Infancy

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Infancy

• Chapter 4-6
• Psyc311
• Dr. Jen Wright

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infant brain
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one of the last organs to develop
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difference between species
Species EQ Species EQ
Human 7.4 Cat 1.0
Dolphin 5.3 Horse 0.9
Chimpanzee 2.5 Sheep 0.8
Rhesus Monkey 2.1 Mouse 0.5
Elephant 1.9 Rat 0.4
Whale 1.8 Rabbit 0.4
Dog 1.2  Parrot 2.5

• Humans do not have the largest brain but they
  have the largest EQ.
• Encephalization Quotient (EQ)
• Average brain mass/body weights for a species.
• Average for species/average mammalian value.

EQ??IQ
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brain development

• Most brain development happens outside (instead
  of inside) the womb
• Monkey newborn 70 adult size
• Human newborn 25 adult size
• Most growth occurs in first 3 yrs
• 3 yrs old 80 adult size
• 5 yrs old 90 adult size

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developmental processes

• Neurogenesis proliferation of neurons through
  cell division
• 250,000 cells born every minute
• Synaptognesis formation of connections
• Each neuron forms 1000s of connections
• Axons elongate towards specific targets
• Dendritic trees increases in size and
  complexity
• By 6 months 2 x more synaptic connections

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developmental processes
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developmental processes

• Synaptic pruning elimination of excess synapses
• Streamlines neural processing
• Without synaptic pruning, children wouldn't be
  able to walk, talk, or even see properly.
• Myelination insulating sheath
• Happens at different rates into adolescence
• Certain areas are myelinated first

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patterns of brain growth
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importance of experience

• Plasticity brains ability to change w/
  experience
• Experience-expectant plasticity (experiences
  present throughout evolution)
• Economizes on material encoded in genes
• Development will occur within a normal range of
  environments
• Level of vulnerability in timing
• Sensitive periods

• Examples?
• vision
• language

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announcements

• Psychology Club Event
• Volunteering in the Community
• 9/29 (next Weds) 515pm, ECTR 116
• Feedback for in-class debate
• Group write-ups pick up after class.
• Study session for Exam 01
• 9/29 (next Weds) 700pm, ECTR 113
• 35 MC/TF questions (2pts each)
• 2 essay qs (20 pts 10 pts) I will give you
  potential qs in advance

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production
comprehension
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both languages
2nd language
native language
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importance of experience

• Experience-dependent plasticity (experiences of
  individual)
• Brain sculpted by idiosyncratic experiences
• Responsive to richness of environmental stimuli
• Important in development of expertise
• More brain resources dedicated to processing
• E.g. musicians cortical representation of hands

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effect of deprivation
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effect of deprivation
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importance of sleep

• Regular and ample sleep correlates with normal
  brain maturation, learning, emotional regulation,
  and psychological adjustment in school and within
  the family.

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importance of sleep
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importance of sleep

• REM sleep critical for neural development in
  brain, esp. for activity-dependent development
• E.g. visual system
• Facilitates learning/memory
• Sleep deprivation linked with later problems
• E.g. ADHD, learning disabilities
• Babies most at risk of disruption
• Premature infants in IC units

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stress and brain development

• Exposure to excessive stress hormones is bad for
  brain development.
• Early symptoms of PTSD
• The brain can become incapable of producing
  normal stress responses.
• Hyper-vigilance (Ghosts in the Nursery)
• Emotional flatness
• Physical/emotional abuse and neglect can be
  equally damaging.

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what is attachment?
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attachment theory

• Attachment refers to the close, emotional bond
  between an infant and his/her primary caregiver.
• Psychoanalytic Theory (Freud)
• Driven by oral needs during the first year
• Emphasized early experiences on later outcomes
• Behaviorist Perspective (Skinner)
• Driven by the need for food
• Learns to associate contact with mother with food
• Mothers closeness continually reinforced

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attachment theory

• Ethology (Lorenz)
• Rooted in Darwins Evolutionary Theory
• Focused on the adaptive value of behavior
• Bond necessary for survival
• Imprinting

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primary criticisms

• Love (i.e., attachment) seen as secondary to
  instinctive or survival needs
• Harlow believed that the need for love and
  affection was necessary for survival

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announcments

• Psyc Club Volunteering in the Community
• Exam study session
• Weds, 7-9pm, ECTR113
• Friday Ch 4-6 Ask yourself Qs due
• How do you want to spend Friday?
• A) lecture
• B) ask yourself qs and study guide!
• Exam 01- Monday!

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Harlows monkeys (1958)

• Early work with monkeys
• Cloth wire mother
• Only one equipped with feeding apparatus
• Monkeys randomly assigned
• Observed for 5 months
• Both groups preferred cloth mother

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Infant monkey fed on cloth mother
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Infant monkey fed on wire mother
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18
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Hours per day spent with cloth mother
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Contact Time with Wire and Cloth Surrogate
Mothers
12
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Mean hours per day
.
6
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Hours per day spent with wire mother
0
21-25
1-5
11-15
6-10
16-20
Age (in days)
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Harlows monkeys (1958)

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vhsA5Sec6dAI
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vcaM4-f6ZZBEfeature
  related

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attachment theory

• John Bowlby
• Observations of children in institutionalized
  care
• Infant has built-in behaviors to keep parent
  close
• Gives way to true affectionate bond
• Serves 2 purposes
• Secure base
• Internal working model

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attachment theory

• Mary Ainsworth (1979)
• Developed Strange Situation
• Work revealed 4 types of attachment behavior
• Securely Attached
• Insecure Avoidant
• Insecure Resistant
• Insecure Disorganized
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vQTsewNrHUHU

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internal working model
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cultural variation
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social learning
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facial recognition
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mirror neurons

• Found in the frontal and parietal lobes
• Fire when you
• You engage in an activity (reaching out ones
  hand)
• You observe someone else engaging in the same
  activity.
• Fire more strongly when action has some purpose
  or content
• reaching out ones hand for a cup.
• MNs play a clear role in learning/imitation.
• May also play a role in mind-reading
• grasping intentions, goals, desires.

