New born babies o No immune system until about 5 or 6 months old Need very hygienic environments o They sleep a lot About 17 hours a day short spurts Sleep through the night at about 6 weeks t a year o Babies double their weight in about 5 months Transition to parenthood o Mothers spend 2 days in the hospital after birth o Moms used to spend a week in the hospital o The bonding hypothesis First 3 or 4 days are important Need immediate physical contact Not really confirmed o 2 days in the hospital Extremely exhausted Begin breastfeeding immediately People in and out very busy o Decrease in marital satisfaction rom middle of pregnancy to about 6 months after birth o Men commit themselves to do more with babies By 6 months months are doing almost all of the childcare o Where the baby sleeps Separate rooms Same room with crib Cosleeping Dangerous according to pediatricians o Suffocation Higher rate of SIDS o Feeding the baby Breastfeeding or bottle feeding Breast milk is perfectly formulate for babies Not all women can breastfeed Inconvenience don t want do don t produce sufficient milk Binocular vision o Baby s eyes aren t in sync yet o Can look in different directions Newborn babies o What do babies experience when people interact with them o Some babies are responsive and some are unresponsive Development of the brain o The brain needs stimulation in order to grow The quality of the stimulation matters o Has a physiological structure for learning and adapting to the world Auditory system o Babies react to sounds around 7 or 8 months in the womb o Babies hear things in the womb o The cat in the hat study 2 groups of mothers One group read the cat in the hat to the fetus and the other group didn t The story was read to all the babies when they were born o Prosody The babies in the experimental group had more reaction to the story than the other babies The sequence of sounds melody in words o Playing music to the fetus Not necessarily a good idea May damage hearing with high levels of sound o Parents fighting increases cortisol in mothers and babies High cortisol predicts stress reactions in 7 or 8 month old babies o Localization of sound In some babies when they re first born Visual system o The visual system comes on slowly o Doesn t focus on the features of the face Focuses more on the periphery o Neurons in they eyes especially the ones connected to the retina and the fovea don t function efficiently o The lens of the eye and the muscles connected to it cilliary muscles are immature o The eye focuses randomly o Acuity Ability of the eye to detect detail Babies are estimated to have vision of 20 600 feet Improves very rapidly What a baby can see at 20 feet is what a normal person can see at 600 feet 20 120 at about 6 weeks and 20 40 at about 2 months o Slow and steady increase of visual acuity correlates with the improved muscles months o Babies fixate on objects to learn about them Babies can tell objects are separate by color movement separation and occlusion blocking another object o Babies develop the ability to make smooth eye movements at about 2 Well developed by about 4 months o An adult like pattern of eye tracking improves gradually after about 6 months o Depth perception Develops around 6 months 3 types of clues the brain needs Cues about binocular fixation o You get slightly different images of objects from the two eyes Kinetic cues o When turning your head objects closer to the eye move across the retina faster Pictorial cues o Occlusion Needed before babies crawl Visual cliff experiment The human brain is explorative and always looking to improve itself Explorative touch o Babies use their hands to learn about objects o Passive grasp Reflexive grasp when palm is stroked o Pincer grasp Use of the thumb and forefinger to pick up tiny things The perceptual systems are a gateway into the brain Brain development o Proliferation of nerve cells o Nerve cells need to migrate to their correct location Alcohol and drug consumption during pregnancy affect migration paths o Differentiation of cells o Babies have about 100 billion nerve cells when born o Synaptogenesis The process by which synapses are formed Axons can create multiple synapses About 1 000 trillion synapses are created by the baby is born Way more than necessary Synapses increase early in life level off around age 10 and then decline after that The brain has evolved to where it can sustain injuries causing the deterioration of nerves and still get by Plasticity o The brain s ability to reprogram itself after injury That s why we re born with more nerve cells than necessary Plasticity is greater and better at younger ages Injuries sustained at younger ages are more likely to be compensated for Apoptosis pruning Programmed cell suicide Up to age 10 apoptosis and synapse proliferation are equal o Apoptosis wins out after age 10 Use it or lose it Neurons that fire together wire together o Helps resist apoptosis o Quantity and quality of stimulation are important Too little stimulation retards brain development Too much stimulation creates chaos and can lead to cognitive deficits Diversity is important o Mediates emotions Amygdala Center for emotion Babies only feel basic emotions Distress and calmness Regulator of emotions Some babies can begin to regulate their emotions Self quieting Mom s emotions affect baby s emotions Baby feels mother s emotions in the womb Anxiety stress depression We don t know how the brain processes stimuli at the neurological level o We can study this through behavior Cognitive and intellectual development of children o Sigmund Freud o Jean Piaget Psychology of personality Cognitive development Children and their brains are innately curious and explorative Studied the development of his 3 children and actively seek exploration Natural state of children No explanation for why not everyone shows curiosity Possible explanations o Stimulus isn t very stimulating o Emotions o Foreclosure You got into an area of interest that wasn t interesting to you You made up your mind too early Usually due to pressure Schema Groping A plan for how to do something Explorative pulling o Babies don t know anything when they re first born Don t know how to actively do anything o Progressive organization of the human mind structure Stage theory of cognitive development Sensorimotor stage 0 2 years Preoperational stage 3 6 7 years Concrete operational stage 6 7 11 12 years Formal operational stage 12 15 16 years
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