Ch 3 Cognitive Development: Building a Foundation for Language Flashcards
Assimilation
The process of using existing schemata to include new information.
Schema
A category that we use to process, identify, store, and retrieve information in our brains.
Accomodation
When a new schemata is developed to allow for the organization of information that does not fit existing schema.
Equilibrium
A cognitive process to maintain a balance between existing schemata (assimilation) and the creation of new schemata (accomodation).
Piaget’s 4 stages of intellectual development
1) Sensorimotor Intelligence (Birth to 2 years)
2) Preoperational Thought (2 to 7 years)
3) Concrete Operations (7 to 11 years)
4) Formal Operations (11 to 15 years)
1) Sensorimotor Intelligence (Birth to 2 years)
Most behaviors are reflexive and motor. Interaction with environment is mostly physical and unlearned ways, especially earlier in the stage.
2) Preoperational Thought (2 to 7 years)
Conceptual thought begins and the most rapid period of language development occurs.
3) Concrete Operations (7 to 11 years)
The ability to think logically in dealing with concrete or physical problems is developed, along with the ability to place stimuli into categories based on order and levels.
4) Formal Operations (11 to 15 years)
Cognitive abilities become fully developed. The child is able to think abstractly, to solve problems mentally, and to develop and test mental hypotheses.
Perception
The processes by which a person selects, organizes, integrates, and interprets sensory stimuli.
Distancing
Something that happens during perceptual development, where a child relates to stimuli from a greater and greater distance over time.
Representation
The idea that a stimulus can stand for or represent something else.
Object Permanence
Knowing that objects exist in time and space even if you cannot see or act on them.
Causality
The understanding that events can cause other events.
Means-Ends
A conceptual extension of causality; the understanding that there are ways (means) to attain a goal (end).
Imitation
Duplication of models you hear and see.
Delayed or deferred imitation
Very important because it allows children to produce a desired behavior even when the model is not present.
Play
Child-directed activities that provide the child with opportunities for learning.
Symbolic Play
A form of play in which one object represents another object.
Communication
Conceptual development contributes to the ever increasing development of a child’s language ability.
Private speech
Egocentric speech in which the child guides themselves through actions by speaking out loud. As development continues, this slowly goes away and is replaced by thinking through things in a language in one’s mind.
Zone of Proximal Development
A zone of tasks in which the child needs help, and the help generally comes in the form of language.
Intersubjectivity
When two people working together on a common task with different levels of understanding about how the task can or should be accomplished manage to merge what they know into a shared understanding as the task is completed. In this kind of interaction, each partner accommodates the viewpoint and competence of the other partner.
Scaffolding
When an adult provides cognitive and language scaffolds to their child through responses and interaction with their child. The level of difficulty can be adjusted for proper building of language and cognition.
Dynamic Systems Theory
Each individual moment of knowing reflects the context specific integration of these components and sets the stage for the next interaction between the child and the context. Over time, stable patterns of behavior emerge as many individual interactions are laid down over the course of a child’s developmental history. Variability and change emerge as the system is pushed into new forms of organization by the specifics of individual contexts, abilities, and experiences.
Shape Bias
The generalization of novel names to new instances that match in shape. Generalizations based on shape help children learn new words.
Perceptual Stimulation
When a person recognizes that stimuli are present and reacts to the major characteristics of the stimuli.
Cognitive Stimulation
When one not only recognizes stimuli by their sensory characteristics but also understands what they mean and how they compare to other stimuli he has received.
Executive Functions
A set of control processes in the human brain that allow us to maintain attention, inhibit irrelevant associations, and use working memory.
Controlled Attention
The capacity to maintain and hold relevant information, especially when there are internal or external distractions or interferences in the environment.
Working Memory
The voluntary, focused, and exclusive processing and maintenance of task relevant information.
Theory of Mind
An understanding of mental states that develops over time to assist us in considering other people’s thoughts, feelings, and knowledge.