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emotional communication
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crying

• Crying communication of emotion
• Response to distress
• Development of emotional self-regulation
• Mastery of environment agency
• Biofeedback loop
• Soothing
• Swaddling tight wrapping of baby in cloth
• Touch
• Sweet taste
• Soft, rhythmic sounds
• Vibration

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crying disorders

• Colic (1 in 10 infants birth 12 weeks)
• Extended periods of intense crying
• Cause unknown
• Immature nervous system
• Hyper-sensitivity
• Digestive problems
• Prolonged crying (beyond 12 weeks)
• Exhibit developmental and behavioral disorders

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crying disorders

• Prolonged crying expose the brain to high levels
  of cortisol, adrenaline, and other damaging
  chemicals.
• Damage to hippocampus
• Reduced levels of vasopressin and serotonin
• Reduced levels of emotional regulation
• Impaired memory
• Increased levels of aggression/violence/bullying
• Increased levels of anxiety disorders

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early emotional expression

• Earliest emotion
• global arousal states of attraction and
  withdrawal
• set the stage for further development
• develop into well-organized, sustained signals
• Basic emotions
• emotions that can be directly inferred from
  facial expressions.
• happiness, interest
• surprise, fear, anger
• sadness, disgust

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• Basic emotions
• Universal across all human cultures
• Present in other advanced species
• Include guilt, shame, embarrassment
• AB
• All of the above

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emotional self-regulation

• Strategies for adjusting emotional state to a
  comfortable (adaptive) level of intensity in
  order to accomplish goals
• Infants withdrawal, distress, crying -- need
  soothing
• 4 mos shift focus of attention
• 1 year approach/retreat from stimulus
• Parent response to distress is important
• Sympathetic
• child more easily soothed, more self-regulated
• Non-responsive (wait to intervene)
• child enters into rapid, intense distress
• harder to soothe
• doesnt develop self-regulation

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emotional self-regulation

• When an infants needs are met, they can focus on
  the world around them and explore.
• Their brains take in and adapt to stimulation
  from the external world.
• When they arent met, they become fixated on
  trying to get their needs met.
• They stop exploring and shut out other
  stimulation from the external world.

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emotions of others

• Emotional contagion babies match the emotional
  expressions of caregiver
• 7-10 mos infants perceive facial expressions as
  organized patterns, can match facial expression
  to emotion
• 8-10 mos social referencing- relying on another
  persons emotional reaction to appraise situation
  (e.g.- visual cliff)
• Still face experiment

http//www.youtube.com/watch?vapzXGEbZht0
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• Mirror neurons help infants experience others
  emotions
• Yes, because they help them match emotional
  facial expressions
• Yes, because they stimulate a matching internal
  experience
• Yes, because they allow infants to empathize with
  others.
• AB
• No, because mns are only involved in imitation
  of physical behavior

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social referencing

• Example of how adults help child regulate emotion
• Permits toddlers to compare their assessments of
  situations with others
• Helps young children move beyond simply reacting
  to emotional messages
• Visual cliff experiment

http//www.youtube.com/watch?veyxMq11xWzM
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temperament

• Constitutionally based individual differences in
• Emotion
• Motor function
• Attentional reactivity
• Self-regulation
• Influences the way that children develop,
  display, and control emotions
• Foundation for later personality

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temperament styles

• Types
• Easy
• Difficult
• Slow to warm up
• Differences in sociability
• Differences in punishment/reward

• Which child will be harder to reward/punish?
• Easy child
• Difficult child

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temperament styles

• What else affects the development of temperament?
• Gender
• Cultural differences
• Goodness of fit (with parents/environment)

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cognitive development
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theory differences

• Piaget stage theory
• Child as blank slate (everything learned)
• Focus on learning as a process within individuals
• Core-knowledge theory
• Child possesses innate knowledge (domains of
  thought)
• Socio-cultural theory
• Focus on learning as a social process between
  individuals

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Piagets theory

• Constructivist approach children actively
  construct knowledge for themselves in response to
  their experiences.
• Child as scientist
• Generate hypotheses
• Perform experiments
• Draw conclusions
• Children learn many things on their own
• without the help of instruction from adults.
• Children are intrinsically motivated to learn.
• Discontinuous (qualitative) change
• different ages think differently.

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conservation of quantity (1)
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conservation of quantity (2)
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Information processing

• Computational approach cognitive development as
  a passive maturation process that occurs over
  time.
• Child as a computational system
• Children undergo continuous (quantitative)
  cognitive change
• Development through increasingly sophisticated
  hardware and software
• Faster and more efficient processing, larger
  memory bank, better learning algorithms
• More content knowledge (learned facts) to draw
  upon

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Core-knowledge theories

• Child as well-adapted product of evolution
• Emphasis on sophistication of childrens thinking
  in areas that have had evolutionary importance.
• Eg. environment navigation, face recognition,
  language
• Naïve physics, psychology, biology
• Some advanced capacities already present (innate)
• Move from general to domain specific
  specialized learning mechanisms

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Naïve physics

• Infants have a surprisingly sophisticated
  understanding of how the physical world works.

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understanding intentions

• They also have a pretty sophisticated
  understanding of how the psychological world
  works
• e.g., they understand that there are goals and
  intentions and that only certain creatures can
  have them.

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primitive morality
?