Infant and Child Exam 2 PDF

Exam 2 Ch (1 – 9, emphasis on 5 – 9) EXAM REVIEW Chapters 1-5 ○ Birth and post-natal/neonatal period Labor: stage 1 – cervix thins and dilates; stage 2 - birth occurs; stage 3 - placenta delivered ○ APGAR screening: appearance, pulse, grimace, activity an...

Exam 2 Ch (1 – 9, emphasis on 5 – 9) EXAM REVIEW Chapters 1-5 ○ Birth and post-natal/neonatal period Labor: stage 1 – cervix thins and dilates; stage 2 - birth occurs; stage 3 - placenta delivered ○ APGAR screening: appearance, pulse, grimace, activity and respiration – ○ Motor & perceptual development ○ Milestones ○ Developmental cascades Chapter 5-7 ○ Prenatal development: germinal, embryonic, fetal stages Fetal development – heart, lungs and brain mature more slowly Fetal survival: at 22 weeks a small number will survive with high tech care (4 months early) At 28 weeks, many will survive (2.5 months, 10 weeks early) Fetal programming: epigenetic changes from nutritional stress, maternal stress Maternal substance use harms the developing fetus: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is most obvious Pre-natal care can minimize prematurity, maternal and infant morbidity and mortality Major Topics in Cognitive Development ○ Piaget’s theory and its limitations ○ Core knowledge theory: infants as prepared learners Areas critical to survival throughout human evolutionary history Children are active learners, constantly striving to solve problems and to organize understanding into coherent wholes Well equipped learners Infants enter the world with specialized learning abilities that allow rapid effortless learning of information of adaptive importance, eg, face perception and language ○ Information processing theory: development of memory and attention Adult memory is frequently characterized in terms of explicit or declarative memory (semantic and episodic), implicit or procedural memory and working memory Basic memory processes are encoding, retention, and retrieval Retrieval – recall and recognition Long-observed phenomenon of “infantile amnesia” needs explanation ○ Dynamic Systems/Developmental systems ○ Influences on cognitive development, interventions ○ Developmental cascades Sensorimotor Stages ○ Spans the first two years of life ○ Infants and toddlers “think” with their sensory and motor equipment Initial reflexes are transformed by learning  ○ Piaget believed the very young infant had no capability of mental representation of its experience ○ Six substages ○ Reflexive schemes (birth–1 month) Circular reactions—repeating chance behaviors: 1. Primary circular reactions: (1–4 months): simple motor habits centered around the infant’s own body 2. Secondary circular reactions (4–8 months): imitation of familiar behaviors and interesting effects; no understanding of object permanence, fail hidden object task 3. Coordination of secondary circular reactions (8–12 months): intentional, or goal-directed, behavior; A – not –B error 4. Tertiary circular reactions (12–18 months): simple means ends analysis; exploring objects by acting on them in novel ways 1. Mental representation (18 months–2 years): internal depictions of objects or events, images and words Key Terms 1. Productive Language Cooing: Begins around 2-3 months; infants make cooing sounds like "oo" and "ah." This marks early vocal exploration. Babbling: Starts around 4-6 months; infants produce repetitive consonant-vowel combinations (e.g., "ba-ba" or "da-da"). This phase is crucial for developing speech sounds. First Words: Typically emerge around 12 months. These are often simple words like "mama," "dada," or "ball," signifying the first steps toward meaningful communication. Vegetative sounds: grunts, burps, sucking sounds Crying: initially distress signals, become more communicative Coos (“ahhh” and “ooo”) (~2 to 3 months) Babbles or canonical syllables (“bo-bo” “ma-ma” “da-da”) (~6 to 7 months) Conventional “words” (~12 months) First 10 – 12 words common across many cultures Hearing impairment and deafness 2. Sentence Comprehension and Production Sentence Comprehension: Refers to a child’s ability to understand spoken sentences, which develops significantly in the second year. By 18-24 months, toddlers can follow simple commands (e.g., “Give me the ball”). Sentence Production: Involves the ability to form sentences. By age 2, children start combining words (e.g., "want cookie"), gradually developing more complex structures. 3. Phonemic Tuning This process occurs around 6-12 months when infants begin to fine-tune their ability to differentiate sounds specific to their native language, losing sensitivity to sounds not present in their language environment. 4. Statistical Learning Children use statistical learning to pick up on patterns in language. For example, they might notice which sounds frequently occur together, helping them identify word boundaries in speech. Underextension: The mapping of words to an overly narrow class of objects (example: saying “truck” only to a toy truck) 5. Word Comprehension Word Segmentation: Infants learn to identify where words begin and end in speech. This skill typically develops around 7-9 months. Learning Words: Children often learn new words through context and repetition. By age 2, they might understand about 200 words. Referents: The relationship between words and their meanings (e.g., a child understands that “dog” refers to a specific animal). 6. Research Methods Methods include longitudinal studies, cross-sectional studies, and experiments involving observation and recordings of child interactions to track language development over time. 7. Word Production, Use, Errors in Use, Understanding Word Production: The actual verbalization of words, starting around 12 months. Use: Refers to how children apply words in context. Errors in Use: Common during early stages; for example, overextensions (calling all four-legged animals "dog") or underextensions (using "dog" only for their pet). Understanding: Children may understand more words than they can produce, showing a gap between comprehension and production. 8. Social Cues for Language Children pick up on social cues, such as eye gaze and gestures, to understand communication and word meanings. Interaction with caregivers is crucial for language learning. Socioeconomic status ○ Hart & Risley (1995) conducted longitudinal study of parent-child talk in Kansas ○ Infants between 10 and 36 months ○ Language inputs were compared to language inputs of welfare families ○ The “30-million word gap” by age 4 9. Cognitive Biases in Word Learning Children may exhibit biases like the "whole object bias," where they assume that new words refer to whole objects rather than parts or attributes. 