CH. 3 - Body and Mind Flashcards
Norm
An average, or standard, calculated from many individuals within a specific group or population.
Percentile
A point on a ranking scale of 0 to 100. The 50th percentile is the midpoint; half of the people in the population being studied rank higher and half rank lower.
REM (Rapid Eye Movement) Sleep
A stage of sleep characterized by flickering eyes behind closed lids, dreaming, and rapid brain waves.
Bed-Sharing
When two or more people sleep in the same bed.
Co-Sleeping
A custom in which parents and their children (usually infants) sleep together in the same room.
Head-sparing
A biological mechanism that protects the brain when malnutrition disrupts body growth. The brain is the last part of the body to be damaged by malnutrition.
Transient Exuberance
The great but temporary increase in the number of dendrites that develop in an infant’s brain during the first two years of life.
Cortex
The outer layers of the brain in humans and other mammals. Most thinking, feeling, and sensing involves the cortex.
Prefrontal Cortex
The area of the cortex at the very front of the brain that specializes in anticipation, planning, and impulse control.
Synapse
The intersection between the axon of one neuron and the dendrites of other neurons.
Neurotransmitter
A brain chemical that carries information from the axon of a sending neuron to the dendrites of a receiving neuron.
Limbic System
The parts of the brain that interact to produce emotions, including the amygdala, the hypothalamus, and the hippocampus. Many other parts of the brain are also involved with emotions.
Amygdala
A tiny brain structure that registers emotions, particularly fear and anxiety.
Hippocampus
A brain structure that is a central processor of memory, especially memory for locations
Cortisol
The primary stress hormone; fluctuations in the body’s cortisol level affect human emotions.
Hypothalamus
A brain area that responds to the amygdala and the hippocampus to produce hormones that activate other parts of the brain and body.
Experience-Expectant
Brain functions that require certain basic common experiences (which an infant can be expected to have) in order to develop normally.
Experience-Dependent
Brain functions that depend on particular, variable experiences and therefore may or may not develop in a particular infant.
Shaken-Baby Syndrome
A life-threatening injury that occurs when an infant is forcefully shaken back and forth, a motion that ruptures blood vessels in the brain and breaks neural connections.
Sensation
The response of a sensory organ (eyes, ears, skin, tongue, nose) when it detects a stimulus.
Perception
The mental processing of sensory information when the brain interprets a sensation.
Binocular Vision
The ability to focus the two eyes in a coordinated manner in order to see one image.
Motor Skill
The learned abilities to move some part of the body, in actions ranging from a large leap to a flicker of the eyelid. (The word motor here refers to movement of muscles.)
Gross Motor Skills
Physical abilities involving large body movements, such as walking and jumping. (The word gross here means “big.”)
Fine Motor Skills
Physical abilities involving small body movements, especially of the hands and fingers, such as drawing or picking up a coin. (The word fine here means “small.”)
Sensorimotor Intelligence
Piaget’s term for the way infants think—by using their senses and motor skills—during the first period of cognitive development.
Object Permanence
The realization that objects (including people) still exist when they can no longer be seen, touched, or heard.
Information-processing Theory
The idea that human cognition and comprehension occurs step by step, similar to the way that input, analysis, and output occur via computer.
Babbling
An infant’s repetition of certain syllables, such as ba-ba-ba , that begins when babies are between 6 and 9 months old.
Holophrase
A single word that is used to express a complete, meaningful thought.
Naming Explosion
A sudden increase in an infant’s vocabulary, especially in the number of nouns, that begins at about 18 months of age.
Grammar
All of the methods—word order, verb forms, and so on—that languages use to communicate meaning, apart from the words themselves.
mean length of utterance (MLU)
The average number of words in a typical sentence (called utterance because children may not talk in complete sentences). MLU is often used to measure language development.
language acquisition device (LAD)
Chomsky’s term for a hypothesized mental structure that enables humans to learn language, including the basic aspects of grammar, vocabulary, and intonation.
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)
A situation in which a seemingly healthy infant, usually between 2 and 6 months old, suddenly stops breathing and dies unexpectedly while asleep.
Immunization
A process that stimulates the body’s immune system by causing production of antibodies to defend against attack by a particular contagious disease. Creation of antibodies may be accomplished either naturally (by having the disease), by injection, by drops that are swallowed, or by a nasal spray.
Protein-calorie Malnutrition
A condition in which a person does not consume sufficient food of any kind. This deprivation can result in several illnesses, severe weight loss, and even death.
Stunting
The failure of children to grow to a normal height for their age due to severe and chronic malnutrition.
Wasting
The tendency of children to be severely underweight for their age and height as a result of malnutrition.
