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Child Dev. Midterm 1
Alison Sachet midterm 1 Psych 376, 2013
110
Psychology
Undergraduate 3
04/28/2013

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Cards

Term
Reliability
Definition
consistency of independent measures of a behavior under study
Term
Validity
Definition
accuracy, does the test measure what it’s supposed to measure
Term
What are the three main periods of prenatal development?
Definition
Germinal
Embryonic
Fetal
Term
Germinal Period
Definition
(zygote) [conception-2 weeks]: Begins with conception and lasts until the zygote becomes implanted in the uterine wall. Rapid cell division takes place.
Term
Embryonic Period
Definition
(embryo) [3-8 weeks]: Following implantation, major development occurs in all the organs and systems of the body. Development takes place through the processes of cell division, cell migration, cell differentiation, and cell death, as well as hormonal influences.
Term
Fetal Period
Definition
Fetal (fetus) [9 weeks-birth]: continued development of physical structures and rapid growth of the body. Increasing levels of behavior, sensory experience, and learning.
Term
What research evidence is there that a fetus can hear and process sounds from the external environment before she or he is born?
Definition
ewborn infants showed preference for sounds they had been exposed to in utero: mothers repeatedly read “Cat In The Hat” to their fetuses for the last 6 weeks of pregnancy, when the babies were born, they sucked on a pacifier in such a way that they would hear the story read by their own mothers rather than another voice. Similarly, they preferred “Cat In The Hat” over an unfamiliar story.
Term
Describe the effects of alcohol on the developing fetus.
Definition
Immediate behavioral effects on fetus: altered activity levels, abnormal startle reflexes

Facial deformities (smooth upper lip, short nose, narrow, widely spaced eyes)

Mental retardation

Abnormal development of the heart

defects in the joints

Pre and/or Postnatal growth deficiencies

Central nervous system dysfunction

Attention problems
Hyperactivity
Term
Why is it often difficult to determine the effect that teratogens have on a developing fetus? Give examples in your answer.
Definition
Cannot conduct an experimental study because it is unethical; therefore have to rely on women who have been exposed to teratogens, who lack accuracy in reporting quantity and timing of exposure.

There are also individual differences in how each woman and fetus process a teratogen, such that one baby may experience different effects from a similar exposure at a similar time than another baby.

Teratogen exposure may occur in combination, making it hard to isolate effects. There may even be a cumulutive effect from multiple factors.

The impacts of exposure may not show up immediately, aka sleeper effects, where effects might not manifest until a child is fully grown and trying to have their own children.

Effects may not be clearly linked to teratogen exposure (obesity or diabetes might be linked to marginal nutrition as a fetus). AKA fetal programming, because prenatal experiences program later adult physiology.
Term
What is meant by brain plasticity? x
Definition
The capacity of the brain to be affected by experience.
Term
Experience-expectant plasticity:
Definition
the process through which the normal wiring of the brain occurs in part as a result of experiences that every human who inhabits any reasonably normal environment will have. Strengthen frequently used synapses and prune unused ones.
Term
Experience-Dependent Plasticity
Definition
The process through which neural connections are created and reorganized throughout life as a function of an individual’s experience.

AKA neurons that fire together wire together.

Also, connect this with the idea of synaptic pruning-- use it or lose it!
Term
To what extent are infants capable of coordinating the information they receive from different sense modalities (i.e., intermodal perception)?
Definition
Contrary to Piaget’s thinking, infants can integrate info from different sense very early on, EX) auditory localization: turn toward a sound they hear, indicates that they expect the sound to be associate with an object

Oral-visual connection: EX) 1-month-olds sucked on a pacifier that they were prevented from seeing (let’s pretend it had bumps on it), they were showed pictures of the pacifier they sucked on and a novel one. They looked longer at the pacifier they had sucked on, indicating they visually recognized something they had only experienced orally.

Visual-tactile: EX) 4-month-olds allowed to hold and feel an object (a pair of rings connected by either a rigid bar or a string), then when shown both types, they recognized the one they had touched.

Auditory-visual: EX) 4-month-olds shown two videos, one of a person playing peek-a-boo, the other of a person playing drums; when a person saying “peek-a-boo” or a drum noise was played, infant looked longer at the image that matched the sound.

