Life-Span Development

Twelfth Edition

Chapter 4:

Physical Development in Infancy

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 Patterns of Growth:

Cephalocaudal Pattern: sequence in which the

earliest growth always occurs from the top
downward
Also applies to gains in motor development

Proximodistal Pattern: sequence in which growth

starts in the center of the body and moves toward
the extremities
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 Height and Weight:
Newborns lose 5-7% of their body weight in the
first few days of life
They typically gain 5-6 ounces per week during the
first month
Weight usually triples by their 1st birthday
Newborns gain approximately 1 inch per month
during the first year
Growth slows considerably during the 2nd year

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2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
 The Brain:
Brain continues developing past infancy
Shaken Baby Syndrome: brain swelling and
hemorrhaging from child abuse trauma
Brain imaging technologies cannot typically be used
with babies
EEGs show regular spurts in the brains electrical activity
Spurts may coincide with important changes in cognitive
development
At birth, the brain is 25% of its adult weight; at 2
years of age, it is 75% of its adult weight
The brain does not mature uniformly

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 Forebrain: portion of the brain farthest from the
spinal cord; includes cerebral cortex
Cerebral Cortex: folded surface covering the
forebrain
Cerebral cortex is divided into 2 hemispheres, each
with 4 lobes
Frontal lobe: voluntary movement, thinking, personality, and
intentionality
Occipital lobe: vision functions
Temporal lobe: hearing, language processing, and memory
Parietal lobe: spatial location, attention, and motor control

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 Lateralization:
specialization of function in
one hemisphere of the cerebral cortex or the
other
Some functions are lateralized, some are not
Complex functions involve communication between
both hemispheres

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 Neurons: brain nerve cells that communicate
through electrical and chemical signals
Axons carry signals away from the cell body
Dendrites carry signals toward the cell body
Myelin sheath is a layer of fat cells that insulate
axons
Helps electrical signals travel faster
Terminal buttons release chemicals
(neurotransmitters) into synapses
Synapses: tiny gaps between neurons

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2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Changes in Neurons:
Myelination: the process of encasing axons with
fat cells
Begins prenatally and continues into adolescence
Connectivity among neurons increases
New dendrites grow
Connections among dendrites increase
Synaptic connections increase
More synaptic connections are created than will
ever be used
Leads to a pruning of unused connections

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**Note the increase in connectedness between neurons over the course of the
first 2 years of life.
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 Changes in
regions of the
brain:
Blooming and
pruning of
synapses varies by
brain region
Pace of myelination
varies as well

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 Depressed brain activity has been found in
children who grow up in a deprived environment
Enriched environments promote faster brain
development than deprived ones

Afterbirth: sights, sounds, smells, touches,

language, and eye contact help shape the
brains neural connections
Repeated experience wires (and rewires) the brain

Brain is both flexible and resilient

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 Typical newborns sleep 16-17 hours per day
Infants vary in their preferred times for
sleeping
Most have moved closer to adult-like sleep
patterns by 4 months of age

Factors involved in night waking:

Daytime crying and fussing
Distress when separated from mother
Breast feeding

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 Cultural variations influence infant sleeping
patterns

REM Rapid eye Movement Sleep

appears about one hour after non REM sleep
Babies average much more REM sleep than do
older children or adults
REM sleep may provide infants with added self-
stimulation
REM sleep may also promote brain development
We do not know whether infants dream or not

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2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
 The practice of shared sleeping, in which a newborn
shares a bed with mother, varies among cultures
Potential benefits:
Promotes breast feeding and a quicker response to
crying
Allows mother to detect potentially dangerous breathing
pauses in baby

American Academy of Pediatrics discourages shared

sleeping
Increases risk of injury (rolling over baby) and SIDS

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 SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome):
infants stop breathing and die without
apparent cause
Highest cause of infant death in U.S. annually
Highest risk is 2-4 months of age
Risk decreases when infant sleeps on its back
and when a pacifier is used

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 Other risk factors associated with SIDS:
Siblings who died from SIDS
Sleep apnea or low birth weight
Infants passively exposed to cigarette smoke
Being from lower SES
Infants placed in soft bedding
Infants with abnormal brain stem functioning
involving serotonin

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 Experts recommend that infants consume 50
calories per day for each pound they weigh
U.S. parents typically do not feed infants
enough fruits and vegetables
By 15 months, French fries are the most common
vegetable eaten

Increasing rates of overweight and obese

infants
Other factors:
Mothers weight gain during pregnancy and pre-pregnancy
weight
Breast feeding vs. bottle feeding
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2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
 AmericanAcademy of Pediatrics strongly
endorses breast feeding throughout the first
year

Benefits for baby can include:

Fewer gastrointestinal and lower respiratory tract
infections
Potentially decreased risk of asthma
Less likely to become overweight or obese
Less incidence of diabetes
Less likely to experience SIDS
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 Benefits for mother can include:
Lower incidence of breast and ovarian cancer
Lower incidence of Type 2 diabetes

Breast feeding does not:

Help mother return to pre-pregnancy weight
Guard against osteoporosis
Decrease likelihood of experiencing post-partum
depression

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 Women less likely to breast feed:
Mothers who work full-time outside of the home
Mothers under age 25
Mothers without a high school education
African-American mothers
Mothers in low-income circumstances

