Prenatal

1
Prenatal Infancy

• Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6

2
Genetics and Heredity

• Conception Occurs when the male gamete (sperm)
  penetrates the female gamete (ovum), combining to
  form the zygote.

3
Some Definitions

• Gene basic units of heredity, about 100,000 for
  humans, capable of combining for 3 Billion
  specific codes
• DNA Deoxyribonuclic Acid, complex molecules
  that determine form and function of each cell.

4
Chromosomes

• Rows of genes that combine in different ways to
  produce specific features.
• Humans have 23 pairs.
• One half of each pair from each parent.

5
Sex chromosomes

• The 23rd pair.
• Determines sex of offspring
• XX Female
• XY Male

6
Genetic traits

• Most traits are polygenetic, effected by many
  genes.
• Traits are also multifactorial, influences by
  many factors, including the environment.

7
Genotype and Phenotype

• Genotype The genetic mix that we inherit.
• Eye color
• Phenotype The characteristics that we exhibit.
• Height/weight

8
Dominant vs. Recessive

• Genes that have a controlling influence over
  weaker genes are dominant.
• Genes that are likely (but not always) suppressed
  by other genes are recessive.

9
Sex Linked Regressive Genes

• Genes located on the X chromosome, not balances
  by the missing leg of the Y chromosome.
• Color-blindness
• Some allergies
• Some Learning Disabilities
• Hemophilia

10
Genetic/Chromosomal Abnormalities

• Down Syndrome an extra 21st chromosome
• Klinefelters Syndrome an XXY pattern
• Fragile-X Syndrome part of the X breaks off
• Cri du Chat Syndrome missing 4th or 5th
  chromosome.
• Incidence between 1-200 and 1-500.

11
Genetics and Psychological Traits

• Shyness
• Mental Illness
• Bi-polar Disorder
• Schizophrenia
• Substance Dependence
• Clear Genotype vs phenotype issues

12
Conception

• Spermatogenesis 300 million sperm produced
  daily, 200-500 million released per ejaculation.
• Oogenisis About 400 present at birth, with
  (typically) one ripened and released every 28
  days after puberty.

13
Prenatal Developmental Stages

• Germinal Period Conception to about day 14.
• Embryonic Period 2 weeks to 8 weeks.
• Fetal Period 8 weeks to delivery.

14
Germinal Period

• Morula, the first cell divisions, in a mulberry
  pattern.
• Blastula, or hollow ball of cells, seen after
  about the 4th day.
• Blastocyst, the attachment of cells to the
  uterine wall, about the 8th day.

15
Embryonic Period

• Implantation typically complete by the 14th
  day.
• Original embryo size, about .06th of an inch
  (1/16th).
• Fish-like appearance, with tail and gills.

16
Fetal Period

• From 2 months to full term.
• Period of very rapid growth.
• Highly vulnerable to environmental influences.

17
The Prenatal Environment

• Teratogens
• Maternal Illnesses
• Other Maternal factors

18
Teratogens

• Any substance that can cross the placental
  barrier and cause harm to the developing organism.

19
Teratogen Rules

• Effect is greatest on a system when that system
  is growing most rapidly.
• Every fetus may react differently to a specific
  teratogen, susceptibility is partly genetic.
• The same effect can be caused by different
  teratogens.

20
Teratogen Rules (contd)

• A variety of effects can result from a single
  teratogen.
• The higher the dose, the greater chance of damage.

21
Teratogen Classifications

• Drugs
• Opiates
• Alcohol
• Tranquilizers
• Anti-depressants
• Marijuana
• Cocaine

22
Teratogen Classifications

• Pollutants
• Radiation
• Chemicals
• Agent Orange
• PCBs
• Heat

23
Teratogen Classifications

• Maternal Diseases
• Rubella
• Toxoplasmosis
• STDs
• AIDS
• Syphilis
• Gonorrhea

24
Teratogen Classifications

• Maternal Factors
• Age
• Nutrition
• Stress

25
Critical Periods

• Each structure or system has periods during the
  prenatal stage where they are most sensitive to
  teratogens.
• CNS
• Heart
• Extremities
• Face/mouth
• See the chart.

