Chapter 4 From pg. 133 Physical Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
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- Slide 1
- Chapter 4 From pg. 133 Physical Development in Infancy and
Toddlerhood
- Slide 2
- Learning Capacities Learning refers to changes in behavior as
the result of experience Babies are born with built-in learning
capacities Types of infant learning Classical conditioning Operant
conditioning Habituation Imitation
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- Classical Conditioning Newborn reflexes allow classical
conditioning in young infants Neutral stimulus is paired with a
stimulus that leads to a reflexive response Once the babys nervous
system makes the connection between the two stimuli, the neutral
stimulus alone with produce the behavior
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- Steps of Classical Conditioning 1. An unconditioned stimulus
(UCS) produces a reflexive, or unconditioned response (UCR) 2. A
neutral stimulus, which does not lead to the UCR, is presented just
before, or at the same time as, the UCS 3. If learning has
occurred, the neutral stimulus, now called the conditioned stimulus
(CS), will produced the reflex, now called a conditioned response
(CR)
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- Operant Conditioning Form of learning in which infants act on
the environment and stimuli that follow their behavior change the
probability that the behavior will occur again Reinforcer increases
probability that the behavior will occur again Ex. Sweet liquid
reinforces the sucking response in newborns Punishment decreases
probability that the behavior will occur again Ex. Sour-tasting
liquid punishes newborns sucking response, causing them to purse
their lips and stop sucking entirely Vital to the formation of
social relationships Baby gazes into adults eyes, adult smiles
back, infant looks and smiles again Behavior of each partner
reinforces the other so that both continue the pleasurable
interaction Contributes to development of infant-caregiver
attachment
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- Habituation Habituation gradual reduction in the strength of a
response due to repetitive stimulation Babies respond more strongly
to novelty After baby has seen a stimulus over and over it is no
longer novel and baby will decrease responding (lose interest)
Looking, heart rate, and respiration may all decline, indicating a
loss of interest Recovery new stimulus, or a change in the
environment, causes responsiveness to return to a high level
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- Assess infants recent memory Habituate infants to a baby- face
Soon after show baby-face and bald man Novelty preference infants
remember baby-face and look longer at bald man Assess infants
delayed memory Habituate infants to a baby- face After weeks or
months show baby-face and bald man Familiarity preference infants
who continue to remember baby-face look at baby-face longer
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- Imitation Infants learn through copying the behavior of others
Certain gestures, head movements, facial expressions Across all
cultures as well as newborn chimpanzees Some researchers believe
newborns imitate in the same was as older children and adults By
trying to match the body movements they see with the ones they feel
themselves make Mirror neurons underlie these capacities
Specialized cells in the motor areas of the cortex Fire identically
when a primate hears or sees an action and when it does the action
itself Allow us to observe another persons behavior while
simulating the behavior mentally Biological basis for of imitation,
empathetic sharing of emotions, and understanding others intentions
Brain-imaging research suggests mirror neurons function as early as
6 months of age
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- Motor Development New motor skills allow babies to explore
their bodies and environment in new ways Sitting upright gives a
new perspective on the world Reaching permits ability to act on
objects When infants can move on their own, their opportunities for
exploration multiply
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- Sequence of Motor Development Gross-motor development actions
that help an infant move around the environment Crawling, standing,
walking Fine-motor development smaller movements Reaching and
grasping Sequence of motor development is fairly uniform across
children, but there are large individual differences in rates of
progress Cephalocaudal trend motor control: control head 1 st,
control arms and trunk 2 nd, control legs 3 rd Prodimodistal trend
head, trunk, and arm control appears before coordination of the
hands and fingers
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- Motor Skills as Dynamic Systems Dynamic systems theory of motor
development Mastery of motor skills involves acquiring increasingly
complex systems of action When separate motor skills work as a
coordinated system, more effective ways of exploring and
controlling the environment are produced Example: control of the
head and upper chest combine into sitting with support
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- Motor Skills as Dynamic Systems Each new skill is a joint
product of: Central nervous system development The bodys movement
capacities The childs goals Environmental supports for the skill
Physical environment strongly influences motor skills because it
provides opportunities for exploration Ex. Infants in homes with
stairs learn to crawl up stains at an earlier age Motor development
cannot be genetically determined because it is motivated by
exploration and the desire to master new tasks Behaviors are softly
assembled, allowing for different paths to the same motor
skill
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- Dynamic Motor Systems in Action Researchers have discovered
that the way babies acquire motor capacities depends on: The
anatomy of the body part in use The surrounding environment The
babys efforts Means that acquiring motor capacities is not strictly
cephalocaudal Ex. 8 month old babies may reach for a toy with their
feet before they will reach with their hands Because the hip joint
constrains the legs to move less freely than the shoulder
constrains the arms Makes reaching with arms more difficult,
requiring much more practice than reaching with feet
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- Cultural Variations in Motor Development Cross-cultural
research shows how early movement opportunities and a stimulating
environment contribute to motor development Example: infants in
Iranian orphanages were deprived of surroundings that induce
infants to acquire motor skills Spent their days lying on their
backs in cribs with no toys Most did not move on their own until
after 2 years of age When they did move, constant experience of
lying on their backs caused them to scoot in a sitting position
