Developmental Psychology Terms From Chapter 6 Of Child Development

Front 1

habituation

Back 1

Gradual decline in intensity, frequency, or duration of a response over repeated or lengthy occurences of the same stimulus

Front 2

recovery from habituation

Back 2

Reinstatement of the intensity, frequency, or duration of a response to a stimulus that has changes. Also called dishabituation.

Front 3

unconditioned stimulus (UCS)

Back 3

Stimulus that, without prior training, elicits a reflexlike response (unconditioned response)

Front 4

unconditioned response (UCR)

Back 4

Response that is automatically elicited by the unconditioned stimulus (UCS).

Front 5

conditioned stimulus (CS)

Back 5

Neutral stimulus that begins to elicit a response similar to the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) with which it has been paired.

Front 6

conditioned response (CR)

Back 6

Learned response that is exhibited to a previously neutral stimulus (CS) as a result of pairing the CS with an unconditioned stimulus (UCS)

Front 7

positive reinforcement

Back 7

Occurence of a stimulus that strengthens a preceding response. Also known as reward.

Front 8

negative reinforcement

Back 8

Removal of an aversive stimulus that strengthens a preceding response.

Front 9

negative punishment

Back 9

Removal or loss of a desired stimulus or reward that weakens or decreases the frequency of a preceding response.

Front 10

negative reinforcement

Back 10

Removal of an aversive stimulus that strengthens a preceding response.

Front 11

positive punishment

Back 11

Occurence of an aversive stimulus that serves to weaken or decrease the frequency of a preceding response.

Front 12

deferred imitation

Back 12

Ability to imitate a model's behavior hours, days, and even weeks after observation.

Front 13

implicit learning

Back 13

Abstract knowledge not available to conscious reflection acquired incidentally from processing structured information

Front 14

sensation

Back 14

Basic information in the external world that is processed by the sensory receptors

Front 15

perception

Back 15

Process of organizing and interpreting sensory information.

Front 16

attention

Back 16

Sate of alertness or arousal that allows the individual to focus on a selected aspect of the environment.

Front 17

kinetic cue

Back 17

Perceptual information provided by movement of objectts in the environment or of eyes, head, or body. Important source of information for depth perception.

Front 18

visual accomodation

Back 18

Visuomotor process by which small involuntary muscles change the shape of the lens of the eye so that images of objects seen at different distances are brought into focus on the retina.

Front 19

saccade

Back 19

Rapid eye movement to inspect an object or view a stimulus in the periphery of the visual field.

Front 20

smooth visual pursuit

Back 20

Consistent, unbroken tracking by the eyes that serves to maintain focus on a moving visual target.

Front 21

vergence

Back 21

Ability of the eyes to rotate in opposite directions to fixate on objects at different distances; improves rapidly during first few months after birth.

Front 22

visual acuity

Back 22

Ability to make fine discriminations among elements in a visual array by detecting contours, transitions in light patterns that signal borders and edges.

Front 23

externality effect

Back 23

Tendency for infants younger than two months to focus on the external features of a complex stimulus and explore the internal features less systematically.

Front 24

stereopsis

Back 24

Ability to perceive a single image of an object even though perceptual input is binocular and differs slightly for each eye; significant source of cues for depth perception.

Front 25

visual cliff

Back 25

Experimental apparatus used to test depth perception in which the surface on one side of a glass-covered table is made to appear far below the surface on the other side.

Front 26

sound localization

Back 26

Ability to determine a sound's point of origin.

Front 27

phoneme

Back 27

Smallest unit of sound that changes the meanings of words.

Front 28

catergorical perception

Back 28

Inability to distinguish among sounds that vary on some basic physical dimension except when those sounds lie at opposite sides of a critical juncture point on that dimension.

Front 29

intermodal perception

Back 29

Coordination of sensory information to perceive or make inferences about the characteristics of an object.

Front 30

perceptual differentiation

Back 30

Process postulated by Eleanor and James Gibson in which experience contributes to the ability to make increasingly finger perceptual discriminations and to distinguish stimulation arising from each sensory modality.