26
Childbirth

• Prepared Childbirth
• Lamaze methods
• Birthing Rooms
• Decisions about anesthesia

27
Stages of Labor

• Dilation Stage opening the mouth of the cervix
• Delivery baby passes through the birth canal
• Afterbirth passage of the placenta.

28
Assessing the new born

• The Apgar Score 0-2 point scale measuring
• Heart rate
• Respiratory effort
• Muscle tone
• Reflex response
• Color
• The higher the better

29
Neonatal Reflexes

• Babinski
• Moro
• Palmar
• Rooting
• Stepping
• Sucking
• Swimming

30
Neonatal Physical Characteristics

• Average 20 inches long
• Weight about 7 pounds
• Frequently misshapen head
• Legs and buttocks small in relationship to the
  rest of the body
• Presence of vernix caseosa, a cheese like
  protective coating.

31
Brain Growth

• At birth, brain is 25 of adult weight
• Increases to 75 of adult weight by age 2
• Increase based on
• Increase in number of neurons
• Increase in density of dendrites
• Increase in myelin sheath

32
First Brain Functions

• Regulating physiological states
• Cycles through
• Quiet sleep, slow regular breathing with relaxed
  muscles
• Active sleep, movement of facial muscles and less
  regular breathing
• Alert wakefulness, rapid regular breathing, eyes
  bright and active

33
Stage changes

• Gradual shift from 13-15 hours of sleep/day at
  birth to
• Cycle that matches family activities
• By age 3 months, 30 sleep through the night
• By age 1 year, 80 sleep through the night

34
Sensory Development

• Sensation a sensory system responds to a
  particular stimulus
• Perception the brain recognizes and processes
  the stimulus
• In infants both tested through habituation,
  measuring the ability to discriminate between
  similar stimuli

35
Vision

• Least developed of senses at birth
• Able to focus on objects between 4 and 30 inches
• At birth about 20/600, at six months about 20/20
• Binocular vision (depth perception) starts to
  develop at about 3-4 months.

36
Hearing

• Well developed, probably from before birth.
• Able to discriminate mothers voice from other
  female voices by the 3rd day.
• Hearing of high frequency sounds better than low
  frequency sounds until about age 2.

37
Taste and Smell

• Able to discriminate between sweet, sour, salty
  and bitter as early as early as 2 hours after
  delivery
• Able to discriminate between a breast pad used by
  mother and breast pads used by other women by the
  5th or 6th day.

38
Use it or loose it rules

• Early practice with stimulation tends to increase
  density of brain material in sensory regions.
• Lack of stimulation leads to atrophy.
• Numerous fine tuning processes through
  development of connective networks from
  experience.

39
Physical Development

• Age Norms averages from large, representative
  samples from a variety of ethnic groups.
• Usually expressed at the 50 and 90 level, that
  is the ages at which 50 of children master a
  skill and the age at which 90 master the skill.

40
Age Norms for Motor Skill

• Skill 50 90
• Lifts head 2.2 3.2
• Rolls over 2.8 4.7
• Stands alone 11.5 13.9
• Walks well 12.1 14.3

41
Cognitive Development

• The interaction of all the perceptual,
  intellectual and linguistic skills that are
  involved in thinking and learning.
• How we acquire and use knowledge in adapting to
  the environment.

42
Piagets Sensorimotor Stage

• Thinking exclusively with sensation and motor
  responses.
• Six sub-stages

43
Stage One

• Birth to 1 month
• Reflexes
• Sucking
• Grabbing
• Staring
• Listening

44
Stage Two

• 1-4 months
• The First Acquired Adaptations
• Accommodation and coordination of reflexes
• Sucking a pacifier differently than a nipple
• Grabbing a bottle to suck from

45
Stage Three

• 4-8 months
• Procedures for Making Interesting Things Last
• Responding to people and objects

46
Stage Four

• 8-12 months
• New Adaptations and Anticipation
• Becoming more deliberate and purposeful in
  responding to people and objects

47
Stage Five

• 12-18 months
• New Means Through Active Experimentation
• Experimentation and creativity in the activities
  of the little scientist.

48
Stage Six

• 18-24 months
• New Mean Through Mental Combinations
• Thinking before doing allows ways to achieve a
  goal without trial and error.

49
Object Permanence

• Emerges in Stage 4
• The realization that objects exist even when they
  cannot be seen.
• Peek-a-boo and hide-the-toy
• Current research suggests not on such a strict
  timetable as Piaget thought.
• As early a 4 months, not complete at 12 months.

