04 Development in Infancy

A complete set of vocabulary flashcards covering neonatal development, physical growth patterns, motor milestones, and cognitive as well as psychosocial theories for infancy and toddlerhood.

Neonatal Period

A time of transition from intrauterine to extrauterine life, where boys tend to be longer and heavier than girls.

Fontanels

Areas on the baby’s head where bones do not meet to allow easy passage during birth, which gradually close in the first $18$ months.

Lanugo

The fuzzy prenatal hair often found on newborns.

Vernix Caseosa

A cheesy varnish that protects the baby against infection.

Witch’s Milk

A secretion that leaks from a newborn’s breasts, believed in some contexts to have magical properties.

Anoxia

A total lack of oxygen for the infant.

Hypoxia

A reduced oxygen supply to the infant.

Neonatal Jaundice

Infant jaundice caused by the immaturity of the liver.

Apgar Scale

The first physical assessment administered a minute after delivery and $5$ minutes after birth to assess the newborn's condition.

Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale

The first neurological and behavioral test used to measure a neonate’s responses to the environment, applicable to infants up to $2$ months old.

States of Arousal

An infant's physiological and behavioral status at a given moment in the daily cycle of wakefulness, sleep, and activity.

Cephalocaudal Principle

A principle of growth that occurs from top to bottom, or head to tail.

Proximodistal Principle

A principle of growth that occurs from the inside out, moving from gross motor control to fine motor control.

Lateralization

The specialization of the brain hemispheres, joined by the tough tissue known as the Corpus Callosum.

Reflex

An automatic, innate response to stimulation; infants have an estimate of $27$ major reflexes.

Binocular Vision

The ability to use both eyes to focus, which does not develop until $4$-$5$ months.

Systems of Action

Increasingly complex combinations of motor skills that permit a wider or more precise range of movement.

Denver Developmental Screening Test

A screening test given to children $1$ month to $6$ years old to determine if they are developing normally in gross and fine motor skills.

Pincer Grasp

A coordinated hand movement using the thumb and index finger to pick up tiny objects, typically appearing at $7$-$11$ months.

Social Referencing

The process where babies learn to look to caregivers for clues as to whether a situation is secure or frightening.

Visual Guidance

The use of the eyes to guide hand movement.

Depth Perception

The ability to perceive objects and surfaces in three dimensions.

Haptic Perception

The ability to acquire information by handling objects rather than just looking at them, becoming effective around $5$-$7$ months.

Ecological Theory of Perception

Eleanor and James Gibson's theory describing motor and perceptual abilities as interdependent parts of a functional system.

Dynamic Systems Theory

Proposed by Ester Thelen, it views motor development as a dynamic process of active coordination of multiple systems within the infant.

Intelligent Behavior

Behavior that is goal-oriented and adaptive to the circumstances and conditions of life.

Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development

A psychometric assessment for infants ages $1$ month to $3 \frac{1}{2}$ years.

HOME (Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment)

A yes-or-no checklist designed to assess the child’s home environment and its relation to cognitive competence.

Sensorimotor Stage

Piaget's first stage of cognitive development where infants learn through sensory and motor activity.

Circular Reactions

Piagetian term for processes where infants repeat pleasurable actions discovered by chance.

Deferred Imitation

The reproduction of an observed behavior after the passage of time.

Object Permanence

The realization that an object or person continues to exist when out of sight, which Piaget argued develops by $18$-$24$ months.

Pictorial Competence

The ability to understand the nature of pictures, such as understanding a picture is both an object and a symbol by age $2$.

Scale Error

A momentary misperception of the relative sizes of objects.

Dual Representation Hypothesis

The proposal that children under age $3$ have difficulty simultaneously mentally representing both the actual object and its symbolic nature.

Habituation

A type of learning in which repeated or continuous exposure to a stimulus reduces attention to that stimulus.

Dishabituation

An increase in responsiveness after the presentation of a new stimulus.

Cross-Modal Transfer

The ability to use information gained by one sense to guide another, such as using sight to guide touch.

Joint Attention

A development between $10$-$12$ months where babies follow an adult's gaze, which is a predictor of later vocabulary.

Implicit Memory

Unconscious recall of habits or skills, such as procedural knowledge.

Explicit Memory

Conscious recall of facts, names, activities, and events, also known as declarative memory.

Guided Participation

An adult’s participation in a child’s activity that helps to structure it and bring the child’s understanding closer to the adult’s.

Prelinguistic Speech

The forerunner of linguistic speech, consisting of sounds that are not words, including crying, cooing, and babbling.

Phonemes

The smallest units of sound in speech.

Holophrase

A single word used by an infant that conveys a complete thought based on context.

Telegraphic Speech

An early form of sentence use consisting of only a few essential words.

Syntax

The fundamental rules for putting sentences together in a language.

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

Noam Chomsky's term for an inborn biological capacity that predisposes humans to acquire language.

Universal Grammar

Chomsky's theory that all human languages share a deep structure rooted in a set of grammatical rules and categories.

Overregularization

A speech error where children inappropriately apply a syntactic rule to irregular words, such as saying 'goed' instead of 'went'.

Code Mixing

The use of elements from two different languages in a single utterance.

Code Switching

Changing one's speech to match specific situations or social contexts.

Social Smiling

The behavior when newborn infants gaze and smile at their parents, typically starting in the second month.

Anticipatory Smiling

When infants smile at an object and then gaze at an adult while continuing to smile, occurring around $12$-$15$ months.

Temperament

An early-appearing, biologically based tendency to respond to the environment in predictable ways.

Goodness of Fit

The match between a child’s temperament and the environmental demands and constraints the child must deal with.

Attachment

A reciprocal, enduring emotional tie between an infant and a caregiver.

Strange Situation

A laboratory technique developed by Mary Ainsworth to assess attachment patterns between an infant and an adult.

Self-Concept

Our image of ourselves, describing what we know and feel about ourselves and guiding our actions.

Socialization

The process by which children develop habits, skills, values, and motives that make them responsible members of society.

Nonorganic Failure to Thrive

Slowed or arrested physical growth with no known medical cause, accompanied by poor developmental and emotional functioning.