1. Infancy Physical Growth The brain Infant states Nutrition
Motor development
Sensory and perceptual development
Piaget’s theory
Learning
Intelligence
Language
Emotional developmt.
Temperament
Personality
Attachment
Family
Day care
Are all babies cute? Some are…but your own is always the cutest!

2. Physical Growth and Development in Infancy
Cephalocaudal pattern
Proximodistal pattern
Height and weight
The Cephalocaudal Pattern
The cephalocaudal pattern is the sequence in which the greatest growth always occurs at the top—the head— with physical growth in size, weight, and feature differentiation gradually working its way down from top to bottom.
Aspects of the Cephalocaudal Pattern
This same pattern occurs in the head area, because the top parts of the head—the eyes and brain—grow faster than the lower parts. An extraordinary proportion of the total body is occupied by the head during prenatal development and early infancy. Sensory and motor development proceed according to the cephalocaudal principle.
The Proximodistal Pattern
The sequence in which growth starts at the center of the body and moves toward the extremities.
Height
The average North American newborn is 20 inches long. Ninety-five percent of full-term newborns are inches long. Infants grow about 1 inch per month during the first year, reaching approximately 1½ times their birth length by their first birthday. Infants’ rate of growth is considerably slower in the second year of life. At age 2, the average infant is inches long.

3. Vaccinations
Vaccinations against the most common, historically deadly and debilitating diseases are started in infancy. Some are combined into one shot; some are part of a multi-year series.
There is NO EVIDENCE that vaccines “cause” autism. One researcher in England found a correlation, but it was later revealed that he was paid by lawyers who wanted data in their favor. He later lost his license to practice medicine.

4. The Brain The Brain’s Development
Measuring the Brain’s Activity in Research on Infant Memory
The Brain’s Hemispheres
Early Experience and the Brain
Definition of a Neuron
A nerve cell that handles information processing at the cellular level
The Brain’s Development
At birth, the newborn’s brain is about 25% of its adult weight and, by the second birthday, it is about 75% of its adult weight. Newborns have all of the neurons they will ever have—about 100 billion. Some areas of the brain, such as the primary motor areas, develop earlier than others, such as the primary sensory areas. Among the most dramatic changes in the brain in the first 2 years of life are the spreading connections of dendrites to each other.
Myelination
The process of encasing axons with fat cells. Myelination both insulates the nerve cells and helps nerve impulses travel faster. A myelin sheath (a layer of fat cells) encases most axons. Myelination for visual pathways occurs rapidly after birth and is completed in the first 6 months. Auditory myelination is not completed until 4-5 years of age. Some aspects of myelination continue into adolescence.
Measuring the Brain’s Activity in Research on Infant Memory
Even the latest technologies don’t enable researchers to make out fine details in brain imaging of babies, and they often can’t be used with babies. Charles Nelson is pioneering informative infant-brain research using 128 electrodes

5. Infant States Sleep REM sleep Classification of Infant States SIDS
Developmentalists are interested in infants’ states of consciousness, or levels of awareness. Classifying infant states has helped researchers identify many aspects of infant development, such as the sleep-waking cycle. Newborns sleep hours a day with individual variations. Most 1-month-olds begin sleeping longer at night. Most 4-month-olds usually have moved closer to adultlike sleep patterns. Researchers have found cultural variations in infant sleeping patterns.
REM (Rapid Eye Movement) Sleep
A recurring sleep stage during which vivid dreams commonly occur. Most adults spend about one-fifth of their night in REM sleep. Infants spend about one-half of their sleep in REM sleep and it begins their sleep cycle. By 3 months the percentage of REM sleep falls to 40%, and it no longer starts their sleep cycle. REM sleep is thought to promote the brain’s development in infancy. A Classification Scheme for Infant States
No REM sleep
Active sleep without REM
REM sleep

