Chapter 4

Question 1

Synapses are?

Answer 1

Connections between neurons

Question 2

All brain structures are composed of two types of cells: neurons and glial cells. Millions of these cells are present at birth, and _______ have already begun to form

Answer 2

Synapses

Question 3

Synapses development results from?

Answer 3

Growth of both dendrites and axons

Question 4

Synaptogenesis

Answer 4

The process (creation) of synapse development. Occurs rapidly in the cortex during the first few years after birth, quadrupling the overall weight of the brain by age 4. 
Not smooth and continuous, happens in spurts

Question 5

Each synaptic growth spurt generates?

Answer 5

More connections between neurons than the individual needs. Each spurt of synaptogenesis is followed by a period of pruning in which unnecessary pathways and connections are eliminated

Question 6

What is lateralization?

Answer 6

• The human brain is divided into two hemispheres - left and right hemispheres. Lateralization of brain function means that there are certain mental processes that are mainly specialized to one side or the other.
• Most mental functions are distributed across the hemispheres but there are specific processes that are specialized to one hemisphere. For example, both sides of the brain perform functions related to language. But in most people, grammar and vocabulary are localized to the left side of the brain, while understanding the emotional content of language is a function of the right hemisphere.

Question 7

The purpose of Primitive reflexes

Answer 7

They are controlled by the less sophisticated parts of the brain (the medulla and the midbrain), their purpose is less clear. For example if you make a loud noise or startle a baby you’ll see her throw her arms outward and arch her back, a pattern that is part of the Moro, or startle, reflex. Stroke the bottom of her feet and she will splay out her toes and then curl them in, a reaction called the Babinski reflex. By 6 to 8 mo, primitive reflexes begin to disappear. If such reflexes persist past this age, the baby may have some kind of neurological problem

Question 8

Humans are born with many _____ ______ that help them survive

Answer 8

Adaptive reflexes. Some as automatically sucking any object that enters the mouth, disappear in infancy or childhood. Others protect us against harmful stimuli over the whole lifespan. These include withdrawal from a painful stimulus and the opening and closing of the pupil of the eye in response to variations in brightness.
* Weak or absent adaptive reflexes in neonates suggest that the brain is not functioning properly and that the infant requires additional assessment

Question 9

Sucking Reflex

Answer 9

an infant’s response in sucking on any object put in it’s mouth

Question 10

Babinski Reflex

Answer 10

An infants reaction to someone running a thumbnail right up the center bottom of the foot, the baby will flare out their toes and press the foot against the stimulus

Question 11

Moro Reflex

Answer 11

Sudden extension of neck r/in flexion, abd of shoulders, extension of elbows, and then extension, abd of shoulders, flexion of elbows. CRY! TEST LAST!

Question 12

Colic

Answer 12

An infant behavior pattern of involving intense daily bouts of crying totaling 3 or more hours a day

Question 13

About ____ % of infants develop colic, a pattern involving intense bouts of crying totaling 3 or more hours a day, for no immediately apparent reason such as hunger or a wet diaper. Typically, colic appears at about?

Answer 13

15-20%
2 Weeks of age and then disappears spontaneously at 3-4 months. The crying is generally worst in late afternoon or early evening. No one knows why colic begins or why it stops w/out any intervention.

Question 14

SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome)

Answer 14

• Most deaths after the first month of life are caused by SIDS
• Apparently healthy infant dies suddenly and unexpectedly
• Leading cause of death in the United States among infants between 1 month and 1 year of age
• A few clues: more common in winter when babies may be suffering from viral infections that cause breathing difficulties, babies w/a history of apnea
• More frequent among babies who sleep on their stomachs or sides, smoking by mother during pregnancy or anyone in household
• Infants who show increasingly lengthy sleep periods during the early months are at lower risk of dying from SIDS than babies who sleep periods do not get much longer as they get older

Question 15

Visual Acuity

Answer 15

How well one can see details at a distance

Question 16

The usual standard for visual acuity in adults is?

Answer 16

“20/20” vision. This means that you can identify something 20 feet away that the average person can also see at 20 feet.

• A person with 20/100 vision, in contrast, has to be as close as 20 feet to see something that the ordinary person can see at 100 feet. The higher the 2nd number, the poorer the person’s visual acuity.
• At birth, infant’s acuity is in the range of 20/200 to 20/400, but it improves rapidly during the first year as a result of synaptogenesis, pruning, and myelination in the neurons that serve the eyes and the brain’s vision processing centers.
• Experts believe that most children reach the level of 20/20 vision by about 6 months of age/ 2 years of age

Question 17

Habituation

Answer 17

A decline in attention that occurs because a stimulus has become familiar

Question 18

Dishabituation

Answer 18

Responding to a somewhat familiar stimulus as if it were new

Question 19

Habituation is? Dishabituation is?

Answer 19

Habituation: Getting used to a stimulus
Dishabituation: opposite of habituation. It is responding to a somewhat familiar stimulus as if it were new.

Question 20

Depth perception

Answer 20

Ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional.

Question 21

Visual Cliff

Answer 21

A laboratory device for testing depth perception, especially in infants and young animals. In their experiments , Gibson and Walk found strong evidence that depth perception is at least in part innate.

Question 22

Who devised the visual cliff?

Answer 22

Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk (1960)

Question 23

What did the visual cliff experiment show?

Answer 23

Showed that 6-month-olds have depth perception