The First Two Months

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The First Two Months

• Fogel
• Chapter 5

Created by Ilse DeKoeyer-Laros, Ph.D.
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Overview Chapter 5

• Physical and Motor Development
• Perceptual Development
• Cognitive Development
• Emotional Development
• Family and Society

Experiential Exercises Co-regulating with Baby
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Physical and Motor DevelopmentNewborn States

• The fetal states of rest activity develop into
  sleeping waking states

• at 32 weeks gestation REM non-REM
• by 38 weeks several other sleep states
• newborns sleep about 17 hours per day, throughout
  the day and night
• by 3 or 4 months, infants sleep more at night
  than during the day, but night wakings are common
  in infancy and early childhood

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Physical and Motor DevelopmentNewborn States
State Description
Quiet sleep (NREM) Respiration is regular eyes are closed and not moving the baby is relatively motionless
Active sleep (REM) Muscles more tense eyes may be still or display REMs breathing is irregular spontaneous rhythmic startles, sucks, and body movements
Drowsiness Opening and closing of the eyes increased activity more rapid and regular breathing occasional smiling
Quiet alert Eyes open, scanning the environment body is still respiration is more rapid than in sleep
Active alert Awake, body and limb movements, less focused than in the quiet alert state
Crying Elevated activity and respiration rate cry vocalization facial expression of distress
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Physical and Motor DevelopmentWaking States

• Newborns have two basic modes of response to
  stimulation orienting defense
• orienting a heightened alertness that includes
  behavioral localization toward the source of the
  stimulation (a head turn to the source of a
  sound)
• defense a behavioral action that involves
  withdrawal from the source of stimulation

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Physical and Motor DevelopmentWaking States

• Newborns will orient to stimuli of moderate
  intensity and complexity

soft talking, moderate light levels, and holding
rocking can enhance alertness
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Physical and Motor DevelopmentCrying State

• Crying is an organized rhythmic activity
• there are different cries with different body
  responses and cry sounds
• The frequency increases between birth and 2
  months then, it decreases
• similar in many cultures with different patterns
  of infant care response to crying
• infants cry more when parents are slower to
  respond

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Physical and Motor DevelopmentCrying State

• Colic is crying in which
• the infant cries at least 3 hours a day, on at
  least 3 days per week, for at least 3 successive
  weeks
• the parents find the crying very intense
• the infant is otherwise normal and
• the infant is relatively unresponsive to soothing
  feeding

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Physical and Motor DevelopmentCrying State

• What causes colic?
• unknown
• not caused by digestive problems, sympathetic
  nervous system arousal, or cortisol levels
• Factors related to colic
• mothers who were highly stressed during pregnancy
  had higher chances of having a colicky baby
• colicky infants are more likely to have sleep
  problems to be inattentive, emotionally
  reactive, and sensitive to touch, food, and other
  stimulation at 3 8 years

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Physical and Motor DevelopmentThe Effects of
Crying on Adults

• Adults perceive crying as an index of distress
  they try to figure out the source
• nonparents are as responsive as parents
• levels of arousal responsiveness are equal for
  men women
• Child abusers show greater arousal more
  annoyance at cries than nonabusers

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Physical and Motor DevelopmentSoothing Infants

• nonnutritive sucking (NNS) immediately soothes
• swaddling reduces motor movement startles
  keeps the infant calm for long periods
• daily massage enhances alertness, sleep, growth
  reduces stress and crying
• rocking can calm or put infants to sleep
• continuous sound can be calming, esp. when
  moderately loud of low frequency (e.g., singing
  lullabies, humming)

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Newborn States

• Newborn state is important
• the body needs periods of tranquility and rest to
  consolidate resources for growth
• attention to the environment depends on a
  stress-free state of quiet alertness
• state regulates the types of interactions
  newborns have with their adult caregivers

Picture from flickr.com
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Reflexes
www.babyzone.com

• Reflexes
• semiautomatic behaviors, triggered only by
  specific elicitors
• look about the same every time they occur
• have to run their course once triggered

See examples of reflexes on YouTube, such as the
sucking reflex at www.youtube.com/watch?vKIgzqRaY
Jsg
http//health.allrefer.com/health/infantile-reflex
es-moro-reflex.html
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ReflexesPurposes

