Infant Physical, Cognitive, and Socioemotional Development

Vocabulary flashcards covering physical, cognitive, and socioemotional development in infancy based on Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 lecture slides.

Full-Term Infant

An infant born after remaining in the womb for a full $39$ to $40$ weeks and $6$ days between conception and delivery.

Preterm Infant

A baby born prior to $37$ weeks of gestation, considered to be a high-risk infant.

Low-Birthweight Infant

A baby born weighing $5\,\text{lb}\,8\,\text{oz}$ or less, considered to be a high-risk infant.

Kilogram Kids

Very premature babies who weigh less than $1000\,\text{g}$ ($2.3\,\text{lbs}$) at birth.

Cephalocaudal Trend

A pattern of physical growth that proceeds from head to feet, governing length gain.

Proximodistal Trend

A pattern of physical growth that proceeds from the center of the body outward.

Neuron

A nerve cell that receives and sends information within the central nervous system.

Synapse

A communication junction or space between nerve cells where neurons communicate.

Neurotransmitter

A chemical messenger released by a neuron that crosses synapses to transfer signals.

Myelination

The process of encasing nerve fibers with a fatty sheath, which helps neural signals travel faster along axons.

Four Lobes of the Brain

The four main anatomical divisions of the cerebral cortex: frontal, occipital, temporal, and parietal lobes.

Experience-Expectant Brain Growth

Rapid development of the young brain's organization that depends on ordinary, expected experiences such as interacting with people, exploring the environment, and hearing sounds.

Experience-Dependent Brain Growth

Brain growth and refinement of established neural structures that occurs throughout life as a result of specific, individual learning experiences.

Melatonin

A brain-secreted hormone that promotes drowsiness, which infants begin secreting at about $6$ months of age.

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)

A condition occurring when an infant stops breathing and dies without an apparent cause, reaching peak risk between $2$ and $4$ months of age.

Dynamic Systems Theory

The perspective on motor development stating that infants assemble motor behaviors for perceiving and acting, combining existing skills into complex systems.

Gross Motor Skills

Physical abilities involving large muscle activities that assist in moving through the environment, such as crawling, standing, and walking.

Fine Motor Skills

Finely tuned movements involving smaller muscle groups and finger dexterity, such as reaching, grasping, and writing.

Ulnar Grasp

An early, clumsy infant grasping technique using the whole hand like a mitten to pick up an object.

Pincer Grasp

A refined infant grasping technique using the forefinger and thumb to pick up small objects.

Rooting Reflex

An automatic newborn reflex where stroking the cheek or side of the mouth causes the infant to turn their head toward the stimulus to find something to suck.

Moro Reflex

A neonatal startle response to sudden noise or movement in which the infant flings out arms and legs, arches the back, and pulls the limbs back inward.

Sensation

The product of interaction between sensory receptors (eyes, ears, tongue, nostrils, skin) and environmental information.

Perception

The brain's interpretation of what is sensed by sensory receptors.

Visual Preference Method

A research technique developed by Robert Fantz that measures the length of time infants attend to different visual stimuli.

Habituation

Decreased responsiveness to a stimulus after repeated presentations.

Dishabituation

The recovery of a habituated response following a change in stimulation.

Visual Acuity in Infancy

Newborn vision is estimated at $20/600$, improving gradually to an average of $20/40$ by $6$ months of age.

Intermodal Perception

The ability to relate and integrate information coming from two or more sensory modalities, such as vision and hearing.

Schemes

In Piaget's theory, actions or mental representations that organize knowledge.

Assimilation

Piagetian concept of using existing schemes to process and incorporate new information or experiences.

Accommodation

Piagetian concept of adjusting existing schemes to fit new information and experiences.

Equilibration

A mechanism in Piaget's theory through which children shift from one stage of cognitive thought to the next by resolving disequilibrium.

Sensorimotor Stage

Piaget's first stage of cognitive development lasting from birth to about $2$ years, where infants construct understanding by coordinating sensory experiences with motor actions.

Object Permanence

The understanding that objects and events continue to exist even when they cannot directly be seen, heard, or touched.

A-not-B Error

The mistake made by infants when selecting a familiar hiding place (A) instead of a new hiding place (B) during an object permanence test.

Core Knowledge Approach

A theory proposing that infants are born with domain-specific innate knowledge systems.

