PSYCO 223 - Lifespan

Developmental Psychology

Chapter 3- infancy
Anahita Shokrkon
Physical Development in Infancy (starts from birth and
continues through the first 2 years of life)
•Infants grow rapidly in the first 2 years
–Birthweight (3 to 10 kg)
–Length (from 48 to 80 cm)
–Not all parts grow at same rate (e.g. head and trunk grow faster than
the legs)

•Gender and ethnic differences

–Girls slightly shorter than boys and weigh slightly less than boys
–Asian infants smaller than North American Caucasian infants
–African American infants bigger than North American Caucasian infants
 Height and Weight Growth

Although the greatest increase in height and weight occurs during the first year of life, children continue to grow (fairly
steadily) throughout infancy and toddlerhood.
● Source: Based on Cratty, B. (1979). Perceptual and motor development in infants and children (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
The Major Principles Governing Growth
4 major principles regarding growth

cephalocaudal head to tail

proximodistal from midline outward

hierarchical simple skills typically

develop separately but then
these simple skills are
incorporated into more
complex ones

independence different body system grows

at different rates
Brain
- during infancy, brain undergoes some of the most dramatic changes
- born with most of the brain cells that we will ever have – around 85 billion neurons that
serve to store and transmit information
- the development of central nervous system and the brain: fundamental to all aspects of
our behavioral development
- the basic units of the brain: the neurons that are specialized for sending and receiving
electrical messages
- all neurons comprise 3 main components: a cell body. dendrites and axons
- Neurons: with the help of dendrites and axons– make connections with other neurons
- these connections: called: synapses
- Synaptogenesis (= the formation of connections between neurons) continues from
prenatal period. forming thousands of new connections during infancy and toddlerhood
The Nervous System and Brain:
The Foundations of Development
Synaptic Blooming: this period of rapid neural growth

followed by a period of synaptic pruning (a phrase in the development of the nervous system):
- the infants are born with many more neurons that they need
- billions of new synapses form during the first two years of life
- the brain eliminates extra synapses
- and this process is called synaptic pruning
- during the peak of this period, as many as 100.000 synapses may be eliminated per second
- pruning allows the brain to build more elaborate communication networks with other neurons
 The Neuron

The basic element of the nervous

system, the neuron, comprises a
number of components

Neuron Structure and Function

● Synaptic Blooming
• Synaptic Pruning
• Brain is sensitive to injury

•Environmental Influences on Brain Development

–Plasticity (the greatest during the 1st year of life): the capacity of the brain
to be affected by experience. and brain plasticity is relatively great
–Sensitive period (children are more susceptible to environmental influences
or stimulation
–Brain development
Sleep
–Newborns sleep 16 to 17 hours daily
- infant is 15 avg by one month and 14 by 6 months
- 2 years: 10 hours
- by average. 50% of the sleep time of newborn in the REM
(rapid eye movement phase)
- decreased to 25-30% in childhood
–Sleep stages are fitful and “out of sync” during early infancy
–Most do not sleep through the night for several months (newborns
sleep in short periods of time that could last from a few minutes to
a few hours)
3 commonly reported types of sudden
unexpected infant deaths
1) SIDS sudden infant death syndrome
- the death of a healthy infant happens suddenly and unexpected
- medical and forensic investigation findings are inconclusive
2) unknown cause
- the sudden death of an infant less than one year of age that cannot be explained because a full
investigation was not conducted and the cause of death could not be determined
3) accidental suffocation in bed
- suffocation by soft bedding, another person rolling on top of or against the infant while sleeping.
infant being trapped between two objects such as a mattress and a wall
•SIDS: The Unanticipated Killer

–Unexplained death of a seemingly healthy baby

–Affects about 2,500 infants in the United States every year
–No cause has been found
–“Back-to-sleep” guidelines have decreased incidence of SIDS
–Leading cause of death in the first year of life
Motor Development
Reflexes: Our Inborn Physical Skills
•The Basic Reflexes
–Reflexes are unlearned, organized, involuntary responses,
involuntary movements in response to stimulation
▪Swimming reflex
-sucking reflex. rooting reflex (important for feeding)
-grasping and stepping reflexes (eventually replaced by more voluntary
behaviors)
▪Eye-blink reflex, swallowing, sneezing, gagging and withdrawal
–Some reflexes stay throughout life, others disappear
Process of Motor Development

