Ch. 6 Definitions Flashcards
Schemes
Actions or mental representations that organize knowledge (Piaget’s theory)
Assimilation
Concept in which children use existing schemes to incorporate new information (Piaget’s theory)
Accommodation
Concept of adjusting schemes to fit new information and experiences (Piaget’s theory)
Organization
Concept of grouping isolated behaviors and thoughts into higher-order, more smoothly functioning cognitive systems (Piaget’s theory)
Equilibration
Mechanism proposed to explain how children shift from one stage of thought to the next (Piaget’s theory)
Sensorimotor stage
Birth to 2; during which infants construct understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences with physical, motoric actions (Piaget’s theory, stage 1)
Object permanence
The understanding that objects exist even when they cannot directly be seen, heard, touched (Piaget’s theory, first sensorimotor stage)
A-not-B error
Selecting familiar hiding place of an object rather than its new hiding place (Piaget’s theory, substage 4 of sensorimotor stage)
Core knowledge approach
Infants are born with domain-specific innate knowledge systems such as space, number sense, object permanence, language
Preoperational stage
Age 2-7; children represent the world with words, images, drawings (Piaget’s theory, second stage)
Operations
Reversible mental actions that allow children to do mentally what before they had done only physically
Symbolic function substage
Age 2-4; ability to represent mentally an object that is not present (Piaget’s theory, first substage of preoperational thought)
Egocentrism
Inability to distinguish between one’s own and someone else’s perspective (Piaget’s theory, key in preoperational thought)
Animism
Belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and are capable of action (Piaget’s theory, key part of preoperational thought)
Intuitive thought substage
Age 4-7; using primitive reasoning to consider all sorts of questions (Piaget’s theory, second substage of preoperational thought)
Centration
Focusing attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others
Conservation
Awareness that altering the appearance of an object/substance does not change its basic properties
Concrete operational stage
Age 7-11; children can perform concrete operations and logical reasoning replaces intuitive reasoning as long as the reasoning can be applied to specific or concrete examples (Piaget’s theory, third stage)
Seriation
Concrete operation that involves ordering stimuli along a quantitative dimension (such as length)
Transivity
Ability to logically combine relations to understand certain conclusions (Piaget’s theory, concrete operational stage)
Formal operational stage
Appears between age 11-15; moving beyond concrete experiences and think in more abstract and logical ways (Piaget’s theory)
Hypothetical-deductive reasoning
Cognitive ability to develop hypotheses about ways to solve problems and can systematically deduce which is the best path to follow in solving the problem (Piaget’s theory, formal operational stage)
Adolescent egocentrism
Heightened self-consciousness of adolescents which is reflected in the belief that others are as interested in them as they are interested in themselves; personal uniqueness and invincibility (Piaget’s theory, formal operational stage)
Imaginary audience
Aspect of adolescent egocentrism involving feeling that one is the center of attention as if on a stage
Personal fable
Aspect of adolescent egocentrism involving a person’s sense of uniqueness/invincibility
Neo-Piagetians
Developmentalists who have elaborated on Piaget’s theory, emphasizing attention to children’s strategies, information-processing speed, task involved, division of the problem into more precise, smaller steps
Zone of Proximal Development
Tasks that are too difficult for children to master alone but can be mastered with assistance from adults or more-skilled children (Vygotsky)
Scaffolding
Changing level of support over the course of a teaching session, adjusting guidance to fit the child’s performance level (Vygotsky)
Social constructivist approach
Emphasis on social contexts of learning and construction of knowledge though social interaction (Vygotsky’s is one such approach)
Postformal thought
Thinking that is reflective, relativistic, and contextual; provisional; realistic; and influenced by emotions
