Chapter 4

Physical Changes in the First 2 Years of Life:

• Newborns have limited physical skills but rapid development occurs.

• By age 2, toddlers can move independently, feed themselves, and explore their environment.

• Toddlers exhibit a "top-heavy" appearance due to faster brain development compared to the rest of the body.

Brain and Nervous System Development:

• Midbrain and medulla are most developed at birth, regulating vital functions.

• Cortex, responsible for perception, movement, thinking, and language, is least developed.

• Synaptic development involves the formation and pruning of connections between neurons.

• Synaptogenesis occurs rapidly in the cortex during the first few years, quadrupling brain weight by age 4.

• Pruning eliminates unnecessary pathways and connections, making the brain more efficient.

• Plasticity refers to the brain's ability to change in response to experience, with enriched environments
enhancing brain development.

• Myelinization, the development of sheaths around axons, follows cephalocaudal and proximodistal patterns.

• Myelinization is most rapid in the first 2 years but continues throughout childhood and adolescence.

Implications:

• Early experiences shape brain development, with enriched environments leading to denser neural networks.

• Plasticity decreases with age, making young infants vulnerable to deficits but also more resilient to insults.

• Balanced stimulation and nutrition in infancy are crucial for long-term cognitive progress.

• Continued synaptogenesis and myelinization throughout life challenge previous beliefs about brain
organization and behavior.

Reflexes and Behavioral States

Reflexes:

• Humans are born with adaptive reflexes aiding survival.

• Adaptive reflexes disappear in infancy or childhood, while others persist throughout life.

• Weak or absent adaptive reflexes in neonates indicate potential nervous system issues.

Behavioral States:

• Neonates exhibit five states of sleep and wakefulness, including deep sleep, lighter sleep, alert
wakefulness, and fussing.

• Sleep patterns change as circadian rhythms mature, with infants initially sleeping up to 80% of the
time.

• By 8 weeks, signs of day/night sleep rhythms emerge, and infants start to sleep through longer
cycles.

• Cultural beliefs influence parental responses to infant sleep patterns, with variations between
societies.

Crying Patterns:
 • Infants have different cries for pain, anger, and hunger.

• Cross-cultural studies show crying increases in frequency over the first 6 weeks before tapering off.

• Colic, characterized by intense bouts of crying for at least 3 hours a day, affects 15–20% of infants.

• The cause of colic is unknown, but it typically resolves without intervention.

Awake Time:

• On average, neonates are awake and alert for 2 to 3 hours each day, with uneven distribution.

• Neurological development advances allow longer periods of wakefulness over the first 6 months as
sleep, crying, and eating patterns become more regular.

Growth and Motor Skills:

• Babies grow approximately 10–12 inches and triple their body weight in the first year.

• By age 2, toddlers are half as tall as they will be as adults, with proportionately larger heads.

• Motor skill development includes gross motor skills like crawling and fine motor skills like stacking
blocks.

• Girls may have a slight advantage in fine motor skills due to earlier wrist bone development.

• Despite gender differences in physical development rates, the sequence of motor skill development
remains consistent.

Explaining Motor Skill Development:

• Motor skill development follows an inborn biological timetable but is influenced by environmental
factors.

• Dynamic systems theory suggests multiple factors interact to influence development, such as muscle
strength and weight ratio.

• Environmental variables, like nutrition and practice opportunities, play a crucial role in motor skill
acquisition.

• Cross-cultural research indicates that cultural practices promoting motor development influence
milestone achievement.

Developing Body Systems:

• Bones undergo changes in size, number, and composition during infancy, contributing to
coordinated movement.

• Ossification, the process of bone hardening, occurs steadily from prenatal development through
puberty.

• Motor development relies on bone ossification, as soft leg bones would hinder standing.

• Muscle fibers are present at birth but mature and increase in strength throughout infancy.

• Lung efficiency improves rapidly in the first 2 years, enhancing stamina and sustained activity
capabilities in toddlers.

Nutritional Needs of Infants:

• Breastfeeding is generally superior to formula feeding, providing numerous benefits like rapid weight gain,
reduced risk of various illnesses, and better immune system function.
 • However, in some cases, such as with preterm babies or mothers unable to breastfeed due to substance
abuse or medications, formula feeding is necessary.

• Infants typically require only breast milk or formula supplemented with appropriate nutrients like iron and
vitamin B12 until 4 to 6 months of age.

• Solid foods should be introduced gradually after 6 months, starting with single-grain cereals, to avoid
interfering with nutrition and to identify potential food allergies.

Malnutrition and Its Effects:

• Malnutrition in infancy, particularly macronutrient malnutrition (resulting from insufficient calories or

protein), can severely impair brain development.