Similarly, infants prefer watching a video where the voice is synched up with the lip-movements of people, rather than when it is off-time.
Term
Oral-Visual Connection
Definition
1-month-olds sucked on a pacifier that they were prevented from seeing (let’s pretend it had bumps on it), they were showed pictures of the pacifier they sucked on and a novel one. They looked longer at the pacifier they had sucked on, indicating they visually recognized something they had only experienced orally.
Term
Visual-Tactile
Definition
EX) 4-month-olds allowed to hold and feel an object (a pair of rings connected by either a rigid bar or a string), then when shown both types, they recognized the one they had touched.
Term
Auditorial-Visual
Definition
EX) 4-month-olds shown two videos, one of a person playing peek-a-boo, the other of a person playing drums; when a person saying “peek-a-boo” or a drum noise was played, infant looked longer at the image that matched the sound.
Similarly, infants prefer watching a video where the voice is synched up with the lip-movements of people, rather than when it is off-time.
Term
Discuss recent research that challenges Piaget’s ideas about the development of object permanence.
Definition
-Because infants looked longer at (were surprised by) the middle test where the screen appeared to go right through the wall, study indicates that infants believed the box continued to exist after it was occluded by the screen.
-It is now thought that infants can demonstrate knowledge of an objects location at 5-12 months, (whereas Piaget thought before 12-18 months infants didn’t know the objects existed if they were unseen).
-Infants search behaviors (as with the object hidden under a blanket) are not an accurate measure of their conceptual understanding of object permanence.
-It is likely that they lack the motor ability to perform Piaget’s task of object permanence.
Term
A & B Error
Definition
-Definition: the tendency to reach for a hidden object where it was last found rather than in the new location where it was last hidden.
-Piaget thought that it represented infant’s lack of knowledge of object permanence.
-New information indicates it is likely that the infant does not know how to retrieve the object in its new hiding place, either because of motor control or attention deficit.
Term
Describe a task that assesses concrete operations in children?
Definition
1. Conservation of Liquid Quantity
2. Conservation of Solid Quantity
3. Conservation of Number
Term
Conservation of Liquid Quantity
Definition
when water is poured into a differently sized container, children understand that it is the same amount of water. (
Term
Conservation of Solid Quantity
Definition
when a quantity of clay is stretched out from a round ball to a skinny log, children understand it is the same amount of clay.
Term
Conservation of Number
Definition
-when a series of objects are placed such that they take up more space than another series of the same number of objects, children understand that both series have the same number of objects in them.

*actually on p 138 it says that children don’t understand that it’s the same amount of water/clay/number during preoperational stage
Term
Visual Infant Perception
Definition
infants have immature visual systems at birth but almost immediately begin visually scanning, and they show preferences for strongly contrasted patterns and colors just as adults do, and show special preference for human faces. Also they have perception of constant size and shape; other visual abilities develop quickly.
Term
Auditorial Infant Perception
Definition
well-developed at birth, turn heads to localize a sound, perceive patterns in auditory stimulation, sensitive to music
Term
Olfactory Infant Perception
Definition
sensitive from birth, learn to determine mother based on scent, can identify smell of breast milk
Term
Infant Perception of Touching
Definition
use mouth and hands to learn about self and environment.
Term
Intermodal Perception
Definition
are able to integrate the info they get from different senses.
Term
Do babies under one year of age have depth perception? Discuss the research evidence that they do or do not have depth perception.
Definition
-sensitive to optical expansion in images, 1-month-olds blink defensively at an expanding image that appears to be an object heading toward them. ‘

Stereopsis (the process by which the brain makes sense of binocular disparity) emerges at 4 months
-Infants after 7 months, with one eye covered, will reach toward whichever object appears to be nearer (the experiment used a trapezoidal window-looking object that created the optical illusion of one side being nearer), showing evidence that they use relative size as an indication of depth.
-6-14-month-olds tested using the visual cliff did not cross, indicating they do have depth perception.
Term
Does a newborn baby know the difference between his/her own mother's voice and the voice of another mother? How do we know?
Definition
-YES, they can tell the difference, and they prefer their mother’s voice.

