Infancy Flashcards
Name the 5 key newborn reflexes
Moro (startle) Grasping Rooting Sucking Stepping
Define critical period
Limited time in development when a particular stimulus has a profound effect on the organism. The same stimulus has little effect before or after the critical period
What are the 3 different types of temperament?
Easy
Difficult
Slow to warm
Experimental techniques rely on infants innate abilities. Name 3 key focus areas
Reflexes
Habituation (decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated presentations)
Surprise (looking longer at unexpected than expected events)
Babies prefer their maternal language. True or false?
True
Preferential looking technique. Babies look at visual displays. What do they prefer?
Human faces
Babies distinguish male from female faces?
Yes
Babies expect objects to obey the laws of gravity. True or false?
True
Name the five senses with small info on infant babies
Vision (20/500 acuity at birth, 20cm fixed focus at birth, adult vision by 8 months)
Taste (prefer sweet)
Touch (skin to skin contact important)
Smell (in one month babies recognise mums smell)
Hearing (listening preferences at birth, sound localisation at birth)
Babies brains double in size in the first two years of life. True or false?
True
Konrad lorenz’s studies of imprinting on geese. Infant/parent bond not based on ?
Food
What was harlow & harlow’s research?
Infant rhesus monkeys raised in isolation. Isolates preferred comforting mum (cloth mum). Isolates without soft mum showed bizarre behaviour (aggressive, loners, socially incompetent)
Attachment theory. John bowlby. Baby loves its mother because she provides security.
True
What are the 3 attachment classifications?
A= anxious avoidant (infant tends to ignore mum) B= secure (baby uses mum as secure base) C= anxious ambivalent (infants cant cope in strange situation)
Critical period hypothesis is?
Bowlby: non-attachment in early years causes lifelong psychological malfunction
There is a critical period for attachment
Sounds: babies can hear all phonetic distinctions (how the word sounds)
Prefer high pitch
True
Young babies produce all phonetic distinctions through?
Babbling
What is whole object assumption?
Babies assume that names refer to whole objects
Joint attention refers to?
Infants/toddlers watch to see what people are attending to as they speak
Define overextension
Grouping lots of similar objects under the one label (moon is everything white and round)
Define underextension
Not recognising that one particular object is part of a group (dog is only at home (pet), doesn’t understand others in parks are dogs too)
What age do toddlers learn a lot of words?
18 months or after 50-75 words are acquired they will then start to learn an average of 9 words per day till age 6
Is there a critical period for language acquisition? If so when is it?
Yes must be acquired by age 7
Define syntax
The pattern of formation of sentences or phrases in a language
What is telegraphic speech?
Compressed simple speech (eg want teddy)
Define assimilation
Taking it into (eg someone from overseas moving to australia and acting more Australian)
Define accommodation
Changing in response to your environment
What are Piagets cognitive developmental stages (there are 4)
Sensorimotor (birth-2years)
Preoperational (2-7years)
Concrete operational (7-11years)
Formal operational (adolescence-adulthood)
Explain the keys concepts of the sensorimotor stage
Infant explores world through senses
Object performance develops
Child completely egocentric
Explain key concepts of the preoperational stage
Symbolic thought develops
Object permanence established
Cannot co ordinate different views of an object or perspectives
Explain key concepts of the concrete operational stage
Can Apply logic to concrete situations
Understanding of conservation develops
Reversible mental operations
Name key characteristics of the formal operational stage
Can apply logic more abstractly, hypothetical thinking develops
