| A | B |
|---|
| Empathy | Identification with and appreciation for another’s situation and feelings. |
| Executive function | The part of the brain that helps you plan and that organizes other parts of the brain for various tasks, which develops during the preschool years . |
| Growth, migration, and differentiation | Refers to cell growth which moves to parts of the brain where the cells differentiate. |
| Intersubjectivity | A feeling of mutual understanding that an individual experiences when he or she shares attention and adapts behavior to communicate. |
| Social referencing | Refers to a child’s ability to check another individual’s facial expression to judge the emotional meaning of a situation. |
| Strange situation | Refers to research situation that assesses the quality of a child’s relationship to one caregiver. |
| Self-regulation | A core ability that enables children to pace and control their feelings and behaviors. |
| “Magical thinking”: | Occurs when children have unrealistic reasons for causes of events or actions. |
| Temperament | Refers to an individual’s behavioral style that plays a role in self-regulation. Temperament has been found to be hereditary but is influenced by environmental experiences. |
| Theory of mind | The ability to think about one’s own and other people’s thinking. |
| Symbolic play | Occurs when children go beyond the obvious attributes and qualities of the available play materials. When this occurs, children have to imagine attributes and qualities so that the plaything can represent something more or different. |
| Constructive play | When children combine and arrange objects to construct something new . |
| Dramatic play | Interactive and open-ended process in which children invent symbols for ideas, feelings, and issues. |
| Functional play | Play that involves actions and the body. Infants and toddlers engage in this type of play when they move parts of their bodies and objects. |
| Traumatic play | Play that originates from a child experiencing a traumatic situation that is usually grim or businesslike. This type of play will have an urgent quality that contains the aftereffects of fear, rage, or helplessness that are the result of the traumatic event. |