- happens in an orderly sequence as infants move

from reflexive reactions (sucking and rooting) to
more advanced motor functioning
Landmarks of Physical Achievement
Motor skills: our ability to move our bodies and manipulate objects

•Gross Motor Skills (begin to develop first)

- large muscle groups that control our head, torso,
arms, and legs and involve large movements
such as running and jumping
–moving to bring the chin up when lying on the stomach.
moving the chest up and rocking back and forth on hands and
knees. exploring an object with feet (8 weeks) By 6 months,
infants can move by themselves
–Crawling between 8 and 10 months
–Support themselves on furniture and walking by 9 months
–Walk alone by 1 year
–Most sit unsupported by 6 months
Fine Motor Skills:
○ muscles in our fingers. toes and eyes and enable coordination
of small actions such as grasping a toy and using a spoon

○ By 3 months, infants coordinate movements of limbs

○ 4 months able to reach for an object first with both arms and in
a few weeks only one arm

○ Grasp objects by 11 months

○ By age 2, drink from cup without spilling

○ Motor skill development follows a sequential pattern (making

generalization about the timing of the behaviors)
•Developmental Norms: Comparing the Individual
to the Group
–Norms
–Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS)
▪4 aspects of infants’ behavior:
–Interactions with others
–Motor behavior
–Physiological control
–Response to stress
Nutrition in Infancy: Fueling Motor Development

•Nutrition: fuel of motor development

-Malnutrition: later adverse consequences (slower growth. low IQ.
academic problems and severe disorders
–Condition of having an improper amount and balance of nutrients

•Obesity
–Weight greater than 20 percent above average for given height
–May predispose infant to adult obesity
•Breast or Bottle?
–For first 12 months, breast milk is the best(contains all the
necessary nutrients and is easier to digest for the infants
The Development of the Senses
-William James (father of American Psychology) thought the newborn’s world is a blooming
and buzzing confusion
- current research: newborn is equipped with organized sensory and perceptual abilities
- the underlying process of infants’ understanding of the world: sensation and perception

•Sensation: The stimulation of sense organs (the input about

the physical world received by our sensory receptors)
•Perception: Our interpretation and analysis of a sensory
stimulus (the process by which the brain selects, organizes
and interprets these sensations)
Visual Perception (1 of the most poorly developed senses at birth
and time is needed to build those neural pathways between the
eyes and the brain)

- Newborns can’t see beyond 20 feet (1/10 to ⅓ of an average adult)

- By 6 months, the average infant’s vision is 20/20 almost identical to adult
- newborn infants prefer and orient to face-like stimuli more than they do other
patterned stimuli
- prefer faces that are upright and not scrambled
- quickly learn to distinguish the face of their mothers from the faces of other women
- Depth perception develops at 6 months
- Infants prefer patterns and complex stimuli
•Auditory Perception: very keen at birth and the ability
to hear is evidenced as soon as the 7th month of prenatal
development
–Hearing begins prenatally
–Sensitive to high and low frequencies but not middle ranges
–Sensitive to the exaggeration of infant directed speech
- prefer their mother’s voices over another female when speaking the same
material
- can distinguish between very similar sounds as early as 1 month after birth
- can distinguish between a familiar and unfamiliar voice even earlier
- especially sensitive to the frequencies of sounds in human speech
•Smell and Taste
- smell: well developed in young infants, certain preferences are innate
–Infants react to unpleasant tastes and smells from birth. distinguish sour bitter sweet and salty
–Newborns can detect their mother’s smell, but only when breastfed
–Infants have an innate sweet tooth
•Sensitivity to Pain
–Infants can feel pain from birth
–There is a developmental progression to reactions to pain
–Exposure to pain in infancy may lead to being more sensitive as an adult
•Responding to Touch （triggers a complex chemical reaction helping infants to
survive)(massages from caregivers could stimulate the production of some
chemicals in infant brains that could enhance growth)
–Most highly developed sense in newborns
–Rooting reflex is strong （寻乳反应）
–Infants learn about world through touch
Significant development of Cognitive abilities

