Child Development A Cultural Approach 2nd Edition

Arnett Solutions Manual

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CHAPTER 4: INFANCY

TABLE OF CONTENTS
LEARNING OBJECTIVES.......................................................................................................... 93
Section 1: Learning Objectives ............................................................................................... 93
Section 2: Learning Objectives ............................................................................................... 93
Section 3: Learning Objectives ............................................................................................... 93
KEY TERMS ................................................................................................................................ 94
Section 1: Key Terms.............................................................................................................. 94
Section 2: Key Terms.............................................................................................................. 94
Section 3: Key Terms.............................................................................................................. 95
CHAPTER 4 OUTLINE ............................................................................................................... 95
I. Section 1: Physical Development ................................................................................... 95
II. Section 2: Cognitive Development ................................................................................ 96
III. Section 3: Emotional and Social Development .............................................................. 96
LECTURE NOTES ....................................................................................................................... 96
I. Section 1: Physical Development ......................................................................................... 96
A. Growth and Change in Infancy ...................................................................................... 96
1. Growth Patterns .......................................................................................................... 96
2. Brain Development ..................................................................................................... 97
a. Brain Growth .............................................................................................................. 97
b. Brain Specialization .................................................................................................... 97
c. The Plasticity of the Infant Brain ............................................................................... 98
3. Sleep Changes............................................................................................................. 99
a. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) ..................................................................... 99
b. Cosleeping: Helpful or Harmful to Babies? ............................................................... 99
B. Physical Development: Infant Health .......................................................................... 100

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 1. Nutritional Needs ...................................................................................................... 100
a. Introduction of Solid Foods ...................................................................................... 100
b. Malnutrition in Infancy............................................................................................. 100
2. Infant Mortality......................................................................................................... 101
a. Causes and Prevention of Infant Mortality ............................................................... 101
b. Cultural Beliefs and Practices to Protect Infants ...................................................... 101
C. Physical Development: Motor and Sensory Development .......................................... 102
1. Motor Development .................................................................................................. 102
a. Gross Motor Development ....................................................................................... 102
b. Fine Motor Development.......................................................................................... 102
2. Sensory Development ............................................................................................... 103
a. Hearing and Vision ................................................................................................... 103
b. Depth Perception ...................................................................................................... 103
c. Intermodal Perception............................................................................................... 103
II. Section 2: Cognitive Development ..................................................................................... 104
A. Cognitive Development: Approaches to Understanding Cognitive Change ................ 104
1. Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage ..................................................................................... 104
a. Object Permanence ................................................................................................... 104
2. Evaluating Piaget’s Sensorimotor Theory ................................................................ 105
B. Information Processing in Infancy ............................................................................... 106
1. The Information Processing Approach ..................................................................... 106
2. Attention ................................................................................................................... 106
3. Memory .................................................................................................................... 106
C. Cognitive Development: Assessing Infant Development ............................................ 107
1. Approaches to Assessing Development ................................................................... 107
a. The Bayley Scales .................................................................................................... 107
b. Information-Processing Approaches to Infant Assessment ........................................ 107
2. Can Media Stimulation Enhance Cognitive Development? The Myth of “Baby
Einstein”.............................................................................................................................. 107
D. The Beginnings of Language ....................................................................................... 108
1. First Sounds and Words ............................................................................................ 108
2. Infant-Directed (ID) Speech ..................................................................................... 108
III. Section 3: Emotional and Social Development ............................................................... 109

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 A. Emotional and Social Development: Temperament..................................................... 109
1. Conceptualizing Temperament ................................................................................. 109
2. Goodness-of-Fit ........................................................................................................ 109
B. Emotional and Social Development: Infants’ Emotions .............................................. 109
1. Primary Emotions ..................................................................................................... 109
2. Infants’ Emotional Perceptions ................................................................................ 110
C. Emotional and Social Development: The Social World of the Infant.......................... 111
1. Cultural Themes of Infant Social Life ...................................................................... 111
2. The Foundation of Social Development: Two Theories .......................................... 111
LECTURE LAUNCHERS, DISCUSSIONS, AND ACTIVITIES ............................................ 112
Section 1 Lecture Launcher: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) ................................. 112
Section 1 Lecture Launcher: Infant Brain Growth ............................................................... 113
Section 2 Activity: Learning Piaget’s Terms: Assimilation and Accommodation ............... 114
Section 1 and 2 Activity: What Do Infants Like? ................................................................. 114
Sections 1–3 Activity: Visit to a Toy Store .......................................................................... 114
Section 3 Lecture Launcher: Should You Let a Baby Cry? .................................................. 114
Section 3 Activity: Infant Day Care...................................................................................... 116
CRITICAL THINKING ABOUT CHILD DEVELOPMENT ................................................... 117
Critical Thinking: Confirmation Bias ................................................................................... 117
SUPPLEMENTAL READINGS ................................................................................................ 119
MULTIMEDIA IDEAS .............................................................................................................. 121
TEXTBOOK FEATURES .......................................................................................................... 122
Video Guide ................................................................................................................................ 122
a. Chapter Introduction: Infancy (7:59; p. 127) ............................................................... 122
b. Cosleeping (2:11; p. 136) ............................................................................................. 122
c. Milestones of Gross Motor Development in Infancy (1:05; p. 142) ............................ 122
d. Cultural Focus: Infant Fine Motor Development across Cultures (3:26; p. 144) ........ 122
e. Cultural Focus: Object Permanence across Cultures (4:02; p. 151) ............................ 122
f. Language Development (3:19; p. 158) ......................................................................... 122
g. Infant-Directed Speech (2:37; p. 160) .......................................................................... 122
h. Research Focus: Measuring Temperament (3:58; p. 165) ........................................... 122
i. Cultural Focus: Stranger Anxiety across Cultures (6:19; p. 172) ................................ 122
j. Career Focus: Pediatric Nurse Practitioner (4:52; p. 175) ........................................... 122
Cultural Focus Review Questions and Answers ................................................................... 122

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 Research Focus Review Questions and Answers ................................................................. 123
Critical Thinking: Questions and Answers ........................................................................... 123
HANDOUTS......................................................................................................................... 125124
Handout 4-1: Assimilation and Accommodation ................................................................. 125124
Handout 4-2: Infant Toy Survey ................................................................................................. 126

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Section 1: Learning Objectives

4.1 Describe how the infant’s body changes in the first year, and explain the two basic
principles of physical growth.
4.2 Identify the different parts of the brain, and describe how the brain changes in the first
few years of life.
4.3 Describe how infant sleep changes in the course of the first year, and evaluate the risk
factors for SIDS, including the research evidence regarding cosleeping.
4.4 Describe how infants’ nutritional needs change during the first year of life and identify
the reasons for and consequences of malnutrition in infancy.
4.5 List the major causes and preventive methods of infant mortality, and describe some
cultural approaches to protecting infants.
4.6 Describe the major changes during infancy in gross and fine motor development.
4.7 Describe how infants’ sensory abilities develop in the first year.

Section 2: Learning Objectives

4.8 Describe the first four sensorimotor substages of Piaget’s theory.

4.9 Describe how the elements of the information processing model of cognitive functioning
change in infancy.
4.10 Describe the major scales used in measuring infant development, and explain how
habituation assessments are used to predict later intelligence.
4.11 Evaluate the claim that educational media enhance infants’ cognitive development.
4.12 Describe the course of language development over the first year of life.
4.13 Describe how cultures vary in their stimulation of language development.

Section 3: Learning Objectives

4.14 Define infant temperament, and describe its main dimensions.

4.15 Explain how the idea of goodness-of-fit pertains to temperament on both a family level
and a cultural level.

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4.16 Identify the primary emotions, and describe how they develop during infancy.
4.17 Describe infant’s emotional perceptions and how their emotions become increasingly
social over the first year.
4.18 List the main features of infants’ social worlds across cultures.
4.19 Compare and contrast the two major theories of infants’ social development.

