W3: Birth to Early Infant Development

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Questions and Answers

Which factor contributes to the decrease in REM sleep as infants develop?

Development of motor skills

Regulation of sleep patterns (correct)

Enhancement of visual acuity

Increase in sensory stimulation

What characteristic of stylised voices is typically used by adults when talking to babies?

Monotone with long pauses

Variable pitch and loudness (correct)

Constant speed without exaggeration

High volume and fast pace

What is one of the functions of stylised facial expressions when interacting with infants?

To avoid sensory overload

To initiate social interaction (correct)

To promote tactile perception

To encourage gustatory responses

Which activity is associated with the development of visual tracking in infants?

Peek-a-boo games Signup and view all the answers

What type of interaction is suggested to be innate in infants?

Temporal organisation of behaviour Signup and view all the answers

At what age do infants begin to develop manual tactile exploration?

By 4 months Signup and view all the answers

Which factor significantly influences an infant's preferences for tastes?

Food preferences linked to early taste exposure Signup and view all the answers

How can infants demonstrate their sensitivity to sound pertaining to language perception?

By turning their heads towards sounds at 1 month Signup and view all the answers

What is a primary method used to study olfactory preferences in newborns?

Head turning towards breast pads of mothers Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following correctly describes infants' crying as a communication tool?

Different cries can signal various needs and emotions Signup and view all the answers

What type of sound are infants most likely to prefer?

Sound frequencies similar to the human voice Signup and view all the answers

What is the primary sensory response observed in newborns when tasting something sweet?

Slight smile and expression of satisfaction Signup and view all the answers

In cross-modal perception, infants are likely to do which of the following?

Turn towards sounds they find interesting. Signup and view all the answers

What role does touch play in the emotional development of newborns?

It is important for environmental exploration and emotional development. Signup and view all the answers

Which sensory focus is primarily developed in newborns for feeding?

Tactile perception Signup and view all the answers

At what distance do newborns best focus their vision?

20 - 25 cm Signup and view all the answers

What is a key factor influencing an infant's ability to discriminate between different sounds?

Auditory exposure Signup and view all the answers

How do infants demonstrate their olfactory preferences shortly after birth?

By recognizing familiar scents from prenatal exposure Signup and view all the answers

What develops rapidly within the first few months of an infant's life concerning visual perception?

Color vision Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following reflects a newborn's capability in auditory perception?

Recognition of their mother's voice Signup and view all the answers

What implication does maturation have on motor development in infants?

It is necessary but insufficient. Signup and view all the answers

What do newborns prefer to gaze at when first born?

Faces with complex features Signup and view all the answers

What aspect of postural stability is fundamental for motor development?

Vestibular and proprioceptive information Signup and view all the answers

What is a characteristic visual response seen in 2-month-old infants?

They scan more extensively but fixate on edges. Signup and view all the answers

What does the first stage of labour involve?

Contractions of uterus to dilate the cervix Signup and view all the answers

What are some risks during birth for the infant?

Both prematurity and hypoxia Signup and view all the answers

What are some examples of how delivery practices and setting can impact the infant? (Select all that apply)

Impact of contraction/expulsion can stimulate infant respiratory function Signup and view all the answers

What does the APGAR test assess?

Appearance, Pulse, Grimace response, Activity, Respiration Signup and view all the answers

What is ontogenic development?

The development of an individual organism from conception to maturity Signup and view all the answers

What is the name of the model that refers to how stressors add together until a threshold is reached above which problematic outcomes occur?

Cumulative Stress Model Signup and view all the answers

What is the name of the model that describes developmental outcome as the result of the combined effects of stressors and protective factors?

Additive Main Effects Model Signup and view all the answers

The progression of locomotor development from gross to fine movements is described as:

Ortho-genetic Signup and view all the answers

What is the correct order of these gross motor milestones?

Head control in prone, rolling over, propping, crawling, sitting Signup and view all the answers

Which is not an example of fine motor development?

Running Signup and view all the answers

Which are methods of assessing infant perceptual abilities?

Visual preference technique Signup and view all the answers

At what age do infants typically start to distinguish facial expressions?

3 months Signup and view all the answers

At 4 months, infants shift from oral exploration to...

Tactile Exploration Signup and view all the answers

What are the characteristics of affect attunement?

Some form of matching affective state Signup and view all the answers

What is the primary function of the NBO in relation to infants?

To promote engagement with the caregiver Signup and view all the answers

Which characteristic is true regarding the sensory development of newborns compared to older infants?

Newborns have greater oral sensitivity than tactile Signup and view all the answers

Which assessment tool is specifically designated as a clinical evaluation for infants?

The NBAS Signup and view all the answers

What fundamental aspect distinguishes newborn sensory capabilities from those of older infants?

Newborns have greater oral sensitivity than tactile sensitivity Signup and view all the answers

Why is the NBAS essential in clinical settings?

