PSY Chapter 5
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31 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 norm | an average or standard measurement, calculated from the measurements of many individuals within a specific group or population. |
| percentile | a point on a ranking sclae of 0 to 100. 50th is the middle. |
| head-sparing | the biological protection of the brain when malnutrituion affects the body growth. |
| REM sleep | rapid eye movement sleep, a stage of sleep characterized by flickering eyes behind closed lids, dreaming, and rapid brain waves. |
| co-sleeping | a custom in which parents and their children sleep together. |
| neuron | one of he billions of nerve cells in the central nervous system, especially the brain. |
| cortex | the outer layers of the brain in humans and other mammals. most thinking, feeling, and sensing involve this part of the brain. |
| axon | a fiber that extends from a neuron and transmits electrochemical impulses from that enuron to the dendrites of other neurons. |
| dendrite | a fiber that extends from a neuron and receives electrochemical impulses transmitted from other neurons via their axons. |
| synapse | the intersection between the axon of one neuron and the dendrites of other neurons |
| transient exuberance | the great increase in the number of dendrites that occurs in an infant's brain during the first two years of life. |
| experience-expectant | refers to brain functions that require certain basic common experiences in order to develop normally. |
| experience-dependent | refers to brain functions that depned on particular, variable experiences and that therfore may or may not develop in particular infant. |
| prefrontal cortex | the are of cortex at the front of the brain that specializes in anticipation, planning, and impulse control. |
| shaken baby syndrome | a life-threatening condition that occurs when an infant is forcefully shaken back and forth, rupturing blood vesselse in the brain and breaking neural connections. |
| self-righting | the inborn drive to remedy a developmental deficit. |
| sensitive period | a time when a certain kind of growth or development is most likely to happen or happens more readily. |
| sensation | the response of a sensory system (eyes, ears, tongue, etc) when it detects a stimulus. |
| perception | the mental processing of sensory information, when the brain interprets a sensation. |
| binocular vision | the ability to focus the two eyes in a coordinated manner in order to see one image. |
| motor skill | the learned ability to move some part of the body, from a large leap to a flicker of the eyelid. |
| reflex | a responsie movement that seems automatic because it almost always occurs in reaction to a particular stimulus. |
| fine motor skills | physical abiliites involving small body movemnts, especially of the hands and fingers, such as drawing and picking up a coin. |
| immunization | a process that stimulates the body's immune system to defend against attack by a particular contagious disease. |
| sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) | a situation in which a seemingly healthy infant, at least 2 months of age, suddenly stops breathing and dies unexpectedly while asleep. Cause unknown, correlated with sleeping on the stomach and having parents who smoke. |
| protein-calorie malnutrition | a condition in which a person does not consume sfficent food of any kind. This deptrivation can result in several illnesses, severe weight loss, and sometimes death. |
| marasmus | a disease of sever pretein-calorie malnutrition during early infancy, in which growth stops, body tissues waste away, and the infant eventually dies. |
| kwashiorkor | a disease of chronic malnutrition during childhood, in which a protein deficiency makes the child more vulnerable to other diseases, such as measles, diarrhea, and influenza. |
| gross motor skills | Skills that involve the large muscles of the body, such as those of the legs, arms and torso and the ability to make large movements, such as jumping and running |
| stunting | The failure of children to grow to a normal height for their age due to severe and chronic malnutrition |
| wasting | The tendency for children to be severely underweight for their age as a result of malnutrition |
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