Exam 2 Study Guide: Developmental Psychology

Practice vocabulary flashcards for Exam 2, covering prenatal, motor, cognitive, and social-emotional development.

Teratogens

External environmental agents, such as cigarette smoking, alcohol, and toxic substances, that can cause damage or atypical outcomes during prenatal development.

States of Arousal

The physiological degrees of sleep and wakefulness exhibited by newborns, prominently characterized by alternating Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) sleep patterns.

Triple-Risk Hypothesis of SIDS

A developmental model explaining Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) as the convergence of an underlying biological vulnerability, a critical developmental period, and external environmental stressors.

Rooting Reflex

An innate newborn survival reflex where an infant turns their head toward a tactile stimulus touching their cheek.

Moro Reflex

An involuntary newborn startle reflex characterized by an infant flinging their arms outward and arching the back in response to a sudden loss of support or loud noise.

Tonic Neck Reflex

A primitive newborn reflex often referred to as the fencing posture, where the arm on the side the head turns extends while the opposite arm flexes.

Palmar Grasp Reflex

An automatic newborn reflex in which an infant's fingers tightly curl around any object placed in their palm.

Babinski Reflex

A reflex present at birth where the big toe extends upward and the other toes fan out when the sole of the foot is stroked.

Synaptogenesis

The rapid neuronal developmental process involving the formation of new synapses between neurons in the central nervous system.

Synaptic Pruning

The neurodevelopmental process wherein extra or underutilized synapses are eliminated to increase the efficiency of neural transmissions.

Myelination

The biological process in central nervous system maturation where axons are coated with an insulating fatty sheath to accelerate nerve impulse transmission.

Experience-Expectant Brain Development

Brain organization that depends on ordinary, species-typical environmental inputs that every normal human brain expects to encounter early in life.

Experience-Dependent Brain Development

Brain growth and neural refinement that occurs as a consequence of specific, unique learning experiences that vary widely across individuals and cultures.

Neuroplasticity

The capacity of the brain's neural networks to grow, reorganize, and adapt in response to experience and injury, driven by the 'use it or lose it' principle.

Gross Motor Skills

Physical motor actions that involve large muscle groups to coordinate major bodily actions, such as crawling, sitting, and walking.

Fine Motor Skills

Motor behaviors that require precise control of smaller muscle groups, particularly coordinating the hands and fingers for reaching and grasping.

Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage

The initial period of cognitive development spanning from birth to age $2$, during which infants construct knowledge about the world entirely through their sensory impressions and motor actions.

Object Permanence

The cognitive understanding acquired during infancy that physical objects continue to exist even when they are out of direct sight, sound, or physical contact.

B-not-B Search Error

An error demonstrated in Piaget's sensorimotor stage where infants repeatedly reach for a hidden object at a familiar hiding location rather than looking at its most recent, observed location.

Information Processing Theories

Theoretical perspectives that conceptualize cognitive development as continuous improvements in how the human mind attends to, encodes, stores, retrieves, and processes information.

Sustained Attention

The cognitive capacity to voluntarily maintain focused visual or mental engagement on a single stimulus or task over an extended duration.

Goldilocks Effect

The attentional phenomenon where infants preferentially allocate their attention toward visual or auditory events that possess an intermediate level of complexity—neither overly simple nor overly complex.

Habituation

An experimental paradigm outcome marked by a progressive decrease in an infant's responsiveness or looking time following repeated exposures to a single unchanging stimulus.

Dishabituation

The recovery of an infant's attention or orienting response when a new or different stimulus is presented following a period of habituation.

Deferred Imitation

The cognitive ability to remember and replicate an observed action or sequence of behaviors after a delay of hours, days, or weeks.

Phonemes

The elemental, distinct linguistic sound units that distinguish one word from another in a given language.

Joint Attention

A shared communicative state where an infant and a social partner simultaneously focus their attention on the same object or event, playing an essential role in early vocabulary acquisition.

Holophrases

Single-word utterances used by young infants to communicate an entire sentence, complex idea, or complete thought.

Basic Emotional States of the First Month

The three earliest global affective states observable during the first postnatal month: contentment, interest, and distress.

Still Face Procedure

An experimental methodology used to observe infant socioemotional expectations wherein an adult caregiver abruptly ceases all interaction and adopts an expressionless, neutral face.

Stranger Anxiety

A developmental fear response displayed by infants when they are approached by an unfamiliar person, commonly emerging in the second half of the first year.

Separation Anxiety

An infant's or toddler's overt emotional distress and crying triggered by the departure or absence of their primary attachment figure.

Self-Conscious Emotions

Secondary emotional expressions—such as shame, embarrassment, guilt, and pride—that emerge in the second year of life as self-awareness develops.

Autism Spectrum Disorder

A neurodevelopmental condition marked by distinct early deviations from normal patterns of brain growth, cognitive functioning, and socioemotional interaction within the first $2$ to $3$ years.