Personal Perspective

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The First Two Years: Body and Mind

Chapter 3

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Growth of Body and Brain: Height and Weight

Healthy toddlers vary in size; percentiles

At 24 months: 15 inches (38 centimeters) taller than at birth

At birth: 7 pounds (3.2 kilograms)

At 24 months: 28 pounds (13 kilograms)

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Typical 2-year-olds are half their adult height and about one-fifth their adult weight.

Percentile

Point on a ranking scale of 0 to 100: The 50th percentile is the midpoint; half of the people in the population being studied rank higher, and half rank lower.

Percentile indicates how a person compares to others who are the same age.

Averages and Individuals

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Norms and percentiles are useful — most 1-month-old girls who weigh 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) should be at least 25 pounds (11.3 kilograms) by age 2.

But, although females weigh less than males on average, lifelong, it is evident that individuals do not always follow the norms.

Do you know of a 200‑pound woman married to a 150‑pound man?

Growth of Body and Brain: Sleep (part 1)

Infant sleep

Average of 17 hours at birth, 16 at 3 months, 15 at 6 months, and 12 at 1 year

Influenced by every level of the ecosystem, as both biological needs and the social context affect it

Dreaming and waking

There is more dreaming in the first weeks of life.

Sleep adapts to family.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Many quite healthy and happy babies get more or less than the average.

The crucial factor is that babies get as much sleep as they want and need.

At first, sleep is almost entirely determined by biology (maturation and genes), with newborns sleeping and waking when their bodies demand it.

Growth of Body and Brain: Sleep (part 2)

Where should babies sleep?

The U.S. middle-class infants sleep separated from their parents; sleeping patterns may be changing.

Decision to co-sleep or bed-share linked to culture, age of infant, mother’s education level and depressive state, and father’s involvement.

Asian, African, and Latin American infants co-sleep or bed-share.

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Co-sleeping is a matter of custom, not merely income.

Asian and African mothers worry more about separation; European and North American mothers worry more about lack of privacy.

Many U.S. pediatricians advise against bed-sharing because it increases the risk of sudden, unexpected infant death (SUID), deaths that include suffocation, and SIDS (Moon et al., 2022; more on SIDS at the end of this chapter).

Thus, bed-sharing, a common practice in many cultures for most of history, has become controversial.

Suspected Child Endangerment?

People in all nations tend to see the customs of other nations as dangerous or even abusive.

That may be why some adults in African countries think the U.S. practice (babies sleeping in their room) is emotional abuse, whereas some North Americans regard bed-sharing as dangerous.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Growth of Body and Brain: Brain Development

Prenatal and postnatal brain growth (measured by head circumference) is crucial for later cognition.

Head-sparing is a biological mechanism that protects the brain when malnutrition disrupts body growth.

Many other terms in neuroscience could be more self-explanatory.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Throughout fetal and infant development, the brain grows more rapidly than any other organ, from about 25 percent of adult weight at birth to 75 percent at age 2.

Connections

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

A few of the hundreds of named brain parts are shown here. Although each area has particular functions, the entire brain is interconnected. The processing of emotions, for example, occurs primarily in the limbic system, where many brain areas are involved, including the amygdala, hippocampus, and hypothalamus.

Growth of Body and Brain: Neuroscience Vocabulary (part 1)

Neuron

One of billions of nerve cells in the central nervous system (CNS)

Axon

Fiber that extends from a neuron and transmits electrochemical impulses from that neuron to the dendrites of other neurons

Dendrite

Fiber that extends from a neuron and receives electrochemical impulses transmitted from other neurons via their axons; transient exuberance

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Neurons and synapses proliferate (increase rapidly in number) before birth. This increase continues quickly after birth, but an opposite phenomenon occurs, that is, the elimination, or pruning, of unnecessary connections.

Growth of Body and Brain: Neuroscience Vocabulary (part 2)

Synapse

Intersection between the axon of one neuron and the dendrites of other neurons

Neurotransmitter

Brain chemical that carries information from the axon of a sending neuron to the dendrites of a receiving neuron

Myelin

Fatty substance coating axons that speeds transmission of nerve impulses from neuron to neuron

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

The last part of the brain to mature is the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for anticipation, planning, and impulse control.