10. Language Exposure The amount and quality of language exposure affect development. Frequent, rich interactions with caregivers promote better vocabulary and comprehension skills. Tasks of early language development: Learning the sound discriminations that are important Segmenting the speech stream into words Learning the referents of words Learning to communicate without words Learning to approximate words Learning to understand and produce more and more words Speaking in single words, two-word sentences, longer sentences 11. Bilingualism Bilingual children often develop language skills in two languages simultaneously, leading to unique advantages such as enhanced cognitive flexibility and metalinguistic awareness. Dual-language learners (DLL): Children who learn 2 languages because they are exposed to a native language at home that differs from the language of the community Similar and unique language processes in children learning multiple languages Similar growth rates in vocabulary; similar total vocabulary size 12. Maternal Use of Mental State Verbs and Emotion Words Mothers who frequently use verbs related to thoughts and emotions (e.g., “think,” “feel”) help children develop a deeper understanding of mental states, enhancing social and emotional language skills. 13. Language Milestones These are developmental benchmarks, such as cooing (2-3 months), babbling (4-6 months), first words (around 12 months), and combining words (around 2 years). 14. Vocabulary Explosions Typically occurring around 18-24 months, this is when children rapidly increase their vocabulary, sometimes learning new words at an astonishing rate (up to 10-20 new words a week). 15. Developmental Cascades from Language Development Language development can influence other areas, such as social skills and cognitive development. For example, a strong vocabulary can enhance reading skills later on. Prenatally: learning sounds and rhythms of mother’s language Phonemic tuning takes place in second half of first year Word segmentation made easier by IDT; statistical learning plays a major role  1. Piaget: Object Permanence, A-not-B Task Object Permanence: This is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they are not visible. Piaget suggested that this concept develops around 8-12 months. A-not-B Task: In this task, an object is hidden in location A several times, then moved to location B. If an infant searches at A despite having seen it moved to B, it demonstrates a lack of understanding of object permanence. ○ Possible reasons for failure… Co-ordinating memory with movement with unfamiliar situation Cognitive interpretation: Learned response becomes “prepotent” or dominant, infant must maintain location in working memory AND inhibit the learned response Social interpretation: Grownup wants me to reach to location A 2. Infant Memory, Categorization Infant Memory: Infants have a form of memory that allows them to recognize familiar faces or objects. Research shows that even young infants can remember experiences for short periods. Categorization: Infants can categorize objects based on shared features (e.g., color, shape) as early as 3-4 months, helping them make sense of their environment. 3. Nativist Theories Nativist theories suggest that certain cognitive abilities are innate and develop independently of experience. For example, the ability to understand basic concepts of physics or biology may be hardwired into the brain. 4. Understanding Quantity and Number Infants show a rudimentary understanding of quantity; studies have demonstrated that they can differentiate between small sets of objects. This ability develops into more complex numerical understanding as they grow. 5. Baillargeon’s Methods & Findings Renée Baillargeon's research on object permanence involved looking at infants’ reactions to unexpected events (like a moving screen that appears to pass through an object). Her findings suggest that infants have a more sophisticated understanding of object permanence earlier than Piaget proposed. 6. Information Processing Approaches to Cognitive Development This approach likens the mind to a computer, focusing on how children process, store, and retrieve information. It emphasizes mechanisms like attention, memory, and problem-solving strategies.  7. Planning and Problem Solving As children grow, they develop the ability to plan and solve problems. Around age 3-4, they begin to engage in more complex planning, like using tools or strategizing to achieve goals. 8. Effortful Control of Attention, Executive Functions Effortful Control: This refers to the ability to regulate attention and manage impulses, crucial for cognitive development. ○ In infants: stimulus detection, stimulus orienting, sustained attention, attention termination Orientation: head turn, heart rate deceleration Sustained attention: infant processes information, learns, brain is active, heart rate is slow Termination: heart rate returns to normal, brain activity patterns change Executive Functions: Skills such as working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control develop throughout early childhood and are essential for academic success and self-regulation. ○ Stimulus salience– intensity, complexity, familiarity, repetition ○ Ability to control, e.g. eye movements ○ Joint attention experiences with caretakers, intersubjectivity ○ Speed of habituation Indexes speed of learning, memory, predictive of later learning Premature infants habituate more slowly than full term Parents help toddlers and infants learn attentional control ○ Infants gradually improve in attentional control and the speed at which they take in information ○ Adults can foster sustained attention through joint attention encouraging babies’ current interest prompting the child to stay focused, elaborating on details ○ Benefits of joint attention experience toddlers more capable of intentional behavior attraction to novelty declines sustained attention improves 9. Social Cognition: Roles of Motor and Language Development Social cognition involves understanding others' thoughts, feelings, and intentions. Motor skills (like pointing) and language development (like naming) play critical roles in fostering social interactions and understanding. Understanding the intent of others ○ Woodward’s reaching studies ○ 9 months, can distinguish between accidental and deliberate actions in failing to give a toy, and respond differently Understanding reactions Understanding the minds of others, is limited to intent, desire Sensitive parenting and use of language  10. Developmental/Dynamic Systems Approach to Cognitive Development This approach views cognitive development as a complex interplay of various factors (biological, social, environmental) that change dynamically over time. It emphasizes how these elements influence one another. 11. Socio-Cultural Approaches, Vygotsky's Theories Vygotsky emphasized the importance of social interaction and culture in cognitive development. He proposed concepts like the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), which suggests that children learn best with guidance from more knowledgeable others. 