KEY TERMS

Section 1: Key Terms

cephalocaudal principle p. 129
proximodistal principle p. 129
neurotransmitter p. 130
axon p. 130
dendrite p. 130
overproduction/exuberance p. 130
myelination p. 130
synaptic pruning p. 130
cerebral cortex p. 131
lateralization p. 131
plasticity p. 132
experience-expectant brain functions p. 132
experience-dependent brain functions p. 132
sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) p. 134
cosleeping p. 135
custom complex p. 136
marasmus p. 138
oral rehydration therapy (ORT) p. 139
gross motor development p. 141
fine motor development p. 141
opposable thumb p. 143
statistical learning p. 145
depth perception p. 145
binocular vision p. 146
intermodal perception p. 147

Section 2: Key Terms

sensorimotor stage p. 149
object permanence p. 150
habituation p. 152
information-processing approach p. 153

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dishabituation p. 153
developmental quotient (DQ) p. 155
Bayley Scales of Infant Development p. 155
cooing p. 157
babbling p. 158
infant-directed (ID) speech p. 160

Section 3: Key Terms

temperament p. 163
goodness-of-fit p. 165
primary emotions p. 166
secondary emotions p. 166
social smile p. 168
emotional contagion p. 168
social referencing p. 169
trust-versus-mistrust p. 171
stranger anxiety p. 172
attachment theory p. 173
primary attachment figure p. 173
secure base p. 173

CHAPTER 4 OUTLINE
I. Section 1: Physical Development
A. Growth and Change in Infancy
1. Growth Patterns
2. Brain Development
a. Brain Growth
b. Brain Specialization
c. The Plasticity of the Infant Brain
3. Sleep Changes
a. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)
b. Cosleeping: Helpful or Harmful to Babies?
B. Infant Health
1. Nutritional Needs
a. Introduction of Solid Foods
b. Malnutrition in Infancy
2. Infant Mortality
a. Causes and Prevention of Infant Mortality
b. Cultural Beliefs and Practices to Protect Infants
C. Motor and Sensory Development

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 1. Motor Development
a. Gross Motor Development
b. Fine Motor Development
2. Sensory Development
a. Hearing and Vision
b. Depth Perception
c. Intermodal Perception
II. Section 2: Cognitive Development
A. Approaches to Understanding Cognitive Change
1. Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage
2. The Information-Processing Approach
B. Assessing Infant Development
1. Approaches to Assessing Development
2. Can Media Enhance Cognitive Development? The Myth of “Baby Einstein”
C. The Beginnings of Language
1. First Sounds and Words
2. Infant-Directed (ID) Speech
III. Section 3: Emotional and Social Development
A. Temperament
1. Conceptualizing Temperament
2. Goodness-of-Fit
B. Infants’ Emotions
1. Primary Emotions
2. Infants’ Emotional Perceptions
C. The Social World of the Infant
1. Cultural Themes of Infant Social Life
2. The Foundation of Social Development: Two Theories

LECTURE NOTES

I. Section 1: Physical Development

A. Growth and Change in Infancy

1. Growth Patterns
a. Accelerated growth occurs during the first year of life.
b. By 5 months, an infant’s birth weight is expected to double, and by a
year it should triple.

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 c. Babies have fat to help them regulate their body temperature. A
normal baby looks plump, but loses much of the baby fat by a year old.
d. Height increases from about 20 to 30 inches in the first year. Babies
grow about an inch a month, but in spurts, not evenly.
e. There are gender differences in height and weight, with girls tending to
be shorter and weighing less.
f. Babies’ heads tend to be large compared to the rest of their bodies.
Their growth, according to the cephalocaudal principle, begins with
the head and travels down the rest of the body. Likewise, the
proximodistal principle states that growth occurs from the center or
trunk outwards.

2. Brain Development

a. Brain Growth
i. There is tremendous brain growth during infancy. Although an
infant’s brain is only a quarter of the size of an adult’s brain at
birth, it grows to about 70% of the size by 2 years of age.
ii. Infants have billions of brain cells or neurons that are separated
by synapses or tiny gaps. Chemicals called neurotransmitters
flow between neurons from the axon of one neuron to the
dendrite of another neuron to communicate.
iii. Brain growth occurs in three ways. One, it grows by decreasing
the number of neurons by about one-half of what it was at
birth; two, by increasing numbers of dendritic connections
called overproduction or exuberance; and three, by the
process of myelination, whereby axons are sheathed in a fatty
material (myelin sheath) to increase the speed of
communication.
iv. As the neural network develops with use, the strength,
accuracy, and precision of the connections increases. The
unused connections wither away in a process called synaptic
pruning. About one-third of the synapses between childhood
and adolescence are eliminated.

b. Brain Specialization
i. The three major parts of the brain are the hindbrain, the
midbrain, and the forebrain.
ii. The hindbrain and midbrain maintain basic biological functions
like lungs breathing, heart beating, and balanced movements.

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 iii. The forebrain is divided into two main parts, the limbic system
and the cerebral cortex.
a. The limbic system includes several structures, such as the
hypothalamus, which monitors and regulates basic
functions; the thalamus, which relays information from
the body to the brain; and the hippocampus, which is vital
to memory function.
b. The cerebral cortex is the outermost part of the forebrain.
1. It is much larger in human animals than in non-
human animals and is the center of brain growth
during infancy.
2. The cerebral cortex facilitates language, problem
solving, and thinking about concepts, ideas, and
symbols.
3. It is divided into the right and left hemispheres,
which are connected by a band of fibers called the
corpus callosum.
4. Lateralization is the term for the specialization of the
two hemispheres; left for language and sequential
information processing and right for spatial
reasoning and holistic information processing.
5. Each hemisphere has four lobes with distinct
functions. The visual processing system is in the rear
occipital lobes, while auditory processing takes place
in the temporal lobes located near the ears. The
parietal lobes process bodily sensations, and the
frontal lobes deal with more advanced processes.

c. The Plasticity of the Infant Brain

i. As the infant brain matures, it is high in plasticity, meaning
that it is highly responsive to environmental influences and
thus very adaptable, but also vulnerable.
ii. Experience-expectant brain functions are brain functions that
require basic, expectable experiences to develop in a normal
pattern. Whereas experience-dependent brain functions only
develop with particular experiences that may be idiosyncratic
to a particular infant.
i. One benefit of plasticity is that brain damage due to early
deprivation prior to 6 months of age is reversible. However,
plasticity decreases with age. Consequently, as children age,

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 they are less able to overcome poor environmental conditions
that result in cognitive impairment, as seen with Romanian
orphans.

3. Sleep Changes
i. Newborns sleep about 16–17 hours a day, but by 3–4 months
of age, they are mostly sleeping through the night with 40% of
the time spent in REM.
ii. At 6 months, cultural practices influence the amount of sleep
an infant gets from 12 hours a day in Kenya to 14 hours in
America to 16 hours in the Netherlands.

a. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)

i. SIDS occurs when an infant falls asleep and dies with no
known reason.
ii. It is the leading cause of death in developed countries for
infants 1–12 months of age.
iii. In the United States, rates are highest for Native American and
African American infants, especially those who have had poor
prenatal care.
iv. Risk factors include sleeping on stomach, low birth weight and
low APGAR scores, prenatal smoking mother or intake of
secondhand smoke, soft bedding, or being too warm.
v. Theoretically, infants may be most at risk during the 2–4
month age range because this is when they should transition
from reflexive behaviors (like clearing an obstruction to
breathing) to intentional behaviors. If they are not able to
engage in the intentional behavior and have a breathing
problem, they might die.
vi. The BACK to Sleep program successfully, dramatically
reduced the number of deaths due to SIDS in developed
countries.

b. Cosleeping: Helpful or Harmful to Babies?

i. Cosleeping is when an infant sleeps in the same bed as the
parent(s).
ii. Cosleeping is common worldwide, except in Western
countries. The Western practice of isolating infants is frowned
upon by most of the rest of the world.

