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Infants (birth to age 1) and toddlers (ages 1 to 2) grow quickly; bodily changes are rapid and
profound. Physical development refers to biological changes that children undergo as
they age. Important aspects that determine the progress of physical development in infancy and
toddlerhood include physical and brain changes; development of reflexes, motor skills,
sensations, perceptions, and learning skills; and health issues.
Learning
Emotional Well-Being
Learning Capacities
Learning is the process that results in relatively permanent change in behavior based
on experience. Infants learn in a variety of ways.
Classical Conditioning
• An unconditioned stimulus (UCS), say, a nipple inserted into the mouth, elicits a
reflexive unlearned response (unconditioned response, UR), sucking.
• The infant can become conditioned to the nipple (now a conditioned stimulus, CS) so
that sucking occurs as soon as the baby sees a nipple (now a conditioned
response, CR).
Operant Conditioning
Habituation
Habituation research reveals that infants learn and retain a wide variety of
information just by watching objects and events (Berk, 2007). They are especially
attentive to the movements of objects and people, and have been reported to be able
to habituate themselves to the actions of older people for up to seven weeks after they
were first introduced to the actions in the first place.
In another habituation research, it was revealed that newborn babies required a long
time to habituate and recover to novel visual stimuli, usually about three or four
minutes (Berk, 2007). Once the infants reached four or five months of age, they required
as little as five to ten seconds to recognize different visual stimuli (Slater et al., 1996).
Psychologists believe that a reason for young babies'habituation times being so long is
that they have a hard time disengaging their attention from interesting stimuli
(Colombo, 2002).
There are studies that show that infants who have habituated to hearing one language,
such as Dutch, dishabituate when they hear a different language such as Japanese
(Kalat, 2007). By age 5 months, however, babies dishabituate when they hear an
adjustment from Dutch to English, apparently because the sounds and rhythms are
relatively similar (Jusczyk, 2002). These type of studies show that children can
distinguish relevant language sounds before they even know what the words mean.
When a change in a stimulus increases a previously habituated response, we say that the
stimulus produced dishabituation (Kalat, 2007).
Habituation can even be seen as early as the third trimester of pregnancy. A fetus
shows sensitivity to external stimuli in the third trimester of pregnancy by showing
changes in fetal heart rate when various repeated sounds are presented (Berk, 2007).
Imitation
Newborn babies come into the world with a primitive ability to learn through imitation
—by copying the behavior of another person. Infants from 2 days to several weeks old
imitating adult facial expressions (Field et al., 1982; Meltzoff & Moore, 1977). The
human newborn’s capacity to imitate extends to certain gestures, such as head
movements, and has been demonstrated in many ethnic groups and cultures (Meltzoff &
Kuhl, 1994). As the figure reveals, even the newborns of chimpanzees, our closest
evolutionary ancestors, imitate some facial expressions: tongue protrusion, mouth
opening, and lip protrusion (Myowa-Yamakoshi et al., 2004) (Berk).
imitation is more difficult to induce in babies 2 to 3 months old than just after birth.
Therefore, some investigators regard the capacity as little more than an automatic
response that declines with age,much like a reflex. Others claim that newborns imitate a
variety of facial expressions and head movements with apparent effort and
determination, even after short delays—when the adult is no longer demonstrating the
behavior. Furthermore, these investigators argue, imitation does not decline, as reflexes
do.Human babies several months old often do not imitate an adult’s behavior right away
because they try to play social games they are used to in face-to-face interaction—mutual
gazing, cooing, smiling, and waving their arms. When an adult models a gesture
repeatedly, older human infants soon get down to business and
imitate (Meltzoff & Moore, 1994). Similarly, imitation declines in baby chimps around 9
weeks of age, when mother–baby mutual gazing and other face-to-face exchanges
increase. (Laura Berk)
MOTOR DEVELOPMENT
A. The Sequence of Motor Development
1. Gross motor development refers to control over actions that help an infant
move around in the environment, such as crawling, standing, and walking.
2. Fine motor development involves smaller movements such as reaching and grasping.
3. Although the sequence of motor development is fairly uniform across children,
there are large individual differences in rate of motor progress.
4. Motor control of the head precedes control of the arms and trunk which
precedes control of the legs .