12. Joint Attention, Intersubjectivity Joint Attention: This occurs when two individuals focus on the same object or event, facilitating learning and communication. It usually emerges around 9 months. Intersubjectivity: Refers to the shared understanding between individuals during interactions, crucial for language learning and social cognition. 13. Factors That Promote/Impede Cognitive Development Promote: Rich language exposure, supportive caregiving, engaging activities, and social interactions enhance cognitive growth. Impediments: Factors like neglect, low socio-economic status, limited stimulation, or adverse environments can hinder cognitive development. 1. Attachment: Stages, Categories, Internal Working Model Stages of Attachment: ○ Pre-attachment (0-2 months): Infants exhibit innate signals (crying, cooing) to attract caregivers. ○ Attachment in Making (2-6 months): Infants begin to form preferences for familiar caregivers. ○ Clear-Cut Attachment (6-18 months): Attachment to a primary caregiver becomes evident, and separation anxiety may occur. ○ Formation of Reciprocal Relationships (18 months+): Children start to understand caregivers' feelings and negotiate interactions. Categories of Attachment (based on Ainsworth’s Strange Situation): ○ Secure: Comfortable with exploration, uses caregiver as a secure base. ○ Insecure-Avoidant: Avoids or ignores the caregiver, shows little emotion upon separation or reunion. ○ Insecure-Resistant (Ambivalent): Clingy, resistant to separation, shows anxiety but is not comforted upon reunion. ○ Disorganized: Displays contradictory behaviors, often due to inconsistent caregiving. Internal Working Model: This refers to the mental framework that shapes how individuals perceive relationships based on their early attachment experiences. It influences expectations and interactions in future relationships.  2. Strange Situation The Strange Situation is a structured observational study developed by Mary Ainsworth to assess attachment styles in children. It involves a series of separations and reunions between the child and caregiver, revealing the child’s attachment behavior and strategy for seeking comfort. 3. Key Figures in Attachment Theory John Bowlby: Proposed that attachment is an evolutionary mechanism critical for survival, emphasizing the bond between mother and child. Mary Ainsworth: Developed the Strange Situation and identified different attachment styles through empirical observation. Harry Harlow: Conducted experiments with rhesus monkeys, demonstrating the importance of comfort and security over basic needs (e.g., feeding). Rene Spitz: Studied the effects of maternal deprivation in orphanages, highlighting the detrimental impact of lack of maternal care on development. 4. Temperament Theories Chess & Thomas: Identified three types of temperament—easy, difficult, and slow to warm up—based on children's behavior patterns and emotional responses. Rothbart: Proposed a model with dimensions of temperament including reactivity (sensitivity) and self-regulation (effortful control). Kagan: Focused on behavioral inhibition, identifying a temperamental trait characterized by shyness and withdrawal in unfamiliar situations. Characteristic ways of reacting Chess & Thomas: Easy, difficult, slow-to-warm-up babies Rothbart’s six dimensions (different in different papers), five focusing on reactivity, one on self-regulation ○ Activity level ○ Attention span/persistence ○ Fearful distress ○ Irritable distress ○ Positive affect ○ Effortful control: called orienting/regulation in infancy Grouped into negative reactivity, surgency, and orienting regulation 5. Effects of Deprivation of Maternal Care Children deprived of maternal care can experience various negative outcomes, such as attachment disorders, emotional difficulties, and cognitive delays. Long-term effects can include increased anxiety, depression, and social difficulties. 6. Parental Sensitivity, Affection, Responsiveness, and Self-Regulation Parental Sensitivity: Refers to caregivers’ ability to perceive and respond appropriately to their child’s needs, crucial for fostering secure attachment. Affection: Physical and emotional warmth provided by caregivers promotes emotional security.  Responsiveness: The ability to respond to a child’s cues fosters trust and emotional regulation. Self-Regulation: The development of self-control in children is influenced by parental modeling and responsiveness. ○ Infant feelings can become too intense – parents’ job is to regulate the environment to reduce stimulation, and soothe the baby ○ Self-soothing may emerge ~ 3 months as baby shifts attention away from an unpleasant or too stimulating event ○ Look away, suck thumb or pacifier ○ Older infant may have a comfort object – blanket or toy ○ Parental sensitive response promotes earlier and more effective development of self-regulation 7. Sequence of Recognition of Emotional Expressions Infants can recognize basic emotional expressions (happy, sad, angry) from about 3-6 months. By 7-12 months, they begin to produce their own emotional expressions in response to social interactions. 8. Maternal Use of Mental State Verbs and Emotion Words Mothers who frequently use mental state verbs (e.g., "think," "know") and emotion words (e.g., "happy," "sad") help children develop a deeper understanding of their own emotions and the emotions of others, fostering social and emotional competence. 9. Cultural Differences in Attachment and Emotional Expressiveness Attachment styles and emotional expressiveness can vary across cultures. For example, collectivist cultures may emphasize interdependence and emotional restraint, while individualist cultures may promote independence and emotional expression. 10. Secure Base A secure base is a caregiver's presence that provides safety and security, allowing the child to explore their environment and return for comfort and support. This concept is central to attachment theory. 