-They show preferences for their own mother’s voice over the voice of another woman (prefers the voice that is most familiar)

-Infants show preference for mother’s voice the way they normally hear it, aka a newborn prefers a filter of the mom’s voice so it sounds like it did when the infant was in the womb.
-mothers repeatedly read “Cat In The Hat” to their fetuses for the last 6 weeks of pregnancy, when the babies were born, they sucked on a pacifier in such a way that they would hear the story read by their own mothers rather than another voice.
Term
What is the “visual cliff” and how has it been used to study early development?
Definition
-Consists of a thick sheet of plexiglass that can support the weight of the infant; a platform across the middle divides the apparatus into two sides; a checkered pattern right under the glass on one side makes it look like a solid, safe surface, on the other side, the same pattern is far beneath the glass, and the contrast in the apparent size of the checks makes it look as though there is a dangerous drop-off, a cliff, between the two sides.

-6-14 month old infants would not go over the cliff, even when a parent was beckoning them to come across.

-Strong evidence that they perceived and understood the significance of the depth cue of relative size
- Infants motor skills play a role in their behavior. Infants have to learn through experience how to integrate perceptual information with each new motor behavior they develop.
Term
Piagets 4 stages of Cog Dev
Definition
1. Sensorimotor Birth-2
2. Pre-Op 2-7
3. Concrete Operational 7-12
4. Formal: 12 & Up
Term
Sensorimotor Stage
Definition
infant’s intelligence develops, and is expressed, through their sensory and motor abilities.

use these abilities to perceive and explore the world around them

gain information about the objects and people in it and by exploring

construct rudimentary forms of fundamental concepts, such as time, space, and causality.
live largely in the here and now: their intelligence is bound to their immediate perceptions and actions.
Term
Pre-operational Stage
Definition
-able to represent their experiences in language and mental imagery.
-allows them to remember the experiences for longer periods of time and to form more sophisticated concepts.

-emphasizes young children’s inability to perform mental operations, that is, forms of reasoning that are part of an organized system of mental activities.
-Unable to form certain ideas, like conservation of matter
Term
Formal Operational Stage
Definition
-can think about abstractions and hypotheticals
-can perform systematic scientific experiments, draw appropriate conclusions, even when the conclusion differs from prior knowledge
Term
Concrete Operational Stage
Definition
-reason logically about concrete objects and events (understand conservation of matter)
-difficulty in thinking purely abstract terms, and in generating scientific experiments to test beliefs.
Term
What are some of the criticisms of Piaget’s theory of development?
Definition
-Infants are much more richly endowed with knowledge or procedures for obtaining knowledge than Piaget thought.

-reflexes and impulses
-qualitative series of changes doesn’t fit
-development is much more continuous than he thought---> underestimated babies
-answered questions that people weren’t asking
Term
Is there any evidence that infants are capable of reasoning about number?
Definition
Using looking time experiments, scientists have found:

1. Infants can distinguish small numbers from each other (eg., 2 vs. 3)

2. Infants can enumerate (count) actions
3. Infants have procedures that support numerical reasoning
Term
Scale Error
Definition
the attempt by a young child to perform an action on a miniature object that is impossible due to the large discrepancy in the relative sizes of the child and the object.

In this kind of error, very young children try to do something with a miniature replica object that is far too small for the action to be at all possible. Toddlers will attempt to fit in a tiny dollhouse-sized chair or to get into a small toy car. The child momentarily fails to take into account the relation between his or her own body and the size of the target object.
Term
Describe the development of drawing with children
Definition
At first children are focused on the activity and don’t attempt to produce recognizable images. The most common subject for children to draw are human figures. Children simplify their drawings. They move from drawing individual shapes of an object to drawing contour lines.
Term
Evaluate this statement: ‘Young children learn language by imitating their parents and being reinforced when they say things correctly.’
Definition
FALSE, they learn the systems for most correct grammar (ie. adding -ed to a verb to make it past tense) and eventually will learn the anomalies (ie thought not thinked) haha, yeah needs more info. they actually learn through mutual exclusivity, in other words, they use the language that they know to figure out language that they dont.
Term
Is there any evidence for critical periods in the development of language?
Definition
Victor the Wild Child who lived on his own in the woods until 12. He learned how to behave appropriately, but never learned more than a few words. Genie was rescued at age 13 and never developed much beyond the level of a toddler.
Term
Why do two-year-old children have difficulty with scale models? What evidence is there for your explanation?
Definition
They have a difficult time with scale models because it requires dual representation. Children must mentally represent mentally both the object itself as well as its symbolic relation to what it stands for. By using the shrinking room experiment, 2 ½ year olds do better compared to the scale-model task.
Term
  • How has the study of deaf children informed our understanding of language development?

