Infancy and Toddlerhood:

Physical and Cognitive Development

LECTURE FOUR
Physical and Motor Development
The Brain
• Command centre of an organism
• Brain of neonate weighs less than one pound
• By first birthday, the brain triples in weight,
reaching nearly 70% of adult weight
Least
developed
Most
developed
Synaptogenesis
 Synaptogenesis

– Creation of synapses or
connections between neurons
– Synapse results from growth of
dendrites and axons
– Brain weight x3 by age 2, and x4
by age 4
– Synaptogenesis is not smooth and
continuous, it happens in spurts
– Each growth spurt generates more
connections than actually needed
Pruning
 Pruning

– Elimination of unused neural pathways and

connections
– Following each growth spurt, unnecessary
pathways and connections are eliminated
 Synaptic Density

• Does not occur at the same rate across all parts

of the brain
– e.g visual cortex maximally dense at 4 months
pruning afterwards
• Prefrontal cortex maximally dense at around 1
year old
• Support for critical/sensitive periods
Myelinization / Myelination
Myelinization / Myelination
 Myelinization

• A process in neuronal development in which

sheaths made of a substance called myelin
gradually cover individual axons and electricity
insulate them from one another to improve the
conductivity of the brain
Neural Plasticity
 Neural plasticity
• The ability of the brain to change in response
to experience
• Young infants need sufficient stimulation and
order in their environments to maximize the
early period of rapid growth and plasticity
• Use it or lose it
• An intellectually challenging environment
creates a more complex network of
synapses
• Changes in psychological functioning
– Developmental changes in brain across lifespan
– Infant brains have greater plasticity but more
vulnerability to major deficits
How Do Nature and Nurture Interact to
Affect Brain Development?
• Brain development is affected by
maturation (nature) and sensory
stimulation and motor activity (nurture)
• Human infants have more neural connections
than adults
Reflexes
 Adaptive Reflexes
• Reflex actions that aid survival
• Examples: sucking, grasping, withdrawal
from painful stimuli, opening and closing
of pupil in response to lights
• Weak or absent adaptive reflexes are red
lights of possible neuronal development
problems
• Some reflexes will be replaced by
voluntary behaviours, while others protect
us throughout our lifespan
 Primitive Reflexes
• Reflex actions that are controlled by the
less sophisticated parts of the brain
• Example: Moro (or “startle”) reflex;
Babinski reflex (curled toes)
• The purposes are less clear
• Appear at birth and disappear by 6 to 8
months
• May indicate neurological problems if
they persist
 Primitive Reflexes

• The Moro reflex

– Baby is dropped or hears loud noise
– Extends legs, arms, and fingers,
arches back, draws back head
– 7th month of gestation till 3 months
• Babinski reflex
– Sole of baby’s foot is stroked at once
– Toes fan out
– Foot twist in
– Birth till 4 months
 Primitive Reflexes
• Walking reflex
– Baby is held under arms, with bare feet
touching flat surface
– Makes step like motions that look like well –
coordinated walking
– Emerges in 1 month; disappears in 4 months
• Swimming reflex
– Baby is put into water face down
– Makes well-coordinated swimming
movement put into water face down
– Emerges in 1 month; disappears in 4 months
 Changes in Size
Height
n 12 months - 50% greater than it was at
birth
n 24 months - 75 % greater

Weight
n 5 months – doubled
n 1 year – tripled
n 2 years – quadrupled
Reached half of their adult height
Gender Differences
 The Body Proportions

