I. Reflexes - Born with reflexes and skills necessary to sustain life (sucking, swallowing, Moro/startle reflex, grasping, rooting, Babinsky, stepping, looking, and perceptual abilities like seeing, hearing and smelling)
II. Growth Patterns
* Cephalocaudel pattern - top to bottom
* Proximodistal pattern - center out
* Gross motor skills - large muscle activities (walking)
* Fine motor skills - finely tuned movements (finger dexterity)
* Average North American newborn is 20 inches long and weighs 7.5 pounds. Infants grow about 1 inch per month during the first year and triple their weight
III. The Brain (see additional handout)
IV. Brain's development - 3 processes in the development of neurons
* cell production - 10-26 weeks after conception, 250,000 neurons per minute
* cell migration (proximodistal growth pattern) Neuron movement from neat the center of the brain
* cell elaboration - axon and dendrites grow from connections with other cells, continues years after birth, during infancy dendrite branching is extensive
* myelination - process in which nerve cells are covered and insulated with a layer of fat cells, increasing the speed of information traveling through the nervous system.
English: Drawings of the cerebral cortex.
English: Micrograph of the visual cortex.
Human cerebral cortex, Brain MRI, Coronal slicess ...Begins prenatal and continues after birth.
V.
Infant States
*deep sleep *regular sleep *drowsy *alert activity *alert and focused attention *inflexibility focused *SIDS
VI.
Nutrition
* Infants need to consume about 50 calories for each pound of weight
* Breast feeding superior to bottle feeding (especially important for building up immune system)
* Marasmus - severe protein-calories malnutrition
* Malnourished infants are shorter in stature and slower in cognitive growth in middle and late childhood
VII.
Sensory and Perceptional Development
* sensation - physical energy contacts the sensory receptors
* perception - brain interprets what is sensed
* visual perception - infants prefer patterns over colors or brightness, visual acuity 20/200 for newborn...