When students have mastered the material in Chapter 5, they should be able to:
1. Describe the physical characteristics of an infant at birth and the first few hours of an infant’s life.
2. Describe methods for assessing the newborn and know what different assessment scores mean.
3. Describe the development of the nervous system both structurally and functionally.
4. Describe infant sleep patterns in terms of type and duration. Contrast infant sleep with adult sleep.
5. Discuss the infant’s sensory abilities at birth and throughout the first two years.
6. Identify and describe the newborn’s reflexes. Differentiate between survival and primitive reflexes. 7. Describe the development of motor skills during the first year. Discuss the roles of learning and maturation in motor development.
8. Discuss the nutritional requirements during infancy. What are the pros and cons of breast versus bottle feeding?
9. Discuss the economic and cultural factors that promote malnutrition and overnutrition in the United States, and discuss the consequences of both conditions.
10. Discuss why the distinction between preterm and small-for-date infants is important.
11. Discuss the common causes of low birth weight and the consequences of that condition.
12. Discuss the current forms of interventions used for premature infants.
13. Describe current trends in infant mortality in the United States and elsewhere. Identify the differences found with respect to socioeconomic status.
CHAPTER 6 Cognitive Development in the First Two Years
When students have mastered the material in Chapter 6, they should be able to:
1. Define perception and cognition and describe ways of studying these processes.
2. Describe habituation and indicate how it is used to study perceptual development.
3. Characterize early infant perceptual abilities and discuss evidence concerning the contributions of heredity and experience.
4. Describe the development of size and shape constancy in early infancy.
5. Trace the development of depth perception in infancy using a visual cliff.
6. Describe the infant’s ability to localize sounds, indicating how this ability differs from that of older children and adults.
7. Describe the visual expectation paradigm and discuss the implications of the infant’s growing ability to anticipate future events.
8. Compare a reversal shift with a nonreversal shift and discuss the implications of the research in this area.
9. List the major characteristics of and achievements in each of Jean Piaget’s six stages of sensorimotor development.
10. Provide an overall evaluation of Piaget’s sensorimotor stage theory.
11. Describe classical conditioning in infancy and indicate the limitations in this ability.
12. Describe how operant conditioning occurs in infancy and how this technique can be used to study other behaviors.
13. Discuss the research on early infant imitation and describe the abilities newborns have to imitate.
14. Trace phonological development in the infancy period. Indicate the kinds of sounds infants can understand and produce.
15. Trace semantic development in the infancy period. Indicate the characteristics of the first words infants can understand and produce.
16. Describe the individual differences in language development and indicate how parents influence early language.
CHAPTER 7 Psychosocial Development in the First Two Years
When students have mastered the material in Chapter 7, they should be able to:
1. Describe the special relationship parents and infants develop. In particular, discuss the synchrony in behavior.
2. Describe the special relationship fathers and infants develop. Discuss how this role is similar to and how it differs from the mother-infant relationship.
3. Discuss the roles that siblings, peers, and other caregivers play in social interactions, and contrast these roles with mother-infant and father-infant relationships.
4. Describe the early emotions of the infant, including the range of expression and developmental patterns.
5. Define what is meant by temperament and describe the three types found in infants.
6. Discuss the short- and long-term effects of temperament. In particular, describe how it interacts with parent characteristics.
7. Identify and describe the four phases of attachment. Cite the major characteristics of each phase and be able to generate examples.
8. Describe the Strange Situation and indicate how it is used to assess attachment level.
9. Describe the four common outcomes of attachment, how they are assessed, and what the long-term consequences of each are.
10. Discuss the similarities and differences in mothers’ and fathers’ roles in attachment.
11. Describe the effects of maternal employment and day care on attachment.
12. Define what is meant by the development of autonomy and indicate how parents might influence it.
13. Differentiate among the four major theoretical positions (identification, operant conditioning, observational learning, and social referencing) concerning the development of autonomy.
14. Describe the development of the sense of self during the first two years.
15. Describe the development of competence in the infant and how it contributes to self-esteem.