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 iii. The benefits of cosleeping are thought to include easy breast-
feeding, protection of the infant from illness and injury, and
parent-child bonding.
iv. Cosleeping, in non-Western cultures, usually occurs until the
next child is born, or about 2–4 years.
v. Cosleeping is an example of a custom complex because it is a
distinctive cultural pattern of behavior that is based on
underlying cultural beliefs.
vi. SIDs is almost unknown in cosleeping cultures, and SIDs rates
are high in the United States, especially if the parents are obese
or impaired while cosleeping.

B. Physical Development: Infant Health

1. Nutritional Needs

a. Introduction of Solid Foods

i. Because infants grow at such a rapid rate, they need to eat a lot
of quality, high-fat food with great frequency. This can be
achieved by feeding breast milk and later solid foods.
ii. There is some cultural variation in the timing of the
introduction of solids to the infant diet, but 4–5 months of age
is common, although it is a little later in the West at about 6
months of age.
iii. Even at 4–5 months old, infants resist solids due to a gag
reflex; chewing and swallowing effectively does not develop
until after 6 months.
iv. Commonly, the first solid foods are actually mashed, pureed, or
pre-chewed. In the United States, babies start with thinned rice
cereal or oatmeal cereal, which is an important source of iron
(because it has been fortified). Then they eat pureed vegetables
and fruits, and finally pureed meats.

b. Malnutrition in Infancy
i. Malnutrition can lead to severe and enduring negative
developmental outcomes, including physical and cognitive
deficits.
ii. Because breast milk is readily available to most infants,
malnutrition usually occurs only when a mother is unable or
unwilling to breast-feed due to being ill, malnourished, or
diseased or the use of formula may have limited availability or
belief that it is better, or in the case of the mother’s death,
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 there may be no one else who can breast-feed the baby or
otherwise provide adequate nutrition.
iii. Government programs, such as WIC in the United States, help
provide nutrition for infants.
iv. Marasmus is a disease that affects malnourished infants by
limiting their growth and causing fatigue, and eventually
death. If the child lives, he or she will always have
impairments. But, even using some form of nutritional
supplements can be very helpful in avoiding the consequences
of starvation.

2. Infant Mortality

a. Causes and Prevention of Infant Mortality

i. The risk of death during the life span is greatest during infancy, but
is highest for those in developing countries.
ii. Most often infant mortality in the first month is the result of
neonatal issues, such as severe birth defects, low birth weight, or
maternal death.
iii. In months 2–12, infant deaths in developing countries are most
likely due to diarrhea (number one cause), malnutrition, and
diseases and illnesses like malaria and dysentery.
iv. Diarrhea can be treated easily with oral rehydration therapy
(ORT).
v. Infant deaths have been significantly reduced in the last half
century with the introduction of vaccines, but there is great
variability in the rate of vaccinations by country. Vaccination rates
are highest in developed countries (90%) and lowest in developing
countries located in Africa and South Asia (70%).
vi. The claim that vaccines are harmful to children and should be
avoided has been completely debunked by recent scientific studies.

b. Cultural Beliefs and Practices to Protect Infants

i. In traditional cultures, parents are acutely aware that infants are
vulnerable and must be protected to increase the chances of
survival.
ii. Historically, and even currently, many cultures in developing
countries with limited access to medical care will use magic to
protect their infants.
iii. Cultural practices vary from secluding infants in the early weeks,
cosleeping with them, carrying them all of the time, and making

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 derogatory comments about them to ward off evil spirits who
might want to take them to covering them in many cloths to hide
them from evil spirits.

C. Physical Development: Motor and Sensory Development

1. Motor Development
Gross motor development is the development of motor abilities
including balance and posture, as well as whole body movements that use
large muscle groups, such as crawling. Fine motor development is the
development of motor abilities involving finely tuned movements of the
hands, such as grasping and manipulating objects.

a. Gross Motor Development

i. Skills like holding the head up without support, crawling, and walking
are major gross motor milestones that usually occur in this sequence,
but the timing is variable within a normalized range.
ii. Gross motor development is greatly influenced by genetics, but also
includes environmental influences. The interaction of genetics and the
environment contributes to the variability we see within and between
cultures. It is a combination of genetics, brain maturation, support and
assistance, and individual effort.
iii. Some cultures restrict gross motor movement early in life to protect
the infant, while others encourage it. In the long run, it usually does
not impact the infants’ developmental timeline significantly.

b. Fine Motor Development

i. The basis of fine motor development is our opposable thumb, which
enables us to do things like make tools, pick up small objects, and
thread a needle.
ii. Reaching and grasping are the essential fine motor tasks infants must
master. Prior to 2 months of age, infants will reflexively prereach for
and grasp objects. Later, as these reflexes fade, they learn to be skilled
at reaching and grasping, which becomes smoother and more direct,
and infants deliberately make adjustments by the end of their first year.
iii. As these skills become more advanced, 5-month-old infants can reach
for, pick up, and transfer an object from one hand to the other or, more
commonly, to their mouths.
iv. By the end of the first year, this ability culminates in the “pincer
grasp,” whereby the child is able to pick up a small object between his
or her thumb and forefinger.

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2. Sensory Development
a. Hearing and Vision
i. Hearing is mostly fully developed at birth, but infants’ ability
to distinguish sounds develops over time as their cognitive
abilities improve.
ii. Some researcher think that infants use statistical learning, the
ability to extract statistical regularities in information in the
world, to learn about the world.
iii. Infants’ sight develops quickly over the first year with
experience and visual cortex maturation.
iv. Preference for looking at complex patterns such as human
faces and where they look changes over time.
v. Color vision develops over the first year.
b. Depth Perception
i. Depth perception is the ability to discern the relative distance
of objects in the environment by using binocular vision.
ii. Binocular vision, the ability to combine the images of each eye
into one image, is necessary for depth perception.
iii. This important aspect of vision is essential for babies who are
on the move to help them stay safe.
iv. Gibson and Walk’s famous visual cliff experiment provides
strong evidence of the development of depth perception in
infants.
v. Using a glass-covered table with a checked pattern just below
the surface on one half and about 2 feet below on the other
half, they tested their theory of depth perception.
vi. The infants (6–14 months) who had developed binocular vision
saw the visual “cliff” and refused to crawl across it, even when
encouraged to do so by their mothers.
c. Intermodal Perception
i. Intermodal perception is the ability to integrate and
coordinate incoming sensory information.
ii. One-month-olds can integrate touch and sight.
iii. By 4 months of age, infants can integrate visual and auditory
stimuli.
iv. Six-month-olds can compare numerical information across
modalities.
v. Eight-month-olds begin to coordinate visual and auditory
information.

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 vi. Understanding others’ emotions requires intermodal
perception.