11. Developmental Cascades from Attachment Attachment can lead to cascades of development in various domains. Secure attachment can foster positive social relationships, emotional regulation, and cognitive development, while insecure attachment may lead to difficulties in these areas, creating a ripple effect throughout a child’s development. Emotional Range in neonates and infants ○ Discomfort and comfort ○ Facial expressions to taste stimuli reflect emotion-like states pleasure, disgust, rejection(bitterness) ○ True social smiles emerge ~ 6 weeks, laughter ~3 to 4 months ○ Imitation with parent, face to face interaction varies culturally  ○ Happiness, anger, sadness, and fear are more frequently studied than surprise, interest and disgust Expression of NEGATIVE emotions differentiate after 1 year ○ Generalized distress ○ Anger usually emerges ~ 4 months with frequency and intensity of expression increasing ○ Usually in response to some frustration ○ Sadness is generally less frequent ○ Fear increases in second half of first year, most frequently to strangers ○ Culture influences expression/suppression of emotion 1. Growth Rates and Physical Changes Children experience rapid growth in early childhood, with height and weight increasing significantly. Growth rates tend to slow down as they enter middle childhood, but puberty brings another surge in growth, with varying onset ages. Key physical changes include: Early Childhood (2-6 years): Steady growth in height and weight; improved motor skills and coordination. Middle Childhood (6-12 years): Slower, more gradual growth; body proportions begin to change. Adolescence (12-18 years): Growth spurts, development of secondary sexual characteristics, and changes in body composition. 2. Secular Trends Secular trends refer to long-term changes in health and growth patterns over generations. For example: In many countries, children are taller and heavier than in previous generations, often attributed to improved nutrition, health care, and living conditions. The onset of puberty has been observed to occur earlier in some populations, possibly linked to factors like nutrition and environmental influences. 3. Lead Poisoning Lead poisoning remains a significant public health concern, particularly for young children. Exposure can occur through lead-based paint, contaminated water, or soil. Consequences include: Cognitive impairments Behavioral issues Developmental delays Regular screening and public health interventions are essential to prevent lead exposure and its harmful effects. 4. Brain Development Childhood is a critical period for brain development, characterized by: Neuroplasticity: The brain’s ability to reorganize itself based on experiences. Synaptic Pruning: Elimination of excess synapses, enhancing efficiency. Critical Periods: Certain skills (e.g., language, vision) develop best during specific time frames. 5. Eating Patterns and Problems Healthy eating patterns in childhood are crucial for growth and development. Common issues include: Childhood Obesity: Increasing prevalence due to poor dietary habits and lack of physical activity. Picky Eating: Common in young children; can lead to nutrient deficiencies if not managed. Promoting balanced diets and healthy eating habits is essential for preventing obesity and associated health risks. 6. Sleep Patterns and Problems Sleep is vital for growth and cognitive development. Typical sleep patterns include: Infants (0-12 months): 14-17 hours a day, including naps. Toddlers (1-3 years): 12-14 hours, with one or two naps. Preschoolers (3-5 years): 10-13 hours, often including a nap. Common sleep problems include insomnia, night terrors, and sleep apnea, which can affect behavior and learning. 7. Illness and Mortality, Global Patterns Childhood illnesses vary globally, influenced by factors like socioeconomic status and access to healthcare. Common concerns include: Infectious Diseases: Such as pneumonia and diarrhea, especially in low-income countries. Chronic Conditions: Like asthma and obesity, prevalent in high-income countries. Mortality rates have decreased significantly due to improved healthcare and vaccinations, but disparities persist. 8. Vaccination Vaccination is crucial for preventing childhood diseases. Key points include: Importance: Vaccines protect against serious illnesses like measles, mumps, and whooping cough. Herd Immunity: Widespread vaccination helps protect those who cannot be vaccinated, such as infants or immunocompromised individuals. Challenges: Vaccine hesitancy and misinformation can lead to lower immunization rates and outbreaks of preventable diseases. 9. Child Maltreatment Child maltreatment includes physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect. It has severe consequences, including: Physical and Emotional Harm: Long-term effects on mental health, social functioning, and cognitive development. Intervention: Early identification and intervention are crucial for protecting children and providing support to families at risk. Preventative measures include education, community support programs, and strong child protection policies. Chapter Summaries: Chapter 5 ○ Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development During the sensorimotor stage of development, infants progress through 6 substages marked by changes in the ways they act on their environments, moving from spontaneous actions involving only the body, to repeating their actions, to intentional actions with objects, to the coordination of actions to achieve a goal, to generating new objects to solve problems, and finally the ability to mentally represent and reason about objects and actions independent of the self. During each of the substages, infants advance in their understanding and reasoning about objects in the physical world, until their attainment of object permanence and other forms of mental representation at substage 6. Piaget introduced the A-not-B task to show that the infant’s failure on object permanence tasks—as signaled by a failure to find an object that is hidden in a new location—can be attributed to a lack of reasoning about the continued existence of objects. Infants’ achievement of mental representation is seen in object permanence, deferred imitation, language, and pretend play. ○ Nativist Tests of Infant Core Capacities Nativists assert that infants are cognitively capable of much more than Piaget claimed. Using methods primarily based on visual looking time—including violation-of-expectation experiments—infants are thought to have core capacities in their understanding of object permanence, object solidity and substance, gravity and support, and number. The nativist tradition has been challenged for over-crediting infants with cognitive understanding; alternative interpretations are based largely on low-level perceptual processes. ○ Developmental Systems Insights into Cognitive Performance  Developmental systems theorists show that infant performance on cognitive tasks, such as the A-not-B task, depends on multiple factors, rather than merely the capacity for representation (Piaget) or core knowledge (nativist). When researchers modify the A-not-B task, such as modifying the sensory feedback of infants’ actions or changing the task itself, infants’ performance changes in turn. ○ Information Processing: Attention in Cognition Information processing theorists emphasize infant attention, encoding, and memory for information, and draw analogies between human learning and computers. According to information processing accounts of cognitive development, gradual changes occur with age in children’s cognitive structures and cognitive processes. Infants