Prenatal and Infant Development Quiz

Prenatal and Infant Development

• Human development examines continuity and change throughout life.

• Developmental psychologists often study younger children, as changes are significant during this period.

• Continuity refers to consistent aspects of human nature, like personality.

• Change can be gradual or abrupt, like learning to walk.

• Development encompasses sensation & perception (sensing and interpreting surroundings), cognition and language (thinking and communication), emotion (controlling and expressing feelings), and social/moral behavior (appropriate social interactions).

• Human development encompasses four major periods:

  • Prenatal period and infancy (conception to ~2-3 years)
  • Childhood (2-3 to 11 years)
  • Adolescence (12 to ~25 years - when brain maturation stops)
  • Adulthood(~25 years - death)

• Note: These ages are approximate as individuals develop on different timelines.

Warm-Up Exercise

• Most frequent earliest memories form between 3 and 4 years old.
• Early memories are often vague or non-existent, or they may be related to a strong emotional experience or high sensory input.

Early Experience in Infancy

• Experiencing the world in infancy influences development greatly, affecting language, food preferences, and other learned behaviors.

• In-utero experiences influence development.

  • Prenatal sounds, including mother's speech rhythm
  • Tactile sensations of the mother's movement
  • Tastes and smells in the womb, (e.g., preference for mother's food).

Prenatal Development

• Prenatal development occurs in three stages
  • Germinal stage (0-3 weeks): begins with conception, characterized by the zygote. Following implantation, the germinal stage ends.
  • Embryonic stage (3-8 weeks): a period of organ development.
  • Fetal stage (9 weeks to birth): focused on growth and maturation of bodily systems.

Developmental Process in Brain Development

• Neurogenesis: creation of neurons
• Myelination: refining neurons for smoother transmission
• Synaptogenesis: the creation of connections between neurons.
• Synaptic pruning: trimming of unused connections to make pathways more efficient.

Fetal Experience and Sensation

• The womb isn't wholly silent; fetuses can experience sounds and other stimuli.
• Fetal heartbeat responses change in reaction to external stimuli.
• Fetuses can recognize their mothers' voices and language.

Teratogens

• External factors can disrupt fetal development, including alcohol, drugs, and viruses.
• Critical and sensitive periods are times of intense development where exposure to teratogens can have significant effects.

Newborns and Beyond

• Infants primarily sleep, to facilitate development of their physical and cognitive skills
• Sleep amounts differ among new-borns.

Neonatal Sleep

• Sleep patterns change across different ages, with newborns requiring significantly more sleep than adults.
• Visual cues (visual acuity) and auditory (evoked responses), develop throughout early childhood.

Perceptual Development

• Sensation involves detecting physical stimuli; perception involves interpreting those signals.

Measuring Infant Perception

• Preferential looking tests observe infants' visual responses to different stimuli.
• Infants show visual preferences for stimuli their brains recognize as pleasing and familiar.

Motor Development

• Motor skills, like reflexes, develop alongside perceptual skills.