50
Cultural differences

• Non Western babies reach the stages earlier than
  Western babies.
• Testing conditions may vary dramatically.

51
Perception

• Gibsons Affordances
• Objects have many Affordances, that is they offer
  diverse opportunities for interaction.
• A lemon affords smelling, tasting, touching,
  viewing, throwing, and squeezing.
• Which one we focus on depends on the individual
  and the situation.

52
Intermodal Perception

• The ability to associate information from one
  sensory modality with information from another.
• Fireplaces
• Golf balls
• Dancing puppets and rock roll

53
Cross-modal Perception

• The ability to use information from one sensory
  modality to imagine something in another.
• Picturing a person from a voice on the phone
• Seeing a picture of a food and imagining how it
  will taste.
• Both cross-modal and inter-modal perception
  present by 1 month.

54
Categorization

• The ability to put things in groups based on some
  common characteristic.
• Present for shapes and colors at 3 months.
• Present for gender by 12 months.

55
Language Development

• Language function the communication of ideas and
  emotions (present from birth)
• Language Structure the particular words and
  rules of your native tongue (by 24 months)

56
Steps in Language Development

• Universal sequence and timetable for early
  language development in all cultures.
• First evident in function, later in structure.

57
The Newborn

• Reflexive communication
• Cries, movements, facial expressions

58
Two Months

• Meaningful noises
• Cries, coos, babbles and laughs
• English mama, dada
• Spanish mama, papa
• Hebrew ema, abba
• Bantu ba-mama, taata
• Also present as manual babbling in deaf infants

59
Three to Six months

• New sounds all sounds from all human languages
• Squeals, groans trill, vowel sounds
• -sk ch, -gh, -sb, etc

60
Six to Ten Months

• Repeated consonant and vowel sounds, gradually
  restricted to mother tongue.
• Comprehension of adult language
• Up, go, Wheres mommy?

61
Twelve Months

• First spoken words
• Tendency toward over-extension.
• All round things are balls, all 4 legged things
  are doggies, etc.

62
Twelve to Eighteen Months

• Vocabulary building
• 1 to 50 words, a few each month.
• Holophasic speech a single word that expresses
  a complete thought, often in a variety of ways
• -gheti?, vs. gheti!, vs. gheti

63
18 to 20 Months

• Rapid increase in vocabulary
• First two-word sentences
• Telegraphic speech
• baby cry
• rain stop
• Awareness of simple grammar

64
24 Months

• 200 word vocabulary
• Awareness of more complex grammar
• Jack Jill hit.

65
Theories about Language Development

• Learned or innate?
• Skinner vs. Chomsky

66
Language is Learned

• Simple conditioning reinforces the use of sounds
  to communicate, and interaction with parents
  gradually shapes grammar.
• Amount of language based interaction is critical
• Evidence that mothers talk more to first children
  who do have better language skills.

67
Language is Innate

• The Language Acquisition Device, a built in part
  of the human brain that prewires communication
• Points to universality of language stages across
  cultures.
• No formal grammar instructions but it develops
  anyway

68
Motherese

• The way adults talk to babies
• Higher pitch
• Greater high-low variation
• Simpler vocabulary
• Shorter sentences
• More questions and commands
• More present tense

69
Social Interaction and Language

• Combines the behaviorist and naturalist positions
  by stressing the role of parents and sibling in
  language development
• Helps explain differences in language development
  for different birth orders (learn from parents or
  learn from siblings?

70
PSYCHOSOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

• Emotional Development
• Personality Development
• Temperament
• Parent-Infant Interaction

71
Emotional Development

• A scheduled process, linked to cognitive
  development
• Determined from studies of facial expressions
• Typically focused on
• Joy, surprise, anger, fear, disgust, interest and
  sadness

72
First Days Distress

• First emotion discerned distress, usually
  registered by crying.
• Present from the first hours of life
• Reactions get more pronounced as child gets older

73
Sadness

• Found from 1st 3rd month
• Mostly from facial expression
• Looking away and fussing are also characteristic

74
Interest Surprise

• Found at about the 6th week
• Includes wide-eyed expression and smiles
• Social Smilesmiles in response to another person

75
Stranger Anxiety

• Also called fear of strangers
• Emerges at about 6th month, becomes full-blown by
  12th month.
• Depends on interaction of several variables
• Infant temperament
• Nature of the parent-child bond
• Stranger characteristics

76
Separation Anxiety

• Fear of being left by mother or caretaker.
• Emerges at about the 8th month, peaks at about
  14th month.
• Influenced by
• Past separation experiences
• Manner of departure
• Abrupt vs. relaxed.

