Ch. 8 - Cognitive Development: Piaget's Theory, Case's Non-Piagetian Theory, and Vygotsky's Sociocultural Viewpoint Flashcards
What is cognition?
The activity of knowing and the processes through which knowledge is acquired
What is cognitive development?
Changes that occur in mental activities such as attending, perceiving, learning, thinking, and remembering
What is genetic epistemology?
The experimental study of the development of knowledge, developed by Piaget
What is cognitive equilibrium?
Piaget’s term for the state of affairs in which there is a balanced, or harmonious, relation
What is a constructivist?
One who gains knowledge by acting or otherwise operating on objects and events to discover their properties
What is a scheme?
An organized pattern of thought or action that a child constructs to make sense of some aspect of his or her experience; Piaget sometimes uses the term cognitive structures as a synonym for schemes
What is organization?
An inborn tendency to combine and integrate available schemes into coherent systems or bodies of knowledge
What is the sensorimotor period?
Piaget’s first intellectual stage, from birth to 2 years, when infants are relying on behavioural schemes as a means of exploring and understanding the environment
What is intelligence, according to Piaget?
In Piaget’s theory, a basic life function that enables an organism to adapt to its environment
What is adaptation?
An inborn tendency to adjust to the demands of the environment
What is assimilation?
The process of interpreting new experiences by incorporating them into existing schemes
What is accommodation?
The process of modifying existing schemes in order to incorporate or adapt to new experiences
What is an invariant developmental sequence?
A series of developments that occur in one particular order because each development in the sequence is a prerequisite for those appearing later
Describe the reflex activity substage?
First substage of Piaget’s sensorimotor stage; infants’ actions are confined to exercising innate reflexes, assimilating new objects into these reflexive schemes, and accommodating their reflexes to these novel objects
Describe the primary circular reactions substage?
Second substage of Piaget’s sensorimotor stage; a pleasurable response, centred on the infant’s own body, that is discovered by chance and performed over and over
Describe the secondary circular reactions substage?
Third substage of Piaget’s sensorimotor stage; a pleasurable response, centred on an external object, that is discovered by chance and performed over and over
Describe the coordination of secondary circular reactions substage?
Fourth substage of Piaget’s sensorimotor stage; infants begin to coordinate two or more actions to achieve simple objectives. This is the first sign of goal-directed behaviour.
Describe the tertiary circular reactions substage?
Fifth substage of Piaget’s sensorimotor stage; an exploratory scheme in which the infant devises a new method of acting on objects to reproduce interesting results
Describe the inner experimentation substage?
Sixth substage of Piaget’s sensorimotor stage; the ability to solve simple problems on a mental, or symbolic, level without having to rely on trial-and-error experimentation
What is deferred imitation?
The ability to reproduce a modelled activity that has been witnessed at some point in the past
What is object permanence?
The realization that objects continue to exist when they are no longer visible or detectable through the other senses
What is the A-not-B error?
Tendency of 8- to 12-month-olds to search for a hidden object where they previously found it even after they have seen it moved to a new location
According to Piaget, what does the term ‘accommodation’ refer to?
a. the modification or distortion of new information in order to incorporate it into current schemes
b. the fact that every structure has its genesis in previous structures
c. the tendency to integrate structures into higher-order systems of structures
d. the changing of a current scheme in order to incorporate new information
d. the changing of a current scheme in order to incorporate new information
According to Piaget, what does the term ‘cognitive equilibration’ refer to?
a. the tendency to integrate structures into higher-order systems or structures
b. the individual seeking to stabilize his or her cognitive structures
c. the tendency to modify structures in order to incorporate new information into existing structures
d. the fact that every structure has its genesis (i.e., its origins) in earlier structures
b. the individual seeking to stabilize his or her cognitive structures
Professor Johanson believes that children’s thinking follows an invariant developmental sequence. Does Professor Johanson generally agree or disagree with Piaget?
a. Professor Johanson agrees with Piaget and is a stage theorist.
b. Professor Johanson agrees with Piaget and is not a stage theorist.
c. Professor Johanson disagrees with Piaget and believes that children’s thinking is uneven at different times of development.
d. Professor Johanson disagrees with Piaget and believes that children’s thinking strongly reflects sociocultural influence.
a. Professor Johanson agrees with Piaget and is a stage theorist.
What is neo-nativism?
Idea that much cognitive knowledge, such as the object concept, is innate, requiring little in the way of specific experiences to be expressed, and that there are biological constraints, in that the mind/brain is designed to process certain types of information in certain ways
What are theory theories?
