CH 5 NOTES- Intro to Dev. Psych

prefrontal cortex

the part of the cortex that is located directly behind the forehead and is important to the development of voluntary movements

Fine motor skills

motor skills related to the development and coordination of small muscles, such as those that move the fingers and eyes

Gross motor skills

motor skills related to the development and coordination of large muscles; important for locomotion

Visual proprioception

the visual feedback that one gets from moving around, linked to the development of wariness of heights in infancy

Social referencing

infants’ tendency to look to their caregiver for an indication of how to feel and act in unfamiliar circumstances

Object permanence

the understanding that objects have substance, maintain their identity when their location is changed, and ordinarily continue to exist when out of sight

deferred imitation

the imitation of an action observed in the past

A-not-B error

a pattern of reacting in the object permanence task, in which the infant looks for the hidden object in location A, where the infant had previously found the object, instead of location B, where the infant has just observed it being hidden

Violation-of-expectations method

a test of mental representation in which the child is habituated to an event and then presented with possible and impossible variants of the event 

Stimulus-detection reflex

signals the baby’s initial awareness of some change in the environment; brief slowing and then quickening of the heart rate

Stimulus orienting

the baby’s attention becomes fixed on the stimulus; heart rate slows considerably

Sustained attention

baby cognitively processes and controls/focuses his or her attention on the stimulus; the heart rate remains slow

Attention termination

the baby is still looking at the object but is no longer processing its information; heart rate begins to return to prestimulus levels