The First Two Years: ��Biosocial (Physical), �Cognitive, and �Psychosocial Development

The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence

by Kathleen Stassen Berger

Body Changes

• An average newborn is 7½ lbs, 20 inches.

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• Infants typically –
• double their birth weight by 6 months
• triple their birth weight by 1 year.

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• By age two, they are about ½ their adult height (!) and ¼ their adult weight.

Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

The Wonderful World of SLEEP

• Newborns sleep 17+ hours a day.

DAVID YOUNG-WOLFF / PHOTOEDIT, INC.

Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Brain Development

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• Brain grows faster than the rest of the body
• Head sparing – when there is inadequate nutrition, the brain grows at expense of the body
• By the age of 2, the brain is 75% its adult weight
• Neural connections in the brain also develop

Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Brain Development (cont.)

• Basic brain structures
• Neurons = long, thin nerve cells that make up nervous system
• Axons = nerve fibers that send impulses
• Dendrites = nerve fibers that receive impulses

Regional specialization: neurons in certain areas of the brain correspond to different tasks

Examples: language, vision, smell,

recognizing faces vs. objects, etc.

Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Infant Senses

• All five senses function at birth
• vision, hearing, taste, touch, smell
• Hearing: is well developed at birth
• Infants respond to sudden noises, human voice, phonemes of language
• Vision: is the least developed at birth
• Binocular vision develops around 14 weeks
• “Adult” vision (20/20) by one year

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Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Infant Senses (cont.)

• Taste, touch, smell function well at birth

All: CINDY CHARLES / PHOTOEDIT, INC.

Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Motor Skills (cont.)

• Gross motor skills involve large muscle movements.

Examples: crawling, sitting, walking

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• Fine motor skills involve small muscle movements.

Examples: learning to grasp, shake, pull an object, hold a spoon, write, draw, etc.

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• Motor skills are influenced by genes, culture, and patterns of infant care.

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Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Nutrition

• Breast Is Best

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• Breast milk
• Begins with colostrum, high-calorie nourishment before milk “lets down”
• Easily digestible
• Has antibodies and antibacterial properties
• Better for baby’s health until 6 months
• Does not contain adequate iron

Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

What is “cognition”?

• Cognition refers to thinking, including language, learning, memory, and intelligence.

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• Jean Piaget (born 1896) was a pioneer in studying cognitive development in humans.

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Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Affordances

• Affordances = opportunities to interact with objects in the environment
• How children act upon it depends on
• Past experiences
• Current developmental level
• Sensory awareness of opportunities
• Immediate needs and motivation

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Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Make it Real: Memory

• What’s your prediction: Can infants remember anything? For how long? What about a 1 or 2 year old?

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• What have you been told about your first two years of development ?

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Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Memory

• Even very young infants (3 months) can remember IF:
• Experimental conditions are “real life”
• Motivation is high
• Special measures aid memory retrieval (repetition and reminders)
• Example: Rovee-Collier’s mobile experiment

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Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Language: What Develops in Two Years?

• First Noises and Gestures -
• Infants are noisy!

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• They coo, squeal, cry, yell, grunt, gurgle

- Babbling = repetition of syllables

• All babies babble and gesture
• Infants prefer child-directed speech

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• “Motherese”: high-pitched, simplified, repetitive speech of adults

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Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

First Words

• Infants learn about 50–100 words a month.

• First words usually appear around 1 year.

• They are often familiar nouns.
• (Have you ever heard of an infant’s first word being “stapler”?)
• The naming explosion refers to a language spurt once an infant begins talking.

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Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Emotional Development in Infancy

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• The First Year

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• At birth: distress and contentment

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• Social smile appears around 6 weeks

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• Anger -as early as 4 months (when frustrated)

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• Fear– related to

▪ Stranger wariness

• Separation anxiety

Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Make it Real: Language

• What fun sentences or words (good ones or mistakes) have you heard a young child make?

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• Example: “I catched the ball.”

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Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

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• Fear and anger, laughing and crying become more discriminating

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• New emotions appear: pride, shame, embarrassment, guilt
• These emotions require a sense of self
• Dot-of-rouge experiment

• The Second Year

Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Behaviorism

• Infant’s emotions and personality are molded as parents reinforce or punish child’s spontaneous behavior.

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Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Temperament and Caregiving

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• Goodness of fit: the match between the child’s temperament and the environment

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• This is especially important for a child with a difficult temperament

Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Attachment

• A close emotional bond between infant and caregiver(s) that develops gradually over the first year of life.
• How do you think you, or someone you know, adult relationships are impacted by childhood attachment styles?
• For more information, click on How Our Own Attachment Style Impacts Our Relationships.

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Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Four Basic Attachment Styles

• 1.Secure (generally happy and trusting, attached and enjoy their parent/caregiver. secure to explore the world & test limits of their independence) �2. Avoidant (emotionally distant, often preferring to play and interact w/ objects vs. people)�3. Ambivalent (anxious & insecure) �4. Disorganized (struggle w/ managing their emotions.) �-Source

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Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Click on Source for a bigger view.

Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Active physical play

Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Infant Day Care

• As more infants spend time in non-parental care, the effects of care on child development continues to be debated.
• For more information, �-Click Early Child Care Research Network.
• -View video: Ainsworth Strange Situation (7:27). View what happens when a stranger plays and then leaves an infant.

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Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Types of Infant Day Care

• Family day care: children cared for in home of a paid caregiver

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• Center day care: several paid providers care for children

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• Our textbook author suggests that center care may be the best option, but even licensed centers vary in quality!

Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7

Some Results of the NICHD Study

• Even 40 hours a week of infant child care had considerable less influence than the mother-infant relationship on child outcomes.

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• Secure attachment was just as likely among infants in center care as those raised at home.

Berger: The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence, 7th Edition, Chapter 7