- especially in:
1) language acquisition
2) ability to think and reason
Cognitive Development in Infancy:
Piaget’s Theory

•Knowledge in infancy: based on direct physical contact where

infants use senses and motor skills to taste, feel, push, hear and
move in order to experience world

- these basic motor and sensory abilities provide the foundation for the
cognitive skills that will emerge during the subsequent stages of cognitive
development
main concepts of Piaget

Schema: distinct. organized and generalizable patterns of knowledge about certain

concepts that could adapt and change with mental functioning
- e.g. in the sensory motor stage. a schema could be: chewing (encodes a set of
instructions relating to how to chew and that motivations for chewing) within the
schema for chewing are: relevant categories of information (sets of objects that can
and can’t be chewed) Similarly objects that can be chewed might contain further
categories. those that taste good. soft and so on
- all these info —-> contained in the schema of chewing
2 principles underlie growth in children’s schemes

▪Assimilation
(adaptation process by which new info is taken into the
previously existing schema)
▪Accommodation
(pre-existing knowledge is altered in order to fit in the
new information

Assimilation and accommodation: Development:

Schemas, Assimilation, & Accommodation
Here is a very interesting TED talk on “How do babies learn”:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1KIVZw7Jxk&ab_channel=TED
6 sub-stages of the 1st stage of cognitive
development (sensory motor period)
1) simple reflexes stage (1st month)
- active learning begins with reflexes such as sucking and grasping
2) first habits and primary circular reactions
- coordinate separate actions into integrated activities (e.g. they become able to stare at an object and touch it at the
same time)
3) secondary circular reactions
- infants’ reactions are no longer confined to their bodies and able to be more actively engaged in the outside world and
interactions between the baby and something else could happen
4) coordination of secondary circular reactions
- engage in behaviors that others perform and anticipate upcoming events
- object permanence (the understanding that items and people still exist even when you can’t see or hear them is achieved
during this stage)
5) tertiary circular reactions
- actively engaged in experimentations to learn about the physical world and are considered little scientists and begin
exploring the world using both motor skills and planning abilities
6) the beginning of thought stage
- capacity for mental representation or symbolic thought appears
- able to engage in pretend play
•Memory Capabilities in Infancy
○ memory requires: certain degree of brain maturation thus infant memory:
fleeting and fragile
○ Memory in infants improved with age and as brain develops
○ The Duration of Memories increase with age
○ Older children and adults experience Infantile amnesia (the inability to recall
memories from the first few years of life)
○ Hypotheses:
○ 1) immaturity of the infant’s brain especially those areas that are crucial for the
formation of autobiographical memories such as the hippocampus
○ 2) lack of linguistic skills of babies and toddlers limits their ability to mentally
represent events therefore reducing their ability to encode memories
○ 3) (social theorists) episodic memories of personal experiences require:
understanding of self. which is undeveloped in infant and young toddlers
Infants have some memory capacities