It helps to assess and identify developmental progress in infants Signup and view all the answers

Study Notes

Fine Motor Development

Progression from reflexes to voluntary movements
Grasp reflex integrates into voluntary release
Swipe and palmar grasp transitions to pincer grasp
Trunk stability is crucial for fine and gross motor development
Second year marks voluntary and controlled release, enabling block tower building and scribbling

Maturation vs. Practice/Learning

Maturationist view emphasizes genetic programming and universal unfolding
Practice and environment influence the timing of development
Deprived infants demonstrate the importance of environmental stimulation
Cultural rearing practices can both restrict and enhance motor development
Maturation is essential, but not sufficient for optimal development

Postural Stability

Intermodal perception integrates visual, kinaesthetic, and vestibular information for postural reflexes
Vision is fundamental for postural stability
Early intervention is crucial for addressing developmental motor problems. Examples include postural experiences and scooter boards.

Sensory Processes

Perception involves interpreting sensory input from sensory organs
Mouth, hands, eyes, nose, ears, vestibular system, and kinaesthesis (proprioception) are key sensory modalities
Kinaesthesis refers to knowing where your body is in space through joint and stretch receptors

Assessing Infant Perceptual Abilities

Preferential looking paradigms observe infants' gaze preferences
Habituation paradigms assess infants' responses to repeated stimuli
Visual cliff paradigm tests depth perception
Conditioning paradigms examine learned associations between stimuli and responses

Vision (1): Patterns & Contrasts

Visual scanning tracks infants' eye movements
Newborns have limited visual acuity, focusing on patterns and contrasts, especially edges.
Colour vision develops rapidly in the first few months
Two-month-olds scan more extensively, but still focus on contours and edges

Vision (2): Face Perception

Newborns are drawn to faces, particularly those exhibiting movement, edges, solidity, and complexity.
Two-month-old infants, but not one-month-olds, distinguish and prefer natural faces, including their mothers' faces.
Facial expression recognition develops between 3 and 6 months.

Vision (3): Depth Perception

Depth perception is a crucial aspect of visual development that allows infants to perceive the world in 3D.

Hearing & Auditory Perception (1)

Newborns can distinguish the human voice
Unborn fetuses can hear their mothers' voices, and neonates show preference for their mothers' voices by 4 days old.
Familiar stories are recognized after prenatal exposure
By 6 months, infants can discriminate pitch, tempo, contour, rhythm, and melody.

Hearing & Auditory Perception (2)

Infants are sensitive to sounds related to language perception, specifically phonemes
Habituation paradigms, such as the "Pa... Ba" experiment, demonstrate this sensitivity
Newborns can localize sounds
They prefer patterned sounds within the human voice frequency range
By 1 month, they can distinguish between different sounds

Olfaction (Smell)

Olfaction is highly acute at birth
Head turning is used to assess infants' preference for their mothers' breast pads
Two-day-olds respond randomly, while 6-day-olds and older infants consistently turn toward their mothers' breast pads.

Taste

Newborns can discriminate among basic taste qualities
Sweetness elicits satisfaction, smiling, and sucking
Sourness triggers lip-pursing, nose wrinkling, and blinking
Bitterness results in dislike, spitting, and vomiting movements
Early taste exposure may influence food preferences

Touch, Temperature, Pain

Touch is crucial for exploration and emotional development.
Newborns primarily explore orally, but manual exploration emerges by 4 months
Manual tactile exploration becomes dominant after 4 months.
Tactile sensitivity is demonstrated through reflexes.
Infants are sensitive to temperature and experience pain.
Recent research using MRI imaging shows that infants do feel pain, and their threshold may be lower than that of adults.
Stroking provides pain relief.

Intermodal perception combines information from different senses for a richer perceptual experience
Infants reach toward objects that are visually interesting
They turn towards sounds of interest to visually locate the source
They mouth objects that capture their visual and tactile attention.

Combining information from different senses creates "amodal" representations
Classic pacifier experiments demonstrate this integration (Melzoff & Burton, 1979)
Infants suck on a dummy with a distinctive shape/texture
They then look longer at pictures of the dummy they have sucked on.

Parent Child Reciprocal Interaction

Parent-child interaction is vital for infants' development.

Crying

Crying is a universal survival mechanism, but variations exist
Different cries communicate different needs.
Cultural and cohort differences influence beliefs about crying and soothing practices.
Crying reflects a developmental trajectory and individual differences.
Distressed infants often have compromised learning abilities.
Regulation of crying is critical.

Sleeping

Establishing an organized sleep-wake pattern is a key developmental task in the first three months
Infants have short sleep/wake cycles that lengthen gradually
Cultural differences exist in beliefs about night waking and co-sleeping practices
Young infants spend more time in REM sleep, which decreases as they develop
Sleep regulates sensory stimulation
"Witching hour" fussiness is often attributed to overstimulation.

