cshd essay 2

habituation

simple form of learning that involves a decrease in response to repeated or continued stimulation

dishabituation

introduction of a new stimulus rekindles interest following habituation to a repeated stimulus

statistical learning

the innate ability of infants and children to automatically track patterns and regularities in their environment without explicit instruction or intentional effort

observational learning

infants seem to analyze the reason for people’s behavior & attempt to reproduce the behavior and intentions of other people but not of inanimate objects

imitation

repetition of other people’s behavior 

deferred imitation

repetition of other people’s behavior a substantial time after it originally occurred 

intermodal perception

the combining of information from two or more sensory systems (touch, taste, smell, auditory, vision) to gain awareness of and respond to their environment 

perceptual narrowing

developmental changes in which experience fine-tunes the perceptual system to focus on the distinctions between stimuli that are most relevant in a person’s environment 

reflexes

automatic, involuntary physical reactions that occur in response to particular stimulation

stepping reflex

an innate reflex in which an infant lifts first one leg and then the other in a coordinated pattern like walking

gross motor development

the coordination of large muscle groups in the torso, arms, and legs to perform major body movements, such as walking, maintaining balance, and reaching

fine motor development

Fine motor skills are the coordination of tiny movements we make with our hands, fingers, feet, and toes

motor milestones

the major physical skills & abilities that a child learns and achieves as they grow, progressing from reflexive movements to coordinated, voluntary control of their body

dynamic systems theory

a set of theories that describe behavior as the emergent product of a complex, self-organizing, multicomponent system evolving over time

affordances

the opportunities to perceive and then interact/take action on an environment, object, or surface offered to a person

perception-action coupling

describes how children constantly take in information from their environment and use it to guide movement

novelty preference

the preference of infants for novel stimuli, characterized, for example, by a longer looking time at a novel stimulus when it is paired with a familiar stimulus in a familiarization task 

classical conditioning

a form of learning that consists of associating an initially neutral stimulus with a stimulus that always evokes a particular reflexive response 

instrumental conditioning

a learning process where voluntary behaviors are modified through the consequences that follow them

contingency learning

the relationship between a child’s actions and behavior, and what happens in response, where the response is dependent (contingent) on the child’s behavior 

recognition memory

the ability to identify previously encountered events, objects, or people as familiar when they are experienced again

recall memory

process of retrieving information from one’s past without the presence of external/contextual cues 

visual acuity

the clarity and sharpness of your vision that gives you the ability to see fine details in a visual stimulus

depth perception

the ability to see the world in three dimensions and accurately judge the distance, size, and spatial relationship of objects (binocular/monocular cues)

binocular disparity

the difference between the retinal image of an object in each eye that results in two slightly different signals being sent to the brain

active learning

learning by engaging with the world through physical and mental interactions, rather than passively observing objects and events