Child development exam

Babbling

The stage of speech development where infants produce repetitive consonant-vowel combinations, typically starting around 6 months of age.

Infant-directed speech (IDS)

A style of speech often used by adults when talking to infants, characterized by a higher pitch, exaggerated intonation, and slower tempo.

Symbols

Units of meaning that represent objects, actions, or concepts, essential for communication and thought.

Bilingualism

The ability to use two languages proficiently.

Morphemes

The smallest units of meaning in a language, which can be words or parts of words (e.g., prefixes, suffixes).

Syntactic bootstrapping

A theory suggesting that children use the syntactic structure of sentences to infer the meanings of new words.

Categorical perception

The ability to perceive distinct categories of sounds, such as phonemes, despite variations in acoustic signals.

Narratives

Structured accounts of events or experiences that convey a story, important for language development.

Syntax

The rules that govern the structure of sentences, including word order and sentence formation.

Collective monologues

Instances where children engage in conversations where each speaker expresses their own thoughts without interaction or shared dialogue.

Overextension

A language error where a child applies a word too broadly, using it for objects or concepts beyond its actual meaning.

Telegraphic speech

Early form of speech where children use two or three-word phrases that convey meaning, omitting non-essential words (e.g., "want cookie" instead of "I want a cookie").

Comprehension

The ability to understand language and its meanings.

Overregularization

A language error where children apply regular grammatical rules to irregular cases (e.g., saying "goed" instead of "went").

Underextension

A language error where a child uses a word too narrowly, applying it to fewer instances than it should.

Connectionism

A theoretical framework suggesting that cognitive processes arise from interconnected networks of simple units.

Phonemes

The smallest units of sound in a language that can distinguish meaning.

Universal Grammar

A theory proposed by Noam Chomsky suggesting that the ability to acquire language is innate and that all human languages share a common underlying structure.

Cross-situational word learning

A process where learners use contextual information across multiple situations to infer the meanings of words.

Pragmatic cues

Contextual hints that help individuals understand the intended meaning of language in social situations.

Voice onset time (VOT)

The time between the release of a consonant and the onset of vocal cord vibrations, crucial in distinguishing phonemes.

Distributional properties

Statistical patterns in language input that help children learn the meanings of words based on their co-occurrence with other words.

Pragmatics

The study of how context influences the interpretation of communication.

Word segmentation

The ability to identify where words begin and end in spoken language.

Dual representation

The understanding that a symbolic artifact (like a map or model) can represent both itself and a real-world object or space.

Production

The ability to produce spoken or signed language.

Generative

Referring to the capacity of language to create an infinite number of sentences and meanings through a finite set of rules.

Prosody

The rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech that conveys meaning and emotion.

Active learning

A learning approach where individuals engage in activities that promote critical thinking and problem-solving rather than passive reception of information.

Perceptual narrowing

The process where infants become increasingly sensitive to the sounds and features of their native language while losing sensitivity to non-native sounds.

Affordances

The potential actions that an object or environment offers to an individual.

Positive reinforcement

A technique used in behaviorism where a desirable stimulus is presented following a behavior, increasing the likelihood of that behavior occurring again.

Auditory localization

The ability to determine the location of a sound source in the environment.

Preferential-looking technique

A research method used to study infants' preferences for looking at certain stimuli over others.

Binocular disparity

The difference in images between the two eyes, which helps with depth perception.

Pre-reaching movements

Early arm movements made by infants in the direction of an object, not yet coordinated enough to grasp it.

Classical conditioning

A learning process where a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a meaningful stimulus, eliciting a conditioned response.

Rational learning

Learning based on the understanding of probabilistic relationships and outcomes.

Conditioned response (CR)

A learned response to a previously neutral stimulus that has become associated with a conditioned stimulus.

Reflexes

Involuntary responses to specific stimuli.

Conditioned stimulus (CS)

A previously neutral stimulus that, after association