II. Section 2: Cognitive Development

A. Cognitive Development: Approaches to Understanding Cognitive Change

1. Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage

a. The sensorimotor stage occurs during the first 2 years of
cognitive development. Children can successfully move through
this stage when they are able to coordinate their senses with their
motor activities; this would include moving from reflex behavior
to intentional behavior and object permanence.
i. During infancy, the first four of the six substages of the
sensorimotor stage take place.
a) Substage 1: Simple reflexes (0–1 month). The first
substage, simple reflexes, occurs in the first month.
Reflex schemes rely heavily on assimilation rather than
adaptation.
b) Substage 2: First habits and primary circular
reactions (1–4 months). This substage features chance
behavior that can be intentionally repeated when the
infant likes the sensations the behavior produced. The
focus here involves the infant’s own body.
c) Substage 3: Secondary circular reactions (4–8
months). This stage extends the second substage to
include not only a focus on the infant’s own body, but
also on his or her ability to impact his or her environment
by repeating favorable acts that occurred by chance.
d) Substage 4: Coordination of secondary schemes (8–
12 months). This stage is the beginning of intentional,
goal-directed behavior and the coordination of schemes.

b. Object Permanence
Object permanence is the awareness that objects (including people)
continue to exist even when we are not in direct sensory or motor
contact with them.
i. Infants less than 8 months old generally do not have an
awareness of an object’s permanence. However, between 8 and
12 months of age, they begin to develop a rudimentary
awareness of object permanence.

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 ii. Infants’ object permanence was limited to the A not B error,
which occurred when the simple task of hiding an object under
a blanket was complicated by adding a second blanket and
hiding the object under there.
iii. This could explain the universal appeal of the ever popular
peek-a-boo game because infants have a limited understanding
of object permanence, and the other faces seems to disappear
and magically reappear.

2. Evaluating Piaget’s Sensorimotor Theory

a. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, based on his
observations of and experiments with his own children,
continues to be influential in life span development research.
As research techniques have become more advanced, the
theory has been somewhat modified, but the basic principles
remain.
b. Some critics have argued that infants’ cognitive abilities may
have been underestimated. Their inability to locate a missing
object may have been due to a lack of motor coordination
rather than cognitive immaturity.
c. Motor Coordination and Memory in Object Permanence.
1. Baillargeon developed experiments to test her hypotheses
regarding young infants’ development of object
permanence using the “violation of expectations method.”
When the researcher failed to meet the infants’ expectations
for the location of an object, this demonstrated that they
had an awareness of the object.
2. Habituation is the gradual decrease in attention to a
stimulus after repeated exposures.
d. Another criticism of Piaget’s theory was his failure to consider
memory development as a cause of the A-not-B error, based on
more recent research, which employed a delay technique.
e. Culture and Object Permanence
1. Finally, Piaget’s theory was criticized because it was
culturally based on children in Western cultures.
2. A study in a developing culture did show infants going
through the sensorimotor stages, but much earlier than
Piaget found.

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B. Information Processing in Infancy

1. The Information Processing Approach

a. The information processing approach views cognitive change as a
continuous, gradual process that is broken down into components, such as
attention, processing, and memory.

2. Attention
a. For information to be processed to any degree beyond sensory memory, one
must pay attention to that stimulus information.
i. Attention research with infants has focused on habituation
and dishabituation.
a) Dishabituation occurs when the infant’s attention is
recaptured with the introduction to a new stimulus after
repeated presentations of an old stimulus became
boring.
b) The time it takes for habituation to occur decreases
as the age of the infant increases. Although there are
individual differences in the rate of habituation, it tends
to be stable over time. Infants who habituate quickly are
later found to have good memory abilities and higher
intelligence.
c) After 6 months of age, infants’ attention becomes
more social. That is, infants not only pay attention to
sensations that are stimulating to them, but they also
pay attention to the stimuli that seem of interest to
significant others. This is referred to as joint attention,
which is important for learning language and
understanding emotional cues.

3. Memory
a. Infants’ short-term and long-term memory expands greatly during the first
year of life.
b. Researchers have shown that infants’ ability to hold and recall information
from long-term memory is about a week for a 2 month old, but about 3
weeks for a 6 month old. However, recognition memory is triggered by
prompts even with very young infants, even when there was no recall
initially.
c. One explanation for infantile amnesia is that long-term memories require
language and a sense of self, but others have argued that is not the case
because other animals have it.

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 d. Long-term memory is now said to rely on the development of the
hippocampus in the lower brain.

C. Cognitive Development: Assessing Infant Development

1. Approaches to Assessing Development

a. The Bayley Scales

1. The Bayley Scales of Infant Development was based on Gesell’s
approach, which measured infant development of motor skills,
language, adaptive behavior, and personal-social behavior.
2. This resulted in a developmental quotient (DQ) as an overall
measure of infants’ developmental progress. This scale measures
cognitive, language, and motor development.
3. The Bayley scales have become a screening tool to catch serious
developmental delays in children from 3 months to 3½ years of
age.
b. Information-Processing Approaches to Infant Assessment
1. The information processing approach to infant assessment has
primarily focused on habituation.
2. Longitudinal research supports the reliability and validity of this
approach as infants who were quick to habituate, or short lookers,
were later shown to be quick learners who succeeded academically
compared to long lookers who did not habituate quickly.
3. This approach was also found to effectively assess developmental
problems, and the Bayley scales now include a measure of
habituation.

2. Can Media Stimulation Enhance Cognitive Development? The Myth of

“Baby Einstein”
a. Media stimulation or watching educational videos does not enhance
infants’ cognitive development. In fact, it may be detrimental because
they could receive less social interaction.
b. The best caregivers can do to support cognitive development in
infancy is to interact with their infants by talking to them, reading to
them, and responding to them.
c. The results regarding harmful effects of media exposure have been
mixed for television watching, but infants and toddlers can learn to use
mobile devices and apps, but experts are concerned about their use.

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D. The Beginnings of Language

1. First Sounds and Words

a. Cooing, at 2 months, and babbling, at 4–6 months, are the first
sounds an infant makes that will eventually develop into language.
b. Babbling has been shown to be universal, and infants produce the
same sounds initially, but then lose sounds that are not relevant to
the language they are learning. By 9 months of age, infants’
babbling becomes very distinctive to their own culture.
c. Gestures, as a method of communication, generally begin at about
8–10 months of age.
d. An infants’ first words are usually uttered just before 12 months of
age and commonly include “mama, dada, dog, car, milk, and bye-
bye.”
e. Language production is very limited at this age, but language
comprehension is much better.
f. Infants’ ability to discriminate different sounds is apparent within
their first few weeks of life and continues along the same
developmental trajectory as babbling.
g. Bilingual babies do not seem to have any difficulties learning two
languages at once.

2. Infant-Directed (ID) Speech

a. In developmental science, what you may think of as “baby talk” is
referred to as infant-directed (ID) speech. That is when the pitch
of the voice becomes higher, intonation is exaggerated, and
grammar is simplified when speaking to an infant.
b. ID speech is often used because infants like and respond to it due
to the emotional tone of the speech.
c. ID speech also provides clues that help infants learn language.
d. Although ID speech is common in developed countries, there is
more variability in developing countries. In some cultures,
caregivers do not make an effort to speak directly to infants. These
infants learn language by listening to the words and phrases spoken
in their presence by others.
e. After a few years, there are no differences in language fluency
between infants who heard ID speech and those who did not.
f. Gender differences in speech are present, that is, mothers talk to
daughters more often and with more supportive speech.

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III. Section 3: Emotional and Social Development

A. Emotional and Social Development: Temperament

Temperament, the biological basis of personality, is defined as individual
differences in activity level, irritability, soothability, emotional reactivity, and
sociability. These tendencies are shaped by the infants’ behavior, personality
development, and the environment.

1. Conceptualizing Temperament
a. Thomas and Chess conceptualized temperament by classifying
infants as easy, difficult, and slow-to-warm up based on parental
reports. Their longitudinal study supported their initial approach,
but excluded 35% of the infants who did not fall into one of these
classifications.
b. Subsequent researchers chose temperamental traits, rather than
narrowly defined categories to describe temperament.
c. Rothbart and colleagues added aspects of emotionality, such as the
ability to manage positive and negative emotions.
d. Buss and Plomin added sociability—which refers to positive or
negative responses to social interactions—to their model, which
also included activity level and emotionality.
e. The latter models have moderate predictive validity.

