Ch. 4 Physical Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood Flashcards
Brain Plasticity
A highly plastic cerebral cortex, in which many areas are not yet committed to specific functions, has a high capacity for learning. And if a part of the cortex is damaged, other parts can take over tasks it would have handled.
Cephalocaudal Trend
“Head to Tail” - During the prenatal period, the head develops more rapidly than the lower part of the body.
Cerebral Cortex
Surrounds the rest of the brain, resembling half of a shelled walnut. It is the largest brain structure, accounting for 85% of the brain’s weight and containing the greatest number of neurons and synapses.
Prefrontal Cortex
In the front areas controlling body movement, is responsible for complex thought - consciousness and various “executive processes” including inhibition of impulses, integration of information, and memory, reasoning, planning, and problem-solving strategies.
Classical Conditioning
A form of learning: A neutral stimulus is paired with a stimulus that leads to a reflexive response. Once a baby’s nervous system makes the connection between the two stimuli, the neutral stimulus produces the behavior itself. It helps infants recognize events that usually occur together and anticipate what will happen next.
Conditioned Stimulus
When a neutral stimulus by itself produces a response similar to the reflexive response.
Conditioned Response
The response a reflexive response elicits. Ex: Stroking the baby’s forehead outside the feeding situation (CS) results in sucking (CR).
Contrast Sensitivity
Explains early pattern preferences. Contrast refers to the difference in the amount of light between adjacent regions in a pattern. If babies are sensitive to (can detect) the contrast between two or more patterns, they prefer the one with more contrast.
Differentiation Theory
Infants actively search for invariant features of the environment – those that remain stable – in a constantly changing perceptual world. (Young babies search for features that stand out and orient toward faces).
Dynamic Systems Theory of Motor Development
Mastery of motor skills involves acquiring increasingly complex systems of action. When the motor system, separate abilities blend together, each cooperating with others to produce more effective ways of exploring and controlling the environment.
Experience-Dependent Brain Growth
Occurs throughout our lives. It consists of additional growth and refinement of established brain structures as a result of specific learning experiences that vary widely across individuals and cultures.
Experience-Expectant Brain Growth
Refers to the young brain’s rapidly developing organization, which depends on ordinary experiences - opportunities to explore the environment, interact with people, and hear the language and other sounds.
Glial Cells
Compose half of the brain’s volume and multiply rapidly from the end of pregnancy through the second year of life - a process that continues at a slower pace through middle childhood and accelerates again in adolescence.
Habituation
Refers to a gradual reduction in the strength of response due to repetitive stimulation.
Imitation
Copying the behavior of another person. In infancy, this extends to certain gestures like head and index finger movements.
Intermodal Perception
We make sense of these running streams of light, sound, tactile, odor, and taste information, perceiving them as integrated wholes. Infants may expect sight, sound, and touch to go together.
Kwashiorkor
A disease caused by an unbalanced diet very low in protein.
Lateralization
The specialization of the two hemispheres. The left is better at processing info in a sequential analytic (piece-by-piece) way which is good for dealing with communicative info (language and emotion). The right is specialized for processing info in a holistic and integrative manner, ideal with spatial info and regulating negative emotion.
Marasmus
A wasted condition of the body is caused by a diet low in all essential nutrients. It usually appears in the first year of life when the mother is too malnourished to produce enough breast milk.
Mirror Neurons
Specialized cells in motor areas of the cerebral cortex in primates that may underlie early imitative capacities. Mirror neurons fire when a primate hears or sees action and when it carries out the action on its own.
Myelination
The coating of neural fibers with an insulating fatty sheath improves the efficiency of message transfer.
Neurons
Nerve cells that store and transmit information
Neurotransmitters
Neurons send messages to one another by releasing chemicals that cross the synapse.
Operant Conditioning
Infants act, or operate, on the environment, and stimuli that follow their behavior change the probability that the behavior will occur again.
