CHAPTER 4

I. Physical Growth and

Development in Infancy
Patterns of Growth
 Cephalocaudal Pattern - The sequence in which growth proceeds from top to bottom
 Proximodistal Pattern - The sequence in which growth starts at the center of the body and moves
toward the extremities
Height and Weight - The average North America newborn is 20 inches long and weighs 7.6
pounds
- Infants grow about 1 inch per month in the first year and nearly triple their
weight by their first birthday
- The rate of growth slows in the second year
The Brain - Growth of the brain from conception to birth
- The infant as a single estimated to have a brain that contains
approximately 100 billion nerve cells or neurons
 Shaken Baby Syndrome - Includes brain swelling and hemorrhaging
 Eletroenephalogram - A measure of the brain’s electrical activity to learn about the brain’s
(EEG) development in infancy
 Functional Near-Infrared - Uses very low levels of near-infrared light to monitor changes in blood
Sprectroscopy (fNIRS) oxygen to study infant’s brain activity
- Portable and allows the infants to be assessed as they explore the world
around them
 fMRI - Uses magnetic fields or electrical activity
 Magnetoencephalography - Brain-imaging machines to assess infant’s brain activity
(MEG) - Maps the brain activity by recording magnetic fields produced by
electrical currents and is being used to assess
The Brain’s Development
 Mapping the Brain  Forebrain – the portion farthest the spinal cord
 Cerebral Cortex – covers the forebrain
 Frontal lobes – voluntary movement, thinking, personality and
intentionality on purpose
 Occipital lobes – function in vision
 Temporal lobes – active role in hearing, language processing and memory
 Parietal lobes – important roles in registering spatial location, attention
and motor control
 Lateralization – specialization of function in one hemisphere of the
cerebral cortex or the other
 Left hemisphere – logic
 Right hemisphere – creative
 Changes in Neurons  Neurons – type of nerve cells that send electrical and chemical signals,
communicating with each other; handles information processing
 Axon – type of neuron that carries signals away from the body cell
 Dendrites – type of neuron that carry signals toward it
 Myelin sheath – layer of fat cells; insulates axons and helps electrical
signals travel faster down the axon
 Neurotransmitters – release chemicals
 Synapses – tiny gaps between neurons’ fibers
 Myelination – the process of encasing axons with fat cells
Neuroconstructivist View - Biological proceses and environmental conditions influence the brain’s
development
- The brain has plasticity and is context dependent
- The child’s or advance the construction of cognitive skills
Sleep - Restores, replenish and rebuilds our brains and bodies
Why do we sleep?  Evolutionary perspective – all animals sleep and this sleep likely is
necessary for survival

Infant sleep
REM sleep
Shared sleeping
Nutrition
II. Motor Development
The Dynamic System View
 Dynamic System Theory
 Reflexes
 Rooting reflex
 Sucking reflex
 Moro reflex
 Grasping reflex
Gross Motor Skills
First Year: Motor Development
Milestones and Variations
Fine Motor Skills
III. Sensory and Perceptual
Development
What are Sensation and
Perception?
 Sensation
 Perception
The Ecological View
 Second perspective – sleep replenish and rebuilds the brain and body
 Third perspective – sleep is critical for brain plasticity
- Newborn sleeps approximately 18 hours a day
- The range is from about 10 hours to about 21 hours a day
 REM sleep – eyes flutter beneath close lids
 Non-REM sleep – this type of eye movement does not occur and sleep is
more quiet
- Sleeping arrangements for infants vary across cultures
- Some experts believe shared sleeping can lead to sudden infant death
syndrome (SIDS), a condition that occurs when a sleeping infant suddenly
stops breathing and dies without apparent cause
- Infants need to consume about 50 calories per day for each pound they
weigh
- Severe infant malnutrition is still prevalent in many parts of the world
- Esther Thelen’s theory
- Seeks to explain how motor behaviors are assembles for perceiving and
acting
- Motor skills are the result of many converging factors
- Motor development is far more complex than the result of a genetic
blueprint
- Built-in reactions to stimuli; they govern the newborn’s movements,
which are automatic and beyond the newborn’s control
- Occurs when the infant’s cheek is stroked or the side of the mouth is
touched
- The infants turns its head toward the side that was touched in an apparent
effort to suck
- Occurs when newborns automatically suck an object places in their mouth
- It enables newborns to get nourishment before they have associated a
nipple with food and also serves as a self-soothing or self-regulating
mechanism
- Occurs in response to a sudden, which the newborn arches its back, throws
its head back, flings out its arms and legs and then pulls its arm and legs
close to the center of the body
- Occurs when something touches the infant’s palms and the infant responds
by grasping tightly
- Motor skills that involve large-muscle activities
0-1 month – prone, lift head
2-4 months – prone, chest up, use arm for support
5 months – roll over
6 months – support some weight with legs
7-8 months – sit without support
9-10 months – stand with support and pull self to stand
11-13 monts – walk using furniture for support
13-14 months – stand and walk alone easily
- Motor skills that involve more finely tuned movements
- Occurs when information interacts with sensory receptors – eyes, ears,
tongue, nostrils and skin
- Interpretation of what is sensed
  Ecological View
 Affordances
Visual Perception
 Visual Preference Method
 Habituation
 Dishabituation
- According to Gibson, we directly perceive information that exist on the
world around us
- It connects perceptual capabilities to information available in the world of
the perceiver
- Perception brings us into contact with the environment so we can interact
with and adapt it
- Opportunities of interaction offered by objects that fit within our
capabilities to perform functional activities
- A method used to determine whether infants can distinguish one stimulus
from another by measuring the length of time they attend to different
stimuli
- Decreased responsiveness to a stimulus after repeated presentations of the
stimuli
- Recovery of a habituated response after a change in stimulation

 Perceptual Narrowing - Infants are more likely to distinguish between faces to which they have
been exposed than faces that they have never seen before
Perceptual Constancy  Size constancy – is the recognition that an object remains the same even
though the retinal image of the object changes as you move toward or
away from the object
 Shape constancy – is the recognition that an object remains the same
shape though its orientation to us changes
Other Senses
Hearing  Loudness – after birth, infants cannot hear soft sounds quite as well as
adults can
 Pitch – is the perception of the frequency of a sound
 Localization – newborn can determine the general location from which a
sound is coming
Touch and Pain - Newborns can respond to touch and feel pain
Smell - They can differentiate odors
Taste - They are sensitive
Intermodal Perception - The ability to relate and integrate information from two or more sensory
modalities
Nature, Nurture, and Perceptual
Development
 Nature - Advocates are referred to as nativist
 Nurture - Proponents are called empiricist
Perceptual-Motor Coupling - Perception and action are often not isolated but rather are coupled
- Individuals perceive in order to move and move in order to perceive