• Primitive forms of orienting behavior
• e.g., rooting, sucking, and grasping
• Primitive defensive reactions
• e.g., the Moro reflex, reaction to a cloth on
  the face
• Elementary coordinations for later adaptive
  voluntary movements
• e.g., stepping, crawling, and swimmers reflexes
• No clear function
• e.g., the Babinski reflex although the lack of
  a Babinski response may indicate neurological
  disorder

Picture from www.susheewa.com/blog/?p866
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Physical and Motor DevelopmentReflexes

• Reflexes are highly variable within between
  infants
• depends on individual differences, age, time
  since last feeding number of attempts to evoke
  the reflex
• Many disappear by about 6 months
• brain developments and other factors play a role
  (e.g., weight muscle strength in the stepping
  reflex)

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Physical and Motor DevelopmentReflexes

• In sum,
• newborn reflexes are extremely important for
  orienting the infant to the environment for
  protecting the infant from harm
• movements related to reflexes are not simply
  discharges in the brain, but depend on muscle
  movement, weight, state, illness many other
  factors
• reflexes play a role in the active development of
  the muscles, leading to increased strength
  coordination

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Physical and Motor DevelopmentGrowth

• Asynchronous growth different parts of the body
  grow at different rates at different times

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Physical and Motor DevelopmentSucking

• Sucking is a reflex that is crucial for survival
  it changes over time becomes more voluntary

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Physical and Motor DevelopmentGrowth

• The newborns arms hands are among the least
  controlled parts of the body
• arm hand movements seem uncoordinated but
  detailed video analyses show that they occur in
  meaningful patterns

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Physical and Motor DevelopmentThe Brain

• Neuroscience the study of the brain nervous
  system as it relates to psychological
  behavioral functions such as moving, thinking,
  and feeling

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Brain structures and functions

• Major areas of the brain
• brain stem
• limbic system
• cortex

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Brain structures and functions

• The prefrontal cortex is least developed in
  infancy

• connects limbic cortical areas
• responsible for social emotional regulation
• involves thinking, reasoning, and judging

Picture from www.cast.org
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Brain structures and functions

• Most developed in infancy
• brain stem controls autonomic functions such as
  breathing and heart rate
• limbic system processes emotions and memories
  some body functions
• the important structures are the hippocampus,
  amygdala, hypothalamus, and pituitary gland

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Brain structures and functionsThe Limbic System

• Hippocampus important in
  the formation of memories for
  events sequences
  (autobiographical memory)
• during the first 3 years, the hippocampus
  develops links with the language cognition
  areas of the cortex
• Amygdala plays a role in the formation of
  emotional memories, especially those around fear
  safety

Picture from homepage.psy.utexas.edu
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Brain structures and functionsThe Limbic System

• Hypothalamus links the brain to the endocrine
  systems of the body via the pituitary gland
• regulates stress, body temperature, hunger,
  thirst, and day-night rhythms
• The pituitary gland produces hormones
• for stress regulation, maintenance of body state,
  sexual activity, milk production in nursing
  mothers, cell growth

Picture from www.crnasomeday.com/anatpages/pituit
ary.htm
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Physical and Motor DevelopmentTwo Hemispheres

• Right hemisphere processes the majority of
  social emotional activity
• major development during the first 2 years of
  life (emotion regulation, attachments)
• Left hemisphere more specialized for thinking
  language
• develops more rapidly after the first 2 years

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Fetal and infant brain development A critical
period

• The period from the 5th gestational month through
  the age of 3-4 years is a critical period for the
  development of the human brain
• To understand why, we need to look at the
  structure of neurons information storage
  
  transfer cells

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Fetal and infant brain development A critical
period

• The brain develops by four basic processes
• New cells are created via mitosis during the
  prenatal period
• most development after this occurs by making cell
  connections by pruning of unused neurons
• The brain becomes more efficient
• glial cells guide growth migration of neurons
  (prenatally)
• myelination increases the speed of conduction
  along the axon (mostly right before after birth)

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Fetal and infant brain development A critical
period

1. Synaptogenesis cells grow more dendrites axon
   terminals make more synaptic connections
   neurotransmitters

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Fetal and infant brain development A critical
period

