Chapter 5: Infancy (First 24 Months)

1
Chapter 5 Infancy (First 24 Months)
2
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Chapter Objectives
• To identify important milestones in the
  maturation of the sensory and motor systems, and
  to describe the interactions among these systems
  during the first two years of life
• To define social attachment as the process
  through which infants develop strong emotional
  bonds with others, and to describe the dynamics
  of attachment formation during infancy

3
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Chapter Objectives (cont.)
• To describe the development of sensorimotor
  intelligence, including an analysis of how
  infants organize experiences and conceptualize
  causality
• To examine how infants understand the properties
  of objects, including the sense that objects are
  permanent, that they have unique properties and
  functions, and that they can be categorized.

4
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Chapter Objectives (cont.)
• To examine the nature of emotional development,
  including emotional differentiation, the
  interpretation of emotions, and emotional
  regulation
• To analyze the factors that contribute to the
  resolution of the psychosocial crisis of trust
  versus mistrust, including the achievement of
  mutuality with the caregiver and the attainment
  of a sense of hope or withdrawal

5
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Chapter Objectives (cont.)
• To evaluate the critical role of
  parents/caregivers during infancy with special
  attention to issues of safety in the physical
  environment optimizing cognitive, social, and
  emotional development and the role of
  parents/caregivers as advocates for their infants
  with other agencies and systems

6
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Newborns
• On average 7 to 7 ½ pounds and 20 inches
• Low-birth-weight-babies weigh 5 pounds 8 ounces
  or less
• Small for their gestational age low weight for a
  given gestational age

7
Chapter 5 Infancy
8
Chapter 5 Infancy

• The Development of Sensory/Perceptual and Motor
  Functions
• Infant sensory/perceptual competencies can be
  measured with infant gazing, heart rate, sucking,
  head turning, and habituation
• Habituation allows the infant to attend to new
  aspects of the environment

9
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Brain Development in Infancy
• Infant brain is well-formed at birth with about
  100 billion interconnected neurons (brain cells)
• Neural plasticity

10
Chapter 5 Infancy
11
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Sensory/Motor Development
• Hearing
• Vision
• Taste and Smell
• Touch
• The sensory/perceptual capacities function as an
  interconnected system to provide a variety of
  sources of information about the environment at
  the same time

12
Chapter 5 Infancy
13
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Sensory/Motor Development (cont.)
• Motor skills develop as a result of physical
  growth and maturation in the context of varied
  environmental opportunities
• Motor skills begin as involuntary reflexes, and
  follow a general sequence of development

14
Chapter 5 Infancy
15
Chapter 5 Infancy
16
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Temperament
• Relatively stable characteristics or response to
  the environment that can be observed during the
  first months of life
• Significant source of individual differences a
  result of genetic, environmental, and socially
  construed factors
• Assessed by childs positive or negative reaction
  to events and stability of this reaction

17
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Another View of Temperament
• Reactivity or the childs threshold for arousal,
  which could be evidenced at the physiological,
  emotional, or motor level
• Self-regulation or behavioral inhibition that can
  be thought of as a continuum from bold or brazen
  to inhibited and cautious

18
Chapter 5 Infancy
19
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Case Study The Cotton Family
• Thought Questions
• How would you describe Annas temperament? What
  problems might the Cotton family face if Anna had
  been a more passive, reserved, and inhibited
  child?
• In what ways was Anna being expected to adapt to
  the Cotton family lifestyle?

20
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Case Study The Cotton Family (cont.)
• What are some of the challenges Nancy and Paul
  faced as new parents? How did they cope with
  these challenges?
• How would you describe Pauls enactment of the
  father role?
• How would you describe Nancys enactment of the
  mother role?
• Anna seems to be influencing the well-being of
  her mother, father, and her grandmother. What
  impact does Anna have on each of these family
  members?

21
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Attachment
• Process through which people develop specific,
  positive emotional bonds with others
• Attachment Behavior System
• Parenting or caregiving is the nurturing
  responses of the caregiver to the child
• Synchrony, or interactions that are rhythmic,
  well-timed, and mutually rewarding establish
  attachments

22
Chapter 5 Infancy
23
Chapter 5 Infancy

• The Development of Attachment
• Internal mental representations / internal
  working models
• Goal-corrected partnerships
• Stranger anxiety
• Separation anxiety

24
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Formation of Attachments with Mother, Father, and
  Others
• The amount of time the infant spends in the care
  of the person
• The quality and responsiveness of the care
  provided by the person
• The persons emotional investment in the infant
• The presence of the person in the infants life
  across time

25
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Measuring the Security of Attachment
• The Strange Situation
• A 20 minute period
• Child is exposed to a sequence of periods of
  separations and reunions with the caregiver
• How the child responds to these periods is used
  to assess their level of attachment to the
  caregiver

