The End of Infancy

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The End of Infancy

• The Development of Children (5th ed.)
• Cole, Cole Lightfoot
• Chapter 6

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Overview of the Journey

• Biological Maturation
• Perceptual-Motor Coordination
• New Modes of Thought
• Child-Caregiver Relations
• A New Sense of Self
• The End of Infancy

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Biological Maturation

• Rate of growth
• Myelination
• Neural branching

4
Second-Year Changes

• Rate of growth is slower than during the first
  year
• Height 29 ? 38 inches
• Weight 20 ? 33 lbs.

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Second-Year Changes

• Accelerated myelination
• Within cerebral cortex
• Between brain stem and cortex
• Leads to new self-awareness, emotional responses,
  better problem solving, voluntary control of
  behavior, enhanced analysis of visual and
  auditory input, and language acquisition
• Neuron branching close to adult magnitudes
• Each neuron has multiple connections with others,
  usually numbering in the thousands

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Perceptual-Motor Coordination

• Locomotion
• Manual dexterity
• Control of elimination

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Locomotion

• Walking Development, integration, and practice
  of component skills
• Upright posture
• Leg alternation
• Weight shifting
• Sense of balance
• Occurs around the age of one year
• Increased walking coordination
• Enhanced ability to perceive conditions of the
  environment

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Increasing Ability
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Enhanced Perception
Experience crawling up and down slopes does not
seem to carry over to walking.
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Manual Dexterity

• Coordination of fine hand movement increases
  significantly 12 ? 30 months
• Throw a ball
• Turn pages of a book
• String beads
• Snip paper with scissors
• Build tower 6 blocks high
• Hold a cup of liquid without spilling it
• Dress themselves (but not buttons or shoelaces)

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Grip Patterns for Spoon
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Control of Elimination

• Requirements
• Sensory pathways from bladder and bowels must
  mature enough to transmit signals to the cortex
• Must learn to associate these signals with need
  to eliminate
• Also learn to tighten their sphincters to prevent
  elimination and loosen them to permit it

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Control of Elimination

• Toilet training
• Succeeds in the limited sense that infants learn
  to eliminate when placed on the potty
• No change in the ages at which children gained
  sufficient control to stay dry at night
• Can stay dry during the day by the age of 2
  (with adult watchfulness)
• Do not typically stay dry at night until the age
  of 4

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New Modes of Thought

• Symbolic thought
• Problem solving
• Pretend play
• Deferred imitation
• Ability to categorize
• Pictures and models

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Piaget Sensorimotor Stage (Infancy)
Sub Age (M) Description
1 0 1 ½ Reflex schemas exercised
2 1 ½ 4 Primary circular reactions
3 4 8 Secondary circular reactions
4 8 12 Coordination of secondary circular reactions
5 12 18 Tertiary circular reactions
6 18 24 Beginning of symbolic representation
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Piaget Sensorimotor Stage (Infancy)
Sub Age (M) Description
5 12 18 Tertiary circular reactions Deliberate variation of problem-solving means, with experimentation to see what the consequences will be
6 18 24 Beginning of symbolic representation Images and words come to stand for familiar objects new means of problem solving through symbolic combinations
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Evidence of Representation (Symbolic Thought)

• Ability to imagine an object not physically
  present
• Shown by systematic search for hidden objects

• Appearance of systematic problem-solving

• Emergence of pretend play
• Ability to imitate events well after they have
  occurred
• Ability to understand visual models

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Mastery of Object Permanence

• Substage 4 (8-12 months)
• Infant finds an object hidden in one location and
  then observes it being hidden in a second
  location
• Will search for it in the original hiding place
• Substage 5 (12-18 months)
• Not confused by switching when watching
• If distracted when the switch occurred, however,
  will continue to search in the first location
  rather than elsewhere

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Substage 5
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Substage 5
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Substage 5
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Substage 5
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Substage 5
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Mastery of Object Permanence

• Substage 4 (8-12 months)
• Infant finds an object hidden in one location and
  then observes it being hidden in a second
  location
• Will search for it in the original hiding place
• Substage 5 (12-18 months)
• Not confused by switching when watching
• If distracted when the switch occurred, will
  continue to search in the first location rather
  than elsewhere
• Substage 6 (18-24 months)
• Well it wasnt where I expected it to be, but it
  must be here somewhere.
• Able to anticipate the trajectory of a moving
  object that has disappeared behind a barrier

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Problem Solving

• Infant in substage 5 carries out deliberate
  problem solving, but still relies principally on
  trial and error
• Infant in substage 6 pictures a series of events
  in her mind before acting (i.e., via inference)

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Pretend Play

• Symbolic play (pretend or fantasy play)Play in
  which one object stands for another (e.g., banana
  for a telephone, railing for a road)
• Makes its appearance during the second year
• Allows children to perform actions more
  developmentally advanced than what they can
  perform on their own (e.g., pour milk into a
  cup)

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Development of Agent Use in Pretend Play
Type of Agent Example
Self as agent The infant puts his or her head on a pillow to pretend to go to sleep
Passive other agent The infant puts a doll on a pillow to pretend that it goes to sleep
Passive sub-stitute agent The infant puts a block on a pillow to pretend that it goes to sleep
Active other agent The infant has a doll place a block on the pillow to go to sleep, as if the doll were actually putting the block to bed
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Pretend Play

• Research
• Lasts longer and is more sophisticated when with
  mother than when alone
• Similarly, when with older sibling than when with
  mother
• However, in cultures where infants engage in less
  play (e.g., Mayan), equal performance on tests of
  development

