Chapter 3Tools for Exploring the World: Physical, Perceptual, and Motor Development
Learning Objectives
The Newborn
- Know the name and significance of each newborn reflex.
- List the components of the Apgar scale and describe what the scale tells us about the newborn.
- Describe the information about the newborn that can be learned from the Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment.
- List and describe the 4 newborn states.
- Describe the 3 different types of crying found in newborns.
- Describe the pattern of REM and non-REM sleep found in the newborn.
- Describe sleep disturbances such as nightmares, night terrors, sleep walking, and bedwetting.
- List and describe the factors associated with Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
- Describe the dimensions of temperament.
- Describe cross-cultural differences in temperament.
- Explain how temperament is influenced by heredity and environment.
- Explain the stability of temperament across childhood.
Physical Development
- Describe the pattern of growth that is seen in children from birth to 2 years of age.
- Know how average size and normal size differ from each other.
- Describe the advantages of bottle feeding and breast feeding.
- Describe how children’s eating habits change during the first two years of life.
- Describe the effects of malnutrition on growth in young children.
- Explain why it is important to combine changes in diet and parent training when treating malnutrition in children.
- List and describe the parts of neurons.
- Describe the structure and various functions of parts of the brain such as the cerebral cortex, hemispheres, and the corpus callosum.
- Describe the development of the brain throughout prenatal development and the first few years after birth.
- Describe the functions of the left and right hemispheres and the frontal lobe of the brain.
- Describe the various methods that are used to study the functions of the brain.
- Describe neuroplasticity.
Moving and Grasping - Early Motor Skills
- Describe some of the important developments that lead to the ability to maintain one's balance and eventually walk.
- Know dynamic systems theory and the difference between differentiation and integration.
- Describe how practice is related to motor development.
- Describe the development of running and hopping.
- Describe the development of fine motor skills from simple grasping in the newborn to the ability to eat with a spoon in a 2-year old.
- Describe the development of handedness from about 6 months of age until kindergarten.
- Explain how both heredity and environment influence the development of handedness.
Coming to Know the World: Perception
- Describe the newborn's sense of smell and taste.
- Describe the newborn's sense of touch and pain and how we infer these feelings.
- Describe infants’ hearing, perception of music, perception of pitch, differentiation of speech sounds, and localization of sound.
- Know how infants' visual acuity is assessed.
- Describe the development of color perception.
- Describe the differences in the reactions of non-crawling and crawling infants when they are placed on the "deep" side of the visual cliff.
- Describe the various cues that are used to infer depth, include kinetic cues, visual expansion, motion parallax, retinal disparity, pictorial cues, linear perspective, and texture gradient.
- Describe how infants perceive objects.
- Explain how researchers can tell if infants can integrate information from vision and touch.
- Know the importance of intersensory redundancy in infants’ perception.
Becoming Self Aware
- Know when self-recognition appears and how it is measured.
- Know how saying “mine” while playing with toys is related to self-awareness.
- Describe the characteristics of young children’s self-concepts.
- Define theory of mind and know the three phases of theory of mind in preschool children.