The proportion of the head becomes smaller in relations to

the whole body across age
Motor Development in Infancy
 Gross Motor Development

• Lifting of the head

• Neck and shoulders
• Upcome chest
• Moving legs to move from one place
to another
• Rolling
• 3-4 months sit upright (held in
propped up position)
 Gross Motor Development
• 6-8 months sit alone
• Stay up for 10 minutes and longer
• 7-9 months Crawling (can be skipped)
muscle of arms and legs
• 8 months Standing with support (need
control over back and hips)
• 9 months can pull themselves up,
holding on to furniture
• 12-13 months Walking (motivation and
muscle coordination)
 Fine Motor Development
• 1 month: Stepping reflex; lifts head
slightly; Holds object if placed in hand
• 2-3: Lifts head up to 90-degree angle
when lying on stomach; Begins to swipe
at objects in sight
• 4-6: Rolls over; sits with support; moves
on hands and knees (“creeps”); holds
head erect while in sitting position;
Reaches for and grasps objects
• 7-9: Sits without support; crawls;
Transfer objects from one hand to the
other
 Fine Motor Development
• 10-12: Pulls self up and walks grasping
furniture; then walks alone; squats and
stoops; Shows some signs of hand
preference; grasps a spoon across palm
but has poor aim when moving food to
mouth
• 13-18: Walks backward, sideways; runs
(14-20 months); rolls ball to adult; claps;
Stacks two blocks; puts objects into small
container and dumps them out
• 19-24: Walks up and down stairs; jumps
with both feet off ground; Uses spoon to
feed self; stacks 4 to 10 blocks
How Do Nature and Nurture Interact
to Affect Motor Development?
• Maturation: the genetically programmed biological
process that governs our growth
3.2 months: 3.3 months: 5.9 months: 7.2 months: standing 8.2 months:
rolling over grasping rattle sitting without support while holding on grasping with thumb
and finger

11.5 months: 12.3 months: 14.8 months: building 16.6 months: 23.8 months:
standing alone well walking well tower of two cubes walking up steps jumping in place
Sensory & Perceptual Development
 Vision
• Visual acuity
– 20/200 at birth; 20/20 at 2 years
– The 20 is the distance in feet between the
subject and the chart. The 200 means that
the subject can read the chart (from 20
feet away) as well as a normal person
could read the same chart from 200 feet
away.
• Colour vision
– Red, blue, green at 1 month
• Tracking
– Tracking slow-moving object before 2
months and skilled at 6-10 weeks
 Hearing
• Adults voices heard well
• High-pitched noises must be loud enough
to be heard
• Some directional loud-sound location
• By 1 month, infants perceive differences
between similar speech sounds
• By 3½ months they can discriminate
caregivers voices
• Infants perceive most speech sounds
present in world languages
– By 10 to 12 months, lose ability to discriminate
sounds not found in native language
 Smelling and Tasting

• The two senses are intricately related

• Newborns react differently to each basic taste as
early as birth
 Touch and Motion

• Best developed of all senses

• Sensitive to touches on the mouth, hands, feet,
and abdomen
Infant Research Methodologies
Preferential Looking
Preferential Looking
Preferential Looking
 Preferential Looking

• Study how long baby attends to a

particular stimulus
• Preference technique: baby is
shown 2 pictures and researchers
keep track of how long the baby
looks at each one.
• Baby prefer complex things over
simple things
Habituation/Dishabituation
 Habituation/Dishabituation

• Study the loss of interest in

particular stimulus after repeated
exposures
• Habituation: show a baby something
over and over until the baby stops
looking at it.
• Dishabituation: renewed interest in
something that is slightly different
than the original stimulus
Operant Conditioning
 Operant Conditioning

• Vary the stimulus and study the

learned response
• Infant learn to turn their head when
she hears a particular sound, with sight
of a moving toy as reinforcer. After the
learned response is well established,
the experimenter can vary the sound in
some systematic way to see whether
or not the baby still turns her head
Cognitive Development
Jean Piaget
(1896-1980)
Assimilation and Accommodation

• Assimilation
• The process of fusing incoming
information to existing schemes so as
to make sense of the experience
• Accommodation
• The process of changing a scheme to
incorporate new information
Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage
• Children demonstrate cognitive development through
sensory and motor activity
• Substage 1: Simple reflexes
• Substage 2: Primary circular reactions
• Repeats stimulating actions that occurred by chance
• Substage 3: Secondary circular reactions
• Patterns of activity are repeated because of their effect on
the environment
• Substage 4: Coordination of secondary schemes
• Begin to show intentional, goal-directed behavior
• Gain the capacity to copy others’ actions (Deferred imitation)
Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage
• Substage 5: Tertiary circular reactions
• Behavior takes on experimental quality
• Substage 6: Invention of new means through
mental combinations
• Transition to development of symbolic thought
Object Permanence
• Objects continue to exist when they cannot be seen
• A show an infant or young baby a toy and then cover it with a
blanket. A child who had a clear concept
of object permanence might reach for the toy or try to grab the
blanket off the toy. A child who had not yet developed object
permanence might appear distressed that the toy had
disappeared.
• A lack of object permanence can lead to A-not-B errors, where
children reach for a thing at a place where it should not be.
• 2 months: Surprise when an object disappears
• 6-8 months: Looking for missing objects for a brief period of time
• 8-12 months: Reaching for or searching for toy that is completely
hidden
• Development of object permanence is tied to the development of
the infant’s working memory and reasoning ability
Object Permanence Before 4 Months?

