InfancyHuman Development Across the Lifespan
DEP 2004
Guiding QuestionsWhat is brain plasticity?
How do infants think and understand?
How do infants develop emotions?
How do infants use the emotions of other people?
Emerging Nervous SystemNeuron - basic cellular unit of brain and
nervous system specialized In receiving and transmitting information
Cell body - center of neuron that keeps it alive
Dendrite - end of neuron that receives information
Axon - tubelike structure that emerges from cell body and transmits information to other neurons
Adapted from Kail & Cavanaugh’s Human Development: A Life-Span View, 5th Ed.
Emerging Nervous SystemTerminal buttons - small knobs at the end of the axon
that release neurotransmitters
Neurotransmitters - chemicals released by terminal buttons that allow neurons to communicate
Cerebral cortex - wrinkled surface of brain that regulates many functions distinctly human
Hemispheres - right and left halves of cortex
Corpus collosum - thick bundle of neruons that connects hemispheres
Frontal cortex - brain region that regulates personality and goal-directed behavior
Adapted from Kail & Cavanaugh’s Human Development: A Life-Span View, 5th Ed.
Emerging Brain StructuresNeural plate - group of cells present in
prenatal development that becomes brain and spinal cord
Myelin - fatty sheath that wraps around neuron and enables them to transmit information more rapidly
Synaptic pruning - gradual reduction in number of synapses, beginning in infancy, continuing until early adolescence
Adapted from Kail & Cavanaugh’s Human Development: A Life-Span View, 5th Ed.
Brain PlasticityNeuroplasticity – extent to which brain
organization is flexible
Experience-expectant growth - process by which the wiring of the brain is organized by experiences that are common to most humans
Experience-dependent growth - process by which individual’s unique experiences affect brain structures and organization
Adapted from Kail & Cavanaugh’s Human Development: A Life-Span View, 5th Ed.
Jean Piaget’s Perspectiveon Children’s Thinking
Children desire to make
sense of their experiences.
Children construct their
understanding of the world
Children create theories like
scientists
Though these theories are
incomplete, they make the
world seem more predictable.
Piaget’s Basic Principles of Cognitive Development
Schemes: Psychological structures that organize experience.
Assimilation: Taking in information that is compatible with what one already knows.
Accommodation: Changing existing knowledge based on new knowledge.
Equilibration: A process by which children reorganize their schemes to return to a state of equilibrium when that is broken.
Jean Piaget’sStages of Cognitive Development
Stage One: Sensorimotor Infancy (0-2 years)
Sensorimotor Period: First of Piaget’s stages of cognitive development, which lasts from birth to approximately 2 years.
Object Permanence: understanding that objects exist independently of oneself.8-18 months.
Children’s Thought from an Information-Processing Perspective
Thought involves mental hardware and mental software
This combination allows children to complete a task
Mental hardware—built-in neural structures that allow the mind to operate
Mental software—mental “programs” that are the basis for performing particular tasks
• As children develop their mental software is more complex and efficient
• Development of thought is viewed as relatively continuous
• Cognitive processes such as attention, learning, and memory become more sophisticated as children develop
Attention—processes that determine which info. will be processed further
Orienting Response--an individual views a strong or unfamiliar stimulus, and changes in heart rate and brain-wave activity occurMakes us aware of dangerous situations and
important events
Habituation--the diminished response to a stimulus as it becomes more familiarHelps us to preserve our cognitive resources
LearningWhen an infant is born they already have the
mechanisms that help them learn from experience
Some forms of learning are:-Habituation (mentioned earlier)
-Classical Conditioning
-Operant Conditioning
-Imitation
Classical ConditioningA form of learning that involves pairing a neutral
stimulus and a response originally produced by another stimulus
Gives infants a sense of order
They learn that a certain stimulus is a signal for what is going to happen next
Infants more often show classical conditioning when the stimulus is associated with something good and less likely with something unpleasant
Operant ConditioningFocuses on the relation between the
consequences of behavior and the likelihood that the behavior will recur
When a child behaves a certain way and is met with a positive consequence for that behavior, the child will most likely act that way again
When the child’s behavior has an unpleasant consequence they are less likely to repeat what they did
ImitationOlder children,
adolescents, and young adults learn a lot just by watching others perform a task
There is even some evidence that infants may imitate facial expressions
MemoryYoung babies can remember
events for days or weeks at a time
Rovee-Collier’s experiment shows that there are 3 important features exist at 2-3 months:
1.) an event from the past is remembered
2.) over time, the event can no longer be recalled
3.) a cue can serve to dredge up a memory that seems to have been forgotten
Learning Number SkillsInfants have basic number skills even before
they know the names of numbers. They experience variations in numbers everyday
• An infant learns that quantity is one of the ways that their world differs
• Experiments have shown that babies can even perform simple addition and subtraction
Learning Number Skills Cont’d
• Also infants have shown to be able to compare quantities
• 6 month olds are sensitive to ratio’s. When shown stimuli that features two blue circles for every yellow circle they will look longer when they are shown four blue circles for every yellow circle next
• When adults placed two crackers in one container and three crackers in the next, the baby reached for the one with three crackers
Erikson’s Early Stages of Psychosocial Development
Stage 1: Trust vs. MistrustInfancy (Birth to 1
year)Goal to obtain hope—
healthy balance between openness and caution
Development of Basic Emotions
Social Smiles - smile that infants produce when they see a human face
Stranger Wariness - first distinct signs of fear that emerge around 6 months of age when infants become wary in the presence of unfamiliar adults
Complex Emotions & Later Developments
Complex emotions usually emerge between 18 and 24 months of age
Not universally expressed in similar ways
Various experiences contribute to emotions
Cultural context plays a large role in emotional expression
Measuring Emotions
Facial expressions are strong indicators of emotions
Some evidence we are biologically programmed to express basic emotions
Similarities between adults’ and infants’ expressions of emotions
Recognizing and Using Other’s Emotions
Social ReferencingBehavior in which infants in unfamiliar or
ambiguous environments look at an adult for cues to help them interpret the situation
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