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3: Physical and Cognitive Development in Infants and Toddlers (Birth to Age 3)
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3.0: What Does Psychology Say?
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The text discusses the developmental changes from infancy to toddlerhood, emphasizing the nature vs. nurture debate through examples of sibling differences. It shares a mother's observations of her children's growth, highlighting motor and language milestones. Parents often ponder what comes next in their child's development, exploring sensory skills, memory, and language acquisition. The narrative showcases individual developmental variability among siblings.
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3.1: Physical Development in Infants and Toddlers
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This section covers the key aspects of infant and toddler development, including physical growth patterns, sleep and eating behaviors, brain maturation, and health risks in the first two years. It emphasizes the incredible changes during this period, with growth influenced by genetics and environment. Various cultural practices impact sleep and feeding routines, while brain development is crucial for early learning.
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3.2: Motor Development in Infants and Toddlers
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This page provides an overview of infants' motor development, highlighting reflexes, motor milestones, and the influence of internal and external factors on development. It explains how newborn reflexes transition into voluntary movements, outlines the typical sequence and timing for milestones like sitting and walking, and discusses the distinction between gross and fine motor skills.
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3.3: Sensory Development in Infants and Toddlers
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This section discusses the development of sensation and perception in infants and toddlers, highlighting how these abilities evolve as children grow. It examines the relationship between sensation and perception, detailing the progression of various sensory systems such as vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. The text also explores the concept of intermodal perception, which is the integration of multiple sensory inputs.
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3.4: Cognition and Memory in Infants and Toddlers
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This section outlines the learning objectives for understanding cognitive development in infants and toddlers. It covers milestones in cognitive development, methods of studying infant cognition, types of memory and their development, major theories of cognitive development, and variations influenced by environmental factors.
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3.5: Language in Infants and Toddlers
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This section focuses on language development in early childhood, outlining key concepts, milestones, and theories. It discusses the nature of language and communication, highlighting features such as phonemes and morphemes, and covers milestones such as babbling, gesturing, and vocabulary expansion. The role of caregivers and environmental factors in language development is emphasized, while different language theories like nativist, learning, and interactionist approaches are compared.
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3.6: Key Terms
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This page contains definitions and descriptions of various concepts related to infant development, cognitive processes, brain anatomy, and language acquisition. Topics include the "A not B error," processes of accommodation and assimilation in learning, characteristics of child-directed speech, stages of motor skills development, theories like dynamic systems theory, and details on various brain functions and their areas.
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3.7: Summary
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Significant physical, motor, sensory, cognitive, and language developments occur in infants and toddlers during their first two years. Physical growth and sleep, influenced by biopsychosocial factors, are crucial, with nutrition playing a vital role. Motor skills evolve from head-lifting to jumping. Sensory abilities like vision and hearing improve.
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3.8: Review Questions
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This page consists of a multiple-choice quiz covering various aspects of infant development, including physical growth, sensory development, reflexes, cognitive development theories, language acquisition, and parent-infant interactions. Topics such as swaddling, breastfeeding recommendations, motor skills development, and psychological concepts like assimilation in Piaget's theory and Vygotsky's perspective on learning are addressed.
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3.9: Check Your Understanding Questions
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The page contains a series of questions related to child development, touching on various topics such as health risks associated with sleeping practices, patterns of growth during infancy and toddlerhood, and processes by which children learn skills like walking and self-feeding.
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3.10: Personal Application Questions
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3.11: Essay Questions
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