Joint Attention

A state where two or more individuals focus on the same object or event, requiring gaze tracking, directing attention, and reciprocal interaction.

Deferred Imitation

Imitation of an observed behavior that occurs after a time delay of hours or days.

Implicit Memory

Memory without conscious recollection, involving skills and routine procedures that are performed automatically.

Explicit Memory

Conscious remembering of facts, concepts, and specific personal experiences.

Infantile Amnesia

The inability of adults to recall memories from their first $3$ years of life.

Infinite Generativity

The ability to produce an endless number of meaningful sentences using a finite set of words and rules.

Telegraphic Speech

The use of short, precise word combinations without grammatical markers like articles or auxiliary verbs.

Broca's Area

A region in the brain's left frontal lobe involved in producing spoken language.

Wernicke's Area

A region in the brain's left hemisphere involved in language comprehension.

Aphasia

A loss or impairment of language processing resulting from brain damage to regions like Broca's or Wernicke's areas.

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

Noam Chomsky's proposed theoretical biological endowment that enables children to detect features and rules of language.

Child-Directed Speech

Language spoken in a higher pitch and slower tempo with simple words and structures when adults converse with infants.

Recasting

A language teaching strategy of rephrasing a child's incomplete or grammatically incorrect statement into a full grammatical sentence.

Expanding

Adding missing information and elaboration to a child's incomplete language utterance.

Labeling

The practice of identifying and naming objects that an infant is showing interest in.

Interactionist View of Language

Perspective emphasizing that both biological preparedness and environmental experience contribute to language development.

Reflexive Smile

A smile that occurs without external stimulation, often appearing during sleep within the first month after birth.

Social Smile

A smile in response to an external stimulus, such as seeing a caregiver's face, occurring as early as $2$ months of age.

Stranger Anxiety

An infant's expression of fear and wariness when confronted by unfamiliar people.

Separation Protest

Distressed crying expressed by an infant when their primary caregiver departs.

Social Referencing

"Reading" emotional expressions and cues in others to determine how to act in an unfamiliar or ambiguous situation.

Temperament

Individual differences in behavioral styles, emotional reactivity, and characteristic ways of responding.

Easy Child

A temperament category describing a child who is generally in a positive mood, quickly establishes routines, and adapts easily to new experiences ($40\%$ of children).

Difficult Child

A temperament category describing a child who reacts negatively, cries frequently, has irregular routines, and adapts slowly to change ($10\%$ of children).

Slow-to-Warm-Up Child

A temperament category describing a child with a low activity level, somewhat negative mood, and low intensity of emotional expressions ($15\%$ of children).

Behavioral Inhibition

Kagan's temperament concept focusing on differences between timid, subdued children (inhibited to the unfamiliar) and bold, extraverted children.

Effortful Control

A temperament dimension described by Rothbart and Bates involving the ability to voluntarily manage attention and self-regulate behavior.

Goodness of Fit

The compatibility between a child's temperament and the environmental demands and caregiver expectations.

Harlow's Contact Comfort Study

Harry Harlow's experiment demonstrating that infant monkeys preferred spending time with a soft cloth surrogate mother over a wire surrogate mother that provided food.

Strange Situation

Mary Ainsworth's observational procedure measuring infant attachment through a series of introductions, separations, and reunions with a caregiver and stranger.

Secure Attachment

An attachment pattern where infants use the caregiver as a secure base to explore, show mild distress upon separation, and seek comfort upon reunion.

Insecure Avoidant Attachment

An attachment pattern where infants show minimal distress during separation and actively ignore or avoid the caregiver upon reunion.

Insecure Resistant Attachment

An attachment pattern where infants display intense distress during separation and exhibit mixed reactions of clinging and pushing away/resisting upon reunion.

Disorganized Attachment

An attachment pattern identified by Main and Solomon where infants appear dazed, confused, fearful, or show contradictory behaviors toward caregivers.

Developmental Cascade Model

A framework stating that connections across multiple domains over time influence developmental pathways and long-term outcomes.

Scaffolding

A process in social interaction where caregivers structure and adjust support to fit the infant's capabilities, fostering early social skills like turn-taking.

Primary Child Care Arrangements in the U.S.

For children under $5$ with employed mothers in the U.S., care includes center-based care ($28\%$), parent care ($27\%$), relative care ($27\%$), family child care ($14\%$), and nanny care ($4\%$).