rather than crawl Because babies who scoot come up against
furniture with their feet, not their hands, they are less likely to
pull themselves to a standing position (which prepares them for
walking) At 3 to 4 years old, only 15% could walk on their own
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- Fine-Motor Development: Reaching & Grasping Voluntary
reaching may play the greatest role in infant cognitive development
Because it opens up a whole new way of exploring the environment
Grasping things, turning them over, and seeing what happens when
they are released allows infants to learn a great deal about the
sights, sounds, and feel of objects Reaching and grasping start out
as gross activities and move toward mastery of fine movements
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- Milestones of Reaching and Grasping Prereaching (newborn-3
months) poorly coordinated swipes or swings Reaching (3 4 months)
Ulnar grasp clumsy motion in which the fingers close against the
palm first with both hands, then with one Transfer object from hand
to hand (4 5 months) Pincer grasp (9 months) More coordinated grasp
using the thumb and index finger opposably
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- Hearing Development Shift from sensation to perception
Sensation passive, what babys receptors detect when exposed to
stimulation Perception active, organize and interpret what is
perceived 4-7 months sense of musical phrasing Prefer structured
musical sounds 6-8 months screen out sounds from non-native
languages Learn to focus on meaningful sound variations 7-9 months
extend sensitivity to speech structure Recognize familiar words
Natural phrasing in native language Begin to divide the speech
stream into wordlike units
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- Analyzing the Speech Stream Statistical learning capacity
ability to analyze speech for recurring sequences of sounds and
extract patterns from complex continuous speech By analyzing the
speech stream for patterns infants acquire a stock of speech
structures Later, infants will learn the meaning of the familiar
speech structures they have stored Because communication is
multisensory, infants receive support from other senses in
analyzing speech Example: parents teaching infant the word doll
Saying doll while moving a doll around and sometimes having the
doll touch the infant
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- Vision Development Supported by rapid maturation of the eye and
visual centers in the cortex 2 months can focus on objects about as
well as adults 4 months color vision 6 months visual acuity
(fineness of discrimination) 20/20 Scanning the environment and
tracking moving objects Result of increased ability to control eye
movements 6-7 months depth perception Ability to judge the distance
of objects from one another and from ourselves
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- Depth Perception: The Visual Cliff Plexiglas-covered table
Shallow side Deep side Mother stands on deep side and calls infant
Around the time babies crawl they begin to avoid the deep side and
react with fear Meaning they perceive the drop-off Babies figure
out how to use depth cues from repeated everyday movements
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- Milestones in Depth Perception 3-4 weeks old motion perception
Blink eyes defensively when an object moves toward their face as if
it is going to hit 2-3 months binocular depth Occurs because our
eyes have slightly different views of the visual field and the
brain blends the two images, resulting in perception of depth 6-7
months pictorial depth & fear of heights Ex. Receding lines,
changes in texture, overlapping objects, shadows cast on
surfaces
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- Pattern Perception Contrast sensitivity Contrast the difference
in the amount of light between adjacent regions in a pattern If
babies are sensitive to (can detect) the contrast in two or more
patterns, they prefer the one with more contrast To adults the
complex checkerboard has more contrasting elements Because of their
poor vision, newborns cannot resolve the small features in the
complex pattern
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- Milestones in Pattern Perception 1 month Poor contrast
sensitivity; prefer single, large simple patterns with high
contrast 2-3 months Can detect detail in complex patterns Scan
internal features of patterns 4 months Can detect patterns even if
boundaries are not really present 12 months Can detect objects even
if two-thirds of drawing is missing 4 months12 months
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- Face Perception Infants tendency to search for structure also
applies to face perception Birth-1month prefer simple facelike
patterns to other patterns 2 months can discriminate faces
recognize and prefer mothers detailed facial features to those of
an unfamiliar woman 3 months make fine distinctions among the
features of different faces Perception of the human face supports
infants earliest social relationships
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- Intermodal Perception Intermodal stimulation simultaneous input
from multiple senses Intermodal perception perceiving running
streams of light, sound, tactile, odor, and taste information as
unified wholes Infants perceive input from different sensory
systems in a unified way by detecting amodal sensory properties
Amodal sensory properties information that overlaps two or more
sensory systems Such as rate, rhythm, duration, intensity, temporal
synchrony (vision and hearing), and texture and shape (vision and
touch)
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- Milestones in Intermodal Perception Birth-3 months can detect
amodal sensory properties Ex. After touching an object placed in
the palm, infants recognize it visually and can distinguish it from
a different- shaped object 3-4 months can relate speech sounds to
lip movement 4-6 months can perceive unique face-voice parings of
unfamiliar adults 8 months can match voices and faces on the basis
of gender Intermodal perception facilitates social and language
processing and is encouraged and expanded by early parent- infant
interaction
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- Understanding Perceptual Development How do all these
developments occur so rapidly??? Differentiation theory infants
actively search for invariant features of the environment (those
features that remain stable) in a constantly changing perceptual
world 1 st search for invariant, stable features in the environment
2 nd note stable relationships between features Visual patterns,
intermodal relationships 3 rd gradually detect finer and finer
features Differentiation analyze or break down invariant features
Think of perceptual development as a built-in tendency to search
for order and consistency which becomes increasingly fine-tuned
with age