- distinguish between old and new objects

- older than 6 months: retain information for some periods of
time
- need less reminding to retrieve information in memory
- deferred imitation (imitation of actions after a time delay)
can happen as early as 6 months of age
Individual Differences in Intelligence:
Is One Infant Smarter Than Another?
•Infant intelligence difficult to define
•approaches to measuring intelligence in infants:
1) Developmental quotient (Gesell) - infant’s overall developmental score in the 4 domains
of motor skills. language adaptive behavior and personal social behavior
2) Bayesian Scales of Infant Development (assess the development of infants and toddlers
aged 1 to 42 months)
- a series of developmental play tasks to calculate a developmental quotient rather than an
IQ score
- focuses on 2 areas of mental and motor abilities
The Roots of Language
•Language is the systematic, meaningful arrangement of
symbols and provides the basis for communication
>> the order in which children learn language structures is
consistent across children and cultures (universal)
•Early Sounds and Communication
1) before birth: babies begin to develop language and communication skills
2) at birth: babies recognize their mother’s voice and can distinguish between the languages spoken by
their mothers and foreign languages
3) prelinguistic communication: newborns are able to communicate their thoughts and needs with body
postures. gestures. cris and facial expressions
4) babies begin to coo almost immediately (cooing = one syllable combination of a consonant and a
vowel sound)
5) 2-3 months: babbling (intentional vocalizations that lack specific meaning and contain a
consonant-vowel repeated sequence (e.g. mama)
6) first word: 10-14 months.
7) after 10-14 months: vocabulary increases at a rapid rate
8) toddlers: have a vocab of 50-200 words. putting words together in telegraphic speech (baby bye bye,
doggy pretty)
•First Words
–Generally spoken between 10 and 14 months of age
––By 15 months, vocabulary is about 10 words
–By 24 months, vocabulary increases to 400 words
–Culture impacts the use of early words
•First Sentences
By age 2, infants use telegraphic speech
The major theories of language development
1) Learning Theory Approach: Bandura
- language development happens through the principles of learning including association
and reinforcement
- the importance of observation and imitation of others in learning a language
2) Nativist Approaches: Language as an Innate Skill
–Championed by Noam Chomsky (human brain contain a language acquisition device that includes a
universal grammar that underlines all human languages
- born with a knowledge of general rules of syntax that determines how sentences are constructed
- language develops as long as infant is exposed to it
- no teaching. training or reinforcement is required for language to develop (Skinner)
–Argues that genetics and innate mechanism directs language development
Social and Personality Development in Infancy

- emotional development
- attachment
- self-development
- personality and temperament development
Emotional Development in Infancy
● 2 emotional responses infants exhibit: Attraction and withdrawal
- they show attraction to pleasant situation that bring comfort. stimulation and pleasure
- they withdraw from unpleasant stimulation such as bitter flavor or physical discomfort
- Across cultures, infants show facial expressions of basic emotions
- Coding of infants’ nonverbal expressions shows interest, distress, and disgust present at
birth
- 2 months: By 6 to 8 weeks, babies exhibit social smile (responding to another person
who engage their positive attention)
- social smile becomes more stable and organized: learn to use their smiles to engage their
parents in interactions
○ By 2 years of age, children purposeful in their smiling
Emotions 2 categories

1) basic emotions: interest. happiness. anger.

fear. surprise. sadness and disgust. which
appear first
2) self-conscious emotions: envy. pride. shame.
guilt. doubt and embarrassment
facial expressions of emotions

- important regulators of social interactions

- the concept of social referencing: the process of infants seek out information
from others to clarify a situation and then use the information to act
e.g. experimenters posed facial expressions of neutral anger or disgust toward
babies as they moved toward an object and measured the amount of
inhibition the babies showed in touching the object
Result: the anger produced the greatest inhibition followed by disgust and
then with neutral the least
The Development of Self: during the 2nd year of life
children begin to recognize themselves as they gain a
sense of self as object

● Self-awareness developed (15 to 24 months)

- the understanding that you are separate from others
○ Assessed by mirror-and-rouge task
○ Most infants touch nose at 17 to 24 months
● Infants have a Theory of Mind
○ Knowledge and beliefs about the mental world early in infancy
 Sense of Self

Research suggests that this 18-month-old baby is exhibiting a clearly developing sense of self.
Source: antoniodiaz/Shutterstock
Intentionally and causality

the capacity to understand intentionality and causality grow during infancy

as early as 18 months. infants begin to understand that others’ behaviors have

meaning and that the behavior they see people displaying is designed to
achieve specific goals

by age 2,. infants begin to use deception

 Attachment: Forming Social Bonds (most important
part of social development in infancy)
Definition: a positive and close emotional bond with the caregiver from which the infant drives
a sense of security
○ attachments: foundations for future relationships
○ form the basis for confidence and curiosity as toddlers
○ important influences on self-concept
○ John Bowlby argued attachment is biological/innate need to attach to one main
attachment figure. a child should receive the continuous care of this single most
important attachment figure for approximately the first 2 years of life
■ Because mother provides safety and security, this attachment different from
others
■ Having a strong, firm attachment provides a home base
Maternal deprivation

