Alexandra Marquez

11604319

GEPSYCH HW 2

QUESTIONS:

1. How much time do infants spend in sleeping? Why do they sleep this long?
2. Infants show a lot of reflexes after they are born. What purpose are these reflexes for? When
infants show reflexes, what do these indicate?
3. Enumerate the different types of cries infants use to communicate.
4. What is infantile amnesia? Why does this happen?
5. What is object permanence? When does this happen? What does this indicate about the infant?
6. In what best way do infants learn to speak? How many languages can infants learn?

Answers:
1. Generally, newborns sleep about 8 to 9 hours in the daytime and about 8 hours at night.
Most babies do not begin sleeping through the night (6 to 8 hours) without waking until at
least 3 months of age, or until they weigh 12 to 13 pounds. However, this varies
considerably and some babies do not sleep through the night until closer to 1 year.
Newborns and young infants have a small stomach and must wake every few hours to eat.
In most cases, your baby will awaken and be ready to eat about every 3 hours. How often
your baby will eat depends on what he or she is being fed and his or her age.
Some babies sleep too much because they have jaundice or are not getting enough food

https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=newborn-sleep-patterns-90-
P02632&sa=U&ei=58e3VM6CIIr5yATNnIGwAg&ved=0CG8QFjAT&usg=AFQjCNFvyKhlh5_8yF
ZvCBirEv-fTY56pQ https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322565.php
2. 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

https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=90&ContentID=P02630

3. Emumerate the diff cries of a baby

1. I'm hungry
2. I'm tired or uncomfortable
3. I've had enough
4. I'm bored

5. I've got colic

6. I'm sick
https://www.whattoexpect.com/first-year/week-10/decoding-cries.aspx
4. Infantile amnesia and why does it happen?
By the time children are two years old, they are able to answer questions about recent
events although they often need careful prompting to retrieve memories. Over the next
four or five years, children become better at recalling and describing important events in
their lives. By the age of seven or eight, most children have well-developed
autobiographical memories with the same rate of normal forgetting seen in adults.
- Freud's theory that childhood amnesia is caused by repression of traumatic memories
occuring in the child's early psychosexual development. More modern theorists, however,
argue that the key to forgetting lies in the early development of the brain itself. While
young children and even infants appear able to recall information for weeks or months,
linking those memories to verbal cues is more difficult.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/media-spotlight/201404/exploring-childhood-
amnesia
5. Object permanence is a cognitive skill that develops in babies shortly after object
recognition, which is when infants can recognize familiar objects like a favorite book, stuffed
animal or toy. Babies learn object recognition when they're around 3 months old, after they
can identify their parents' and other primary caregivers' faces at about 2 months old. Babies
can recognize faces earlier than any other kind of object or pattern.
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-object-permanence-2795405
6. Research shows babies begin to learn language sounds before they’re even born. In the
womb, a mother’s voice is one of the most prominent sounds an unborn baby hears. By the
time they’re born, newborns can not only tell the difference between their mother’s
language and another language, but also show a capability of distinguishing between
languages. At birth, the baby brain has an unusual gift: it can tell the difference between all
800 sounds. This means that at this stage infants can learn any language that they’re
exposed to. Gradually babies figure out which sounds they are hearing the most.

7. Babies from monolingual English households are specialized to process the sounds of
English, and not the sounds of Spanish, an unfamiliar language. Babies from bilingual
Spanish-English households are specialized to process the sounds of both languages, Spanish
and English. So when a three-year-old growing up in a bilingual household inserts Spanish
words into his English sentences, conventional wisdom assumes that he is confusing the two
languages. If a child does not have enough exposure to the target language, they cannot
become fluent. Therefore by adding too many languages at once, you risk not having
enough exposure to each of them. This could mean your child can speak 3, 4, 5 or even 6
languages, but is not actually fluent in one of them.
If a child does not have the language resources necessary to help language learning, they
cannot become fluent
https://bilingualkidspot.com/2018/01/15/how-many-languages-can-children-learn-same-
time/