 

Definition
    • Deaf population is perfect for studying critical periods because there is a large population, children are loved and treated well, they are normal socially and cognitively, they vary in the age at which they were exposed to language.

    • Newport (1990) studied ASL competence among deaf people

      • Participants = 35-70 years old, had at least 30 years signing experience

      • 3 groups

        • native signers (born to deaf signing parents)

        • early learners (exposed at 4-6 years)

        • late learners (first exposed after age 12)

      • Subjects tested on production and comprehension of complex morphology and syntax

      • RESULTS:

        • comprehension of word order - no effect for age of acquisition

        • production and comprehension of morphology is strongly affected by age of acquisition

 

 

Term
What do infants understand about the categorization of objects?  What about toddlers and preschoolers?
Definition
    • Infants form categories of objects. The key element in infants categorization abilities is perceptual categorization, the grouping of objects that have similar appearances. Infants categorize objects along many perceptual dimensions, including color, size, and movement. By 2, children categorize objects based on shape. Children begin to grasp individual categories, but hierarchical and causal relations among categories.

 

 

Term
  • Describe the research evidence about children’s understanding of living things.

 

 

Definition
    • Both 9 and 12 month olds show surprise when they see inanimate objects move. This suggests that they understand that self-produced motion is a distinctive characteristic of people and other animals.

    • During preschool years, children gain basic understanding of the properties of biological entities: growth, heredity, illness and death.

    • inheritance- 3 and 4 year olds that are told that Mr and Mrs Bull have hearts of an unusual color, and they predict that Baby Bill will also have a heart of that color. Most preschoolers also believe in “essentialism” which is the view that living things have an essence inside of them that makes them what they are.

    • Preschoolers understand that something inside of living things is making them grow to be larger and more complex. They also know a little about germs and how germs can make you sick. They also understand that living things can heal, but at a certain point they will die.

    • They typically don’t group plants with animals into a single category of living things until they go to school though.

    • Children rapidly acquire biological knowledge because of extensive exposure provided by families and because of brain mechanisms that lead children to be interested in living things and to learn about them quickly and easily.

 

 

Term
What do children understand about space?
Definition
    • Nativists argue that children have an innate capacity for representing and learning about space

    • Empiricists argue children acquire spatial representations in same way they learn about everything on their own. This suggests that they understand that self-produced motion is a distinctive characteristic of people and other animals.else; children combine info to reach goals by moving through environment, also use language and cultural tools to inform spatial understanding.

    • 2 sides agree on:

      • early in infancy, children show impressive understanding of above, below, left of, right of.

      • certain parts of the brain are specialized for particular spatial info

    • Code locations of objects relative to self.

    • As they get older, infants’ can hold the location of an object in their mind for longer-- their spatial representations become more “durable” (EX: 7-month-olds correctly reach for the object hidden under one of two blankets 2 seconds earlier, but not 4 seconds earlier.)

    • Piaget said children only had “egocentric representations”: coding of spatial locations relative to one’s own body, regardless of surroundings (ie. they will continue to reach for an object hidden on their right even when they have been turned around 180 degrees) Piaget was mostly right, kids will find something if hidden by a large/striking landmark, otherwise they are egocentric.

    • Self-locomotion leads to a decrease in egocentric representation

 

 

Term
What do children understand about time?
Definition
    • Repetitive sequence of events over time. By the end of their first year, infants can remember the order of events for a substantial period.

    • BASIC: knowledge of temporal order- what happened first, what happened next, and so on.

      • (EX: 3-month-olds presented with a series of photos, first one on right, then one on left, and so on. Within 20 seconds, the infant began to anticipate the side the new photo would be placed)

    • The improvement in children’s sense of future time between the ages of 5 and 6 years is probably influenced by 5yr olds experience in kindergarten classrooms, where the cycle of seasons, holidays, and daily routines is emphasized.

    • Children are subject to certain illusions about time, in part because of the role of attention in time perception.

      • “A watched pot never boils”

    • Children become increasingly proficient at reasoning about time. they become able to infer that if 2 events started at the same time, but one event ended later than the other, then the event that ended later must have lasted for a greater amount of time.

    • Children can make logical inferences about time

 

 

Term
Describe the development of causal reasoning
Definition
    • Children are trying to understand causal reasoning when they take toys apart, switch the light switch back and forth.

