Achievements of the First Year

1. Achievements of the First Year The Development of Children (5th ed.) Cole, Cole & Lightfoot Chapter 5

2. Overview of the Journey • Biological changes • Perceptual-motor development • Cognitive changes • Relationship with the social world • A new bio-social-behavioral shift

3. Biological Changes Size and Shape Bone and Muscle The Brain

4. Size and Shape • Triple in weight… (7  21 lbs.) • Add 10 inches height… (20  30 in.) • Change in body proportions… • At birth, head is 70% of adult size and accounts for 25% total body length • Legs at birth are not much longer than their heads; by adulthood, legs account for about half of total height • Result in lowering the center of gravity (balance, walking)

7. Environmental Conditions Influence Growth Rate Babies born in Malawi face conditions such as widespread mal-nutrition, chronic poverty, disease, and a rising HIV/AIDS infection rate. As a result of this complicated array of factors, Malawian infants grow at a slower rate than their American counterparts.

8. Changes in Body Proportions

9. Bone, Muscle, & Gender • Bone ossification • First in hand and wrist (pick up) • Increases in muscle mass • Associated with ability to stand alone and walk • Sex differences • Females are ahead 3 weeks prenatal, 6 weeks at birth, 2 years at puberty • Girls get their permanent teeth, start puberty, and reach full size earlier than boys

10. Brain Development • Exuberant synaptogenesis (3-12 months) • Density of synapses is double what it will be in early adolescence • As a result of this overproduction of synapses, infants are prepared to establish neural connections for virtually any kind of experience • “Synapses that are regularly used flourish and are strengthened, while those that go unused are gradually ‘pruned away’—that is, they atrophy and die off.” (p. 183) • What might be some educational implications?

11. Brain Development • 2½ - 4 months: Surge in visual cortex • 6 months: Spurt in motor cortex • 7 - 9 months: Rapid growth of frontal cortex (used inintegrating information) • Prefrontal area plays a particularly important role in the development of voluntary behavior (e.g., impulse inhibition)

12. Perceptual-Motor Development Reaching and Grasping Locomotion

13. Reaching and Grasping • Newborns: Perceive an object moving before them and reach for it (i.e., visually initiated reaching) • 2 ½ months: Coordination of reach and grasp • 5 months: No longer reach for an object beyond their grasp • 9 months: Guide movements with a single glance

14. Fine Motor Movements Babies seem to perceive that different objects offer different affordances – properties that lend themselves to particular ways of interacting with them

15. Perceptual-Motor Exploration Contour following(exact shape) Pressure(hardness) Enclosure(volume/size) Unsupported holding(weight) Static contact(temperature) Lateral motion(texture)

16. Development of Locomotion The integration of movements of many parts of the body

17. Creep by making pushing movements with knees & toes 1st Month

18. Head held up, but leg movements diminish 2nd Month

19. Control over movement of head and shoulders increases

20. Ability to support upper body with arms improves

21. Midsection raised, but head lowers

22. Midsection and head raised, but tend to rock back and forth

23. Coordinated arm and leg movements enable crawling 7th – 8th Month Walks at around 12 months

24. The Role of Practice • During the 1930s and 1940s it was commonly believed that learning and experience played little or no role in the development of such motor milestones as sitting and walking. • Recent findings: Motor development can be speeded up by extensive practice or slowed when adults seek to protect the child against danger, depending upon the cultural circumstances.

25. Cognitive Changes Piaget’s Constructivist Explanation Are Infants Precocious? Challenges to Piaget’s Theory Categorizing Growth of Memory

26. Piaget: Sensorimotor Stage (Infancy)

27. Piaget: Sensorimotor Stage (Infancy)

28. Piaget: Sensorimotor Stage (Infancy)

29. Object Permanence • Understanding that objects • Have substance • Maintain their identify when they change location • Continue to exist (ordinarily) when out of sight – otherwise, “out of sight is out of mind” • An early indicator of the development of representation For example, an infant younger than 8 months of age does not search for an object that has been removed from sight

30. Infant does not track the movement of the train in the tunnel, is happy to see the train again, but is not surprised that it is now a different color or shape. Lack of Representation

31. Incomplete Object Permanence (8-12 months of age) After an infant has successfully searched for an object hidden one location, the object is then hidden in a new location while the infant watches. The infant will search for the object where it was previously found.

32. Developments in Object Permanence • Infant does not search for objects that have been removed from sight. • Infant orients to place where objects have been removed from sight. • Infant will reach for a partially hidden object but stops if it disappears. • Infant will search for a completely hidden object; keeps searching the original location of the object even if it is moved to another location in full view of the infant. • Infant will search for an object after seeing it moved but not if it is moved in secret. • Infant will search for a hidden object, certain that it exists somewhere.