26
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Four Patterns of Quality of Attachment
• Secure Attachment
• Anxious-Avoidant Attachment
• Anxious-Resistant Attachment
• Disorganized Attachment

27
Chapter 5 Infancy
28
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Parental Sensitivity and the Quality of
  Attachment
• Four factors come into play in producing
  sensitive parenting that underlies secure
  attachments
• Cultural and subcultural pathways
• The caregivers personal life story
• Contemporary factors
• Characteristics of the infant

29
Chapter 5 Infancy

• The Relevance of Attachment to Later Development
• Attachment and internal working models influence
  
• expectations about the self, others, and the
  nature of relationships
• the childs ability to explore and engage the
  environment with confidence
• the formation of later relationships

30
Chapter 5 Infancy

• The Relevance of Attachment to Later Development
  (cont.)
• Clinical diagnoses and links to attachment
• Reactive Attachment Disorder
• Inhibited Type
• Uninhibited Type
• Critique of the Attachment Paradigm
• Attachment paradigm has limitations, especially
  when viewed from a cross-cultural or comparative
  cultural lens

31
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Sensorimotor Intelligence and Early Causal
  Schemes
• Sensorimotor intelligence, or motor routine, that
  reflects organization
• Sensorimotor adaptation is Piagets chief
  mechanism governing the growth of intelligence
  during infancy
• Infants develop an understanding of causality
  based largely on sensory and motor experiences

32
Chapter 5 Infancy
33
Chapter 5 Infancy

• The Development of Causal Schemes
• Infants form expectations about how objects
  function.
• Development of causal schemes
• Phase 1 reflexes
• Phase 2 first habits
• Phase 3 circular reactions
• Phase 4 coordination of means and ends
• Phase 5 experimentation with new means
• Phase 6 - insight

34
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Understanding the Nature of Objects and Creating
  Categories
• Object permanence - objects in the environment
  are permanent and do not cease to exist when they
  are out of reach or view
• One reason babies experience separation anxiety
  is that they are uncertain whether a person to
  whom they are attached will continue to exist
  once out of sight

35
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Video Segment The Sensorimotor Stage Absence of
  Object Permanence

36
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Video Segment The Sensorimotor Stage Presence
  of Object Permanence

37
Chapter 5 Infancy

• The Prefrontal Cortex and Infant Intelligence
• Prefrontal Cortex allows for the ability to
  derive abstract concepts, rules, and
  generalizations from sensory/motor experiences
  and apply them to new situations

38
Chapter 5 Infancy
39
Chapter 5 Infancy
40
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Emotions as a Key to Understanding Meaning
• Provide a channel for determining the meaning the
  child is giving to a specific situation
• The Ability to Regulate Emotions
• One of the most important elements in the
  development of emotional regulation is the way
  caregivers assist infants to manage their strong
  feelings

41
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Emotions as a Channel for Adult-Infant
  Communication
• Emotions provide a two-way channel through which
  infants and their caregivers can establish
  intersubjectivity
• Mechanism of social referencing

42
Chapter 5 Infancy

• The Psychosocial Crisis Trust versus Mistrust
• Trust - an appraisal of the availability,
  dependability, and sensitivity of another person
  emerges as one person discovers those traits in
  another person
• Mistrust - can arise, during infancy, from at
  least three sources infant wariness, lack of
  confidence in the caregiver, and doubt in ones
  own lovableness

43
Chapter 5 Infancy

• The Central Process for Resolving the Crisis
  Mutuality with the Caregiver
• Mutuality is a characteristic of a relationship
  that is initially built on the consistency with
  which the caregiver appropriately responds to the
  infants needs

44
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Coordination, Mismatch, and Repair of
  Interactions
• Coordination refers to two related
  characteristics on interaction matching and
  synchrony
• Matching means that the infant and the caregiver
  are involved in similar behaviors or states at
  the same time
• Synchrony means that the infant and caregiver
  move fluidly from one state to the next

45
Chapter 5 Infancy

• The Central Process for Resolving the Crisis
  Mutuality with the Caregiver
• Establishing a Functional Rhythm in the Family
• The match or mismatch between an infants rhythms
  and the familys rhythms is an important factor
  in the overall adjustment of a family to a new
  baby
• Parents with Psychological Problems

46
Chapter 5 Infancy

• The Prime Adaptive Ego Quality and the Core
  Pathology
• Hope - the first prime adaptive ego quality an
  orientation that goals and dreams can be attained
  and events will turn out for the best
• Withdrawal - a general orientation of wariness
  toward people and objects

47
Chapter 5 Infancy

• Applied Topic The Role of Parents
• Safety in the physical environment
• Fostering emotional and cognitive development
• Fathers and mothers parental behavior
• Parents as advocates
• The importance of social support

48
Chapter 5 Infancy