Sensory-Motor Development and Early Cognition

Flashcards covering the comprehensive lecture series on developmental psychology, including sensorimotor development, perception, cognition, language, socialisation, and attachment.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative Change

The debate in developmental psychology over whether children's thought is genuinely different in kind from adults (qualitative) or merely reflects a difference in the amount of knowledge and experience (quantitative).

Philippe Aries (1960)

Published the 'discovery of childhood,' arguing that childhood is a modern invention established between the 15th and 19th centuries; previously, children were portrayed as 'mini adults.'

Schemes

Organised patterns of behaviour or thought that emerge from the child's interaction with the environment.

Assimilation

The process of fitting new experiences into existing cognitive structures or schemes.

Accommodation

The modification of existing cognitive structures in response to specific environmental demands.

Vygotsky's Theory

A cultural focus on cognitive development that emphasises the role of social interaction and the mediation of cultural knowledge by adults.

Sensory-Motor Period

Piaget's first stage of cognitive development (0–2 years), characterised by learning through sensory impressions and motor activity.

Object Permanence

The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they can no longer be perceived; Piaget argued this is fully attained around 18 months.

A-not-B Error

A phenomenon in which 9-month-old infants search for a hidden object at its original location (A) even after seeing it moved to a new location (B).

Primary Circular Reactions

Repetitive behaviours centred on the infant's own body (e.g., thumb sucking) occurring between 1 and 4 months.

Secondary Circular Reactions

Repetitive behaviours directed toward external objects (e.g., dropping a toy) to recreate interesting events in the environment.

Tertiary Circular Reactions

A stage (12–18 months) where infants become 'active experimenters,' varying actions by trial and error to see different results.

Interiorisation of Schemes

The final sensory-motor substage (18–24 months) marking the beginning of mental representation and conceptual thought.

Violation-of-Expectation (VOE)

A research paradigm based on the fact that infants look longer at events that violate their expectations; used to test early object permanence.

Inhibitory Control

The executive function required to stop a previously reinforced response, such as reaching for Location A in the A-not-B task.

Constructivism

Piaget's position that knowledge is actively built through the child's own actions on the world, rather than being innate or purely learned.

Embodied Cognition

The idea that thought is fundamentally grounded in and derived from bodily action rather than existing as an abstract system.

Sound Localisation

The ability to turn toward a sound source, which follows a U-shaped developmental curve: present at birth, dipping, then recovering around 4 months.

Categorical Perception

The ability of infants to distinguish subtle phonemic contrasts, such as [b] from [p], from a very early age.

Motherese

The high-pitched, slow, and exaggeratedly intonated speech style adults use with infants, which infants prefer over adult-directed speech.

Visual Acuity

The ability to resolve fine spatial detail; a newborn's acuity is approximately $20/600$ and reaches near-adult levels by 6 months.

Externality Effect

The tendency of one-month-old infants to fixate narrowly on the outer contours or boundaries of a shape rather than its internal details.

Size Constancy

The perceptual achievement of recognizing an object as the same size despite changes in its retinal image due to distance; observed in infants as young as one week.

CONSPEC

A proposed subcortical mechanism that biases newborns to attend to face-like configurations from birth.

CONLERN

A slower-developing cortical mechanism that allows infants to learn the specific details of familiar individual faces.

Biological Motion

Highly identifiable rhythmic patterns of movement produced by humans/animals; neonates show a preference for this over mechanical motion.

Visual Cliff

A classic paradigm by Eleanor Gibson (1960) used to study depth perception; even two-month-olds show physiological responses to the 'deep' side.

Stereopsis

Stereoscopic fusion of images from both eyes to perceive depth, which appears suddenly in infants at around 4 months of age.

Cross-Modal Perception

The ability to relate information from one sensory modality (e.g., sight) to another (e.g., touch or sound).

Neonatal Imitation

The contested finding that infants only hours old can imitate specific facial gestures, such as tongue protrusion or mouth opening.

Natural Pedagogy

The theory by Csibra and Gergely that infants are innately sensitive to communicative cues, such as eye contact, intended for teaching.

Core Knowledge Theory

The nativist view by Elizabeth Spelke that infants are born with foundational principles regarding objects, number, space, and agents.

Sensitive Period

A maturational window during which specific experiences have their peak effect on development, such as language acquisition.

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

Chomsky's proposed innate, domain-specific mechanism that provides built-in constraints for guiding language induction.

The Wug Test

A test developed by Berko-Gleason (1958) demonstrating that children apply grammatical rules (e.g., plurals) to novel, meaningless words.

Mean Length of Utterance (MLU)

A measure of grammatical development calculated by counting the average number of morphemes per utterance.

Centration

The tendency of preoperational children to focus on only one salient aspect of a situation while ignoring others.

Egocentrism

The perceptual or cognitive limitation where a child fails to distinguish their own perspective from that of others.

Collective Monologue

A form of communication between young children where they appear to talk to each other but actually continue independent trains of thought.

Conservation

The logical understanding that a quantity remains the same despite changes in its physical appearance (e.g., liquid volume in different containers).

Horizontal Décalage

The observation that children master different types of conservation (e.g., number, mass, volume) at different ages despite their identical logical structure.

One-to-One Counting Principle

The principle that exactly one number word must be assigned to each individual object being counted.

Cardinal Principle

The understanding that the final number word reached in a count represents the total numerosity of the set.

Approximate Number System (ANS)

A non-verbal system for estimating large quantities that is sensitive to ratios rather than absolute differences.

Property Inheritance

The cognitive efficiency gained when features of a category are assumed to apply to any newly encountered member of that category.

Basic-Level Category

The level of taxonomy (e.g., 'dog') that balances internal similarity and external distinctiveness; traditionally thought to be acquired first.

Global Categories

Broad, high-level groupings (e.g., 'animal' vs. 'vehicle') that infants as young as 18 months can distinguish.

Induction Paradigm

A study design used by Gelman and Markman to show that children generalise properties based on category membership rather than surface appearance.

Ecological Systems Theory

Bronfenbrenner's model of nested influences on development: micro, meso, exo, macro, and chronosystems.

Id, Ego, and Superego

Freud's three components of personality, representing instinctual needs, social appropriateness, and internalised moral conscience.

Ethology

The scientific study of animal and human behaviour under natural conditions, emphasizing innate programs like imprinting.

Parental Investment

Any cost to a parent that increases an offspring's chance of survival while limiting the parent's ability to invest in other offspring.

Heritability ($h^2$)

The proportion of phenotypic variation in a trait within a population that is attributable to genetic factors.

Falconer's Rule

The formula used in twin studies to estimate heritability: $h^2 = (r_{MZ} - r_{DZ}) \times 2$.

Internal Working Models

Bowlby's concept of mental representations of relationships formed in childhood that shape social interactions throughout life.

Adult Attachment Interview (AAI)

A clinical tool used to classify adults' internal working models into categories: Autonomous, Dismissing, or Preoccupied.

Authoritative Parenting

A style combining high warmth with high but reasoned control; associated with the most positive child outcomes.

Coercive Cycle

Patterson's model of a self-reinforcing loop where harsh parenting and disruptive child behaviour escalate each other over time.

Theory of Mind (ToM)

The intuitive framework for understanding others' actions as being caused by unorable mental states like beliefs and desires.

False-Belief Task

A classic test (e.g., Sally-Anne) used to determine if a child understands that others can act based on beliefs that are factually incorrect.