PSYC 255
Life-Span Developmental Psychology
Fall 2024
SIMON
Chapter 3 Worksheet
Chapter 3: Physical and Cognitive Development in Infancy
Physical Growth and Development in Infancy
1. Growth follows two patterns:
a. ________________________.
b. ________________________.
2. The ________________________ is the sequence in which the earliest growth
always occurs at the top with physical growth and differentiation of features
gradually working their way down from top to bottom.
3. The ________________________ is a sequence in which growth starts at the
center of the body and moves toward the extremities.
4. Growth is ________________________, which means it occurs in spurts.
5. Infants ________________________ their birth weight by 4 months and nearly
________________________ it by 1 year.
6. Infants grow about ¾ inch per month during the first year, increasing their
length by about ________________________ by 1 year.
7. By the second year, infants have reached ________________________ of their
adult weight and almost ________________________ of their eventual adult
height.
8. ________________________ occurs when a baby is shaken and their still
developing brain is injured, including brain swelling and hemorrhaging.
9. At birth, the brain weighs about ________________________ of its adult weight.
[Link] 2 years, the brain weighs ________________________ of its adult weight.
[Link] brain has reached its final size by age ________________________.
[Link] we assess infant brain activity/development in infancy:
a. ________________________: an electrical measure of brain activity.
b. ________________________: map brain activity by recording magnetic
fields produced by electrical currents.
c. ________________________: uses very low levels of near-infrared light to
monitor changes in blood oxygen during many types of brain activity.
[Link] ________________________ is the portion farthest from the spinal cord. It
includes the ________________________ and several structures beneath it.
[Link] ________________________ covers the forebrain and has two halves or
________________________, which are ________________________.
15.________________________ is the specialization of function in one hemisphere or
the other.
[Link] important parts of the brain that are developing during infancy:
a. ________________________: Linked to balance and motor movements.
b. ________________________: Linked to sleeping, eating, drinking, and
reproduction-linked behaviors.
c. ________________________: Linked to some types of memory.
d. ________________________: Linked to fear responses.
e. ________________________: regulates the hypothalamus and other glands
through the release of hormones.
[Link] on ridges and valleys in the cerebral cortex, scientists distinguish four
main areas called ________________________ in each hemisphere:
a. ________________________: Involved in personality, intelligence, control of
voluntary muscles.
b. ________________________: Responds to visual stimuli and processes
information about what people see, such as color, shape, and motion.
c. ________________________: Involved in hearing, language processing, and
memory.
d. ________________________: Involved in registering spatial location,
attention, and motor control.
[Link] areas of the lobes:
a. ________________________: voluntary movement, with specific parts
controlling corresponding parts of the body.
b. ________________________: center of speech and language production.
c. ________________________: linked to complex human behaviors, such as
planning, decision-making, and appropriate social responses.
d. ________________________: responsible for conscious processing of the
visual field.
e. ________________________: translates basic sensory input into meaningful
information.
f. ________________________: basic processing of sound.
g. ________________________: speech comprehension.
h. ________________________: processes signals related to speech, music, or
basic tones.
i. ________________________: involved in perceiving touch and pressure in
corresponding parts of the body, with areas of greater touch sensitivity
mapping into larger portions of the somatosensory area.
j. ________________________: integrates sensory and motor information and
is associated with higher-level cognitive processes such as thinking,
problem solving, language, memory, and speech.
19.A ________________________ is a nerve cell that handles information processing.
[Link] send ________________________ and ________________________ signals to
communicate with each other.
21.________________________ are tiny gaps between neurons.
[Link] from the neuron’s cell body are two types of fibers:
a. ________________________: Carry signals away from the cell body.
i. ________________________A layer of fat cells that encases axons,
providing insulation and helping electrical signals travel faster
down the axon.
ii. ________________________ is the process of encasing axons with
fat cells, which can provide energy to neurons and facilitate
communication.
iii. ________________________: Sit at the end of the axons and release
chemicals called ________________________ into the synapse.
b. ________________________: Carry signals toward the cell body.
[Link] and dendrites are connected through ________________________ in the
synapse, allowing information to pass from one neuron to another.
