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An overview of physical and cognitive development in infants, focusing on body changes, brain development, moving and perceiving, and surviving in good health. Topics covered include height and weight norms, headsparing, neuron and synapse development, reflexes, sensory development, and preventing sudden infant death syndrome.
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Physical and Cognitive Development
Psychosocial Development
โ Average weight at birth: 7.5 pounds โ Average length: 20 inches โ These numbers are norms, an average measurement.
โ Doctor or nurse measures babyโs growth: height, weight, and head circumference. โ Abnormal growth may indicate physical or psychological
problems.
mechanism that protects the brain when malnutrition disrupts body growth. The brain is the last part of the body to be damaged by malnutrition.
โ Neuron - nerve cell. Billions in the central nervous system. โ Cortex - the outer layers of the brain. โ Axon - a fiber that extends from a neuron and transmits electrochemical impulses from that neuron to the dendrites of other neurons.
occurs: the elimination, or pruning,
connections. โ The last part of the brain to mature is the prefrontal cortex, the area for anticipation, planning, and impulse control. โ Shaken baby syndrome - a life-threatening injury that occurs when an infant is forcefully shaken back and forth, a motion that ruptures blood vessels in the brain and breaks neural connections.
โ Newborns sleep about 17 hours a day, in one- to threehour segments. โ Newbornsโ sleep is primarily active sleep: often dozing,
able to awaken if someone rouses them, but also able to go back to sleep quickly if they wake up, cry, and are comforted. โ Quiet sleep: slow brain waves and slow breathing. โ Newborns have a high proportion of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, with flickering eyes and rapid brain waves.
โ The first movements are not skills but reflexes, involuntary responses to a particular stimulus.
โ Some reflexes help insure survival:
โ Gross motor skills โ Physical abilities involving large body movements, such as walking and jumping. โ Fine motor skills โ Physical abilities involving small body movements, especially of the hands and fingers, such as drawing and picking up a coin.
โ Sensation โ The response of a sensory system (eyes, ears, skin, tongue, nose) when it detects a stimulus. โ Perception โ The mental processing of sensory
information when the brain interprets a sensation. โ Sensory development โ typically precedes intellectual and motor development.
โ The sense of hearing develops during the last trimester of pregnancy and is already quite acute at birth; it is the most advanced of the newbornโs senses. โ Vision is the least mature sense at birth. โ Newborns focus only on objects between 4 and 30 inches away. โ Binocular vision, the ability to coordinate the two eyes to see one image, appears at 3 months. โ Sensation is essential for the
Adequate Nutrition
โ For every infant disease (including SIDS), breast-feeding reduces risk and malnutrition increases it, stunting growth of body and brain. โ Breastfed babies are less likely to develop allergies, asthma, obesity, and heart disease. โ As the infant gets older, the composition of breast milk adjusts to the baby โ s changing nutritional needs.
