Chapter 4 a Cultural Approach to Child Development

Chapter 4 Infancy

4.1 Describe how the infant’s body changes in the first year, and explain the two basic principles of physical growth.

4.2 Identify the different parts of the brain and describe how the brain changes in the first few years of life.

4.3 Describe how infant sleep changes in the course of the first year and evaluate risk factors for SIDS, including the research evidence regarding cosleeping.

4.4 Describe how infants’ nutritional needs change during the first year of life and identify the reasons for and consequences of malnutrition in infancy.

4.5 List the major causes and preventive methods of infant mortality and describe some cultural approaches to protecting infants.

4.6 Describe the major changes during infancy in gross and fine motor development.

4.7 Describe how infants’ sensory abilities develop in the first year.

4.8 Describe the first four sensorimotor substages of Piaget’s theory. 4.9 Describe how the elements of the information- processing model of cognitive functioning change in infancy. 4.10 Describe the major scales used in measuring infant development and explain how habituation assessments are used to predict later intelligence. 4.11 Evaluate the claim that educational media enhance infants’ cognitive development.

4.12 Describe the course of language development over the first year of life. 4.13 Describe how cultures vary in their stimulation of language development.

4.14 Define infant temperament and its main dimensions. 4.15 Explain how the idea of goodness-of-fit pertains to temperament on both a family level and a cultural level.

4.16 Identify the primary emotions, and describe how they develop during infancy.

4.17 Describe infants’ emotional perceptions and how their emotions become increasingly social over the first year.

4.18 List the main features of infants’ social worlds across cultures.

The later the age of adoption, the lower their cognitive abilities.

• Neonates sleep 16 to 17 hours

• At 3 to 4 months sleep 6 to 7 hours at night-Dramatic difference

• At 6 months cultural patterns influence sleep patterns

– American: 14 hours- ??

– Kipsigis: 12 hours- Always strapped or carried by mom or family. Less active.

– Dutch: 16 hours- Value rest and early bedtimes.

• Infants between 2 to 4 months of age have highest risk for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)

– Leading cause of death for infants 1 to 12 months in developed countries

• No clear cause but there are risk factors – Sleeping on stomach instead of back – Low birth weight and APGAR score – Smoking – Soft bedding • Campaign to reduce SIDS includes a “BACK to Sleep” campaign • Campaign has caused reduction of SIDS worldwide

Why did rates of SIDS decline so much over this period?

•Infants need a high-fat diet which breast milk provides.

•About 6 months may introduce solid foods

– Cultural variations in types of food introduced

– West – rice cereal

– Traditional cultures – mashed, prechewed, pureed

• Malnutrition during this time can be severe and enduring

• Can be caused by inability of mother to breast feed

• Marasmus- is a risk for malnourished infants

• Most infant mortality takes place during the first month of life

• Top sources of infant mortality beyond the first month but within the first year include

– Malnutrition

– Malaria

– Diarrhea

. Can be helped with oral rehydration therapy- is a fluid replacement strategy used to prevent or treat dehydration.

• Vaccinations have been beneficial

How do infant mortality rates compare with neonatal mortality rates (as shown in Map 3.2)? What are some potential causes of the high infant mortality rates in developing countries?

Traditional cultures:

• Parents’ awareness of infant’s vulnerabilities influenced parenting practices- Help babies survive.

• Developed practices to help infants avoid harm- We find ways to keep them safe.

• Current practices may be magical where knowledge is limited- We look to other methods when we don’t have answers.

• Gross motor development includes whole body movements like crawling

• Children tend to develop gross motor skills in sequence

• Sequence has genetic beginnings with environmental influences- Let them move! Our bodies know what to do and our environment supports that development.

• Cultural practices emphasize the role of environment on gross motor skills- Are babies allowed to move?

Fine motor skills are the more precise motor abilities

Thumb!

