Life-Span Development

Physical Development in Infancy

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 Patterns of Growth:

 Cephalocaudal Pattern: sequence in which the earliest growth

always occurs from the top downward

 Proximodistal Pattern: sequence in which growth starts in the

center of the body and moves toward the extremities

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 Height and Weight

 Average North American newborn is 20 inches long and 7 ½

pounds

 At 2 years of age, infants weigh 26 to 32 pounds and are half

their adult height.

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 The Brain:
 Contains approximately 100 billion neurons at birth

 Extensive brain development continues after birth, through

infancy, and later

 Head should be protected

 Shaken Baby Syndrome: brain swelling and hemorrhaging
from child abuse trauma

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 The Brain:
 The Brain’s Development
 At birth, the brain is 25% of its adult weight; at 2 years of
age, it is 75% of its adult weight

 Mapping the Brain

 Frontal, Occipital, Temporal, and Parietal Lobes
 Lateralization
 Left-brained vs. Right-brained

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 The Brain:
 Changes in Neurons
 Continued myelination
 Greater connectivity and new neural pathways

 Changes in Regions of the Brain

 Dramatic “blooming and pruning” of synapses in the visual,
auditory, and prefrontal cortex

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 Changes in regions
of the brain:
◦ “Blooming and
pruning” of synapses
varies by brain region
◦ Pace of myelination
varies as well

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 The Brain:

 Early Experience and the Brain

 Depressed brain activity has been found in children who grow up

in a deprived environment

 Repeated experience wires (and rewires) the brain

 Brain is both flexible and resilient

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The Brain

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 Sleep

 Typical newborn sleeps 18 hours per day

 Infants vary in their preferred times for sleeping

 Most common infant sleep-related problem is night waking

 Consistently linked to excessive parental involvement in sleep-
related interactions with their infant

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 Sleep

 REM Sleep – eyes flutter beneath closed lids

 Sleep cycle begins with REM sleep in infants

 May provide infants with added self-stimulation

 REM sleep may also promote brain development

 We do not know whether infants dream or not

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 Sleep

 Shared Sleeping
 Varies from culture to culture

 American Academy of Pediatrics discourages shared sleeping

 Potential benefits:
 Promotes breast feeding and a quicker response to crying

 Allows mother to detect potentially dangerous breathing pauses in

baby

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 Sleep

 SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome): infants stop breathing

and die without apparent cause
 Highest cause of infant death in U.S. annually

 Highest risk is 2-4 months of age

 Many other risk factors associated with SIDS

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 Nutrition

 Nutritional Needs and Eating Behavior

 50 calories per day for each pound they weigh

 Fruits and vegetables by end of 1 st year

 Poor dietary patterns lead to increasing rates of overweight and

obese infants

 Breast feeding reduces risk of obesity

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Nutrition

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 Nutrition

 Breast Versus Bottle Feeding

 Consensus: Breast feeding is better

 American Academy of Pediatrics strongly endorses breast

feeding throughout the first year

 Numerous outcomes for child and mother

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 Nutrition
 Malnutrition in Infancy
 Early weaning can cause malnutrition

 Two life-threatening conditions resulting from malnutrition

 Marasmus: a severe protein-calorie deficiency resulting in a
wasting away of body tissues

 Kwashiorkor: a severe protein deficiency that causes the abdomen

and feet to swell with water

 Severe and lengthy malnutrition is detrimental to physical, cognitive,

and social development

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 The Dynamic Systems View:

 Infants assemble motor skills for perceiving and acting

 Motor skills represent solutions to goals

 Development is an active process in which nature and nurture

work together as part of an ever-changing system

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 Reflexes: built-in reactions to stimuli; automatic and inborn
 Rooting Reflex

 Sucking Reflex

 Moro Reflex

 Grasping Reflex

 Some reflexes continue throughout life; others disappear

several months after birth

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 Gross Motor Skills: large-muscle activities

 The Development of Posture

 Posture – a dynamic process linked with sensory information in
the skin, joints, and muscles, which tell us where we are in space

 Learning to Walk
 Occurs about the time of their first birthday

 Infants learn what kinds of places and surfaces are safe for
locomotion

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 Gross Motor Skills: large-muscle activities

 The First Year: Motor Development Milestones and

Variations
 Some milestones vary by as much as two to four months

 Experience can modify the onset of motor accomplishments

 Some infants do not follow the standard sequence of motor

development

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 Gross Motor Skills

 Development in the Second Year

 Toddlers become more skilled and mobile

 By 13-18 months, toddlers can pull a toy or climb stairs; by 18-24

months, toddlers can walk quickly, balance on their feet, walk
backward and stand and kick a ball

 Even when motor activity is restricted, many infants reach

motor milestones at a normal age

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 Fine Motor Skills: finely tuned movements

 Using a spoon, buttoning a shirt, reaching and grasping

 Palmer grasp: grasping with the whole hand

 Pincer grip: grasping with the thumb and forefinger

 Perceptual-motor coupling is necessary for infants to coordinate

grasping

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 What are Sensation and Perception?
 Sensation: occurs when information interacts with sensory
receptors (eyes, ears, tongue, nostrils, and skin)

 Perception: the interpretation of what is sensed

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 What are Sensation and Perception?
 Ecological View: we directly perceive information that exists
in the world around us

 Affordances: opportunities for interaction offered by objects that

fit within our capabilities to perform activities

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 Visual Perception

 Visual Acuity and Human Faces

 Newborn’s vision is about 20/240 but 20/40 by 6 months of age

 Infants show an interest in human faces soon after birth

 Spend more time looking at their mother’s face than a stranger’s face
as early as 12 hours after being born
 A 2-month-old scans much more of the face than the 1-month-old

 Color Vision

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Visual Perception

1 month 2 months 3 months 1 year

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Visual Perception

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 Visual Perception
 Perceptual Constancy: sensory stimulation is changing but
perception of the physical world remains constant

 Size Constancy: recognition that an object remains the

same even though the retinal image of the object changes
 Babies as young as 3 months show size constancy

 Shape Constancy: recognition that an object remains the

same shape even though its orientation to us changes

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 Visual Perception

 Depth Perception
 Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk studied development of depth
perception using a “visual cliff”

 Infants 6-12 months old can distinguish depth

 Nature, Nurture, and the Development of Infants’ Visual

Perception

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Depth Perception

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 Other Senses

 Hearing
 Fetuses can hear and learn sounds during the last two months of
pregnancy and can recognize their mother’s voice at birth

 Touch and Pain

 Newborns do respond to touch and can also feel pain

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 Other Senses

 Smell
 Newborns can differentiate odors

 Taste
 Sensitivity to taste may be present before birth

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 Intermodal Perception: the ability to integrate information
from two or more sensory modalities

 Perceptual–Motor Coupling: perception and action are

coupled
 Action educates perception

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