Babies come without instructions or a manual, often leaving parents feeling insecure and incompetent about caring for them. In this assignment you are to write a 4 - 5 page owners manual for new parents describing the key changes in development from newborn to 1 year of age. In the manual you should address the major changes (do not list every single change at every time period) in the following areas:

1) Your baby's perceptual development (5 pts)

2) Your baby's physical and motor development (5 pts)

3) Your baby's cognitive development (5 pts)

4) When and how to feed your baby (5 pts)

5) Crying and how to soothe your baby OR Your baby's sleep and how to help them sleep (5 pts)

Include at least one piece of research evidence for each area of development that supports your claims (e.g., how do we know that babies prefer faces to other stimuli almost at birth?) make sure to describe how the study was conducted (method), what the findings were (Results) and what do the findings imply (Results) 20pts

Overall presentation (clarity, organization, spelling, grammar) 5 pts

Additional Information

1) For reporting the evidence/research: You need to go to the library and look up articles. The references given in the book often give you the results or conclusions of a study only. GO to the library and look up the article (all work referenced in the text have the full citation at the back. Get the citation and then go to the library and find the article). Read the article to find out what method they used and what their actual results were (in your paper you don't have to give details of the results, just summarize, such as "2 month old babies looked longer at the face than at any other stimuli".)

2) Format. You have a lot of flexibility/creativity here. You can format your paper as a series of questions from parents and your answer.

For example: Mother: My 2 week old doesn't look at me when I walk into the room. Is there something wrong with his eyes?

Answer: Here you would discuss about the developmental time course of visual acuity, how we know (research done), how it will change and why it changes (biological changes, experience, etc)

Mother: When can I expect my baby to roll over and crawl?

Answer : Here you would discuss the physical/motor milestones for the first year.

Or you can do it like a manual, with sections and subsections:

Section I: Perceptual Development

Your baby comes into the world with rudimentary visual capabilities. When born he can see .... (Then you would continue to describe the milestones, research, etc.

Other formats are also acceptable as long as you cover the required information, it is well organized, well-written, and accurate.

3. You do not have to cover everything for every topic. For instance, in vision you could cover acuity in depth, discussing all the changes from birth to 1 yr. only OR

you could discuss pattern recognition and scanning in less depth, discussing a major change (compare the difference between the newborn and the 1 yr old) in each of them..

4. If you think it is relevant, discuss cultural differences (for example, this might be to show that babies who don't sleep through the night are not necessarily biologically impaired)

**Thinking about and writing this assignment will be excellent study preparation for your first exam.