Module 11: Infancy and Childhood Flashcards
Maturation
Biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience.
Critical Period
An optimal period early in the life of an organism when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces normal development.
Cognition
All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating.
Schema
A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.
Assimilation
Interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas.
Accommodation
Adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information.
Sensorimotor Stage
In Piaget’s theory, the stage (from birth to nearly 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities.
Object Permanence
The awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived.
Preoperational Stage
In Piaget’s theory, the stage (from about 2 to 6-7 years old) during which a child learns to use language, but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic.
Conservation
The principle (which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects.
Egocentrism
In Piaget’s theory, the preoperational child’s difficulty taking another’s point of view.
Theory of Mind
People’s ideas about their own and others’ mental states - about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict.
Concrete Operational Stage
In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 7 to 11 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events.
Formal Operational Stage
In Piaget’s theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts.
Scaffold
A framework that offers children temporary support as they develop higher levels of thinking.
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
A disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by significant deficiencies in communication and social interaction, and by rigidly fixated interests and repetitive behaviors.
Stranger Anxiety
The fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about 8 months of age.
Attachment
An emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to their caregiver and showing distress on separation.
Parenting Styles (authoritarian, permissive, negligent, authoritative)
Authoritarian: parents are coercive, they impose rules and expect obedience.
Permissive: parents are unrestraining, make few demands, set few limits and use little punishment.
Negligent: Parents are uninvolved, neither demanding or responsive.
Authoritative: parents are demanding and responsive, they set rules but also encourage open discussion and allow exceptions.
Imprinting
The process by which certain animals form strong attachments during early life.
Temperament
A person’s characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity.
Basic Trust
A sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers.
Jean Piaget
Identified significant cognitive development milestones. He focused on the sequence or specific milestones, and less on the child’s age.
Lev Vygotsky
Emphasized how the child’s mind grows through interaction with the social environment.
Mary Ainsworth
Designed an experiment to assess what accounts for children’s attachment differences. Found that sensitive, responsive mothers, had infants who exhibited secure attachment. Insensitive unresponsive mothers had infants that were often insecurely attached.