6. Nutrition Nutritional Needs and Eating Behavior
Breast- Versus Bottle-Feeding
Malnutrition in Infancy
Nutritional Needs and Eating Behavior
The importance of adequate energy and nutrient intake consumed in a loving and supportive environment during the infant years cannot be overstated. Nutritionists recommend that infants consume approximately 50 calories per day for each pound they weigh—more than twice an adult’s requirement per pound. A controversy has existed over whether infants should be fed on a regular schedule (e.g., 4 ounces of formula every 6 hours), or fed on demand (determined by the infant). Diets designed for adult weight loss and prevention of heart disease may actually retard growth and development in babies, who need high-energy, high-calorie food.
Breast- Versus Bottle-Feeding
Human milk, or alternative formula, is the baby’s source of nutrients and energy for the first 4 to 6 months of life. For years, debate has focused on whether breast-feeding is better for the infant than bottle-feeding. The growing consensus is that breast-feeding is better for the baby’s health. The American Pediatric Association strongly endorses breast-feeding throughout the first year of life. Mothers least likely to breast feed are those who work full-time outside the home, mothers under 25, mothers without a high school education, African-American mothers, and mothers in low-income circumstances. Some researchers have found no psychological differences between breast-fed and bottle-fed infants.

7. Motor Development Reflexes Gross and fine motor skills
Developmental biodynamics
Toilet training
Reflexes
Reflexes, genetically carried survival mechanisms, govern the newborn’s movements. They are automatic and beyond the newborn’s control; built-in reactions to stimuli. In these reflexes, infants have adaptive responses to their environment before they’ve had the opportunity to learn. Reflexes may serve as important building blocks for subsequent purposeful motor activity.
The Sucking Reflex Occurs when newborns automatically suck an object placed in their mouth. Enables newborns to get nourishment before they have associated a nipple with food. Present at birth; later disappears at 3-4 months. Most newborns take several weeks to establish a sucking style that is coordinated with the way the mother is holding the infant, the way the milk is coming out of the bottle or breast, and the infant’s sucking speed and temperament.
The Rooting Reflex The rooting reflex occurs when the infant’s cheek is stroked or the side of the mouth is touched. In response, the infant turns its head toward the side that was touched in an apparent effort to find something to suck. The rooting reflex disappears when the infant is 3-4 months old, as it is replaced by the infant’s voluntary eating.

8. Sensory and Perceptual Development
What are sensation and perception?
Visual perception
Other senses
Intermodal perception
Perceptual-motor coupling and unification
What Are Sensation and Perception?
Sensation occurs when information interacts with sensory receptors—the eyes, ears, tongue, nostrils, and skin. The sensation of hearing occurs when waves of pulsating air are collected by the outer ear and transmitted through the bones of the inner ear to the auditory nerve. Perception is the interpretation of what is sensed. The information about physical events that contact the ears may be interpreted as musical sounds, human speech, or a jet engine.
Visual Perception
Visual Acuity and Color
The newborn’s vision is estimated to be 20/400 to 20/800 on the Snellan chart—about times lower than normal adult vision (20/20).
By 6 months of age vision is 20/100 or better.
By the first birthday, the infant’s vision approximates that of an adult.
At birth, babies can distinguish green and red.
By 2 months of age, there is adultlike functioning in all three types (red, blue, green) of color-sensitive receptor (cones).
Visual Preferences
In 1963 Robert Fantz discovered that infants look at different things for different lengths of time. He found that infants preferred to look at patterns

9. Piaget’s Theory of Infant Development
Sensorimotor development
Substages
Object permanence
Evaluating Piaget’s theory
Piaget’s Theory of Infant Development
Piaget believed that the child passes through a series of stages of thought from infancy to adolescence. Passage through the stages results from biological pressure to adapt to the environment (through assimilation and accommodation) and to organize structures of thinking. The stages are qualitatively different from one another; the way that children reason at one stage is different from the way they reason at another stage. Children have schemes (cognitive structures that help individuals’ organize and understand their experiences) from birth. Schemes change with age. As children grow older and gain more experience, they shift from using physically-based schemes to mentally-based schemes.
The Stage of Sensorimotor Development
According to Piaget, this stage lasts from birth to about 2 years of age. Mental development is characterized by considerable progression in the infant’s ability to organize and coordinate sensations with physical movements and actions. Children progress from having little more than reflexive patterns to work with to complex sensorimotor patterns and a primitive system of symbols.

