Throughout this chapter, you will be introduced to important key terms that will help deepen your understanding of human development.

• Accommodation: a cognitive process that occurs when an existing schema is updated or a new schema is created.
• Animism: refers to the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike abilities.
• Assimilation: a cognitive process that occurs when a current schema is applied to understand something new.
• Child directed speech: a type of sing-song type of intonation and exaggeration adults use when talking to children.
• Cortisol: hormones that are produced by the brain in response to stress.
• Egocentrism: refers to the inability to see the world through other people’s perspective.
• Experience-dependent plasticity: when the brain is remodeled due to unique or unexpected experiences within and outside sensitive periods of development.
• Experience-expectant plasticity: when stimuli from the environment guide normal brain development, especially during sensitive periods.
• Fine motor skills: motor development focused on the muscles in our fingers, toes, and eyes, which enable coordination of small actions.
• Gross motor skills: motor development focused on large muscle groups that control our head, torso, arms and legs which enable the coordination of larger body movements.
• Holophrastic speech: when young children use one word phrases or expressions to convey thoughts.
• Infantile amnesia: the inability to recall memories from the first few years of life.
• Magical thinking: when children believe that their thoughts or actions influence things that happen in their environment.
• Mental representations: the ability to think about things that are not currently present or to think about something in the past.
• Neurons: a type of brain cell that sends signals to the nervous system.
• Neuroplasticity: is a process that involves adaptive structural and functional changes to the brain.
• Object permanence: refers to a child’s understanding that even though something is out of their sight, it still exists.
• Palmer grasp: the ability to grasp an object using the fingers and palm without the thumb.
• Pincer grasp: the ability to grasp an object using the forefinger and thumb.
• Preoperational stage: the second stage of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development where children learn through symbolic and intuitive thought.
• Private speech: a form of expression in which children talk to themselves for clarification or to solve problems.
• Receptive Language: Children’s ability to understand language before they produce speech.
• Schemas: categories of knowledge within the brain that help make sense of and process information.
• Sensitive periods of development: when brain connections reach their peak for certain functions and skills.
• Sensorimotor stage: the first stage of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development where children develop an understanding of the world through their senses.
• Symbolic function substage: a substage of preoperational development that is characterized by gains in symbolic thinking which allows for advances in language development, problem solving and memory.
• Synapses: connections between neurons that help relay information.
• Synaptic pruning: refers to the process by which the brain eliminates certain neural connections and strengthens others.
• Telegraphic speech: when children use two to three word phrases to communicate by leaving out unnecessary words.
• Toxic stress: stress that results in excessive or prolonged activation of stress response systems in the body and brain.
• Tummy time: the practice of placing an infant on a flat surface on their stomachs during awake times.
• Underextension: when children apply a word to all objects that are similar to the original object
• Zone of proximal development: the period of time when a child is close to performing a task independently but needs assistance to complete it.