8.03 Infancy and childhood Flashcards
inborn, naturally occurring, does not have to be taught
innate
an innate, involuntary behavior pattern that helps an infant to survive
reflex
five reflexes in infants
- grasping
- startle
- rooting
- stepping
- sucking
between birth and age three, the human brain __ in weight
triples
most early brain growth is due to the formation of new __
synapses
the loss of unused synapses, which are cleared to make way for functioning connections and cells
synaptic pruning
infants can __ the difference between their own mothers’ milk and that belonging to other women
smell
tastes preferred by infants
sweet and salty
this sense in great in newborns, except that their auditory canals often have fluid
auditory
least functional sense at birth
vision
cells that are not well developed in a newborn’s retina
cones –> poor color perception and fuzzy vision
cells that are reasonably well developed in a newborn’s retina
rods
most preferred visual stimulus for an infant
human face
experiment that proves infants possess depth perception
visual cliff
typical sequence of motor milestones
- raise head (2-4 months)
- roll over (2-5)
- sit up with support (4-6)
- sit up without support (6-7)
- crawl (7-8)
- walk (8-18)
Piaget’s term for a mental concept or framework
schema
Piaget’s term for a child’s process of trying to understand new things in terms of the schemes they already possessed
assimilation
Piaget’s term for the learning of new information that forces a child to alter his/her preexisting shema
accommodation
Piaget’s stages of cognitive development
- sensorimotor (birth - 2 years)
- preoperational (2-7 years)
- concrete operational (7-12)
- formal operational (12-adulthood)
sensorimotor stage
coordination of senses with motor response, sensory curiosity and learning, language for demands and cataloguing, object permanence develops
preoperational stage
symbolic thinking, use of proper syntax and grammar, expression of full concepts, imagination and intuition are strong, complex abstract thought is difficult, conservation develops, animism, egocentrism
concrete operational stage
conservation fully develops, reversible thinking is possible, rational thinking takes over, still difficult to handle abstract concepts
formal operational stage
theoretical, hypothetical, abstract, strategic thinking
an understanding that an object exists, even when it is not in sight
object permanence
the belief that anything that moves is alive, and even has human-like qualities
animism