PSY215 Chapter 3

Outer folded material of the brain, responsible for thinking, reasoning, perceiving, and all conscious responses.

Long nerve fiber that usually conducts impulses away from the cell body of a neuron.

Branching fiber that receives information and conducts impulses toward the cell body of a neuron.

Gap between the dendrites of one neuron and the axon of another, over which impulses flow.

Forming of connections between neurons at the synapses.  This process, responsible for all perceptions, actions and thoughts, is most intense during infancy and childhood but continues throughout life.

Formation of a fatty layer encasing the axons of neurons.  This process, which speeds the transmission of neural impulses, continues from birth to early adulthood.

Malleable, or capable of being changed (used to refer to neural or cognitive development).

Automatic, spontaneous sucking movements newborns produce, especially when anything touches their lips.

Newborns' automatic response to a touch on the cheek, involving turning toward that location and beginning to suck.

Response of action that is automatic and programmed by noncortical brain centers.

Chronic lack of adequate food.

Excessively short stature in a child, caused by chronic lack of adequate nutrition.

Chronically inadequate level of a specific nutrient important to development and disease prevention, such as Vitamin A, zinc, and/or iron.

A baby's frantic, continual crying during the first three months of life; caused by an immature nervous system.

Wrapping a baby tightly in a blanket of garment.  Technique is calming during early infancy.

Carrying a young baby in a sling close to the caregiver's body  Technique is useful for soothing an infant.

Phase of sleep involving rapid eye movements, when the EEG looks almost like is does during waking; decreases as infants mature.

Children's ability, usually beginning at about 6 months of age, to put themselves back to sleep when they wake up during the night.

Standard custom, in collectivist cultures, of having a child and parent share a bed.

Unexplained death of an apparently healthy infant, often while sleeping, during the first year of life.

Research technique to explore early infant sensory capacities and cognition, drawing on the principle that we are attracted to novelty and prefer to look at new things.

Predictable loss of interest that develops once a stimulus becomes familiar; used to explore infant sensory capacities and thinking.

Research using preferential looking and habituation to explore what very young babies know about faces.

Ability to see (and fear) heights.

Table that appears to "end" in a drop-off at it's midpoint; used to test for infant dept perception.

Making the home safe for a newly mobile infant.

Piaget's first stage of cognitive development, lasting from birth to age 2, when babies' agenda is to pin down the basics of physical reality.

In Piaget's framework, repetitive action-oriented schemas (or habits) characteristic of babies during the sensorimotor stage.

In Piaget's framework, the first infant habits during the sensorimotor stage, centered on the body.

In Piaget's framework, habits of the sensorimotor stage lasting from about 4 months of age to the baby's first birthday, centered on exploring the external world.

In Piaget's framework, "Little-scientist" activities of the sensorimotor stage, beginning around age 1, involving flexibly exploring the properties of objects.

The time around age 1 when babies use tertiary circular reactions to actively explore the properties of objects, experimenting with them like "scientists".

In Piaget's framework, performing a different action to get to a goal - an ability that emerges in the sensorimotor stage as babies approach age 1.

In Piaget's framework, the understanding that objects continue to exist even when we can no longer see them, which gradually emerges during the sensorimotor stage.

In Piaget's framework, a classic mistake made by infants in the sensorimotor stage, whereby babies approaching age 1 go back to the original hiding place to look for an object even though they have seen it get hidden in a second place.

Any skill related to understanding feelings and negotiating interpersonal interactions.

First sign of "getting human intentions," when a baby looks at an object an adult is pointing to or follows a person's gaze.

Rules & work arranging systems that every human language employs to communicate meaning.

Chomsky's term for a hypothetical brain structure that enables our species to learn and produce language.

Approach to language development that emphasizes it's social function, specifically that babies a& adults have a mutual passion to communicate.

Alternating vowel and consonant sounds that babies repeat with variations of intonation & pitch that precede the first words.

First clear evidence of language, when babies use a single word to communicate a sentence or complete thought.

First stage of combining words in infancy, in which a baby pares down a sentence to its essential words.

Simplified, exaggerated, high-pitched tones that adults and children use to speak to infants that function to help teach language.