exhibit four types of attention and are most likely to learn information when they are in a phase of sustained attention. Infants have difficulty with selective attention, as shown in visual search tasks. With age, selective attention improves. Infants’ limited selective attention is best viewed as adaptive, allowing infants to learn a lot about their new worlds during a period of rapid brain growth. Habituation tasks test infants’ speed of information processing and rebound of attention to novel stimuli. Younger infants are slower at processing information on habituation tasks than are older infants. And preterm infants are slower than are term infants. Three common methods used to test infant memory are habituation-recovery studies, conjugate mobile experiments, and deferred imitation tasks. Between birth and around 2.5 years of age, infants improve in how long they remember information, how flexibly they retrieve information, and the number of details they remember about stimuli or events. ○ Contexts of Cognitive Development Home experiences, including the quantity of support and stimulation provided for infants, aspects of family organization and routines, and the involvement of family members relate to infant cognitive performance. Infants from low-income households experience less stimulating home environments, on average, and in turn show delays to cognitive performance on standardized assessments. The Carolina Abecedarian Project and Early Head Start are interventions that show positive impacts on the cognitive performance of  infants assigned to the treatment group relative to infants in a control group. Cultural context influences the types of objects with which infants engage, and the sophistication of infants’ actions with those objects. ○ Understanding Others’ Attention Social-cognitive development refers to how children process, store, and apply information about people and social situations. Developmentalists consider infants’ understanding of the psychological states of attention (including interest and joint attention), goals and intentions, and knowledge of self and others to be building blocks to later, mature forms of social cognition. Infants follow other people’s gaze and points to objects of interest, both of which indicate a desire to share attention with others. ○ Understanding Others’ Actions, Knowledge, and Beliefs Infants imitate other people’s intentional actions but not accidental actions, suggesting that they understand the intentions (goals) of others. Infants’ behaviors on false-belief tasks, such as signaling when a person believes an object is in the wrong box, are thought to indicate an early understanding of others’ minds, although some researchers challenge the idea that infants understand false belief. ○ Contexts of Social Cognition The quality of caregivers’ interactions with infants predicts individual differences in infants’ social-cognitive development. Cross-cultural investigations indicate that infants from dramatically different rearing environments exhibit similar levels of social-cognitive skills (when considering basic skills such as achieving joint attention with an adult, imitating others’ actions, inferring others’ intentions and goals, and helping others to achieve their goals). Thus, the early building blocks in social-cognitive skills may be universal, even if acquired in different ways and showing later differences with continued cultural experiences. ○ Developmental Cascades Individual differences among infants in information processing and cognitive tasks (such as approximating numbers) relate to cognitive skills years later, including how children perform on cognitive tasks through early adolescence. Infants’ social-cognitive skills are associated with their responsiveness to other people, inferences about how others will interact, memory, and language development. Chapter 6 ○ Phonological Development: Learning Speech Sounds  The four key components of a language are sounds (phonology), words (semantics), grammatical rules (syntax), and sociocultural norms and conventions around the use of language (pragmatics). Very young infants can perceive and discriminate among the phonemes of their language. Over time and with experience, infants become less able to discriminate among sounds that are phonemic in other languages but not their native language, which is known as perceptual narrowing. Infants’ ability to produce sounds rapidly grows over the first years of life. They move from crying to producing coos, then babbles, and ultimately conventional words that contain a range of consonant and vowel combinations. Infants identify words in speech and map words to objects and events in the world through a basic and powerful learning mechanism, statistical learning. ○ Semantic Development: Learning Word Meaning In the area of semantics, infants understand words and phrases well before they produce their first words. Most children produce their first words around their first birthday. Initially word learning is effortful and slow. In the second and third years of life, children learn new words with only one or two exposures, known as fast mapping. Infants underextend and overextend their use of words. The rate of growth in productive vocabulary increases substantially around 18 months of age, which has been referred to as the vocabulary spurt. ○ Syntactic Development: Putting Words Together In the area of syntax, toddlers show sensitivity to grammatical rules as seen in their looking to pictures that map the grammar of a sentence. In the second year of life, infants begin to combine words into meaningful sentences. Toddlers are able to use the grammatical structure of the sentence to figure out the meaning of the unfamiliar word, a phenomenon referred to as syntactic bootstrapping. ○ Pragmatic Development: Learning Communication Norms Children learn the sociocultural norms and conventions around the use of language, regarding when to talk, how, and about what. Infants show rudimentary pragmatic skills in (a) conventions around conversational turn taking, (b) sensitivity to the context of interactions, (c) the use of nonverbal cues in communication, and (d) discerning the attention and intentions of people. ○ Nativist Accounts of Language Development  Nativist views of language arose with the Chomskian proposals of a universal grammar and innate language acquisition device (LAD). Support for a nativist view of language derives from studies of Deaf children’s spontaneous use of sign language, from case studies of children reared in isolation without exposure to language (such as Genie), and from studies of sensitive periods in language development in dual-language learning children. Two types of cognitive biases (constraints) have been documented in children’s early language learning: the assumption of mutual exclusivity and the