GUDEN, HAZEL ANN M.

CHAPTER 4: EARLY PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT

PRINCIPLES OF DEVELOPMENT
Cephalocaudal Principle (top down)

 Principle that development proceeds in a head-to-tall direction; that is, upper parts of the body
develop before lower parts of the trunk.

Figure 8: Changes in Proportions of the Human Body during Growth

Proximodistal Principle (inner to outer)

 Principle that development proceeds from within to without; that is, parts of the body near the
center develop before the extremities.
 According on this principle, growth and motor development proceed from the center of the body
outward.

PHYSICAL GROWTH
 Babies grow most rapidly in both height and weight during the first few months of life and
then taper off somewhat by age of 3.
 Baby boys are slightly larger, on average, than baby girls.

FACTORS THAT AFFECT GROWTH

1. Genetic Influence
2. Environmental Influences
a. Nutrition
b. Living conditions
TEETHING
 Begins around 3 – 4 months, but the first tooth may not actually arrive until sometime between 5
and 9 months or even later.
 By their 1st birthday, babies generally have 6 – 8 teeth
 By age 2 ½ , they have a mouthful of 20.
In medieval Europe, teething was believed to lead to illness or death (Fontanel & d’Hartcount, 1997);
these beliefs are shared by some indigenous cultures and immigrant groups today .

NUTRITION
 Optimal growth and brain development require the proper mix of vitamins, minerals, calories,
and high-quality protein sources. Failure to secure theses essential substances can have effects
lasting far past the early years in areas as diverse as cognitive development, physical health, work
capacity, and earning power (Habicht & Martorell, 2010).

Breast or Bottle?
 Breastfeeding is almost always best for infants.
 The lives of approximately 820,00 children could be saved every year if all children under age of
2 were optimally breastfed (World Health Organization, 2021).
Breast milk

Can be called the “ultimate health food” because it offers so

many benefits to babies – physical, cognitive, and emotional.
As newborn age into infants and then toddlers, their
nutritional needs change. So, too, does their mother’s milk. As
children grow bigger, their bodies require more energy, and the
fat and protein in breast milk rise in concert with their needs
(Czosnykowska – Lukacka et al., 2018)
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
breastfeeding is inadvisable if:
a baby is diagnosed with galactosemia ( a genetic metabolic
disorder)
the mother is infected with the HIV virus, Ebola, or any other
infectious illness
the mother has been exposed to radiation
the mother is taking any drug that would not be safe for the baby
Solid Foods
 Healthy babies should consume nothing but breast milk or iron-fortified formula for the first 6
months.
 Pediatric experts recommend that iron-enriched solid foods and water be introduced gradually
during second half of the first year.
 Children should be offered 2 to 3 healthy snacks a day and can be encouraged to feed themselves
and drink from a cup.

Obesity
Variety of risk factors found in infants and toddlers from 0 to 2 years of age that are associated with
later risk of obesity in children:
1. Children born to mothers who had a higher pre-pregnancy BMI or who gained a great deal of
weight during pregnancy
2. Infants who weighed a great deal at birth or gained weight quickly as infants
3. Prenatal tobacco exposure
Other factors associated but not as strongly:
1. Maternal diagnosis of gestational diabetes
2. Enrollment in child care
3. Inappropriate bottle use
4. Being introduced to solid food before the age of 4 months
5. Use of antibiotics for the infant

 A child under age 3 with an obese parent is likely to become obese as an adult, regardless of the
child’s own weight.

MALNUTRITION
Factors that cause chronic malnutrition:
1. Poverty
2. Low-quality foods
3. Poor dietary patterns
 4. Contaminated water
5. Unsanitary conditions
6. Insufficient hygiene
7. Inadequate health care
8. Diarrheal diseases and other infections

 A long-term longitudinal study conducted in Guatemalan villages showed that Protein

supplementation is early childhood resulted in substantial improvements in cognitive skills,
physical development, and economic productivity in children at risk for malnutrition.
Reasons why the positive effects of protein supplementation occurred only for those children who
participated in the study before age of 3 – roughly the first 1000 days:
1. This is a time of exceedingly rapid physical growth and brain development
2. Young children have greater susceptibility to infections, such as diarrheal diseases, that can
impact their ability to digest nutrients.
3. Younger children are more dependent upon others to take care of their needs.

BUILDING THE BRAIN

Central Nervous System

 Includes the brain and spinal cord (a bundle of nerves running through the backbone), as well as a
peripheral network of nerves extending to every part of the body.

*At birth, an infant’s brain is about 25 percent of its eventual adult volume. By a year of age, it has
reached 70 percent, and by the age of 2, the typical child’s brain will be about 80 percent of its eventual
size. However, specific parts of the brain continue to grow and develop functionally in adulthood (Tau &
Peterson, 2010).

Brain Anatomy and Development

Brain Stem

 Part of the brain responsible for such basic bodily functions as breathing, heart rate, body
temperature, and the sleep-wake cycle.
Cerebellum

 part of the brain that maintains balance and motor coordination

Cerebrum
  largest part of the brain, divided into right and left halves, or hemispheres, each with specialized
factors.
Lateralization

 tendency of each of the brain’s hemispheres to have specialized functions.

