The model asserts that infants first come into this world with certain basic adaptive processes (BAPs) which permit them to adapt, with greater or lesser effectiveness and efficiency, to their environment (See Stage 1 of Figure 1). Examples of these basic processes are: hearing and seeing, which are BAPs for the reception of sound and light; motor movement, which is the BAP for orienting to and manipulating the environment; and the cognitive BAPs, which include the basis for a memory system and rudimentary ways of processing (ie., storing, retrieving, and using) information.

Table 1

Definitions Used in the Model

  1. Basic Adaptive Processes (BAPs): Sensory, Perceptual, Motor, and Cognitive capacities operating at birth by means of which the infant adapts to the environment.
    1. Hearing: BAP for reception of sound.
    2. Seeing: BAP for reception of light.
    3. Motor Movement: BAP for orienting to and manipulating the environment.
    4. Cognitive: BAP for storing, retrieving, and using information.
  2. Precursors to the receptive processes for languaging.
    1. Listening: Selecting and attending to excitation in the auditory modality.
    2. Looking: Selecting and attending to excitation in the visual modality.
  3. Precursors to the expressive processes for languaging.
    1. Uttering: Production of vocal sounds; i.e., sounds produced using the larynx and oral cavities.
    2. Marking: Manual motor movements producing marks (lines, scribbles) on environmental surfaces.
  4. Language (noun): System of a) conventionalized signs, and b) rules for selecting and sequencing these signs.
    1. Language (verb-to language, languaging): Representation of conceptualizations by properly ordered sequences of signs; or the inverse process of understanding the conceptualizations underlying the sequences of signs produced by others.
  5. Gracy Processes
    1. Auding: Listening to speech in order to language.
    2. Speaking: Uttering in order to language.
  6. Literacy Processes
    1. Reading: Looking at script in order to language.
    2. Writing: Marking in order to language.