Infants & Toddlers: Physical, Cognitive, & Social Development

Vocabulary flashcards covering key concepts in infants' and toddlers' physical, cognitive, and social development, based on lecture notes from Chapter 3.

Sucking Reflex

One of two reflexes babies are born with, an automatic activity not under conscious control.

Rooting Reflex

If anything touches a baby's cheek, they turn their head in that direction and suck; an automatic activity.

Reflexes

Automatic activities that do not depend on the cortex and are not under conscious control.

Operant Conditioning

A process by which a baby's sucking behavior becomes governed by reward as the cortex matures.

Breastfeeding Benefits

Linked to resistance to illness, memory skills, and lower disruptive behaviors for infants; recommended for at least 6 months.

Undernutrition

A serious lack of adequate food, a risk in developing countries.

Stunting

Excessively short stature in a child caused by a lack of adequate nutrition, affecting about 140 million children worldwide.

Food Insecurity

Households reporting needing to serve unbalanced meals, worrying about not having enough food, or going hungry due to lack of money.

Crying (Infants)

A vital way for infants to communicate feelings, reaching a lifetime peak around 1 month, and cementing the infant-parent bond.

Colic

Frantic, continual crying in a baby during the first 3 months, often caused by an immature nervous system.

REM Sleep (Infants)

Infants immediately enter this state when they fall asleep and spend most of their sleep time here.

Self-Soothing

A child's ability, usually around 6 months, to put themselves back to sleep when they wake during the night.

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)

The unexplained death of an apparently healthy infant, often while sleeping, during the first year of life.

Back to Sleep campaign

A campaign that led to a 43% decrease in SIDS by recommending placing babies on their backs to sleep.

Face Perception (Babies)

Babies prefer faces over scrambled patterns and speaking faces over still faces.

Fear Bias (Infants)

Hypersensitivity in babies to facial expressions of fear.

Visual Narrowing

Less sensitivity in infants to facial differences in other ethnic groups within the first year of life, meaning they do not recognize those differences.

Motor Milestones

The progression of physical abilities during the first year of life, such as lifting the head, pivoting the upper body, sitting without support, and standing.

Mass-to-specific sequence

The principle that large, uncoordinated movements are honed and perfected as children grow, meaning control of shoulders precedes control of arms and fingers.

Piaget's Sensorimotor Stage

The cognitive stage from birth to 2 years where infants assimilate and accommodate to understand physical reality.

Assimilate (Cognition)

When infants fit the outer world to what they are capable of doing.

Accommodate (Cognition)

When infants gradually mentally advance by adapting their schemas to new information.

Circular Reactions

Habits or action-oriented schemas a child repeats again and again.

Primary Circular Reactions

Self-focused action schemas developing between 1-4 months, such as thumb in mouth or waving arms/legs.

Secondary Circular Reactions

Action-oriented schemas centered on the outside world, appearing around 4 months, such as grasping and kicking.

Tertiary Circular Reactions

Action schemas appearing around 12 months, where infants act like 'little scientists,' exploring the flexibility and properties of objects.

Object Permanence

Knowing that an object continues to exist even when it can no longer be seen.

A-not-B-error

Around 9-10 months, babies going back to an original hiding place for an object even after seeing it hidden in a second place.

Social Cognition

Any skill related to understanding feelings and negotiating interpersonal interactions, including making inferences about people's feelings based on their actions.

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

A hypothetical brain structure proposed by Chomsky that enables our species to learn and produce language.

Babbling

A stage in infant language development, typically starting around 6 months.

Holophrase stage

The first clear evidence of language, when babies use a single word to communicate a sentence or complete thought.

Telegraphic stage

The first stage of combining words, in which a toddler pares down a sentence to its essential words.

Infant Directed Speech (IDS)

The simplified, exaggerated, high-pitched tones adults and children use to speak to infants to help teach language.