 Specialization of the hemispheres.
 Left hemisphere – language and logical thinking
 Right hemisphere – visual and spatial functions
Corpus callosum

 Tough band of tissue in joining two hemispheres

 Is like a giant switchboard of fibers connecting the hemispheres and allowing them to share
information and coordinate commands

Four lobes of cerebral hemisphere:

1. Occipital
2. Parietal
3. Temporal
4. Frontal

Occipital lobe

 Smallest of the four lobes and is primarily concerned with visual processing
Parietal lobe

 Involved with integrating sensory information from the body

Temporal lobe

 Helps us interpret smells and sounds and is involved memory

Frontal lobes

 Newest region of the brain

 Involved variety of higher-order processes, such as goal setting, inhibition, reasoning, planning,
and problem solving.
The Brain development during gestation

 The regions of the cerebral cortex (the outer surface of the cerebrum) that govern vision,
hearing, and other sensory information grow rapidly in the first few month after birth and are
mature by age 6 months, but the areas of the frontal cortex responsible for abstract thought,
mental associations, remembering, and deliberate motor responses grow very little during this
period and remain immature for several years (Gilmore et al., 2007).

Brain Cells
Neurons

 Nerve cells
 Send and receive information
  neurons are simply cell bodies with a nucleus, or center, composed of deoxyribonucleic acid
(DNA), which contains the cell’s genetic programming.
Glia

 Glial cells
 Nourish and protect the neurons
 Support system for our neurons

* Beginning in the 2nd month of gestation, an estimated 250,000 immature neurons are produced every
minute through cell division (mitosis). At birth, most of the more than 100 billion neurons in a mature
brain are already formed but are not yet fully developed. The number of neurons increases most rapidly
between the 25th week of gestation and the first few months after birth. This cell proliferation is
accompanied by a dramatic growth in cell size.
* Most of the neurons in the cortex are in place by 20 weeks of gestation, and the cortex’s structure
becomes fairly well-defined during the next 12 weeks.

Axons

 Send signals to other neurons

Dendrites

 Receive incoming messages from them, through synapses, tiny gaps, which are bridged with the
help of chemicals called neurotransmitters that are released by the neurons.
* The multiplication of dendrites and synaptic connections, especially during the last 21⁄2 months of
gestation and the first 6 months to 2 years of life, accounts for much of the brain’s growth and permits
the emergence of new perceptual, cognitive, and motor abilities.
Integration

 Process by which neurons coordinate the activities of muscle groups.

Differentiation

 Process by which cells acquire specialized structures and functions

Cell Death

 In brain development, normal elimination of excess brain cells to achieve more efficient
functioning.
 This process begins during the prenatal period and continues after birth.

Myelination
Myelination
  process of coating neural pathways with a fatty substance called myelin, which enables faster
communication between cells.
 Begins about halfway through gestation.
 It continues to form rapidly throughout infancy, accelerating at 12 – 16 months and then slowing
again from 2 -5 years old.
 At 5 years of age, the myelinated white matter volume in the brain is approximately 80% of that
found in adults.
 Continues through adolescence and persist through the third decade of life.

Early Reflexes
Reflex behaviors

 Automatic, involuntary, innate responses to stimulation

 Controlled by the lower brain centers that govern other involuntary processes such breathing and
heart rate.

 Primitive reflexes such as sucking and rooting for the nipple are related to instinctive needs for
survival and protection.
 Disappearance of unneeded reflexes on schedule is a sign that motor pathways in the cortex have
been partially myelinated, enabling a shift to voluntary behavior.

Brain Plasticity
Plasticity
  Range of modifiability of performance
 Modifiability, or “molding”, of the brain through experience.
 Evolutionary mechanism to enable adaptation to environmental change
Just as plasticity allows learning in response to appropriate environmental input, it can also lead to
damage in the case of harmful input.

Exposure to hazardous drugs, environmental toxins, or maternal stress before or after birth can
threaten the developing brain, and malnutrition can interfere with normal cognitive growth. Early abuse
or sensory impoverishment can leave an imprint on the brain as it adapts to the environment in which the
developing child must live, delaying neural development or affecting brain structure (Kolb et al., 2017).

Ethical constraints prevent controlled experiments on the effects of environmental deprivation on human
infants.

EARLY SENSORY CAPACITIES

 The regions of the developing brain that control sensory information grow rapidly
during the first few months of life, enabling newborn infants to make fairly good
sense of what they touch, see, smell, taste, and hear.

Touch and Pain

 Embryos will respond to touch as early as 8 to 9 weeks of pregnancy; however, these
responses do not involve any conscious awareness (Humphrey,1970).
 In Second trimester, fetus begin to respond to touch
 In Third trimester, response to touch becomes more robust, and fetuses also reach
out to touch the uterine wall, yawn, cross their arms, or touch themselves.
 By 32 weeks of gestation, all body parts are sensitive to touch, and this sensitivity
increases during the first 5 days of life.

Smell and Taste

 The senses of smell and taste begin to develop in the womb.
 The taste preferences developed in infancy may last into early childhood, children offered
different flavors in early infancy later have less restricted food preferences.
 Other taste preferences seem to be largely innate and reflect an adaptive preference for
signals for high-calorie, high-protein foods and an aversion toward a food that may be
poisonous or toxic. These preferences exist most strongly for sweet and bitter flavors.

Hearing
  Even in the womb, fetuses respond to sound, as indexed by changes in brain activity, heart
rate, or physical movements. They respond differentially to familiar versus unfamiliar
voices, live versus recorded maternal voice, and native versus nonnative language.
 Because hearing is a key to language development, hearing impairments should be identified
as early as possible.

Sight
 Vision is the least developed sense at birth, perhaps because there is so little to see in the
womb.
 Visual perception and the ability to use visual information-identifying caregivers, finding
food, and avoiding dangers-become more important as infants become more alert and active.
 Early screening is essential to detect problems that interfere with vision. Infants should be
examined by 6 months for visual fixation preference, ocular alignment, and signs of eye
disease. Formal vision screening should begin by age 3 (American Optometric Association,
2018). Doctors’ offices have modified eye charts for toddlers specifically for this purpose; in
place of letters are shapes easily recognized by most toddlers such as stars, hearts, and circles.