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Deferred Imitation

• First appearance at 6-9 months of age
• Toward end of 2nd year, a new ability to
  imitate actions that adults (but not machines)
  intend to do, but do not actually complete
• Demonstrates the ability to represent the mental
  states of other people

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Ability to Categorize

• 12 months More likely to touch the toy they
  picked up than other toys that had the same shape
• 18 months Create a small workspace in front of
  them and put 2 or 3 objects of the same kind in
  it
• 24 months Divide objects into two distinct
  categories, working on one category at a time
• 30 months Simultaneously coordinate work on two
  major categories and create sub-categories in
  which the objects are grouped according to
  color as well

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Pictures and Models

• 2 years Can rarely use pictorial information to
  find an object hidden in the room
• 2 ½ years Can use a picture, but not a model
  of the room to find the object
• 3 years Can use the model as a representation
  of the room to find the hidden object

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Development ofChild-Caregiver Relations

• Attachment

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Attachment

• An emotional bond most prominent in infants from
  6-18 months of age, evidenced by separation
  anxiety
• Explanations
• Freud Caused by reduction of hunger drive (not
  substantiated, however, by research)
• Erikson Become attached to people who reliably
  attend to their needs and who otherwise foster a
  sense of trust
• Bowlby Provides a balance between an infants
  need for safety and varied learning experiences

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Animal Research

• The cloth mother, which does not provide
  nourishment, acts as a secure base, whereas the
  wire mother, which does provide nourishment, does
  not
• This contradicts drive-reduction theories of
  attachment (Freud)

Harlow, 1959
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Animal Research

• Although southing tactile sensations provide a
  baby with a sense of security that is more
  important to the formation of attachment than
  food, they are not sufficient
• Social interactions seem to be necessary for
  healthy emotional development

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Human Research

• Mary Ainsworth and the strange situation
• Types secure, anxious/avoidant,
  anxious/resistant

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Types of Attachment

• Secure
• Child reacts positively to a stranger as long as
  mother is present
• Becomes upset when mother leaves and is unlikely
  to be consoled by a stranger
• Calms down as soon as mother reappears
• Anxious/avoidant
• Child is indifferent to where mother is sitting
• May or may not cry when mother leaves
• Is as likely to be comforted by a stranger as by
  mother
• Is indifferent when mother returns
• Anxious/resistant
• Child stays close to mother and appears anxious
  even when mother is near
• Becomes very upset when mother leaves but is not
  comforted by her return
• Simultaneously seeks renewed contact with mother
  and resists her efforts to comfort

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Causes of Variation in Patterns of Attachment

• Parental behaviors
• Mothers sensitivity to their infants signals of
  need seems to be related to higher levels of
  secure attachment
• Characteristics of the child
• Infants who had spent more time playing with
  objects than interacting sociably with their
  mothers were more likely to display signs of
  insecure attachment later on
• Family influences
• Maternal depression and marital discord appear to
  be related to lower levels of secure attachment
• Cultural influences
• Children who slept at home displayed a
  significantly higher level of secure attachments

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Course of Attachment
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A New Sense of Self

• Self-recognition
• Self as actor
• Sense of standards
• Secondary emotions

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Self-Recognition

• 3 months Little interest at all
• 4 months Reach out and touch mirror image
• 10 months Reach behind them if a toy is slowly
  lowered behind their back while they are looking
  in the mirror, but will not try to rub off a red
  spot that has been surreptitiously applied to
  their nose
• 18 months Will reach for their own nose when
  they see the red spot when asked, Whos that?
  will answer Me

Mirror
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Self as Actor

• 18-24 months (at same time as begin 2-word
  utterances)
• Did it!
• Becky finished.
• Uh-oh. I fix.

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Sense of Standards

• Around 2 years of age
• Upset if ear of teddy bear is missing or mud on
  dress
• Yucky Fix it
• Self-imposed goal of using all available blocks
  or fitting every doll into baby carriage
• Actively seek adults help in reaching goals and
  standards

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Emergence of Secondary Emotions

• 6 primary emotions by the first birthday
• Joy, fear, anger, surprise, sadness, disgust
• Primary bear a simple, direct relation to the
  events that elicit them

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Emergence of Secondary Emotions

• 18-24 months Experience new secondary emotions
• Embarrassment, pride, shame, guilt, envy, etc.
  (e.g., self-satisfied smile, hang head, cover
  face, try to hide)
• Secondary depend on infants new abilities to
  recognize, talk about, and think about themselves
  in relation to other people (e.g., in terms of
  some social standard, rule, or desired goal)
• Also known as social or self-conscious
  emotions

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The End of Infancy

• A bio-social-behavioral shift
• Between the ages of 24 30 months

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Prominent Shifts Periods
Shift Point Developmental Period
Conception Prenatal period
Birth Early infancy
2 ½ months Middle infancy
7-9 months Late infancy
24-30 months Early childhood
5-7 years Middle childhood
11-12 years Adolescence
19-21 years Adulthood
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Characteristics of the Shift
Biological Myelination of connections among brain areas Leveling off of brain growth Maturation of brain areas in roughly equal degrees
Social Decline of distress at separation Distinctive sense of self Acceptance of adult standards Emergence of secondary emotions
Behavioral Walking becomes well coordinated Manual dexterity enables infant to pick up small objects Control over bladder and bowels More complex and planned problem solving Symbolic play and expression of basic words phrases Conceptual representations and complex categories Smile accompanying mastery