Newborn Reflexes

What reflexes should be present in a newborn?

Reflexes are involuntary movements or actions. Some movements are spontaneous and occur as part of
the baby's normal activity. Others are responses to certain actions. Healthcare providers check reflexes
to determine if the brain and nervous system are working well. Some reflexes occur only in specific
periods of development. The following are some of the normal reflexes seen in newborn babies:

Rooting reflex

This reflex starts when the corner of the baby's mouth is stroked or touched. The baby will turn their
head and open their mouth to follow and root in the direction of the stroking. This helps the baby find
the breast or bottle to start feeding. This reflex lasts about 4 months.

Suck reflex

Rooting helps the baby get ready to suck. When the roof of the baby's mouth is touched, the baby will
start to suck. This reflex doesn't start until about the 32nd week of pregnancy and is not fully developed
until about 36 weeks. Premature babies may have a weak or immature sucking ability because of this.
Babies also have a hand-to-mouth reflex that goes with rooting and sucking. So they may suck on their
fingers or hands.

Moro reflex

The Moro reflex is often called a startle reflex. That’s because it usually occurs when a baby is startled by
a loud sound or movement. In response to the sound, the baby throws back their head, extends out
their arms and legs, cries, then pulls the arms and legs back in. A baby's own cry can startle them and set
off this reflex. The Moro reflex lasts until the baby is about 2 months old.

Tonic neck reflex

When a baby's head is turned to one side, the arm on that side stretches out and the opposite arm
bends up at the elbow. This is often called the fencing position. This reflex lasts until the baby is about 5
to 7 months old.

Grasp reflex

Stroking the palm of a baby's hand causes the baby to close their fingers in a grasp. The grasp reflex lasts
until the baby is about 5 to 6 months old. A similar reflex in the toes lasts until 9 to 12 months.
Stepping reflex

This reflex is also called the walking or dance reflex because a baby appears to take steps or dance when
held upright with their feet touching a solid surface. This reflex lasts about 2 months.

 Social referencing refers to the process wherein infants use. the affective displays of an adult to
regulate their behaviors. toward environmental objects, persons, and situations. Social
referencing represents one of the major mecha- nisms by which infants come to understand the
world.
 Separation anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most common childhood anxiety disorders. SAD
is an exaggeration of otherwise developmentally typical anxiety manifested by excessive
concern, worry, and even dread of the actual or anticipated separation from an attachment
figure.
 Although some babies display object permanence and separation anxiety as early as 4 to 5
months of age, most develop more robust separation anxiety at around 9 months. The leave-
taking can be worse if your infant is hungry, tired, or not feeling well. Keep transitions short and
routine if it's a tough day.
 Cognition refers to thinking and memory processes, and cognitive development refers to long-
term changes in these processes. One of the most widely known perspectives about cognitive
development is the cognitive stage theory of a Swiss psychologist named Jean Piaget.
 Piaget studied how children and youth gradually become able to think logically and scientifically.
 Piaget believed that learning was proceeded by the interplay of assimilation (adjusting new
experiences to fit prior concepts) and accommodation (adjusting concepts to fit new
experiences). The to-and-fro of these two processes leads not only to short-term learning, but
also to long-term developmental change. The long-term developments are really the main focus
of Piaget’s cognitive theory.
 After observing children closely, Piaget proposed that cognition developed through distinct
stages from birth through the end of adolescence. By “stages” he meant a sequence of thinking
patterns with four key features:
 The stages always happen in the same order.
 No stage is ever skipped.
 Each stage is a significant transformation of the stage before it.
 Each later stage incorporates the earlier stages.
 Basically, this is a “staircase” model of development. Piaget proposed four major stages of
cognitive development, and called them (1) sensorimotor intelligence, (2) preoperational
thinking, (3) concrete operational thinking, and (4) formal operational thinking. Each stage is
correlated with an age period of childhood, but only approximately.