33. Precocious Infants? Challenges to Piaget’s Theory… • Infants 3½ months old dishabituated (i.e., surprised, looked longer) when screen appeared to pass through the place where box had been located • Seemed to indicate reasoning about an impossible event Baillargeon et al., 1987

34. Reversing the Experiment However, when habituated to the impossible event first and then tested on the possible event, the babies stared more than twice as long at this possible event! In essence, they looked longer at the novel events, whether possible or impossible. Cohen et al., 2000

35. Intermodel Perception • Infants held two rings, one in each hand, under a cloth that prevented them from seeing the rings or their own bodies. • For some infants the rings were connected by a rigid bar and therefore moved together. For others the rings were connected by a flexible cord and therefore moved independently. • All the infants were allowed to hold and feel just one or the other type of rings until they had largely lost interest (habituated). • They were then shown both types of rings. • The babies looked longer at the rings that were different from those they had been exploring with their hands. Streri & Spelke, 1988

36. Infant Arithmetic? Infants (4 months) looked longer at the end display when there was only one doll, suggesting that they had mentally calculated the number of dolls that ought to be behind the screen. [Wynn, 1992]

37. Rational Behavior In this experiment, infants were shown a small circle repeatedly jumping over a barrier to get to another circle (a). After they had habituated to this event, the obstacle was removed. In subsequent tests, the infants looked longer if the circle repeated its familiar jumping action (b) (which was not a reasonable behavior since the barrier was no longer there) than if it took a novel, but more efficient, straight-line route (c).

38. Infant Categorizing • Infants (3 months) shown a sequence of pictures of cats were surprised when they saw a picture of a dog, suggesting that they were sensitive to the category of cats • Similarly, 3- to 4-month-olds, after having been shown a series of pictures of mammals, looked longer at pictures of non-mammals and furniture than at a picture of a new mammal Eimas & Quinn, 1994Behl-Chadha et al., 1995

39. Infant Categorizing • After three 15-minute sessions, each with a different-color A block, a 3-month-old baby will kick the mobile with yet a fourth color added. • But if a new shape is inscribed on the blocks used in the fourth session (e.g., B’s), the baby will not kick, indicating that the baby has formed a category and remembered prior experience

40. Conceptual Categories • Babies (7 months) treated plastic toy birds and airplanes, which are perceptually similar, as if they were members of the same category • Babies (9 -11 months) treated toy airplanes and birds as members of conceptuallydifferent categories, despite the fact that they looked very much alike Mandler & McDonough, 1993

41. Growth of Memory

42. Growth of Memory In one study (Rovee-Collier et al.), a group of 3-month-old babies were trained to activate a mobile by kicking. They then let an entire month elapse before putting the babies into the experimental situation again. They knew that this was more than enough time for the babies to forget their training. However, 1 day before being retested, the 3-month-olds were shown the mobile as a reminder (without allowing them to kick). The next day, these infants started kicking as soon as the ribbon was tied to one of their legs. The mere sight of the mobile a day earlier seemed to remind the babies of what they had learned 1 month earlier. What might be the educational implications?

43. Relationship with the Social World Imitation Wariness New Relationships

44. Deferred Imitation (Evidence of Recall) • Infants move from relying on implicit memory (recognition) to explicit memory (recall) • For example, infants will imitate live models, as well as actions that they have seen on television • Infants who watch a televised model on one day will reproduce the model’s behavior 24 hours later (Meltzoff, 1988) • What might be an educational implication?

45. Wariness (begins at 6-9 months) • Infants who are exposed to something new – even a spoonful of cereal from a stranger – display characteristic wariness • Another evidence of recall

46. Indicators of New Social Relationships • Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky) • Assistance provided by adults goes just slightly beyond the child’s current competence; helps child learn new behaviors • Attachment • Seek to be near their primary caregivers and show distress when they are separated, happy when reunited • Secondary Intersubjectivity • Primary: face-to-face communication (e.g., social smiling) • Secondary: shared communication that refers to objects beyond themselves (e.g., looks when mother points)

47. Indicators of New Social Relationships Social Referencing • Tendency to look to the caregiver for an indication of how one should feel and act (girls will do this more than boys) Language Development • Comprehension: understands words for highly familiar objects (6 months); identifies phrases (8-9 months) • Babbling: Vocalizing that includes consonant/vowel repetitions (7 months) • Jargoning: Babbling with stress and intonation of actual utterances (12 months)

48. A New Bio-Social-Behavioral Shift 7-9 Months

49. Prominent Shifts & Periods

50. Characteristics of the Shift