Growth of Body and Brain: Neuroscience Vocabulary (part 3)

Cortex

Outer layers of the brain, where most thinking, feeling, and sensing occur

Prefrontal cortex

Area of the cortex at the very front of the brain that specializes in anticipation, planning, and impulse control

Limbic system

It comprises parts of the brain that interact to produce emotions, including the amygdala, hypothalamus, and hippocampus.

Many other parts of brain also are involved with emotions.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Growth of Body and Brain: Neuroscience Vocabulary (part 4)

Amygdala

Tiny brain structure that registers emotions, particularly fear and anxiety

Hippocampus

Brain structure that is a central processor of memory, especially memory for locations

Hypothalamus

Brain area that responds to amygdala and hippocampus to produce hormones that activate other parts of brain and body

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Growth of Body and Brain: Neuroscience Vocabulary (part 5)

Cortisol

Primary stress hormone; fluctuations in the body’s cortisol level affect human emotions

Pituitary

Gland in the brain that responds to a signal from the hypothalamus by producing many hormones, including those that regulate growth and those that control other glands, among them the adrenal and sex glands

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Growth of Body and Brain: Brain Exuberance and Pruning

Newborns

More neurons than necessary at birth; programmed cell death

Massive gain in dendrites; cortex volume increase

Transient exuberance

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Transient exuberance

There is a significant but temporary increase in the number of dendrites that develop in an infant’s brain during the first two years of life.

Brain structure and growth specific depend on genes, maturation, and experience.

Such extensive postnatal brain growth is evident in humans but not in other mammals because humans need extensive brain networks to support elaborate language, deep analysis, nuanced emotions, etc. If all the necessary brain structures occurred before birth, fetal heads could not fit through the pelvis to be born.

Connecting

The color staining on this photo shows that the two cell bodies of neurons (stained chartreuse) grow axons and dendrites to each other’s neurons.

This tangle is repeated thousands of times in every human brain.

These fragile dendrites will grow or disappear throughout life as the person continues thinking.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

The infant brain contains billions of new dendrites.

Every electrochemical message to or from the brain causes thousands of neurons to fire, each synapse to neighboring neurons.

Growth of Body and Brain: Harming the Infant Body and the Brain

Necessary stimulation

Babies need stimulation; severe lack of stimulation stunts the brain.

Stress and the brain

Too much or wrong stimulation has adverse effects.

Early overabundance early in life can derail some brain connections and cause odd lifelong responses to stress.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

If the infant brain reacts to stress by producing too much cortisol, that derails the connections in the brain, causing odd responses later on. Years later, that person may be hypervigilant (always alert) or emotionally flat (never happy or sad).

Listen, Imagine, Think, and Tap

A person has just heard “banana” and “round, red fruit” and is told to tap if the two do not match. An MRI reveals that 14 areas of the brain are activated.

As you see, this simple matching task requires hearing (the large region on the temporal lobe), imagined seeing (the visual cortex in the occipital lobe at the bottom), motor action (the parietal lobe), and analysis (the prefrontal cortex at the top).

Imagine how much more brain activation is required for the challenges of daily life.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Perceiving and Moving: The Senses

Newborns

Exhibit sensory responsiveness with open eyes, ears, and responsive sensory organs

Sensation

Begins at birth

Includes response of a sensory organ (eyes, ears, skin, tongue, nose) when stimulus is detected

Perception

Develops later with experience and culture

Occurs when the brain is conscious of sensation or idea

Sometimes, it combines several senses and ideas

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Perceiving and Moving: Hearing

Hearing

Genes and experiences allow early hearing.

At birth

Familiar, rhythmic sounds are soothing.

Sudden loud noises cause crying.

Newborns

They turn head toward the source of voice, with preference for prenatally heard language.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Perceiving and Moving: Vision

Seeing

The least mature sense at birth

Experience

Allows visual cortex to begin perception

Leads to binocular vision at around 13 weeks

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Newborns look intensely at faces.

Repeated sensations become perceptions so this baby will smile at Dad, Mom, and every other face in about six weeks.

If this father in Utah responds like typical fathers everywhere, by 6 months, cognition will be apparent: The baby will laugh with joy at seeing him but become wary of unfamiliar faces.

Perceiving and Moving: Smell, Taste, and Touch (part 1)

Smelling and tasting

Smell and taste function at birth and rapidly adapt to the social world.