• Baby will exhibit prereaching reflex until about 3 months of age

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• Grasping also begins as a reflex

• Will learn to coordinate the actions of the two skills-

• Hearing develops during the last trimester of fetal development

• Infants can distinguish sound categories but are limited in encoding all aspects of a situation

• May use statistical learning to encode and learn about the world

• Vision develops rapidly after birth

• Infants prefer complex patterns and faces

• Depth perception is influenced by development of binocular vision at 2 to 3 months of age- The ability to combine the images of each eye into one image.

– Important when children become mobile- depth perception

• Visual cliff useful in understanding and emotional development

• Intermodal perception

– One-month-olds recognize things they put in their mouth to things they haven’t seen before.

– Six month-olds match number of sounds to number of sights they have seen

– By eight months can match unfamiliar faces with correct voice and gender

– Neural correlates of intermodal sensory activity- measurement of brain function. The brain lights up when a baby shows interest.

• Sensorimotor stage can be divided into six substages; the first 4 occur in infancy

– Substage 1: Simple reflexes (0-1 month)-Sucking, rooting, grasping.

– Substage 2: First habits and primary circular reactions (1-4 months)- purposeful movement and behavior begins i.e sucking on hand.

– Substage 3: Secondary circular reactions (4-8 months)- The repeating of those actions with purpose.

– Substage 4: Coordination of secondary schemes (8-12 months)- Actions are now intentional.

• Piaget: Object permanence – objects continue to exist even when not aware of them

– Under 4 months – no understanding

– 4 to 8 months – some uncertain about existence

– 8 to 12 months – developing awareness

. Will still make A not B error

Criticisms include:

– Underestimating infants’ ability especially regarding object permanence

– Renee Baillargeon and researchers tested infant abilities using the violation of expectations method

– Object permanence may reflect memory development

– Cultural limitations as well

3 ½ to 4 ½ month old babies. After a few times the baby becomes “Habituated” with the object. Decrease in A box is placed to stop the attention. drawbridge from going completely down. Child becomes interested again. Stayed interested as the box was taken off and on.

The experiment inferred that babies who cooed and looked interested knew the box was manipulating the drawbridge. Therefore knew it was there.

• Attention studied using habituation and dishabituation

• Habituation – gradual decrease in attention. Loses attention of object after several presentations.

– Neonates – several minutes before dishabituation- Takes longer to pay attention to new stimuli.

– 4 to 5 months – only several seconds- They are now more curios and pay attention to new stimuli.

• Infants become better at perceiving and processing stimuli

• End of first year joint attention highlights social attention

• Short-term memory improves during first year of life

– Object permanence tasks show infants can remember more locations of hidden objects

• Long-term memory increases notably over the course of the first year

• Difference between recognition memory (recognize the object) and recall memory (remember the object when prompted).

• Arnold Gesell – four subscale assessment tool- no longer used but was continued by Nancy Bayley – Motor skills – Language use – Adaptive behavior – Personal-social behavior • Developmental Quotient (DQ)- An over all measurement of infants developmental progress.

• Nancy Bayley produced a contemporary measure of infant development • 3 main scales – Cognitive – Language – Motor • Does not predict of later IQ but can be used as a screening tool

• Information-processing model uses habituation to assess intelligence

• Infants with short habituation time process information more quickly- “Short-lookers” vs. “Long-lookers”

• Longitudinal studies have shown a connection between habituation time and IQ and higher achievement- “Short-lookers” have higher IQ’s

• Most studies have not supported the effectiveness of education CDs and videos

• Effective ways to encourage cognitive interaction include talking, reading, responding and patience- Talk, Sing, Read campaign

• Babbling develops at 4 to 6 months

– Seems universal

• Gestures about 8 to 10 months

• First words about 10 to 12 months

– Higher pitch with simplified grammar

– Exaggerated intonation and phrases repeated • Infants seem to prefer this speech and it is common in many cultures • Some cultures do not speak to infants in any special way • No consistent negative effects in cultures with no infant-directed speech