User:Atcovi/Spring2024/Child Psychology/Ch. 5

5.1 - Physical Growth & Development
'''What Are the Sequences of Physical Development? Head First?'''


 * The first 2 years are massive for a child's development and physical growth.
 * Cephalocaudal development - Development from head to lower parts of the body. Head develops more rapidly than the rest of the body, that's why they so big. The brain develops faster than the spinal cord, arm buds form before leg buds, sucking reflex in-tact whilst legs are spindly. They get control from arms to legs.
 * Proximodistal development - Development from the body's central axis towards the periphery. Vital organs develop first and are essential. Gain control over shoulders before arms and fingers/hips before toes.
 * Differentiation - Behaviors and physical structures become more specialized. Toddlers may cry like neonates if someone hurts their finger, but they are less likely to just cry about it all willy-nilly!

What patterns of growth occur in infancy?


 * Most dramatic gains in height/weight occur in prenatal development. Massive gains in weight can take place within 5 months, as infants can DOUBLE their weight.
 * Tall infants wind up taller than short infants.

Failure To Thrive (FTT)

Failure to thrive (FTT) - Disorder of impaired growth in infancy/early childhood, characterized by inability to gain weight within normal measures. Judged by low weight for age and low BMI. Organic FTT comes from insufficient intake of nutritents, whilst nonorganic FTT comes from psychological/social roots. Not only physical stunt in growth, but also has cognitive, behavioral, and emotional problems.

Deficiencies in caregiver-child interaction play a key role in developing FTT, causes reactive-attachment disorder. May need to address nutritional support and attention to adjustment problems.

Marasmus is a form of FTT which is caused by poor nutrition and the infant is painfully thin.

A child can play "catch-up" once their problems are gone. Canalization is the tendency to return to one's genetically determined pattern of growth.

5.2 - Nutrition: Fueling Development
Nutritional quality for children in the US is better than most countries, but racial minorities face difficulties in nutritional support due to poverty. Breast milk should be going for a year while solid foods come in at 4-6 months - can't be down before as the tongue-thrust reflex is active.

First solid foods are iron-enriched cereal, followed by vegetables and meats.

Breastfeeding vs. Bottle-Feeding

 * Breastfeeding: Breastfeeding is the golden standard, breast milk is lower in fat than whole milk, colostrum is amazing, health benefits for mom (builds bones, risk of cancer reduces), good on stomach, oxytocin and prolactin are involved
 * Bottle-feeding: Time consuming after work, allows husband and mother to take turns feeding, less likely to transmit HIV/alcohol/environmental hazards, if mother is malnourished: bottle-feeding is much better/preferable.

Kwashiorkor: A form of protein-energy malnutrition in which the body may break down its own reserves of protein, resulting in enlargement of the stomach, swollen feet, and other symptoms. Lack of protein. Includes guidelines on monitoring.

Looks into food allergies.

5.3 - Infancy: Physical Development
The nervous system is made up of nerves, a bundle of axons from many neurons.


 * You already know about neurons, so skip.

Neurons are wrapped with myelin sheaths, allowing faster transmission of neural impulses. Myelination is where axons become coated with myelin. This is developed when you can crawl/walk. In multiple sclerosis, myelin is replaced by hard tissues that disrupt neural transmission timing. Alzheimer disease is the breakdown of myelin and therefore reduction of cognitive abilities.


 * Medulla is involved in respiration/heartbeat. May get wrecked in SIDS.
 * Cerebellum is involved in balance and coordination, wrinkled part of the brain.
 * Cerebrum: large mass of the forebrain with 2 hemispheres.

Proliferation of neurons cause major growth spurts in brain. Vision is the earliest, dominant sense.

How Do Nature and Nurture Interact to Affect the Development of the Brain?

 * Sensory stimulation & physical activity spur infant's development (reading babies a book/light).
 * Infants have more connections among neurons than adults do because connections that do NOT activate by experience die.