Exposure to taste occurs prenatally through amniotic fluid, then through breast milk and food after birth.

Variation occurs; early experience influences perception of all kinds.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Perceiving and Moving: Smell, Taste, and Touch (part 2)

Touch

Sense of touch is acute in infants; gentle touch.

Although all newborns respond to being securely held, they soon prefer specific touches.

Pain and temperature

Pain and temperature are often connected to touch.

Pain is less intense than adult pain but not absent altogether.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Perceiving and Moving: Motor Skills

Motor skills

Any deliberate movement of body

Start with reflexes and inborn movements

May be practiced and encouraged

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Advancing and Advanced

At 8 months, she is already an adept crawler, alternating hands and knees, intent on progress. She will probably be walking before a year.

Motor skill

Learned abilities to move some part of the body, in actions ranging from a large leap to a flicker of the eyelid. (The word “motor” refers to movement of muscles.)

Every skill requires maturation, motivation, and practice.

Perceiving and Moving: Gross Motor Skills

Gross motor skills

Every basic motor skill develops over the first two years of life.

Course of development

Cephalocaudal (head-down) and proximodistal (center-out) direction

Sequence of emerging skills

Sitting unsupported

Standing, holding on

Crawling (creeping)

Standing, not holding on

Walking well

Walking backward

Running

Jumping up

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Gross motor skills

Physical abilities involving large body movements, such as walking and jumping. (The word “gross” here means “big.”)

See chart on page 76 for additional information about age norms for gross motor skills.

Advancing and Advanced

Something compels infants to roll over, sit, stand, and walk as soon as possible. This boy will often fall, despite his balancing arms, but he will get up and try again. Soon, he will run and climb. What will his cautious mother (behind him) do then?

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Perceiving and Moving: Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills

Physical abilities involving small body movements, especially of the hands and fingers, such as drawing and picking up a coin

Shaped by culture and opportunity

Sequence of emerging skills

Grasping rattle

Reaching to hold object

Thumb and finger grasping

Stacking two blocks

Imitating vertical line

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

See chart on page 77 for additional information about age norms for fine motor skills.

The Eager Infant Mind

Infant brain

Possesses inborn motivation to acquire information

Develops particular brain connections provided by the personal world

Specifics, habits, and preferences

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

From early on in development, infants display perception biases and attentional patterns that strongly suggest a motive to acquire information.

Mispronunciation Examples in the Bergelson and Swingley Study

Hearing of speech becomes increasingly accurate in the first year — long before babies can talk.

Very young babies are primed to learn language.

1-year-olds are attuned to the accepted way to pronounce words.

Apple	Opel
Banana	Banoona
Milk	Mulk
Hair	Har
Mouth	Mith
Nose	Na

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

The Eager Infant Mind: Listening to Learn

Pronunciation

Acute hearing in infancy

Entrainment and word segmentation

Language specificity and pronunciation

Learning two languages

Early bilingual exposure provides benefit

Prenatal language preference

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

By one year, infants prefer correctly pronounced words, suggesting an early sensitivity to linguistic norms.

Pronunciation

Acute hearing in infancy

Remarkable auditory acuity

Ability to discern subtle tonal variations to distinct phonetic pronunciations

Entrainment and word segmentation

Synchronize with language rhythm and distinguish word boundaries before meaning comprehension.

Language specificity and pronunciation

Perceptual abilities fine-tuned to environmental linguistic features; disregard sounds irrelevant to native language.

Fetuses exposed to multiple languages show preferences for the language associated with happier emotions, often the first language of the birthing parent.

Newborns with bilingual parents preferred the language associated with more animated and emotional talk, indicating an early inclination toward familiar linguistic environments.

Learning two languages

Early bilingual exposure

Infants are adept at learning multiple languages from birth.

They benefit from exposure to diverse speech sounds, which primes infant brains for language acquisition.

Prenatal language preference

Bilingual learning may commence before birth.

Fetal exposure to multiple languages shows preferences for languages in infants exposed prenatally.

The Eager Infant Mind: Looking to Learn (part 1)

Infants actively engage with their surroundings, using their senses to learn.

Even at 3 months, infants show a natural inclination to follow caregivers’ gaze and grasp social cues early on.