Stylised Voices

Adults communicate with babies through stereotypical, stylized voices
This includes raised pitch, exaggerated pitch and loudness changes, slow speed, and long pauses.

Stylised Facial Expressions (1)

Adults use exaggerated facial expressions to initiate, maintain, and terminate interactions.
These expressions include mock surprise, smiles, frowns, head aversion, gaze aversion, and neutral faces.

Stylised Facial Expressions (2)

Stylized facial expressions are exaggerated in space and time.
They are limited in repertoire and universal, forming part of "games" adults play with babies.
Peek-a-boo and surprise games aid gross motor skills, visual tracking, social development, regulation, and object permanence.

Synchronised Interactions

There is a natural temporal organization to infant behavior.
Adults adapt their communication to match infants' rhythms.

Infant Sleep

REM sleep decreases as infants develop due to brain maturation.

Infant Communication

Stylized voices used by adults when talking to babies are typically characterized by higher pitch, exaggerated intonation, and slower speech rate.
Stylized facial expressions help infants understand and interpret emotions.
Visual tracking develops through activities like following a moving object with the eyes.
Social interaction is believed to be innate in infants.

Infant Development

Manual tactile exploration begins around 4 months.
Infant taste preferences are significantly influenced by prenatal exposure to flavors through the mother's diet.
Infants demonstrate their sensitivity to sound pertaining to language perception by preferring their native language.
The primary method for studying olfactory preferences in newborns is "sniffing" tests.
Crying is a multifaceted communication tool used by infants to express hunger, discomfort, and need for attention.
Infants tend to prefer sounds with higher pitches and frequencies, which is why they often react to musical tones.
When tasting something sweet, newborns exhibit a primary sensory response of sucking and lip smacking.
Cross-modal perception allows infants to integrate information from different sensory modalities, such as linking a visual object with a sound.
Touch plays a crucial role in emotional development by fostering feelings of security and bonding.
Feeding is primarily developed using the sense of touch, particularly for sucking and swallowing.
Newborns best focus their vision at a distance of 8-12 inches (20-30cm).
The ability to discriminate between sounds is influenced by the infant's developing auditory system.
Infants demonstrate olfactory preferences shortly after birth by turning their heads towards familiar scents.
Visual perception develops rapidly during the first few months of life.
Newborns are capable of hearing a wide range of sounds and recognizing familiar voices.
Maturation of the nervous system plays a crucial role in motor development.
Newborns prefer to gaze at faces when first born.
Postural stability is fundamental for motor development, enabling infants to maintain balance and control their bodies.
At 2 months, infants exhibit a "visual cliff" response, demonstrating their developing depth perception.

Birth Process

The first stage of labor involves contractions that dilate the cervix.
**Risks during birth for the infant include premature birth, low birth weight, and birth injuries.
Delivery practices and setting can impact the infant in various ways:
- Cesarean births can affect the infant's microbiome.
- Natural childbirth can expose the infant to beneficial bacteria.
- Medical interventions like episiotomies may impact the infant's vaginal microbiome.

Assessment Tools

The APGAR test assesses the infant's physical condition at birth by measuring heart rate, breathing, muscle tone, reflex irritability, and color.
Ontogenic development refers to the process of individual development and maturation, focusing on the changes and interactions between biological, psychological, and social factors.
The "thresholder model" refers to how stressors add together until a threshold is reached above which problematic outcomes occur.
The "interactive model describes developmental outcomes resulting from the combined effects of stressors and protective factors.
The progression of locomotor development from gross to fine movements is described as cephalocaudal development.
The correct order of these gross motor milestones is rolling, sitting, crawling, standing, walking.
Drawing is an example of fine motor development.

Infant Cognitive Abilities

Methods of assessing infant perceptual abilities include habituation, preferential looking, and elicited imitation.
Infants typically start to distinguish facial expressions around 4 months.
At 4 months, infants shift from oral exploration to manual exploration.

Infant Interactions

Affect attunement is the synchronization of emotional responses between an infant and caregiver.
The NBO's primary function in relation to infants is to assess neurological development and identify potential issues.
Newborns have a limited sensory range compared to older infants as their systems continue to develop.
The Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS) is specifically designated as a clinical evaluation tool for infants.
The fundamental aspect distinguishing newborn sensory capabilities from those of older infants is the level of maturation and integration of sensory systems.
The NBAS is essential in clinical settings because it provides valuable information about the infant's neurological health, behavioral patterns, and overall well-being.

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Description

Explore the key concepts of fine motor development, including the progression from reflexes to voluntary movements, and the role of postural stability. This quiz covers aspects such as the significance of maturation and environmental influences on motor skills. Additionally, learn about early intervention strategies for developmental motor issues.