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Neonate—newborn baby from birth to 1 month old; shows reflexive behavior.

Reflex—the simplest form of behavior. Reflexes of neonate include:

• Rooting reflex—the newborn’s tendency to move its head when stroked on the cheek, turn toward the stimulus as if searching for a nipple, and open its mouth.

• Sucking—the automatic response of drawing in anything at the mouth.

• Swallowing—automatic contraction of throat muscles that enables food to pass into the esophagus without choking.

• Grasping reflex—infant closes his or her fingers tightly around an object put in hand.

• Moro or startle reflex—when exposed to a loud noise or sudden drop, the neonate automatically arches his or her back, flings his or her limbs out, and quickly retracts them.

As the infant matures, developing voluntary control over behaviors, many reflexes disappear.

Psychologists depend on gazes, sucking, and head turning to reveal abilities of infants during habituation studies.

Habituation—decreasing responsiveness with repeated presentation of the same stimulus.

Development proceeds from head to tail, from the center of the body outward, enabling baby to lift its head, roll over, sit, creep, stand, and walk—usually in that order. Proliferation of dendrites at rapid rate is a major way the brain changes during childhood.

Puberty—the early adolescent period, marked by accelerated growth and onset of the ability to reproduce.

Primary sex characteristics—the reproductive organs (ovaries, uterus, and testes) and external genitals (vulva and penis).

Secondary sex characteristics—the nonreproductive sexual characteristics including developed breasts in females; facial hair, Adam’s apple, and deepened voice in males; and pubic hair and underarm hair in both.

Menarche—first menstrual period at about age 121/2, marks female fertility. Male fertility is marked by ejaculation of semen with viable sperm at about age 14. Adolescent brain changes include selective pruning of dendrites and development of emotional limbic system and frontal lobes.

Our physical abilities peak by our mid-20s.

Menopause—the cessation of the ability to reproduce accompanied by a decrease in production of female sex hormones; occurs at about age 50.

Cognitive development:

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development—four sequential and discontinuous stages (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational)—deals with how children think.

Schema—framework of basic ideas and preconceptions about people, objects, and events based on past experience in long-term memory.

Assimilation—process by which we incorporate new information into our existing cognitive structures or schemas.

Accommodation—process by which we modify our schemas to fit new information.

Sensorimotor stage—Piaget’s first stage (0–2 years) during which the infant experiences the world through senses and action patterns; progresses from reflexes to object permanence and symbolic thinking.

• Object permanence—awareness that objects still exist when out of sight.

Preoperational stage—Piaget’s second stage of cognitive development (2–7 years) during which the child represents and manipulates objects with symbols (language) and is egocentric.

• Egocentrism—seeing the world from one’s own perspective; the inability to see reality from the perspective of another person, characteristic of the preoperational child.

• Animism—belief of a preoperational child that all things are living.

• Artificialism—the belief of the preoperational child that all objects are made by people.

Concrete operational stage—Piaget’s third stage of cognitive development (7–12 years) during which the child develops simple logic and masters conservation concepts.

• Conservation concepts—changes in the form of an object do not alter physical properties of mass, volume, and number.

Formal operational stage—Piaget’s fourth stage of cognitive development (12+ years) during which the child begins to think logically about abstract concepts and