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Infant Capacities and
the Process of Change
Chapter 4
The Development of Children (5th ed.)
Cole, Cole & Lightfoot
What does this mean?
“Babies control and
bring up their
families as much as
they are controlled
by them; in fact, we
may say that the
family brings up a
baby by being
brought up by him.”
Erik Erikson in
Childhood and Society
Why is this the case?
Compared with many animals
that are able to negotiate their
environments at birth almost
as well as their parents,
human beings are born in a
state of marked immaturity….
For many years, human
offspring must depend on
their parents and other adults
for their survival.”
Cole, Cole & Lightfoot, p. 114
Overview of the Journey
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Tuesday:
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Brain development

Earliest capacities

Coordination with the
social world
Thursday:
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Mechanisms of
development
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First postnatal BSB shift
Infant Brain Development
At birth, the brain has
all the cells it will
have, yet it is ¼ the
size of an adult brain.
Why?
Because Experience Matters!
Rats Raised in
Enriched Environments have…
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Increased rates of learning in standard laboratory tasks,
such as learning a maze
Increased overall weight of the cerebral cortex (the part of
the brain that integrates sensory information)
Increased amounts of acetylcholinesterase, a brain
enzyme that enhances learning
Larger neuronal cell bodies and glial
cells (which provide insulation, support
and nutrients to neuronal cells)
More synaptic connections
Rosenzweig, 1984
Active Interaction
with the Environment

Rats were raised in an enriched environment
but were housed alone in small cages so they
could only observe what was going on
around them
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The learning capacity of these rats differed in no
way from that of the animals that were housed in
individual cages away from the enriched
environment
What might this imply for
child-rearing? For teaching?
Brain Elements and Functions
Six
Mammalian
Species
Why the
difference?
Earliest
Infant Capacities
Sensory Processes
Response Processes
Early Sensory Capacities
Sense
Capacity
Hearing
Ability to distinguish phonemes
Preference for native language
Vision
Slightly blurred at birth
Color vision by 2 months
Distinguish patterned stimuli from plain
Preference for face-like stimuli
Smell
Ability to differentiate odors well at birth
Taste
Ability to differentiate tastes well at birth
Touch
Response to touch at birth
Temperature
Sensitivity to temperature changes at birth
Position
Sensitivity to changes in position at birth
Sensory Processes

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Normal full-term newborns enter the world
with all sensory systems functioning, but not
all of these systems have fully developed
Indications of sensation
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Turning the head, changes in brain waves,
changes in rate of sucking on a nipple
Habituation: Baby becomes bored so s/he stops
attending
Dishabituation: Interest is renewed after the
infant perceives a change in the stimulus
Hearing


Infants only minutes old will startle or cry when
they hear a loud noise
Infants will turn their heads toward the source
of a sound

Baby Scotty at 5 minutes old

Infants can distinguish the sound of the human
voice from other kinds of sounds, and seem to
prefer it
 Babies are very interested in
high pitch speech with slower, exaggerated
pronunciation (i.e., “baby talk”)
 Evidence that by 2 days old, some babies
would rather hear the language that has
been spoken around them than a foreign
language
Infants’ Visual Capacity
Based on
studies of
infant eye
movement
when a striped
visual field
passes in front
of the eyes, it
is evident that
visual capacity
increases
dramatically
over the first
few months of
life.
Fantz Looking Chamber (1960s)


Demonstrated that
babies less than 2
days old can
distinguish among
visual forms
They tend, however,
to focus on areas of
high contrast, such
as lines and angles
Development
of Visual
Scanning
Due to brain
maturation
Perception of Faces

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Infants show a
preference for
patterned stimuli
over plain stimuli
Babies as young
as 9 minutes old
will look longer
at a schematic
moving face than
a scrambled one
Visual
Preferences
of Infants
Expressions of
Various Tastes
Neutral stimulus (water)
Sweet stimulus
Sour stimulus
Bitter stimulus
Three Kinds of
Response Processes

Reflexes
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Emotions
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Automatic (involuntary)
responses to specific
types of stimulation…
Two basic emotions,
contentment (+) & distress (-),
split into primary emotions
(e.g., joy, anger, fear) at 3-6 months…
Temperament

Individual modes of responding to the environment
that appear to be consistent across situations and
stable over time…
Reflexes: involuntary
movements that are
present at birth, then
some fade into voluntary
movements over time
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Grasping Reflex: When a finger or
some other object is pressed
against the baby’s palm, the baby’s
fingers close around it
Stepping Reflex: When the baby is
held upright over a flat surface, he
makes rhythmic leg movements
Moro Reflex: Baby startles when
s/he hears a loud sound
Babinski reflex: Toes fan outward
when foot is stroked from heel to toe
Infant Expression of Emotions
Joy
Anger
Sadness
Disgust
Distress
Interest
Fear
Surprise
Infant Expression of Emotions
Joy
Anger
Sadness
Disgust
Distress
Interest
Fear
Surprise
Temperaments
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Easy babies (flexible): Playful,
regular, adaptable
Difficult babies (feisty): Irritable,
irregular, often respond intensely or
negatively to new situations
Slow-to-warm-up babies (fearful):
Low activity level, mild responses,
tend to withdraw from new situations,
require time to adapt to change
Temperament is stable over first 8
years of life, due to both genetic
(nature) and environmental
(nurture) elements
Coordination with
the Social World
Sleeping
Feeding
Crying
Pattern of Sleep/Wake Cycles
Newborns sleep ~16½ hours
/day, but the longest period
of sleep is only 3-4 hours.
Feeding