[Link] change in two significant ways in the first year of life:
a. ________________________: speeds up neural transmissions.
b. ________________________: creates new neural pathways.
25.________________________ refers to the disappearance of neural connections
that are not used.
[Link] birth, it is mainly ________________________ that direct how the brain
establishes basic wiring patterns.
[Link] birth, ________________________ guide the brain’s development.
[Link] the ________________________ view of brain development…
a. ________________________ and ________________________ influence the
brain’s development.
b. The brain has ________________________ and is ________________________.
c. Development of the brain is closely linked with the child’s cognitive
development.
[Link] neuroconstructivist view is much like the ________________________, which
emphasizes the interaction between gene expression and experience in
development.
[Link] Health Organization (WHO) recommends…
a. Infants 0-3 months of age should get ________________________ of good-
quality sleep daily.
b. Infants 4-12 months old should get ________________________ of good-
quality sleep daily.
c. 1 to 2 years olds should get ________________________ of good-quality
sleep daily.
31.________________________ sleep in infancy takes up a much greater amount of
time than at any other point in the lifespan.
32.________________________ is a condition that occurs when an infant stops
breathing, usually during the night, and dies suddenly without an apparent
cause.
[Link] research has indicated that there is a positive link between infant
sleep and ________________________.
[Link] recommend that infants consume approximately
________________________ per day for each pound they weigh.
[Link] life threatening conditions that can result from malnutrition in infancy:
a. ________________________: caused by a severe protein-calorie deficiency
and results in a wasting away of body tissues in the infant’s first year,
leading to the infant becoming extremely underweight and their
muscles atrophy.
b. ________________________: caused by a severe protein deficiency, usually
appearing between 1 and 3 years of age.
[Link] if not fatal, ________________________ is detrimental to physical, cognitive,
and social development.
[Link] important measures used to promote infant health:
a. ________________________.
b. ________________________.
Motor Development
38.________________________ discovered that infants and children develop rolling,
sitting, standing, and other motor skills in a fixed order and within specific
time frames. He thought that this demonstrated that motor development is
an unfolding genetic plan.
39.________________________ proposed the ________________________, in which
infants assemble motor skills for perceiving and acting by putting together a
goal, their body, and the environment.
[Link] dynamic systems theory, to develop motor skills, an infant must
________________________ something in the environment that
________________________ them to act, and then use these perceptions to fine-
tune their ________________________.
[Link] dynamic systems theory, the development of motor skills involves many
factors:
a. The development of the ________________________.
b. The body’s ________________________ and ________________________ for
movement.
c. The ________________________ the child is motivated to reach.
d. ________________________ support for the skill.
[Link] have basic ________________________, which ae built in, genetically
carried, automatic and involuntary reactions to stimuli.
43.________________________ are skills that involve large-muscle activities.
44.________________________ provides a foundation for the development of gross
motor skills and is closely linked to ________________________.
[Link] is a dynamic process that is linked with sensory information in…
a. The ________________________, ________________________, and
________________________: which tell us where we are in space.
b. ________________________ in the inner ear: regulate balance and
equilibrium.
c. ________________________ and ________________________.
46.________________________ investigated how infants learn to
________________________ by studying how experienced and inexperienced
crawling and walking infants go down steep slopes.
[Link] important findings from Karen Adolf’s research include:
a. ________________________, rather than age, was the primary predictor of
adaptive responding on slopes of varying steepness.
b. ________________________: Learning does not transfer across crawling
and walking. When expert crawlers began to walk, they would again
make mistakes and fall.
[Link] Adolf’s research is a demonstration of ________________________ in motor
development. That is, the infant must integrate perceptual information with
the development of a new motor behavior.
[Link] in gross motor skills in the first year culminate in the ability
to ________________________ easily.
50.A development such as walking can be linked to ________________________ in
other aspects of development.
[Link] timing of milestones, especially the later ones, vary by as much as
________________________.
52.________________________ can modify the onset of gross motor skill
accomplishments.
[Link] ________________________ in the second year is vital to development
of competence, so exploration should not be restricted.
54.A key theme of motor development in infancy is that an infant’s development
of a skill requires ________________________, which is the ability to do what is
necessary to attain life’s everyday goals. This Continues to be required as
their bodies, environments, and tasks they face change.