5.4 - Infancy: Physical Development
Motor development: Activity of muslces, changes in posture, movement, and coordination. Initially, nenonates can't sustain their hands - but by 3-6 months, they can hold their heads high!

Visual motor development is measured by an infant's ability to stack blocks

Control of the Hands: Getting a Grip on Things?

 * 3 months: clumsy swings at things.
 * 4-6 months: more success.
 * Ulnar grasp: Hold objects between fingers and palm.
 * 5-11 months: Infant adjust their hands in anticipation to grasp moving targets.
 * Pincer grasp, use of opposing thumb, comes in handy at 9-12 months.

Locomotion
Locomotion: Movement from one place to another.


 * Crawling: Requires lifting the body off the floor and coordinating arm and leg movements.
 * 8-9 months: Infants remain in a standing position whilst holding onto something.
 * 12-15 months: Toddlers can walk. Africans get the advantage of doing this earlier than the whites.

How Do Nature and Nurture Interact to Affect Motor Development?
Maturation of neurons play a role in motor development. Slight effects from specialized training. Nature provides limits for the expression of inherited traits, while nurture determines if the child will develop above average skills and reach the cieling.

Both maturation and experience play indispensable roles in motor development.

5.5 - Sensory and Perceptual Development: Taking in the World

 * Sensation - Stimulation of sensory organs; transmission of sensory info to the brain.
 * Perception - Process by which sensations are organized into a mental map of the world.

Newborns start out nearsighted, gains in visual perception are dramatic from birth - 6 months and is steady afterwards. Poor peripheral vision until 6 months of age, once its = to an adult.

Visual Preferences: How Do You Capture an Infant’s Attention?

Neonates perfer stripes than blobs. After ages 8 - 12 weeks, they move onto curved lines.


 * Frantz believed infants like faces because of patterns (eyes), while Groen believed liking faces was an evolutionary thing.
 * A 2001 study shows that infants like the components that make up the human face vs. the whole face.
 * Infants learn to distinguish their mother's faces from other faces, then emotional faces, then finally attractive vs. unattractive faces.
 * 1 month old vs. 2 month olds - move from the edges of the face to the inner part of the face.

See Visual Cliff experiment.

Development of perceptual constancy and size constancy. Size constancy is avaliable as early as 2 months old. Shape constancy is established at about 4-5 months old (proved by habituation).

Development of Hearing: The Better to Hear You With?

Habituation can take place. Infants at 3.5 months of age can discriminate between a mother and father's voice. Infants gradually lose the ability to discriminate sounds not found in their native language. Can ignore accents/slight variations in their native language as early as 6 months of age.

Development of Coordination of the Senses: If I See It, Can I Touch It?

Sources of sound and odor can be sensed through visual scanning. Young infants can recognize that objects experienced by one sense are the same as those experienced through another sense.

Do Children Play an Active or a Passive Role in Perceptual Development?


 * Intentional action replaces "capture" (automatic responses to stimulation). Strong evidence that the neonate is 'prewired' to gather and seek visual info.
 * Systematic search replaces unsystematic search - pay more attention to objects and people to make better discriminations.
 * Attention becomes elective - Select info to pay attention to.
 * Irrelevant info becomes ignored - Older children shut out needless stimuli.

Children do not like alcohol at all. Early exposure to vegetables is key to babies liking vegetables. "In short, children develop from passive, mechanical reactors to the world about them into active, purposeful seekers and organizers of sensory information".

What Is the Evidence for the Roles of Nature and Nurture in Perceptual Development?


 * We have inborn ways of responding to sensory input.
 * Critical periods in perceptual development, failure for stimulation results in permanent sensory deficits.
 * "Most agree that nature and nurture interact to shape perceptual development. Nature continues to guide the unfolding of the child’s physical systems. Yet nurture continues to interact with nature in the development of these systems." Sensorimotor experiences thicken cortex.