• The role of experience
• experience expectant pathways await specific
  environmental input
• e.g., pain elicits crying
• experience dependent pathways are based on unique
  experiences
• those that are used most become strengthened
  those that are used the least eventually die

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Optimal non-optimal brain development

• Neural plasticity the ability of the brain
  nervous system to seek novelty, learn, and
  remember by continuing to alter the patterns of
  connections between neurons
• intact brains retain plasticity throughout life
• impairments in social linguistic skills, along
  with brain abnormalities, develop in infants
  reared in orphanages or infants not exposed to
  appropriate language

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Optimal non-optimal brain development

• Each baby in the first two years of life comes to
  assess the social world as either a safe or a
  threatening place

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Optimal non-optimalbrain development

• Neuroception nonconscious evaluation of safety
  or threat, by the nervous system and not the
  conscious mind (Porges, 2004)

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Optimal non-optimalbrain development

• Neuroception is regulated by
• Sympathetic parasympathetic nervous systems
• Sympathetic nervous system prepares the body
  for action
• Parasympathetic nervous system allows the body
  to relax, slow down, process information, engage
  socially, learn grow the vagus nerve is most
  responsible for neuroception
• The HPA-axis

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The HPA-axis
When stress occurs

• Hypothalamus CRH
• Pituitary gland ACTH
• Adrenal glands Cortisol

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Optimal non-optimalbrain development

• Cortisol prepares the body for action in response
  to stress
• increases blood sugar needed for action
• feeds back into the limbic system where it
  heightens the formation of memories related to
  the stressful event
• If stress is persistent, cortisol is overproduced
• prolonged activation of cortisol suppresses the
  immune system physical growth
• too much stress leads to a tendency to feel fear
  and threat in the future can lead to post
  traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

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Optimal non-optimalbrain development
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Optimal non-optimalbrain development

• In sum, the first 3 years of life are critical
  for brain development
• for the development of the limbic prefrontal
  parts of the right brain, which is dependent on
  the quality of love, emotional sharing, social
  engagement received perceived
• not for cortical left-brain processes like
  reading, math, thinking, or musical ability

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Optimal non-optimalbrain development

• It is more important for infant brain development
  to spend quality one-on-one and family time than
  letting the baby play for long periods with
  expensive toys, or listen to Mozart, or watch
  baby TV programs

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Perceptual Development

• Ecological perception experience that relies on
  direct perception through the senses
• the senses form the basic ways in which we are
  connected to the environment
• Newborns have the ability to see, hear, taste,
  smell, and feel although not as focused or
  discriminating as adults can

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Perceptual Development

• Newborn visual acuity visual processing are
  poor but improve rapidly
• visual acuity is only 20/500 on average, due to
  an immature nervous system
• the newborns visual world is rather blurry, but
  the infant can see colors
• as a result of experience-dependent brain
  development, visual acuity improves to nearly
  20/20 by 6 months

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Perceptual Development

• Oculomotor skills movements that the eye makes
  to
• bring objects into focus
• follow moving objects
• adjust for objects at different distances
• Newborns tracking of moving objects is jerky,
  and they only follow slowly moving objects
• at 6-8 weeks, following becomes more adultlike

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Perceptual Development

• Scanning the eye traces a path across a visual
  stimulus in small, rapid movements

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Perceptual Development

• Oculomotor control adjusts the eyes to see
  objects at different distances
• Depth perception the ability to judge the
  relative distances between two objects
  determine whether objects are close or far
• The ability to compare the two retinal images
  (and therefore to see distance) emerges slowly
  between 3 6 months

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Perceptual Development

• Can newborns see patterns?
• Studies show that newborns can detect differences
  between visual images seem to prefer some
  images more than others
• Newborns prefer
• objects with clearly marked edges outlines
• circular patterns over straight lines
• the external contours of a figure, especially if
  the edges are sharp

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Perceptual Development

• Newborns have perceptual preferences that are
  likely to bring them into contact with things
  that enhance their survival
• infants prefer faces over other objects
• 1-day-old infants change their sucking response
  to see a picture of their mothers face rather
  than the face of an unfamiliar female but not
  when the mother is shown wearing a scarf
• newborns prefer to look at faces judged by adults
  to be more attractive
• they also prefer faces in which the other
  persons gaze is directed toward the infant
  rather than averted

