallel lines
- begin using at 7 months
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texture gradient
- closer objects are coarser and distinctly textured
- begin using at 7 months
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By 4 months, infants use several cues to discern that a stimulus is an object
- elements that move together
- similar colors and textures
- aligned edges
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Perceiving Faces
- Newborns prefer to look at moving faces, suggesting an innate attraction to them
- By 4 weeks, infants track all moving stimuli, including faces and nonfaces
- Before 6 months, infants have a prototype of a face that includes both human and nonhuman faces
- Between 6 to 12 months, the prototype is fine-tuned to reflect familiar faces, which they prefer viewing
- By 7 to 8 months, infants process faces similarly to adults, as a unique arrangement of features
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Intersensory redundancy:
- simultaneously available multimodal sensory information (e.g., sight, sound, touch)
- Infants perceive best when sensory information is redundant
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Mirror test: red smudge on nose
- 9-month-old infants smile at the image in the mirror but do not seem to recognize it as themselves
- By 15-24 months, infants see the image in the mirror and touch their own nose, suggesting they know the image is theirs
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Toddlers self awareness:
- look more at photographs of themselves than other children
- refer to themselves by name and use personal pronouns I or me
- selfs continuity over time
- mine in reference to possessions
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Preschoolers describe the self in terms of
possessions, physical characteristics, preferences, and competencies
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Theory of mind:
naïve understanding of the relationship between mind and behavior
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theory of mind Phase 1:
- by 2 years, aware of desires; speak of wants and likes
- Understand that people have desires and that desires cause behavior (e.g., Ew peas; I not eat.)
- theory of mind Phase 2:
- by 3 years, distinguish the mental from physical world
- Use mental verbs (think, believe, forget), but still emphasize desires as main causes of behavior
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theory of mind Phase 3:
by 4 years, know that behavior can be based on beliefs about events, even if belief is false
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