2. Goodness-of-Fit
a. Thomas and Chess proposed the concept of goodness-of-fit, which
they explained as children who develop best do so if there is a
good fit between the temperament of the child and environmental
demands.
b. When there is a good fit, it can mean that children who are difficult
or slow to warm up have better emotion regulation when they have
understanding caregivers. Conversely, a “bad” fit can have
negative outcomes for the child and the caregivers.
c. Goodness of fit varies from culture to culture, given that different
cultures have different views of the value of personality traits, such
as activity level and emotional expressiveness.

B. Emotional and Social Development: Infants’ Emotions

1. Primary Emotions
a. Primary emotions are basic emotions such as anger, sadness, fear,
disgust, surprise, and happiness, which are evident within the first year
of life. However, secondary emotions or sociomoral emotions, such

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 as embarrassment, shame, and guilt, are learned emotions dictated by
their social environment.
i. Distress, interest, and pleasure are the first emotions to
emerge in infancy.
ii. Anger is more likely to be evident once an infant has
developed intentional behaviors and his or her goal
directed behavior is blocked.
iii. Sadness is somewhat uncommon in infants, but may
express distress in response to a depressed mother’s
sadness.
iv. At about 6 months of age, both fear and surprise are
noted.
v. One fear that infants show is stranger anxiety in
response to unfamiliar adults.
vi. Surprise is generally produced when an event violates
an infant’s schemes.
vii. Evidence of happiness is seen after birth in response to
certain kinds of sensory stimuli. But at 2–3 months of
age, social smiles appear. A social smile occurs in
response to a pleasant interaction with others. Laughter
follows within the next month.

2. Infants’ Emotional Perceptions

a. Infants are aware of others’ emotions from the first days of life and
become increasingly adept during the first year at perceiving and
responding to others’ emotions.
b. Emotional contagion, crying when an infant hears another infant
crying, provides evidence of infants’ emotional perception when
they are just days old.
c. In the beginning, infants perceive emotions based on what they
hear and later on what they see.
d. Infants’ emotional perception has been researched using the
habituation method, the still-face paradigm, and a method that
employs visual and auditory stimuli that is inconsistent.
e. In the still-face paradigm, parents are asked to show no emotion to
their infant, and the infant becomes disturbed by this behavior by
2–3 months of age.
f. By 9–10 months of age, infants use an emotion perception
technique called social referencing. That is, they observe the
emotional responses of others when presented with stimuli that

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 may be ambiguous and uncertain and use that information to shape
their own emotional responses.

C. Emotional and Social Development: The Social World of the Infant

1. Cultural Themes of Infant Social Life

a. Culture is very important to every aspect of infant
development.
b. Some common themes of infant social life across cultures have
emerged over time.
i. Infants are with the mother almost constantly in the
early months.
ii. About halfway through the first year, infant care is
delegated to an older girl, usually a sister, but other
relatives may help as well.
iii. Infants are part of a social circle comprised mainly
of a variety of family members throughout the day.
iv. Infants are held or carried most of the time.
v. Fathers are usually remote or absent during the first
year of the infants’ life.
c. Infants’ social life in Western, developed countries departs
from this pattern in many ways. For example, infants are
usually exposed to only their nuclear family on a consistent
basis, they sleep alone, they are not carried for most of the day,
and paternal involvement is higher.
d. Despite cultural differences, social development seems to hinge
on infants having a strong, reliable bond with at least one
primary caregiver with whom they interact.

2. The Foundation of Social Development: Two Theories

a. Erikson’s psychosocial theory of development and Bowlby’s
theory of attachment are very influential.
b. Erikson’s Theory: Trust vs. Mistrust notes a central crisis in which
the infant needs to establish a stable attachment to a loving and
nurturing caregiver, most often the mother, but it could be another
caregiver.
c. If the caregiver meets these needs, then basic trust of others
develops; if not, then mistrust develops. Basic trust or mistrust can
last well beyond infancy.
d. Bowlby’s attachment theory developed after he noticed
inconsistencies in attachment research findings.

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 e. First, Spitz found that infants raised in an orphanage developed
anaclitic depression and failed to thrive, even with adequate
physical care. Second, Harlow found that caged monkeys preferred
a cloth mother, except when feeding. Third, Lorenz found that
goslings imprinted on the first moving object they saw. This was
not a bond based on nourishment, but for protection.
f. Bowlby developed his theory of attachment, which is based on an
emotional bond that promotes protection from the primary
attachment figure and the survival of the infant. Separation can
create developmental problems.
g. Children who trust their primary attachment figure will use
her/him as a secure base, allowing the child to explore the world
while seeking comfort when threats arise.
h. Bowlby theorized that a goal corrected partnership develops over
the first two years.
i. Comparing the Two Theories. According to Erikson and
Bowlby, the major crisis or issue in infancy is the development of
trust based on interactions with a reliable, sensitive, and responsive
primary caregiver.
j. Both theories stressed the importance of the initial social
relationships on later stages of social development.
k. The development of trust facilitates healthy social development,
but mistrust can be problematic long term.
l. The theories do differ in their origins, and Bowlby’s theory was a
springboard for empirically based evaluations of infants and their
caregivers.

LECTURE LAUNCHERS, DISCUSSIONS, AND ACTIVITIES

Section 1 Lecture Launcher: Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)

The leading killer of infants is sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), “accounting for about 16%
of the 38,000 babies born in the United States who die before their first birthday. . . .Ninety
percent of SIDS deaths occur before 6 months of age, mostly between 2 and 4 months; rarely do
such deaths occur beyond 12 months of age” (McKenna, 1992). Interestingly, SIDS is not known
to occur in any other species besides humans, and there is presently no known medical
explanation for this heartbreaking event. Some data are available. For example:
- SIDS occurs most frequently in the winter
- in the United States, rates are highest among Native Americans and poor African
Americans

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 - risk factors include teenage mothers, smoking during pregnancy, and premature birth
- possible causes include lack of breast-feeding, upper respiratory infections, respiratory
system collapse during sleep (McKenna, 1992)
- exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke is a much bigger risk factor for SIDS than was
previously suspected (Arizona Republic)

An interesting phenomenon has occurred in the last few years. Pediatricians routinely advised
parents to lay their babies face down when they put them to sleep to prevent the infants from
choking in case they spit up. Recently, doctors have been asking parents to lay their babies on
their backs, with the result that SIDS deaths have dramatically decreased. British researchers
have found that putting a baby on its side to sleep reduces the risk of SIDS, but not as much as
putting the baby on its back. McKenna suggests that modern sleeping patterns may contribute to
SIDS. By placing an infant in another room to sleep, we force the baby to “sleep too much—too
long and too hard” and deprive the baby of “sensory intrusions” that wake the infant up at crucial
times in sleep stages.

Furthermore, “For every hour spent each day in a room where people smoke, the risk [of SIDS]
increases 100%,” says Dr. Peter Fleming of the University of Bristol. Other risk factors:
- lack of prenatal care
- low birth weight
- drug and alcohol abuse
- wrapping infants heavily or having loose bed clothes that can entangle the infant

Sources:
Arizona Republic (July 26, 1996). Tobacco smoke, infant death link confirmed. A9.

McKenna, J. J. (Winter, 1992). SIDS research. Mothering. pp. 45–51.

