Health 320: Environmental Stimuli and Child Development Essay

This essay examines the effects of environmental stimuli, specifically audio-visual, on a child's nervous system during key developmental periods and its impact on learning and memory. It defines stimuli and explores the overstimulation hypothesis, emphasizing early media exposure. The essay highlights the influence of auditory and visual stimuli on behavior and development, referencing studies on maternal sounds and visual interactions. It discusses how neural representations develop during sensitive periods and the potential negative consequences of overstimulation, such as attentional deficits. The study also touches on the societal implications of these findings and suggests public policy changes to promote healthy child development, including limiting media use and encouraging educational content.

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Health 320 Research Paper
11/22/2018

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Child development
The essay brings is on the development of the child and the effects of environmental
stimuli on the nervous system of an individual during the key developmental periods which
further impacts the learning process and memory. In s general sense, stimuli refers to things
or any events which induce a particular functional response in a tissue or organ (English
Oxford Living Dictionaries, 2018). In other words, stimulus (stimuli) refers to the identifiable
change in the external or internal environment. Receptors are specialized cells which detect
the changes in the environment, called as stimuli (Pavlov, 2010). Thus, the essay will discuss
the audio-visual stimuli, and the concept of overstimulation hypothesis, with a major
emphasis on the early exposure to media on the development of a child (Aita, & Goulet,
2003; Christakis, Ramirez, Ramirez, 2012). Several aspects of this study will also be
highlighted such as attentional capacity, cognition, learning, and memory, and their impact on
the overall society (Aita, & Goulet, 2003).
The nervous system of an individual is composed of the complex network of more
than 100 million nerve cells, called as neurons enabling the body to respond to different
internal and external environmental stimulus. It integrates and regulates the functions of
different organ systems of the human body (Beauchaine, 2001).
Auditory and visual stimuli influence an individual’s nervous system in many
different ways. For example; the type of stimuli to which infants and children are exposed
determines their behavior and development in their key stages of life. An auditory stimulus
refers to those things which an individual listens and the basic type of auditory stimulus in the
presentation is the sound stimulus (Boyd, Bee, & Johnson, 2017). Discussing auditory stimuli
it can be stated that these types of stimulus are created by the objects, such as it includes
about the person speaking, musical instrument played by someone, or the sound of trees

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falling in the forest. Hearing is the greatest developed sensory system at birth and primary
exposure to auditory stimuli that motivates growth of the neural pathways. Functional hearing
grows at twenty-fifth to twenty-seventh weeks’ gestation, with the low-frequency noises, like
the mother’s heartbeat and talking, causing physiological reactions in the uterus (Boyd, Bee,
& Johnson, 2017). The growing foetus answers to a broader range of noise frequencies from
the third trimester (Boyd, Bee, & Johnson, 2017).
In babies, sounds produce remembrance in the auditory and the language areas of
baby’s cerebral cortex and trigger the development of nervous connections to body’s limbic
system (Schore, 2000). In the clinical examinations of the effects of the auditory stimulus on
neurobehavioral and autonomic development in initial life, longitudinal and randomized case-
control readings have revealed that motherly sounds like singing or talking in a soft soothing
speech, lead to decreased heart rate in pre-term infants (Gesell, 2013). Maternal sounds were
also related to better feeding behaviors and improved mother-infant attachment, thereby
dropping parental stress related to pre-term baby care (Corbetta, Patel, & Shulman, 2008).
The Visual sensory system developed poorly at birth but develops quickly with
stimulation in the first 1 to 3 months of life (Gesell, 2013). Development of the visual system,
counting neurological and visual components, is affected by many aspects including postnatal
and prenatal nutrition and postnatal pictorial stimulation (Crain, 2015). The body’s visual
cortex is the area of the mind accountable for handling visual information. There is some
experimental evidence that, from birth, babies favor direct eye interaction as a practice of
communication and that improved neural processing happens throughout infant-parent
straight eye contact (Gesell, 2013). Certainly, the World Health Organization (WHO)
suggests that parents need to involve in the direct eye interaction with their baby starting at
birth (Boyd, Bee, & Johnson, 2017). This initial sensitivity to shared gaze is probably to
support the growth of social skills in life later (Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2005).

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At the start of a sensitive period, the neural representations are rather widely tuned to
associate with environmental stimuli. Extensive tuning is beneficial because it permits the
growing brain to recognize and respond to the characteristics of the sensory environment.
During the sensitive period, the neural representations develop progressively refined and
initiate to especially respond to regularly encountered, thus allowing for extra precise and
effective handling of noticeable and regularly encountered information (Boyd, Bee, &
Johnson, 2017). Through numerous sensory systems, learning and plasticity throughout
sensitive periods are called “bottom-up” process, categorized by the perceptual contracting in
which underlying perceptual discrimination developed increasingly discriminating in their
responsiveness to the environmental input (Boyd, Bee, & Johnson, 2017).
The Overstimulation Hypothesis is considered as the continued exposure to a quick
image alteration during an acute period of mind growth which would prerequisite the brain to
suppose great levels of stimuli and that would result in distraction in later life (Christakis,
Ramirez, Ramirez, 2012). Therefore if someone watches sufficient ‘Baby Einstein’
(example), their mind might become uninterested when they are remain at a place that was
speaking about activities happened on the show because in real life it is not as promising as it
was on the television. Some observational research has shown links between
overstimulation in early stages of life via excessive television viewing and consequent
deficits in understanding and attention (Christakis, Zimmerman, DiGiuseppe, McCarty,
2004). Environmental enhancement is extensively known to significantly improved
memory functions (Leggio et al., 2005). The environmental improvement results in many
neurobiological alterations counting increased and improved dendritic splitting in the
cortical neurons enlarged size and density of the greater colliculus and proliferated
neurogenesis in the part of the brain called hippocampus (Boyd, Bee, & Johnson, 2017).
The important characteristic of the enriched environment (environment that stimulate brain