10. Learning and Remembering
Conditioning
Imitation
Memory
Conditioning
Both classical and operant conditioning have been demonstrated to occur in infants. If an infant’s behavior is followed by a rewarding stimulus, the behavior is likely to recur. Operant conditioning has been helpful to researchers in their efforts to determine what infants perceive. Studies have demonstrated that infants can retain information from the experience of being conditioned.
Imitation
Andrew Meltzoff believes infants’ imitative abilities to be biologically based because they can imitate a facial expression within the first few days after birth. This occurs before they’ve had the opportunity to observe social agents in their environment or the behaviors they have been observed to imitate. Meltzoff also believes infant imitation involves flexibility, adaptability, and intermodal perception. Not all experts accept Meltzoff’s conclusions and believe the babies were automatically responding to a stimulus.
Deferred Imitation
Deferred imitation is imitation which occurs after a time delay of hours or days. Meltzoff found that 9-month-old infants could imitate actions that they had seen performed 24 hours earlier. Piaget believed that deferred imitation doesn’t occur until about 18 months of age.

11. Intelligence Individual differences Arnold Gesell
The Bayley Scales of Infant Intelligence
The Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence
Individual Differences in Intelligence
Individual differences in infant cognitive development have been studied primarily through the use of developmental scales or infant intelligence tests. It is advantageous to know whether an infant is advancing at a slow, normal, or advanced pace of development. Infant developmental scales differ from those used to assess older children in that they are necessarily less verbal, contain more perceptual motor items, and include measures of social interaction.
Arnold Gesell
Gesell is the most important early contributor to the developmental testing of infants. He developed a measure used as a clinical tool to help sort out potentially normal babies from abnormal ones. The Gesell test was widely used years ago, and is still used by pediatricians to assess normal and abnormal infants. The current version of the Gesell test has 4 categories of behavior: motor, language, adaptive, personal-social. Results yield an infant’s developmental quotient (DQ)—an overall developmental score that combines subscores in the four categories.
The Bayley Scales of Infant Development
These scales are widely used in the assessment of infant development. The current version has 3 components: a mental scale, a motor scale, and an infant behavior profile. It includes assessment of the following:

12. Language Development Defining language How language develops
Biological influences
Behavior and environmental influences
Defining Language
Language is a form of communication, whether spoken, written, or signed, that is based on a system of symbols. All human languages have some common characteristics such as infinite generativity and organizational rules. Infinite generativity is the ability to produce an endless number of meaningful sentences using a finite set of words and rules.
How Language Develops
First few months of life - infants startle to sharp noises
3-6 months - begin to show an interest in sounds, respond to voices
6-9 months - babbling begins (goo-goo) due to biological maturation; infants also begin to understand their first words
Early communication is in the form of pragmatics to get attention:
Making or breaking eye contact
vocalizing sounds
performing manual actions such as pointing
10-15 months - the infant utters its first word

13. Reading to Children
Is it important to read to babies? Yes! Babies look at the pictures and listen to mom’s and dad’s voices. They pick up language quickly, associate words with visual cues, and benefit from the physical contact (the only way to read to a baby is by having him/her on your lap!).

14. Emotional Development
Defining Emotion
Affect in Parent-Child Relationships
Developmental Timetable of Emotions
Crying
Smiling
Stranger Anxiety
Defining Emotion
Emotion is a feeling, or affect, that can involve physiological arousal, conscious experience, and behavioral expression. Psychologists debate which of these components is the most important aspect of emotion, and how they mix to produce emotional experiences. An important aspect of emotional development is emotional regulation. During the first year, infants develop an ability to inhibit or minimize the intensity and duration of emotional responses. An example of early emotional regulation are infants’ soothing themselves by sucking.
Affect in Parent-Child Relationships
Emotions are the first language with which parents and infants communicate. The initial aspects of infant attachment to parents are based on emotion-linked interchanges, as when an infant cries and the caregiver responds. By the end of the first year, a mother’s facial expression— smiling or fearful—influences whether an infant will explore an unfamiliar environment. When children hear their parents quarreling, they often react with distress. Infant and adult affective communicative capacities make possible coordinated, bidirectional infant-adult interactions.