77
Social Referencing

• Looking to trusted adults for cues about the
  emotional response to a situation.
• Requires enough cognitive development to
  meaningfully interpret others cues.
• Emerges at about 10th month.

78
Self-Awareness

• Few distinct signs until 12th month.
• The red-nose experiment
• Changes reactions to others, including showing
  embarrassment, jealousy, frustration.

79
Personality Development

• Essentially determined by the environment, that
  is, by parents.
• Personality Characteristic way we react across
  a variety of situations.
• Closely tied to developmental theories.

80
Behavioral Theory

• Personality is a function of the infants
  reinforcement schedule.
• Ignores the childs effect on parent, misses
  reciprocity

81
Psychoanalytic Theory

• The Oral and Anal Stages
• Focus on conflict and fixation
• Parental warmth and management probably more
  important than anything specific about feeding or
  potty training.

82
Eriksons Theory

• Trust vs mistrust
• Is the world a secure place where needs can be
  met?
• Autonomy vs shame and doubt
• Can I operate independently to meet new
  experiences?

83
Separation-Individuation

• Proposed by Margaret Mahler
• psychological birth at about the 5th month
• Balancing the need for dependence and
  independence
• Influenced by how smothering parenting is.

84
Temperament

• The Nature part of personality
• Genetic programming, probably mostly in the
  limbic areas of the brain that determines how
  reactive we are to the environment
• The Environmental Psychology notion of screeners
  vs nonscreeners

85
The New York Longitudinal Study

• 1963 study of personality characteristics found
  in the first months of life.
• Established nine dimensions or characteristics

86
The Nine Characteristics

• Rhythmicity
• Approach-withdrawal
• Adaptability
• Intensity of reaction
• Threshold of responsiveness
• Quality of mood
• Distractibility
• Attention span
• Activity Level

87
Baby Types

• The easy baby (40)
• The slow-to-warm-up baby ( 15)
• The Difficult baby (10)

88
Stability of Temperament

• Influenced by the care-giving environment
• Goodness of Fit the quality of the match
  between the babys temperament and the home
  environment.

89
Interaction of temperament and parenting

• Children teach parents how they want to be
  parented as much as parents teach children how to
  cope.

90
Parent /Infant Interaction

• Synchrony coordinated interactions between
  parent and baby emerging in the 2cd month.
• Probably the source of ability to read and
  express emotions.

91
Attachment

• An affectional tie that one person forms between
  himself and another person, that unites them in
  space and over time.

92
Types of attachment

• Secure caregiver is a safe base from which the
  infant ventures forth into a bigger world. (66)
• Insecure Infant is fearful, angry or
  indifferent to the caregiver and is either
  unwilling to let go or indifferent to the
  caregiver (33)

93
Types of Insecure Attachment

• Anxious cling nervously to mother
• Avoidant avoid interaction with mother
• Disoriented inconsistent mix of behavior toward
  mother

94
Promoting Attachment

• Caregiver traits that increase attachment
• Sensitivity to infants needs
• Responsiveness to infants signals
• Encourages growth in play and talk.

95
Other influences on attachment

• Extend to fathers involvement
• Nature of the marriage relationship
• Stress faced by parents
• Cultural differences
• Asian children with higher rates of anxiety,
  European children with high rates of avoidance

96
Attachment issues

• Daycare
• Orphanages
• Prisons

97
Fathers Roles

• Historically ignored by developmentalists
• Very much like mothers on measures of
  responsiveness, stimulation, vocalization

98
Differences between parents

• Fathers more likely to hold children as part of
  play, mothers as part of care giving
• Mothers play more verbal games, fathers more
  physical games
• Mothers more likely to do turn-taking.

99
Effects of Father Absence

• Father absent boys have poorer moral judgment
• Father absent boys have lower academic
  achievement
• Father absent boys may be less aggressive