5. Head, trunk, and arm control appears before coordination of the hands and fingers .
http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/devmile.htm
http://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/cd/re/itf09percmotdev.asp
Object Perception
Intermodal Perception
1. Piaget based the sensorimotor stage on his observations of his own children.
2. The Circular Reaction:
a. Circular reactions are the means by which infants explore the environment and
build schemes by trying to repeat chance events caused by their own motor
activity.
b. These reactions are first centered on the infant's own body. Subsequently, they
change to manipulating objects and then to producing novel effects in the
environment.
3. Substage 1: Reflexive Schemes -
a. Piaget regarded newborn reflexes as the building blocks of
sensorimotor intelligence.
b. At first, babies suck, grasp, and look in much the same way, no
matter what the circumstances.
4. Substage 2: Primary Circular Reactions - The First Learned Adaptations -
a. Infants develop simple motor skills and change their behavior in
response to environmental demands.
b. The first circular reactions are primary in that they are oriented
towards the infants' own bodies and motivated by basic needs.
5. Substage 3: Secondary Circular Reactions-Making Interesting Sights Last -
a. Circular reactions of this substage are secondary in that the infants
repeat actions that affect the environment.
b. Infants can imitate actions that they have practiced many times.
6. Substage 4: Coordination of Secondary Circular Reaction -
a. Intentional, or goal directed, behavior is the combination of
schemes to solve problems.
b. Piaget regarded mean send action sequences as the first sign that
babies appreciate physical causality.
c. Object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to
exist when they are out of sight; it is not yet complete in this substage.
d. AB search errors are committed by infants in this substage. Infants
8- to 12-months-old only look for an object in hiding place A after the object is
moved from A to hiding place B.
7. Substage 5: Tertiary Circular Reactions-Discovering New Means Through Active
Experimentation -
a. Circular reactions in this substage are tertiary in that the infant
repeats actions with variation-exploring the environment and bringing about new
outcomes.
b. Experimentation leads to a more advanced understanding of object
permanence. Toddlers no longer make the AB search error.
8. Substage 6: Mental Representation-Inventing New Means Through Mental
Combinations -
a. Mental representations are internal images of absent objects and
past events.
b. The toddler can now solve problems through symbolic means
instead of trial-and-error.
c. Representation allows deferred imitation-the ability to copy the
behavior of models who are not immediately present.
d. Functional play is motor activity with or without objects during the
first year and a half in which sensorimotor schemes are practiced.
e. At the end of the second year, representation permits toddlers to
engage in make-believe play.
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
On average, children say their first word at around 12 months of age, with a range of 8 to 18
months. Between 1.5 and 2 years, toddlers combine two words; soon their utterances increase in
length and complexity.
First Words
1 . Children's first words usually refer to important people, objects that move,
familiar actions, or outcomes of familiar actions.
2. Under extension is a vocabulary error in which a word is applied to a
smaller number of objects and events than is appropriate.
3. In contrast, over extension occurs when a word is applied to a wider
collection of objects and events than is appropriate.
EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Basic emotions are those that can be directly inferred from facial expressions,
such as happiness, interest, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, and disgust.
A. Happiness: a. Happiness binds parent and baby and fosters the infant's
developing competence.
b. The social smile-the smile evoked by the stimulus of the
human face-first appears between 6 and 10 weeks.
c. Laughter first appears around 2 to 4 months in response to
active stimuli.
B. Anger and Fear: a. Anger is expressed during the first months when babies
cry in response to unpleasant experiences.
b. Both fear and anger rise during the second half of the
first year.
C. Stranger anxiety is an expression of fear in response to
unfamiliar adults. it depends on the infant's temperament,
past experiences with strangers, and the situation in which baby and
stranger meet.
d. Researchers believe that anger and fear have special
survival value as infants' motor capacities improve.
http://www.parents.com/baby/development/behavioral/month-by-month-
guide-to-babys-emotional-development/
Understanding and Responding to the Emotions of Others
Self-conscious emotions appear at the end of the second year. They involve
injury to or enhance ment of the sense of self and include shame,
embarrassment, guilt, envy, and pride. Self-conscious emotions assist children
in acquiring socially valued behaviors and goals.