Glossary
The 25 science terms in Big Bang Baby, each in a sentence or two, with the chapter where the book develops it.
Short answer: Big Bang Baby uses 25 science terms, from attachment and co-regulation to sensitive periods, synaptic pruning and serve-and-return. The thread tying most of them together: development starts as one tightly linked system, then separates, and its windows narrow gradually rather than closing overnight.
Jump to: Attachment · Authoritative parenting · Competence–performance gap · Co-regulation · Core knowledge · Coupling/decoupling · Critical period · Differentiation · Executive function · Experience-expectant development · Experience-dependent development · Internal working model · Myelination · Object permanence · Overproduction (synaptogenesis) · Plasticity · Pruning (synaptic pruning) · Scaffolding · Sensitive period · Serve-and-return · Social referencing · Stress (positive/tolerable/toxic) · Temperament · Theory of mind · Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
Terms, A to Z
- Attachment
- The lasting bond a baby forms with her caregivers, which Bowlby saw as a biological foundation of development. Ainsworth described secure, avoidant and ambivalent patterns; Main and Solomon added disorganized.
In the book: Chapters 1 and 5 · See also: Internal working model · Relationships and stress - Baumrind's pairing of warmth with firm expectations: holding a limit while keeping the relationship intact. Research ties it to the best outcomes. Not authoritarian parenting, which is control without warmth.
In the book: Chapter 5 · See also: Relationships and stress - Competence–performance gap
- Babies often understand more than their bodies let them show. Baillargeon's looking-time studies suggested infants expect a hidden toy to still be there months earlier than Piaget believed.
In the book: Chapter 1 · See also: Object permanence · Core knowledge - Co-regulation
- A child leaning on an adult's calm before she has her own. The baby cries, the adult soothes, and self-regulation is slowly built on that shared loop.
In the book: Chapter 4 · See also: Executive function · Relationships and stress - Core knowledge
- Elizabeth Spelke's idea that babies seem to arrive with built-in expectations about objects, quantity, space, and other beings who act on purpose, rather than learning everything from scratch.
In the book: Chapter 1 - Coupling/decoupling
- How tightly a child's developmental areas move together. Early on, a gain in one carries the others; through the first year they loosen into more separate paths without becoming unrelated.
In the book: Chapters 2 and 4 · See also: Differentiation · In the beginning, everything is everything · Kinedu data on coupling - Critical period
- A window that really does close for good, such as the one for judging depth with both eyes. Such hard cutoffs exist but are rare in early childhood.
In the book: Chapter 2 · See also: Sensitive period · Sensitive windows - Differentiation
- How one tightly knit developmental system gradually separates into distinct areas, each on its own schedule. In the book's cosmic language, the universe cooling.
In the book: Chapter 4 · See also: Coupling/decoupling · In the beginning, everything is everything - Executive function
- The brain's management skills: holding back an impulse, keeping information in mind, and shifting between approaches. They build slowly and mature only in adulthood.
In the book: Chapter 1 - Experience-expectant development
- Growth that needs only what almost every loving home supplies: faces, voices, being held. The brain evolved to count on these inputs being there.
In the book: Chapter 3 · See also: Experience-dependent development - Experience-dependent development
- Growth shaped by the particular things a child meets: the language she hears, the games she plays, the habits around her. It is where children become distinctly themselves.
In the book: Chapter 3 · See also: Experience-expectant development - Internal working model
- Bowlby's term for the inner blueprint of relationships a child forms from her earliest bonds, which colors how she later handles emotions and other people.
In the book: Chapter 1 · See also: Attachment - Myelination
- Coating the brain's pathways in fatty insulation so signals travel faster. It moves roughly from sensory and motor regions toward the prefrontal cortex, and continues for decades.
In the book: Chapter 3 - Object permanence
- Knowing that a thing still exists after it disappears from view. Later research suggests babies grasp this much sooner than Piaget thought, possibly by three and a half months.
In the book: Chapter 1 · See also: Competence–performance gap - Overproduction (synaptogenesis)
- In the first years the brain builds far more connections than it will keep. That surplus is what gives early experience such a large say in which ones last.
In the book: Chapter 3 · See also: Pruning (synaptic pruning) · Plasticity - Plasticity
- How readily the brain rewires in response to experience. It is greatest in the first years and tapers gradually afterward: a gentle downhill, not a sudden drop.
In the book: Chapter 2 · See also: Sensitive period · Sensitive windows - Pruning (synaptic pruning)
- The brain's removal of unused connections, so a child's experiences decide which ones remain. Like a sculptor, development shapes by taking material away.
In the book: Chapter 3 · See also: Overproduction (synaptogenesis) - Scaffolding
- Help an adult offers so a child can manage something just beyond what she can do alone, withdrawn bit by bit as she masters it (Wood, Bruner and Ross).
In the book: Chapter 1 · See also: Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) · Play - Sensitive period
- A stretch when the brain is especially ready for a particular kind of experience. The window narrows gradually instead of closing at once: sooner is easier, later remains possible.
In the book: Chapter 2 · See also: Critical period · Sensitive windows · what the Kinedu curves show - Serve-and-return
- The back-and-forth between a baby and an adult: she sends a signal, like a coo, a look or a point, and you answer it. A basic engine of early development.
In the book: Chapter 5 · See also: Play · Bath time - Faced with something uncertain, a baby glances at a caregiver's face to decide how to react. It appears around six to eight months and peaks at roughly ten to fourteen.
In the book: Chapters 2 and 4 · See also: Sensitive windows - Stress (positive/tolerable/toxic)
- Shonkoff's three kinds: positive (brief friction that builds growth), tolerable (serious but eased by a caring adult) and toxic (severe, lasting, unbuffered). The adult buffer changes the outcome.
In the book: Chapter 5 · See also: Co-regulation · Relationships and stress - Temperament
- A child's inborn style, such as how active, reactive or adaptable she is, visible from infancy. It helps explain why siblings raised in the same home turn out so different.
In the book: Chapter 2 · See also: Why siblings are different - Theory of mind
- Grasping that other people have their own thoughts, wishes and beliefs, which may not match yours. It develops gradually through the preschool years.
In the book: Chapter 4 - Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
- Vygotsky's band between what a child does alone and what she can do only with help. Below it, nothing new is learned; above it, the task is out of reach.
In the book: Chapter 1 · See also: Scaffolding · Play
None of these definitions is a diagnosis. If something about your own child worries you and persists over months, talk to your pediatrician. The full explanation of every term is in the book; read the Introduction free.
Sources
- Big Bang Baby, Glossary and Chapters 1–5 (definitions here are paraphrased, not quoted).
- Big Bang Baby, Research Primer, Chapters 1–5, for the research behind each term.
- Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment. Erlbaum. Main, M., & Solomon, J. (1986, 1990) on the disorganized pattern.
- Baumrind, D. (1971). Current patterns of parental authority. Developmental Psychology Monographs, 4(1, Pt. 2), 1–103.
- Spelke, E. S. (2000). Core knowledge. American Psychologist, 55(11), 1233–1243.
- Wood, D., Bruner, J. S., & Ross, G. (1976). The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17(2), 89–100.
- Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Harvard University Press.
- Shonkoff, J. P., Garner, A. S., et al. (2012). The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress. Pediatrics, 129(1), e232–e246.
- Stenhaug, B., Ram, N., & Frank, M. C. (2021). The Structure of Developmental Variation in Early Childhood [Preprint]. PsyArXiv.