 The Sensorimotor Stage: Birth to Age 2

  In Piaget’s theory, the sensorimotor stage occurs first, defined as the period when
infants “think” through their senses and motor actions. As every new parent will attest,
infants continually touch, manipulate, look, listen to, and even bite and chew objects.
According to Piaget, these actions allow children to learn about the world and are
crucial to their early cognitive development.
 The infant’s actions allow the child to represent (i.e., construct simple concepts of)
objects and events. A toy animal may be just a confusing array of sensations at first, but
by looking, feeling, and manipulating it repeatedly, the child gradually organizes her
sensations and actions into a stable concept: toy animal. The representation acquires a
permanence lacking in the individual experiences of the object, which are constantly
changing. Because the representation is stable, the child “knows,” or at least believes,
that toy animal exists even if the actual toy animal is temporarily out of sight. Piaget
called this sense of stability object permanence, a belief that objects exist whether or
not they are actually present. Object permanence is a major achievement of
sensorimotor development, and marks a qualitative transformation in how older infants
(~24 months) think about experience compared to younger infants (~6 months).
 During much of infancy, of course, a child can only barely talk, so sensorimotor
development initially happens without the support of language. It might therefore seem
hard to know what infants are thinking. Piaget devised several simple, but clever,
experiments to get around their lack of language, and these experiments suggest that
infants do indeed represent objects even without being able to talk. In one, for example,
he simply hid an object (like a toy animal) under a blanket. He found that doing so
consistently prompts older infants (18-24 months) to search for the object, but fails to
prompt younger infants (less than six months) to do so. (You can try this experiment
yourself if you happen to have access to a young infant.) Something motivates the
search by the older infant even without the benefit of much language, and that
“something” is presumed to be a permanent concept or representation of the object.

 The Preoperational Stage: Age 2 to 7
 In the preoperational stage, children use their new ability to represent objects in a wide
variety of activities, but they do not yet do it in ways that are organized or fully logical.
One of the most obvious examples of this kind of cognition is dramatic play, or the
improvised make-believe of preschool children. If you have ever had responsibility for
children of this age, you have likely witnessed such play.
 Children engaged in imaginative activities are thinking on two levels at once—one
imaginative and the other realistic. This dual processing of experience makes dramatic
play an early example of metacognition, or reflecting on and the monitoring of thinking
itself. Because metacognition is a highly desirable skill for success in school, teachers of
young children (preschool, kindergarten, and even first or second grade) often make
time and space in their classrooms for dramatic play, and sometimes even participate in
it themselves to help develop the play further.

 The Concrete Operational Stage: Age 7 to 11

  As children continue into elementary school, they become able to represent ideas and
events more flexibly and logically. Their rules of thinking still seem very basic by adult
standards and usually operate unconsciously, but they allow children to solve problems
more systematically than before, and therefore to be successful with many academic
tasks. In the concrete operational stage, for example, a child may unconsciously follow
the rule: “If nothing is added or taken away, then the amount of something stays the
same.”
 This simple principle helps children understand certain arithmetic tasks (such as adding
or subtracting zero from a number) as well as perform certain classroom science
experiments (such as ones that involve calculating the combined volume of two
separate liquids). Piaget called this period the concrete operational stage because
children mentally “operate” on concrete objects and events. They are not yet able,
however, to operate (or think) systematically about representations of objects or
events. Manipulating representations is a more abstract skill that develops later, during
adolescence.

 Concrete operational thinking differs from preoperational thinking in two ways, each of which
renders children more skilled as students. One difference is reversibility, or the ability to think
about the steps of a process in any order. Imagine a simple science experiment, such as one that
explores why objects sink or float by having a child place an assortment of objects in a basin of
water. Both the preoperational and concrete operational child can recall and describe the steps
in this experiment, but only the concrete operational child can recall them in any order (e.g.,
chronological, reverse chronological, etc). This skill is very helpful for any task involving multiple
steps—a common feature of tasks in the classroom. In teaching new vocabulary from a story, for
example, a teacher might tell students: “1) Every time you come across a word you don’t know,
write it down. 2) Then find and write down the definition of that word before returning to the
story. 3) After you have a list of all the words you don’t know, have a friend test you on your
list.” These directions involve repeatedly remembering to move back and forth between a
second step and a first—a task that concrete operational students and most adults find easy, but
that preoperational children often forget to do or find confusing. If the younger children are to
do this task reliably, they may need external prompts, such as having the teacher remind them
periodically to go back to the story to look for more unknown words.
 The other new feature of thinking that develops during the concrete operational stage is the
child’s ability to decenter, or focus on more than one feature of a problem at a time. There are
hints of decentration in preschool children’s dramatic play, which requires being aware on two
levels at once—knowing that a banana can be both a banana and a “telephone.” But the
decentration of the concrete operational stage is more deliberate and conscious than
preschoolers’ make-believe. Now the child can attend to two things at once quite purposefully.
Suppose you give students a sheet with an assortment of subtraction problems on it, and ask
them to do this: “Find all of the problems that involve two-digit subtraction and that involve
borrowing from the next column. Circle and solve only those problems.” Following these
instructions is quite possible for a concrete operational student (as long as they have been
listening!) because the student can attend to the two subtasks simultaneously—finding the two-
 digit problems and identifying which actually involve borrowing. (Whether the student actually
knows how to “borrow” however, is a separate question.)
 In real classroom tasks, reversibility and decentration often happen together. A well-known
example of joint presence is Piaget’s experiments with conservation, the belief that an amount
or quantity stays the same even if it changes apparent size or shape (Piaget, 2001; Matthews,
1998). Imagine two identical balls made of clay. Any child, whether preoperational or concrete
operational, will agree that the two indeed have the same amount of clay in them simply
because they look the same. But if you now squish one ball into a long, thin “hot dog,” the
preoperational child is likely to say that the amount of clay has changed—either because its
shape is longer or because it is thinner, but at any rate because it now looks different. The
concrete operational child will not make this mistake, thanks to new cognitive skills of
reversibility and decentration: for him or her, the amount is the same because “you could squish
it back into a ball again” (reversibility) and because “it may be longer, but it is also thinner”
(decentration). Piaget would say the concrete operational child “has conservation of quantity.”