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to learn things by physical and social surrounding) comprises numerous sensory practices,
and the active involvement with the original environment (Boyd, Bee, & Johnson, 2017).
In studies on the effects of environmental stimuli in rats, the Institute of Medicine
demonstrated how initial social environments should similarly be enhanced to improve
brain growth (DiPietro, 2000). This can be done by the exposure of products or content;
several of these products were video-based, that privilege that they triggered baby’s brains
enables them to become for example “smarter” or extra “musical” through no empiric
basis of help (Christakis, 2009). Due to this, in the later thirty years, the normal age at
which kids begin to frequently watch television has changed from four years of age to five
months of age and the usual preschool kid spends nearly 30–40 per cent of their waking
period in front of a type of screen, This may cause delayed language development,
attention disorder and sleep problems (Christakis, Zimmerman, DiGiuseppe, McCarty,
2004).
Chief, but implied in the improved environment readings is the idea that the
stimulus delivered was normative, which is constant with what can be practised by rats in
a realistic setting. Observational studies have supported the link between unnecessary
watching of such shows and consequent attentional issues (Christakis, 2009). Single brief
experimental research found watching a fast sequenced program results in temporary
attentional difficulties in preschool kids (Christakis, Zimmerman, DiGiuseppe, McCarty,
2004).
The essential departure from the enhanced environment method verified the
“opposite” theory: extreme, non-normative triggering or stimulation throughout a
comparable period will weaken performance afterward (Papoušek, 2007). To eliminate the

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danger of these problems it is essential to understand and recognize the overstimulation
(Aita, & Goulet, 2003).
Some of the studies found that the babies learn language better from the parent talker
than from any display even if it is a voice tape of the inherent speaker. These conclusions beg
the query of why numerous DVD’s claim to enhance language enrichment (e.g. Baby
Einstein ‘Language Nursery’”) (Christakis, 2008). These statements have never been
validated by strong experimental readings. Furthermore, a cross-sectional reading of one
thousand kids below the age of two years unsuccessful to identify any advantage to infant
watching (Christakis, 2009). That study further found that the babies among the ages of seven
and sixteen months who viewed baby DVDs had inferior language understanding (Christakis,
2008).
Beyond the impacts on language, excessive early exposure to television may have
adverse effects on cognitive growth more widely. The effects of television on older kids’
academic success have been widely studied while data for babies are comparatively sparse
(Christakis, Ramirez, Ramirez, 2012). In a longitudinal study of premature exposure to TV
and cognitive results at school age, they found no proof of advantage and in fact revealed
detriment (Shute, & Slee, 2015).
In a big observational study of above 1300 kids revealed a modest link between TV
watching earlier age three and attentional difficulties at age seven. The more television kids
viewed as babies, the more probably they were to have some time attentional difficulties at
age seven. Both violent and the non-violent learning platforms were linked with considerably
improved threats of attentional difficulties, but educational shows were not thus lending
further credibility to the hypothesis of overstimulation (Christakis, Zimmerman, DiGiuseppe,
McCarty, 2004).

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Overstimulated rats demonstrate improved risk taking/reduced anxiety, lesser
temporary memory, and weakened learning (Christakis, 2008). High television viewing
experience to upbringing, television has been identified to harmfully disturb the language
usage and attainment, cognitive development, attention and executive ability in kids younger
than five years (Christakis, Zimmerman, DiGiuseppe, McCarty, 2004). However, when kids
view educational, screen time, age-appropriate shows with an involved adult, can be a helpful
learning experience (Boyd, Bee, & Johnson, 2017).
These diverse studies conducted by researches found to be most important to
recognize the positive and negative impacts of television or media in kids (Christakis,
Ramirez, Ramirez, 2012). These researches might benefit people to increase information
about overstimulation that can play and key essential role in the growth of the babies. The
environmental stimuli are beneficial to understanding the effects of the surrounding
environment on child growth such as auditory and the visual stimulations (Christakis,
Ramirez, Ramirez, 2012). Chills start listening in the mother’s abdomen and it improves the
attachment between mother and kid (Boyd, Bee, & Johnson, 2017).
The public policy can be developed on the basis of these researches that can help the
parents and the carers to understand about the benefits, disadvantages, and importance of
media, overstimulation, and environmental stimuli in order to provide their children's a
healthy development. The parents should be recommended to limit the use of media (1 to 2
hours daily) to the children’s, and avoid the loud sound that may impact the infants
negatively (Linebarger, & Vaala, 2010). They should not allow the children to watch negative
TV shows (for example, the TV shows with violent content) and encourage them to see
educational shows for a limited time (Jordan, Hersey, McDivitt, & Heitzler, 2006).

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The environmental stimuli are identifiable alterations in the external and internal
atmosphere. The auditory stimuli impact the hearing development of infant at birth such as
falling tree in the forest. The developing foetus responds to various types of frequencies from
the 3rd trimester. The overstimulation hypothesis is the consistent exposure to the rapid image
changes through an acute period or brain development. For normal and healthy development
child it is necessary to understand impacts overstimulation. The early exposure to media may
cause a decrease in language to understand, low cognitive development and attention
difficulties. The media uses should be limited and the parents should be engaged in the media
uses with the child.

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References
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