Section 1 Lecture Launcher: Infant Brain Growth

When the human pelvis evolved thicker to adapt to walking in an upright position, the brain was
also evolving and getting larger. Consequently, in order to pass through the birth canal, human
infants must be born early in their brain development. Although they are born with all the
neurons (brain cells) they will ever have—over 100 billion cells—their brain is only about 25%
of its adult weight. By 24 months, the brain is about 75 percent of adult weight, which explains
why babies and toddlers are so top heavy! All of this brain growth is not new cells; in fact, many
neurons die off as the brain specializes for language, motor skills, etc. What grow are the axons
and dendrites that connect neurons and the myelin that coats the axons and speeds brain
processing. Thus, the major portion of brain growth occurs outside the womb. (By comparison,
baby chimps are born with 50% of their adult brain weight.)

At birth, the lower brain (brain stem, cerebellum, limbic system) is better developed than those
parts of the brain allocated to thinking and reasoning (cerebrum). The lower brain helps the
infant breathe, eat, and sleep and controls all vital organs. The development of the “thinking”
brain requires more dendrite connections and myelin sheathing. This development requires a
tremendous amount of sleep and nutrients. Is it any wonder infants sleep so much and eat so
frequently? Moreover, dendrite growth is stimulated as the infant is exposed to a rich

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environment of sights and sounds and is allowed to move around. We know from studies that
severe malnutrition can cause inadequate brain growth and mental retardation. Studies with rats
show that those that grow up in a rich environment with lots of visual stimulation and movement
have heavier brains than rats that grow up in cages devoid of such a rich environment.

The newest research is showing how the tens of billions of nerve cells have to climb ropelike
fibers (on the glia cells) to rise to the surface and form the cerebral cortex.

Sources:
Drescher, H. (August, 1998). Climbing through the brain. Discover.

Ornstein, R., Thompson, R. F., & Macaulay, D. (1984). The amazing brain. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin.

Section 2 Activity: Learning Piaget’s Terms: Assimilation and Accommodation

Students have a difficult time understanding Piaget’s terms assimilation and accommodation. To
help them gain an understanding of these terms, divide your class into groups and have them
think of examples of assimilation and accommodation in an infant’s development. Then, have
the groups make a list of examples of these concepts at work in their own adult lives. Use
Handout 4-1 for this exercise. Have representatives from each group present their examples to
the whole class. You can list their examples on the board or on an overhead.

Section 1 and 2 Activity: What Do Infants Like?

Review the Mayo Clinic research and advice entitled “Infant development: What happens from
birth to 3 months?” at http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/infant-development/PR00061.
Considering the information on the website and in your textbook, roughly develop (either a brief
descriptive paragraph or drawing with notations) a newborn’s toy, blanket, mobile, baby room,
or crib decorations. Use the known research about newborns to justify and strengthen your
choice of applicable color, tone, texture, or recommended distance or placement.

Sections 1–3 Activity: Visit to a Toy Store

Using Handout 4-2, have students determine how toys for infants enhance sensory development.
If students have children or young brothers or sisters at home, they can bring in toys that develop
the senses.

Section 3 Lecture Launcher: Should You Let a Baby Cry?

Many developmentalists believe that the discomfort caused by listening to a baby cry is an
adaptive response that assures the helpless baby will get attention from an adult. However, even
the experts disagree on how quickly parents or caregivers should respond to a crying baby. A
recent visit to the website www.parentsoup.com produced the following question from a frantic
new parent: Which is better for my baby, Ferberization or the attachment theory? These are
modern incarnations of an old dilemma. Ferberization is based on the views of Dr. Richard
Ferber in his book Solving Your Child’s Sleep Problems and advocates letting babies cry
themselves to sleep. Attachment theory argues that babies cry for adaptive reasons and that
letting them cry stunts their social and emotional development.

Ferberization: Modern-Day Behaviorism

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The first psychologist to advise new parents on whether to allow babies to cry or not was John B.
Watson. Watson argued that when parents respond each time their baby cries, they are rewarding
the crying and increasing its happening. In other words, they are spoiling their children. To avoid
this, Watson advises, treat them

…as though they were young adults….Let your behavior always be objective and kindly
firm. Never hug or kiss them, never let them sit on your lap….Shake hands with them in
the morning….In a week’s time, you will find how easy it is to be perfectly
objective…[yet] kindly. You will be utterly ashamed at the mawkish, sentimental way
you have been handling [your child] (1928, 81–82).

Interestingly, a few years later his wife, Rosalie Rayner Watson, wrote the following in Children
magazine (the precursor to today’s Parents):

One grave reason why I am a very bad mother, behaviorally speaking, is because I am
still somewhat on the side of the children. I am afraid the scientists tackled me too late in
life to wholly recondition me. I cannot restrain my affection for the children completely.
The respect in which I am the very worst behaviorist is because I too want to break all
rules once in awhile (cited in Parents, August 1996, p. 50).

By the 1940s, Dr. Spock (in his classic Baby and Child Care) was dispensing very similar
advice: when babies are fussy and won’t sleep, let them cry it out until they fall asleep. Fifty
years later, Dr. Richard Ferber, head of the Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders at Children’s
Hospital in Boston, wrote a best-selling book called Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems. After
studying babies’ sleep habits for years, Ferber says that most healthy babies are sleeping through
the night by age 3 months. Babies need to learn that if they cry at night, parents will not (a) take
them out of the crib, (b) feed them, or (c) play with them. Also, says Ferber, if a baby learns to
fall asleep only while being held, rocked, or fed, she’ll insist on those conditions being met night
after night. While it’s normal for babies to wake during the night, Ferber continues, it is knowing
how to go back to sleep that is the problem. Instead, advises Ferber, teach her to sleep on her
own. Give the baby a pat (not a cuddle) and leave the room. If the crying continues, parents
should return and calmly reassure the child. Ferber suggests increasing the intervals between
returning to the child’s room by 5 minutes at first, then 10, then 15. Within a week, claims
Ferber, the child will be trained to fall asleep on her own.

Many developmentalists disagree with the behaviorist view. John Bowlby (1989) argued that
babies’ cries are preprogrammed distress signals that bring caregivers to the baby. The
caregivers, too, are programmed to respond to babies’ cries. The adaptive significance of crying
ensures that

 the infant’s basic needs will be met;

 a sense of trust in others will develop; and
 the infant will have sufficient contact with other human beings to form social and
emotional attachments.

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Mary Ainsworth believes that you cannot respond too much to an infant’s crying in the first year.
She found that mothers who responded quickly to their infants when they cried at age 3 months
had infants who cried less later (Bell & Ainsworth, 1972). Other researchers have found that
quick, soothing responses to infant’s crying increased subsequent crying (Gewirtz, 1977).
Your students might find this an interesting topic for discussion. Students may even enjoy
surveying parents they know about their views on responding to babies’ crying.

Sources:
Bell, S. M. & Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1972). Infant crying and maternal responsiveness.
Child Development, 43, 1171–1190.

Bowlby, J. (1989). Secure and insecure attachment. New York: Basic Books.

Ferber, R. (1989). Solve your child’s sleep problems. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Gewirtz, J. (1977). Maternal responding and the conditioning of infant crying: Directions
of influence within the attachment-acquisition process. In B. C. Etzel, J. M.
LeBlanc, & D. M. Baer (Eds.), New developments in behavioral research.
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Gordon, D. (Spring/Summer, 1997). Preventing a hard day’s night. Newsweek Special

Issue, 56–57.

Is it wrong to show affection to children? (August, 1996) Parents, 50.

Spock, B. (1957). Baby and child care. New York: Pocket Books.

Watson, J. B. (1928). Psychological care of infant and child. New York: W. W. Norton.

Section 3 Activity: Infant Day Care

The National Institute on Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) released the
following data on infant day care:
 Children (ages 15 months to 36 months) in high-quality day care—care that provides a
stimulating environment—do as well on cognitive and language tests as children who
stay home with their mothers, regardless of how many hours a day they spend in such
care.
 Mothers are slightly more affectionate and attentive to their children the higher quality
the day care setting.
 Mothers are slightly more affectionate and attentive to their children the less time their
children spend in day care (Azar, 1997).

