Operant Procedures Essay Example

Medical development from advanced research in neonatal, obstetric and pediatric areas has reduced the mortality rates of infants that are born prematurely. However, the fears of premature birth in many countries have remained unchanged for the last two decades. There are growing numbers of births that are premature, and they are always at risk of contracting cognitive and sensorimotor disorders that affect how they learn and move. A practical example may be to consider looking at prematurely born infants and those of school-going age that show a wider distribution of disabilities in learning, poor eye-hand coordination, development of dyspraxia and possible cerebral palsy. They also tend to use specialist and community resources at a relatively higher rate than those who are born full term (Alessandri, Sullivan, & Lewis, 1990).
Difficulties in learning for preterm infants are believed to show impairment in arousal regulation. Many scientists from decades ago had reported that there was a syndrome affecting the behavior of children born prematurely. The syndrome includes difficulties in motor function, speech, social interactions, arousal, learning, sensory input and emotional responses. Over time, there have been deep and rigorous studies on infants born prematurely. Controls that are made up of full-term infants and are matched according to age have shown results of increased incidence of learning, cognitive, and behavioral problems of prematurely born infants. These problems in the infants continue into later stages of the children’s development.
Impairments in learning and memory have been adequately identified as soon as the infant that was prematurely born enters childhood. However, the prematurely born infants are a wide population base in terms of risks involved due to impaired learning and movement (Schneider, 2015). In addition, there is evidence that shows that prematurely born infants that lack definitive involvement neurologically, or other serious medical complications are at a higher risk of developing impairments in learning and memory. As a result, these infants may show impaired learning and memorize in their early infancy stages.
Physical therapy testing of very young infants that are at high risk of delays in their development looks closely in evaluating the development of sensorimotor. In the case of infants with an age of below four months, there are sets of given tools of assessment that target on how reflexes and reactions are tested (Alessandri et al., 1990). When conducting these psychological tests the infants are regarded as passive participants. The tests focus on movements made by the infant with the possibility of little or no environmental interaction. In most cases, the researcher or medical practitioner has to wait until the infant can show skills with a purpose like reaching out for objects. This way the clinicians can evaluate an infant’s ability to use body movements to interact with the environment or even manipulate it. Some recent observational tools of assessment focus on the infants active behaviors and place it on a predetermined scale of more accurate assessments. According to pediatric doctors, interactions of the child with the environment reflect the child’s ability to move. It also shows the infant's ability to learn and memorize some basic associations between movements of the body and environmental manipulations. For toddlers and babies that have not yet understood early skills in functions like reaching, there exist no means or measure that is scientifically or medically approved to assess learning and memory in an associative manner. As a consequence, doctors and pediatric professionals have to try and extract or force for sensorimotor assessments to decipher these abilities. However, the interaction between sensorimotor and learning abilities is very difficult to understand and master (Schneider, 2015).
Taking an example of children with disabilities in learning, there may or may not exist a display of disorders in coordination abilities. Some kids that are suffering from autism show varying intelligence and sensory displays. The deficits present in each condition may not show equal ranges in severity. In such cases, drawing the ability of the children to learn or the opposite is not always possible or valid. There is an ever growing need to agree on the most feasible measures of associative learning and learning for infants at a risk of developmental challenges among the medical personnel. The modern paradigm procedures used common assessment of infant developmental psychology is believed to have the ability to solve most issues pertaining to infant developmental psychology (Alessandri et al., 1990).
Studies to compare learning and memory abilities of prematurely born infants and those born full time using the mobile paradigm have been conducted on several occasions. The modern paradigm has been used as a standard in the assessment of infant learning and memory psychology. This paradigm has also gone a step further to assist in studying the development of associative memory in infants between two and six months of development. Here, an infant is put in a position where one leg is tied to an overhead object that is mobile. Spontaneous kicking by the infant results in the mobile objects movement proportionally. Conditioning to an optimum occurs when the object has some movement features that are familiar and sometimes unfamiliar (novel). Movements on the mobile object are believed to strengthen the kicking by the infant being assessed. The movement of the mobile device is then compared to the initial movement where the tied leg does not cause any movements to the movable device (DiPietro, Porges, & Uhly, 1992).
The kicking rate, when tethered for the study group, is put in comparison with a standard. The standard is, in most cases, comprised of infants that are born full term where the objects movements’ are not associated with the tied leg kicking. At first, infants laid in such a way that the kicks by the leg are proportional to the movements of the mobile object usually kick more because they get excited by the object’s movements. Learning that is associative is thus said to have taken place when the tied leg’s kicking remains unchanged during the expiry of the period when the kicks do not cause the object to move at all (Schneider, 2015). Learning can also be when the rate of kicking at the extinction period is more than that of the comparison group.
With the above observations, it can be deduced that operant procedures can be used to successfully assess the learning and memorizing ability of infants born prematurely. Their movements and kicks are compared with those of infants born fill term and observations made. These observations are used to determine the learning and memory abilities of the infants.

References

Alessandri, S. M., Sullivan, M. W., & Lewis, M. (1990). Violation of expectancy and frustration in early infancy. Developmental Psychology, 26(5), 738–744.
DiPietro, J. A., Porges, S. W., & Uhly, B. (1992). Reactivity and developmental competence in preterm and full-term infants. Developmental Psychology, 28(5), 831–841.
Schneider, W. (2015). Memory Development from Early Childhood Through Emerging Adulthood. New York: Springer.