Chapter 5: Infancy (First 24 Months)

1. Chapter 5: Infancy (First 24 Months)

2. Chapter 5: Infancy • Chapter Objectives • To identify important milestones in the maturation of the sensory and motor systems, and to describe the interactions among these systems during the first two years of life • To define social attachment as the process through which infants develop strong emotional bonds with others, and to describe the dynamics of attachment formation during infancy

3. Chapter 5: Infancy • Chapter Objectives (cont.) • To describe the development of sensorimotor intelligence, including an analysis of how infants organize experiences and conceptualize causality • To examine how infants understand the properties of objects, including the sense that objects are permanent, that they have unique properties and functions, and that they can be categorized.

4. Chapter 5: Infancy • Chapter Objectives (cont.) • To examine the nature of emotional development, including emotional differentiation, the interpretation of emotions, and emotional regulation • To analyze the factors that contribute to the resolution of the psychosocial crisis of trust versus mistrust, including the achievement of mutuality with the caregiver and the attainment of a sense of hope or withdrawal

5. Chapter 5: Infancy Chapter Objectives (cont.) To evaluate the critical role of parents/caregivers during infancy with special attention to issues of safety in the physical environment; optimizing cognitive, social, and emotional development; and the role of parents/caregivers as advocates for their infants with other agencies and systems

6. Chapter 5: Infancy • Newborns • On average 7 to 7 ½ pounds and 20 inches • Low-birth-weight-babies: weigh 5 pounds 8 ounces or less • Small for their gestational age: low weight for a given gestational age

7. Chapter 5: Infancy

8. Chapter 5: Infancy • The Development of Sensory/Perceptual and Motor Functions • Infant sensory/perceptual competencies can be measured with infant gazing, heart rate, sucking, head turning, and habituation • Habituation: allows the infant to attend to new aspects of the environment

9. Chapter 5: Infancy • Brain Development in Infancy • Infant brain is well-formed at birth with about 100 billion interconnected neurons (brain cells) • Neural plasticity

10. Chapter 5: Infancy

11. Chapter 5: Infancy • Sensory/Motor Development • Hearing • Vision • Taste and Smell • Touch • The sensory/perceptual capacities function as an interconnected system to provide a variety of sources of information about the environment at the same time

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13. Chapter 5: Infancy • Sensory/Motor Development (cont.) • Motor skills develop as a result of physical growth and maturation in the context of varied environmental opportunities • Motor skills begin as involuntary reflexes, and follow a general sequence of development

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15. Chapter 5: Infancy

16. Chapter 5: Infancy • Temperament • Relatively stable characteristics or response to the environment that can be observed during the first months of life • Significant source of individual differences – a result of genetic, environmental, and socially construed factors • Assessed by child’s positive or negative reaction to events and stability of this reaction

17. Chapter 5: Infancy • Another View of Temperament • Reactivity or the child’s threshold for arousal, which could be evidenced at the physiological, emotional, or motor level • Self-regulation or behavioral inhibition that can be thought of as a continuum from bold or brazen to inhibited and cautious

18. Chapter 5: Infancy

19. Chapter 5: Infancy • Case Study: The Cotton Family • Thought Questions • How would you describe Anna’s temperament? What problems might the Cotton family face if Anna had been a more passive, reserved, and inhibited child? • In what ways was Anna being expected to adapt to the Cotton family lifestyle?

20. Chapter 5: Infancy • Case Study: The Cotton Family (cont.) • What are some of the challenges Nancy and Paul faced as new parents? How did they cope with these challenges? • How would you describe Paul’s enactment of the father role? • How would you describe Nancy’s enactment of the mother role? • Anna seems to be influencing the well-being of her mother, father, and her grandmother. What impact does Anna have on each of these family members?

21. Chapter 5: Infancy • Attachment • Process through which people develop specific, positive emotional bonds with others • Attachment Behavior System • Parenting or caregiving is the nurturing responses of the caregiver to the child • Synchrony, or interactions that are rhythmic, well-timed, and mutually rewarding establish attachments

22. Chapter 5: Infancy

23. Chapter 5: Infancy • The Development of Attachment • Internal mental representations / internal working models • Goal-corrected partnerships • Stranger anxiety • Separation anxiety

24. Chapter 5: Infancy • Formation of Attachments with Mother, Father, and Others • The amount of time the infant spends in the care of the person • The quality and responsiveness of the care provided by the person • The person’s emotional investment in the infant • The presence of the person in the infant’s life across time

25. Chapter 5: Infancy • Measuring the Security of Attachment: The Strange Situation • A 20 minute period • Child is exposed to a sequence of periods of separations and reunions with the caregiver • How the child responds to these periods is used to assess their level of attachment to the caregiver