    • There is a difference between understanding psychological causes and physical causes. Children and adults are better at understanding psychological causes than infants.

    • In a study, 4 and 5 year olds were presented with pictures of “wugs” and “gillies.” Some of the kids were given causal reasons for why each creature looked the way it did- wug had spikes and claws because it likes to fight. The kids who were given the reasons why the creatures looked they way they did were better at remembering the names of the creatures later on.  

    • Preschoolers’ questions about causes and reasons show that they understand that different categories of objects vary in the types of causal relations they are typically involved in. For example, a preschooler who sees an object will ask “what is it for?” instead of “what does it like to eat” because he knows what an artifact is compared to an animal.

    • Physical causes- By 6 months, infants understand causal connections among some physical events (looking longer at scenario where stationary object starts moving before it is hit). When 9-11 month olds are shown actions that are causally related, they usually can reproduce the actions. Do not reliably reproduce causally unrelated actions until 21 months. By end of 2nd year, kids can infer causal impact of one variable based on indirectly relevant info about another. (At 24 months versus 19 months they can deduce which object will make blicket detector go off). Preschoolers expect that if a variable causes an effect, it should do so consistently. At age 5, kids are fascinated by magic tricks because no obvious causal mechanism could produce the trick.  



 

Term
With which of the following statements would stage theorists DISAGREE?
Definition

A) Behaviors of children at different ages differ sharply.

B) A child's entry into a new stage involves a gradual shift from one way of experiencing the world to a different way of experiencing it.

C) Children of a particular age show wide-ranging similarities across a variety of situations.

D) When children enter a new cognitive stage, they demonstrate their new way of thinking across a broad spectrum of tasks.

 

Term

Which of the following items would NOT be considered part of the sociocultural context involved in an American child's

language development?

 

Definition

A) number of words in a child's vocabulary

B) town budget for speech therapy

C) parental knowledge of child development

D) modern American value for education

E) All of the answers are parts of the sociocultural context involved in a child's language development.

Term
3. Which of the following research designs allows researchers to infer cause-and-effect associations between variables?
Definition

A) structured

B) correlational

C) experimental

D) None of the answers is correct.

Term

Which of the following factors is cited as a reason why some children are resilient in the face of multiple developmental

hazards?

Definition

A) prenatal nutrition

B) education

C) responsive care

D) welfare

 

Term
Marijuana use by a pregnant woman affects the fetus's:
Definition
Learning and Memory
Term

Which of the following statements about fetal activity and inactivity is true?

 

Definition

 

A) Fetuses do not have true sleep states, but they do have periods of inactivity while awake.

B) Fetuses have periods of high activity and rest while awake, and they have both active and quiet sleep states.

C) Fetuses sleep all day and night, but their sleep can be active or quiet.

D) Fetuses are in constant motion throughout the day and night.

 

 

Term

A researcher discovers that boys who spend more time playing violent video games are also more aggressive outside the home. Which of the following conclusions would the researcher be justified in making?

 

Definition

A) It is not possible to discern from this finding whether playing violent video games causes increased aggression or vice versa.

B) Reducing time spent playing violent video games is an effective way to reduce aggression in boys.

C) The link between aggression and violent video games is not likely to be evident in girls.

D) The relationship between aggression and violent video games is culturally determined, such that in interdependent societies, the two are not associated.

 

Term

Which of the following is NOT an assumption of infant attention paradigms:

 

Definition

A) The same children are tested when they are 1, 3, 5, and 10 years of age.

B) Different children are tested at 1, 3, 5, and 10 years of age.

C) The processes underlying changes in emotion understanding are evaluated in a group of 3-year-olds and group of 10-year-olds.

D) All of these

 

Term

1. Which lobe of the cerebral cortex is most important for foresight and goal-directed behavior?

Chapters 2,3,4

Definition

A) temporal

B) parietal

C) frontal

D) occipital

Term

If the correlation between identical (monozygotic) twins on Trait R is higher than the correlation between fraternal (dizygotic) twins on Trait R, behavior geneticists conclude that:

 

Definition

A) genetic factors are important in the development of Trait R.

B) genetic factors are irrelevant to the development of Trait R.

C) environmental factors are irrelevant in the development of Trait R.

D) genetic factors and environmental factors play equivalent roles in the development of Trait R.

Term

3. Which of the following practices is believed to have led to a secular trend in the development of self-locomotion by U.S. infants (i.e., that infants born after the late 1990's crawled at a later age than infants born before the late 1990's)?