Violation-of-expectation
experiment: Measures
infants’ attention to a
stimulus that violates their
expectation about the world
 Infant Arithmetic

Possible outcome Impossible outcome

Numerically CORRECT Numerically INCORRECT

Perceptually DIFFERENT Perceptually SAME
Challenges to Piaget’s views
• Underestimation of infant cognitive capacity
• Inaccurate equation of infant’s lack of physical ability with
lack of cognitive understanding
• Baillargeon (1986) found that babies as young as 4
months show signs of object permanence but may be tied
to experimental situations
• At around 1 year old, infants show sufficient
understanding of object permanence across situations
• Baillargeon showed infants a series of impossible and
possible events regarding object permanence. Infants
looked longer at impossible events, showing that they
may understand object permanence as early as 3 months
of age
Language Development
Prelinguistic Vocalizations
• Prelinguistic vocalizations that do not
represent objects or events
• Crying
• Cooing – vowel-like, linked to pleasant feelings
• Babbling – combine vowels and consonants
• Echolalia – repetition of vowel/consonant
combinations
• Intonation – patterns of rising and falling melody
Language Development in the first 2 years
• Infants begin to produce recognizable words usually around
12 months, though babbling may continue for some time
afterward.
• Before babies say their first word, they are preparing for
language in many ways. They listen attentively to human
speech and make speechlike sounds. As adults, we can
hardly help but respond.
• Around 2 months, babies begin to make vowel-like noises,
called cooing because of their pleasant “oo” quality.
Language Development in the first 2 years
• Gradually, consonants are added, and around 4 months,
babbling appears, in which infants repeat consonant-vowel
combinations in long strings, such as “babababababa” or
“nananananana.”
• Babbling (also called twaddling) is a stage in child development
and a state in language acquisition, during which
an infant appears to be experimenting with uttering sounds
of language, but not yet producing any recognizable words.
• Babbling begins shortly after birth and progresses through
several stages as the infant's repertoire expands and
vocalizations become more speech-like.
• Babies everywhere start babbling at about the same age and
produce a similar range of early sounds.
Language Development in the first 2 years
• As infants listen to spoken language, babbling expands to
include a broader range of sounds.
• At around 7 months, it starts to include many sounds of
mature spoken languages
• By 1 year, it contains the consonant-vowel and intonation
patterns of the infant’s language community
• Receptive vocabulary outpaces expressive
• First words – typically 11 to 13 months
• First words are general nominal and specific nominal
• 18 to 22 months rapid increase from 50 to more than 300
words
How Does the Child Develop Vocabulary?
• Referential language style
• Use language to label objects
• Expressive language style
• Use language as means for engaging in social
interactions
How Do Learning Theorists Account
for Language Development?
• Social-cognitive theory – Imitation
• Children learn from parental models
• Does not explain spontaneously-uttered
phrases that children have not heard
• Behavioral theory – Reinforcement
• Shaping through approximations of real words
• Extinction of foreign sounds
Holophrases
 Holophrases

• Word combined with nonverbal cues (gestures

and inflections)
• Example: “Mummy” (Meaning: “Would you
please come here, mummy?”)
Telegraphic Speech
 Telegraphic Speech

• Telegraph speech (18 months onwards)

• Modifiers joined to topic words
– “Pretty baby” (declarative)
– “Where daddy?” (interrogative)
– “No play” (negative)
– “More milk!” (imperative)
How Does Psycholinguistic Theory
Explain Language Development?
• Innate factors cause children to attend to
and acquire language in certain ways
• Infant-Directed Speech
• Interaction between environmental
influences and inborn tendency to acquire
language
• Language acquisition device (LAD)
Plasticity in Language Learning
• Brain plasticity provides sensitive periods
for learning language
• Begins about 18 to 24 months and lasts until
puberty
• Evidence for sensitive periods
• Brain injuries
• Children recover good deal of speech, utilizing
opposite hemisphere; adaptation decreases in
adolescence
How Can Adults Enhance Language
Development in Children?
• Use infant-directed speech
• Use questions to engage child in conversation
• Attune your speech to child s expressive language
• Join the child in pay attention to something
• Use gestures to enhance understanding
• Describe aspects of the environment
• Read to child
• Talk to child a great deal

• Language Development Overview video

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_wXdW6xNN8