Infants also exhibit gaze-following independently, a combination of innate predisposition and learned behavior.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Gaze-following

When someone looks at another person’s eyes to see where they are looking, they look at the same thing.

This requires impressive perspective and social motivation — and infants do it.

Infants instinctively focus on objects or people that draw their caregivers’ gaze, indicating an early grasp of social cues.

Gaze-following reflects innate predisposition and learned behavior, highlighting the interplay between biology and social learning.

The Eager Infant Mind: Looking to Learn (part 2)

Early logic

Early understanding of expectations

Surprise response and emerging sense of normalcy and anticipation

Innate logical framework

Core knowledge

Basic understanding of gravity, object permanence, and significance of adult grazing signals

Extends to social cues; competent teacher identification

Leveraged to learn and develop rapidly

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

The Eager Infant Mind: Looking to Learn (part 3)

How to learn

Newborns

Look at, listen to, suck on, grab, and taste everything

Toddlers

Respond as taught

Grit fosters learning

Learn from watching adults struggle with task completion

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Curiosity is inborn.

The Eager Infant Mind: Looking to Learn (part 4)

Joint attention

Occurs when two or more people look at, listen to, or think about the same thing

Considered a crucial aspect of cognition; understanding others’ points of view

Play far more interrupted by a cell phone than by a person

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

If At First You Don’t Succeed . . . Quit?

Two times, with two toys, babies watched an adult try to get toys from a container.

One group saw the toys quickly released, and another group saw them released only after some effort.

Then, the babies were shown another toy.

This third toy played music when the adult turned it on, but then (unbeknown to the babies) the music-playing was deactivated.

When babies were handed the quiet toy, how long did they try to turn on the music?

(Answer is in the text.) If you don’t take time to read the text, what does that suggest about your childhood?

Inborn Racism?

Do babies have innate ideas of “us” and “them,” or are such prejudices the product of early learning?

Justify your answer.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

The answer is unclear, but if infants are to become at ease in a multiethnic, multigender world, caregivers need their babies to experience friendly people of every appearance.

The Eager Mind: Infant Memory (part 1)

Infant memory

Capacity to learn evident before birth

Crucial for knowledge and skill acquisition

Implicit memory

Nonverbal memory for movements, emotions, or impulses

Come from brain parts developed early in life: cerebellum, amygdala

Explicit memory

Verbal, accessible via words

Longer to emerge; language-dependent

Rovee-Collier’s mobile kicking research findings

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Memory is crucial for acquiring the tremendous knowledge and skills infant[s] and children acquire it in the first years of life.

Implicit memory

Memory that is not verbal, often unconscious. Many motor and emotional memories are implicit.

Explicit memory

Memory that can be recalled in the conscious mind, usually factual memories that are expressed with words

Verbal memory, especially vocabulary, continues to increase in adolescence and adulthood

The Eager Mind: Infant Memory (part 2)

Infants are fascinated by moving objects within a few feet of their eyes — that’s why parents buy mobiles for cribs and why Rovee-Collier tied a string to a mobile and a baby’s leg to test memory.

Babies not in her experiment, like this one, sometimes flail their limbs to shake their cribs and thus move their mobiles.

Piaget’s “making interesting sights last” stage is evident to every careful observer.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

The Eager Mind: Sensorimotor Intelligence

Piaget’s sensorimotor intelligence

Senses and motor skills are raw materials for infant cognition.

Circular reaction

Interplay of sensation, perception, action, and cognition occurs in six stages, grouped in three pairs of circular reactions.

Primary circular reaction; secondary circular reaction; tertiary circular reaction

No beginning and no end to learning; experience leads to the next, which loops back.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

See Table 3.2 for additional information on the Six Stages of Sensorimotor Intelligence

Piaget described the interplay of sensation, perception, action, and cognition as a circular reaction. As in a circle, learning does not begin and end. Each experience leads to the next, which loops back: All the infant's brain activity advances their understanding.

In primary circular reactions (birth to 4 months)

Circle is within the infant’s body. They learn that sucking on nipples produces milk, and sucking on a pacifier does not. That’s why hungry babies might spit out a pacifier — they have learned!