whole-object assumption. ○ Connectionist and Dynamic Systems Theory Dynamic systems theory and connectionist theories apply a bottom-up interpretation to language learning in which infants build up knowledge, and neural connections strengthen with experience. Computer simulations help researchers identify the ways that children learn language from the bottom up by asking how machines learn from the language inputs that children are likely to experience. ○ Sociocultural Theory Sociocultural accounts emphasize the ways that adults and other people support infant language learning. Parents’ child-directed speech, language diversity and amount, contingent responsiveness, physical cues (such as gesture), and engagement of children in learning routines such as book reading can support language learning and explain individual differences among toddlers in language skill. ○ Contexts of Language Development Parents and other primary caregivers contribute in major ways to early language development: the use of a special type of speech register (baby talk), the amount and diversity of child-directed speech, responsiveness to infant communicative behaviors, and the use of physical cues to help infants understand language. Family poverty and low-quality nonparental childcare experiences are associated with delays in early language development. High-quality care, characterized by sensitive and stimulating caregiving, also supports the language development of infants and toddlers. Dual-language learning (DLL) children are in many ways similar in the course of their language learning to monolingual children and benefit from high-quality language experiences just as monolingual children do. However, DLL children differ from monolingual children in various aspects of language learning, including in their reactions to mispronunciations and their strategies for learning new words.  Cultural communities vary in their communications to infants, including in the extent to which caregivers alter their speech and behaviors to fit infant needs (accommodation), whether the communication is verbal or non-verbal, and the social partners who interact with children on a regular basis. ○ Developmental Cascades Language growth goes hand in hand with changes in cognitive skills. Different languages have different ways of encoding concepts and events, and children increasingly attend to the concepts and categories particular to their language. The different ways that languages encode concepts and events are thought to have cascading influences on how children and adults think, a concept termed linguistic relativity that draws from the Whorfian hypothesis. Vocabulary growth allows children to establish a body of knowledge, which further leads children to perceive and think about the world in new ways. Language gains allow children to be faster at processing new information, resulting in snowball effects in learning and better school readiness outcomes. Infants who learn more than one language may show heightened skills in areas of executive functioning, although benefits may depend on their strengths. Chapter 7 ○ Evolutionary Theory and the Functions of Emotions Emotions have adaptive functions of organizing and regulating people’s behaviors, including preparing them for action, and communicating relevant social information to other people. Three key areas of infant emotional development are: emotion understanding, emotion expression, and emotion regulation. ○ Expressing Emotions Infants develop abilities to discriminate among different emotions, connect emotional expressions to meaning, and seek and use emotional information from other people. The spontaneous smiles of newborns do not contain the social meaning seen in later social smiles, which emerge between 6 weeks and 3 months of age, that are socially motivated and increasingly selective in the persons to whom they are directed. Generalized distress is infants’ first negative emotion, which is expressed across a variety of situations. Over development, generalized distress differentiates into emotions of anger, fear, and sadness in reaction to specific events. ○ Understanding Emotions  In the second year, toddlers’ emotional expressions become increasingly differentiated, and they begin to display self-conscious emotions, such as embarrassment, pride, guilt, and shame. ○ Regulating Emotions Infants get better at controlling emotions as they grow older. In the first months of life, infants primarily rely on parents to regulate emotion. Over time, infants engage in strategies to regulate their emotions, such as self-comforting behaviors and looking away from temptations. ○ Temperament Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess were the first to document individual differences in infant temperament, and classified infants as easy, difficult, and slow-to-warm-up babies. Mary Rothbart identified six dimensions of temperament: activity, positive affect, fear, distress, soothability, and attention and three components of temperament: surgency, negative reactivity, and orienting regulation. In toddlers, the component of orienting regulation is referred to as effortful control. “Goodness of fit” refers to the fit between a baby’s temperament and the demands of the environment, including parenting behaviors. ○ Social and Cultural Contexts of Emotional Development and Temperament Individual differences in infant temperament and emotion regulation can be explained by aspects of family context, including genetics, infant heart rate changes, and brain activation patterns, as well as family context, including parents’ emotional expressions and their responses to and support of children’s emotional experiences and expressions. Infant temperament, emotion understanding, and expressions differ across cultural communities, which may depend on cultural differences in emotional expressions, values, and practices. ○ Attachment In his ethological theory of attachment John Bowlby asserted that infant proximity-seeking behaviors of crying, sucking, smiling, clinging, and following are biologically based and adaptive to survival. Harry Harlow’s studies of rhesus monkeys further supported this idea. The Strange Situation developed by Mary Ainsworth assesses infant attachment, and classifies infants as secure, insecure resistant, and insecure avoidant attachment. Main and Solomon added the category of disorganized attachment. ○ Contexts of Attachment The quality of caregiver-infant interactions, including sensitivity, acceptance, attunement to infant needs, and emotional accessibility predict infant attachment statuses.  