Have your classroom groups list as many advantages and disadvantages of putting infants in day
care centers. Choose one representative from each group to argue the “PRO” side, and one
representative to argue the “CON” side. You may want to give your class several days to prepare
their arguments. Below are several resources to help them.

Sources:

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 Azar, B. (June 1997). It may cause anxiety, but day care can benefit kids. APA Monitor,
28(6), 13.
Baydar, N., Brooks-Gunn, J., Vandell, D. L. & Ramanan, J. (1995). Does a mother’s job
have a negative effect on children? In R. L. DelCampo & D. S. DelCampo (Eds.),
Taking sides: Clashing views on controversial issues in childhood and society.
Guilford, CT: Dushkin.
Clark-Stewart, K. A. (1989). Infant day care: Maligned or malignant? American
Psychologist, 44(2), 266–273.
Thompson, R. A. (in press). Infant day care: Concerns, controversies, choices. In J. V.
Lerner & N. Galambos (Eds.), The employment of mothers during the
childrearing years. New York: Garland.
Wallis, C. (June 22, 1987). Is day care bad for babies? Time, 63.

CRITICAL THINKING ABOUT CHILD DEVELOPMENT

Critical Thinking: Confirmation Bias

Understanding the Concept

In the section on infancy, Arnett tells us about a time when people thought that teething caused
illness and death in infants. He reminds us that this is an example of mistaking correlation for
causation. It is also a good example of our tendency toward confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias helps explain why erroneous beliefs, bad ideas, and ineffective or dangerous
behaviors stick around so long. It has also been proposed by experts in critical thinking that
confirmation bias may be the leading cause of conflict between people and nations. To confirm
something is to support its correctness with evidence. Confirmation bias refers to our strong
tendency to look for, see, remember, or accept mostly information that supports what we already
think.

Confirmation bias slows down progress, too. In medicine, many practices that were ineffective or
even harmful continued for centuries because of confirmation bias. Unless a treatment was
lethal, some individuals receiving it would survive and improve. Which cases do you think
people noticed?

There are many theories about why we are so prone to confirmation bias and why it is so strong
and so pervasive. If you would like to explore these, a good starting point is Raymond S.
Nickerson’s article “Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises.” You can
read the full text at http://psy2.ucsd.edu/~mckenzie/nickersonConfirmationBias.pdf or in the
Review of General Psychology, 1998, V. 2, No. 2, 175–220.

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Critical Thinking Challenge, Use the Concept

1. In Medieval Europe when people believed teething was a cause of illness and death in
infancy, they developed all sorts of remedies from protective amulets to bleeding their
infant’s gums with leeches. How did confirmation bias encourage the continued use of
these (ineffective) behaviors?

Mastery Exercise, Capstone

1. Joseph, age 9 months is very ill. He has strange green bumps and triangular orange
patches on his skin. Both are symptoms of Merp Disease and Pago Disease. We are
trying to decide which one he has. Our decision will mean life or death for Joseph.

We know the percentage of infants with Merp Disease who have green bumps. Which of
the following pieces of information will be of most help to us in making the correct
diagnosis?
a. The percentage of infants with Merp Disease who have triangular orange patches.
b. The percentage of infants with Pago Disease who have green bumps.

2. Explain your choice of a or b. Might your reasoning have been influenced by

confirmation bias? If so, in what way did confirmation bias play a role?

Bringing It Home
Examine a belief you have held for a long time about infants or infant care. Examples: Do you
believe frequent responding to infant’s cries does or does not make them dependent, weak, or
fussy? Do you believe infants have or have not been affected directly by what they heard while
in the womb?

In doing the following exercise, do not look up any information, rely only on your memory of
experiences, examples, and information that come easily to mind.

1. Write a defense of your belief using information that comes to mind that supports it.
2. Write an attack of your belief using information that comes to mind to contradict it.
3. Did examples that contradict your belief come easily to mind?
4. Had you ever looked for examples or information that contradicted your belief?
5. Now that you have been directed to think about your belief, can you remember having
been exposed to information that did not support your belief? How did you handle that
information? Did you ignore, forget, or undermine it in some way?

Instructor’s Guide to Critical Thinking about Child Development

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Although effective stimuli for class, small group, or online discussion, these exercises are best
completed as individual assignments first.

Understanding the Concept

Additional resources include:
 http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/23/confirmation-bias/
 http://www.skepdic.com/confirmbias.html

Critical Thinking Challenge, Use the Concept

A correct answer will indicate that confirmation bias caused people to notice the instances in
which treated infants did not become ill or survived an illness, thus confirming the belief in
amulets or the use of leeches.

Mastery Exercise, Capstone

This version of a classic exercise in Bayesian decision situations is based on the theory that part
of the explanation for confirmation bias is that it is inherently difficult for humans to think about
two hypotheses at once. Therefore, whichever hypothesis we start with, we tend to seek
information only about it. This contributes to our failure to seek or note any information about a
second hypothesis.

The correct answer is b. “The percentage of infants with Pago Disease who have green bumps.”
Most students will choose a. “The percentage of infants with Merp Disease who have triangular
orange patches,” continuing to examine the first hypothesis suggested (Merp Disease), although
this information contributes nothing further to the diagnosis.

Since this is a more subtle form of confirmation bias, students may need assistance to think it
through.

Bringing It Home
This exercise is usually self-explanatory. One difficulty that may arise is that students choose
something they just learned in the textbook, rather than a belief they have previously held.

SUPPLEMENTAL READINGS
Axia, G., & Bonichini, S. (2005). Are babies sensitive to the context of acute pain
episodes? Infant distress and maternal soothing during immunization routines at 3 and 5
months of age. Infant & Child Development,14, 51–62.

Baillargeon, R. (October, 1994). How do infants learn about the physical world? Current
Directions in Psychological Science. pp. 133–140.

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Berko-Gleason, J. (Ed.) (1993). The development of language. New York: Macmillan.
Bower, T. G. R. (1989). The rational infant: Learning in infancy. New York: W. H.
Freeman and Company.
Brazelton, T. B., Nugent, J. K., & Lester, B. M. (1987). Neonatal Behavioral Assessment
Scale. In J. D. Osofsky (Ed.), Handbook of infant development (2nd ed.). New
York: Wiley.

Chick, K. A., Heilman-Houser, R. A., & Hunter, M. W. (2002). The impact of child care
on gender development and gender stereotypes. Early Childhood Education
Journal, 29, 149–154.

Eisenberg, A., Murkoff, H. E. & Hathaway, S. E. (1989). What to expect in the first year.
New York: Workman.

Flavell, J. H. (1985). Cognitive development (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall.
Fogel, A. (2001). Infancy: Infant, family and society, 4th Edition. Wadsworth Books.

Hock, R. R. (1999). Out of sight, but not out of mind. In Forty studies that changed
psychology: Explorations into the history of psychological research. (3rd ed.).
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

A subsection of Chapter 5, “Human Development” in Hock’s excellent book, this

resource is a good distillation of Piaget’s research and writing on object permanence. It
includes actual citations of his observations of his children Laurent, Lucienne, and
Jacqueline during their sensorimotor stage. Hock also discusses some of the criticisms of
Piaget’s work.

Jacobs, S. H. (1992). Your baby’s mind. Holbrook, MA: Bob Adams.

A book that features learning games based on Piaget's six substages of sociomotor
development.
Kolb, B. (1989). Brain development, plasticity, and behavior. American Psychologist,
44(9). 1203–1212.

La Leche League (1991). The womanly art of breast-feeding (5th ed.). New York: Plume.

Roberts, P. (May/June, 1996). Fathers' time. Psychology Today, 49–55, 81.