- could cause:
long term cognition. social and emotional
difficulties for that infant
 Mary Ainsworth Strange situation

- Mary is a student of John

Baldwin
- the experimental technique is
designed to measure
attachment
● The strange situation is a procedure devised by Mary Ainsworth in the 1970s to observe attachment in
children, that is relationships between a caregiver and child.
Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation
- a child is observed playing for 21 minutes white caregivers and strangers enter and leave the room
- on the basis of their behaviors. the children were categories into 3 groups with a 4th added later
- each of these groups reflect a different kind of attachment relationship with the caregiver
- 1 is secure and the other 3 styles as insecure
- 1) secure attachment style: explores freely while the caregiver is present and may engage with the
stranger
- the child may be upset when the caregiver departs but is also happy to see the caregiver return
2) ambivalent attachment style: conscious of the situation in general. especially the stranger and stays
close to or even clings to the caregiver rather than exploring toys
- when the caregiver leaves. the child is extremely distressed and is ambivalent when the caregiver
returns. the child may rush to the caregiver but then fails to be comforted when picked up. may be still
angry and may even resist being calmed by the caregiver
- 3) avoidant attachment style: avoid or ignore the mother or caregiver. showing little emotion when the
mother departs or returns. child may run away from the mother when she approaches. wil knot
explore very much regardless of who is there and the stranger will not be treated much differently
from the mother
- 4) disorganized or disoriented attachment: inconsistent way of coping with the stress of the strange
situation. may cry during the separation but avoid the mother when she returns. or may approach the
mother but then freeze or fall to the floor
The Ainsworth Strange Situation and Patterns of
Attachment
○ Sequence of staged episodes
■ Secure attachment pattern
■ Avoidant attachment pattern
■ Ambivalent attachment pattern
■ Disorganized-disoriented attachment pattern
Infants. like adults. are different from each other

these differences: related to : their personality and temperament

Personality: a combination of characteristics or qualities that differentiate one person from

another

from the moment of birth. infant begin to show unique traits which will lead to their distinct
individuality
Personality Development:
The Characteristics That Make Infants Unique
● Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development
○ How individuals understand themselves and the meaning of others’ behavior
○ Infants’ early experiences determine if they will be trusting or mistrustful
■ Trust-VS-mistrust stage: First 18 months
■ infants are uncertain about the world in which they live and look toward
their primary caregiver for stability and consistency of care
■ if the care the infant receives is consistent. predictable and reliable. they
will develop a sense of trust. which will carry with them to other
relationships. they will be able to feel secure even when faced with danger
■ if the needs are not consistently met. mistrust and anxiety may develop
● How well are needs met?
Autonomy VS Shame and Doubt (end of
infancy)
- if children are encouraged and supported in their increased
independence. they become more confident and secure in their own
ability to survive in the world
- if children are criticized. overly controlled or not given the opportunity to
assert themselves. they begin to feel inadequate in their ability to survive
and may then become overly independent on others. lack self-esteem and
feel a sense of shame or doubt in their abilities
Erickson: personality is shaped by infants’ experiences

other developmental psychologists believed that: there are

inconsistencies of behavior that is present at birth and these
consistencies are largely genetically determined

some of the differences in infants (such as mood and sensitivity

differences) could be attributed to temperament (the innate
characteristics of the infant. including mood. activity level and
emotional reactivity which are noticeable soon after birth)
Temperament:
● Temperament: Stabilities in Infant Behavior (cont.)
○ Categorizing Temperament: Thomas and Chess (1984)
■ Three general types of temperament:
■ 1) Easy (40%) - able to quickly adapt to routine and new
situations. remain calm and is easy to calm, usually in a
positive mood
■ 2) Difficult (10%) - reacts negatively to new situations. has
trouble adapting to routine. in negative mood and cries
frequently
■ 3) Slow-to-Warm(15%) Babies - low activity level,. adjusts
slowly to new situations and is often in a negative mood