Week 5 – First Adaptations

1. Week 5 – First Adaptations • Review for Test 1 • Brain development in first year • Infant states • Reflexes • Habituation/dishabituation • Infant learning (including imitation) • Concept of preparedness • Motor skill development in first year • Sensory systems in the first year • Depth perception: monocular and binocular cues • Looming • Visual cliff experiments • Size and shape constancy • 9/19 First test, bring Scantron 882 form and a #2 Pencil

2. The nature of development • Preformationism, predeterminism, and empiricism • Heinz Werner: differentiation and hierarchic integration, spiral pattern • Qualitative versus Quantitative change • Normative versus individual • Heredity and Environment (nature/nurture issue) • Piaget’s theory (mechanisms and major periods) • Information-Processing theories (sensory, short-term, and long-term memory) • Lev Vygosky and Sociocultural theories • Psychoanalytic theories (including Freud’s and Erkson’s stages) • Social Learning theory • Bowlby’sadaptational theory

3. Major issue: Gradual versus stage, Early versus current experience • Specificity versus generality • Methods of Developmental Psychology: Experiments, Natural experiments • Naturalistic observation, Longitudinal versus cross-sectional versus cross-sequential (accelerated longitudinal design) • Challenges of doing research with children of different ages • Challenges of doing research with children from different cultures • Bidirectional effects • Effects of daycare • Contexts of Development • Marasmus, hospitalism, failure to thrive, institutionalization • UrieBronfrenbrenner’s model: Biological environment, Immediate environment • Social and economic environment, Cultural environment, and interactions among the levels • Cell Division: mitosis and meiosis • Gene and Environment Interaction

4. Conception • Prenatal Development • Stages from conception to birth • Mother’s Experience of Pregnancy • Problems in Prenatal Development • Ultrasound, amniocentesis, chorionic villus sampling, MRI, blood tests • Genetic Defects • Environmental Influences (teratogens) • Detection and Treatment of Disorders • Birth & its complications • The Apgar Scale • Cultural variations in Childbirth • Concept of critical periods and their importance in prenatal development • Brain development and timing of capabilities • Cycle of poverty

5. Brain development in first year • Infant states • Reflexes • Habituation/dishabituation • Infant learning (including imitation) • Concept of preparedness • Motor skill development in first year • Sensory systems in the first year • Depth perception: monocular and binocular cues • Visual cliff experiments • Size and shape constancy

6. Brain Growth • Infant brain at birth is ¼ of its adult weight. • By one year, the brain has tripled in weight. • One measure of this growth is head circumference, starting at 13.5 inches and growing in spurts to its average adult size of 20.5 inches.Spinal cord and brainstem (for basic reflexes & survival functions) are fully functional at birth. • The thalamus (sensory relay station), the cerebellum (motor functions), the hippocampus (memory formation), and the cerebral cortex all undergo continued development and reorganization. • Cerebral cortex (higher cognitive functions) has the longest period of continued development.

7. Developmental Processes in Brain Growth Early brain development involves 6 main processes: • neurogenesis & neuron migration • neuron elaboration & differentiation • synaptogenesis • glial cell formation & myelination • increasing connections between brain regions • pruning excess synapses & loss of plasticity

8. Environment and Brain Development • Binocular Vision • Strabismus—critical period • Deafness/Blindness and brain regions

9. Infant States • Sleep States (2 – in newborns up to 16hrs/day) • Quiet Sleep, Active Sleep • Sleeping becomes more regular with age • Awake states • Awake and quiet, awake and active • Distressed states (3—usually less than 10% time) • Hungry cries, upset cries, pain cries • Babies differ in their ability to sooth themselves

10. Reflexes in the Newborn

11. Habituation/Dishabituation • Habituation: The decrease in attention when the same stimulus is presented repeatedly. • Orienting response: Response when stimulus is first presented, involving behavioral and physiological changes. • Dishabituation: Increased attention to a new stimulus after habituation to a previous stimulus. • Measures • Heart rate • Looking time

12. Associative Learning • Classical Conditioning --- Pavlov • Can’t explain new behaviors • Instrumental conditioning • Reinforcement, shaping

13. Imitative learning • Piaget’s Observations 0-4 months, adult must repeat a behavior the infant produces 4-8 months, imitate gestures if they can see their own action 8-12 months, imitate behaviors they can’t see in themselves like facial expressions 12 months, imitate unfamiliar actions Meltzoff & Moore (1977, 1999) imitaion at 2 days of facial gestures. There has been some trouble replicating this results, and the skill if present seems to decline by 2 months.

14. Preparedness • Idea that infants are prepared to learn certain things easily • Smiling • Speech sounds • Related to the idea of belongingness (Thorndike)

15. Motor Skills Principles of Motor Skill Development • differentiation • cephalocaudal development • proximodistal development • joint role of maturation and experience

16. Three motor skills examples • Eye movements • Saccadic eye movements • Pursuit eye movements • Crawling • Walking

17. Hearing • Fetuses respond to sound at 26-28 weeks. • For young infants to hear a noise, it must be 10-20 decibels louder than for adults. • It takes 12-13 years to equal adult hearing.

18. Smell and Taste • Infants’ senses of taste and smell are more fully developed at birth than their vision and hearing. • Newborns seem to discriminate among sweet, sour, & bitter. • Ability to sense saltiness develops gradually over 1st 4 months.

19. Vision • Acuity • Preference, evoke potentials, motion induced nystagmous • 2 weeks 20/300 • 5 weeks 20/100 • Adult acuity at 4 to 6 years • Full color vision by 3 to 4 months

20. Depth/Distance perception • Visual Cliff (Walk and Gibson) 6-7 months • Campos (1978) • Notice at 2 months (orienting response) • Fear after they can crawl • Looming (Yonas, et al) • Blink at 1 month • Defensive response at 3 months • Pictorial depth cues between 5 to 7 months

21. Size and Shape constancy • Some skill at birth • Skill improves by 3 to 5 months