Theories of cognitive development that combine neo-nativism and constructivism, proposing that cognitive development progresses by children generating, testing, and changing theories about the physical and social world
What is the preoperational period?
Piaget’s second stage of cognitive development, lasting from about age 2 to 7, when children are thinking at a symbolic level but are not yet using cognitive operations
What is symbolic function?
The ability to use symbols (e.g. images and words) to represent objects and experiences
What is representational insight?
The knowledge than an entity can stand for (represent) something other than itself
The first major period in Piaget’s stage theory is the ‘sensorimotor stage’, which lasts from birth to approximately 2 years of age. According to Piaget, how do children at this stage think about the world?
a. They are not able to comprehend the world yet and must rely on others to do their thinking for them.
b. They are able to think logically and comprehend their environment.
c. They cannot comprehend the world because they are unable to verbalize fluently.
d. They are able to comprehend the world around them through their actions on it.
d. They are able to comprehend the world around them through their actions on it
According to Piaget, ‘imitation’ is the purest example of which of the following?
a. accommodation
b. assimilation
c. the coordination of both assimilation and accommodation
d. abstract representation
b. assimilation
Six-month-old Pedro is playing with his stuffed toy rabbit in his crib. He sets the rabbit down, and as he moves to reach his bottle, his blanket covers the toy. Pedro then turns to reach for his rabbit, but seeing only a bump in his blanket, he cries. According to Piaget, what do Pedro’s actions in this situation reflect?
a. a lack of object permanence
b. a lack of deferred imitation
c. a lack of primary circular reactions
d. a lack of assimilation
a. a lack of object permanence
What does Piaget’s concept of ‘object permanence’ refer to?
a. The knowledge that objects have an existence in space and time independent of one’s perceptions of and action on them
b. The knowledge that an inanimate object (e.g. a ball) will remain in a given location when put there, although an animate object (e.g. a cat) may not
c. The tendency for semantic knowledge of objects to remain permanently in long-term memory
d. The tendency to memorize the spatial location of permanent objects in the environment
a. The knowledge that objects have an existence in space and time independent of one’s perceptions of and action on them
What is dual representation, or dual encoding?
The ability to represent an object simultaneously as an object in itself and as a representation of something else
What is animism?
Attributing life and lifelike qualities to inanimate objects
What is egocentrism?
The tendency to view the world from your own perspective while failing to recognize that others may have different points of view
What is appearance/reality distinction?
Ability to keep the true properties or characteristics of an object in mind despite the deceptive appearance that the object has assumed; notably lacking among young children during the preconceptual period
What is centration?
In Piaget’s theory, the tendency of preoperational children to attend to one aspect of a situation to the exclusion of others; contrasts with decentration.
What is conservation?
The recognition that the properties of an object or substance do not change when its appearance is altered in some superficial way
What is decentration?
In Piaget’s theory, the ability of concrete operational children to consider multiple aspects of a stimulus or situation; contrasts with centration.
What is reversibility?
The ability to reverse, or negate, an action by mentally performing the opposite action (negation).
What is identity training?
An attempt to promote conservation by teaching non-conservers to recognize that a transformed object or substance is the same object or substance, regardless of its new appearance.
What is theory of mind?
A person’s concepts of mental activity; used to refer to how children conceptualize mental activity and how they attribute intention to and predict the behaviour of others; see also belief-desire reasoning.
What is belief-desire reasoning?
The process whereby we explain and predict what people do based on what we understand their desires to be.
What is the false-belief task?
A type of task used in theory-of-mind studies, in which the child must infer that another person does not possess knowledge that he or she possesses (i.e. that other person holds a belief that is false)
What is the concrete-operational period?
Piaget’s third stage of cognitive development, lasting from about age 7 to age 11, when children are acquiring cognitive operations and thinking more logically about real objects and experiences
What is mental seriation?
A cognitive operation that allows one to mentally order a set of stimuli along a quantifiable dimension such as height or weight
What is transitivity?
The ability to recognize relations among elements in a serial order (e.g. if A > B and B > C, then A > C)
What is horizontal décalage?
Piaget’s term for a child’s uneven cognitive performance; an inability to solve certain problems even though the child can solve similar problems requiring the same mental operations
What are formal operations?
Piaget’s fourth and final stage of cognitive development, from age 11 or 12 and beyond, when the individual begins to think more rationally and systematically about abstract concepts and hypothetical events
What is hypothetico-deductive reasoning?
In Piaget’s theory, a formal operational ability to think hypothetically
What is inductive reasoning?