• Severe calorie deficits can lead to marasmus, while inadequate protein intake can cause kwashiorkor, both
of which can result in permanent neurological damage.

• Micronutrient malnutrition, such as iron deficiency anemia, is also common and can affect infants' cognitive,
social, and physical development.

• Early screening and supplementation, along with education about infant nutrition, are essential to prevent
and address malnutrition.

Health Care and Immunizations:

• Nutritional support programs like the WIC program aim to prevent infant malnutrition, which can lead to
learning problems and the need for special education services later in childhood.

• Immunization plays a crucial role in preventing diseases in infants and young children, with vaccination rates
having a significant impact on disease prevalence.

• Proper hygiene practices and timely treatment of respiratory infections are essential to prevent
complications like chronic ear infections, which can affect language development.

• The Safe to Sleep campaign promotes placing infants on their backs to sleep to reduce the risk of sudden
infant death syndrome (SIDS), along with avoiding exposure to tobacco smoke during pregnancy and after
birth.

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS):

• SIDS is the leading cause of death among infants between 1 month and 1 year of age, characterized by
sudden and unexpected death.

• Risk factors for SIDS include viral infections, history of apnea, sleeping on the stomach or side, and exposure
to tobacco smoke.

• Imaging studies suggest neurological differences in infants at high risk for SIDS, indicating delayed
myelination and deficiencies in serotonin.

• Mortality rates from SIDS vary across ethnic groups, with socioeconomic factors and access to prenatal care
playing significant roles.

Infants' Sensory Development:

Vision:

• Newborns have limited visual acuity, around 20/200 to 20/400, which improves rapidly during the first year
of life.

• Infants possess the necessary cells in the eyes (cones) to perceive colors like red, green, and blue, allowing
them to discriminate among various colors from an early age.
 • Tracking, the ability to follow moving objects with the eyes, develops gradually, with infants showing some
proficiency around 6 to 10 weeks of age.

Hearing:

• Newborns have better auditory acuity than visual acuity, with the ability to hear nearly as well as adults
within the general range of pitch and loudness.

• Infants can determine the general direction of sounds, but finer discrimination of sound location improves
with age.

Smell and Taste:

• Newborns respond differentially to basic flavors like sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami, indicating
sensitivity to taste from birth.

• The senses of smell and taste are closely related, with infants demonstrating preferences for certain flavors,
potentially influencing feeding behavior.

Touch and Motion:

• The senses of touch and motion are highly developed in infants, essential for survival and feeding.

• Infants show sensitivity to touch stimuli on areas like the mouth, face, hands, feet, and abdomen, playing a
crucial role in reflexes like rooting and sucking.

Studying Perceptual Development in Infants:

Preference Technique:

• Researchers use this method to gauge infants' preferences by showing them two pictures or objects and
tracking how long they look at each.

• Consistent preferences indicate that infants perceive differences between the presented stimuli.

Habituation and Dishabituation:

• Habituation involves presenting a stimulus repeatedly until the infant loses interest, while dishabituation
occurs when a slightly different stimulus is presented, renewing the infant's interest.

• This method helps researchers understand what infants perceive as different or novel.

Operant Conditioning:

• Researchers can train infants to perform specific actions in response to stimuli and then vary the stimuli to
observe their responses.

• This method allows for the study of infants' ability to discriminate between different stimuli.

Depth Perception:

• Infants develop depth perception gradually, relying on cues such as binocular cues, pictorial information
(monocular cues), and kinetic cues.

• Research suggests that kinetic cues are used first, followed by binocular cues and monocular cues later in
infancy.

Patterns of Looking:

• In the first two months, infants are drawn to light-dark contrasts and moving objects.

• As cortical development progresses, infants shift their attention from where an object is to what it is,
focusing more on patterns.
Listening and Speech Perception:

• Infants can discriminate between speech sounds and recognize patterns in speech as early as one month of
age.

• They demonstrate remarkable abilities to discriminate speech sounds, often outperforming adults in certain
aspects.

Intermodal Perception:

• Infants can combine information from different senses as early as one month and show common intermodal
perception skills by six months.

• Research indicates that prenatal maturational processes play a role in the development of these skills.

Arguments for Nature vs. Nurture:

• Nativists argue that most perceptual abilities are innate, supported by evidence of infants' advanced
perceptual skills from birth.

• Empiricists contend that perceptual skills are learned, citing evidence from research with other species
showing the importance of experience in perceptual development.

• The interactionist view suggests that both innate abilities and experience contribute to perceptual
development, with infants' experiences shaping the specific discriminations they learn.