 

Definition

A) decrease in number of adults who smoke

B) increase in proportion of families with two working parents

C) improvements in nutrition

D) changes in infant sleep position practices

Term

To examine whether infants can perceive a difference between a square of uniform color and a square with a pattern on it, a researcher displays the two squares side by side. The researcher records the number of seconds infants look at each

square. This method is called the:

 

Definition

A) habituation technique.

B) preferential-looking technique.

C) contrast-sensitivity technique.

D) pattern-recognition technique.

Term
5. Which of the following views best represents information-processing theories?
Definition

A) child as social being

B) child as scientist

C) child as computational system

D) child as product of evolution

Term

Synapse elimination (i.e., synaptic pruning) generally occurs as a result of:

 

Definition

A) brain damage.

B) nutritional deficiencies.

C) normal overabundance of synapses.

D) mental illness.

Term
Which of the following statements is an example of experience-expectant processes?
Definition

A) Individuals are able to remember the details of a magazine article after they have read it.

B) Children who are born with cataracts that are not removed early enough will have permanently impaired vision.

C) Rats that are trained to use just one limb to get a food reward have increased dendritic material in the particular area of the

motor cortex that controls the movement of that limb.

D) All of the statements are examples of experience-expectant processes.

Term
Which of the following views best represents Piaget's theory of development?
Definition

A) child as social being

B) child as scientist

C) child as computational system

D) child as product of evolution

Term
Parents who reward their children with sweets for eating vegetables are likely to be influencing their children to:
Definition

A) dislike vegetables even more but also come to dislike sweet, fatty foods.

B) prefer vegetables over sweet, fatty foods.

C) develop a strong preference for both vegetables and sweet, fatty foods.

D) dislike vegetables even more and have a stronger preference for sweet, fatty foods

Term

Core-knowledge theorists believe that humans are equipped with specialized learning mechanisms for:

 

Definition

A) extremely difficult problems.

B) sexual reproduction.

C) problems that have been important from an evolutionary perspective.

D) only language and human faces.

Term

Research by Meltzoff in which 18-month-olds observed either an adult or a mechanical device pull at two ends of a dumbbell demonstrated that children can learn by imitating the:

 

Definition

A) behavior of adults.

B) behavior and intentions of adults.

C) behavior of adults and inanimate objects.

D) behavior and intentions of adults and inanimate objects.

 

Term
An infant learns a new way to climb up on the living room sofa by watching his older sibling through which type of learning?
Definition

A) observational learning

B) statistical learning

C) classical conditioning

D) instrumental conditioning

Term

. Which of the following statements best describes researchers' current view of young infants' ability to mentally represent

objects?

Definition

A) Young infants are able to mentally represent objects, but they do not have any expectations about the behavior of objects that are out of sight.

B) Young infants are able to mentally represent objects, but only if they have substantial experience with the object (e.g., toys with which they have played).

C) Young infants are able to mentally represent objects and to think about the existence of invisible objects.

D) Young infants are unable to mentally represent objects.

 

 

Term

Which of the following is true about infants' understanding of number?

 

Definition

A) Piaget's conservation of number task is a good measure of their knowledge about number.

B) Infants can distinguish small numbers from each other, can add and subtract small numbers, and can enumerate actions.

C) For young children (i.e., under age 7 years), changing the spatial arrangement of items does NOT impact their understanding of the number of items.

D) Infants can understand complex addition and subtraction (e.g., 7 + 14 = 21).

E) none of the above

 

Term

Piaget believed that the best way for children to learn is through:

 

Definition

A) experimenting with the world on their own.

B) modeling peers and adults.

C) explicit instruction from adults.

D) rewards and punishments.

Term

Research in which 12- and 15-month-old infants were introduced to a faceless, eyeless blob suggested that infants are willing to attribute intentions and goals to:


Definition

A) virtually any object, animate or inanimate.

B) inanimate objects.

C) inanimate objects if they look like animate objects.

D) inanimate objects if they behave like animate objects.


Term

Piaget believed that young infants' failure to reach for a hidden object indicated that they:


Definition

A) had lost the desire for the object.

B) lack the concept of object permanence.

C) were unable to reach the object.

D) were unable to uncover the object.