15. Temperament Defining and Classifying Temperament Goodness of Fit
Parenting and the Child’s Temperament
Defining and Classifying Temperament
Temperament is an individual’s behavioral style and characteristic way of emotional response. There is a debate as to the key dimensions of temperament. Many scholars conceive of temperament as a stable characteristic of newborns, which comes to be shaped and modified by later experiences. However, it may be that as a child becomes older, behavior indicators of temperament are more difficult to spot.
Temperament Classifications of Chess and Thomas
Psychiatrists Alexander Chess and Stella Thomas believe there are three basic types of temperament.
An easy child is generally in a positive mood, quickly establishes regular routines in infancy, and adapts easily to new experiences.
A difficult child tends to react negatively and cry frequently, engages in irregular daily routines, and is slow to accept new experiences.
A slow-to-warm-up child has a low activity level, is somewhat negative, shows low adaptability, and displays a low intensity of mood.
New Classifications of Temperament
Mary Rothbart and John Bates have concluded that, based on current research, the best framework for classifying temperament involves a revision of Chess and Thomas’ categories. The general classification of temperament

16. Personality Development
Trust
The Developing Sense of Self
Independence
Trust
According to Erik Erikson, the first year of life is characterized by the trust-versus-mistrust stage of development. Erikson believed that infants learn trust when they are cared for in a consistent, warm manner. If the infant is not well fed and kept warm on a consistent basis, a sense of mistrust will develop. Trust vs. mistrust arises again at each successive stage of development.
The Developing Sense of Self
Infants are not “given” a self by their parents or the culture, rather they find and construct selves. In the animal kingdom, only the apes learn to recognize their reflection in a mirror, but humans accomplish this feat by about 18 months of age. To determine whether infants can recognize themselves, psychologists employ the “rouge test.”
Independence
The theories of Margaret Mahler and Erik Erikson have important implications for both self-development and independence. Mahler believes the child goes through separation, involving movement away from the mother, and then an individuation process, involving the development of self.

17. Attachment Phases of Attachment Studying Attachment
Individual Differences
Caregiving Styles and Attachment
Attachment is a close emotional bond between the infant and the caregiver. Harlow and Zimmerman study found that feeding is not the crucial element in the attachment process and that contact comfort is very important. Erikson believed that the first year of life is the key time frame for the development of attachment. John Bowlby believes that the newborn is biologically equipped to elicit the attachment behavior from the primary caregiver.
The Phases of Attachment
Phase 1: Birth to 2 months - Infants instinctively direct their attachment to human figures.
Phase 2: 2-7 months - Attachment becomes focused on one figure, usually a primary caregiver.
Phase 3: 7-24 months - Specific attachments develop.
Phase 4: 24 months on - A goal-directed partnership is formed in which children become aware of others’ feelings, goals, and plans.
Studying Attachment
Mary Ainsworth believes that some babies have a more positive attachment experience than others. She created the Strange Situation—an observational measure of infant attachment that requires the infant to move through a

18. The Family The Transition to Parenthood Reciprocal Socialization
The Family as a System
Maternal and Paternal Infant Caregiving
The Transition to Parenthood
When people become parents they face disequilibrium and must adapt. Parents want to develop a strong attachment with their infant, but they still want to maintain strong attachments to their spouse and friends and possibly continue their careers. In one study, many couples report that being parents enhanced their sense of themselves and gave them a new, more stable identity as a couple.
Reciprocal Socialization
Reciprocal socialization is bidirectional; children socialize parents just as parents socialize children. The behaviors of mothers and infants involve substantial interconnection, mutual regulation, and synchronization. Scaffolding is parental behavior that supports children’s efforts, allowing them to be more skillful than they would be if they were to rely only on their own abilities. It is evidenced when parents time interactions in such a way that the infant experiences turn-taking. Scaffolding is not confined to parent-infant interaction, but can be used to support children’s achievement-related efforts in school.
The Family as a System
As a social system, the family can be thought of as a constellation of subsystems defined in terms of generation, gender, and role. Each family

19. Day Care
Far more young children are in day care today than at any other time in history.
Far more young children are in day care today than at any other time in history.
The type of day care that young children receive varies extensively. Unlike many European countries, the United States does not have a policy of paid leave for child care, thus day care has become a major national concern. A special contemporary interest of researchers who study day care is the role of poverty. Quality of care is typically based on group size, child-adult ratio, physical environment, caregiver characteristics, and caregiver behavior.
Findings of Day Care Research
It has been discovered that children in low-quality day care as infants were least likely to be socially competent in early childhood. Children who come from families with few resources are more likely to experience poor-quality day care than more advantaged children. Child care in and of itself neither adversely affected or promoted the security of infants’ attachment to their mothers. Certain child care conditions, in combination with certain home environments, did increase the probability that infants would be insecurely attached to their mothers. High-quality child care, especially sensitive and responsive attention, was linked with fewer child problems.