Shell, E. R. (August, 1988). Babes in day care. The Atlantic Monthly.

Stern, D. (1985). The interpersonal world of the infant. New York: Basic Books.
This is perhaps the best book on the emotional and interpersonal world of the very young.

Tronick, E. Z. (1989). Emotions and emotional communication in infants. American

Psychologist, 44(2), 112–119.

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MULTIMEDIA IDEAS
A Baby’s World: A Whole New World (Ages Newborn to 1 Year) (Discovery Communications,
1994, 60 minutes)
At birth, a baby is separated from its mother for the first time, breathing with his own
lungs and beginning his journey to become an independent human being. Relive that
journey from an infant’s point of view, and learn how babies motivate others to care for
them and gradually make sense of the world. Then witness the courage and tenacity, as
well as the comedy, of babies battling to gain control of their bodies and conquer
movement—to sit, crawl, stand, and finally to defy gravity and get up on two legs.
(Quoted from the back of the video box.)

Developmental Phases Before and After Birth (Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 28
minutes)
This program examines the development of the fetus in utero and the child during the
first year.

The First Year of Life (Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 28 minutes)
Examines newborn sensory and cognitive abilities and how they contribute to its interactions
with its environment and the development of individuality during the first year.
The Growing Infant (Insight Media, 1988, 30 minutes)
This video shows how infants develop physically. Includes a discussion of cephalocaudal
and proximodistal development.

Infancy: Landmarks of Development (Magna Systems, 1991)

Major landmarks in locomotion and fine motor skills are shown. Shows age norms and
the principles that affect physical growth and development.

Infancy and Early Childhood (Annenberg/CPB, 1990, 30 minutes)

Beginning with the first years of life, this video explores the early influences of the
biological and social clocks, how children develop, and how they gain confidence and
curiosity.

The Infant Mind (Insight Media, 1992, 30 minutes)

Introduces Piaget’s theory about cognitive development in infants.

Mothers, Fathers, and Babies (Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 26 minutes)
This video observes the role of breast-feeding in different cultures and its effect on the
role of the father.

Nature’s Way (ABC News/Prentice Hall Video Library, 1995, 12:20 minutes)
This segment of 20/20 discusses the pros and cons of breast-feeding. Some mothers who
could not breast-feed are interviewed.

Newborn (Filmmakers Library, 28 minutes)

Dr. T. Berry Brazelton discusses the newborn infant.

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The Newborn (Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 23 minutes)
This video shows the reactions of the newborn 10 days after birth. The most important
functions such as sitting, standing, walking, and grasping can already be recognized in
their incipient form. The first tests give the examining physician indications of possible
damage to and developmental disorders of the newborn.

Touchpoints Vol 1. (Pipher Films; Cat. #7013, 45 minutes)

This video follows several parents through their pregnancy, labor, and delivery. The
video contains a brief segment showing Dr. Brazelton assessing the neurological
responses of newborns.

TEXTBOOK FEATURES

Video Guide
a. Infancy (7:59; p. 127)
b. Cosleeping (2:11; p. 136)
c. Milestones of Gross Motor Development in Infancy (1:05; p. 142)
d. Cultural Focus: Infant Fine Motor Development across Cultures (3:26; p. 144)
e. Cultural Focus: Object Permanence across Cultures (4:02; p. 151)
f. Language Development (3:19; p. 158)
g. Infant-Directed Speech (2:37; p. 160)
h. Research Focus: Measuring Temperament (3:58; p. 165)
i. Cultural Focus: Stranger Anxiety across Cultures (6:19; p. 172)
j. Career Focus: Pediatric Nurse Practitioner (4:52; p. 175)

Cultural Focus Review Questions and Answers

Can you think of any related skills that the pincer grasp might be a precursor for? What
about skills related to grasping? In what ways would these primitive skills be important
across cultures? (p. 144)

A possible answer to the first part of this question would be that it might lead to self-feeding.
Grasping might be related to future skills that would involve reaching out to be able to play with
a toy that is nearby or reaching out to gain attention as a form of communication. These skills
may be so important cross-culturally because they are important to survival (self-feeding leads to
growth and independence) and communication.

According to this video, object permanence is universal across cultures. Why would this be
such an important concept for children to acquire? (p. 151)

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It is important to know that things still exist even when we cannot see them. Once children can
grasp this concept they will realize that a parent does not vanish when they are out of sight and
that they will return.

Research Focus Review Questions and Answers

Review Questions (p. 165):

1. Although parents’ reports are often used to evaluate infant temperament, a drawback of using
parents’ reports is that:

a. Mothers’ and fathers’ reports are often inconsistent

b. Parents tend to exaggerate the differences between their children
c. Depressed mothers tend to rate their infants’ temperaments more negatively
*d. All of the above

2. The most simple and effective biological measure of temperament is

a. Blood pressure
*b. Heart rate
c. Brain-wave intensity
d. Hormonal stability

Critical Thinking: Questions and Answers

What might cosleeping indicate about expectations for marital relations in a culture that
practices it? (p. 137)

In cultures where cosleeping with infants is the norm, the relationship between the mother and
child or parents and child tends to be the primary relationship, while the marital bond is
secondary. In cultures where the marital bond is seen as primary, cosleeping is not as prevalent.
Marital relations (i.e., sex) are probably secondary to the infant’s needs in a context of
cosleeping.

Of the five features of the infant’s social world described here, how many are similar to
and how many are different from the culture you are from? What do you think explains
the differences? (p. 170)

Students may find variance from these five features, particularly in developed countries.
1. Infants are with their mothers almost constantly for the early months of life.
In urban environments, where mothers work outside the home, they may not be able to stay with
infants constantly.

2. After about 6 months, most daily infant care is done by older girls rather than the mother.

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Sibling care is a practice that varies widely by culture. In the United States, sibling care is not a
dominant form of child care. Most American parents do not expect their 6-year-olds to be able to
look after their toddler siblings. However, in many cultures around the world, children are quite
capable of taking care of siblings by the time they are six years old.

3. Infants are among many other people in the course of a day.

In small-scale, agrarian societies, infants will be among many people throughout the day.
However, in large-scale, urban societies, infants are more likely to be around their nuclear
families.

4. Infants are held or carried almost constantly.

Infants in urban environments may not be carried as much as infants in rural settings. It depends
also on the mother’s work. If the mother can work with the infant on her back, then that may be a
desirable arrangement. However, many mothers in the industrialized world find that they are
unable to do this.

5. Fathers are usually remote or absent during the first year.

Again, this varies according to the kind of society one lives in. Societies where fathers are
primary caretakers are extremely rare. It is more often the case that mothers are primary
caretakers. Note that this does not usually mean that fathers are absent. The degree of father
involvement depends on the society where the infant is born.

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HANDOUTS

Handout 4-1: Assimilation and Accommodation

Assimilation and Accommodation

Define the concept of assimilation.

Define the concept of accommodation.

List several ways an infant (birth–2 years) displays the use of assimilation.

List several ways an infant displays the use of accommodation.

List several ways adults display the use of assimilation.

List several ways adults display the use of accommodation.

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Handout 4-2: Infant Toy Survey

Infant Toy Survey

Examine several toys marketed for infants (see package for age ranges). Determine how this toy
is designed for infant safety and to stimulate infant development, especially sensory
development. Try to find one good toy and one poor toy.

Toy #1

Description:

Recommended age range:

Toy rating (1= poor, 2= fair, 3= average, 4= good, 5= excellent). Explain why.

durability

safety

attractiveness

source of stimulation

Toy #2

Description:

Recommended age range:

Toy rating (1= poor, 2= fair, 3= average, 4= good, 5= excellent). Explain why.

durability

safety

attractiveness

source of stimulation

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