[Link] of this concept of behavioral flexibility is that infants must use
_________________________ to find an accurate solution to a current situation
and challenge.
56.________________________ involve finely tuned movements.
[Link] achievement of ________________________ and ________________________
increases interaction with surroundings, because the better able they are to
reach and grasp, the more they will interact with their environments.
[Link] 4 months of age, reaching is guided by ________________________ cues from
muscles, tendons, and joints, not the sight of the limb.
[Link] refine their ability to grasp objects by developing two types of grasps:
a. The ________________________: grip with the whole hand.
b. The ________________________: involves the forefinger and thumb, is a
big fine motor achievement toward the end of the first year.
60.________________________ plays a role in the achievement of reaching and
grasping.
61.________________________ and colleagues (2002) have used “sticky mittens” to
enhance the active grasping and manipulation of objects in young infants.
Infants who ________________________ grasped and manipulated objects earlier
in their development than infants who ________________________.
Sensory and Perceptual Development
62.________________________occurs when information interacts with
________________________ (eyes, ears, tongue, nostril, and skin).
63.________________________ is the interpretation of what is sensed.
[Link] ________________________ of perceptual development in infancy proposed
by ________________________ argues that we do not have to take bits and
pieces of data from sensations and build up representations of the world in
our minds. Rather, we directly perceive information that exists in the world
around us because our perceptual systems can select information from the
environment.
[Link] the ecological view of perceptual development, ________________________
brings us into contact with the environment so that we can interact with and
adapt to it.
66. In the ecological view of perceptual development, perception is designed for
________________________.
[Link] for studying infant perception include:
a. ________________________.
b. ________________________.
c. ________________________.
d. ________________________.
[Link] ________________________ for studying infant perception was developed by
________________________ and he used for studying whether infants can
distinguish one stimulus from another by measuring the length of time they
attend to different stimuli. It involved placing infants in a
“________________________” which had two visual displays on the ceiling above
the infant’s head and the experimenter viewed the infant’s eyes by looking
through a peephole to determine how long the infant looked at each display.
Through this research it was found that infants only 2 days old would gaze
longer at ________________________.
[Link] ________________________ method Involves presenting a stimulus a number
of times. If the infant decreases its response to the stimuli after several
presentations, it is indicated that the infant is no longer interested in the
stimulus. If the researcher now presents a new stimulus, the infant’s
response will recover, indicating that the infant can discriminate between the
old and new stimuli.
a. ________________________: the name given to decreased responsiveness
to a stimulus after repeated presentations of the stimulus.
b. ________________________: the recovery of a habituated response after a
change in stimulation.
[Link] use of equipment in studying infant perception involves:
a. ________________________ equipment.
b. High-speed ________________________ for data analysis.
c. ________________________ equipment for things like respiration, heart
rate, body movement, visual fixation, and sucking behavior.
[Link] use of ________________________ in studying infant perception involves
measuring eye movements that follow a moving object and can be used to
evaluate early visual ability.
72.________________________ once called the newborn’s perceptual world a
“blooming, buzzing confusion,” but we have discovered that even newborns
perceive the world with some ________________________.
[Link] newborn’s vision is estimated to be ________________________, but
improves to ________________________ by 6 months of age.
[Link] have a visual preference for ________________________.
[Link] ________________________, infants can discriminate among some
colors.
76.________________________ is necessary for color vision to develop normally.
[Link] increasingly look at ________________________ over the course of the
first year.
78.________________________ is when sensory stimulation is changing but
perception of the physical world remains constant.
[Link] types of perceptual constancy:
a. ________________________: The recognition that an object remains the
same even though the retinal image of the object changes as you
move toward or away from the object.
b. ________________________: The recognition that an object remains the
same shape even though its orientation to us changes.
[Link] ________________________, infants begin to develop the ability to see
occluded objects as whole.
[Link] ________________________, infants are able to track briefly occluded
moving objects.
[Link] 2 months, infants begin to develop the ability to see
________________________ objects as whole.
83.________________________ and ________________________ investigated
________________________ in infants by constructing a miniature cliff with a
drop-off covered by glass. They placed infants on the edge of this visual cliff
and had their mothers coax them to crawl onto the glass. Most infants would
not crawl out on the glass, choosing to stay on the “shallow” side, which
indicated that they could perceive depth.
