Chapter 4 Infancy: Early Learning, Motor Skills and Perceptual CapacitiesVocabulary:Affordances: The action possibilities that a situation offers an organism with certain motor capabilities. Discovery of affordances plays a vital role in perceptual differentiation.Amodal sensory properties: Information that is not specific to a single modality but that overlaps two or more sensory systems, such as rate, rhythm, duration, intensity, temporal synchrony and texture and shape. Classical conditioning: a form of learning that involves associating a neutral stimulus with a stimulus that leads to a reflexive response. Once the nervous system makes the connection between the two stimuli, the new stimulus with produce the behavior by itself.Conditioned response: in classical conditioning, a new response produced by a conditioned stimulus that is similar to the unconditioned, reflexive response.Conditioned stimulus: in classical conditioning, a neutral stimulus that through pairing with an unconditioned stimulus, leads to a conditioned response. Contrast sensitivity: a general principle accounting for early pattern preferences, which states that if babies can detect a difference in contrast between two or more patterns, they will prefer the one with more contrast. Differentiation theory: the view that perceptual development involves the detection of increasingly fine-grained, invariant features of the environment. Dynamic systems theory of motor development: a theory that views new motor skills as reorganizations of previously mastered skills, which lead to more effective ways of exploring and controlling the environment. Each new skill is a joint product of central nervous system development, the body’s movement possibilities, the child’s goals, and environmental supports for the skill.Extinction: in classical conditioning, decline of the conditioned response as a result of presenting the conditioned stimulus enough times, without being paired with the unconditioned stimulus. Habituation: a gradual reduction in the strength of a response due to repetitive stimulation.Imitation: learning by copying the behavior of another person. Also known as modeling or observational learning.Intermodal perception: perception that combines simultaneous input from more than one modality, or sensory system, resulting in an integrated whole.Invariant features: features that remain stable in a constantly changing perceptual world.Mirror neurons: specialized cells in many areas of the cerebral cortex in primates that underlie the ability to imitate by firing identically when a primate hears or sees an action and when it carries out that action on its own.Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS): a test developed to assess a newborn infant’s behavioral status by evaluation of the baby’s reflexes, muscle tone, state changes,and responsiveness to physical and social stimuli. Non-rapid-eye-movement (NREM) Sleep: A “regular” sleep state in which the body is almost motionless and heart rate, breathing, and brain wave activity are slow and even. Distinguished from REM sleep.Operant conditioning: a form of learning in which a spontaneous behavior is followed by a stimulus that changes the probability that the behavior will occur again.Perceptual Narrowing Effect: perceptual sensitivity that becomes increasingly attuned with age to information most often encountered. Pincer Grasp: the well-coordinated grasp that emerges at the end of the first year, involving thumb and index finger opposition.Pre Reaching: the poorly coordinated, primitive reaching movements of newborn babies.Punishment: in operant conditioning, removal of a desirable stimulus or presentation of an unpleasant stimulus, either of which decreases the occurrence of a response. Rapid-eye-movement Sleep (REM): an “irregular” sleep state in which electrical brain-wave activity is similar to that of the waking state: eyes dart beneath the lids; heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing are uneven; and slight body movements occur. Distinguished from NREM sleep.Recovery: following habituation, an increase in responsiveness to a new stimulus.Reflex: an inborn, automatic response to a particular form of stimulationReinforcer: in operant conditioning, a stimulus that increases the occurrence of a response. Shape constancy: perception of an object’s shape as stable, despite changes in the shape projected on the retina. Size constancy: perception of an object’s size as stable, despite changes in the size of its retinal image. States of arousal: different stages of sleep and wakefulness.Statistical learning capacity: the capacity to analyze the speech stream for repeatedly occurring sound sequences, through which infants acquire a stock of speech structures forwhich they will later learn meanings.Sudden infant death syndrome: the unexpected death, usually during the night, of an infant under 1 year of age that remains unexplained after thorough investigation.Ulnar grasp: the clumsy grasp of the young, infant, in which the fingers close against the palm.Unconditioned response: in classical conditioning, a reflexive response that is produced by an unconditioned stimulus.Unconditioned stimulus: in classical conditioning, a stimulus that consistently produces a reflexive, or unconditioned response. Visual acuity: fineness of visual discriminationVisual cliff: an apparatus used to study depth perception in infants, consisting of a plexi-glass covered table with a central platform, from which babies are encouraged to crawl. Checkerboard patterns placed at different distances beneath the glass create the appearance of a shallow and deep