THE

DEVELOPMENT
OF CHILDREN,
SEVENTH EDITION
Cynthia Lightfoot,
Michael Cole,
and Sheila R. Cole

Chapter 4:
The First 3 Months
 Chapter Overview
I. Physical Growth
II. Brain Development
III. Sensing the Environment
IV. The Organization of Behavior
V. Temperament
VI. Becoming Coordinated with the Social World
VII. Summing Up the First 3 Months
 Physical Growth
• Early growth is rapid
• In 12 weeks, infants
– Gain about 2.5-3 kg
– Grow more than 10 cm
– Expanding head
circumference

• Growth charts:
Show the average values of
height, weight, and other
measures of a normally
developing infant.

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Body Size
How does body size change in an infant?

0- to 4- month-old 2-year-old:
baby: Weight 1-year-old: Half of adult height;
doubles by month 4, Weight triples. one-fifth of adult
mostly baby fat. weight.

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 Physical growth over time
• Decreasing proportions over time
 Four principles of growth
• Cephalocaudal principle
• Proximodistal principle
• Principle of hierarchical integration
• Principle of the independence of systems
 Four principles of growth
• Cephalocaudal principle
– Growth starts with the head and upper body and then
proceeds to the rest of the body
– Top-to-Bottom
– e.g., visual abilities come before walking

• Proximodistal principle
– Development proceeds from the center of the body
outward
– In-to-Out
– e.g., arms grow before fingers
 Four principles of growth
• Principle of hierarchical integration
– Simple skills develop independently, and then they
integrate into complex skills
– Simple-to-Complex
– e.g., pointing before pincer grasp

• Principle of the independence of systems

– Different body systems grow at different rates
– Everything is independent
– e.g., physical development is unrelated to the
nervous system
 Four principles of growth
• Cephalocaudal principle (Top-to-Bottom)
• Proximodistal principle (In-to-Out)
• Principle of hierarchical integration (Simple-
to-Complex)
• Principle of the independence of systems
(Everything is independent)
 Brain Development
• The brain at birth
– Contains most of the neurons it will
ever have.

– Will grow four times larger by

adulthood
 Brain Development
• Growth in brain size as a results of:
– Neuronal connections
• Synaptogenesis: process of synapse formation
• Synapse: Site where a nerve impulse is transmitted
from one neuron to another.
 Brain Development
– Myelination
• Insulates axons and speeds transmission of
impulses
• 10-100 times faster than unmyelinated axons

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 Synaptic pruning: good or bad?
• Use it or lose it?
– This process allows established neurons to
build more elaborate communications
networks with other neurons
– The development of the nervous system
proceeds most effectively through cell loss

• Maybe losing it is a good thing…

• Plasticity
• Sensitive - critical periods
 Central Nervous System
• Brain, brain stem and spinal cord

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 Central Nervous System

• Spinal cord: extends from

below the waist to the base
of the brain.
– Nerves carry messages between
brain and body

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 Central Nervous System

• Brain stem: controls reflexes as

blinking and sucking and vital
functions such as breathing; sleeping.
– Relatively more mature at birth (present
during later stages of prenatal
development)
– One of the most highly developed areas
of CNS.
– Enable movement, responses to stimuli
etc.
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 Cerebral Cortex
• Cerebral Cortex
- outermost layer
- processing center for
the perception of
patterns, the
execution of complex
motor sequences,
planning, decision
making, and speech.
- Less mature at birth
 Central Nervous System
Sequence:
• The stepwise sequence of neurodevelopment is
genetically predetermined and not alterable by
environmental forces.

• It proceeds from lower to higher brain centres, from the

brain stem to the cerebral cortex.

• Infant abilies expand when nerve fibers connecting the

cortex with the brain stem and spinal cord become
myelinated.
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 Lobes of the Brain
 Frontal Lobe – personality,
planning, emotion, problem
solving
 Parietal Lobe – touch,
navigation
 Temporal Lobe – hearing
 Occipital Lobe - vision

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 Association Areas
 “uncommitted” areas
 ¾ of the human cortex; found in all lobes
 integrate and link inputs with stored memories
 many functions involve interplay among areas

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 Development of the Brain
Two major classes of development:
Aspects of environmentally dependent
maturational process of the brain

1.Experience-expectant process

2.Experience-dependent process

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 Development of the Brain
– Experience-expectant process
• Under genetic controls, occur in any
environment
• Exuberant synaptogenesis: a rapid growth in
synaptic density that prepares the brain for a
vast range of possible experiences.
• There is sequential growth, extraordinary
proliferation, and overproduction of axons,
dendrites, and synapses in different regions.

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 Development of the Brain
– Experience-expectant process
• The brain is primed to be exposed to
environmental experience
• Results in rewiring of the brain and
establishes a neural pathway due to learning

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 Development of the Brain
Experience-expectant process
• Synapses are created in advance (before
experiences)

• Certain experiences are essential for orderly brain

development to proceed:

Species-universal experiences are required for

fine-tuning neural connections.
responsive gaze, talking to the infant

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 Development of the Brain

• The determination of which synaptic

connections will persist is environmentally
regulated, being dependent on information
received by the brain.

• Synaptic pruning: selective dying off of

nonfunctional synapses

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 Experience and Development

Exuberant
synapto-
genesis

Synaptic
pruning

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 Experience-expectant development

1. Overproduction of synapses: synapses

anticipate the experiences

2. Environment acts as a guide for the

elimination of unused synapses

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 Experience-expectant development
• Hubel and Wiesel (1979):
– By temporarily blocking the visual input to one eye of a cat
during a critical period of development
– Irreversible structural and functional changes were produced in
the brain's visual cortex, leading to permanent impairment of
vision in that eye.

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Experience-expectant development
• Scarr (1993): Profoundly deaf children do
not continue to vocalise in later infancy
– Species-typical auditory experiences, which are
required for the development of verbal language,
fail to reach the appropriate brain area.

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 Development of the Brain
Experience-dependent process
• Initiated in response to experience: generate new
synapses in response to the environmentally
determined experiences.

• The experiences are not predetermined (non-

heritable), nor are synapses anticipating the
experiences at any particular stage.

• Allows to learn from new experience.

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 Experience-dependent Process
• Example: work on enriched environments by
Rosenzweig and colleagues: increased weight of cortex,
larger cell bodies, more synaptic connections, increased
rates of learning.
• 20-25% more synapses per neuron in upper visual
cortex in group complex environments

Impoverished Rat brain Enriched Rat

environment cell environment brain
cell

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 Experience-dependent Process
• Eskimo children learning to build an igloo –
observational learning

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 Development of the Brain
– Experience-expectant process
• Species-universal experiences are required for fine-
tuning neural connections. When expected experiences
lack in sensitive periods, then the brain will fail to
develop normally.

– Experience-dependent process
• Have evolved to allow the organism to take advantage
of new and changing information in the environment.

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 Development of the Brain

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 Discussion
• It is widely believed that the developing
brain benefits from an enriched
environment and suffers in an environment
of deprivation.

• “enriched” vs “deprived.”
 Sensing the Environment
• Newborns ’ sensory systems are all
functioning.
– But some are more developed than others.
– Example: touch and smell is more advanced
compared to vision.
 Sensing the Environment
• Methods for assessing sensory capabilities:
– Overt response
– Preferential looking
– Habituation/Dishabituation
The High Amplitude Sucking Paradigm
 Habituation

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 Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm

Golinkoff et al.
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 These techniques
(among many others)
• Allow us to understand early infant abilities
• Allow us to carefully manipulate variables or
inputs of interest
• Allow us to do cross-sectional baby research
in the lab that tries to establish what babies
know