When newborns take their first breaths...

their bloodstream is forced to reroute from placenta to lungs

babies' first form of communication

crying

Infants and swimming

their voice box is higher, so when water goes into their stomachs rather than into their lungs

newborn vision

double vison, blurry, because they cannot coordinate vision yet

newborn's vision is best at ______

20 cm from their face, about how far away mom is when she is nursing

babies prefer ____ colors

bright, primary this is because they're eyes respond to contrast

babies spend _____ in REM sleep and don't spend time in ______

2 times as much time NREM 3

babies can _______ and feel it in their fingers

hear a loud noise

babies can _____ a bright light

smell

babies taste in color and smell in sound because

their brain connections aren't properly organized yet

affects of infants who have severe elipisy can be operated on, to have half their swollen brains removed

the brain has such high plasticity at a young age, that the baby's brain can bounce back to some regard

infant's skulls are different from adult skulls in that _____

not all bones are fused together, which helps them fit through the birth canal

infants do not form ______ until they have experiences walking and crawling

their kneecaps

by the time they are 2 yrs old, babies have

grown half their full height

what part of milk is essential for infant brain development?

fat

babies prefer ____

sweet foods, because they are rich in energy

messy eating can allow babies to _____

experiment with solids, liquids, and other science

babies have an aversion to _____

plants; to protect from poison plants

what happens when 18-month-olds look in a mirror

they start to recognize their reflection

how does language development begin

infants start looking at mouth shapes before they can even talk

infants can

understand/use sign language before they can talk; proving they have thoughts and start to communicate before they can talk

Infant reflexes

include rooting, sucking, swallowing, stepping, grasping, and Moro note that while they have these reflexes, there is a lack of consistency

Moro reflex

when running a finger on baby's foot, their toes will spread out

The visual cliff

Visual cliff responses

6-month olds will crawl across, but in a few weeks, they will not this is because they always have depth perception, but as they continue learning to crawl, they gain understanding of the danger of following

preferential looking

how babies are tested for vision; they are given two objects to see which one they look at (are more interested in) longer, which shows their visual abilities

potty training

age is the least important, parents should assess if they are ready, and then allow patience and time to learn

the traditional view of physical development in childhood

this view minimizes environmental effects, children have to be mature and ready, their brains must be mature, they have built in programs for their brains to work

Esther Thelen's background

was a stay at home mom, and when she got bored, she decided to go to grad school and took a class on animal behavior as a biology major. She did a interdisciplinary study on biology and psychology.

Dynamic systems theory

Ester Thelen's theory that children are born with built-in brain programs that get modified as children live in their environment

Esther Thelen's wasp study

Looked at how wasps groomed themselves, with antennae and with antennae removed. The wasps that had their antennae removed still tried to groom themselves, as this was programmed into them. The wasps that had their antennae responded similarly, although since they could feel how they were grooming themselves, their grooming patterns differed.

Esther Thelen's theories on the infant stepping reflex

She realized that infant kicking motion was the same as their stepping motions, and measured this through EMG. She them put babies in a fish tank and the babies were able to walk, as the water helped support their legs. The stepping motion disappears on land as their legs tend to grow faster than they can learn to support themselves, so the support of the water brought it back

Esther Thelen and the treadmill

Put 7-month-old on a treadmill, and they were able to walk, even with tracks for different feet going at different speeds, they were able to keep up

Esther Thelen's experiments prove

Infants have modified experiences and built in motor programs. In real time, infants can learn from their experiences and adapt.

Sensation

processing basic information in the world through senses

perception

organizing sensory information and interpreting it

visual acutiy

how clearly an infant can see, tested with preferential-looking technique

preceptual consistancy

we perceive a constant shape and size of a moving object, even as it moves different distances from our sight

object segregation

we can see the lines that show where one object starts and ends

violation-of-expectancy

used to study infant cognition, and that if they observe something inconsistent with their prior knowledge, they become interested in it again

infants tend to reach for ________

objects in the dark; when a room suddenly becomes dark

optical expansion

a depth cue where as an object gets closer to us, it becomes larger

binocular disparity

the difference between the retinal image of an object in each eye sends slightly different signals to the brain; the closer the object, the greater the difference between signals

stereopsis

the visual process in which the eyes view two different things (binocular disparity), and the brain processes those signals to give depth perception this forms at about 4 months of age

monocular depth cues

depth perception of one eye; this develops around 6-7 months old. Also known as pictorial cues

infants prefer _______ singing

infant directed

infants pay more attention to a _______ of a piece of music

consonant version

Trainor & Trehub

Found that infants can observe more musical tone changes than adults, probably because they have less experience with western music

Perceptual narrowing

developmental changes in which experience fine-tunes the perceptual system ex: musical experience plays a role in developing musical abilities in infants

early exposure to _____ flavors plays a part in infant's later prefrences

bitter

timing of exposure to flavors

matters

infants can recognize their mothers' scents as early as

two days old

toddler's reject new foods due to

their smell, rather than taste

infants start with _____ exploration

oral once they gain control of hand/arm movements, they start exploring by manual touch

intermodal perception

combining info from two or more sensory systems

Examples of intermodel perception

infants can recognize images of pacifiers different than the one they were sucking on, and can pick out the audio from multiple videos, when presented two videos

the development of motor functions tend to _____

vary across cultures

affordances

possibilities for action which are offered by situations to encourage movement

infants that develop better motor skills might have a better ______ later in life

cognitive/perceptual skill

Reaching

Developed 3-4 months, and once infants start reaching, they can learn even more about their environments and the world

Self-locomotion

moving around the environment on thier own

scale errors

young children tend to interact with small replica items as if they were life-sized

grasp errors

children try to pick up 2D items

media errors

children try to pass through/receive items through a screen

Statical learning

infants prefer patterns of variability, not too easy or hard

Classical Conditioning

the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) becomes the conditioned response (CR), as a UCR (unconditioned response) is combined with the UCS to get a conditioned response (CS)

instrumental conditioning

children learn that one action causes another

Instrumental conditioning

infants can imitate behaviors they watch, varying by age

Observational Learning/immitation

infants can imitate behaviors they watch, and the ability of their imitation varies by age

Mirror neurons

help in observational learning, these neurons mirror behavior that are watched

Rational learning

using prior experience to predict what will occur in the future

Active learning

infants learn from acting in their world, and they learn more from surprising activities