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 with an unconditioned stimulus, comes to trigger a conditioned response.

Scale error: A phenomenon where children attempt to use an object that is too small for them, reflecting their understanding of scale and size.

Cone cells: Photoreceptor cells in the retina responsible for color vision and function best in bright light.

Self-locomotion: The ability of an individual to move independently, typically through crawling or walking.

Contrast sensitivity: The ability to detect differences in light and dark, crucial for perceiving visual stimuli.

Sensation: The process of detecting physical stimuli from the environment through sensory organs.

Instrumental (or operant) conditioning: A learning process where behaviors are modified based on their consequences, such as rewards or punishments.

Smooth pursuit eye movements: Eye movements that allow a person to smoothly follow a moving object.

Intermodal perception: The ability to integrate information from multiple sensory modalities.

Stepping reflex: An automatic movement pattern seen in infants when they are held upright and their feet touch a surface.

Monocular depth (or pictorial) cues: Visual cues that allow depth perception using only one eye, such as relative size and linear perspective.

Stereopsis: The perception of depth resulting from the integration of two slightly different images from each eye.

Object segregation: The ability to distinguish and recognize separate objects in a visual scene.

Unconditioned response (UCR): An automatic, natural reaction to an unconditioned stimulus.

Optical expansion: A cue for depth perception where objects appear to grow in size as they approach.

Unconditioned stimulus (UCS): A stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers a response without prior conditioning.

Perception: The process of organizing and interpreting sensory information to understand the environment.

Violation-of-expectancy: A research paradigm used to study infants’ understanding of physical principles by observing their reactions to events that contradict their expectations.

Perceptual constancy: The perception that objects remain the same despite changes in sensory input (e.g., size, shape).

Visual acuity: The sharpness or clarity of vision.

A-not-B error: A common error in infants where they search for an object in a location (A) where they previously found it, even after witnessing it being hidden in a new location (B).

Accommodation: The cognitive process of adjusting existing cognitive structures to incorporate new information.

Encoding: The process of transforming sensory input into a form that can be stored in memory.

Nativism: The philosophical view that certain skills or abilities are hard-wired into the brain at birth.

Selective attention: The process of focusing on a specific stimulus while ignoring others.

Equilibration: A process described by Piaget where individuals balance assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding.

Object permanence: The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen.

Sensorimotor stage: The first stage in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, occurring from birth to about 2 years, characterized by learning through sensory experiences and motor actions.

Formal operational stage: The fourth stage in Piaget’s theory, occurring from around age 12 and onward, characterized by abstract thinking and logical reasoning.

Overlapping waves theory: A model of cognitive development proposing that children use a variety of strategies to solve problems, rather than a single method.

Social scaffolding: A process where more knowledgeable individuals provide support to help learners accomplish tasks they cannot complete independently.

Guided participation: A teaching method where a more experienced individual helps a novice engage in activities within their zone of proximal development.

Piaget's theory: A developmental theory emphasizing stages of cognitive development, where children actively construct knowledge through interactions with their environment.

Sociocultural theories: Theories emphasizing the role of social interaction and cultural context in cognitive development.

Information-processing theories: Theories that focus on how individuals encode, store, and retrieve information, likening the mind to a computer.

Preoperational stage: The second stage in Piaget’s theory, occurring from about 2 to 7 years, characterized by symbolic thinking but limited by egoc