Cognitive Development in Infancy

Flashcards covering vocabulary and key concepts from Professor Taylor Lentz's lecture on cognitive development in infancy and toddlerhood, based on Piaget's theories and information processing approaches.

Bayley Scales of Infant & Toddler Development

An instrument used to evaluate an infant’s development from 1 month to 3 ½ years, indicating competencies in cognitive, language, motor, socio-emotional, and adaptive behavior.

Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME)

An instrument to measure the influence of the home environment on children’s cognitive growth, measuring factors such as parental involvement, presence of books, and emotional responsiveness.

Early Intervention

A systemic process of planning and providing therapeutic and educational services for families that need help in meeting infants’, toddlers’, and preschool children’s developmental needs.

Schemes

Organized patterns of thought and behavior used in particular situations, which Piaget believed were the basic building blocks of understanding the world.

Assimilation

The process in which people understand an experience in terms of their current stage of cognitive development.

Accommodation

The process of changing an existing way of thinking in response to encounters with new stimuli.

Sensorimotor stage

The first stage of cognitive development defined by Jean Piaget (birth to 2 years old), where infants learn through their developing sensory and motor activity.

Circular reactions

The process by which an infant learns to reproduce desired occurrences originally discovered by chance.

Primary circular reaction

A circular reaction occurring between 1 to 4 months where the action and response both involve the infant's own body.

Secondary circular reaction

A circular reaction occurring between 4 to 8 months where an action gets a response from another person or object, leading the baby to repeat the action.

Tertiary circular reaction

A circular reaction occurring between 12 to 18 months where an action gets a pleasing result, leading the baby to perform similar actions to get similar results.

Object Permanence

The realization that people and objects exist even when they cannot be seen.

Information Processing Approach

A model that seeks to identify the way that individuals take in, use, and store information through encoding, storage, and retrieval.

Encoding

The process by which information is initially recorded in a form usable to memory.

Storage

The placement of material in memory.

Retrieval

The process by which material in memory storage is located, brought into awareness, and used.

Habituation

A type of learning in which familiarity with a stimulus reduces, slows, or stops a response.

Dishabituation

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

Visual preference

The tendency of infants to spend more time looking at one sight than another.

Automatization

The degree to which an activity requires attention; lower attention requirements indicate a higher degree of automatization.

Infantile Amnesia

The lack of memory for experiences that occurred before 3 years of age.

Explicit Memory

Memory that is conscious and can be recalled intentionally.

Implicit Memory

Also known as Procedural memory, it consists of memories of which we are not consciously aware but that affect performance and behavior.

Working Memory

Short-term storage of information that is being actively processed.

Prelinguistic communications

The use of sounds that are not words, including early vocalizations like crying, cooing, and babbling.

Holophrase

A single word that conveys a complete thought, such as 'Da!'.

Telegraphic speech

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

Syntax

The rules for forming sentences in a particular language, typically occurring between 20 to 30 months.

Underextension

Using words too restrictively, which is common among children just mastering spoken language.

Overextension

The tendency for children to use words too broadly, overgeneralizing their meaning.

Code mixing

A phenomenon where bilingual children use elements of both languages.

Code switching

Changing one’s speech to match the situation.

Child-directed speech

A form of speech often used with babies characterized by short simple sentences, high-pitched voice, amused sounds, and repetition.

Literacy

The ability to read and write.