Term
An infant randomly makes many vocalizations throughout the day. Some of her vocalizations elicit no response from her parents, but several elicit laughter and hugging from her parents. Eventually, she learns to make those vocalizations in order to elicit laughter and hugs through which type of learning?
Definition

A) classical conditioning

B) perceptual learning

C) observational learning

D) instrumental conditioning

Term

Kevin and his mother are playing with an interesting squeaky toy. Kevin's mother squeezes the toy in front of him and then hides it under a blanket. Kevin has fun finding the toy under the blanket and then giving it back to his mother. After several rounds of this game, Kevin's mother hides the toy behind a pillow instead of under the blanket. Rather than looking behind the pillow, however, Kevin lifts the blanket to look for the toy. Which of the following statements is true?


Definition

A) Kevin does not know the toy still exists.

B) Kevin is making the A-not-B error.

C) Kevin habituated to the toy being under the blanket.

D) All of the statements are true.

Term
10. An infant's learning of the association between the sight of his bottle and the taste of his milk is an example of:
Definition

A) statistical learning.

B) social referencing.

C) perceptual learning.

D) habituation.

Term
Continuous Development
Definition
The idea that changes with age occur gradually, in small increments, like that of a pine tree growing taller and taller
Term
Discontinuous Development
Definition
The idea that changes with age include occasional large shifts, like caterpillar to a butterfly
Term
Stage Theories
Definition
Approaches that propose that development involves a serious of discontinuous, age-related phases
Term
Naturalistic Observation
Definition
examination of ongoing behavior in an environment not controlled by the researcher
Term
Structured Observation
Definition
a method that involves presenting an identical situation to each child and recording the child's behavior
Term
Correlational Designs
Definition
Studies intended to indicate how variables are related to each other
Term
Correlation
Definition
The association between 2 variables
Term
Independent Variable
Definition
The experience that children receive and that children in the control group dont receive
Term
Dependent variable
Definition
A behavior that is measured to determine whether it is affected by exposure to the independent variable
Term
Epigenesis
Definition
The emergence of new structures and functions in the course of development
Term
Zygote
Definition
Fertilized egg cell
Term
Placenta
Definition
support organ for the fetus;
Term
Cephalocaudal Development
Definition
The pattern of growth in which areas near the head develop earlier than other areas of the body
Term
Teratogen
Definition
An external agent that can cause damage or death during prenatal development
Term
Sensitive Period
Definition
the period of time during which a developing organism is most sensitive to the effects of external factors.
Term
Dose-Response Relation
Definition
A relation in which the effect of exposure to an element increases with the extent of exposure
Term
Swaddling
Definition
a soothing technique used in many cultures, involving wrapping a baby in a tightly in cloth or a blanket
Term
Colic
Definition
excessive, inconsolable crying by an infant for no reason
Term
Developmental Resilience
Definition
Successful development in spite of multiple and seemingly overwhelming developmental hazards
Term
Genome
Definition
the complete set of genes
Term
Alleles
Definition
2 or more different forms of a gene
Term
Phenylketonuria PKU
Definition
Disorder related to a defective recessive gene on chromosome 12 that prevents metabolism function
Term
Neurogenesis
Definition
Proliferation of neurons through cell divisions
Term
ERP's
Definition
Changes in the brains electrical activity that occur in response to the presentation of a particular stimulus
Term
Synaptic Pruning
Definition
the normal developmental process through which synapses that are rarely activated are eliminated
Term
Experience-Expectant Plasticity
Definition
Process through which the normal wiring of the brain occurs in part as a result of experiences that every human who inhabits any reasonably normal environment will have.
Term
Experience-Dependent Plasticity
Definition
The process through which neural connections are created and reorganized throughout life as a function of an individuals experiences.
Term
Object Permanence
Definition
the knowledge that objects continue to exist even when they aren't visible
Term
Deferred Imitation
Definition
the repetition of other people's behavior a substantial time after it originally occured
Term
Sensory Memory
Definition
The fleeting retention of sights, sounds, and other sensations that have just been experienced
Term
Encoding
Definition
the process of representing in memory information that draws attention or is considered important
Term
Overlapping-Waves Theories
Definition
An info-processing approach that emphasizes the variability of childrens thinking
Term
Core-Knowledge Theories
Definition
Approaches that emphasize the sophistication of infants' and young childrens thinking in areas that have been important throughout human evolutionary history
Term
Domain Specific
Definition
Limited to a particular area, such as living things or people
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