In secondary circular reactions (4–12 months)

Circular reaction occurs between the baby and something else. For example, when babies realize rattles make noise, they wave their arms and laugh whenever someone puts a rattle in their hand. Seeing something delightful — a favorite squeaky toy or a smiling parent — triggers active effort for interaction.

Never Ending

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Circular reactions keep going because each action produces pleasure that encourages more action.

The Eager Mind: Object Permanence

Object permanence

At around 8 months

Realization that objects (including people) still exist when they can no longer be seen, touched, or heard

Tertiary circular reactions

Begin around age 1

Independent actions taken to discover properties of other people, animals, and things

Piaget’s “little scientist”

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Little scientist

This is Piaget’s term for toddlers’ insatiable curiosity and active experimentation as they engage in various actions to understand their world.

Measuring Object Permanence

A-not-B error (Piaget)

Around 18 months

Infants search after a wait. However, if they have seen the object put first in one place (A) and then moved to another (B), they search in A but not B.

By 2 years

Children fully understand object permanence.

Or is it? (Renee Baillargeon)

Proved that 3-month-olds grasp object permanence

Indications of surprise measured when objects manipulated by screen

Are indications of surprise sufficient to indicate an idea?

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Are indications of surprise sufficient to indicate an idea?

Or do you hold the opposing perspective that a fleeting idea is insufficient to indicate cognition and that ideas are not truly comprehended without some action?

Do you agree that it is not enough to “talk the talk” and that a person must “walk the walk?” Is that fair to infants who cannot walk or even pull away a cloth to reveal an object?

Language: The First Two Years (part 1)

Listening and responding

Babbling and gesturing

First words

Naming explosion

Cultural differences

Putting words together

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

See chart on page 92 for additional information on language development in the first two years.

Who is babbling?

Probably both the 6-month-old and the 27-year-old. During every day of infancy, mothers and babies communicate with noises, movements, and expressions.

Language: The First Two Years (part 2)

Listening and responding

Child-directed speech (motherese); universal

High-pitched, simplified, and repetitive way adults speak to infants; preference for voices over noises

Babbling

Extended repetition of certain syllables, such as ba-ba-ba, that begins when babies are between 6 and 9 months old

Universal

Gesturing

Before age 1, dialogue of give-and-take, passing an object back and forth may develop.

Other early gestures signify bye-bye, pick-me-up, and eat.

For deaf infants, early gestures predict later skills at signing and cognition.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Listening and responding

Infants like alliteration, rhymes, repetition, melody, rhythm, and varied pitch, all typical of child-directed speech.

Babies prefer sounds over content, singing over talking.

Babbling

All babies babble, even deaf ones, although cognitively impaired babies may be slow.

Gesturing

Language: The First Two Years (part 3)

First words

At about 1 year, babies speak a few words, which coincides with walking.

Spoken vocabulary increases gradually (about one new word a week).

First words become holophrases.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Holophrase

Single word that is used to express a complete, meaningful thought

Pointing

Pointing is one of the earliest forms of communication, emerging at about 10 months. As you see here, it is useful for humans for life.

See About This Time: The Development of Spoken Language in the First Two Years for additional information about age and means of communication on page 90

Cultural differences in language use

All new talkers say names and utter holophrases.

Language: The First Two Years (part 4)

Naming explosion

Vocabulary builds rapidly after mastery of first 50 words; many words nouns.

Names favored before explosion.

Ratio of nouns to verbs varies from place to place.

Meanings vary by language.

Words that are difficult to say are simplified.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Naming explosion

Sudden increase in an infant’s vocabulary, especially in the number of nouns, begins at about 18 months.

Notice that all these words have two identical syllables, a consonant followed by a vowel. Many words follow that pattern — baba and bobo, bebe, bubu, and bibi. Other early words are only slightly more complicated — ma-me, ama.

Language: The First Two Years (part 5)

Cultural differences

Early communication transcends linguistic boundaries.

Human baby noises are understood despite listener’s language or experience.

Cultures and families vary in how much child-directed speech children hear.

Small agricultural communities

Educated urban dwellers

Covid-19 pandemic

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Language: The First Two Years (part 6)

Putting words together

Grammar includes all devices by which words communicate meaning.

Word order, prefixes, suffixes, intonation, verb forms, pronouns and negations, prepositions, and articles

Combining two words requires new neurological connections.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

At age 2, most children can combine three or even four words. English grammar uses subject–verb–object order.