26. Chapter 5: Infancy • Four Patterns of Quality of Attachment • Secure Attachment • Anxious-Avoidant Attachment • Anxious-Resistant Attachment • Disorganized Attachment

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28. Chapter 5: Infancy • Parental Sensitivity and the Quality of Attachment • Four factors come into play in producing sensitive parenting that underlies secure attachments • Cultural and subcultural pathways • The caregiver’s personal life story • Contemporary factors • Characteristics of the infant

29. Chapter 5: Infancy • The Relevance of Attachment to Later Development • Attachment and internal working models influence: • expectations about the self, others, and the nature of relationships • the child’s ability to explore and engage the environment with confidence • the formation of later relationships

30. Chapter 5: Infancy • The Relevance of Attachment to Later Development (cont.) • Clinical diagnoses and links to attachment • Reactive Attachment Disorder • Inhibited Type • Uninhibited Type • Critique of the Attachment Paradigm • Attachment paradigm has limitations, especially when viewed from a cross-cultural or comparative cultural lens

31. Chapter 5: Infancy • Sensorimotor Intelligence and Early Causal Schemes • Sensorimotor intelligence, or motor routine, that reflects organization • Sensorimotor adaptation is Piaget’s chief mechanism governing the growth of intelligence during infancy • Infants develop an understanding of causality based largely on sensory and motor experiences

32. Chapter 5: Infancy

33. Chapter 5: Infancy • The Development of Causal Schemes • Infants form expectations about how objects function. • Development of causal schemes • Phase 1 – reflexes • Phase 2 – first habits • Phase 3 – circular reactions • Phase 4 – coordination of means and ends • Phase 5 – experimentation with new means • Phase 6 - insight

34. Chapter 5: Infancy • Understanding the Nature of Objects and Creating Categories • Object permanence - objects in the environment are permanent and do not cease to exist when they are out of reach or view • One reason babies experience separation anxiety is that they are uncertain whether a person to whom they are attached will continue to exist once out of sight

35. Chapter 5: Infancy Video Segment: The Sensorimotor Stage: Absence of Object Permanence

36. Chapter 5: Infancy Video Segment: The Sensorimotor Stage: Presence of Object Permanence

37. Chapter 5: Infancy • The Prefrontal Cortex and Infant Intelligence • Prefrontal Cortex allows for the ability to derive abstract concepts, rules, and generalizations from sensory/motor experiences and apply them to new situations

38. Chapter 5: Infancy

39. Chapter 5: Infancy

40. Chapter 5: Infancy • Emotions as a Key to Understanding Meaning • Provide a channel for determining the meaning the child is giving to a specific situation • The Ability to Regulate Emotions • One of the most important elements in the development of emotional regulation is the way caregivers assist infants to manage their strong feelings

41. Chapter 5: Infancy • Emotions as a Channel for Adult-Infant Communication • Emotions provide a two-way channel through which infants and their caregivers can establish intersubjectivity • Mechanism of social referencing

42. Chapter 5: Infancy • The Psychosocial Crisis: Trust versus Mistrust • Trust - an appraisal of the availability, dependability, and sensitivity of another person; emerges as one person discovers those traits in another person • Mistrust - can arise, during infancy, from at least three sources: infant wariness, lack of confidence in the caregiver, and doubt in one’s own lovableness

43. Chapter 5: Infancy • The Central Process for Resolving the Crisis: Mutuality with the Caregiver • Mutuality is a characteristic of a relationship that is initially built on the consistency with which the caregiver appropriately responds to the infant’s needs

44. Chapter 5: Infancy • Coordination, Mismatch, and Repair of Interactions • Coordination refers to two related characteristics on interaction: matching and synchrony • Matching means that the infant and the caregiver are involved in similar behaviors or states at the same time • Synchrony means that the infant and caregiver move fluidly from one state to the next

45. Chapter 5: Infancy • The Central Process for Resolving the Crisis: Mutuality with the Caregiver • Establishing a Functional Rhythm in the Family • The match or mismatch between an infant’s rhythms and the family’s rhythms is an important factor in the overall adjustment of a family to a new baby • Parents with Psychological Problems

46. Chapter 5: Infancy • The Prime Adaptive Ego Quality and the Core Pathology • Hope - the first prime adaptive ego quality; an orientation that goals and dreams can be attained and events will turn out for the best • Withdrawal - a general orientation of wariness toward people and objects

47. Chapter 5: Infancy • Applied Topic: The Role of Parents • Safety in the physical environment • Fostering emotional and cognitive development • Fathers’ and mothers’ parental behavior • Parents as advocates • The importance of social support

48. Chapter 5: Infancy