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Auditory Perception

• The auditory system is more mature at birth than
  the visual system
• Auditory sensitivity (sensitivity to sounds)
  involves loudness pitch
• newborns can hear sounds of 40-60 dB but only
  sounds from 50-70 dB can awaken them
• they prefer sounds in the middle range higher
  pitch over lower pitch sounds made up of more
  than one note and melodic sequences over a
  jumble of unrelated notes

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Auditory Perception

• The most common source of such sounds is an adult
  female voice, talking or singing
• newborns prefer to listen to a song or story that
  their mothers had sung or read aloud 2 weeks
  prior to birth over an unfamiliar song or story
• newborns seem to prefer heartbeat sounds similar
  to those they must have heard prenatally
• infants can distinguish the voice of their own
  mother from the voices of other women.

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Auditory Perception

• How do newborns distinguish speech sounds from
  different people?
• They may detect overall patterns of rhythm
  pitch that differentiate one person from another
• They may be able to hear differences among
  syllables that give them cues about a speakers
  uniqueness
• By 1 month, they distinguish two very closely
  related speech sounds (e.g., p and b) and by
  2 months, they recognize vowel differences

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Taste

• Newborns seem to distinguish the four basic
  tastes sweet, salty, sour, and bitter

• They show different responses to these four
  tastes
• Sweet fluids seem to relax (see pictures)
• Sour, bitter salty tastes elicit negative
  responses

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Smell

• Newborns can differentiate between odors (incl.
  vinegar, licorice, alcohol)
• In response to unpleasant odors, they make faces
  of disgust and turn away
• They may recognize their mothers by odor
• Newborns turn their heads more to a pad
  containing their mothers breast milk than to one
  containing another womans milk
• Breast-fed infants can also recognize their
  mothers underarm odor perfume they prefer
  the smell of any breast milk over other types of
  smells

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Touch

• Many reflexes are stimulated by touch newborns
  show changes in behavior heart rate in response
  to tactile stimulation
• They adjust hand mouth movements when feeling
  soft vs. hard objects, or smooth vs. textured
  objects
• They visually recognize an object they had
  previously touched, but not the other way around
• In response to medical procedures (e.g.,
  injections, circumcision), infants show increased
  distress and may exhibit sleep disturbances

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Perceptual Development

• In sum,
• newborns perceive with all their senses and their
  sensitivity improves rapidly over the first few
  weeks and months, due to brain development
  experience
• many forms of stimulation have no particular
  meaning for the infant but others are meaningful
  (e.g., recognizing mom, crying in response to
  pain)

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Cognitive Development

• Newborns possess a number of ways to process
  information that are referred to as cognition
  including learning memory, orienting
  habituation, and imitation

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Cognitive Development

• Classical conditioning
• possible when the unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
  evokes a rewarding natural response, such as a
  sweet taste
• Operant conditioning
• once infants learn the connection between their
  behavior a reinforcement, they can signal their
  preferences, using sucking rate or head turn
• newborns can remember (e.g., a word repeated by
  mom) for appr. 24 hours they prefer familiarity

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Cognitive Development

• Habituation is the decline in strength of
  responding after repeating the same stimulus
  dishabituation is renewed interest
• Newborns motor and heart rate responses have
  been found to habituate to auditory stimuli,
  visual stimuli, and tactile stimuli
• Habituation can also be shown in premature
  newborns and even in infants born without a brain
  cortex (anencephalic)

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Newborn Imitation

• Meltzoff Moore (1977) showed that 12- to
  21-day-old infants could match tongue protrusion,
  lip protrusion, mouth opening, hand opening, and
  hand closing

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Newborn Imitation

• These findings have been replicated
• One study showed that newborns also matched
  moving objects
• One study found imitation of surprise, happy, and
  sad facial expressions
• Other studies failed to replicate these findings
• babies show a wide variety of gestures following
  the model
• there are wide individual differences

