Chapter 4 Flashcards
Cephalocaudal Trend
“Head to Tail” in Latin
During the prenatal period, the head develops more rapidly than the lower part of the body.
Proximodistal Trend
Growth proceeds, literally, from “near to far” - from the center of the body.
Neurons
Nerve cells that store and transmit information.
Synapses
Area between neurons, where fibers from different neurons come close together by do no touch.
Neurotransmitters
Chemicals released by neurons that cross the synapse to send a message to another neuron.
Programmed Cell Death
Makes space for these connective structures: As synapses form, many surrounding neurons die, 40-60%, depending on the brain region.
Synaptic Pruning
Neurons that are seldom stimulated lose their synapses through this process. Neurons not needed at the moment to an uncommitted state so they can support future development.
Glial Cells
Half of the brains volume, responsible for myelination.
Mylelination
The coating of neural fibers with an insulating fatty sheath (myelin) that improves the efficiency of message transfer.
Measurements of Brain Functioning
- Electroencephalogram (EEG)
- Event-Related Potentials (ERPs)
- Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)
- Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
- Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS)
Cerebral Cortex
Surrounds the rest of the brain, resembling half of a shelled walnut. It is the largest brain structure, accounting for 85 percent of the brain’s weight and containing the greatest number of neurons and synapses.
Prefrontal Cortex
Lying in the front areas controlling body movement, is responsible for complex thought - in particular, consciousness and various “executive” processes, including inhibition of impulses, integration or information, and memory, reasoning, planning, and problem solving strategies.
Lateralization
Specialization of the two hemispheres of the brain.
Brain Plasticity
A highly plastic cerebral cortex, in which many areas are not yet committed to specific functions, has a highly capacity for learning. And if a part of the cortex is damaged, other parts can take over tasks it would have handled.
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 language and other sounds.
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 very widely across individuals and cultures.
Benefits of Breastfeeding
- Provides the correct balance of fat and protein
- Ensures nutritional completeness
- Helps ensure healthy physical growth
- Protects against many diseases
- Protects against faulty jaw development and tooth decay
- Ensures digestibility
- Smooths the transition to solid foods
Maramus
A wasted condition of the body caused by a diet low in all essential nutrients. It usually appears in the first year of life when a baby’s mother is too malnourished to produce enough breastmilk and bottle-feeding is also inadequate.
Kwashiorkor
Caused by an unbalanced diet very low in protein. The disease usually strikes after weaning, between 1 & 3 years of age.
Classical Conditioning
Possible in the young infant. In this form of learning, a neutral stimulus is paired with a stimulus that leads to a reflexive response. Once the baby’s nervous system makes the connection between the two stimuli, the neutral stimulus produces the behavior by itself.
Conditioned Stimulus (CS)
Neutral stimulus producing a reflexive response.
Conditioned Response (CR)
The response the CS elicits
Operant Conditioning
Infants act, or operate, on the environment, and stimuli that follow their behavior change the probability that the behavior will occur again. A stimulus that increases the occurrence of a response is called a reinforcer.
Punishment
Removing a desirable stimulus or presenting an unpleasant one to decrease the occurrence of a response.
Habituation
Refers to a gradual reduction in the strength of a response due to repetitive stimulation.
Recovery
A new stimulus - a change in the environment - causes responsiveness to return to a high level, an increase.
Imitation
Copying the behavior of another person.
Mirror Neurons
Specialized cells in motor areas of the cerebral cortex in primates that may underlie early imitative capacities. Mirror neurons fire identically when a primate hears of sees an action and when it carries out that action on its own.
Dynamic Systems Theory of Motor Development
Mastery of motor skills involves acquiring increasingly complex systems of action. When motor skills work as a system, separate abilities blend together, each cooperating with others to produce more effective ways of exploring and controlling the environment.
Statistical Learning Capacity
By analyzing the speech stream for patterns - repeatedly occurring sequences of sounds - they acquire a stock of speech structures for which they will later learn meaning, long before they start to talk around age 12 months.
Perceptual Narrowing Effect
Perceptual sensitivity that becomes increasingly attuned with age to information most often encountered.
Constrast Sensitivity
A general principal that 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 in two or more patterns, they prefer the one with more contrast.
Intermodal Perception
Makes sense of these running streams of light, sound, tactile, odor, and taste information, perceiving them as integrated wholes.
Differentiation Theory
Infants actively search for invariant features of the environment - those that remain stable - in a constantly changing perceptual world.
