Module 2 Flashcards
Heredity
transmission of characteristics from parents to offspring
* Height (body proportion, hand size, etc.)
* Eye color
* Gender
* Handedness
Critical Period
A specific time in the organism’s life when it
must experience a particular task or environmental
constraint
Sensitive Period
A time in the organism’s life when it is most
sensitive to a particular task or environmental constraint.
Experience-Expectant Development
the readiness of the brain to receive specific types of
information from the environment
Experience‐Dependent Development
the brain’s adaptation to environmental information
Neuromaturation
change comes from biologically-driven ‘maturing’ of the CNS
Information processing
-Change is due increase in knowledge base (brain’s memory),
and information processing capacity
-Brain is like a computer
Motor Program
-pre-structured set of motor commands selected by the CNS and sent to the peripheral nervous system
-Evidence for motor control in the
absence of feedback
Dynamical systems
-change is self-organizing, nonlinear, and due to constraints (task, organism, environmental)
-any system that changes in time
Degrees of Freedom
-the number of independent elements to be controlled
Bernstein’s Two Problems
Degrees of freedom and context-conditioned variability
Vestibular System
System that provides information about orientation of the body
Somatosensation
System that provides information about sensations pertaining to the body
