Chapter 6

Front 1

Sensorimotor Intelligence

Back 1

Piaget's term for the way infants think - by using their senses and motor skills - during the first period of cognitive development.

Front 2

Primary circular reactions

Back 2

The first of three types of feedback loops in sensorimotor intelligence, this one involving the infant's own body. The infant senses motion, sucking, noise, and other stimuli, and tries to understand them.

Front 3

Secondary Circular Reactions

Back 3

The second of three types of feedback loops in sensorimotor intelligence, this one involving people and objects. Infants respond to other people, to toys, and to any other object they can touch or move.

Front 4

Object Permanence

Back 4

The realization that objects (including people) still exist when they can no longer be seen, touched, or heard.

Front 5

Tertiary circular reactions

Back 5

The third of three types of feedback loops in sensorimotor intelligence, this one involving active exploration and experimentation. Infants explore a range of new activities, varying their responses as a way of learning about the world.

Front 6

"Little Scientist"

Back 6

The stage-five toddler (age 12 to 18 months) who experiments without anticipating the results, using trial and error in active and creative exploration.

Front 7

Deferred Imitation

Back 7

A sequence in which an infant first perceives something that someone else does and then performs the same action a few hours or even days later.

Front 8

Habituation

Back 8

The process of getting used to an object or event through repeated exposure to it.

Front 9

fMRI

Back 9

Functional magnetic resonance imaging, a measuring technique in which the brain's electrical excitement indicates activation anywhere in the brain; fMRI helps researchers locate neurological responses to stimuli.

Front 10

Information-processing theory

Back 10

A perspective that compares human thinking processes, by analogy, to computer analysis of data, including sensory input, connections, stored memories, and output.

Front 11

Affordance

Back 11

An opportunity for perception and interaction that is offered by a person, place, or object in the environment.

Front 12

Visual Cliff

Back 12

An experimental apparatus that gives an illusion of a sudden dropoff between one horizontal surface and another.

Front 13

Dynamic Perception

Back 13

Perception that is primed to focus on movement and change.

Front 14

People Preference

Back 14

A universal principle of infant perception, consisting of an innate attraction to other humans, which is evident in visual, auditory, tactile, and other preferences.

Front 15

Reminder Session

Back 15

A perceptual experience that is intended to help a person recollect an idea, a thing, or an experience, without testing whether the person remembers it at the moment.

Front 16

Child-Directed Speech

Back 16

The high-pitched simplified, and repetitive way adults speak to infants. (Also called baby talk or motherese)

Front 17

Babbling

Back 17

The extended repetition of certain syllables such as ba-ba-ba, that begins when babies are between 6 and 9 months old.

Front 18

Holophase

Back 18

A single word that is used to express a complete, meaningful thought.

Front 19

Naming Explosion

Back 19

A sudden increase in an infant's vocabulary, especially in the number of nouns, that begin at about 18 months of age.

Front 20

Grammar

Back 20

All the methods - word order, verb forms, and so on - that languages use to communicate meaning, apart from the words themselves.

Front 21

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

Back 21

Chomsky's term for a hypothesized mental structure that enables humans to learn language, including the basic aspects of grammar, vocabulary, and intonation.