Lifespan Psychology Module 4 slide on infancy. CC-BY 3.0 from Laura Overstreet http://opencourselibrary.org/econ-201/

1. Infancy
Infants and Toddlers

2. Physical Growth
 Weight (Average 7.5 lbs)
 Doubles by 4 months
 Triples by 12 months
 Length
 20 inches at birth
 32-36 inches by age 2
 Body proportions

3. The Brain
 Size increase
(25% to 75%)
 Growth of
connectors
 Loss of
connectors
 Myelination
 Variation in
maturation

4. Motor Development
 Newborn reflexes
 Automatic
responses to
stimuli
 Include
sucking,
rooting, palmer
grasp, etc.

5. Motor Development
 Gross motor skills
 Large movements

6. Motor Development
 Fine motor skills
 Precise movements of hand and
fingers
 Eye-hand coordination
 Manipulating small objects
 Take longer to acquire

7. Sensory Development
 Vision-least developed sense at
birth
 Newborn focus 8-16 inches away
 Problems scanning/tracking
 Binocular vision at 14 weeks
 Color vision poor
 Hearing-most developed sense at
birth

8. Nutrition: Ideal Diet
 Breast milk
 Pros of breastfeeding
 When to avoid breastfeeding
 Wetnursing Today?
 Find out more at http://www.prolacta.com/

9. Malnutrition
 In developing
countries:
 Infantile
marasmus
 Kwashiorkor
 In United States:
 Milk-anemia
Photo Courtesy CDC

10. Cognitive Development
Language and Thought

11. Jean Piaget
SENSORIMOTOR
INTELLIGENCE

12. Substages
Of Sensorimotor Intelligence

13. Stage One
 Birth to 1 month
 Reflexive actions
 Few schema

14. Stage Two
 1-4 months
 1st adaptations to the environment
 More schema

15. Stage Three
 4-8 months
 Repeating actions
 Starts to realize that he or she can
have an impact on the world

16. Stage Four
 8-12 months
 New adaptations and anticipation
 Look forward to upcoming events
 Object permanence achieved
 Was Piaget wrong?

17. Stage Five
 12-18 months
 Experimentation of little scientists
 Discovering features such as
gravity, simple cause and effect
 Trial and error learning

18. Stage Six
 18-24 months
 Mental combinations
 Child begins to “think” in order to
solve problems
 Less reliance on trial and error
learning
 Deferred imitation

19. Steps in Language Development
COMMUNICATION

20. Newborn Communication
 No language, but effective communication
 Use cries
 Facial expressions
 Body posture

21. 2-5 Months
 Cooing begins
 Squealing
 Laughing
 Taking turns in communication
 Deaf babies also vocalize
 Pointing and gesturing at 5 months

22. 6 Months
 Babbling
 Make the sounds required for any
language
 Gradually, will only continue making
sounds that are part of one’s own
language (at 1 year)
 Deaf babies babble with rudiments of
signs if used

23. 10 Months
Understanding comes before
speaking

24. 12-13 Months
 First spoken words
 Holophrasic speech
 Underextension
 Overextension
 Vocabulary of about 50 words
 Deaf babies vocalizations disappear by
age 2

25. 18-24 Months
 Vocabulary growth spurt at 18 months
 Two word sentences at 21 months
 3-5 word telegraphic (or “text
message”) speech at 24 months

26. Helping Children Learn to
Speak
Why baby talk?
(child-directed speech)

27. Theories of Language
Development
 Infants teach themselves (Chomsky’s
L.A.D.)
 (but must be in person)
 Infants are taught (Skinner)
 Infants learn in order to communicate
(Social-pragmatics)
 For all 3 reasons

28. Psychosocial Development
in Infancy
A Look At Early Social
Relationships and Emotions

29. Emotions
 Attraction and withdrawal
 Social smiling (2 months)
 Laughter (3-5 months)
 Fear, sadness, anger (6-8 months)
 Jealousy? (6 months)
 Stranger wariness, separation anxiety

30. Emotions
 Self-Awareness (15 months)
 The Rouge Test
 Guilt
 Shame
 Embarrassment

31. Early Relationships
ATTACHMENT STYLES

32. Secure Attachments
 Child receives care, concern and
affection
 Leads to a sense of trust and curiosity
 Signaled by separation anxiety and
stranger wariness

33. Insecure-Resistant
 Needs not consistently met
 Insecurity and fear of being alone
 Fussy, clingy, hard to satisfy

34. Insecure-Avoidant
 No attachment; needs not met
 Child does not seek comfort from
caregiver
 Child is neither curious nor clingy

35. Disorganized
 Neither plays nor responds
 Actions of mother
 Cry, freeze, hit, retreat, etc.

36. Attachment Styles
Also vary by culture: Germany
(insecure-avoidant); Japan
(insecure-resistant)

37. Temperament
 Inborn behavioral tendencies
 A way of relating to people, places and things
 Not due to parenting
 Shaped into personality

38. New York Longitudinal Study
 Activity
 Rhythmicity
 Approach/Withdrawal
 Adaptability

39. New York Longitudinal Study
 Intensity
 Mood
 Persistence and attention span
 Distractibility
 Sensory threshold

40. Temperament Types
 Easy or flexible (40% of those
categorized)
 Difficult, active, or feisty (10%)
 Slow to warm up/cautious (15%)
 35 percent are a combination
 Goodness of fit

41. Trust Vs Mistrust
 Problems in developing trust
 Parents who don’t show affection
toward child
 Tension, irritability in the household
(Stress and neurological development)

42. Erikson’s Trust Vs Mistrust
 Requirements for developing trust
 Regular, adequate care
 Sufficient sucking
 Cuddling and physical contact
 Overall message that they are loved

43. Erikson’s Autonomy Vs Shame
and Doubt
 Found in 1-2 year old children
 Toddlers want independence or
autonomy
 Should be allowed to be independent
within safe limits
 Pride requires self-evaluation