Experiencing the Life Span: Ch. 3

Stunting

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

Babinski reflex

Stroke a baby's foot and her toes turn outward.

Depth perception

The ability to see and fear heights.

Babbling

The alternating vowel and consonant sounds that babies repeat with variation of intonation and pitch and that precede the first words.

Sucking reflex

The automatic spontaneous sucking movements newborns produce, expecially when anything touches their lips.

Colic

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

Dendrite

A branching fiber that redceives information and conducts impulses toward the cell body of a neuron.

Under-nutrition

A chronic lack of adequate food.

Synapse

A gap between the dendrites of one neuron and the axon of another, over which impulse flow.

Axon

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

Information processing approach

A perspective on understanding cognition that divides thinking into specific steps and component processes much like a computer.

Preferential-looking paradigm

A 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.

Reflex

A response or action that is automatic and programmed by noncortical brain centers.

Visual cliff

A table that appears to "end" in a drop-off at its midpoint; used to test for infant depth perception.

Food insecurity

According to the US Department of Agriculture surveys, the number of households that need to serve unbalanced meals, worrying about not having enough food at the end of the month or having to go hungry.

Social-interactionist view

An approach to language development that emphasizes its social function, specifically that babies and adults have a mutual passion to communicate.

Social cognition

Any skill related to understanding feelings and negotiating interpersonal interactions.

Kangaroo care

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

Self-soothing

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

Language acquisition device (LAD)

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

Micronutrient deficiency

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

Holophrase

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

telegraph speech

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

Myelination

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

Synaptogenesis

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.

Tertiary circular reactions

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

A not B error

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.

Secondary circular reactions

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.

Mean-end behavior

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

Circular reactions

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

Primary circular reactions

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

Object permanence

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

Baby-proofing

Making the home safe for a newly mobile infant.

Plastic

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

Rooting reflex

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

Sensorimotor stage

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

Face-perception studies

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

Joint attention

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

Cerebral cortex

The outer folded mantle of the brain, responsible for thinking, reasoning, perceiving, and all conscious responses.

REM sleep

The phase of sleep involving rapid eye movement, when the EEG looks almost like it does during waking. REM sleep decreases as infants mature.

Habituation

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

Grammar

The rules and word arranging system that every human language employs to communicate meaning.

Infant-directed speech (IDS)

The simplified, exaggerated, high-pitch tones that adults and children use to speak to infants that function to help teach language.

Co-sleeping

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

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)

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

Little-scientist phase

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

Swaddling

Wrapping a baby tightly in a blanket or garment. This technique is calning during early infancy.