Chapter 4

• Reflex Behavior: automatic, involuntary, innate responses to stimulation
• moro


  stimulation: baby is dropped or hears loud noise
• moro


  baby's behavior ; extend legs, arms, and fingers, arches back, draws back head
• darwinian


  stimulation ; palm of baby's hand is stroked
• darwinian 


  baby's behavior; makes strong fist, can be raised to standing position if both fist are closed around a stick
• tonic neck


  stimulation; baby is laid down on back
• tonic neck


  baby's behavior; turns head to one side, assumes fencer position, extends arm and leg on preferred side, flexes opposite limbs
• babkin


  both of baby's palm are stroked at once
• babkin


  baby's behavior ; mouth opens, eyes close, nevk flexes, head tillts forward
• babinski


  stimulation; sole of baby's foot is strocked
• babinski


  baby's behavior; toes fan out, foot twist in
• rooting


  stimulation; baby's cheeck or lower lip is stroked with finger or nipple
• rooting 


  baby's behavior; heat turns, mouth opens, sucking, movement begin
• Gross Motor Skills: Physical skills that involve the large muscles (e.g., rolling over, catching a ball)
• Fine Motor Skills: Physical skills that involve the small muscles and eye-hand coordination (e.g., grasping an object)
• visual guidance, the use of the eyes to guide the movement of the hands
• depth Perception: Ability to perceive objects and surfaces threedimensionally
• Haptic Perception: Ability to acquire information about properties of objects, such as size, weight, and texture, by handling them. o E.g., Putting objects in the mouth—a common means of exploration in infancy
• Behaviorist Approach: studies the basic mechanics of learning. Behaviorists are concerned with how behavior changes in response to experience (E.g., Classical/ Operant Conditioning)
• Classical Conditioning: Learning based on associating a stimulus that does not ordinarily elicit a response with another stimulus that does elicit the response.
• Operant Conditioning: Learning based on association of behavior with its consequences.
• Psychometric Approach: measures quantitative differences in abilities that make up intelligence by using tests that indicate or predict these abilities
• Piagetian Approach: looks at changes, or stages, in the quality of cognitive functioning. It is concerned with how the mind structures its activities and adapts to the environment
• The first of Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development is the sensorimotor stage. During this stage (birth to approximately age 2), infants learn about themselves and their world through their developing sensory and motor activity.
• Imitation: One-year-old Clara watches as her older sister brushes her hair. When her sister puts the brush down, Clara picks it up and tries to brush her own hair
• Object Permanence: the realization that something continues to exist when out of sight
• Information-Processing Approach: focuses on perception, learning, memory, and problem solving. It aims to discover how children process information from the time they encounter it until they use it
• Habituation: Type of learning in which familiarity with a stimulus reduces, slows, or stops a response.
• Dishabituation: Increase in responsiveness after presentation of a new stimulus
• Visual Preference: Tendency of infants to spend more time looking at one sight than another
• dishabituation


  E.g., A baby who has been sucking typically stops or sucks less vigorously when a stimulus is first presented in order to pay attention to the stimulus.
• visual preference


  E.g., If babies given a choice between looking at a curved or straight line spend more time focused on the curved line, the implication is that babies like curved lines more than straight lines
• visual Recognition Memory: Ability to distinguish a familiar visual stimulus from an unfamiliar one when shown both at the same time; part of the brain that helps us remember what we have seen before
• Visual Recognition Memory


  E.g., The baby saw a picture of the cat, she will be able to remember that it is a cat because she have seen cats before.
• Cognitive Neuroscience Approach: seeks to identify what brain structures are involved in specific aspects of cognition
• Social-contextual Approach: examines the effects of environmental aspects of the learning process, particularly the role of parents and other caregivers.
• Guided Participation: Adult’s participation in a child’s activity that helps to structure it and bring the child’s understanding of it closer to the adults.
• Guided Participation


  E.g., Everyday activities in which children informally learn the skills, knowledge, and values important in their culture, much as an apprentice would
• Language is a communication system based on words and grammar. Once children know words, they can use them to represent objects and actions. They can reflect on people, places, and things; and they can communicate their needs, feelings, and ideas in order to exert more control over their lives
• Prelinguistic Speech. Forerunner of linguistic speech; utterance of sounds that are not words. Includes crying, cooing, babbling, and accidental and deliberate imitation of sounds without understanding their meaning