Ch. 5 Cognitive Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood

Question 1

Accommodation

Answer 1

We create new schemes or adjust old ones after noticing our current ways of thinking do not capture the environment completely.

Question 2

Adaptation

Answer 2

Involves building schemes through direct interaction with the environment.

Question 3

Assimilation

Answer 3

We use our current schemes to interpret the external world. “When Tommy dropped objects, he was assimilating them to his sensorimotor “dropping scheme”.

Question 4

Autobiographical memory

Answer 4

We can recall many personally meaningful one-time events from both the recent and the distant past: recollections of the day a sibling was born or a new house.

Question 5

Automatic processes

Answer 5

Are so well-learned that they require no space in working memory and, therefore, permit us to focus on other information while performing them.

Question 6

Babbling

Answer 6

When infants repeat consonant-vowel combinations “babababa” or “nananana” in an effort to gain control over producing particular sounds.

Question 7

Central Executive System

Answer 7

Directs the flow of information, implementing the basic procedures just mentioned, and also engaging in more sophisticated activities that enable complex flexible thinking. The central executive coordinates incoming information with info already in the system, and it selects, applies, and monitors strategies that facilitate memory storage, comprehension, reasoning, and problem-solving.

Question 8

Circular Reaction

Answer 8

Provides a special means of adapting baby’s first schemes. It involves stumbling onto a new experience caused by the baby’s own motor activity. The reaction is “circular” because, as the infant tries to repeat the event, again and again, a sensorimotor response that first occurred by chance strengthens into a new scheme.

Question 9

Cooing

Answer 9

Around 2 months, babies begin to make vowel-like noises because of the pleasant “oo” sound.

Question 10

Core Knowledge Perspective

Answer 10

Babies are born with a set of innate knowledge systems or core domains of thought. Each of these prewired understandings permits a ready grasp of new, related information and therefore supports early rapid development.

Question 11

Deferred Imitation

Answer 11

The ability to remember and copy the behavior of models who are not present.

Question 12

Developmentally Appropriate Practice

Answer 12

These standards, devised by the US National Associate for the Education of Young Children, specify program characteristics that serve young children’s developmental and individual needs, based on both current research and consensus among experts

Question 13

Displaced Reference

Answer 13

Early attainment of symbolic understanding: the realization that words can be used to cue mental images of things not physically present.

Question 14

Developmental Quotients

Answer 14

Because most infant test scores do not tap the same dimensions of intelligence assessed in older children, they usually are conservatively labeled as DQ.

Question 15

Executive Function

Answer 15

The diverse cognitive operations and strategies enable us to achieve our goals in cognitively challenging situations.

Question 16

Expressive Style of Language Learning

Answer 16

When children produce many more social formulas and pronouns “thank you, done, I want it”

Question 17

Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment

Answer 17

Is a checklist for gathering information about the quality of children’s home lives through observation and prenatal interview.

Question 18

Infant-directed Speech (IDS)

Answer 18

A form of communication made up of short sentences with high-pitched, exaggerated expression, clear pronunciation, distinct pauses between speech segments, clear gestures to support verbal meaning, and repetition of new words in a variety of contexts.

Question 19

Infantile Amnesia

Answer 19

That most of us can retrieve few, if any, events that happened to us before age 2 to 3.

Question 20

Intelligence Quotient

Answer 20

In intelligence tests: indicates the extent to which the raw score (number of items passed) deviates from the typical performance of same-age individuals.

Question 21

Intentional, goal-directed behavior

Answer 21

Coordinating schemes deliberately to solve simple problems. If an object is hidden, the infant might coordinate two schemes “pushing” aside from the obstacle and “grasping” the toy = foundation for problem-solving.

Question 22

Joint Attention

Answer 22

The child attends to the same object or event as the caregiver, who often labels it, contributes to early language development.

Question 23

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

Answer 23

An innate system that contains a universal grammar, or set of rules common to all languages. It enables children, no matter what language they hear, to understand and speak in a rule-oriented fashion as soon as they pick up enough words.

Question 24

Long-term Memory

Answer 24

Our permanent knowledge base

Question 25

Make-believe play

Answer 25

In which children act out everyday and imaginary activities.

Question 26

Mental Representation

Answer 26

Internal depictions of information that the mind can manipulate (images, or mental pictures of objects, people, and spaces, and concepts, or categories in which similar objects or events are grouped together).

Question 27

Normal Distribution

Answer 27

(Intelligence Testing standardization) in which most scores cluster around the mean, or average, with progressively fewer falling toward the extremes. This bell-shaped distribution results whenever researchers measure individual differences in large samples.

Question 28

Object Permanence

Answer 28

The understanding that objects continue to exist when out of sight. (Piaget)

Question 29

Organization

Answer 29

A process that occurs internally, apart from direct contact with the environment. Once children form new schemes they rearrange them, linking them with other schemes to create a strongly interconnected cognitive system. (Timmy will relate “dropping” to “throwing” and to his developing understanding of “nearness” and “farness”.

Question 30

Overextension

Answer 30

Applying a word to a wider collection of objects and events than is appropriate. When a toddler uses the word “car” for buses, trains, and trucks.

Question 31

Recall

Answer 31

Involves remembering something not present. By the middle of the first year, infants are capable of recall (ability to find hidden objects and engage in deferred imitation).

Question 32

Recognition

Answer 32

Noticing when a stimulus is identical or similar to one previously experienced (kicking, pressing a lever, or looking)

Question 33

Referential Style of Language Learning

Answer 33

Most toddler vocabularies consist mainly of words that refer to objects.

Question 34

Scheme

Answer 34

Specific psychological structures - organized ways of making sense of experience.

Question 35

Sensorimotor stage

Answer 35

Spans the first two years of life. Piaget believed that infants and toddlers “think” with their senses and other sensorimotor equipment. They can’t carry out many activities inside their heads.

Question 36

Sensory Register

Answer 36

Where sights and sounds are represented directly and stored briefly. If you look at something and store it, eventually it decays or disappears unless you use mental strategies to preserve it.

Question 37

Short-Term Memory Store

Answer 37

The second part of the mind retains attended-to information briefly so we can actively “work on” it to reach our goals.

Question 38

Standardization

Answer 38

(Intelligence Testing) Giving the test to a large, representative sample and using the results as the standard for interpreting scores.

Question 39

Telegraphic Speech

Answer 39

Two-word utterances that sound like a telegram and focus on high-content words and omitting smaller less important words “mommy shoe”

Question 40

Underextention

Answer 40

When young children first learn words, they sometimes apply them too narrowly “bear” to refer to a stuffed toy.

Question 41

Video deficit

Answer 41

Poorer performance after viewing a video than a live demonstration.

Question 42

Violation-of-expectation method

Answer 42

To discover what infants know about hidden objects and other aspects of physical reality, research may habituate babies to a physical event (expose them to the event until their looking declines) to familiarize them with a situation in which their knowledge will be tested. Or show babies an expected event and an unexpected event that violates their reality. Heightened attention to the unexpected event suggests that the infant is “surprised” by a deviation from physical reality and is aware of that aspect of the physical world.

Question 43

Working Memory

Answer 43

The number of items can be briefly held in mind while also engaging in some effort to monitor or manipulate those items. Thought of as a “mental workspace” that we use to accomplish many activities in daily life.

Question 44

Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky)

Answer 44

The z of p refers to a range of tasks that the child cannot yet handle alone but can do with the help of more skilled partners.