 Meaning of Language Acquisition

The study of child language acquisition is (you guessed it!) the study of the processes by which
children learn a language. At a very young age, children begin to understand, and gradually use,
the language spoken by their caregivers.

The study of language acquisition involves three main areas:

 First-language acquisition (your native language i.e. child language acquisition).

 Bilingual language acquisition (learning two native languages).

 Second-language acquisition (learning a foreign language). Fun fact - There's a reason why
French lessons were so difficult - babies' brains are much more primed for language learning
than our adult brains are!

Definition of Language Acquisition

How exactly would we define language acquisition?

Language acquisition refers to the process of acquiring a language, usually due to immersion (i.e.
hearing the language often and in everyday contexts). Most of us acquire our native language just from
being around others such as our parents.

Stages of language acquisition

There are four main stages in child language acquisition:

The babbling stage (3-8 months)

Children first start to recognise and produce vowel sounds eg 'bababa'. They don't yet produce any
recognisable words but they are experimenting with their newfound voice!
The one-word stage (9-18 months)

The one-word stage / holophrase is when babies start to say their first recognisable words, eg using the
word 'dog' to describe all fluffy animals.

The two-word stage (18-24 months)

The two-word stage is when children start communicating using two-word phrases. For example, 'dog
woof', meaning 'the dog is barking', or 'mummy home', meaning mummy is home.

The multi-word stage (telegraphic stage) (24-30 months)

The multi-word stage is when children start to use longer sentences, more complex sentences. For
example, 'mummy and Chloe go school now'.

 The primary tenet of Freudian psychosocial development revolves around the causal
relationship between sexual conflict and the subsequent precipitant psychoneurosis. This
principle has incited controversy since its inception. Opponents to Freud have argued that
neuroses can develop independently without the need of a psychosexual impetus.[2]
 Each of the five stages of Freudian psychosexual development theory is associated with a
corresponding age range, erogenous body part, and clinical consequence of fixation.

 Stage I: 0-1 year, oral, mouth: Oral desire is the center of pleasure for the newborn baby.
The earliest attachment of a baby is to the one that provides gratification to his oral needs,
usually his mother. If the optimal amount of stimulation is not available, libidinal energy
fixates on the oral mode of gratification, resulting in subsequent latent aggressive or passive
tendencies.
 Stage II: 1-3 years old, anal, bowel, and bladder: Toilet training is an especially sensitive task
during this period. The parents' desire for adequate performance shifts the libidinal energy
from the oral to the anal area. The child faces increased chances to be reprimanded, to feel
inadequate, and an increased ability to perceive a negative evaluation from a caretaker if he
fails to perform appropriately. Fixation at this stage can manifest in anal retentiveness
(incessant orderliness) or anal expulsiveness (whimsical disorganization).
 Stage III: 3-6 years old, phallic, genitalia: This is perhaps the most controversial stage of
Freud's psychosexual development. This is the stage in which the child begins to experience
pleasure associated with their genitalia. In this period of primitive sexual development, the
child can establish the roots of fixation with the opposite sex parent, the Oedipus complex.
 Stage IV: 6 - 12 years old, latency, dormant sexual feelings: During this time, the libido is
relatively repressed or sublimated. Freud did not identify any erogenous zone for this stage.
The child now begins to act on their impulses indirectly by focusing on activities such as
school, sports, and building relationships. Dysfunction at this stage results in the child's
inability to form healthy relationships as an adult.
 Stage V: 13-18 years old, genital, mature sexual feelings: The child's ego becomes fully
developed during this stage, and they are subsequently seeking their independence. Their
ability to create meaningful and lasting relationships is concrete, and their sexual desires
 and activity are healthy and consensual. If a child or young adult experiences dysfunction
during this period, they will be unable to develop meaningful healthy relationships.[2]

 To explicate Freud's developmental theories one must address his structural theory of mind. The
latter suggests that the psyche (personality) encompasses three psychic structures: the id, ego,
and superego.
 The id is the instinctual aspect of the psyche, consisting of the sexual and aggressive
drives. It is essentially the biological, instinctual, unconscious drive of the individual as it
involves gratification.
 Ego is the rational principle that weighs the id and the real world.