The type of thinking that scientists display, where hypotheses are generated and then systematically tested in experiments
What is an imaginary audience?
A result of adolescent egocentrism. Adolescents believe that everyone around them is as interested in their thoughts and behaviours as they are themselves
Glen’s mother has dark hair and is short; Glen thinks that all mothers have dark hair and are short. What is this an example of?
a. conservation
b. disequilibrium
c. egocentrism
d. accommodation
c. egocentrism
What characterizes the preoperational child?
a. introspective and abstract thinking
b. logical, concrete, and nonabstract thinking
c. symbolic, intuitive, and egocentric thinking
d. logical, abstract, and egocentric thinking
c. symbolic, intuitive, and egocentric thinking
A 5-year-old child suggests that John, who is 6 feet tall, must be older than his Aunt Mary, who is only 5 feet tall. What can this approach of interpreting age based solely on the height of an individual be attributed to?
a. this child’s seeing events as specific states and ignoring transformations
b. this child’s egocentricity
c. this child’s inability to deal with a superordinate and subordinate concept simultaneously
d. this child’s perceptual centration
d. this child’s perceptual centration
What is the term for children’s developing concepts of mental activity, including some coherent framework for organizing facts and making predictions?
a. dual encoding
b. reflective abstraction
c. theory of mind
d. representational insight
c. theory of mind
What is sociocultural theory?
Vygotsky’s perspective on cognitive development, in which children acquire their culture’s values, beliefs, and problem-solving strategies through collaborative dialogues with more knowledgeable members of society
What is ontogenetic development?
Development of the individual over their lifetime
What is microgenetic development?
Changes that occur over relatively brief periods, in seconds, minutes, or days, as opposed to larger-scale changes, as conventionally studied in ontogenetic development
What is phylogenetic development?
Development over evolutionary time
What is sociohistorical development?
Changes that have occurred in an individual’s culture and the values, norms, and technologies such a history has generated
What are tools of intellectual adaptation?
Vygotsky’s term for methods of thinking and problem-solving strategies that children internalize from their interactions with more competent members of society
What is the zone of proximal development?
Vygotsky’s term for the range of tasks that are too complex to be mastered alone but can be accomplished with guidance and encouragement from a more skillful partner
What is scaffolding?
Process by which an expert, when instructing a novice, responds contingently to the novice’s behaviour in a learning situation, so that the novice gradually increases their understanding of a problem
What is guided participation?
Adult-child interactions in which children’s cognition and modes of thinking are shaped as they participate with or observe adults engaged in culturally relevant activities
What is context-independent learning?
Learning that has no immediate relevance to the present context, as is done in modern schools; acquiring knowledge for knowledge’s sake
What is egocentric speech?
Piaget’s term for the subset of a young child’s utterances that are nonsocial - that is, neither directed to others nor expressed in ways that listeners might understand
What is private speech?
Vygotsky’s term for the subset of a child’s verbal utterances that serve a self-communicative function and guide the child’s thinking
What is cognitive self-guidance system?
In Vygotsky’s theory, the use of private speech to guide problem-solving behaviour
Vygotsky discussed four perspectives of development that should be considered in any theory of intellectual development. Which one of the following is NOT one of the perspectives proposed by Vygotsky?
a. microgenetic development
b. phylogenetic development
c. sociocultural development
d. prenatal development
d. prenatal development
Miller and his colleagues observed that Chinese children learned to count to 20 before American children. What did they attribute this discrepancy to?
a. differences in the number words used in Chinese and English
b. differences in the amount of instruction in counting that Chinese and American children receive
c. differences in the amount of scaffolding that Chinese and American children receive
d. differences in genetic dispositions, with Chinese children being genetically disposed to better arithmetic abilities than most American children
a. differences in the number words used in Chinese and English
Five-year-old Erin sits on the floor with her mother as they play a board game. Erin rolls a 2 and a 3 on the dice. She picks up her game piece, a small toy dog, moving it along the board as she says, “I move my doggie one, two… then I move my doggie one, two, three.” What does Erin’s behaviour reflect?
a. Piaget’s perspective: that private speech reflects the child’s egocentricity of thought and represents the child’s unsuccessful attempt at social speech
b. Piaget’s perspective: that private speech is a necessary precursor to social speech in that it serves as preparation (practice) for successful social communication
c. Vygotsky’s perspective: that private speech serves as a cognitive self-guidance system for young children
d. Vygotsky’s perspective: that private speech serves only to initiate or inhibit overt motor actions and has no influence on guiding cognition.
c. Vygotsky’s perspective: that private speech serves as a cognitive self-guidance system for young children
