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 neurotransmittersNeurotransmitters - chemicals released by terminal

buttons that allow neurons to communicateCerebral cortex - wrinkled surface of brain that

regulates many functions distinctly humanHemispheres - right and left halves of cortexCorpus collosum - thick bundle of neruons that connects

hemispheresFrontal 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 flexibleExperience-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 scientistsThough 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 orderThey learn that a certain stimulus is a signal for

what is going to happen nextInfants 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 waysVarious experiences contribute to emotionsCultural context plays a large role in emotional

expression

Measuring EmotionsFacial 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