 Stages of the Sensorimotor Stage

As any parent or caregiver can attest, a great deal of learning and development happens during
the first two years of a child's life. The sensorimotor stage can be divided into six separate sub-
stages that are characterized by the development of a new skill:1

 Reflexes (0-1 month)

During this substage, the child understands the environment purely through inborn reflexes
such as sucking and looking.

 Primary Circular Reactions (1-4 months)

This substage involves coordinating sensation and new schemas. For example, a child may suck
his or her thumb by accident and then later intentionally repeat the action. These actions are
repeated because the infant finds them pleasurable.

 Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8 months)

During this substage, the child becomes more focused on the world and begins to intentionally
repeat an action in order to trigger a response in the environment. For example, a child will
purposefully pick up a toy in order to put it in his or her mouth.

 Coordination of Reactions (8-12 months)

During this substage, the child starts to show clearly intentional actions. The child may also
combine schemas in order to achieve the desired effect. Children begin exploring the
environment around them and will often imitate the observed behavior of others. The
understanding of objects also begins during this time and children begin to recognize certain
objects as having specific qualities. For example, a child might realize that a rattle will make a
sound when shaken.

 Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18 months)

Children begin a period of trial-and-error experimentation during the fifth substage. For
example, a child may try out different sounds or actions as a way of getting attention from a
caregiver.
 Early Representational Thought (18-24 months)
Children begin to develop symbols to represent events or objects in the world in the final
sensorimotor substage. During this time, children begin to move towards understanding the
world through mental operations rather than purely through actions.

Principles of Gestalt Psychology

Gestalt psychology helped introduce the idea that human perception is not just about seeing
what is actually present in the world around us. It is also heavily influenced by our motivations
and expectations.

Wertheimer created principles to explain how Gestalt perception functions. Some of the most
important principles of Gestalt theory are:26

 Prägnanz: This foundational principle states that we naturally perceive things in their
simplest form or organization.
 Similarity: This Gestalt principle suggests that we naturally group similar items together
based on elements like color, size, and orientation. An example would be grouping dogs
based on whether they are small or large, or if they are big or small.
 Proximity: The principle of proximity states that objects near each other tend to be viewed
as a group.
 Continuity: According to this Gestalt principle, we perceive elements arranged on a line or
curve as related to each other, while elements that are not on the line or curve are seen as
separate.
 Closure: This suggests that elements that form a closed object will be perceived as a group.
We will even fill in missing information to create closure and make sense of an object. An
example of this Gestalt psychology principle is using negative space to give the illusion that a
particular shape exists when it doesn't.
 Common region: This Gestalt psychology principle states that we tend to group objects
together if they're located in the same bounded area. (For example, objects inside a box
tend to be considered a group.)
 Object permanence means that you know an object or person still exists even when they are
hidden and you can't see or hear them. This concept was discovered by child psychologist
Jean Piaget and is an important milestone in a baby's brain development

 Urie Bronfenbrenner was an American psychologist who is most known for his Ecological
Systems Theory. According to this theory, a child's development occurs within an ecological
system that contains multiple environments or systems that interact to shape the child as they
grow into an adult. The key aspect of this theory is the notion that there are multiple aspects in
a child's life that significantly impact their development. To illustrate this aspect of his model,
Bronfenbrenner theorized that the child's general environment is made of concentric circles
where they are at the center. The closer the layers are to the child, the more influence that
system has on children's experiences.
Microsystem: This system is the closet to children and includes their immediate surroundings. Important
influences in the microsystem include family, neighborhood, and school.

Mesosystem: This system establishes connections between the child's different microsystems. Examples
include relationships between parents and teachers or connections between community groups and the
child's family.

Exosystem: This system encompasses the environmental context which the the child does not directly
experience but which still influences their life and development. An example would be how children's
day-to-day activities are influenced by their parents' work schedule.

Macrosystem: This system includes the cultural values and norms that impact children's lives. For
example, society expects children to be educated and laws were passed requiring children to be enrolled
in some type of school.

Chronosystem: This aspect of Bronfenbrenner's model pertains to changes that can occur through time,
such as personal growth and maturity or significant life events.

These systems do not function in isolation; they influence each other in a bi-directional fashion. The laws
that a society passes can affect communities and neighborhoods, which can in turn influence the direct
experiences children have in their immediate environments. The microsystem has the most noticeable
influence on development since it encompasses the settings in which children have all of their day-to-
day experiences.