[Link] develop the ability to use ________________________ cues to perceive
depth by about 3 to 4 months of age.
[Link] that take place in hearing during infancy:
a. ________________________: Immediately after birth, infants cannot hear
soft sounds as well as adults can.
b. ________________________: Infants are less sensitive to
________________________, or the frequency of a sound, than are adults,
meaning infants are more likely to hear ________________________
sounds than low-pitch sounds.
c. ________________________: At 6 months of age infants are more
proficient at ________________________ sounds or detecting their origins.
86.________________________ involves integrating information from two or more
sensory modalities, such as vision and hearing.
87.________________________ are those who emphasize nature, or innate
foundations, as influences on infant perception.
88.________________________ are those who emphasize nurture, or learning and
experience, as influences on infant perception.
[Link] can guide ________________________, and perception can guide
________________________.
[Link] ________________________ in order to move and ________________________
in order to perceive, demonstrating that perceptual and motor development
do no occur in isolation from each other but instead are
________________________ (perceptual-motor coupling!).
Cognitive Development
1. Piaget’s theory is a general, unifying theory of how ________________________
and ________________________ sculpt cognitive development in which children
________________________ construct their own cognitive world and develop
________________________ to adapt to the world.
2. ________________________ involves adjusting to new environmental demands.
3. Processes of cognitive development with Piaget’s theory include…
a. ________________________.
b. ________________________ and ________________________.
c. ________________________.
d. ________________________, which leads to ________________________ of
cognitive development.
4. As the infant or child seeks to construct an understanding of their world, the
developing brain creates ________________________, which are actions or
mental representations that organize knowledge.
5. Infants create ________________________ which directly represent physical
activities.
6. Toddlers and older children create ________________________ which are
cognitive activities that are symbolic representations of objects.
7. Two concepts that explain how children use and adapt their schemes.
a. ________________________.
b. ________________________.
8. ________________________ occurs when children use their existing schemes to
deal with new information or experiences.
9. ________________________ occurs when children adjust their schemes to
account for new information and experiences.
[Link] make sense of their world, children ________________________ their
experiences.
11.________________________ is the grouping of isolated behaviors and thoughts
into a higher-order system which continually gets refined.
[Link] trying to understand the world, the child experiences cognitive conflict, or
________________________ in which they face inconsistencies and
counterexamples to their own existing schemes.
13.________________________ is how children shift from one stage of thought to
the next.
[Link] children move frequently between states of cognitive
________________________ and ________________________,
________________________ and ________________________ work together to
produce cognitive change.
[Link]’s stage of cognitive development in infancy is the
________________________.
[Link] the ________________________, which lasts from about birth to age 2, infants
construct an understanding of the world by coordinating
________________________ with ________________________.
17.________________________, the understanding that objects continue to exist
even when they cannot be seen, heard, or touched, is one of the infant’s
most important accomplishments.
[Link] understanding of object permanence develops between
________________________ and ________________________ of age, but infants will
still make the ________________________, which is the tendency of younger
infants to search where an object was located earlier rather than where the
object was last hidden.
[Link] can learn through ________________________, a form of learning in which
behavior that is followed by a ________________________ is likely to recur. This
learning was demonstrated by the research of ________________________.
20.________________________ is the focusing of mental resources on select
information and improves cognitive processing on many tasks.
[Link] ________________________ of age, infants can selectively attend to an
object.
[Link] attention is strongly governed by ________________________ and
________________________.
[Link] aspect of attention that plays an important role in infant development is
________________________, in which individuals focus on the same object or
event.
[Link] attention requires…
a. The ability to________________________ each other’s behavior, such as
following someone’s gaze.
b. One person ________________________ another’s attention.
c. ________________________.
[Link] attention emerges at ________________________ of age, but is more
frequently observed at ________________________ of age. By
________________________ of age, they begin initiating joint attention by
directing adults’ attention to objects that capture their interest.