The Strange Situation has been criticized as being culturally biased. Most attachment studies focus on infant-mother attachment, leaving out other notable caregivers (such as fathers) or multiple caregivers. Longitudinal studies indicate that infant attachment status predicts attachment and social relationships in childhood and even adulthood. These long-term stabilities may be explained by internal working models. ○ Peer Relations and the Origins of Morality Beyond caregivers, toddlers develop positive relationships with peers. They display prosocial behaviors of helping, cooperating, sharing, and comforting. Nativists emphasize three main features of infants’ “innate moral sense”: moral goodness, moral understanding and evaluation, and moral retribution. Aggression toward peers emerges in the second year, with most aggressive actions being physical. Conflict between toddlers might offer opportunities for toddlers to learn the perspectives of others and problem resolution. ○ Self-Identity Infants’ understanding of the self divides into two broad types: the subjective (or ecological) self and the objective self. The ecological self (infants’ awareness of their own actions and bodies in relation to the physical world) and the interpersonal self (infants’ sensitivity to the reciprocal nature of social interactions) are two aspects of the subjective self—the “I” of the self. Infants’ understanding of the ecological self is demonstrated in double-touch experiments and studies that test infants’ awareness of the connections between self-action and environmental response. Infants’ understanding of the interpersonal self is demonstrated in their distress when normally occurring contingencies in social interactions are disrupted, such as an infant not receiving feedback in response to their social behaviors. Gender is an early-emerging component of the objective self. In the second year, infants label themselves as boy or girl, and this awareness of one’s gender is associated with toddlers’ gender-stereotyped play. ○ Contexts of Self-Identity Infants’ early gender identity may be influenced by family and cultural context, such as the extent to which parents display gendered expectations and behaviors. ○ Developmental Cascades Infants’ ability to regulate their emotions and attention facilitates language development, because infants can learn the words to which they are exposed without negative affect or inattention getting in the way.  Emotion regulation in infancy relates to later emotion regulation in preschool, which can cascade to academic performance in future years. Poor emotion regulation in infancy, especially high negative reactivity, can hinder peer relationships and lead to later anxiety, mood disorders, and withdrawal from social interactions in childhood, adolescence, and even adulthood. Lack of social connection, abandonment, and the deprivation of a loving relationship—all associated with problems of attachment, such as seen in orphaned infants—can harm brain structural development and functioning. Even in less extreme cases, insecure attachment with caregivers has the potential to harm later relationships as toddlers and children develop internal working models of themselves as unlovable and others as untrustworthy Chapter 8 ○ Brain, Physical, and Motor Development The brain develops in early childhood in significant ways. Myelination in the corpus callosum and fibers that connect the cerebellum to the cerebral cortex speed the rate at which nerve impulses move through neural networks. Synaptic density increases in the prefrontal cortex in areas associated with attention, motor skills, cognitive ability, and memory. Increased connections transfer information within the limbic system and from the hippocampus to the frontal lobes. Synaptic pruning, a reduction of neuron connections, occurs for those connections that are rarely used. Growing lateralization of the brain is reflected in children’s handedness, the tendency to use the right or left hand predominantly. Young children gradually develop a hand preference, thus moving from the greater flexibility in hand use of toddlers to the strong preferences of older children (although most children settle on use of the right hand). Brain changes in early childhood are associated with improved balance and coordination, cognitive and executive functioning skills, information encoding and retrieval, and language development. Physical growth in early childhood, resulting from hormonal production directed by the pituitary gland, leads to elongated limbs, high muscle mass (and therefore a relatively low BMI), and a head size that is proportionate to body size. Young children show gains in gross motor skills in areas of locomotor movements, manipulative movements, and stability movements, and in fine motor skills used in activities of daily living and art and literacy-related areas.  Secular trends in greater population height over the past century and inter-country differences in the height of people present strong evidence for environmental influences on physical growth. ○ Nutrition Many young children in the United States and throughout the world experience dietary deficiencies in protein, vitamins, iron, and minerals, especially calcium and zinc, which affect children’s prognosis for health and mental functioning. Obesity, the excess storage of fat, is a growing epidemic in the United States, and is disproportionately experienced by children living in poverty. Frequent exposures to healthy foods, larger portions of healthy foods, and family role models who eat healthy foods leads to greater acceptance and consumption of those foods by children. A negative family climate around meals, seen in parental prohibitions, threats, and bribes, is ineffective in getting children to eat healthy foods and avoid unhealthy ones. ○ Sleep Improved sleep regulation (falling and staying asleep) and sleep consolidation (the duration of the longest nighttime sleep episode) is seen from infancy through the early childhood years. Actigraphs used to assess children’s sleep indicate that parents overestimate the amount of sleep children get, and that many children are not getting the recommended amount of sleep. Many children have difficulty falling asleep or wake up during the night due to bad dreams or night terrors. Regularity in a family’s daytime and bedtime routines is associated with children getting the sleep they need. ○ Childhood Illness, Injury, and Maltreatment Infectious diseases can be spread through personal contact, water, or air, and include acute bacterial and viral infections. Chronic diseases are long lasting and typically can be controlled but not cured. Chronic diseases include obesity, asthma, and developmental disabilities. Child maltreatment is at its highest for children younger than 5 years of age. The early years are also a time when exposure to family violence is high. Children who live in poverty are at greater risk for infectious and chronic diseases, maltreatment, and exposure to violence than are children who live in more-resourced homes.  