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Newborn Imitation

• Newborn imitation may be a way of relating to
  people
• Infants who imitated more at birth gazed away
  from their mothers less at 3 months
• Newborns imitation of tongue protrusion showed a
  different pattern of heart rate change compared
  to when they initiated the same movement (as if
  to get a response)
• 6-week-old infants spontaneously reproduced the
  imitative response they had learned 24 hours
  earlier when seeing the adult model

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Newborn Self-Awareness The Emergent Self

• Evidence for early self-awareness comes from
  studies that show
• Newborn imitation (distinguishing own movements
  from the movements of others)
• Differential rooting (more when touched by
  someone else than by touching self)
• Differential crying (more when they hear tape
  recordings of other infants cries)

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Newborn Self-Awareness The Emergent Self

• The emergent self is the sense of self-sameness
  over time in behavior, feelings, and states of
  arousal

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Cognitive Development

• In sum,
• newborn cognition is limited to some simple forms
  of learning, memory, habituation, imitation, and
  self-awareness
• early learning and memory are fundamental to
  survival
• recognition of maternal sounds and smells
• learning to orient to sweet fluids milk
• learning to avoid noxious smells tastes
• newborns prefer familiar sights, sounds, tastes,
  feelings, and do not like to be stressed or
  challenged

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Emotional Development

• Newborns can feel distress, contentment, disgust,
  interest, surprise
• newborns savor sweet liquids
• they cry, thrash about, stiffen their bodies when
  distressed
• when attending to faces, social interaction,
  moving objects, they may show expressions of
  interest surprise

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Emotional Development

• Some expressions (e.g., smiling) do not occur
  with any clear link to the situation
• Emotional development depends in part on how
  newborn forms of expression are interpreted by
  adults

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Family and Society

• Adults and infants have mutually complementary
  communications that get their interaction started
  and set the stage for later emotional ties
• Attachment the maintenance of
  mutual proximity over
  time
• Bonding skin-to-skin contact
  immediately after birth,
  
  between mother and infant

Picture from raisingchildren.net.au
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Family and Society

• Mothers fathers explore the newborns body in a
  patterned way when given the opportunity
  apparently important for survival

• However, there is no conclusive evidence linking
  these first few minutes of contact with later
  attachment security
• When there is no immediate post-birth contact,
  lasting attachments can still be formed

Picture from www.smh.com.au
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Family and Society

• There is also a social-psychological component
  that may form the basis of later interpersonal
  communication and attachment
• early feeding patterns (suck-pause, jiggle-stop,
  suck-pause, jiggle-stop, etc.) precede later
  social discourse
• animated adult faces brightly colored objects
  prolong periods of alertness
• the duration of parent-infant face-to-face play
  infant attention gradually increases over the
  first 2 months

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Family and Society

• Studies of large-scale national samples show that
  fathers spend 20-35 as much time as mothers in
  direct infant care

• Mens ability to participate in parenting tasks
  depends on the amount of social support they
  receive, particularly from their partners
• The more involved fathers are, the more involved
  they become

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Family and Society

• Father-infant and mother-infant interaction can
  be enhanced by specific interventions to orient
  parents to their newborns
• E.g., 12-week-old infants whose fathers had been
  trained in massage bathing were more likely to
  interact with their fathers fathers were more
  likely to be involved with their infants than
  non-trained fathers
• Parenting occurs within a family system

Picture from www.childways.co.uk
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Family and Society

• First-time parents appear more hesitant with
  their babies, but this difference disappears
  after several months

• Firstborn newborns receive more caregiving
  interaction

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Experiential Exercises Sucking

• Sucking is the first mouth movement that we
  master later we build on our infant sucking
  ability as we learn to control thousands of other
  mouth face movements
• Lie on your right side in a fetal position, and
  place your hands close to your mouth
• Gently protrude your lips tongue and
  experiment
• Now try sucking movements
• Many people experience a deep relaxation of the
  face after doing this lesson. What was your
  experience?

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Experiential Exercises Somatic Awareness of the
Hands

• Sit in a chair close your eyes become aware
  of your body in the chair
• Now, notice your hands what position are they
  in? How do they feel?
• Slowly move your hands
• Now, slowly curl uncurl your right hand then
  the left
• Let your hands explore your body, clothes, the
  chair, each other
• Open your eyes and look at your hands as if
  youve never seen them before