When fed “on demand”
most newborns preferred a
3-hour schedule

Interval gradually increased
to 4-hour schedule by 2 ½
months

By 7 or 8 months, babies
needed to nurse or eat 4
times a day

Allison and nursing
Crying

Increases
from birth
to about 6 weeks
and then starts to decrease

At a few months of age, infants begin
to cry to communicate as
the cerebral cortex becomes developed

Crying is helped by nursing, holding baby to
shoulder, rocking, patting, cuddling,
swaddling
Thursday:
Mechanisms (Theories) of
Developmental Change
Biological-Maturation Perspective
Environmental-Learning Perspective
Constructivist Perspective
Cultural-Context Perspective
Biological-Maturation Examples
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Physical Development
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Language Development
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Single-sounds, single-words, multiple words, sentences
Play Development
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Roll over, push up on all fours, crawl, walk, run
Solo play, parallel play, associative play, cooperative play
Emotional Development

Trust the parent, interact with others, contribute to the
group
Development occurs over time, in a set sequence of events,
and is directly related to brain growth and maturation
Environmental Learning
Perspective
BF Skinner, J Watson
Children grow on a schedule, and
developmental shifts happen when
the child’s brain is ready
Environmental Learning
The child learns as a result of interacting with the environment.
Behaviors that are reinforced will increase
and behaviors that are punished will decrease.
Classical and Operant Conditioning
Sight of a light (CS) elicits no particular
response
Loud sound of gong (UCS) causes
baby to blink (UCR)
Sight of light (CS) is paired with sound
of gong (UCS), which evokes an
eyeblink (UCR)
Sight of light (CD) is sufficient to cause
the baby to blink (CR), evidence
that learning has occurred
Research on Head Turning Behavior:

After only 25 occasions in
which head turning was
reinforced with a pacifier,
most of the babies had
tripled the rate at which
they turned their heads.

Conversely, those infants
who were rewarded with a
pacifier for holding their
heads still, learned to
move their heads less
during the course of the
experiment.
Constructivist
Perspective
Jean Piaget
Children grow predictably, and
developmental shifts happen
when the child is interested and
adds new information to what
s/he already knows
Piaget’s Stages of
Cognitive Development
Age (Yrs)
Stage
Description
Birth – 2
Sensorimotor
Achievements consist largely of coordinating sensory
perceptions and simple motor behaviors. Come to
recognize the existence of a world outside themselves
and begin to interact with it in deliberate ways.
2–6
Preoperational
Can use symbols, including mental images, words, and
gestures. Often fail to distinguish their point of view from
that of others, become easily captured by surface
appearances, and are often confused about causal
relationships.
6 – 12
Concrete
Become capable of mental operations that allow them to
Operational combine, separate, order, and transform objects and
actions. There are still carried out, however, in the
presence of the objects and events being thought about.
12 – 19
Formal
Acquire the ability to think systematically about all logical
Operational relations within a problem. Display keen interest in
abstract ideas and in the process of thinking itself.
Sensorimotor Substages
Sub
Age (M)
Description
1
0–1½
Reflex schemas exercised: Involuntary rooting, sucking, grasping,
looking
2
1½–4
Primary circular reactions: Repetition of actions that are
pleasurable in themselves
3
4–8
Secondary circular reactions: Dawning awareness of the effects of
one’s own actions on the environment, and that extended actions
can produce interesting change in the environment
4
8 – 12
Coordination of secondary circular reactions: Combining schemas
to achieve a desired effect (earliest form of problem solving)
5
12 – 18
Tertiary circular reactions: Deliberate variation of problem-solving
means, with experimentation to see what the consequences will be
6
18 – 24
Beginning of symbolic representation: Images and words come to
stand for familiar objects, accompanied by the invention of new
means of problem solving through symbolic combinations
Schemas: a mental representation
Assimilation
Accommodation
(new information
added into an
existing schema)
(Modification of a
prior schema to include
the new information)
Equilibration
Adding new knowledge and skills
leads to development
Cultural-Context
Perspective
Vygotsky
Children’s growth is impacted by
their culture and environment,
and developmental shifts happen
when the child is engaged in
social and cultural experiences
Reciprocal Relationships
Presence of
milk stimulates
infant sucking,
which in turn
triggers the
release of
hormones that
increase milk
production and
release
Developmental Change
Incorporates Cultural Variations

Developmental
change depends
on
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
The Active
contributions of
other people in the
child’s community
Cultural messages
are accumulated
over time in the
larger social group
and provide
messages about
behavior
Case in Point
Bottle-feeding vs. Breast-feeding
First Postnatal
Bio-Social-Behavioral Shift
Occurs at 2½ Months
Social Smiling!
Bio-Social-Behavioral Shift:
When Social Smiling Happens
Shift Point
Conception
Birth
2 ½ months
7-9 months
24-30 months
5-7 years
11-12 years
19-21 years
Developmental Period
Prenatal period
Early infancy
Middle infancy
Late infancy
Early childhood
Middle childhood
Adolescence
Adulthood
Characteristics of the Shift
Biological
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Social
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Behavioral
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Myelination of cortical and subcortical neural pathways
Increased cortical control of subcortical activity
Increased diversity of brain cells
Increase in amount of wakefulness
Decrease in proportion of active (REM) sleep
Quiet (NREM) sleep begins to come first
New quality of coordination and emotional contact
between infants and caretakers
Beginning of “crying on purpose” to communicate
Better retention of learning
Increased visual acuity and better visual scanning
Onset of social smiling
Decreased fussiness and crying
Visually initiated reaching  visually guided reaching
Purposes of Social Smiling
Biological
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Increased brain capacity increases ability to
control facial movements
Increased brain functioning increases ability to
make decisions and use their body
Social
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Initiate and respond to interactions with
parents, siblings, family members
Behavioral
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Reinforces interactions with others
Shows engagement with others
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