Children in poorer countries are especially at risk for health problems, due to low levels of immunization, high levels of malnutrition, and exposure to unsanitary living conditions. Experiences such as maltreatment can elicit high levels of stress in children. Toxic or chronic stress can lead to a chronic excess of cortisol, and can adversely affect brain and physical development. ○ Developmental Cascades Children who do not get the sleep they need have difficulties focusing attention and getting along socially. Disruptions in sleep and inadequate sleep have immediate and long-term effects on children’s academic performance and behaviors. Chronic sleep deprivation influences brain functioning by preventing or reducing processes required for brain maturation and restoration, memory consolidation, and learning. Inadequate quality and quantity of sleep place children at risk for being overweight or obese. Exposure to violence and maltreatment in early childhood can trigger long-lasting, devastating developmental consequences. Numerous studies document the harmful consequences of childhood maltreatment and other related risks such as exposure to violence for physical, mental, and social domains. Chapter 9 ○ Piaget and the Preoperational Stage According to Piaget, during the preoperational stage children are capable of mental representation, but are unable to perform logical mental operations. By 3 years of age, children are capable of dual representation, understanding that something can both be itself and stand for something else. Children’s growing representational skills allow them to engage in pretend and fantasy play, and some children create imaginary friends. Piaget and followers documented several cognitive limitations of preoperational thinking, including egocentrism, inability to make the appearance-reality distinction, animistic thinking, causal understanding, and lack of conservation of quantities. Contemporary research challenges some of Piaget’s claims and yields new insights into young children’s emerging cognitive skills. Children’s cultural experiences affect cognitive skills such as conservation and classification. ○ Cognitive Development from an Information-Processing Perspective  Young children show improvements in executive functioning skills, in areas of inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, and working memory. Executive function skills also support children’s abilities in planning, strategy use, and monitoring of performance. Semantic memory and episodic memory are two forms of declarative memory that grow in complexity and organization over early childhood. Development in semantic memory (sometimes referred to as a child’s knowledge base) helps account for improvements in working memory and processing speed. Infantile amnesia refers to the difficulty people have in remembering events from the first years of life, and has been explained with various accounts, including the impact of forgetting on early memories. Episodic memory improves in complexity and detail over early childhood. Young children’s memories are especially vulnerable to suggestion and misleading information, which has implications for children’s accounts in eyewitness testimony. Family poverty can impair children’s executive functioning through effects on the brain. School curricula, such as Tools of the Mind, may strengthen children’s executive function skills. Chinese children have been shown to outperform U.S. children on measures of executive functioning, which might be explained by cultural values and practices. ○ Evaluating People’s Knowledge and Expertise Children show improvement in their social-cognitive skills around understanding of others’ knowledge and expertise, and are selective in whom they turn to for information and help. ○ Theory of Mind Children show gains in theory-of-mind skills around 4–5 years of age, as revealed in their understanding that people can hold “false beliefs” or mental states that differ from reality and what children themselves believe and know. Developmental changes in children’s theory-of-mind skills have been attributed to children’s changing theories about the world (the theory-theory), changing executive functioning skills, and brain development. ○ Contexts of Social-Cognitive Development Individual differences among children on theory-of-mind tasks are influenced by factors in the family (mental state talk, the presence of siblings).  Children’s school experiences, including interactions with peers, interactions with teachers, and literacy activities support developments in theory of mind. ○ Growing Language Skills During early childhood, children improve in the range and accuracy of their speech sounds, vocabulary size, grammar, and pragmatics. Children’s sentence construction grows in complexity as they use parts of speech to modify word meanings and combine separate thoughts (clauses) in sentences. Children learn standard grammar rules before they learn exceptions, resulting in the overregularization of grammatical rules. Young children grow in the pragmatics of language as they learn norms of conversations. ○ Literacy and Mathematical Understanding Emergent literacy skills rely on oral language and code-related skills, the latter referring to learning the sounds of letters and recognizing letters and words in print. Emergent math skills include counting, discriminating quantities, and discerning patterns. In learning number words, children show a clear developmental progression. Spatial skills are likewise pivotal to math learning. ○ Contexts: Language, Literacy, and Mathematical Understanding The amount and diversity of parent talk to children, children’s engagement in book reading and shared narratives, and family socioeconomic status relate to young children’s language and literacy skills. Parents’ elaborations in narratives and engagement in dialogic reading support children’s language and literacy skills. Parent math talk and opportunities provided to children to play with puzzles, blocks, and board games support children’s math skills. Teacher quality and curriculum are two features of school contexts that support children’s language, literacy, and math developments. Cultural communities differ in their language and literacy practices, routines around book sharing and oral storytelling, and ways that languages encode concepts in math. These cultural differences shape children’s literacy and math skills. ○ Developmental Cascades Young children’s language and literacy skills relate to current and future cognitive and language skills and academic performance in areas of reading, writing, attention, and mathematics. Early childhood skills in language support social cognition and social relationships.  Social-cognitive skills in early childhood shape a variety of social behaviors, including making and keeping friends, moral reasoning, persuasion, lying, and deception.