[Link] attention plays an especially important role in the development of
________________________.
[Link] imitative abilities of infants was extensively researched by
________________________. Conclusions of this research include:
a. Infants’ imitative ability is ________________________.
b. Infant imitation informs us about their processing of
________________________.
c. Infant imitation contributes to rapid ________________________.
d. Infant imitative abilities involve ________________________ and
________________________.
e. Infants often make ________________________ in imitation.
f. There is an interplay between learning by ________________________ and
learning by ________________________ that begins at birth.
[Link] also studied ________________________, which is imitation that occurs
after a time delay of hours or days. This research demonstrated deferred
imitation abilities in ________________________, which in turn demonstrated that
that infants have the cognitive ability of ________________________.
29.________________________ involves the retention of information over time.
30.________________________ refers to memory without conscious recollection,
such as memories of skills and routine procedures that are performed
automatically.
31.________________________ refers to conscious memory of facts and
experiences.
[Link] research has shown that babies do not show explicit memory until the
________________________ of life, which improves substantially across the
second year of life.
33.________________________ or ________________________ is the phenomenon that
most adults can remember little, if anything, from their first 3 years of life,
which was studied by ________________________.
34.________________________ of perceptual-motor actions appears to be
substantial in infants.
35.________________________ is more substantial and reliable by the end of the
second year of life.
36.________________________ are cognitive groupings of similar objects, events,
people, or ideas.
[Link] as young as ________________________ of age can group together
objects with similar appearances.
38.________________________ argues that early categorizations are best described
as ________________________ or categorizations based on similar perceptual
features of objects as well as parts of objects. This researcher concludes that
not until ________________________ of age can infants form
________________________, or categorizations that go beyond just making
perceptual discriminations between different categories.
[Link] concepts are ________________________ and ________________________, and
then over the first two years become more ________________________.
Language Development
1. ________________________ is a form of communication (spoken, written, signed)
that is based on a system of symbols and consists of words used by a
community and the rules for varying and combining them.
2. All human languages have some common characteristics, such as
organizational rules and ________________________, which is the ability to
produce and comprehend an endless number of meaningful sentences using
a finite set of words and rules.
3. Learning language involves comprehending…
a. A ________________________ or ________________________ system.
b. The world of ________________________, ________________________, and
________________________.
c. How ________________________ connect sound and world.
4. The effect of early communications is to attract ________________________.
5. Sounds and gestures develop through the following sequence during the first
year:
a. ________________________: At birth; can signal distress, but different
cries signal different things.
b. ________________________: 2-4 months; gurgling sounds that are made in
the back of the throat and usually express pleasure during interaction
with the caregiver.
c. ________________________: Middle of the first year; strings of consonant-
vowel combinations.
d. ________________________: 8-12 months; showing, pointing, waving,
nodding.
6. Before they begin to learn words, infants can make fine distinctions among
the ________________________ of a language. This was researched by
________________________ in an experiment involving ________________________,
which are the basic sound units of language.
7. Conclusions of Patricia Kuhl’s research include:
a. From ________________________ up to about ________________________ of
age, infants can tell when sounds change most of the time no matter
what language.
b. Infants’ brains are most open to learning the sounds of a native
language at ________________________ of age for vowels and
________________________ of age for consonants.
8. In the second half of the first year, infants begin to segment streams of
speech into ________________________, relying on ________________________ such
as the co-occurrence of patterns of phonemes and syllables to extract
potential word forms, which get associated with ________________________ in
their world. This is referred to as ________________________ which involves no
instruction, reinforcement, or feedback.
9. In infancy, ________________________ (words the child understands)
considerably exceeds ________________________ or ________________________
(words the child uses).
10.________________________ are easier for infants to learn because they are
perceptually accessible and concrete.
[Link] vocabulary increases rapidly once the first word is spoken, known as
the ________________________, or the rapid increase in vocabulary that begins
at approximately 18 months.
[Link] ________________________ of age, children usually produce
________________________ in which they rely heavily on gesture, tone, and
context to convey meaning of two words.
[Link]-word utterances can communicate:
a. ________________________.
b. ________________________.
c. ________________________.
d. ________________________.
e. ________________________.
f. ________________________.
g. ________________________.
14.________________________, the use of short, precise words without grammatical
markers, characterizes first combinations of words in every language.