Toddlers say “Mommy read book” rather than any of the five other possible sequences of those three words, an impressive accomplishment.

Theories of Language Learning (part 1)

Behaviorism

Learning is acquired, step by step, through association and reinforcement.

Social impulses

Infants are propelled to communicate and talk because humans are social beings dependent on one another for survival.

Genetically programmed

Language learning arises from particular gene (FOXP2), brain maturation, and overall human impulse to imitate.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Maternal Responsiveness and Infants’ Language Acquisition

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Learning the first 50 words is a milestone in early language acquisition, as it predicts the arrival of the naming explosion and the multiword sentence a few weeks later.

Researchers found that half of the infants of highly responsive mothers (top 10 percent) reached this milestone at 15 months.

The infants of less responsive mothers (bottom 10 percent) lagged significantly behind, with half at the 50-word level at 21 months.

B. F. Skinner (1957) noticed that spontaneous babbling is usually reinforced.

Typically, when a baby says “ma-ma-ma-ma,” a grinning mother appears, repeating the sound and showering the baby with attention, praise, and perhaps food.

Good News or Bad News?

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Caregivers of babies under age 2 were asked if the baby ever did each of these activities and how often each occurred.

Are you glad that 55 percent never watched a video or sad that 12 percent were never shown a book? [There are books even for very young babies, with large pictures on soft pages.]

Social impulses propel infants to communicate.

According to this perspective, infants talk because humans are social beings who depend on one another for survival and joy.

This theory directly challenges child-directed videos, CDs, and downloads such as Baby Einstein and VocabuLarry. Screen time during infancy reduces social interaction.

Theories of Language Learning (part 2)

All perspectives offer insight into language acquisition.

Multiple attentional, social, and linguistic cues contribute to early language.

Different elements of the language apparatus may have evolved in different ways.

Neuroscience

Language arises from many brain regions, contributing to hundreds of genes and areas.

Language is interrelated and complex.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

It was once thought that language was located in two specific regions of the brain ( Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area ).

Surviving in Good Health: Survival

United Nations statistics

Public health measures have dramatically reduced infant death.

World Factbook (CIA, 2021) data

Higher rates of infant death

All report dramatic improvement in China and India.

Most child deaths occur in the first month of life.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

United Nations statistics show that in 1950, almost one infant in six died before age 1 worldwide; in 2022, the rate was about 1 in 33. The rate in North America, Europe, East Asia, and Australia is now less than 1 in 100.

World Factbook (CIA, 2021) reported higher rates of infant death, with 17 nations at 1 infant death for every 20 infants born and five nations at less than 1 infant death in 500 births.

These data suggest the need to:

Understand the dramatic improvements in survival

Prevent the deaths that still occur.

In the twenty-first century in the United States, 99.9 percent of babies who survive those hazardous early days live to adulthood. Public health measures (adequate food, immunization, cleaner air, and water) deserve credit, each now explained.

Wonderful Improvement

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Surviving in Good Health: Nutrition

Better nutrition

Most crucial contribution to cause a drop in infant mortality

Breast is best

Human milk is more digestible and sterile than formula or cow’s milk.

Colostrum

Composition adjusts with the age of baby; quantity increases with demand.

Risk of virus transmission is lower than risk of dying from infections, diarrhea, or malnutrition.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Allergies and asthma are less common in breast-fed children. In adulthood, their rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are lower.

American Academy of Pediatrics recommended exclusive breastfeeding for about six months, continued breastfeeding until 2 years or beyond, and recommended many other foods (Meek & Noble, 2022).

The pediatricians also advocated social changes that make breastfeeding easier for U.S. parents, such as paid maternal leave and private areas at workplaces so women could pump and refrigerate milk to be fed to their infants later in the day.