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 Mother should not breast feed if:
She has AIDS or other infectious diseases that can
be transmitted through milk
She has active tuberculosis
She is taking a drug that may not be safe for the
infant

No psychological differences have been found

between breast-fed and bottle-fed infants
Most breast- vs. bottle-feeding studies are
correlational and do not imply causation

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 Malnutrition in Infancy:
Early weaning and inadequate sources of
nutrients can cause malnutrition
Marasmus: a severe protein-calorie deficiency
Results in a wasting away of body tissues
Kwashiorkor: a severe protein deficiency that
causes the abdomen and feet to swell with water
Causes the vital organs to collect nutrients, depriving
other parts of the body
Severe and lengthy malnutrition is detrimental to
physical, cognitive, and social development

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 Dynamic Systems View:
Infants assemble motor skills for perceiving and
acting
Motor skills represent solutions to goals

Development is an active process in which nature

and nurture work together
Development of nervous system
Bodys physical properties and possibilities for movement
Goal the child is motivated to reach
Environmental support for the skill
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 Reflexes:built-in reactions to stimuli; generally
carry survival mechanisms
Rooting Reflex: when the infants cheek is stroked,
the infant will turn its head to the side that was
touched
Moro Reflex: automatic arching of back and
wrapping of arms to center of body
when startled
Grasping Reflex: infants hands close around
anything that touches the palms

Some reflexes continue throughout life; others

disappear several months after birth
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 Gross Motor Skills: skills that involve large-muscle
activities
Walking, grabbing for objects

Gross motor skills require postural control

Posture is a dynamic process linked with sensory
information in the skin, joints, and muscles

Infants can produce stepping movements needed for

walking from a very early age
They lack the ability to stabilize balance on one leg at a
time
Infants learn what kinds of places and surfaces are safe
for locomotion
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 Development in the 2nd Year:
Toddlers become more skilled and mobile
Motor activity is vital to the childs development of
competence and independence
By 18-24 months, toddlers can:
Walk quickly or run stiffly
Balance on their feet in a squat position
Walk backward
Stand and kick a ball without falling
Jump in place

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 Cultural
Variations: mothers in developing
countries tend to stimulate their infants
motor skills more than mothers in more
modern countries
Infants can reach motor milestones slightly
earlier if provided with physical guidance or given
opportunities for exercise
Even when activity is restricted, many infants still
reach milestones at a normal age

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 Fine Motor Skills: involve finely tuned movements
Reaching and grasping is a significant milestone for
infants
Palmer grasp: grasping with the whole hand
Pincer grip: grasping with the thumb and forefinger

Perceptual-motor coupling is necessary for infants to

coordinate grasping
Experienced infants look at objects longer, reach for
them more, and are more likely to mouth the objects

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 Sensation: occurs when information interacts
with sensory receptors (eyes, ears, tongue,
nostrils, and skin)
Perception: the interpretation of what is sensed
Ecological View: we directly perceive
information that exists in the world around us
The perceptual system selects from the rich
information provided by the environment
Perception enables interaction with, and adaptation
to, ones environment
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 Affordances: opportunities for interaction
offered by objects that fit within our
capabilities to perform activities
What affordances can infants or children detect
and use?
Children become more efficient at discovering and
using affordances through perceptual development

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 VisualPreference Method: infants look at
different things for different lengths of time
They look at preferred objects longer

Habituation:decreased responsiveness to a
stimulus after repeated presentations

Dishabituation:
recovery of a habituated
response after a change in stimulation

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2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Habituation and Dishabituation Studies:
High-amplitude sucking
Orienting response
Tracking
Videotaping
Recording heart rate, respiration, body
movement, sucking behavior, visual fixation

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 Newborns vision is about 20/600 (an object 20
feet away appears as if it were 600 feet away)
Bythe age of 6 months, vision is 20/100 or
better
Vision approximates that of an adult by the infants
first birthday

Infants show an interest in human faces soon

after birth
The way they gather information about the visual
world changes rapidly with age
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The four photographs represent a computer estimation of what a
picture of a face looks like to a 1-month-old, 2-month-old, 3-
month-old and 1 year-old.

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2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Perceptual
Constancy: sensory stimulation is
changing but perception of the physical world
remains constant
Size Constancy: recognition that an object remains
the same even though the retinal image of the object
changes
Babies as young as 3 months show size constancy
Continues to develop until 10 or 11 years old
Shape Constancy: recognition that an object remains
the same shape even though its orientation to us
changes
3-month-olds show shape constancy, but not for irregularly
shaped objects

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 Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk studied
development of depth perception using a
visual cliff
Infants 6-12 months old can distinguish depth
Infants 2-4 months old show heart rate difference
when placed on deep side of cliff
Infants develop binocular depth cues by about 3-
4 months of age

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2009 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
 Fetuses can hear and learn sounds during
the last two months of pregnancy and can
recognize their mothers voice at birth

Newborns:
Cannot hear soft sounds as well as adults
Are less sensitive to pitch
Are fairly good at determining the location of a
sound
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 Touchand Pain: newborns respond to touch
and can feel pain

Smell: newborns can differentiate odors

Preference for mothers smell by 6 days

Taste:
sensitivity to taste may be present
before birth

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 IntermodalPerception: the ability to integrate
information from two or more sensory
modalities
Babies are born with some innate abilities to
perceive relations among senses
Their abilities improve considerably through
experience

PerceptualMotor Coupling: action guides

perception, and perception guides action

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