The Benefits of Breast-Feeding

For the Baby	For the Mother
Balance of nutrition (fat, protein, etc.) adjusts to age of baby	Easier bonding with baby
Breast milk has micronutrients not found in formula	Reduced risk of breast cancer and osteoporosis
Less infant illness, including allergies, ear infections, stomach upsets	Natural contraception (with exclusive breast-feeding, for several months)
Less childhood asthma	Pleasure of breast stimulation
Better childhood vision	Satisfaction of meeting infant’s basic need
Less adult illness, including diabetes, cancer, heart disease	No formula to prepare; no sterilization
Protection against many childhood diseases, since breast milk contains antibodies from the mother	Easier travel with the baby
Stronger jaws, fewer cavities, advanced breathing reflexes (less SIDS)	For the Family
Higher IQ, less likely to drop out of school, more likely to attend college	Increased survival of other children (because of spacing of births)
Later puberty, fewer teenage pregnancies	Increased family income (because formula and medical care are expensive)
Less likely to become obese or hypertensive by age 12	Less stress on father, especially at night

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Worldwide, young children are the most likely to suffer from malnutrition because nutrition is essential for body and brain growth.

Surviving in Good Health: Malnutrition

Consequences of malnutrition

Stunting; wasting

Breast-feeding when nursing parent is malnourished

Consequences of chronic malnutrition

Impaired learning

Other diseases become more deadly

Diseases directly from malnutrition: marasmus, kwashiorkor

Diminished usual childhood joy

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Stunting

Failure of children to grow to an average height for their age due to severe and chronic malnutrition

Wasting

Tendency for children to be severely underweight for their age as a result of malnutrition

Evidence Matters

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Genes were thought to explain height differences among Asians and Scandinavians until data on hunger and malnutrition proved otherwise.

The result: starvation down and height up almost everywhere — especially in Asia. Despite increased world population, far fewer young children are stunted (255 million in 1970; 148 million in 2022).

Evidence now finds additional problems: Civil war, climate change, and limited access to contraception have increased stunting in some nations in western and central Africa, from 20 to 29 million in the past 50 years.

Surviving in Good Health: Considering Culture and Climate

Worldwide, wasting and stunting have decreased; wasting has increased in some nations.

Causes include a high birth rate, limited family planning, and climate change, all affected by local and global cultures.

Climate may be particularly important for fetuses and newborns.

Newborn inability to sweat or shiver; heat waves

Access to clean drinking water

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Although only 17 percent of the world’s population live in Africa, a third of all the world’s malnourished infants live there.

One source puts rates of stunting in sub-Saharan nations at 31 percent and wasting at 8 percent.

Surviving in Good Health: Immunization

Immunization

Stimulates body’s immune system by causing the production of antibodies to defend against attack by a particular contagious disease

Successes

Smallpox

Polio

Measles

Chicken pox

Protection from complications

Covid-19 and anti-vaxers

Herd immunity

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Antibiotic creation may be accomplished naturally (by having the disease), by injection, by swallowed drops, or by a nasal spray.

Immunization has “a greater impact on human mortality reduction and population growth than any other public health intervention besides clean water” (Baker, 2000, p. 199).

Herd immunity

It is the level of immunity necessary in a population (the herd) to stop transmission of infectious diseases. The rate is usually above 90 percent and even higher for very infectious diseases.

The U.S. currently has more sudden infant deaths than other advanced nations.

Some North Americans call SIDS “a disease of health disparities” because it is more common in families with inadequate prenatal and postnatal medical care (Blackburn et al., 2020). Most U.S. SIDS victims experience several risks, a cascade of biological and social circumstances.

Ask Grandma

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

Neither polio nor measles have been completely eradicated because some parents do not realize the danger. They may never have seen the serious complications of these diseases.

Conclusion: Example of Science and Multicultural Research

In 1984, SIDS killed 5,245 babies in the United States.

Research (Susan Beal and others) found that back-sleeping protected against SIDS.

By 1994, a “Back to Sleep” campaign dramatically cut the worldwide SIDS rate.

By 1996, the U.S. rate was half of what it had been.

In 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported only 1,400 SIDS deaths.

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

SIDS

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), colloquially called crib death in North America and cot death in England. (SIDS is a subcategory of sudden unexpected infant death or SUID. An infant’s unexpected, sudden death is when a seemingly healthy baby, usually between 2 and 6 months old, stops breathing and dies while asleep.

Alive Today

Invitation to the Life Span

Kathleen Stassen Berger | Sixth edition

As more parents learn that a baby should be on his or her “back to sleep,” the SIDS rate continues to decrease. Other factors also contribute to the decline — fewer parents smoke cigarettes in the baby’s room.

Personal Perspective

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